Silath's Journal: Day 31 - November 18, 2281

I slept in the bunker until 6 AM. Sleep had been fitful, but better than the previous day. I at least felt mildly refreshed. It seems that my inability to sleep is more related to the danger potential of the area than anything else... I still have bad dreams (I wouldn't go so far as to call them nightmares, there's no terror... just sadness and cruelty) but I don't wake from them as frequently as when I sleep in the wild.
I was tempted to take some Med-x regardless, but it was only a mild desire, for the nice mellow feeling it brings, the complete relaxation of my body. Maybe I ought to just hire someone to give me massages. Hah. I could probably find one somewhere... if I had read about massages in an old magazine, then surely there was a book on it somewhere.
Heh. Anyway... I put on the fantastic armor I found and located a raft in the tunnels. Dragged it out and paddled across the river, while the current carried me downstream. Landed on the opposite bank a few hundred yards from where I started, and found a good place to climb up.

About two hours later I found Veronica sitting outside Camp Searchlight. She didn't realize it was me till I took off the helmet, and we admired my new armor together. Believe it or not she even hugged me (as much as one can hug while wearing power armor) and it was probably a pretty funny sight.
Anyway, since the Dam was only about two miles north I decided to stop by there to see Colonel Moore. I told Veronica to stick close to me; I was well known by the NCR by now, but I didn't like the thought of how the soldiers would react to an unknown person tromping around in power armor.
The dam itself is simply an amazing feat of engineering. The water turbines are massive, I can't imagine the kind of power they put out. The entire place humms with the sounds of the water rushing through. Awe inspiring. I hope nothing would get too damaged in the upcoming battle.

Colonel Moore was a very stern woman. All business. I had to remind her more than once during our conversation that while I was supporting the NCR's efforts, I was by no means a soldier in the NCR army, and in no way beholden to them. A fact she seemed to enjoy forgetting. Frankly it was almost as bad as dealing with MacNamara. She said the soldiers were calling me the 'saviour of the NCR' now, which was kind of embarassing.
Moore wanted me to go visit the Khans and make sure they wouldn't cause any issues for the NCR, and I informed her that I had already convinced them to fight against the Legion when the battle came. I had to explain that the Khans were doing this of their own volition and had their own plans. They were neither mine nor the NCR's to control.
She wasn't particularly happy with that, but she admitted that it was better than having them on the Legions side and seemed content enough with the situation. After that she wanted me to go talk to the Omertas, as her intelligence has indicated they were planning something nasty.

Apparently her intelligence had failed to notify her that I had already resolved the situation. She scribbled some notes down on a pad of paper and said "Well, aren't you just a step ahead of us all the way? The next item on my agenda was to have you eliminate Mr. House, but... someone... took care of that for us. As you're the only one who's been seen going into or out of the Lucky 38, I suppose we have you to thank for that as well." Well, thats the jist of what she said. I won't claim it's 100% accurate.
Then she wanted me to find the BoS and 'finish them off'. Thankfully Veronica didn't so much as ghasp. I sighed: these were the people I was leaving the Mojave to? Moore made a valid point, though; the NCR had fought a nasty battle against the BoS for control of Helios One. Wounds like that wouldn't heal, she figured the Brotherhood would strike when the NCR was it's weakest, busy battling for the Dam.

From a strategic standpoint it made sense. I told her I would see what I could do. If things with MacNamara go well, I might be able to convince him to send at least a token of support to the NCR as a peace offering. Even a small squad of paladins is a lot of firepower.
I'm getting pretty good at convincing people to do things they don't want to do. Hopefully MacNamara will see that if the Brotherhood remains in it's bunker, it WILL die. Their only chance for survival is to act now, against Ceasers legion. This is there one and only chance.

We left to head back to the bunker and give the scouting reports to MacNamara. As soon as we were clear of the dam, Veronica grabbed me and asked if I would really destroy the Brotherhood. I gave her my word I would do no such thing. The worst case scenario was that MacNamara refused to enter a peace with the NCR, and they stayed holed up at their bunker until they were either destroyed or starved out.
I could tell she was worried. She didn't think MacNamara would go for such a thing, and I told her that was his choice. But he was a smart man. He would see this was the only way the Brotherhood could survive. Veronica had her doubts.

Hopefully things will work out for the best. On the bright side, we found the missing laser pistol the Quartermaster was so worried about, and I returned it to her. She gave her thanks and offered me a laser rifle as a gift, but I told her it was no trouble and refused to take it. Anything I can do to improve my reputation among those in the bunker may prove the difference between saving them and their destruction.
I gave MacNamara the reports, and now he wants me to go find a bunch of components to fix the air filtration system of the bunker. Told me to talk to Senior Knight Lorenzo, who I found in a workshop.
Lorenzo told me there were three compenents I needed to find: a differential pressure controller, reverse pulse cleaner, and HEPA filters. Then he gave me the location of three vaults where I could potentially find the require pieces.

Seriously? Are you fucking kidding me? This is the THIRD time I've been sent out into the wastes to grab some random junk for the Brotherhood. The THIRD FUCKING TIME I've been asked to walk across the entire fucking Mojave and back.
I didn't say anything. Simply let him download the locations into my pipboy, told Veronica I'd be back in a few minutes, and left the bunker. This was really starting to piss me off. All this fucking bullshit had better be worth it. I swear if MacNamara refuses to help the NCR at my request after all this bullshit, I might just kill him. I'm not kidding.
I chucked a grenade at a bark scorpion carcass and watched it explode into little bits. That made me feel a little better. While I was sitting outside the entrance having a cigarette, Veronica came and found me.
"I'm sorry." she said, obviously sensing my frustration. I told her it wasn't her fault, and she simply shrugged, then helped me get up out of the sand. I took a deep breath and looked at my pipboy; the nearest vault was vault 11, off to the northeast, north of Helios One.

First though, we headed back inside, and I calmed down somewhat over lunch. Scribe Ibes was having trouble with an old pre-war virus that had infected the terminals. Apparently it was randomly installing and erasing itself from the RAM in the terminals, not in the mainframe. So he couldn't track it down since it kept jumping from terminal to terminal.
I asked him why he didn't just unplug the network connections of the terminals, cut off their power, drain their capacitors to clear them RAM, and then reboot them from the mainframe, he slapped his forehead and looked at me like I was a genious.

Why he hadn't thought of it, I don't know. For those not knowledgable about pre-war computers, those terminals you find all over the place don't actually house any data themselves, except maybe a few thousand kilobytes of extra RAM for holding some text data.
The rest is reserved for the simple BIOS and drivers that allow the terminal to connect to a mainframe, where any large amount of data is stored and can be shared among any other networked terminals. Basically... the terminal is just the trigger, the rest of the gun is the mainframe.

After lunch/dinner me and Veronica set off towards Vault 11, hopefully to find some (if we're lucky, all) of the components MacNamara needs. Something tells me it won't be that easy. It rarely is.
We found the Vault entrance right where my pipboy said it would be. At least Lorenzo had done that right. It was getting dark out, though, and I could tell a storm was brewing; from the looks of it, one of those horrible rad-sandstorms. So we bedded down in the entrance to the Vault. Gonna rest for a few hours and then head inside and try to find some of the air filtration components.
Now that I think about it, this is the first time I'll ever have been in a vault. I wonder what it's like? If the entrance is any indication, the place is going to be trashed...