When Rebecca reported to her that they were ready to go, Rhonda ordered Third Squad down from the far building. They reinforced First in the woods and advanced on the perimeter of the armory compound, ready to cut through the chain link fence and push into the vehicle yard and administration building. Davis and Second Squad stayed in place to cover their rear and potential path of retreat. Rhonda and the two couples joined Epstein's squad (Fourth, Rebecca supposed? Or maybe they were some kind of attached group just like her and Echo?) in the vehicles to head for the rear gate, towards the intersection guarded by the two heavy weapons Humvees.

When Rebecca had asked Catherine what she wanted to do, the nomad queen rightly surmised the armory was going to be pretty crowded with thirty-some people and several vehicles swarming into it. They remained to poke through the handful of cars left in the street and parking garages, and the abandoned apartments in the building Third Squad had vacated. Monica and her dumbshit companion could have Rebecca's old building and its contents to themselves. Once Rebecca and Ronnie's people were done in the small military base, Cat and hers could accompany them back to home for a refuel and short respite from their roving.

It only took a few minutes to get to the gate. Rebecca was somehow glad the road looked different, overgrown and unmaintained, windblown trash mixed with piles of decaying leaves. It didn't make it feel like she was leaving home a second time, and was sufficiently different to not be too reminiscent of driving away with Jaime. Still, she fingered the chain around her neck thoughtfully, feeling the attached pendant move against her sternum beneath layers of clothes and armor. Not dwelling, just reflecting briefly... then smiling appreciatively back at Sam when they made eye contact.

She heard Rhonda order the team in the woods to advance just before they got to the gate and swung into the left hairpin turn needed to enter from that direction. She laughed at the sight of a standard black mailbox on a wooden post just before the tubular steel gates, and then they were approaching the rust-colored brick facaded buildings she'd driven past often but never paid much attention to.

The partial convoy halted before passing between them and most of the riders dismounted, Ronnie gesturing them towards the building on the right. It was squat, wide building, a little over two stories tall, that looked vaguely like an oversized firehouse. Three large steel roll-up doors faced them on the near wall — the two on the right were smaller, and the ground sloped down in that direction so they opened at loading dock height. The left door was wider, at ground level, with wide oval windows in it at standing height. Rebecca supposed it was a good sign nobody was shooting out of them.

Between the large doors were two fairly standard grey steel doors. The two small groups of soldiers ahead of her peeked through the windows with mirrors (faster than her and Sam futzing with plugging in the camera, she supposed) and breached the person-sized doors with a pair of tools that looked like a cross between a crowbar and a hammer. She was impressed by how quickly it popped the seam between the two doors as they swung, then levered, the long bar so its clawed head dug behind the edge of one side and pulled it outwards.

Overall, this didn't seem to have been a particularly high security facility. There wasn't even a fence on either side of the entry gate on this end of the compound — it seemed to be a staff parking and delivery area. Maybe that explained the not-very-reinforced doors too.

Chrissie pointed out movement off to their left, and Rebecca saw some of the squads from the woods making similar entry into what seemed to be an office and administration building, advancing in parallel with the group breaching the garage-warehouse-thing. She was perfectly content to sit back and let the professionals work this time, but did idly glance around in the distance behind them — even though she could see the one of the Humvees at the intersection down the hill, it couldn't hurt to keep an eye out. Maybe someday she could step outside and not always worry about her surroundings again. She'd like to think that Ronnie and Sam were right, their work today was a step towards that.

After a few minutes of watching their surroundings contemplatively, she heard Epstein call out that the building was clear, The big space beyond the door tinged his voice with a hollow echoing note. Shortly after that, someone started hauling the large vehicle door open with a clattering chain pulley inside and some of the vehicles started moving around the building to the main parking lot on the far side— where the solar panels were, and the larger motor pool parking lot beyond.

With the building secured, the four civilians opted to go through, rather than around it — they were all eager to see if there was anything worthwhile inside, and Rebecca liked the idea of walking through a safe enclosed area more than strolling around in the open until they set up a perimeter. They detoured to chip in on opening the loading dock doors to let light in - Sam and Rebecca hauled away on one chain while soldiers opened the other door, and Patrick and Christine headed for another at the opposite end of the building.

When Rebecca released the chain after the last pull and turned around, she could see much more of the interior. The area they stood in was set up as a warehouse — massive Costco-esque steel shelves, palettes, crates, a forklift in the corner. A quick look around confirmed that the depot had been pretty heavily tapped during the outbreak, and searched by someone later. There were big empty swathes of shelves, remaining crates had their lids pried open, and broken padlocks lay on the ground, the sheared edges of their hasps reflecting the ambient light brighter than their surroundings. Still, Epstein look pretty excited as he looked in some of the crates, probably inventorying their contents on the notepad he was writing in. Rebecca was pretty sure one particular contraption near the far garage doors was an engine hoist, and a fair number of tools were still hanging from pegs or visible in open drawers. All that boded well for maintaining their existing fleet, at least.

But... light bulbs. Smokeless heat. Music. Those sure would be nice. After a brief exploration, Rebecca and Sam made their way out of the far garage doors. The redhead let out a low whistle. "Wow. It looks like... six panels per row, three rows per... what should I call those... canopies? Gantries? Four of those. Seventy-two panels. There's no way I'm getting all of those down today. That might be close to what Broadway had."

Rebecca just looked at them in awe as they walked over. "How much power are we looking at?"

Sam tilted her head the left, one of her tells that indicated she was crunching numbers. "Well... they're probably 200, 300 watts each? We'll lose some in transmission and conversion, but... "

"A hundred and forty-four old school light bulbs?"

Sam leaned her face forward into the palm of her hand. "Yes, dear, if you want to use that as a unit of measurement. We could also just settle on 'a lot'."

Rebecca chuckled at how she'd managed to pain Sam with her oversimplification. "I guess we better get you to work."

Sam groaned as she lifted her head and squinted at the panels above her. "Ugh. You have no idea. There's a transformer on each panel instead of one big one... that's... better for future us, but it's going to be so many things to disconnect and unmount." She sighed. "I want a robot. Or..."

Rebecca swept her hand in an arc around them. "A literal army of minions?"

"Muah hah hah." Sam feigned her best attempt at an evil mastermind's laugh, but then her voice was almost plaintive. "Please help me find Ronnie so I don't have to do this all myself."