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mickume

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Vero took the revelation fairly well, all things considered.  Arcade was a good person, in her words, and she guessed it didn’t really matter where he came from when he’d done so much trying to help people, including myself.  Weirdly, I suppose, my own opinion was similar but focused more on the fact that, at the base of it, the Brotherhood and the Enclave really weren’t that different and I’d known since I had first realized his background that he was able to really understand how it felt to have the NCR hunting you down for an accident of birth.  And I admit, his looks hadn’t exactly turned me against him.  

I told the rest of the Brotherhood, for all that title meant anymore, that I hoped to work with a group of Enclave survivors.  That revelation went as well as I had expected: The Brotherhood remembered the Enclave, they worried, but everyone knew we weren’t in any position to pick and choose.  I told them my reasoning, at least the overall gist.  I reminded them that Roger Maxson had been an Army captain, from a branch of pre-war military, the Enclave came from the survivors of the pre-war government and overall, both of us had very similar operating procedures.  I didn’t exactly plan to experiment on human beings, but the Brotherhood had deviated significantly from the founding principals anyway, and the Enclave that remained hardly maintained the same ideals it used to.  I admitted simply that, even beneath all these similarities, these were people like us who had been hunted by the NCR, feared by the masses, isolated and educated and whatever their origin, I believed that we could build a haven for industry, technology, and everyone who had been hunted by the NCR.  

That speech brought them around.  Veronica told me much later that it was my conviction that did it.  They all knew that I absolutely believed every word I was telling them, and they had all seen enough to know that I could build that haven.  They didn’t know what I had endured to get here, but they could hear it in my voice and they could see what I had become.  These last nine soldiers had absolute faith in me and as much as I had never wanted to be a leader, I knew I couldn’t let them down, so I wasn’t going to.  

We stopped by Vegas before heading into the mountains.  I swapped clothes for a similar outfit that actually fit and grabbed my father’s sheepskin coat from my belongings.  I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror before I left.  Even though my hair was lighter and my face a little less scarred, I looked uncannily like my father.  

Yes Man warned that that battle was likely to start soon.  Both sides had brought in veteran troops and fortified their positions as much as possible.  I told him to activate the army once the NCR and Legion had sufficiently destroyed each other.   I had no place in that fight; I wasn’t a soldier, and I had an alliance to negotiate even if I’d wanted to head to the dam.  Besides, robots didn’t need to see their commander on the front lines.  

The paladins insisted on going with Vero and I when we went to the Enclave bunker.  They didn’t trust these people and Williams pointed out that we didn’t even know how many Enclave survivors we would be meeting.  I suppose it was a reasonable point, and after everything they’d lost I could see that they didn’t want to let me go off on my own.  ED-E joined us as well, but mostly because I thought it was a good idea to take the eyebot with us in case the Enclave would want the data it held.  We made quite a scene walking through Vegas, myself in my heavy coat, Vero with her power fist, the knight in recon armor, and six power-armored paladins with gauss rifles all with the courier’s eyebot hovering along behind us.  

We caused a similar stir when we stopped in West Side.  I wanted to resupply before we headed into the mountains and West Side was a convenient stop before the climb.  Vero had the experience trading, so she went inside the shop and I leaned against a building up the street while the rest of our troop loitered near the entrance to the shop, giving me space and making the locals nervous.  ED-E hovered over my shoulder, flicking his remaining antennae, but mercifully silent.  As much as I liked his cheerful tunes, I didn’t want that soundtrack to my current thoughts.  The sun had begun to set, but the day was still hot, so I stood in the shadow of the building pressed up against the brick with my coat barely hanging onto my shoulders, trying in vain to cool off.  I’d need the coat once we reached higher altitudes, but right now the thick sheepskin had become nearly unbearable.  

I picked dirt off my fingernails and found my mind wandering back to Arcade.  I wished I had something of his- nothing big, just some small sentimental reminder of him.  The coat was a relic of my father.  But Arcade traveled light.  He’d had his clothes, his gun, that rusted old ripper, and whatever medical supplies he’d been able to scrounge up, and all of that had been with him when he left with the courier.  I liked sentiment.  With no picture of the man, the loss felt deeper when I had nothing of his to remind me of him.  Granted, I’d rather have him, still alive and with me.  

An old man paused beside me.  He carried a patched satchel over one shoulder.  At first I’d mistaken him for a retired trader headed out to the Thorn, but then I saw the forced causal of his stance and caught the way he was looking at me.  He’d been a soldier.  I looked up to meet his gaze.  His eyes were deep.  From his measured stare I got the sense that he understood much more about me than most people did.  

"You must be Maxson."

I blinked.  "I presume you also knew Arcade?"  

He got my real question; he knew I was asking if he’d been with the Enclave.  He nodded.  "I don’t know if Arcade meant to convince you to do this, but the plan you have sounds reasonable enough from what Daisy told me."  He eyed the paladins behind me and they watched him with a similar degree of caution.  The old man focused back on me.  "I’m Judah Kreger.  Former Captain.  Still Captain, I suppose.  You might have trouble convincing Moreno to work with the Brotherhood, but if you’re driving out the NCR, he might come around."  He nodded and started for the gate, "We’ll talk more when you get there."

It took two days to reach the bunker.  A storm had moved in and we made the last hour of the hike through blinding snow and high winds.  I could only guess the size of their bunker with the visibility.  I guessed it was small, but wouldn’t assume.  

We didn’t all go inside; with six paladins and an eyebot, I didn’t want to intimidate Arcade’s friends.  This was their bunker and I wanted to show them I hadn’t come here to take whatever technology they still had.  The paladins weren’t eager to let me walk into that bunker with only an eyebot and Vero for protection, but they only voiced their objections once.  Mostly by default, I was their Elder.  They wouldn’t fight me on something that could be this critical.  We needed allies, and they understood my reasons.  

The steel hallway beneath the hatch was bitterly cold with the snow above.  Vero and I had barely climbed down the ladder when four men and Daisy stepped through the door at the far end.  I turned to face them and tried to look professional.  

"Are you sure Arcade is dead?"

The speaker was a man I hadn’t met before.  He stood flanking Judah and his posture as well as his expression told me he was stubborn.  Judah introduced him as Moreno, and introduced the others after Moreno spoke.  

I met Moreno’s gaze, but I addressed them all.  I’m still surprised my voice stayed as level as it did, "The courier told me and in this case I’m inclined to trust her.  She was always a sadist and it seemed the most sadistic thing she could have done to him.  She sold him.  To Vulpes Inculta."  My voice broke before the last sentence and I had to steel myself for the last two words.  

Another man I hadn’t seen before shook his head.  He stood opposite Moreno, just as stubborn by my judge of him, but he seemed more optimistic.  "Then he’s sold, but that doesn’t mean he’s dead."  He looked to the others.  "I’m not going to leave him out there if I can help it."

Moreno seemed to agree, but Daisy looked skeptical, as did the other man standing behind them.  Judah met my eyes.   I took that to mean that he agreed with me.  

"I never thought I’d be agreeing with this bastard," Moreno chimed in, "but Johnson’s right.  I’m not leaving Arcade out there if there’s any chance he’s still alive.  Not after everything his father did for us."  

I saw an opportunity that didn’t cost me anything.  "If you think he’s still alive, I’ll do what I can to help.  But," I added, "I’m not optimistic.  It’s been three weeks by now.  And it’ll be even longer before we could get to him."  

Vero piped up, "Five days at best, at least by my estimate."

Judah seemed almost resigned.  "Faster than that, but it has been a while."  He looked at Johnson and Moreno and then the three of them looked back at me.  "You said you’re taking Vegas," Judah continued, "Daisy tells me you’re using the courier’s plans to your advantage and you have some army Mr.House had set up.  What exactly is that?"

I saw no point in hiding it any longer.  "House had an army of securitrons under the Fort.  The Legion fort.  As I control the system now, they answer to me.  They’re going to attack once the NCR and the Legion have fought their own battle, when both armies and any allies they have are weakened.  And if that fails, I have the Archimedes.  Vegas has its own generator and Helios can power it if need be.  The dam is nice to have, but it’s no longer a critical resource for Vegas, but the NCR and the Legion don’t know that.  Let them kill each other, and then I’ll drive them out."

Moreno nodded almost approvingly at that.  He heard my hate and he agreed.  And I admit, if I hadn’t had people depending on me, I would have stopped at nothing to destroy both the NCR and the Legion.  

I wanted them dead.  If I’d had warheads, I would have nuked every camp I knew of, screw the fallout (literally.)  I still wished I could kill every last NCR soldier, every last Legion bastard... but I couldn’t take that risk.  I couldn’t risk the last of the Brotherhood and possibly the last of the Enclave on one personal quest for vengeance.  We’d lost contact with any other Brotherhood bunker years ago, and while they may have survived unable to communicate, I couldn’t rely on that.  For all I knew, everything the Brotherhood had left was right here on this mountain.  And although other scattered survivors of the Enclave might also remain unbeknownst to us, this could be the last of them as well.  I was going to drive those armies out of Vegas, but I couldn’t hunt them into oblivion.  I just had to stop at defending the Mojave... as much as I wished to kill every last one of them.  

Judah seemed to be thinking.  The others waited for him and Vero and I did the same.  

"I’ll help, for what it’s worth," Judah finally agreed.  "I’m no longer your C.O.," he told the others, "so you decide for yourselves if you want to work with Maxson, but I’d suspect we can all agree that we want to try to find Arcade."

The others all nodded and whether or not he meant to include me, I did the same.  I noticed myself standing at attention, the way I’d been taught growing up, but I didn’t correct my posture.  Instead, I simply pointed out, "If there’s any chance he’s still alive, that’s getting smaller the longer we wait.  We can sort out the possibility of an alliance after that."  

Johnson furrowed his brow.  "If you’re ready to charge off into the Legion army with six old timers and eight soldiers, why did you bother climbing all the way up here first?"

"Because I don’t think he’s alive," I replied.  "Arcade would never help the Legion.  Even enslaved, he would have fought them or found a way out.  I didn’t know he was enslaved for two weeks -she had me locked in a hotel room."  I added that last note when Moreno opened his mouth, guessing he would ask why I hadn’t tried to find Arcade in that time.  "Arcade may have waited for rescue.  He may have waited a few days, maybe even a week, but once it seemed to him that rescue was not coming, he would have... opted out."  I couldn’t bring myself to verbalize that I believed Arcade would have killed himself rather than serve Inculta.  

All of them seemed to understand what I meant, but neither Johnson nor Moreno backed down.  "I’m not willing to accept that unless we find proof," Moreno insisted.  

I nodded.  "I understand.  And if you’re willing to let me, I’ll do anything within my power to assist you."

Judah turned towards Daisy.  "How soon can you have that bird ready to fly?"

Daisy managed a smile, "Well, I reckon I can have her fueled up and running in two hours if you’ll clear the snow off the hatch.  

They kept me in Caesar’s tent, closely guarded for at least two weeks.  It turned out Caesar had been dying and as much as I kicked myself for giving in, pain and a bomb collar had won out.  I had saved him.  He was still recovering when I heard them saying that the Archimedes had been activated.  At the time, I could not have become more miserable, but the news still left a cold pit in my empty stomach.  I blamed Lucia.  After what she had done to me, she must have been working for the Legion all along, and I’d just been too blind to see it.  The loss of Helios One must have sent the NCR even more on a warpath; they started massing forces at the dam and if I’d been less concerned with my own situation, I would have realized that the battle was imminent days before it happened.  

Lanius began the assault in the dead of night, acting under Caesar's orders while the latter recovered from his surgery.  He needed another 6 weeks, minimum, and he knew that from the information he’d coerced out of me.  But the NCR forces kept coming and if they didn’t strike soon, he feared they’d be too entrenched.  Really, if the conditions had been better, the information I overheard might have been more entertaining.  

As it was, the situation in the Mojave crept farther and farther from my mind.  Caesar kept me as his pet and unwilling intellectual sparring partner.  After the surgery, his men turned to me for their sick entertainment.  When Caesar had regained consciousness, he ordered his men to make sure I lived.  That didn’t change my situation too significantly.  

I didn’t expect a rescue.  

After four days, I tried to get out.  I was caught.  They tied my arms together, whipped me, and tightened the guard.  Sometimes I’d liked to think that I could have endured torture, but I gave up any delusion of that the first day I was captured.  This was hell.  

After the first week, when Caesar recovered enough to sit in his throne but not enough to travel, I found myself rising to his demented statements.  He knew how to goad me.  With nothing better to do, I ended up playing entertainer - or maybe court jester- because however I tried I was too bored and much too strongly opinionated to hear him praise openly fascist policies as the wasteland’s best hope.  

Caesar died the day the Legion lost.  

He wasn’t killed in action.  In his condition, with his age, his health, and no more than a weeks’ recovery from major surgery, I’m surprised he made it until that first dawn.  It was a forced march.  The Legion left near dawn that first night.  We all heard the battle, but none who had fought retreated, so everything was rumor and no one really cared to discuss it.  The praetorian guard carried Caesar on an improvised palette, but everyone else walked.  When he died the next day, I saw that palette laid out in the sun with Caesar’s body resting almost regally on the red cloth.  He looked like a man on vacation, like those old postcards of people sunbathing at beaches.  I lacked the energy to kick his body, or do anything more than trudge past it.  

We didn’t stop when the sun set or when it rose again the next morning.  Aside from a few soldiers who’d kept waterskins despite the weight, no one had water.  The slaves took the brunt of it.  By day, temperatures climbed over a hundred degrees.  Aside from myself, there were no captures.  I learned the difference in that first week.  They kept my collar on me even as the metal heated until it burned my neck.  Most of the slaves were not fit for the journey.  They shot anyone who fell behind, or tried to run.  Barely two dozen survived to the second day of the march.  Apparently they had bullets but not food.  Or at least not civilized food.  Granted, after two days without eating, I wasn’t too picky about my meals either, but there were some lines I refused to cross.  Bodies became features of the land, hardly more notable than the rocks that dotted the dusty ground.  By the second day, I realized a few had been hacked apart with machetes after they fell.  From the bleeding, I knew some hadn’t been dead when the blades struck, but I tried not to look too closely.  

Three days in, I wasn’t even sure which dusty mounds were rocks and which were bodies.  My skin was raw beneath the hot collar and the rest of my body had blistered everywhere the sun could get at it.  When I moved my neck, the scabs cracked and new blood formed another painful layer between my neck and the collar, but at least it didn’t burn where the scabs protected my skin.  Near the back of the retreating army, the clouds of dust stirred up by the Legion stung my eyes, stuck in my throat, and coated the places where my sunburned skin had cracked open with a layer of rust red muck.  My glasses only helped so much when the dust became a cloud surrounding me and catching in my lungs.  I’d fallen over rocks and bodies so many times that my knees bled through my pants and I didn’t know if I should blame the dust in my eyes or the dizzying lack of food and water and sleep.  I barely registered the drumbeat of the hundred remaining footsteps, nor the terrain around us, only noting the merciful passage of day into night.  I hardly knew who I was at this point, I found I couldn’t focus on anything besides the continued effort to keep moving.  

If I fell behind, they would shoot me.  

If I fell behind, they would shoot me.  

...what did it matter if they shot me?    I slowed my pace as the ground sloped up sharply ahead of me- the base of a mountain I couldn’t perceive as more than a vague barrier that made the journey harder.   The dirt at the base crumbled beneath my feet and I fell onto a soft and lumpy mass which resolved itself as an emaciated body.  I lacked the strength to move or care that I had collapsed on top of a sweat-covered corpse in a dry riverbed.  I lacked the strength to care that they would kill me.  

Gravel crunched under the boots of a centurion.  I saw his helmet, but couldn’t process what it meant.  I saw his gun.  I thought he would kill me until he crouched beside me and deactivated the bomb collar.  He slipped it into his bag, jerking it roughly off my neck in a way that smacked my head against the ribs of the body.  The centurion walked onward up the slope without a second glance.  

The Legion hadn’t even bothered to shoot me.  

Thunder crashed overhead and a storm that had been gathering suddenly broke.  Sheets of rain washed over the dry land.  On a better day, I might have realized that it was dangerous to continue to lay sprawled in a dry riverbed when the rain began, but at the time the water seemed a final mercy.  I had lost any expectation that I might survive, so at least the rain might be a faster death than dehydration.  

However badly burned I had been, the rain was not a relief to my skin.  Every drop hit like a falling stone.  My eyes watered so badly from dust and pain that even with my glasses, I could only make out vague shapes.  I couldn’t tell if my ears rang with pain or just the sweeping patter of rain, the thunder, and the rush of strong winds.  

A decanus stumbled and climbed over my body, making his way up the slope.  I registered his boot on my hand but barely felt the pain.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I almost remembered how bad that was.  

Thunder crashed again.  The wind whipped more loudly and the rain seemed to echo a familiar rhythm I couldn’t quite place.  

The last of few legionnaires struggling through the newly formed muck of the river bed turned to point at the clouds.    

No.  There was something

the clouds.  

A vertibird descended from the storm, to my mind an impossible ghost of the past or more likely the hallucinatory result of a dying mind.  A hail of bullets swept across the retreating legionaries and those who survived scrambled up the mountain above me.  The vertibird began to bank, to fly onward in pursuit when I heard a distant shout half stolen by the wind.  

A figure jumped from the aircraft while it was still dangerously high.  I heard boots scramble down the cliff and didn’t bother to question what I was hearing.  

I didn’t move until two very real- and painful- hands dragged me from the mud.