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2263
She was only ten, and it was six years before Petey would be born to eventually hear the same stories—and to tell them, too. Don the storyteller faced her, Raquel, and Jack, the children seated in a semicircle on the floor, while he told his tales from a chair. Her tailbone ached and her legs and palms were all covered in dirty dust from leaning back while she listened, but it was worth it. She loved hearing the stories.
"I'm hungry!" Jack said in a whiney whisper, and Don's speech faltered from the distraction.
"Shut up," Raquel growled, punching him hard in the arm. She was the youngest of the three and did not like it one bit.
"I'm almost done," Don said, slurring back to his previous sentence.
This was usually around the time Don finished, growing too tired from whatever he was drinking to go on. That didn't mean his stories were bad. Pippa liked them, and she felt like she learned something new every time they sat to listen. She wanted so badly to go outside and see the things he talked about; Vault 34, Lake Mead, even Vegas...but Granny Pearl would never allow that.
Don ended story time with the usual, a dramatized rendition of the crashing of the Lady in the Water. The remains of great American civilization, the B-29, silver and glittering beneath the hot desert sun, had spun down and around into the depths while fighting the enemies of humanity. Bombing the evil from the skies, she became disoriented, skidding across the gleaming surface of Lake Mead while still being attacked. In the end she sank. Pippa wondered how much of that was true. The Lady was lying still and asleep now, for over two hundred years and maybe forever. Rusted and brittle all the way through.
"I wanna fly a plane!" Jack exclaimed once Don rattled off his final words.
"You're too stupid to fly a plane," Raquel replied as he dodged another punch.
"I could fly a plane," Pippa said proudly, wiping the dust from her hands onto her jumpsuit legs as the three of them stood.
Don dismissed them and they walked together back to the mess hall, bickering over the matter of piloting.
2281
Pippa wrung her dark hair out over the desert rocks, watching the droplets of water sizzle on the ground. It was hot, hotter than any other Mojave day she could remember, not even the ones where she had baked under those metal Nellis roofs. She missed the weather of Zion in times like this.
She picked up her boots and jumpsuit from the big flat rock she'd laid them on. A little dusty from the wind that brought no solace, and her wet skin stuck to the rough fabric, but she would dry out soon enough. She tied the arms around her waist and tugged on her socks and boots. It was no use seeking relief from the heat only to be blistered through by the sun.
The water of Lake Mead was refreshing. Her Pip-Boy's Geiger counter ticked angrily, still sitting atop the rock. That didn't matter. It was worth it. She would have stayed beneath the water, rebreather affixed to her face, for hours if she had to. That lady beneath the lake was worth it.
The detonator sat beside the Pip-Boy, and she took it in her palm. The buoyancy devices were attached, ready to deploy.
She wasn't so worse for wear. Rusty and sharp, angry at having been abandoned for so long. Cockpit housing a skeleton whose eye tooth Pippa had wrenched out for the memory. She looked exactly how Pippa always imagined her.
And she would fly again, no matter how unrealistic it seemed now. She could be fixed. Her bones were there, they had the technology—Pippa had leverage elsewhere to get whatever else they might need. The prototype B-29 sat still, waiting, at Nellis. She would fly again, even if she became Theseus's ship, ready to bomb the hell out of anyone who dared cross her.
Pippa pressed the button on the detonator. The water murmured, weakly, bubbles popping. Then droplets exploded from the lake and rained down upon her. The two massive balloons penetrated the surface, blue and yellow breaking against the murky green of the lake.
She wasn't afraid that it hadn't worked, not even when it took a full minute for the lady's hull to breach the surface. It was too real not to work. She had touched it, ran her hand along its wing; it would work. Ever since Granny Pearl and Loyal had told her what she had to do, she knew it would work. Pippa smiled.