#arcjet systems

Went to ArcJet...

...and almost cooked the poor husband. Oops!

3rd Dec., 2287

I located the source of the alert to the Cambridge Police Station & it seemed I arrived at the very last minute. The area directly in front of the station had been heavily fortified with ballistic shielding & temporary walls. Within stood one person in dark power armor & struggled to keep waves of feral ghouls at arm's reach with their laser rifle. Backed up against the wall behind the power armor were two people, one was bleeding profusely & tried to shoot at the ghouls with a pistol while the other did their best to keep pressure on the wounds.

My last two molotov cocktails weakened the stream of ghouls into the fortification & it allowed me to utilize my minigun which efficiently dispatched the last of the ferals.

These three people were what remained of their recon squad & had found themselves isolated in the police station when their long-range transmission equipment got blown up.

The man in the power armor was Paladin Danse, officer of the squad. Field Scribe Haylen was the woman who tended to the injuries of Knight Rhys. She quickly got the bleeding under control as soon as the ghouls weren't a concern & the man stopped squirming.

I was informed by the officer that the squad needed to repair the transmitter for their signals to reach the airship. Somehow they had already determined that some industrial facility to the west was the best option to locate new the needed parts.

Danse ordered the other two to remain at the police station & not risk further injuries because he deemed two armored bodies enough to handle any opposition. It felt like there was no time to waste.

We travelled west from Cambridge & followed the river for some time. On the road ahead of us, gathered under a bridge, was a group of what Danse was first to identify as Raiders. He opened fire, I followed suit & in less than two minutes we had taken out all of them. One of the corpses didn't look like the others, a canvas hood like one of the others, but bound to the wreck of a car. There was no hesitation when this man initiated the attack against these people. No discussion of verbal confrontation or alternate routes.

Our goal was the research facility of ArcJet Systems & we arrived after sundown. Danse said he saw signs of synth activity minutes after we had entered the building, a heap of protectrons without any traces of blood or spent casings. The complex reached deep under street level & we found ourselves cornered at the bottom of a silo. We made it out on top of a pile of charred, white plastic. The specific part we were looking for was found on one of the synths & meant the Institute is looking for it as well.

Me & Danse found an elevator that took us back to the surface. On our way up he (finally) offered me to officially join the Brotherhood of Steel & admitted he had planned to wait but realized my skills would come to good use.

I found a strange piece of machinery at ArcJet & not inside one of the labs but rather in a maintenance room near the power reactor. And it’s not made from complex & expensive materials but rather junk found in most garages. Something about it made me drag it with me even though chances are it’s useless scrap.

They took the elevator to the top floor and none of them was surprised by another wave of gen-ones attacking them in the control room.  

Finally, it seemed that the reinforcements ran out as there wasn’t anymore coming and they eventually managed to dispose them all.

“Damn it,” he growled as he reconnoitered the room, “I don't see the device anywhere. Fan out and check the synth remains,” he draw a circle in the air with his gun. “They may have been after the transmitter as well,” he guessed.

Winter spotted a gen-two across the room, so she headed to see that one first. In the groups of synths a higher generation one usually acted as a leader, so it was logical to see that one first. She found a strange, Institute-issue holding container near its hand. She picked the white box up and peeled the plastic crate open, holding up a dark brown device with some potmeters and others parts she couldn’t even name, “is this it?” 

Look who I found…again 

Deacon’s new friend. There he goes.

Winter grabbed her rifle and ran back to the room with the observing window. She saw a control panel there, with several smaller controls and a large, ominous red button, labeled ‘fire engine’. She looked up and saw that the Paladin was almost cornered and more synths rained down at him, after another white flash. 

“There’s too many of them,” he remarked with wrath. She wondered for a moment how well the power armor can withstand the heat wave coming from the jet engine, and flipped the safety lid open, hovering her hand above the large red button for a moment, because all her previous experience taught her to have a reasonable fear to give it a try. Even if that fear was irrational as it came from her childhood cartoons.

“Improvise, Winter!” he yelled in despair, breathing heavily after the long minutes of continuous combat and she pushed her palm at the button at last, adding her own weight to the thrust. A pre-recorded female voice announced that everyone should leave the main chamber, and after a five seconds countdown the engine fired. 

She watched in awe as the synths around evaporated in a matter of seconds, all at once and the heat wave forced the Paladin to his knees as well. His armor got so hot it started to faintly glow. She picked up her luggage once again and she ran back to assess him, possibly to give him a stimpak if he needs one.

“Oh my god. I’m sorry! Oh god, are you alright?” she was shocked that she almost fried him, despite her best intentions. She didn’t know what would she say to Haylen. Or to the permanently pissed off Rhys.

“Now... as far as the second matter goes, I wanted to make you a proposal,” he continued, snapping her out of admiring the laser rifle. “We had a lot thrown at us back there. Our op could have ended in disaster, but you kept your cool and handled it like a soldier,” he commended her once again and she already grinned wildly because she knew where this was leading.

“Before we departed from the police station, you told me you wanted to join the Brotherhood of Steel. Is that something you're still willing to do, or should we just say our goodbyes?”

Winter understood that things got real, so she took a moment before answering, and asked about the conditions.

Joining a new group always had its advantages and disadvantages, and even though she still knew very little about the Brotherhood of Steel, it didn’t seem like a good choice to turn down this offer.

“You'd be under my command, and I'd expect you to follow orders. No more mercenary work... this is the real thing. You'd have access to advanced military weapons, as well as your own personal suit of Power Armor. Most importantly, you'd have the Brotherhood at your back... ready to spill its own blood to keep you alive. So... what do you say?”

Winter cleared her throat and hit a respectful tone.