Chapter 16: Recon

Chapter 16: Recon

This is Mr. New Vegas, fanning the flames of your passion. Our top story this hour: Refugees at Bitter Springs are giving startling accounts of the Legate, known as Lanius, who is said to be Caesar's top field commander. One refugee told us that "The Legate took over an 'under-performing' squad of troops by beating its commander to death in full view of everyone." The Legate then ordered a tenth of his own troops to be killed by the other nine-tenths. And you thought your boss was a pain. The news this hour has been brought to you by The El Cortez Hotel and Casino: Where locals come to play. And now Nat King Cole reminding us what really matters with Love Me as Though There Were No Tomorrow. Because in New Vegas, hey, you never know.

"Hey, Veronica? Are you doing alright?" I asked Veronica as she, Arcade, ED-E and I made our way down Las Vegas Boulevard, towards the Strip's front gate. She looked up at me, confused.

"Huh? Why do you ask?"

"Well, you've just been... quiet, is all. You've been pretty quiet ever since we left the fort. Is something wrong?"

"Oh," she said, comprehension dawning on her face. "I'm fine. I've just been thinking, that's all."

"Thinking about what?" When I asked, she looked over her shoulder at Arcade. ED-E was floating behind the two of us at the front, and Arcade was behind ED-E keeping his distance.

"About the Brotherhood," she said, keeping her voice low. I guess she didn't want Arcade to know she was a member of the Brotherhood of Steel just yet. Given how he reacted to ED-E, I couldn't blame her. "You can't help but notice that the Brotherhood barely exists to the people out here. We're like an urban myth. No real presence on the outside."

I shrugged. That was true enough. Until Veronica, I'd never met anyone who was a member of the Brotherhood. Or, maybe I had, and I just didn't know it. If nothing else, I was fairly sure I'd never run into a Paladin - someone in powered armor carrying a laser rifle is kind of hard to miss.

"We just don't adapt like we should," she continued. "Used to be that all you needed to get your way was a suit of power armor and a laser rifle. But now... people are armed and organized. They're not afraid. But we still stick to our old approaches, because it's all we know."

"Sounds like whoever's in charge is living in the past," I offered. "I mean, I don't really know, since I don't know much about the Brotherhood, but it sounds like they're eventually going to have to change."

My words reminded me of an old world saying: adapt or die. I don't know who said it first, but if there was one law in the wasteland that was it. And, according to Veronica at least, the Brotherhood was refusing to adapt.

"I think you're right. I mean, power armor and laser rifles are effective - but only if you've got bodies to fill the suits. And since we don't really take on new members, we're starting to get desperate. If something doesn't change, then the empty suits are going to become all that's left of us... and I get the feeling that if I don't take matters into my own hands, the change won't come in time to make a difference."

"I'm sure you'll think of something," I said. "But to be honest, I can't really comment one way or another, since I don't really know too much about the Brotherhood."

"If you wanted me to tell you about the Brotherhood, all you had to do was ask."

"Thanks. And I'll probably take you up on that later. Now... probably isn't the best place to talk about it." She nodded in understanding, looking around at the scenery of Freeside as we walked. "There was one other thing I wanted to ask you, though."

"Shoot," she said, much more amiable now that she'd apparently gotten that off her chest.

"How did you know that Arcade was gay?"This chapter is updated by nov(e)(l)biin.com

"Lesbian's intuition?" she said with a shrug.

When the elevator doors opened to the high roller suite in the Lucky 38, we were greeted by Cass who was leaning against one of the nearby walls.

"Hey, there y'guys are! I was wonderin' where y'all had run off to." She said with a smile.

"You're looking better," I said. She really did look considerably better, especially given the state we'd left her in this morning. She just shrugged.

"Well, b'tween Veronica's hangover cure, sleepin' it off, an..." she reached behind her and pulled out her flask. "... hair o'the dog that bit me, I'm doin' fine." She put the flask in her back pocket, and looked at Arcade behind us. ED-E hadn't taken the elevator, and was likely floating outside one of the windows. "So, who's the new arrival?"

"Cass, this is Arcade. Arcade, Cass. He's a member of the Followers of the Apocalypse." I did my best to get introductions out of the way. Cass nodded at the doctor, and then chuckled when she looked at me.

"You gotta start collectin' coins or somethin', or else we're gonna run out of space here." She moved her head from side to side, and her neck cracked with several audible pops. I tried not to wince. "So, ready to go?"

"Wait, what?" I blinked. "Go? I just got back."

"Well yeah, but earlier y'asked if I wanted to check out th' other caravan, but I was too hungover. I'm not hungover any more, so I thought we could go'n check it out."

"Why not?" I sighed, shrugged, and turned to Veronica and Arcade. "So, what are you guys going to do? Either of you two want to come with?"

"I should probably stay and help Arcade get settled," Veronica replied.

"I was going to stay and get some food a bit later. It was nice to meet you, though," Arcade said as he started looking around the suite. As soon as he was in the kitchen and out of earshot, Veronica shuffled towards me and spoke up.

"Besides, I need to figure out a way to break the whole Brotherhood thing to him," she practically whispered under her breath. I nodded. At that moment, I saw Boone exit from his room. He looked... exactly the same as when I'd seen him earlier tonight. He still had his rifle, his revolver strapped to his hip, his knife strapped to his boot, sunglasses still on despite being indoors. I swear, he always looked ready to fight.

"Hey Boone - Cass and I are gonna check out the other sacked caravan. We might need an extra set of eyes. Interested?" I asked. Boone looked at me with his usual stony, emotionless expression.

"Sorry. I can't come. Something's come up." And that was all he said.

"Well!" Cass smirked and slapped me on the shoulder. "Guess it's just you'n me then. Just like old times."

"Old times?" I raised an eyebrow at that. "What, you mean Thursday? A whole two days ago?"

"Has it only been a couple days?" She asked as the pair of us entered the elevator. "Weird. It's seemed longer..."

"So, where exactly is this other caravan... er, what was it called?"

"Th' name of th' company was Griffin Wares. An' bring up the map on your Pip Boy, I'll point it out." I pulled up the map on my Pip Boy and showed it to her. She scanned it for about a minute or so as the elevator descended, and finally pointed at the screen. "Here. I think that's about where it is."

The spot she pointed to was on route 95, far north of Vegas. The spot was just south of the turnoff to the road that led up to Mt. Charleston; route 156, if the map was accurate. If the scale of the map was any indication, then it was roughly 25 miles away... as the crow flies. Which meant we'd definitely need the Corvega to get there and back before nightfall.

"Alright. Shouldn't take us too long. But before we head up all that way, there's something I need to do first." As if on cue, my knee started to flare up again. I reached down and rubbed my knee, in a vain attempt to lessen the ache. "I need to get this fucking bullet out of my leg."

"I can't believe you've been walkin' around all day on that," Cass said, taking a draw from her flask. We'd just left Usanagi's clinic, and were now on the road toward the other caravan site. ED-E was zooming around the car keeping pace, as per usual.

"Hang on, what's this?" Cass spoke up. I stopped my search and went over to see what she was looking at.

"Found something?"

"Yeah, t'was wedged under one of th' metal boxes over here," She held out a badly faded and yellow piece of paper, and unfolded it so the two of us could see. "Looks like a map."

"Are you sure?" I asked honestly. The drawing on the paper could have been a map... but of what, I couldn't tell you. It was very crudely drawn, and just looked like scribbles.

"Yeah... I think this is supposed t'be Vegas. Look, here's th' wall around th' Strip an' Freeside, here's th' 95, here's th' long 15, here's Hoover Dam an' Boulder City..." she pointed at several of the scratches, and traced her finger along a couple of the lines as she spoke. I squinted... and could almost make out what she was talking about. The only thing that stood out to me were three X's drawn in a different color ink than the rest... and then the bottlecap dropped.

"Wait, hold on - look at these X's here... if this is the 95, like you said, than this X..." I pointed at the one near the top left of the map "... this X is where we are now."

"And that X down there must be..." she paused, swallowed hard, and continued "My caravan."

"But then that must mean the third... there's another caravan site out there that's been hit." I said, a grim realization dawning.

"That's fucked up - third X is out in th' middle of nowhere... I wonder if it has anything to do with th' numbers on th' bottom of th' page." That's when she pointed to a set of chicken scratches near her thumb.

"Those are supposed to be numbers? It looked like their pen had run out of ink to me." It took me a minute to decipher the horrible handwriting, but eventually I was able to work out that the letters and numbers at the bottom of the page spelled out: N36 8.75', W115 3.18'.

"So... do you know what that means?" Cass asked. I shrugged.

"Fucked if I know. Maybe it's some kind of technical thing - I bet if Veronica were here, she'd know what it meant. I mean, it's probably something to do with that third X."

"Yeah... something's wrong. I can feel it. We should-"

I never found out what she was going to suggest we do, because at that moment she was interrupted by a sound like a thunderclap setting off an explosion right above our heads. The two of us ducked instinctively, and ED-E let out a series of panicked beeps and flew behind my car for cover. I looked up and saw a flash in the clouds above us, a split second before the clouds split apart like a gaping wound in the sky, making way for something very large, very metal, and very on fire hurtling out of the sky and dropping directly at the two of us.

"Look out!" I yelled above the racket, and without really thinking, I took hold of Cass by the shoulders and urged her away with all my strength just as I started running myself. She didn't really need much in the way of prompting, and quickly ran out of the incoming... whatever it was, and dove behind my car for cover. The flaming disk in the sky howled and screeched, and I turned around just in time to see it spin in the air, veer wildly off course, and head off away from us and to the north. A trail of dark smoke hung in the air after it passed overhead, and with a flash and boom like nothing else on this earth, it crashed into the desert just north of us.

For several minutes, the three of us hid behind my car before anyone said or did anything. Finally, I got up, pulled Roscoe from it's holster, and checked the clip to make sure it was loaded.

"What're you doin?" Cass asked through gritted teeth, getting up from behind my car. I pointed off in the distance, towards the steadily rising cloud of smoke.

"That thing - whatever it is - just fell out of the fucking sky," I said, holstering Roscoe and moved towards the driver's side of the car. "And I intend to find out exactly what the hell just damn nearly killed us."

It didn't take much to find what I was looking for, and it certainly didn't take long. All I had to do was follow the trail of smoke, over terrain that could only have been more flat if it was a dry salt lake. What we found was... not exactly a crater, but close enough. There was a long trail of displaced earth where the metal disk had started hitting the ground leading to... whatever it was.

The ground all around it was still hot and smoldering, and it was still on fire. Of course, when I got out of the car, Roscoe already drawn, I noticed for the first time that the flames weren't the right color. They burned blue and green rather than orange, and parts of it were spitting sparks randomly. When I caught a glimpse of the clear bubble dome (that was cracked and broken) at one end, the first thing that popped into my head was the kind of cockpit you'd see on an old world jet fighter - the sort of thing I'd only ever seen in holotapes. But this, whatever it was, most certainly wasn't an aircraft, because it was entirely the wrong shape. It looked more like a tank, but without wheels. But to be perfectly honest, it was shaped like a saucer... but that was just stupid. Saucers don't fly. Then again, neither do tanks.

"The fuck is this?" Cass said as she got out of the car. Her shotgun was also at the ready.

"Don't look at me," I said, trying to see any more details through the smoke. "ED-E, do you know what this is?" All I got in response was a few frantic sounding beeps, same as before.

And then I noticed a few of those beeps weren't coming from ED-E... they were coming from my Pip Boy.

I glanced at it quickly, but long enough to see that directly in front of me, obscured entirely by the plume of thick smoke, was something the Pip Boy's radar had indicated was hostile. So I motioned to Cass and ED-E, and the three of us readied our weapons, hoping to be ready for whatever emerged.

I'll tell you right now, I wasn't ready at all.

What stumbled out into view from behind the cloud of smoke was... something that was very much not a human. It had two legs, two arms, and a head, but that was where any similarities ended. The creature couldn't have been more than three or four feet tall, and its limbs were just so skinny and tiny... they almost looked atrophied. The head, on the other hand, was massive and bulbous, with greenish-grey skin, and completely hairless. Its eyes were huge, and completely black; it didn't look like it had a nose or ears, just holes where they should've been, and a tiny slit for a mouth. It looked like it was wearing some kind of full body suit made out of a silvery blue foil, marred and torn, with a weird green liquid staining parts of it. The creature doubled over, and started coughing; when that same green liquid came pouring out of its mouth, I realized it must've been blood.

"What the fuck..." I said aloud. I couldn't help myself. Ghouls, fine. Super mutants, fine. Giant insects, no problem. But this - this was unlike anything I'd ever seen before!

Of course, my exclamation got the attention of whatever it was. It stopped retching blood, looked up at me, and reached for a gun on its belt. As fast as my body would allow, I dove for the ground. Good thing too, because the... whatever it was, fired at me with that gun. There was a bright flash, a sort of twanging sound (like someone hitting a high tension cable with a wrench), and a blue ball of plasma sizzled directly over my head right where I would've been. At the same moment, I fired Roscoe, Cass fired her shotgun, and ED-E fired his laser. I don't know if Cass or I even hit it, but the laser struck the creature right smack in the middle of its chest. With a cry that sounded almost like a quack, it fell over backwards and hit the ground with a thud.

I checked my Pip Boy quickly - no more hostile blips on the radar. So, I got up, dusted myself off, and cautiously made my way to the corpse. Maybe if I got a closer look at it, I'd figure out what it was.

Getting a closer look at it didn't in any way help me figure out what it was. In fact, all it did was disturb me. For one thing, its hands were... there were only two fingers and a thumb, and each digit on its fingers were as long as one of my whole fingers. Its eyes were entirely too large, especially compared to how small everything else on its face was, and speaking of its face - it had more wrinkles than an eighty year old man.

The weirdest thing of all was the gun - it was made out of some odd grey-blue metal, and looked like a very large egg with one stick coming out of one end for the barrel, and another stick coming out of the bottom for the handle and trigger. There were three lights running down each side, and another light on the back. The barrel had a few rings right before the end, and the top of the gun had a fin which could have been the sight. It was the strangest looking energy weapon I'd ever seen in my life.

"Holy fuck," Cass said, shouldering her shotgun as she got a close look at the corpse. "I know what this is."

"Well, feel free to enlighten me any time, because frankly I got nothing."

"It's an alien!" She practically shouted. "It has to be - I mean, look at it! It's just like those holotapes of the alien autopsy from 300 years ago."

"An alien," I deadpanned.

"Yeah, y'know, like the kind that crashed in Roswell. Outer space aliens! UFO's and flying saucers and government coverups, shit like that. There are tons of holotapes on th' subject!" Realizing how that must've sounded, Cass quickly added "Not that I've seen all of 'em, just a couple. Y'know. To pass th' time."

"Aliens," I said again, still trying to make sense of the concept. "From outer space."

I was just about to dismiss the idea as completely bonkers, but then I took stock of what had just happened: The two of us had nearly been killed by a flying saucer that had fallen out of the sky, it crashed with a sound that was not of this earth, the wrecked flying saucer burned with a fire that didn't look like fire from Earth, and finally - the cherry on top of the cake - a little green man that was obviously not human in a space suit had shot at me with a ray gun.

With some measure of regret, I let out a resigned sigh. As absurd as the idea of aliens from outer space inherently was, and in defiance of part of my brain screaming that there must be some other logical rationale, I couldn't think of anything else that even came close to explaining what the hell had just transpired here.

"When the fuck did my life become so weird?" I said aloud.