SFS Chapter 310 - 310
Chapter 310 - 310
Now that Adam had completed his objective of hiring The Gunners it was time to head home. To the Vault. Tomorrow was the big day. Another event where many of the forces of Chicago were brought to bear to fight a larger menace. However for now he was fine to leave the worries of the eventual fight and handle the march with all the warfighters to the later Adam.Adam drove home shortly after. He was at least slightly concerned that The Colonel could have scammed him, but it seemed unlikely. Adam packed a lot of firepower too and the Colonel knew that, in addition he had a lot of 'friends' in high places. It would also be a bad look for the Colonel's business if he stiffed a client. Even if he didn't trust the Colonel he trusted economics, and that he would not throw away his reputation for a mere 800 caps. Though in a way that was precisely why the Colonel likely asked for 20% upfront. He had to trust that the client, Adam in this case, would pay out. He was sure that Harrison had dealt with people who did not pay out after completing the mission. This was a sign of trust for both parties.
Adam arrived back at the Vault again and took the things out of the APC to bring inside, or, in the case of the laser turrets, leave them outside.
While everyone else headed into the Vault Adam stayed outside to install the laser turrets to further aid their defenses. Mira actually offered to stay and help but Adam declined. As much as he wanted to put the problems of tomorrow off until tomorrow, he couldn't because he had a lot on his mind. He was not proud of it, but a lot of people were going to die soon, and because of him. People he willfully will be throwing into a meat grinder. Of course he had no illusions about why he was doing this. Nor did he feel especially bad about going through with it. But fully shedding himself of the guilt of the soon-to-be deaths of so many was not an easy thing to do. If his goal was just the destruction of the cult it would not be so bad. However he was acting duplicitous, he hoped War and his men would die too. It was that issue that gave him pause. The silence and labor intensive action of installing the laser turrets was good for giving him time to sort his thoughts.
Of course he was not entirely alone outside. There was a guard from inside the Vault that was on lookout duty. She was more than happy to help Adam install the laser turret but once more he declined. More than just the Guard, it seemed as though Deccanus was not ready to go inside yet either. Perhaps with thoughts of his own on his mind judging by his thousand yard stare. And then, of course, Buddy remained in the Guard position as well, not that Buddy was prone to offer help but Adam was aware of his presence.
Regardless, the fresh air and time alone gave Adam enough space to come to terms with what he was about to do. It would hurt. But it had to be done. For the safety of Chicago the Cult and War's forces had to be dealt with.
The Vault entrance now had a wall that could be manned and 2 laser turrets sitting atop the wall next to the guard position. Adam decided to put the two new laser turrets in off center positions from the Vault wall. He made use of the remains of the still standing wall and structure that once hid the Vault entrance and put the laser turrets in different firing positions for different angles of attack if ever needed. With 4 turrets and a guard on duty at all times nothing short of a real attack of a heavily armed force would break through. It was safe to say his home was now well defended. There may be many more improvements to make in the future, but for now this was a sign of progress. He was creating a home. One well suited for this new life. Safe and secure.
Adam headed inside shortly thereafter, grabbed a meal, watched a movie, and then headed to bed after a shower. He considered spending some time with others, however he wanted to spend the day alone, on his own terms. The other option was cleaning and doing repairs to the power armor pieces, however he really was not in the mood to clean sewer debris caked power armor pieces. Besides, it would likely be an all day process to just clean them back to a usable state. And that's assuming they did not need any sort of repairs on top of that. He did not have that kind of time. So instead a nice movie was perfect for winding down.
However, before he went to bed he made sure to put the bobblehead up on the shelf with the others and the Vertibird model on top of his nightstand in his bedroom. A small act of normalcy in the sea of chaos that was his life.
The weird alien looking blaster was safely stored away in the Armory, in a locked gun safe within the locked armory. In addition he kept the ammo inside a personal safe he had in his suite. It was best to keep these two things separate until he could figure out a use for them. Just in case.
The next day Adam got his crew together, explained the plan to those who may not have been completely aware, which is to say just Pearl. Everyone else already knew or was a robot who didn't need an explanation. Speaking of robots, however, now was the perfect time to bring Sgt. Fyre and Hades along. There has never been a better time to unveil his secret heavy hitters than now.
Sgt. Fyre was eager to throw himself into the fire and welcomed the chance to kill 'communists' with fervor. However when he ordered Hades to join with the others in the APC for transport the response was… strange.
"Please explain the nature of your orders." Hades said back, robotically, and not at all how it was supposed to respond.
"E-excuse me?" Adam asked back, confused at why a robot was asking questions back to him.
"Repeat: Please explain the nature of your orders." Adam blinked twice as the robotic sentry bot stared back at him. This was… baffling. It's not like he was a robotics engineer, but he felt like he knew robots pretty well. However a robot questioning the orders it was given was… beyond abnormal. This was practically unheard of. He had gone through and deeply cleaned out Hades' programming, but of course he did not change everything. It was a bit of a mess in there. However he did do enough that a problem like this should not be occurring. It was confusing to say the least.
"Recognize Adam Baxter." Adam said back, deciding to make use of his admin privileges.
"Recognized." Hades said back.
"Spin around so I can have access to your input." Adam said as he began to pull out the wire from his pip-boy. He expected that Hades would immediately comply with his order, after all, he had the highest privilege he could program. There should be no question. However, instead Hades seemed to hesitate. Almost as if it was considering Adam's words.
Before Adam could question it, however, Hades did as instructed and offered Adam access to his computer input so he could plug his pip-boy in. As soon as Adam did and called up Hades' coding he noticed something very weird.
Those random strings of code? The ones that looked like a first year engineering student had been experimenting? They had expanded. No, grown is the right word. It was as if the code was a vine and all he did was trim it before. Now it seemed as if the code was growing again, adding new paths, new directives, new ideas. Hades was… changing?