(no subject)
The thing about being a nobody, Rat Face - you remember him, don't you? of course you do - the thing about being a nobody, he muses, or as close as he ever gets to it, is that you might as well just stroll on into places like this, to do things like this. He has no name, he has no identity, he's not in any Alliance database (and they have data on everybody). If they catch him on security feeds, so what? He's nobody. He's just a face, with nobody behind it. Of course, he's not stupid, or at any rate not that stupid; he did boost a uniform, too.
The thing about a base like this, built to defend against attacks, is that obviously you'd want your own power source. If it's coming from the same place as the rest of the town (assuming Gŏu Kào De Nowheresville even has power), then if a Reaver ship in some moment of perspicacity or pure dumb luck takes out that power source - well, then that screws you over pretty gorram well, don't it? Right? Right. If you're the poor húndàn in charge of fighting them off, then you don't really want that to happen.
The thing about power sources, though, is that it seems a bit excessive to have the same degree of security for them as for some other sections of the base. The anti-ship ordnance, the outer defenses, all that - sure, some heishŏudăng liúmáng might want to commandeer the guns for his own nefarious purposes, so it's reasonable to keep them under lock and lock and card-key and retinal identification and the great big blast doors in the entryway. Guns is guns, after all - and that means exactly what you think. But the power source? Well, if that goes, everyone's defenseless. Like poisoning your own drinking water along with the rest of the town's. Nobody's that gorram stupid.
The thing about remotes? Rat Face grins placidly as he pulls one from his pocket and pushes the button. Back in the shabby way-house, back in his dingy room, on his fèiwù de cot, under his limp pillow, two slim black prongs separate from the middle one, and a timer blinks silently to life. The thing about remotes, Rat Face thinks, as he flips switch one (on the wall; blast doors), and then switch two (another remote; the small but precise explosive wired to the fusion generator), is that they're really damn convenient.
The thing about crises is that, when you think about it, nobody ever takes a break to go to the bathroom. It seems stupid, but really they're the perfect place, when you think about it, to relax out of the way and imagine the chaos going on on the other side of the door. Like:
On the power going out: Oh, āiyā huàile! Some chùsheng xai-jiao de xiang huo walked in here with a bomb? What the ruttin' hell for? Didn't nobody see him? Oh, we are so - If anyone thinks about the blast doors... well, it only seems natural to assume it's on account of the power outage.
On the Reavers arriving, touching down with a roar and a scream of engines: a white, shocked silence, that becomes Kào, shit, kào, didn't anyone pick them up - ? Which of course is a silly question. The early warning systems went out with the power. Just like the guns. What do we do, what do we do, everything's down, we don't have any weapons
On the people of Amesbury, obediently flooding towards the defense complex as instructed in informative pamphlets and practiced in drills, and coming up hard against the blast doors: Oh God, oh God, why aren't the doors open, why aren't they firing, Lăotiān, bù, why won't they open the DOORS OH GOD OH JESUS GOD OPEN THE -
The thing about chaos is that when a hidden timer finishes counting down, and a silent signal peters out, and the Reavers scoop up the last of their struggling victims (them as didn't make it into hiding, or get rescued by friends or family with long-unused sawn-offs, or were such poor, quick sport as to be forgotten as soon as they hit the dust) and vanish back into the black, when they finally winch the blast doors open and try to help with counting the dead, the surviving, the missing - nobody notices when one figure, ugly though he is, slips out into the dark, picks up his effects (breaking the beacon in pieces three, to throw in a well somewhere), and lights out for the territories.
Nobody at all.
(That's the thing about being a nobody.)