text
stringlengths 0
61.7k
|
|---|
"You `guess that makes sense.’" Lucia taunted again, "Of course it makes sense, how the fuck do you think I’ve kept everyone in the wasteland practically eating out of my hand this entire time?" |
She shook back a strand of her dusty black hair. "I’m |
I didn’t point out her errors. |
We lapsed into silence and approached Helios One. I tried to look meek and hopeless. |
At fifty feet from the farthest edge of the fence, I noticed another critical oversight in her plan. The Archimedes was active. Between the solar panels, I saw the craters where soldiers had stood. Bodies had been turned to ash and blended with the desert dust. Lucia only noticed as we approached the front doors. |
"ED-E!" I shouted as Lucia turned towards me and drew her pistol, her face contorted in hate, "Ides!" |
I barely remember the details of that fight. I felt the dirt explode just behind my heel- either she had missed, or, even in rage, Lucia still hoped to use me. ED-E’s laser fired off in rapid succession, distracting the courier for a crucial instant. I ran to the door and rushed inside, locking it behind me. I heard the metallic clang that told me she shot the eyebot, followed by the sound of it hitting the ground and rolling until it rattled against the door. Lucia kicked it and swore. She sounded almost injured, but I didn’t dare trust my hopes. |
"Max!" Lucia screamed at the power plant. I wished she would wait that close until the Archimedes locked on and vaporized her, but I didn’t expect she would be that stupid. "Max!" Lucia laughed and then swore, "You know Arcade’s dead now. You know I’m going to kill him now, right? Right after I get in there and kill you." I heard a blast that silenced her for a moment, but soon after she continued, shouting from a bit farther away. She must be testing the system; judging how close and how fast it would fire. "I hadn’t planned to kill Cass," Lucia admitted, shouting, but honest by my judgment. "That’s on you. Cass was useless. She won me sympathy and it was easy to watch her drink himself to death. I hardly needed to encourage that. Veronica was supposed to be killed that way. I don’t know how you convinced her, I don’t know what Brotherhood code you used to tell her to leave, but she’s dead now too." |
I felt stripped to the bone. I had prepared for Arcade’s death. At this point, I took that like the end of a long fall. If Lucia wasn’t lying about Veronica, that cut deeper. I couldn’t process it now; I was numb. After all the lies she had told and all the suffering and death she had caused, I just couldn’t take the time to weigh the odds of this new revelation being a lie. |
It didn’t matter if she had killed Vero, she had done far too much, caused too much pain and suffering to the entire Mojave and I knew I couldn’t let that go. If I could stop her, I needed to use every resource I had to do so. If she had killed Veronica, that was only more reason. I rolled to my feet and rushed to the control room half-blind to my surroundings and all the memories in these bloody halls. |
I was more grateful than ever that we had shut off the turrets and I could reactivate them with a simple command. I changed their parameters to recognize me as friendly, but had no time to do anything else. The sentry bots and Mr.Gutsies were all too badly damaged to repair, so turrets would have to do. |
I’d lied to Lucia about the controls. Helios One already had remote access capabilities, I just hadn’t enabled them. It had connection to non-responsive terminals on a network I guessed had been pre-war. I changed the frequency and connected it to the Lucky 38. Fifteen minutes after connecting, I’d ordered Yes Man to reset any changes Lucia made to the power output and only my authorization codes could override that. He would lie that the Helios system had malfunctioned if she questioned him. |
That was my last resort. I couldn’t escape. I had the Archimedes, but that was no help at this point, not when she was inside the building, and Lucia would never stay still long enough for me to target her. Either I was doomed or I needed help. |
Scrambling through the mess of broken Old World relics, I gathered up the parts of a ruined radio. Jury-rigging with paper clips and duct tape, I managed to assemble the crudest machine I had ever made. It was a radio, but the speakers had crackled and died when the power reached them. I could transmit, but could not hear. I tuned it to the frequency we used to use when we had worked with Elijah, hoping someone might hear me. "Veronica," I began and my voice broke. If she was out there, maybe she would hear. In case she wasn’t, I corrected myself, "Brotherhood of Steel, this is Gabriel Maxson. Helios One is clear, save one hostile. If you can hear me, I need help." I bit my lip. I wanted to beg, but refused to let Lucia hear. If she could pick up my transmission, maybe we were close enough to Hidden Valley that they could also hear and come help, if Lucia couldn’t it wouldn’t matter. "If you can hear me," I continued, "I am at the main controls, beneath the Archimedes relay. Know that I cannot receive incoming transmissions." I shut the radio off. |
Lucia had to be inside by now, I reasoned. She’d be delayed by the turrets, but I had to know where if I had any chance of stopping her. I reactivated the Handy and let it repair the main display- the rounded screen beside the Handy’s recharge station. The dimly lit room flared with sickly green light. The screen displayed the visuals of the turrets throughout the plant, most of them broken or the lenses cracked, but a few remained to show green-tinted images of the many metal corridors. |
I dragged a metal crate over to the display and sat down on it. Lucia stepped into view and shot out the first turret shortly thereafter. Now it was only a matter of time. |
Did I want to die here? I considered. It was ironic, I guess. I’d spent so much of my life wishing for death and now that it had tracked me down, I would have traded almost anything for another year. |
I had no escape. If I was going to die here, in Helios One, where my mother had died, did I want to die in this room? Would it be better for me to die on the thin metal catwalks around the array controls? At least then I would be out in the desert air. Even if I was trapped, that might feel free. I wondered where Arcade had died. Had he been shot out on the wasteland somewhere or trapped in a bunker, like she had told me? I didn’t believe he was alive. There was no way she would have let him live, but I wondered if he had known it was coming, or from his perspective, had everything simply ended without warning? |
I knew now that I would never see him again. I fixated on the vivid memory of letting go of his hand. I tried to relive that moment, remembering every sound, every scent, every facet of that touch. I longed with every shred of my breaking will that I could go back and change it. |
Lucia’s voice crackled over the speakers I hadn’t noticed around the dome-shaped monitor. |
"You know you aren’t making it out of this, Max. I’m not getting close enough for that implant to work, if you even managed to fix it. You aren’t going to stop me, and why bother? Everyone you ever cared about is dead." |
The monitor had speakers. It also had a microphone. It had an intercom system. |
I supposed I could just sit here and let her kill me. Fighting wasn’t going to change anything, and it wasn’t like I had many options. But I had an intercom system and she was going to kill me eventually anyway. I might as well use it. I put on my most confident voice and tried to bluff. "You know you’re just going to die like the troopers who’d been guarding this place, right? I’ve added to the security in here. I’ve built new robots as well as repaired the old ones. You don’t have any idea what kind of traps I’ve set-" I broke off, hearing her laugh through the speakers. |
"I know you’re bluffing, Max. You haven’t had enough time. I’m sure of it." |
"You sure you aren’t just trying to reassure yourself?" I replied, forcing myself to keep the calm, confident tone I’d cultivated for sex work. "I’ve built more than you realize. Even if I were bluffing, even if you kill me, it doesn’t matter. The NCR lost Helios One, they lost Searchlight, and they’re going to lose Vegas." |
Lucia’s laugh grated through the low-quality speakers. "I |
the NCR will lose. Who do you think spread word of the Nipton massacre? Who do you think tells the troopers about the horrible, mindless ghoul soldiers at Searchlight? Who do you think is responsible for the lesions of radiation sickness sweeping through the Bittersprings camp and soon Camp Golf and Forlorn Hope?" |
"You thought I was |
helping the NCR?" She laughed riotously, "Y’know, you and Arcade really were a perfect match. Too bad he’s dead now. Both of you, always so damn sure of your beliefs. |
I’m harmless, and innocent, and couldn’t possibly betray you. |
I’m working with the big, bad NCR, helping the troopers that killed your stupid mommy, getting everyone over to their side!" My breath caught in my throat and I stopped watching the screens to see her progress towards me. |
Lucia continued, "I’m not helping the NCR. Why do you think I laughed when I saw you’d already activated the Archimedes? I knew I couldn’t do that with Arcade looking over my shoulder. That’s why I was taking you back here. I knew you’d have no problem killing all those stupid soldiers especially if I told you it would save Arcade. I’m balancing the playing field. When the Legion attacks, all my `allies’ will charge in to help one side or the other. Lanius will lose. The NCR will lose. It’s going to be a bloodbath and once all sides have beaten each other into the ground, when there’s only a few left standing, you know who’s really going to win? Me." |
She wasn’t helping the NCR. She was helping herself. That was it. |
I stood up, straining my ears and staring towards the door to the rest of the building. "You know what’s really funny?" Lucia shouted, "What’s |
funny is that you made this all so much worse on yourself. I was going to keep Arcade. I need a doctor and he was just so blind to all of this, he would never have figured it out if you hadn’t said something to him. I only killed him because of |
I stepped back towards the door and dropped the microphone, which clattered as it bounced against the side of the monitor, suspended by its short cable. I didn’t want to hear any more, but she continued. "You’ve made me kill so many people, Max. The Brotherhood could have been useful, but I couldn’t trust them because of you and Vero. It was easy enough to get recon armor and slip inside. I found one of your scouts near the prison. I don’t think any of them realized who I was or what I’d done until the klaxons started to sound." |
My heel hit the metal door. No. That couldn’t mean... |
I bolted out onto the catwalks as her voice crackled over the speakers again, mingled with gunfire as she took out another turret. As soon as I stood on the narrow walkway, nearly blinded by the glare off the solar panels, I knew she was right. |
Black smoke curled up from the West, evidence of a fire in Hidden Valley, a fire that would burn for days. I must have missed it in my focus on the power plant. She’d triggered the self-destruct. The Brotherhood was gone. |
My knees buckled and I slumped onto the walkway, not fully aware of the metal burning red lines into my skin. They were gone. Lucia had killed them all. I watched the black column blur into the perfectly clear yellow sky, which darkened as the sun crept farther and farther towards the horizon. Retreating to the west as we had retreated to the east. We’d had no contact with any other bunkers for years. Before we lost Helios, we hadn’t heard anything for so long that we worried we might be the last. After Helios, that’s part of the reason we’d locked down. Now they were gone. I was the last. When Lucia cleared her way through my turrets, the Brotherhood of Steel would be completely gone. |
A raven cawed somewhere above me, no doubt perched on the catwalks nearer to the controls. My skin stung against the metal and for once I regretted dressing like a stripper. I wished it would storm. For all the heat and wonderfully dry air of the Mojave, I wished I could feel rain one last time. |
The door in front of me slid open. |
"I want you to know," Lucia explained, smiling down at me as she cocked her pistol. "I didn’t lock Arcade in a bunker." |
I wasn’t surprised. I stayed resigned. I didn’t expect to believe what she was about to tell me. |
"I didn’t kill Arcade," Lucia assured me. I still thought she was lying until she continued, " |
didn’t kill him. What I did is so much more fun than that." She giggled and I felt bile rise in my throat. |
Lucia stalked closer, keeping that gun always leveled at my head. "It seems a friend of mine had need of a doctor. A very dear friend of mine. A friend who’s worked with me this whole time because he knows as well as I do that the Legion won’t survive after Caesar. I |
Arcade to Vulpes Inculta." |
The burning metal floor seemed to drop out from under me. I hardly remembered the gun still aimed at my face. Arcade was enslaved. For the barest instant, I felt hopeful but that was quickly snuffed out. Arcade had been alive when she sold him, but he would not be alive by now. I knew him. I knew that nothing could ever be done to force Arcade to help the Legion. I had helped Lucia under threat of pain. I was a coward. He wasn’t. He might serve for a day, maybe a week, but he would break. Whether he would die by his own hand or find himself tortured and crucified, he wasn’t going to survive. With twenty days already passed, I had no hope that he remained alive. |
Lucia watched the light die in my eyes and she laughed. "See? Killing him wouldn’t be nearly this fun. Everyone you love is dead, Max. You see? Do you want me to kill you?" |
I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of nodding. I clenched my fist until my knuckles turned white, trying to pretend I was holding Arcade’s hand. In a few seconds, I would join him. I tried not to think of the Brotherhood soldiers I’d seen gunned down in these hallways all those years ago. I tried not to think of the Brotherhood I’d known now incinerated with the destruction of our last bunker. I tried not to picture Arcade’s body left out in the sun on some desolate hill. I tried to convince myself I wasn’t dying alone right now. |
Lucia angled her shoulder forward, subconsciously preparing for the recoil. I stared into the barrel of the gun, refusing to let her face be the last thing I’d see. |
A shot echoed through the old control room, scaring the raven above me, which flew off with an offended caw. The report was not a pistol shot. It was a gauss rifle. |
Lucia’s body crumpled onto the catwalk, sprawling at my feet as I shakily stood. Veronica fired six other shots into the body, completely destroying everything above Lucia’s waist. |
"Thanks." I patted down what remained, picking twenty caps and a poker chip out of her pockets. |
"Don’t mention it," Veronica replied, "I mean really, don’t mention it. I never want to think about this lunatic again." |
"You’re going to have to." I stood up, pocketing the caps and examining the chip. It wasn’t plastic. The metal gleamed in the dying sunlight. I saw fine lines etched into the sides, finer than needed for decoration. I remembered a strange slot I’d seen in the console of the Lucky 38. This was the Platinum Chip. I stowed it in my other pocket. "Veronica..." I turned to face her and noticed the shock on her face. "What?" |
"Max? You... don’t seem like yourself today." She backtracked as the sadness must have shown on my face. "I mean you don’t look like Max today. You... you look like-" |
She bit her lip and I laughed. Something inside me had broken. Lucia had worn me down for the better half of a year by now, life had worn me down before that, but for the past few months I knew Arcade had built me up. Between the two of them, perhaps unknowingly, they had finally shaped me into something that was better than the person I had thought I was. I’d spent so long running from responsibility and so long trying to just be happy that now, when I had lost so much of what could have made me happy, I had stopped running. |
"How many survived?" I asked quietly. |
"Not many." Veronica shook her head sadly and looked back into the control room. Six armored paladins and one very dusty knight stood behind her. I knew every one of them, which wasn’t surprising; I’d known every person in the bunker. The knight was young, barely an adult, and two of the paladins were the sort who thought gunfire solved all problems, but they were mostly good people. I supposed I’d been lucky. Hardin and his cronies would never have bothered to help me. I guess they’d all been in the bunker when... I tried to focus on the task at hand. I looked over their armor and addressed each one by name. |
"Set up guard shifts near the main doors." I ordered after greeting them, "Stay inside, we don’t need the NCR any more on guard then they normally would be." I turned towards the paladin nearest the back. "Williams?" |
"You’re Head Paladin now, for what it’s worth." |
With shock that showed in her voice, she saluted and answered, "I will try to serve well, Elder Maxson." I know I faltered visibly at the name. All my life, I’d dreaded that title. I’d always heard it in nightmares, either directed at myself or at one of my glorified ancestors, but now I heard it spoken with a potent blend of faith, hope, and desperation. The Brotherhood had lost almost everything. The bunker was gone, the scribes were gone, nearly everything we had was gone, except the armor and gear they had carried with them. Now I had taken Helios One and in that darkest hour, I looked like a beacon of hope. I couldn’t afford to be anything less, not after everything I had done. |
She began to backpedal and I cut her off, "Good." I managed a smile, desperately trying to emulate the great leaders we’d learned about as children even though part of me still screamed at the very concept. "We’re going to need the best out of everyone we have now." |
I led the way back to the main building and sent them ahead while I searched for clothing more befitting of a leader than stripper shorts and leather straps. After twenty minutes, I found tan slacks and dress shirts in Ignacio’s locker at the smaller control room. With even Veronica out of earshot, I didn’t hesitate to change clothes while looking over the intercom to see if it had linked with the system I had activated by the grid controls. I all but jumped out of my skin when someone sneezed. |
Wishing I had a gun, I grabbed the puddy on my palm and watched a red-haired figure clamber out from beneath a rusty cot. |
"Yeah, man," the scruffy goof replied, "What gives? I figured the Legion would be taking this place over by now." He wore a stained bedsheet he had fashioned into a crude toga. Not that I was much better, wearing my pants rolled up four times at the hem and a shirt two sizes too big for me with one of the straps from my stripper gear threaded through my belt loops. I felt like a kid wearing his father’s clothes. |
"If they do," I replied, "they aren’t going to be here long." I cracked my knuckles and replaced the puddy on my hand. "Stay inside." |
I left him there and walked back to the others, ignoring his dazed reply. |
Williams, acting as prudently as I had expected from her, already had the paladins split into two shifts, mixing their skills and personalities so they would work as well as possible. Veronica sat behind the front desk, trying to comfort the Knight who was understandably inconsolable. He’d held himself together thus far, following orders and postponing the grief he was feeling now, but he was young. He probably hadn’t even left the bunker before and the community was usually close-knit. He wasn’t closely related to anyone here- he had lost his entire family thanks to Lucia. |
I felt my heavy brows settle into a frown as I watched our little group settle in and I knew I looked even more like my father. The paladins kept glancing my way, but didn’t say anything. They saw me as a leader and they expected a plan. Right now, I can’t say I had one. I needed to keep us alive. |
Once the knight finally lapsed into nervous silence, I called Veronica and headed outside. ED-E lay by the door, dented and marred by three bullet holes. One of his antennae had snapped off. I picked up the eyebot and walked towards Novac as Veronica emerged and followed. |
Broken pieces rattled in the heavy casing and I rolled them around to judge the damage. Veronica watched me in silence. Night had fallen and the heat of the day had cooled to a chill that prickled my skin, but right now I hardly noticed. I followed the cracked pavement of the road to an intersection, paying so little attention to my surroundings that an old man ducked out of the way as we nearly collided. |
"Take yer rattlin’ basketball out of the street, space man!" the lunatic hollered and Veronica frowned at him as we walked past. |
"Well, that guy was definitely nuts," Vero assessed. She rubbed her arms and looked up at the stars. "Man, this would be a great night for a dress if it wasn’t so cold. And if I had a dress. That’s one thing I really wish I had done; I went |
the way to Vegas and I didn’t even buy a nice dress!" |
I walked through the hotel gates, barely hearing her. "Uh-huh." |
"And you could have gotten a dress too!" Veronica rambled with mock excitement. |
I didn’t hear her. I wandered over to a staircase and sat on the steps, taking out a cap to try to unscrew part of ED-E’s chassis. The cheap metal scraped at the screw, making little if any progress. |
"Just let me do it," Veronica snapped. She sat down beside me and snatched the eyebot out of my hands. Taking out the tools she always carried with her, she got the chassis open and handed it back along with pliers and a small flashlight. I resumed my work, picking three bullets out of the circuitry and pocketing them as I continued. Veronica seemed to analyze my mood. |
I nodded and she swore. "I even tried to tell him! I left that cipher inside the pillowcase of the bed he usually takes. I guess he didn’t get it." |
"So that’s how he found that." I shook my head and lay back on the stairs, holding the eyebot in my lap while I stared up at the stars. "He got it. He just didn’t know why he should leave. I tried to tell him. He must have started to get suspicious, from what she told me." |
I didn’t look at Veronica, but I heard the sympathy in her voice. "She killed him, didn’t she?" |
"For all intents and purposes." |
"Are you Maxson?" The voice was unfamiliar and both of us looked up, immediately on guard. An old woman leaned on the railing above us, her white hair tied back and tucked beneath a tattered straw hat. To our confusion, she explained, "Heard you mention Arcade." |
"You knew him?" I guessed. Was she the friend he mentioned he had in Novac?" |
"More than knew him," she replied, "practically raised him. I was good friends with his parents." She paused. "From the way you say that, I... I take it he’s dead?" |
"Almost certainly," I replied. She had a matter-of-fact tone. This was someone who had dealt with death for most of her life. And she already had said that she knew his parents... |
I thought for a moment, plying the various plates and wires within the eyebot. With everything Lucia had set up, even after her death, the NCR and Legion may well reach a stalemate, and I knew about the army under the Fort. I closed up the eyebot’s chassis and toggled the reset switch. His engines hummed to life and ED-E hovered up to eye-level with a shrill series of beeps. I looked back at the old woman and got back to my feet. "I know our organizations haven’t exactly gotten along in the past, but in light of current circumstances I hope we can put that aside. The courier had planned to drive both armies out of Vegas and seize control for herself. With the circumstances she engineered, both armies will be crippled if not destroyed and I don’t plan to change this. I already effectively have control of Vegas and control of-" I hesitated, unwilling to admit that I literally had an army under my indirect command, "-certain tactical advantages associated with that." |
The old woman nodded slowly. She’d heard enough sales pitches and army pep-talks to see where this was going and she wasn’t caught up by my little speech. I cut to the chase and dropped my more official persona. |
"Look, I know who you are and I’d bet you know who I am. I cared about Arcade. Very deeply. The courier’s already dead. I can’t make her more dead. But you were close to him, and if there’s anyone else who was, I’d like to make sure that none of you need to continue living in hiding. I’m taking Vegas. I already have it, for the most part, but after the battle at the dam, I’m bringing in my own forces and I’m ousting the NCR |
the Legion. And hunting down any motherfuckers who refuse to leave. After everything the NCR has done to both of us, I don’t want them anywhere in the entire Mojave, and I refuse to let them harm anyone close to me or anyone Arcade cared about." |
Veronica cleared her throat and stared at me like I was crazy. I realized why. "I’m not talking about nine Brotherhood soldiers taking out an army," I explained bluntly, "I’m going to use |
army, as it’s now controlled by Yes Man, who is controlled by me." I didn’t wait for her response, I just looked back up at the old woman. |
She had tilted her head thoughtfully and took a moment to consider her reply while Vero shrugged and stepped back, apparently deciding that for once I really had thought this through. |
"Well," she began, "I don’t know if we’ll be much help, but you seem to have a good plan by my judgement. I’ll talk to the others." She gave us the coordinates to a bunker in the mountains. "I can see why Arcade wanted to trust you." |
She returned to her room, presumably to pack and I turned back to Veronica. |
"The NCR was after Arcade?" |
I hadn’t really wanted to explain, but I suppose the secret was out. I sighed inwardly. "Do you remember those lessons about the Enclave?" |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.