Crossover With Non-anime Series Fan Fiction ❯ A Certain Machinist ❯ Dora The Explorer ( Chapter 12 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

 

TWELVE

 

 

Snow fell. Snow fell day and night. Then it would stop and some of it would melt. Sometimes the wind blew and the snow might pile up into drifts. All those bushes became lumps, traps for feet to crash through. The trees had lost their leaves in the first day of the snowstorm or shortly before. They knew what was up. It was the clue that there would be strong demand for winter clothing. I built a machine to create insulation fabric from all the spare plastic lying around. I wasn’t using it for anything important, so why not?

 

Most of the population was enjoying the hoarded board games or playing music from Diamond City Radio, some of them dancing in the living rooms of the homes I’d fixed up to keep out the weather and keep in the heat. I even installed carbon monoxide detectors in old alarm clocks so nobody would die. A good reuse of technology and spare fusion cell batteries.

 

Exploration in winter is a mixed bag. The upside to winter is few bandits are standing guard in the cold. You could sneak past locations if they were far enough not to hear you. This was easier in bad weather than silent nights under the moonlight, when every footstep in the snow is a crunch that echoes into the distance. Falling through the crust and slipping on black ice is not a fun time either, and with the area being not entirely flat but filled with waterways and swamps and inlets, getting wet would be a fatal experience. I did get to fiddle with the sensors to activate infrared, once I worked out the code. The sensors were there already. I just had to turn them on and interpret what I was seeing. Turrets and synths, which we found from time to time, were either cold or slightly glowing. The gas powered were hot, of course, but the ones on the sides of buildings were an unwelcome surprise. And the turrets didn’t much care about the cold.

 

Ruby was good at spotting and shooting turrets. She often patrolled with Miles, an Irishman who’d kept his family accent out of pride, and carried a combat rifle. The local version used .45 ACP and stick magazines, but was pretty reliable. I’d looked into the mechanism itself, and it is not up to shooting heavier rounds like the 10mm, which has double the recoil of 45. And 400 is too long for the mechanism, as well as past the shear strength of the locks, which is pretty similar to a 308’s power. A good machinist understands that materials also have heat treating and surface hardening and how to determine those as well as which surfaces are dealing with friction. Ruby kept her preferred weapon in working order, cleaning it often to avoid ice jamming the mechanism. Even a bolt action can jam. Her optics fogged in the cold, so she’d reverted to iron sights. They limited her accuracy and range, but they did not fog up or fail.

 

The lake did not ice up. There was too much moving water to actually freeze, and the springs that leaked into it were moving too quickly, even in winter. The various digging creatures like the giant naked mole rats, were in their burrows for the winter. The iguanas did not move at all, and it was hunting season for them and deathclaws, the giant bipedal version famous for being bullet sponges. Ruby said she wanted to kill one and turn its skin into a jacket. This time of year she could probably do it.

 

“Their weak spot is the belly. Their brain is really small, so shooting them in the head is mostly just annoying them. You gotta gut them to stop them. Everything falls out and they die of shock,” Ruby explained while sharpening her bayonet. I had stopped bothering to remind her she’d just done that an hour ago. If she wants something to do with her hands, she is welcome to it. Ruby is fidgety, which isn’t unexpected. Losing her super speed semblance has made her a lot more anxious because while she was bigger and better able to take a hit, she isn’t as tough as she would like to be in the world without Aura.

 

“Just remember that if they’re warm enough they’ll tear you apart. And they’ll try if they can move,” I warned her.

 

“They’re nowhere near as fast as a beowolf,” Ruby replied, turning up her cute nose in disdain.

 

“Well, you won’t be fast forever either,” I pointed to her swelling belly. It wasn’t much of a bump yet, but it was there.

 

“Yeah yeah. The whole world will change just because we have a kid. What are you doing to fix this place again?” Ruby nagged. Being reminded of her pregnancy tended to get this response.

 

“Well, we both pray every day to Aqua, since she granted our rebirths together, and for your health and the safety of the child.”

 

“That’s great and all, but what about how violent the commonwealth is? Between the junkie raiders and the green cannibal giants and the androids with laser guns and those ridiculous airship army goons up against the militia, those Minutemen? And mercenaries and some shadowy spy agency that wants to liberate vending machines and sex robots?”

 

“We don’t know they’re sex robots.”

 

“Of course they’re sex robots. Why else are they made so realistic? That’s how they get discovered. They’re too good in bed. Be glad I know you’re you and not some copy, Bob,” Ruby objected.

 

“Yes, thank you. I’m grateful that you’re not some goth loli anymore. That would have been weird,” I pointed out.

 

“Aqua was merciful,” Ruby said.

 

“And she has my gratitude. You grew up into a very sexy woman. Not that different from your aunt, in looks,” I said, considering.

 

“You think I look like Raven?” Ruby asked with a degree of rising outrage.

 

“You don’t act like her. You look like her with shorter hair.”

 

“Raven gave me the willies.”

 

“You could have taken her,” I waved it off.

 

“What? But she had portals and was a maiden!” Ruby complained.

 

“Silver Eyed Warriors exist to defeat maidens and grim, both. You could have taken her,” I insisted, hugging the doubting woman, who stared into memory and thought about it.

 

“You really think so?” Ruby asked in a small voice.

 

“Yep,” I answered.

 

“Huh,” she said and lapsed into silence.

 

We drifted off into sleep then.

 

 

The following day I made up my mind to start exploring off the island, and I needed to do it myself because Ruby needed to stay there and keep the settlers organized, working on projects and maintain security discipline. The turrets helped, as did the infrared sensors I’d installed, which caught several different raiding parties. I am determined to see about building adobe walls around the buildings to cut heat loss. Metal buildings are great for keeping out the rain and for fast assembly, but they are crap for keeping in heat, being what radiators are made from. Without large amounts of fiberglass, which I do not have, insulation at the level I would like isn’t possible. And this is a shame. Making better insulation means lower energy costs, that can be put into other purposes, like a factory making goods all winter so all this surplus labor isn’t wasted for four months of snow and ice. I hope its four months. Its only halfway into December, after all. Another week for the solstice, then we start getting more light again and can cope with the increasing snow storms for January and February before they become less frequent, with more rains and ice and eventually the spring thaw and the survivors of the winter will come crawling out hungry and extra vicious.

 

Armor prepped and coated in winter camo? Check. Gas mask with heat exchanger? Check. Infrared blocking poncho? Check. 10 mm SMG and 10 filled magazines in web gear? Check. Insulated pure water canteen? Check. Food bars? Check. Stimpacks? 5, check. Binoculars with infrared? Check. Helmet with infrared and nightvision? Check. Spare microfusion batteries? Check. Heated boots? Check. Sunset? Check. It was time to go.

 

“Wish me luck,” I kissed Ruby and buttoned up, then stepped into the boot-room, shutting off the light, then stepped out into the silent neighborhood. My IFF was working so the turrets ignored me as I worked out of the neighborhood, crunching in the snow and let the nails on my bootsoles bite into the black ice. The sun was down half an hour ago, but it was still fairly early. I carefully crossed the bridge without slipping off the ice-covered timbers and quickly passed the minuteman statue, moving a short way down to the Red Rocket fuel station. It was my first time visiting there and I crouched as I passed some frantic dog who wanted my attention.

 

“You lose your owner boy? Who’s a good boy?” I asked him. Friendly, no growling, and plenty of fur. How did this dog manage to avoid the radiation burns like many wild dogs the turrets killed? Remarkable.

 

“You’re okay. Want to come with me?” I asked.

 

“Woof!” the dog barked quietly. It followed as I moved towards the open garage. There was a drift of snow in the opening and while its light was on for the last 210 years, I couldn’t see much but tools I’d want to investigate once the thaw came next spring. I made a note on my Pip-boy, geotagging the spot.

 

I went around the building and spotted an inclined basement storm shelter, black iron doors clear of snow, probably from interior heat. I opened them and peered in, listening. Other than automated generator noise, it was silent. I descended and the dog came with me and my silenced SMG. No people, no turret, no movement. Lots of junk to haul back as resources. Discarded empty beer bottles, that could be washed and have beer bottled in them again. I had a passable ale. A better lager. A decent pilsner. A good stout. I need hops if I have any hope of brewing an IPA like I used to enjoy back in Tuscon, what feels like a lifetime ago. Two, actually. There was a safe. I opened it with my lockpick gun and found ammunition, a couple letters, which I read, noting the dates were over a year ago, meaning the owner was dead, and some medical stuff, and a handgun, one of those Bond-style concealable .380’s. I took it with me. Might be worth copying or fixing up. Could use a silencer, and I know how to make those, though this has a tilt barrel design so a silencer needs to be really light or the action will fail. The various engineering challenges of silencers are sometimes trivial, sometimes not. On a fixed barrel like my SMG? Trivial. On a rifle? Also trivial. On a tilt barrel? Non-trivial.

 

I found some grenades and some molotov cocktails, which were smelling up the case, so I left them there. Why anyone would make those weeks or years before use is a mystery to me. They evaporate pretty quickly. I found some of that really old pre-war food, which I left behind, adding to the note.

 

I emerged from the basement, alerted by noise. I turned on the infrared and spotted several moving heat sources. The dog barked, darting forward to seize one of them and worried at it. I shouldered my weapon and flicked off my safety with quick bursts into the heat sources, starting with the closest. The gun bucked hard against my shoulder. I managed to kill the first one with a three round burst, then swung the muzzle to the next closest, hitting it with two rounds, then the next, which managed to slam into me even as it died. I fell back into the opened basement doors, which slammed shut above me even as I fell down the stairs backwards. My helmet saved my life, and my backpack saved my spine. It was bruising and my adrenaline spiked. I managed not to kill myself by keeping my finger off the trigger, thus not spraying rounds into the heavy metal doors above me. The sounds of the dog growling and whatever those things were scrabbling at the doors went on for another minute. I reloaded my weapon, then began to feed rounds into the empty magazine. I had four boxes of 10 mm rounds for this purpose. The scrabbling stopped along with the barking and I picked myself up. I climbed the stairs and lifted one of the doors open a couple inches.

 

“All clear, boy?” I asked the dog.

 

“Woof!” he agreed.

 

I looped around the building finding a big semi=truck parked and peered into the engine compartment, noting that the hatch over the power cell was covered up. I used the release in the cab and found it had a fusion core. No idea how much power it had, but I extracted it and put it into my backpack. The large diesel tanks on either side might still have fuel in them, and being diesel would still work as fuel for the turrets or other needs around my farm. I marked those for priority retrieval on my PipBoy.

 

I searched a couple cars and found they had left in the fusion cores for each, which was surprisingly good luck. Score! I moved on back to the road and crouched as I descended on black ice, trying not to make too much noise on the crusty snow drifts. I found I was entering the edge of Concord, which had a number of two and three story buildings still standing. The road split left and right. I went to the right, to a house below the gas station I’d visited. The top corner of the door was missing, but it swung open with a turn of the doorknob inwards. Lucky! I looked around, spotting a glow inside the fridge and a metal box I’d come to associate with caps stashes. Where these odd boxes came from I do not know, nor do I know why people insist on filling them with caps and leaving them around to be found. It is just one of those mysteries. I grabbed the box, hearing the caps rustle. I put it back down again. I am not going to be stealthy carrying around a bunch of tinkling metal pieces. That is just suicidal. The glowing thing was literally radioactive Nuka Cola Quantum. I left it behind because carrying that around would give me radiation poisoning. And to think people used to drink that? On purpose?

 

I tried the staircase and found there was a safe upstairs behind a dresser. I opened it with my pick-gun and found old-world cash, drugs, ammunition in .38 special and a few 10 mm rounds, one of those wood and pipe zip guns, some 200 year old stim-paks to add to my collection, and a small sack of gemstones. I tucked it all away in my pack and noted a full bottle of nuka cola, a med box with some drugs in it, and snagged those before exiting the house, heading into the town itself. I crept down in silence, finding steam rising from the streets. That was both good and bad. Good because there was working power systems here. Bad because it meant there was a warm place for deathclaws to nest. I marked the area with a geotag for Ruby’s teams to investigate. This is exactly the kind of danger that takes planning to deal with. I climbed into a building with a missing roof and found ammo boxes on the second floor, and a tool case with some ridiculous revolver rifle inside. It looked both dangerous and illogically stupid. If you fired it, the burning gases that leaked out around the cylinder gap would burn your arm, maybe even cut you open. There’s a good reason these things don’t exist in worlds that make sense. I wasn’t in one of those here, but the comments on the increasing amounts of vines and trees appearing around Boston from the returning scouts and traders implies that there’s some kind of magic going on.

 

Like my own views on how things should be were somehow changing the world’s rules, but that would be silly wouldn’t it?

 

I searched the building across the street but found a blue cooler with some rotting meat inside, thankfully rapidly freezing in the cold, and more of those caps in a box. I left them behind and moved down the street, discovering a lantern someone had lit… for some reason, and I crept in, alert for traps and found… skeletons, a radio playing Diamond City’s broadcast of Anything Goes, and a no living things. Not even bugs. I found a safe, opened it for more ammunition, drugs, and wads of cash for a country that died two centuries ago. Another floor, a locked door, and a chest full of pipe guns, ammunition, some low quality armor, a skeleton of a soldier wearing his uniform and loaded with various calibers of ammunition. I picked those up and gave a brief prayer to Aqua to rest this poor man’s soul. I am starting to understand why people are so blasé about death. You see examples everywhere you go, especially scouting old buildings. I will ask Ruby how she deals with this. Her world, Remnant, was a death world, so maybe that helps the mind deal with it.

 

I found another building out the back with a lantern and investigated that building, finding the inner floors had collapsed. The plaque said it was a work house, which is ominous. The Brits used those to institute legal slavery on white people in Britain while cursing race-based slavery in America and ignoring slavery across the Muslim world. Because the Brits were the biggest Hypocrites in the world. Losing their Empire made them crazy. I climbed the stairs checking each floor for useful stuff, finding a safe on the third floor, with a skeleton strangling another skeleton. I stared at the spectacle before moving them away and opening the safe with my pick-gun tool. Ammo, gemstones, drugs, wads of old cash. I took it all but the pipe gun. I don’t need pipe guns. I descended and went out the back, finding some cars with fusion cores intact in one of them. Score! I moved on noticing a two story house that piqued my interest. I found some stored pumpkin and a giant carrot in the kitchen, some anti-biotics, and on the second floor was a dead sniper frozen stiff, a dropped rifle with eighteen rounds of .308 ammunition, which I took, and a simple safe with more ammo, drugs, a pipe gun pistol, and more cash. I took what I wanted and moved on. My pack is kinda heavy, so I headed back, noting a house I peeked into, finding stim packs and a safe with more ammo and drugs inside. I finally wrapped it up and returned home, managing not to fall into the icy water while crossing the bridge.

 

Entering the boot room I shook off the snow and left my boots there before moving into the house, warm and inviting. I stripped down the armor, placing it onto hangers for inspection and cleaning tomorrow, toweling off any dirt and noting bruises on my arms and legs from the fall down the stairs. I stretched uncomfortably, and knew that tomorrow I’d be hurting and in no mood to explore. I’ll heal up before my next trip. I headed for bed, tucking in against Ruby, who rolled onto me like a limpet. Such a cute woman.