Chapter 16 “Not much personality.”

It took days to perform a full stock check. Even with the half dozen Assaultrons up and literally running. While they clacked back and forth, Burton used up a box of marker pens.

The equations and diagrams stretched on. Panel after steel panel covered in them. He ran timelines for each, forcing himself not to add them together. Finally he collapsed into an office chair, drifting off into a shallow, fitful sleep.

Things came together quickly after that. He assembled a semi respectable lab from spares. Managed to salvage a few more bots and from the living quarters. And best of all, used them to transfer a good chunk of his research data. Combined with samples he already had, Burton felt a glimmer of hope.

From the stockroom he had access to the main generator room. As well as life support systems for the upper half of the Vault. This is where he started.

He set a single bot to bore a thin hole, no wider than a cigarette. Meanwhile he programmed another bot to strip comm wire to the copper core. Then straighten it, adding coils every metre. These sections were tacked together and fed into the bore hole. With a current running through the wire, the degradation in temperature would serve as a guide for the bots.

One week in, the excavation began. A foot square tunnel, spiralling down through the rock. Modelled after the Vault’s ventilation shafts. This would connect through a sealed section of the living quarters. Then to an ascending spiral on the other side. Finally breaching the launch tube, and up, out into the world.

Years, the voice in his head sneered, you’ll be down here years. “Years I got.” Burton answered, talking only to himself.

With the automation underway, Burton turned his focus to the science. He heaved the pack full of dirt out onto a plastic sheet. The sound echoed, reminding him of something. He turned to see a waterfall, sparkling and blue, cascading from nothing to nothing. Then it vanished.

Using his hands, he separated the contaminated dirt from outside into crates and took accurate readings. His modified extremophile bacteria would have to earn their name. A coffee cup full of the nutrient enriched soil was all he dare take from the tonnes remaining. Fearful of running out before his work was done.

Forcing generations of bacterial growth would take time. As would waiting for the seedlings to sprout. The transfer of supplies couldn’t be made to go any quicker. Burton found himself with downtime, and that made things harder. His fogged mind began to wander, sometimes followed by his body. He’d come round in front of empty shelving, clear across the stockroom.

It took almost a year to empty the Vault of food, construction equipment, and tools. It’d take twice as long to collect it all again. Burton stood in the entrance to the Vault. The door fully open. Today marked a day long awaited.

Almost forgot, he thought, pressing the big red button on the wall. Steel wall panels retracted with a hiss and the floor began to tremble.

“New protocol.” The twin Sentry bots whirred and rotated towards him. “Asset transport. Condition two. Do not engage unless engaged. Copy?”

“Affirmative.” The heavily synthesised voice responded and then trundled beyond the door.

“Not much personality.” Burton heard a voice he knew.

“They weren’t built to make friends.” He answered, as he had before.

For the briefest of moments, Burton found himself a young man. His only nice suit dusty from the demonstration range. The old man himself attended, even if he stayed in the limo. Then he was back, trying to ignore the temptation of the breeze coming down the tunnel.

Burton turned from the Vault door, and pressed the button on his pipboy to close it. Screeching filled the entrance, followed by heavy thuds as the cog shaped door rolled into place. The winch arm descended, connected and triggered the locking pins. As the last one set in position, Burton heaved the pry bar in his hands.

Foot long fuses fizzed, sparks flew from the floor panel. Everything plunged into pitch black. He got to his feet, using the pipboy light. The beam fell upon the door, he moved it slowly. Light fell upon the yellow winch arm, stuck in place. Exactly what he wanted to see. He kicked on the battery powered generator, lighting the room with work lamps, and got started.

The scaffolding wobbled enough to give him pause. A bot could do this in half the time and none of the risk. I have to be sure, he thought, and flipped down the welding mask.

Cutting through the thick mounts that held the winch arm took longer than he thought. The front pair had been cut two thirds. Every shudder drew his eyes to the charred and bubbled metal. The flame on the welding torch shot through the last edge of the mount. The arm didn’t move, neither did he. Burton reached over for the lump hammer.

His first strike sent a ringing twang along the arm, but still it held. Again and again he struck, the ringing near constant. Then it gave, cracking like a whip and clattering to the floor. He climbed down.

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“Stick it in and break it off.” Shaw stood next to him, dressed for training.

“Andrew…” He wanted so much for it to be real, but his dead friend vanished.

Burton inspected his handiwork. Like a key snapped off in the lock, the winch arm broke in two. Half in the door. Half at his feet. He lit a cigar he’d been saving with a lick of flame from the welder and sat.

While he smoked, Burton casually melted every circuit board and hard drive. With the door seized, every bit of Vault-Tec code gone, Burton knew that the Vault door would never open again.

He ground the cigar out under his boot and turned for the lift. The engineer in him caught sight of the broken winch arm. He realised he didn’t actually know how it worked. The door, the whole room in fact, came as a black box. He wasn’t even allowed to perform maintenance on it, having to send for Vault-Tec. Quite the racket, he thought, dragging the arm away.

An hour later, Burton cracked the yellow casing and levered it free. Inside lay a masterwork of pistons and gearing. Each component finely machined, fitted by hand.

“Impressive craftsmanship.” A voice he knew spoke over his shoulder.

“You can say that again, Boss.” Burton answered as he had done before. There stood over him, his old employer and mentor. The great Robert House. He waited for the spectre to vanish. It didn’t.

“Shame to let it go to waste, yes?” The old man looked him right in the eye. Burton couldn’t believe how real it seemed. The three piece suit. The red skin on over scrubbed hands. Even the smell of pomade.

“I need sleep.” Burton turned from his latest walking, talking delusion. Hoping a night’s rest in his hammock would clear his mind.

Burton woke in his simple canvas hammock, hung between empty shelves. He walked the marker scrawled wall till he reached the day’s task. His schedule had reached another milestone. It’d taken years, but the excavation finally hit the launch tube. Connecting one end of the Vault to the other.

It took the single Assaultron turned excavator bot all day to cut through the reinforced concrete. He watched through the remote link. The bot began thumping with enough force to shatter the concrete inwards, cracking and pinging down the tube.

Burton took direct control over the bot, making it crawl through the gap till he could see. The lack of inner ear movement made the vertical tube look horizontal. No cracks, no damage or degradation appeared on the image in his eyes.

He made the head rotate till it faced down. Brushed steel housing reflected the light. What looked like a toy model came into view. The odd angle and lack of scale made it seem almost benign. A multi stage, high yield quad warhead, intercontinental ballistic missile. Loaded and ready to launch. One of a dozen under his sole command. Not one will leave this place, he swore to himself.

Burton never accessed the Omega protocols required for launch. Even now the sight of the symbol on his screen frightened him. Not nearly as much as the next screen. A spinning globe, red arcs sitting atop it like a spider.

He pushed past it, finding what he needed. Years earlier Burton had planned for this moment. He gambled with an idea he hoped would be inspired, not insane. One of the last supply drops to leave contained a metric ton of enriched earth. Plus samples of the latest generation of bacteria. Bots had lugged it, bit by bit, up and around the terrain above the Vault. Finally piling most of it above the launch silo. And the seismic charges buried there.

Even moving only at night, this had been a risk. However the rewards could be exponentially beneficial. He held his breath and hit the button.

Long buried cables surged with power. Dormant charges blew.

A circle of solid ground cracked like glass. It collapsed in for an instant, then the main charges blew. Scorched dirt and fresh earth erupted into the night. Huge chunks came down to form a crater. The smaller bits, and the hope they carried, cast to the wind. These would fall, infecting the ground. The bacteria would feed on radiation and grow, cleansing the land

Burton advanced the launch protocol one step further. The view from the bot changed ever so slightly as the silo cover retracted. A tiny circle of stars now visible. The relief of the plan reaching the next milestone felt short lived. The system informed him with a simple notification. The missile was ready and awaiting a target.

He got up from the workbenches, forcing all but a single voice, a single thought from his mind. Pull the lever, he thought, with every step.

The main life support room looked as if it'd been vandalised. Holes cut through into walls. Pipes cut and rejoined at different angles. The precycled grey water had been isolated and turned into a massive Petri dish. Swaths of blue green algae clung to the opaque plastic.

Burton took a firm grip on the pump handle. A solid clunk set things going. He sat on the ground and watched. The tank, set inside a stripped back wall, shuddered and began to drain. Water rumbled through the transplanted pipes, sloshing into the excavated tunnels.

He fell into his hammock, exhausted. His mind ran the calculations. In a few hours the missile engines would drown beyond any hope of ignition. The flooded tube would hide the missile. And he’d have a much bigger Petri dish. All while he slept.

“Work to be done Burton.” He knew the voice.

“Fuck you.” Burton didn’t leave his hammock. Revenge for all the phone calls from Mr. House that began the same way. “You’re not even fucking real.

“Come now, don’t keep me waiting.” Burton poked his head up to yell at the man he hated, and saw no one.

“Fucking self righteous,” He swung from his hammock and into his boots. “Pompous, egomaniac.” A few steps brought his mistake to mind. “The bot.” Burton sat where he stood, leaning back against the shelving.

The bot still lay horizontal, its head sticking out into the launch tube. Using the direct override, he worked the shoulders up. Then, bending the arms in an inhuman way, slid them out. In the arm cavities, Burton had placed self tapping spikes of his own design. The bot retrieved one, held it to the wall, and Burton sent a charge through the claws. The charge cooked off the shotgun shell inside the spike, driving the point into the concrete.

With four more spikes set Burton locked the claws in place. Leaving the bot like a sprinter in the blocks. Programmed to vaporise anything that so much as looked down at it, and the weapon of mass destruction he’d exposed to the world.

He sat on his hammock, waiting. No one spoke.