Chapter 68: The Lady In The Water

Chapter 68: The Lady In The Water

Good morning, Mojave Wasteland! It looks like today is going to be absolutely gorgeous! Highs of 69, with partly cloudy skies all day. Light winds, and a few mild sandstorms around the Ivanpah Dry Lake race track. Time for a bit of news. Locals in Freeside, Outer Vegas, Primm, Novac, and even as far south as the Mojave Outpost reported seeing a meteor shower in the skies overhead last night. Several scavengers insist it was not a meteor at all, but a crashing satellite. Sounds like wishful thinking to me. Coming up next is Dean Martin, singing one of my favorite tracks: "Volare!" Sing it, Dean-o.

By one in the morning, nearly everyone had left the roof. All the Boomers had left, at any rate. Loyal and Pearl had also disappeared, preceding a steady trickle of departures. Veronica left shortly after the last pieces of ARCHIMEDES stopped burning up in the atmosphere. Gregory had disappeared with his grill about an hour earlier. Cass was passed out drunk on one of the deck chairs up here, Boone had disappeared, as had Arcade (along with Argyll, unsurprisingly enough.)

That was around when I left to get some shut eye. Don't know why, but I was only able to get a few hours in before I woke up, and couldn't get back to sleep. So, since daylight hadn't quite broken yet and the Boomers weren't going to play Reveille for at least another hour or so, I decided to head back up to the roof - start cleaning up a few things. And who should I find up there? Raul. He was sitting at a table near the edge of the roof, staring out at all the Nellis landscape. There were a few empty bottles and cups sitting on the table, but... I didn't think they were his. I hadn't seen him drink anything all last night during the party. Could ghouls even get drunk?

"Hey man," I said, sitting opposite of him at the table. "What are you still doing up?" Raul shrugged.

"Didn't really feel like sleeping, Boss. Just got... a lot on my mind." Raul sighed, and kept looking east. It was almost like he was waiting for the sun to come up.

"Anything you want to talk about?" I asked. Raul merely chuckled.

"I did plenty of talking last night. Loyal and Pearl, the three of us talked about a lot of things. Swapped stories... Did you know they both had plenty of chances over the years of giving up?" I shook my head. "They could have stepped down, retired to live out the rest of their days in luxury. Instead they stayed on, and they continue to do what they can to make sure the Boomers are kept on the right track."

"Hell," I shrugged, and tried to slump in the chair - and then realized just in time that the chair didn't have a back. "I think it's a good thing they're so devoted to their duty. If more people acted that way, trying to do the right thing, the wasteland might not be so bad."

"You think so, Boss?" Raul asked, chuckling grimly, and looking back at me. He folded his arms, and rested his elbows on the table. "Because I remember a time when a lot of people stuck to their duty, no matter what. And it ended with nuclear bombs falling on my hometown."

"Yeah, I remember you telling me about that the other day," I thought back to the story he had told me while checking on the solar panels. "If I recall, you said there was more to that story." Raul stared at me for a good long while, regarding me carefully. And eventually, he sighed, and started talking.

"Well... I told you about the fire. I knew my sister and I couldn't stay at what was left of Hidalgo Ranch anymore. The refugees still wanted me dead - they even put a bounty on me. I remember how scared Rafaela was. I told her if she came with me, we'd see the vaqueros."

"The what?" I asked. Was that more Spanish?

"Oh... sorry, Boss. I'm old, sometimes I forget these things..." Raul shook his head. "Technically, vaquero's a Spanish word for 'herder of cattle,' but Rafaela and I knew about them because the trick riders at the rodeo dressed like the vaqueros of the Old West. Sombreros, kerchiefs 'round their necks, leather chaps... the whole nine yards, Boss. Rafaela loved to go see the rodeo when it came to town. We figured maybe we could find help in Mexico City - we were young, we didn't know what had happened, really. We didn't understand about the bombs."

"I can't imagine you found anything," I said. "Didn't you say last time that Mexico City was vaporized?" Raul just shrugged.

"I don't think it was hit as hard as DC or Bakersfield, but... yeah, it was really bad. By the time we got there, the city was a radioactive ruin. Worse, it was full of looters, already forming into the beginning of raider tribes. Don't get me wrong, Boss, crime was bad before the War, but after the bombs it was a nightmare. For a long time, we were forced to live like scavengers, scraping by on what little food we could find, always looking for medicine for my burns..."

"Burns?" I asked. Raul nodded slowly, and subtly started rubbing his arms, as if it was an old habit.

"I didn't escape the ranch fire unscathed, Boss... but it didn't take long for the burns to be the least of my problems. Before long, the radiation started to kick in," Raul leaned back, opening his arms and putting himself on display. "turning me into this handsome devil you see before you."

"That sounds..." I tried to think of something to say, and came up short. "...pretty bad." Raul just shook his head.

"You're a poet of understatement, Boss. But... there were moments it was almost worth it. I still remember finding that novelty costume shop. I was just looking around for something I could slice up to wrap my burns when I saw the vaquero outfit hanging on the rack, like it hadn't been touched. I took it - I mean... not like anybody else needed it, you know? - and wore it back to our camp," Raul closed his eyes, and smiled his cracked lips wide. "Rafaela laughed for the first time since the bombs."

"Uh..." I tried to picture Raul before the bombs, dressed up in a sombrero, a neckerchief, and a pair of leather chaps. It was surprisingly difficult. "Wasn't it... kind of dangerous to be dressed so... noticeably?" Raul started nodding slowly, and the smile faded.

"It was. I started to build up a reputation... bit of a legend. Sort of like how people have started calling you Courier Six. Sometimes it headed off trouble... but most of the time, it just started more. Young punks looking to prove themselves would come looking for me. The nameless, gun-slinging vaquero... but my eyes were sharp, and my guns were quick. For a while, it seemed like we might even survive there, until... until Rafaela..." Raul trailed off, looking away from me.

"Something happened to her, didn't it?" I asked, almost unnecessarily. Raul nodded somberly.

"She went out to find some food one day. I was sick, so I stayed at the camp. Looking back, I guess it must have been the beginnings of radiation poisoning. It was supposed to be safe, but some raiders happened to pass through where she was scavenging. I..." Raul ran a scabby hand over his scalp, and slowly shook his head. "When I found her... her body, the...uh... the only way I was able to recognize her was this funny little scar on her knee."

"Oh fuck..." I looked around; I suddenly wished some of these empty beer bottles and cups weren't empty. "I'm sorry, man. I didn't know." Raul hung his head, refusing to look me in the face.

"I'd let my whole family down. First the Ranch... and then Rafaela. I was the last Tejada. I guess maybe I went a little crazy then. I took my guns, and went back to that market. I didn't have many bullets..." Raul's voice went low, and dangerous. "... but I had enough. Once the raiders were all dead, I salvaged what I could from the store. I was tired, I... I just wanted to be alone forever."

"So what did you do?"

"I left Mexico City behind. I made my way out to the Gulf Cost, and eventually I found an old Petro-Chico refinery nobody had claimed. I stayed there for a little while, and I thought a lot about my life. I thought about the guns I'd lived by and what they'd gotten me. And that's when I decided..." Raul looked up at me, with eyes that looked, for the first time, as old and tired as he said he was. "My guns hadn't gotten me anything. It was time to give them up. I took off the old vaquero outfit, and put on this Petro-Chico jumpsuit. The name tag said Miguel, so I started using the name myself. Eventually, I made it to Arizona..." Raul sighed. "But that's another story, Boss." Raul shook his head and chuckled. "You know, it's funny."

"Uh... what is?" I asked, genuinely curious. There was nothing about this conversation that seemed funny in the slightest.

"It's just that I never really open up to people, Boss. Especially not about my past." He looked off to the east - the first rays of sunshine were just starting to appear on the edge of the horizon. "I don't know what it is about you. You just seem... easy to talk to, Boss." I chuckled at that - Cass had said something similar about me being easy to talk to, if I remembered correctly. "I've gotta be honest... that's been weighing on my mind for a very long time. I think I just needed to get that out in the open."

"Happy to help."

The RHIB wasn't exactly luxurious, but it was in surprisingly good condition given that it probably hadn't been used in over 200 years. The hull of the boat looked like it was made out of fiberglass, and there was a rubber inflatable collar running along the outer edge of the boat. As soon as we pushed the boat off the back of the Deuce-And-A-Half, we loaded up and sped off along the pristine, crystalline blue surface of Lake Mead. With the location in my Pip Boy's map, it took us less than half an hour to find the B-29 crash site.

"So, this is th' place, huh?" Cass asked as she leaned over the side of the RHIB. Seemed pointless to me, looking down. Even with the clear water and lack of rough seas, the most any of us could see was about 10, maybe 15 feet below the surface.

"As close as I think we can get without all of us diving down," I said, looking around out of habit. Boone, Cass, and Raul were all sitting at the bow, keeping watch. Arcade, meanwhile, was with Veronica at the control console: apparently, it took two people to drive the boat. ED-E was circling above us.

"I still think this is a bad idea," Veronica said, stepping away from the console. "I mean, you going down there alone like this."

"Why, do you have another rebreather?" I asked, referencing the device draped around my neck. To be honest, I was a bit iffy about trusting my life to something seemingly built out of corn silk, rubber hose, removable adhesive, and a pressure cooker. But, it was the best I had. "Because I have no idea how deep this plane is, and I'm pretty sure whoever goes down there is going to need air."

"I'm more worried about how close we are to The Fort," Arcade scanned the horizon. "I mean, we're practically spitting distance. We know the Legion has boats, and we know they kind of want us all dead..."

"Why d'ya think we're up here, keepin' watch?" Cass chuckled, clutching at the rifle she'd borrowed. Boone nodded.

"So, what happened t'yer facemask?" Cass asked, sitting down next to me, her rifle against her shoulder. "Did y'lose it when ED-E was draggin' y'up at a million miles'n hour?"

"Uh..." I didn't quite know what to say. No sense surgarcoating the madness, I guess. "No. I lost it a bit earlier. Turns out, I can breathe underwater."

"What." It looked like Cass' brain had broken.

"Hey, I don't know either. All I know is I was down there way too long without oxygen, and yet somehow I'm still here. Hell, maybe one of those cybernetics Usanagi put in me helped me breathe underwater somehow, I don't know." I shrugged. "If I'm still here, does it matter?" Cass stared at me for a few minutes.

"Well?" She said, breaking the silence.

"Well, what?"

"Ain't ya gonna say it?" She asked, poking me in the ribs.

"Say what?" I asked.

"Don't y'usually say 'when th' fuck did m'life get so weird?' right 'bout now?" Cass smirked, and I couldn't help but laugh and shake my head.

"Yeah, the sick thing is I'm actually getting used to this crap. Hey, Raul?" I turned to the ghoul sitting across from me against the control station. "You've still got Loyal's detonator, right?"

"Sure thing, Boss," Raul reached into his jumpsuit, and pulled out the detonator, handing it to me. "Think we're far enough away?"

"Guess we'll find out soon enough," I grabbed the detonator, flipped open the finger guard, and pulled the trigger. The light on the top of the detonator switched from green to red and started flashing, and then...

Nothing.

"Did it work?" Arcade asked, looking behind him. The RHIB slowed, and everyone looked behind the boat, back where we'd been a few minutes ago. The surface of the lake was incredibly still. And then...

There was a bulge. It seemed small at first, but then the bulge got bigger, like someone was inflating a huge balloon right below the surface of the water, and the lake was clinging to the sides, refusing to let it surface. And then suddenly, the imaginary balloon seemed to explode. The surface of the water shattered, and a there was a massive surge of water flying upwards into the air. The shock sent waves through the water, and the RHIB started to rock violently. The water started to fall back down to the lake... and that's when I saw it.

Sitting defiantly on the surface of the lake was the B-29, with what looked like two massive car airbags under the wings keeping it afloat. It wobbled and swayed, and the right wing beyond the two engines looked dangerously close to snapping off completely from the force of being dredged up from the lake floor, but... there it was.

"Mission accomplished?" I asked, giving a thumbs up.

Everyone was too busy staring at the risen bomber to reply.

"Your plan worked," I said to Pearl and Loyal. It was several hours later, and I'd had time to shower and change; now, I was meeting with the two of them in the old HQ building again. "The plane is now floating on the surface of Lake Mead. Seems to be mostly intact." Pearl just smiled, but Loyal's face lit up like the neon signs in Vegas. The old guy was practically jumping up and down, he was so happy.

"That's tremendous!" He beamed. "I'll transmit instructions to the robots to start packing up the plane to bring it back to Nellis!"

"Robots?" I asked. "What, you mean the Mr. Gutsy's I've seen flying around?" Loyal nodded.

"Exactly. They can break the plane down into pieces and move it up from Callville Bay in one shot."

"Hey, I'm just glad I could help. Sorry the rebreather got wrecked, though. Wish I could make up for that." I shrugged, opting not to tell them all the details about my strange experience under the water.

"Ah, don't worry about it. Jack still has the plans, he can make more if he needs to." When he mentioned Jack, he seemed to recall something, and looked down at his Pip Boy. "Actually, speaking of that, I better get rolling. Jack and I have a lot of work ahead of us! See you around, Outsider!" Loyal shook my hand one last time, and rushed out of the office. Pearl, on the other hand, stayed, resting a hand on my shoulder to grab my attention.

"What you have done for us is a miracle, child," Pearl smiled warmly at me, her wrinkled features beaming brightly with unfiltered happiness. "You have fulfilled the only dreams we ever had outside our walls. You've done more than any other outsider ever has, and I can tell you with certainty that you're a trusted friend to us all. If there is ever a way for us to help you, child, tell me and I will make it so."

Well, this is it. The whole reason I came here. It's now or never.

"You know how you said you knew about the conflict between NCR and Legion?" I asked; Pearl nodded. "Well, it may come sooner, rather than later. When that battle finally happens, it'll be at the Hoover Dam. Do you think the Boomers can help me decide the outcome?" I didn't think it possible, but Pearl smiled even wider.

"Of course, my child. After everything you have done for us? We would love to help you in the upcoming fight, once we use The Lady to rebuild the bomber. The young ones would relish an opportunity to put their skills to real battle after all the years training in virtual reality. I promise you, we will be there when you need us."

"Excellent!" I said, offering my hand to shake. "I knew I could count on you."

"But..." Pearl started, still smiling.

"But?" I tried to disguise the concern in my voice. Don't tell me there's more!

"There is one last thing I'd like you to partake in, before you take your leave of us, back to the lights of Vegas. In fact..." Pearl motioned behind me. "There's someone I'd like you to meet who can explain everything."

I turned around, expecting any number of things... and on all counts, I was completely wrong. Standing in the doorway was a Boomer with a short mowhawk, sunglasses, and a necklace of spark plugs hanging around his neck. He smiled at me, extending his hand as he approached.

"Hey Sheason. Remember me?" I nodded as the two of us shook hands.

"Yeah, I remember you, from the party last night?" I tried to remember his na- "Sebastian, right? Sebastian Hamilton?" He nodded. "Yeah, sorry for leaving suddenly like I did. Boone was having some troubles and needed a bit of help." Hamilton just waved it off.

"Don't worry about it, I understand. He looked as nervous as a gecko stumbling into a deathclaw nest. That's not why Pearl called me here. You remember that secret I mentioned?"

"Of course," I said, nodding.

"Well," Hamilton flashed a satisfied grin. "Pearl doesn't want it to be a secret anymore."