Chapter 36: VSS Facility

Minutes after turning on my night vision, my robots and I kept trudging along through the tunnel, getting closer and closer to the train terminal, when I heard noise up ahead.

"Hold up for a moment guys, I heard something further up ahead." I ordered robotic companions.

"Affirmative." All 10 of them responded.

While the robots were holding their position, I started my investigation and crept forward until I could hear low raspy grunts and growls coming from the train terminal that should be located just around the corner.

Curious as to what was making the noise, I snuck to the corner that was just a little ways ahead of me and peeked around it to see what was producing it. The second I looked around the corner, I saw a large metro terminal similar to the one from Fallout 3, just significantly larger in size, with about two dozen zombie-like feral ghouls wandering around the area.

Phew, no feral ghoul reavers this time, thank god.

I scanned the terminal a bit longer and when I was content; I signaled for my robots with Mechu-deru to come to my position and to get rid of the feral ghouls in the terminal straight ahead. So we could continue heading towards our goal via the other metro entrance on the opposite side.

My squad, receiving my command, swiftly arrived at my location and immediately got into semi-spread-out positions, collectively took aim at the nearby feral ghouls with their AER9 Laser Rifles. And whilst still under the effects of my currently active stealth field, they began firing off laser beams in rapid succession around the train terminal, creating a laser light show in the process and startling the remaining feral ghouls that weren't eliminated in the initial burst of shots.

*Bzzzt-Bzzzt-Bzzzt…*

*eh-HAA*

*eh-HAA eh-HAA*

As my robots were busy mopping up the feral ghouls around the terminal area, a ton of screeches went off from below where the train platforms were. Moments later, a couple dozen more feral ghouls came flying up the old and broken escalators charging toward where we were positioned.

*Bzzzt Bzzzt Bzzzt…*

Watching my robotic forces kill off one ghoul after another, the last few feral ghouls left were closing in on our position. Thus, I raised my leg and kicked the air in front of me while utilizing the energy I obtained from the Human Weapon perk. This move of mine sent out a wave of energy that blasted the remaining survivors to pieces of rotten flesh that flew off in multiple directions.

Yeah, I didn't mean for that to happen. I was just planning on knocking them back. I guess I'll need to add energy control to my training regime so I can accurately judge and control the power output and gain a better understanding of the energy itself.

Adding another thing to my training regime, I continued forward to the other side of the terminal while ignoring the rotten flesh strewn about the vicinity that will more than likely be cleaned up by the many rad roaches that exist out here in the wasteland.

After walking through the metro for a short amount of time, we began nearing the metro exit and as we neared it; the area started to brighten up again, so I toggled off the night vision on my helmet. Waiting for my eyes to adjust to the brightness, I proceeded and walked out of the metro moments later with my robots following my lead as per usual.

"Ahh, we're finally back in the light once again." I commented aloud before I took a nice deep breath of the noticeably fresher air.

As soon as I had gotten several more breaths of fresh air in my lungs, I ascended the rusted nonfunctioning escalators and inspected my surroundings. Scanning the general area for 15 seconds, I didn't really find anything in the way of danger since it seemed the rubble had collapsed in such a way around the area that it has basically made a wall around the collapsed buildings.

Thereby preventing most creatures from accessing this part of the DC ruins, unless, of course, they wanted to attempt to scale large unstable piles of rubble that had a good likelihood of giving way. In addition to that, a lot of the rubble had sharp broken steel rebars spread and jutting throughout it, which no doubt further discouraged anything from climbing on it.

Done scanning the place, I checked my Pip-Boy map and went toward the building that I needed to cut through to reach the VSS Facility. The minute we neared the location, what stood before us was a large multi-story concrete building with a weathered and barely visible US army insignia on the front door.

This is the place.

Now that we found our way through to the facility, I walked up to the front door of the multi-leveled structure and gave the handle a test to see if it was locked. It wasn't, so I cracked it open and took a peek inside but saw nothing out of the ordinary other than a normal general reception area in obviously dilapidated condition.

Following that, my robots and I walked inside while checking our surroundings and keeping an eye out for any possible threats or anything of interest. A couple of moments later while I was scanning the surroundings, I discovered with my perception field a Guns and Bullets skill book, a Nikola Tesla and You skill book, and an N99 10mm Pistol in pretty decent condition. With some halfway decent loot found, I put the skill books away in my inventory for safekeeping and handed the pistol off to one of my robots.

Once the loot was properly stowed away, we continued exploring the building until we found an exit in the back of the structure that led to the VSS Facility. Wasting not a second more, I went right to the door and checked to see if it was locked as usual. I found it wasn't, thus I cracked it open and checked what was beyond it.

After several seconds of scrutinizing the area, I only saw the unfinished VSS Facility with its exposed steel i beams and several offline laser turrets spread throughout the surroundings. So with no hostiles needing to be eliminated, we headed over to the unfinished facility and went towards the elevator placed in the middle of it.

The second we arrived in front of it, I began inspecting it to see if it still worked and didn't, so I investigated further. Fumbling around with the control panel, I discovered that the panel wasn't functioning correctly, hence; I popped off the metal cover, crouched down, and took a look at the insides. Examining it, I quickly discovered what the issue was, thus I got to work on fixing it. I first adjusted the internals a bit before then removing and removing one of the copper wires that had accumulated quite a lot of corrosion. From there, I replaced the missing wiring with a small length of copper wire I scavenged along my travels, repairing the elevator panel.

"Alright, that should do it. Hop on the elevator, guys."

"Roger."

Standing on the spacious industrial elevator, my robots joined me and when everybody was aboard, I hit the B4 button, which then brought the elevator back to life.

*Whirr*

Dozens of seconds later, after we had passed by a number of underground levels, we descended to the lowest floor. However, despite us reaching the floor, the elevator doors for this floor didn't open, so I walked up and got my fingertips into the crack and pried them open. And right as I got the doors open, I was immediately greeted by an armored blast door in the locked position. So, needing to bypass this one as well to get to the goods on the other side, I used my increasingly useful lockpicking ability on it.

*Click-errrrsk-thump*

Now that the blast door is open, let's head inside and explore this facility from top to bottom and loot it for all it's worth.

With nothing impeding our path, I walked through the opening, followed by my squad of bots. Upon entering the VSS Facility, we spent the next 30 minutes exploring the underground military facility, finding everything from a pristine medical slash surgery block to an area filled with virtual simulation pods for training military personnel. After exploring most of the place, my robots and I got to work and started logging all the loot spread throughout the facility, minus the armory, since it was sealed shut and I was saving it for last.

...

It took us about 3 hours to find and log most of the loot that was in this facility, but it was time well spent because we found a ton of resources and a large variety of high-tech equipment. So my trip was definitely well worth it from just this loot alone.

Finished logging the loot spread throughout the military site, I signaled to my robots with Mechu-deru to meet me at the armory blast doors, since it was time to open them. Following that, I walked off in the direction of the armory which was on the lowest floor of the facility, so it took me a short while to get down to it due to me being on one of the upper floors. 

Once there, I had to wait for several minutes for all my robots to gather and the moment they did, I finally walked up to the blast doors protecting the armory and used my lockpicking ability. A second passed when I heard a click and before I knew it, the large blast door protecting the armory started to open up.

No more than a handful of seconds later, the blast doors were set into the open position, revealing a massive armory and its wide assortment of armaments.

*Whistle*

"I think that's the most amount of loot I've ever seen." I couldn't help commenting aloud with a bit of excitement in my voice as I stared at the large assortment of weapons, armor, and ammo.

That's enough staring. Let's get down to business and see what sort of loot we got here.

Excited to see what sort of haul I would come out of this military installation with, we set off and began inspecting and logging all the loot sitting inside the armory.

...

Over the next couple of hours, my robots and I went through absolutely everything, and what we ended up finding in the armory was enough gear and equipment to outfit at least 1 battalion of troops. 

| Armory Loot |

Aid: 1,000 Bottles of Buffout, 1,000 Syringes of Med-x, 1,000 Psycho, 1,000 Bags of Radaway, 1,000 Stimpaks

Ammo: 3,000 7.62 Rounds, 50,000 10mm Rounds, 15,000 12 Gauge Shotgun Shells, 10,000 2mm Gauss Rounds, 5,000 25mm Grenades, 1,000 40mm Grenades, 250,000 5mm Rounds, 100,000 5.56 Rounds, 10,000 Units of Flamer Fuel, 500 Fusion Cores, 50,000 Microfusion Cells, 100 Mini Nukes, 500 Missiles, 25,000 Small Energy Cells

Apparel: 10 Advanced Radiation Suits, 10 Chinese Stealth Suits, 50 sets of Heavy Combat Armor, 50 sets of Marine Armor, 10 sets of T-45 Power Armor, 5 sets of T-51 Power Armor, 1 set of T-60 Power Armor

Magazines: 50 5mm 500 Round Minigun Drum Magazines, 10 5mm 1,000 Round Minigun Backpack Magazines, 50 8 Round Anti-Material Rifle Magazines, 500 Combat Shotgun Drum Magazines, 50 10 Round Gauss Rifle Magazines, 50 30 Round Grenade Machinegun Magazines, 100 Light Machine Gun Box Magazines, 50 M2 Browning Machine Gun Magazines, 2,000 N99 10mm Pistol 12 Round Magazines, 500 30 Round R91 Assault Rifle Magazines, 100 10 Round Sniper Rifle Magazines, 500 30 Round Type 93 Chinese Assault Rifle Magazines

Miscellaneous: 100 Stealth Boys

Vehicles: Chimera Tank Partially Assembled

Weapons: 10 5mm Miniguns, 50 AEP7 Laser Pistols, 50 AER9 Laser Rifles, 10 Anti-Material Rifles, 100 Bricks of C4, 10 Chinese Officer Swords, 500 Combat Knives, 100 Combat Shotguns, 5 Fat Man Mini Nuke Launchers, 10 Flamers, 1,000 Frag Grenades, 1,000 Frag Mines, 10 Gatling Lasers, 10 Gauss Rifles, 20 Grenade Launchers, 10 Grenade Machineguns, Jingwei's Shocksword, 20 Light Machine Guns, 10 M2 Browning Machine Guns, 10 Missile Launchers, 400 N99 10mm Pistols, 500 Plasma Grenades, 500 Plasma Mines, 50 Plasma Pistols, 500 Pulse Grenades, 500 Pulse Mines, 100 R91 Assault Rifles, 20 Sniper Rifles, 100 Type 93 Chinese Assault Rifles, 50 Urban Plasma Rifles

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If you're looking for something else to read, that's similar to this, check out my other webnovel Wasteland Conqueror. It has a lot more chapters released.