Chapter Text
Stopped by the market for some stimpaks and ammo this morning before we headed into the Galactic Zone. I feel for the traders trapped here, abused and scared and ill-treated as they are. Seeing them flinch as a gang member walks too close to them and their products (often on purpose), it helped firm up an already solid resolve to do something. I just have to get the timing just right. There would be no room for any kind of error. If I did this too soon, we'd all be in trouble. And I would definitely be dead.
We then came across a bloodbath just outside of the Galactic Zone gates a little while later. Curie thought that they might have been some of the traders that Chip in the market had mentioned. But if that were the case, why were their bodies strewn about with robots that had been destroyed, too? It didn’t make sense, because the raiders would definitely have grabbed some of the bodies to display as a threat and warning to the traders that hadn’t tried to run. At least, that was my thought process in the moment.
Meaty uncovered a holotape that must have fallen out of one of the dead persons pockets and gotten trapped under her leg. Most of the entries (it was some sort of personal diary, far as I could tell) were corrupted beyond interpretation, but the last two (dated almost two years ago), were still legible. There was a lot of technical talk that I didn’t fully understand, but it seemed that something had happened that involved the mainframe that ran the robots in the Galactic Zone. There were several mentions of things she called ‘star cores’ and a repeating in several different ways of how it had all gone wrong. The distress at their situation was clear and potent. As was her frustration and anger with someone named Kendall about his not listening and how he just started ripping out the cores for scrap. It was quite disjointed and I knew that if I wanted to know exactly what had happened, I would have to find more details inside the park. If there were any more.
Whatever had happened inside the Galactic Zone prior to my arrival, it had put the robots that functioned as servers and security – so, basically, every single one of them – into ‘murder everyone’ mode. Because the second a Mr. Frothy saw our small party, it definitely tried to start killing us. Being shot with what I can only assume was super-heated and incredibly irradiated Nuka-Cola was not fun when I was still aching from the radscorpions.
We made it to the top of Starport Nuka and found a fat reel of Nukacade tickets in the manager’s office in between waves of robots. Getting it into the pack was tricky, but I wanted to bring it with me.
Then we figured out how to get down to the first floor of Starport Nuka. I had totally forgotten about the Nuka-Cola Quantum themed set of power armor that was a front and center display in this attraction. Totally forgotten about its existence. Curie expressed a curiosity in the power armor, so she stayed back to check it out while Meaty and I walked around it to check out the wall of equipment at the back. I noticed, while Meaty had a good sniff at everything, that there seemed to be things missing from the equipment. I was poking around the terminal when Meaty let out a short bark – I’d learned this is his ‘I’ve found something’ bark.
That something was the body of a man dressed in rawhide rags. A strange looking panel was next to his outstretched hand and I definitely noticed that it looked like it would fit in one of the empty spaces on the machinery. Curie had discovered one poking around in a back room of the arcade the other day. Then she remarked that it looked like it would fit in the empty spaces on the equipment. I hadn’t heard her come up, so I jumped like my soul was trying to leave my body and pulled my gun out as I whipped around. So I almost shot Curie today for sneaking up on me. She apologized profusely, but I couldn’t really be mad at her. I also felt bad for pulling a gun on her the way I did.
These panels did indeed turn out to be the referenced missing ‘star cores’ and putting the two we had back was enough to be able to boot up the system properly and find a list of locations for the rest of the cores. Most of them, thankfully, were located inside the park, but a couple were outside the Zone.
We weren’t in the park much longer after booting up the mainframe. Curie had picked up a few burns from the jets of super-heated Nuka-Cola and Meaty’s fur had been matted down by the same jets of liquid, so he needed a bath and a comb. Much as I knew he’d hate it; and so would I because my face still hurt quite a damn bit.