Silath's Journal: Day 4 - October 22, 2281

Continued to follow the strip wall around to the east today, until I ran into the H&H tools building. I wasn't in a huge hurry to get to the strip, so I decided to explore inside a bit. I remembered seeing that H&H Logo on Victor.
Inside were a few hostile robots, Mr. Handies and Robobrains, and a few turrets. Not a single one of them got a shot off one me. What was more trouble were the mines and booby traps; there was a pack of 6 mines at the landing of one of the stairways to the factory floor catwalk. The damn things blew before I got out of range and crippled my left arm and leg.
I had picked up some Hydra from that doctor back at the radio station, though, so that and a stimpack fixed me up. Hydra is great stuff.
At the top of the catwalk was some sort of managers office, inside was a terminal I couldn't manage to hack and a Lucky 38 VIP access card. Not sure what that's for, maybe the terminal could have told me.  Now that I think about it, I want to head back there in the morning and try to hack it again.

After that I left H&H and found a manhole cover, headed inside to explore (What can I say, I'm curious) and it lead to a very extensive sewer system. Oddly though it was inhabited, and not by hostiles; just ordinary folk. A little further down though, deeper in the sewers, were plenty of rats and ghouls waiting for me. I swear there's not a damn place in the wasteland someone or something isn't waiting to kill you if you look hard enough.
My N99 with the 10mm hollow points did a fantastic job on them though, glad I could finally give my service rifle a break. I found another terminal with a locked chest beside it, but I wasn't able to pick the lock. Was able to hack the terminal though: it gave me an option to access the sewer controls. When I did, all I got was a message about "Override order blah blah House Directive'.
Interesting thing is, I'd heard that House name mentioned back in some of the H&H unsecured terminals. On a few of them, someone had left some (poorly) concealed files, the journal of some paranoid man named House. He mentioned a brother, though: H&H is two brothers House?

One of the ways outta the sewer was guarded by some NCR troopers; these guys weren't as friendly as the ones at the water cistern, and they didn't want me going through the manhole they were guarding. I wasn't going to push my luck.
Little ways past that I ran into some more hostile gang members; had to pull out the service rifle and AP ammo again, but I put them down easy enough. I hate to say it, but I might be starting to enjoy taking out those freaks. I'm a little worried.

Anyway, past the gangers, I found a locked room holding a shitload of ghouls. Once I had killed them off (Hollow points to the head do wonders at stopping them) I found a dead salvager hidden in a back room. He had some small amounts of various ammo on him, and more interestingly... reinforced combat armor, accompanied by a helmet.
I used my old combat armor to patch this reinforced suit up a bit and put it on. Granted it's a little heavier than my old armored jacket, so I can't be quiet as sneaky, but it's worth the trade off for the protection. Especially since I seem to have a bad habit of getting my limbs crippled by explosives.

Anyway, I got out of the sewers around 10:30 PM, I had no idea I had spent so much time wandering around in there. Worth it, though. Plan for tomorrow: head back to H&H to try and hack that terminal again, then try to get into the strip... hopefully without getting distracted by another 10 hour jaunt in a sewer system!