Radiance Ch. 120

Chapter 120: Homemovers Blues.

In the midst of the crap storm that followed Number Eight's infiltration of the Railroad and subsequent ousting by Wisp and her people both groups found some common ground and sat down together to discuss a potential partnership that could benefit them both.

But the first order of business had been getting the Railroad people moving as their HQ under the church at the centre of Boston had been compromised by Number Eight and if he had gone scurrying back to the Enclave, then there was no telling when the heavy clomping of power armoured Jackboots would be heard clomping through those well-disguised catacombs.

So with Wisp's team's help, they stripped and moved the entire HQ to a nearby site that Desdemona had picked out, though it wasn't one of the fallback locations they had on file as they had no way of telling if Eight had compromised those as well.

Tinker Tom set up a beacon that informed all incoming Railroad teams of the security breach and to disperse to their designated safe house until they could be contacted and brought into the new HQ.

This was also communicated in Railsign that was plastered on all the doors and walls of the HQ so if by chance any personnel came in without hearing the beacon they would see the warning signs and vanish.

The last thing they did before finally leaving the HQ which had served them for so long was to booby trap everything they could think of to make the place a hall of nightmares to any trespassers who broke in while they were gone, though Desdemona hoped that one day they would reclaim it.

The new HQ they picked out was ironically an actual railroad, well a subway station deep underground in the heart of the rail network of Boston.

Turned out Tom had been holding onto this little ace up his sleeve for a dire emergency and had pulled it at just the right moment and the best part was he hadn't either written it down or told anyone about it, until now.

You see this was not any ordinary subway station, it was an old abandoned Vaulttec Vault.

He'd discovered it when going through a series of old Vault tec records that had been brought in on holo tape by one of the scav teams but there had never been any records of this place in any of the other records they'd recovered from the local Vault tec offices and they were always on the lookout for old Vaults as they had a mine of old tech they could salvage.

This place had been penned for local politicians and VIPs and was a strictly off-grid kind of affair, apparently some kind of under-the-table deal between someone high up in the Vault tec hierarchy and the local business and politics bigwigs.

The local wealthy business folk had stumped up the cash while the politicians did their bit to keep it out of the papers and under the radar, it was so hush-hush that it didn't even have a number, it was simply referred to as the Retreat.

"Are you sure this place exists Tom?" Desdemona asked for about the sixth time this particular hour as the now large group of Railroad personnel and Wisp's team walked together through the rat's maze of tunnels that wound them ever deeper under the city.

"I'm sure Des for the umpteenth time, it was right there in the fucking paperwork, hard as fuck to dig up and decode mind you but it was there," Tom said as he tapped his pipboy which contained the route and rough location of the supposed secret vault.

"All I'm seeing down here is feral bloody Ghouls and roaches, so many bloody roaches," Malakai said from above their heads on the tunnel ceiling.

"Yeah, I heard that," Glory grumbled as she saw another feral ghoul and roach strung up in one of Malakai's web traps and dangling from the ceiling like a shit-filled pinata.

"We're close trust me," Tom said checking his map again and then pointing off to the left.

"If I'm right and I always bloody well am, there should be a maintenance door coming up on the left side there, if we take it should lead us into a side tunnel that doesn't show up on any of the transit maps," Tom said.

"Military?" Wisp asked and Tom nodded.

"Yup, there's quite a few like that down here that you'd never even know about unless you managed to stumble into them by off chance and given the sheer amount of shit down here you'd have to have balls of steel or be able to walk on walls like your fluffy boyfriend up there to get past them, or well you know to be a big angry Claw," Tom said glancing first at Malakai scuttling along on the ceiling and then switching to Ven who was simply striding along at the centre of the group.

Wisp had noticed just how many of the Railroad personnel had warmed right up to her non-human friends when the first wave of Ferals had charged them only to run smack bang into Ven and Passa who had diced them like rotten sausages in a matter of seconds.

Ever since the group had tightened up around the two Claws like they were two walking beacons of safety.

Just as Tom had said out of the gloom a door appeared set into the wall of the tunnel with faded and flaking yellow paint on it which gave away its maintenance status rather easily as all the maintenance shafts down here were painted yellow so they could be easily spotted.

Malakai dropped down off the ceiling and scuttled up to the door, he tried the handle and saw that it was rusted shut so planting his eight legs wide apart he anchored himself down and put that surprising arachnid strength of his to good use in wrenching the handle opened with a metallic screech that echoed away into the distance.

As he pulled it open both Ven and Passa moved in first just in case the tunnel had a nasty feral surprise waiting for them on the other side of it and despite not having much in the way of manoeuvrability in the tight corridor an angry wall of scales and claws coming at you down a tunnel was still more than enough to make the rat brains think twice.

Once everyone had passed through the tunnel Malakai sealed it up behind them and the group found themselves in a slightly narrower train tunnel now that wound its way off into the darkness in both directions.

"The entrance to the vaulted tunnel should be just up ahead, they used this line to run munitions between some of the military bases in the region and there are a few underground stations that serve as fallback positions and stockpiles for the military, though most have been picked clean there are still one or two still sitting in the shadows waiting to be found, there's not exactly a road map for me you know?" Tom said taking point.

"How did the military keep track of them all if there are no maps?" Passa asked.

"It was most likely written in code but without a cypher to decode it would be a pain in the arse for anyone to crack these days, so it's not that maps don't exist it's more they've been encoded so that any rando who somehow managed to get their hands on one would have little chance of reading it," Fuller said as he walked along next to Glory who had barely let him out of her sight to take a piss since their reunion, not that Wisp could blame her.

Hell, she figured that if she found herself in Glory's shoes she'd probably have tied herself to Malakai's fluffy rear end and clung the fuck on no matter where he scuttled off to.

"So how the hell did they manage to sneak a whole bloody Vault down here into this line without getting noticed?" Desdemona asked as they walked following Tom.

"I don't think it's so much that they weren't noticed it's just that people had other things to worry about other than some random construction work going on, think about Des the Military was on the brink of war and was gearing up for it, bases were springing up all over the shop and personnel and equipment were buzzing around everywhere, so are regular everyday soldiers gonna worry about some random construction dudes just building something that kinda looks like another base on the line>," he said.

"Well I guess when you put it like that yeah it does kinda make sense but still, hard to imagine that they could construct an entire vault right under the military's nose and no one noticed or batted an eyelid," she said.

"Oh they most likely noticed and the ones with any kinda power to do anything about it were probably either promised a place for themselves and their families to look the other way or paid very well, business was shady as fuck back then," Tom said running his hand down the inside of the dark stone walls as he walked and that's when he stopped.

"And there it is!!" he exclaimed pointing and when everyone looked there was nothing there but a little box on the wall.

"Umm I know those lenses on your head can fuck up your eyes somewhat Tom but I think you might need to get them checked, all I see is a junction box," Glory said looking where pointed and Tom turned to grin at her.

"And that's the point, my synthetic friend, take a closer look at that junction box and tell me what you see?" he said.

They all turned to look at the junction box and at first, nothing jumped out at them until Malakai piped up from the ceiling above them.

"Isn't that join a little odd, it kinda looks like one of the vault doors, you know a big fucking cog?" he said pointing at where the box joined a cable that ran off into the wall to fuck only knew where.

"Exactly, hiding in plain sight is our mo to a tee," Tom said and with that, he walked up to the junction box and opened it with a little effort.

Now to the untrained eye, it didn't look any different to a normal junction box with fuses and breakers all over the place, but right there at the bottom was something that didn't belong, a pipboy interface.

Tom pulled the wire from his own pipboy and plugged it into the port, he ran through a series of codes until he found the one that worked and as it did a small flap in the bottom of the box popped open revealing a large red button hidden behind it.

Which upon being pressed started a whole series of events that made a whole lot of mouths fall open.

Firstly the whole tunnel began to shake, and then the lines under their feet began to retract like they were being pulled in by something, next up a large section of the wall simply retracted into the floor and finally, another set of lines appeared out of the gravel to make a split section, one going left and the other right.

"Ladies, gents, claws and fluffy spooder people I give you, the Retreat," Tom said proudly while doing an overly theatrical bow and sweeping arm gesture towards the tunnel.

"Well I'll be damned, so it does exist!" Desdemona exclaimed.

"Aren't the residents gonna be umm kinda pissed when we show up to knock on their door?" Glory asked and Tom shot her a grin.

"That's the best part, although the Vault was finished they never got to use it, the bombs fell before they had the chance to set up the system or to tell the people who paid for it where it was, so as far as we know it's a pristine vault that's never been opened or used, well until today that it," he said grinning.

'Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go!" Wisp said and the whole group set off into the newly opened tunnel only for it to close behind them when they got halfway.

"So wait you are telling me you've known about this place the entire time but you never told us?" Desdemona said as they began to walk down the now sealed tunnel leading towards the Vault entrance which the closer they got became more obvious in the distance as the painted metal began to reflect their lights.

"Not the entire time no, I began to hear see whispers of its existence in the files we kept finding in both military files and the Vault tec files so I decided to start to cross-referencing everything mainly because I was curious but the more I dug the more I realised that not only was this place real, but that it might be absolutely perfect for us when the time was right and the shit hit the fan and lo and behold here we are," Tom explained.

Desdemona shot him an odd glance and then sighed heavily.

"Actually you were probably right not to tell me earlier as I'd have probably written it off as you chasing ghosts again and not worthy of diverting resources to, but here we are now and who would have thought it but one of your fucking conspiracy theories not only turns out to be true but saves our arses," she said with a chuckle to her voice.

"Your welcome," Tom said not looking particularly pleased to be made out to be a wild conspiracy theorist in front of their new friends.

As they reached the end of the tunnel they fully saw it, a signature Vault tec vault door set into the tunnel itself in the shape of an oversized cog blocking their path.

"So does that box of tricks of yours open this or are we gonna need to break out the crowbars?" Glory asked gesturing to firstly Tom's pipboy and then to the blue and yellow door.

"You'd need a lot more than a fucking crowbar to get this fucker open I can tell you, not even the fucking bombs could crack these things, hence why none of them ever got broken into, the only way people got into one of these things was they were selected and later on when the people inside were stupid enough or desperate enough to open the doors," Tom said walking up to a control panel on the wall.

He stretched the wire and connecter out from his pipboy and hooked it up to the door itself but unlike the panel back in the previous tunnel this one simply glowed an angry red at him.

"Ahh fuck looks like it has a specific code that it's needing that's not in the Vault tec database, it's gonna take a bit for me to crack the damn thing so ya all might wanna get comfy, we might be here for a while," Tom said.

"Or I could take a look?" Wisp said walking up to join him and Tom glanced at her for a moment before shrugging and gesturing to the panel.

"Be my guest, after the shit I've seen you and your people do I know better than to second guess you any more," he said.

Wisp turned to Malakai and gave him a nod.

The large Archnakai boy scuttled his way up to her and held her body tenderly as she exited it through both the mouth and nose causing it to sag limply in his arms.

"Don't be gone too long my love, I get jittery when you are not here where you belong," he said tenderly and Wisp did a floating lap around his head while he twitched his little mandibles and pedipalps before turning herself into a large floating heart shape.

Gaining access to the Vault door controls was a piece of piss thanks to Tom's pipboy connection and once she'd gained entry she began to cycle her way through the contained codes that she could find stored on the matrix until she hit the right one.

There was a loud rumble and a metallic shriek as the giant screw system that was behind the door began to move forward to uncork the door from the inside.

Wisp shot back out of the door panel and into her body making it spring to life in Malakai's arms and the first thing she did was give him a big mischievous grin.

"Miss me?' she said playfully and he gave her a flick of his pedipalps.

"Very funny," he said before swinging her around and plopping her down on his fluffy rear end.

"Jesus you don't fuck about do you, I was expecting to be here for at least an hour or so!?" Desdemona exclaimed as she watched the door begin to vibrate as the large screw drill screwed itself into the thread on the other side.

"It's a lot easier to pop the code when you have access to the circuit board on which they are stored, it's a simple task of picking one of the stored codes and spoofing it so the system thinks that it's being activated," she replied.

"Seems like you lot are real handy to have around in a pinch," Glory said glancing at them.

"More than you know trust me, these guys saved my arse out there more than once, hell those two chased me halfway across the region when I got myself kidnapped," Fuller said gesturing to Wisp and Passa.

"You got yourself fucking kidnapped!?" Glory exclaimed looking shocked and angry as well as a little worried.

"Yeah that was kinda my fault," Yumi said and she glanced at the young Japanese girl.

"Err how exactly?" Glory asked.

"She's the one who kidnapped me," Fuller said and Glory looked at them both with a raised eyebrow.

"The girl is about ninety pounds soaking wet how the fuck did that happen?" Glory exclaimed and now Wisp's group all laughed.

"If there is one thing you'll learn real fast hanging about with our lot is that looks mean absolutely fuck all, that girl right there has more than enough power in her to kill us all without much of an effort," Ven said to the now rather startled Glory who glanced at Yumi only to now noticed that this entire time she hadn't been holding a flaming torch but had just lit her hand on fire.

"How the fuck did I not notice that before!?" Glory exclaimed staring at her hand.

"Most people only see what they want to see rather than what they really should see, it's kinda the premise of this entire group really, they see who people really are, you see I'm a number just like Wisp here, though as you can see we are vastly different, while Wisp is non-corporeal and able to infiltrate machines, I am able to control the elements around me," Yumi said holding up her other hand making the fire jump between the two.

"Ok that is officially cool as fuck," Glory said.

"She can also fly," Fuller said making Glory shoot him an amazed glance before returning her attention to Yumi who simply gave her a grin.

"He's not kidding," she said.

"Well fuck me sideways, can you all bloody fly or something?" Glory muttered and Passa gave her a fang-filled grin.

"Nope just me, Yumi and Wisp, though Malakai can jump seriously far though that's pretty close," he said ruffling his wings which seemed to attract Shepherd's hands like black magnets.

Finally, the door rolled itself open and revealed what was hidden beyond it.

"It's another tunnel," Desdemona said peering into the brightly lit rail tunnel.

"Looks like a train station, look there's a platform for people to be offloaded, I guess that's where the guests were supposed to be processed before being taken down further into the Vault," Malakai said before he sprung forwards and landed on the platform itself.

He turned himself in a full circle with Wisp still mounted on his back like a jockey, "Looks clear come on in guys," Malakai called and the rest of the team headed in with Tom stopping to pull a breaker switch on the platform next to the door.

It seemed that the breaker controlled the door drill because no sooner had he pulled it than the drill slid back into the centre of the rails and rolled the door back into position before pushing it back into the slot it had been pulled out of.

There was a deep resonating metallic screech as the drill pushed the cog-shaped door home and fastened it into place, it then retracted up into the ceiling out of the way.

"I can't get over how clean this place looks," Desdemona said looking around at all the bright lights that lit the platform up which seemed to be littered with tables that had blue jumpsuits in plastic wrapping sitting waiting to be handed out.

"Vaults were designed to be a completely sealed environment, isolated from the outside world and the radiation it contained, no air or water from the outside so that means no rot or decay either, it's kinda like a fucking oversized time capsule," Tom said as he walked back to join the rest of them who had all climbed up onto the platform now.

"I'm just surprised the generators still work after all this time," Glory said glancing up at the lights.

"Nuclear powered and the whole thing has been in basically standby mode this entire time so it's probably not even used a tiny fraction of its fuel," Fuller said heading towards what looked like the security office which was set into the wall of the station with a plexiglass window looking out onto the platform.