Chapter 113: Red Rocks

Chapter 113: Red Rocks

At precisely 10:07 am (and a bit) the next day, we set out. There were only four of us in the car this morning; myself and Cass in the front seats, and Veronica and Arcade in the back. ED-E was flying around somewhere else, having offered to scout out ahead. For a while, the car was pretty silent, and I wasn't entirely certain why. The party last night had been fun, but hadn't been too raucous, and it didn't seem like anyone was hungover. But then, as we drove past an abandoned gas station somewhere west of Vegas in the middle of nowhere, the silence was broken.

"So, where'r we goin' again?" Cass asked, surprising me. The way she was reclining, I thought she was asleep.

"Weren't you paying attention earlier?" Arcade leaned forward, clearly annoyed, and grabbed the back of Cass' chair. Cass shook her head and leaned back in her seat even more.

"Nope," Cass sniffed loudly. "I mean, I'm pretty sure we're headin' out to shoot some folks. That's what we always tend to do, right? Just not sure who we're goin' to shoot." Arcade rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh.

"With any luck," I said, before Arcade got a chance to say anything. "We won't have to shoot anyone. I don't plan on any shooting taking place, at least." Cass snorted out a laugh.

"Yeah, well, what you plan an' what takes place ain't ever exactly been similar."

"Thanks for that," I said, forcing a smile. "We're going to Red Rock Canyon, because that's where Yes Man said the last of the Great Khans in the Mojave are holed up. I'm gonna try and talk to them, and see if I can get them on board with this whole Independent Vegas scheme I've been putting together."

"Hold up, the Great Khans?" Cass finally sat up, and tilted her hat back with her thumb. I nodded.

"Yup."

"The same Great Khan assholes who Benny hired to ambush you when you first arrived in the Mojave?" Cass asked. "The same fucks who tried to kill you and buried you alive? Those the Great Khans we're talkin' about?"

"Yeah," I said simply. "And then Benny fucked them over just as soon as he was finished using them."

"And then the NCR killed them in Boulder City," Veronica said absentmindedly, staring out the back window. Ah, so she had been paying attention to the conversation after all.

"And let's not forget the Bitter Springs Massacre," Arcade spoke up. "Which, I can only imagine, is why Boone isn't joining us today. Yes?"

"As always, Arcade, your powers of deduction are beyond compare," I said, doing my best to make the sarcasm at least sound playful and friendly. It seemed to work, since he just smiled, shook his head, and leaned back in his seat.

"Y'know, fer the longest time, the only thing I'd ever heard about the Khans is that they were drug dealers, an' raiders, an' shit..." Cass shook her head. "As a rule, I tend not to deal with raiders, unless it's down the barrel of a shotgun. I guess I just don't understand why we're goin' to talk to 'em."

"Because," I said forcefully, glancing over my shoulder at Veronica slightly. "I want to give them a chance. If I go in there, guns blazing, without even giving them that chance? I'd be no better than House if I did that, when he wanted me to wipe out the Brotherhood. And that would make me a terrible hypocrite..." I turned my attention back to the empty, straight road ahead. "I'm tired of being a hypocrite."

"Alright, whatever," Cass tilted her hat forward, and she shrugged back down in her seat. "But if they turn out to really be raiders like the Fiends, then I'm gonna open fire no matter what."

"How about this: first body we see hanging from a meathook is our signal to go nuts." I offered. From behind me, I heard Veronica snort out a stifled laugh.

"Yeah, that's fair." Cass nodded. She seemed pleased with that. I was just about to settle in for a nice, relaxing rest of the trip... when suddenly my Pip Boy started making noise.

"Friend_Courier," ED-E's voice emerged from the speaker. "Are you there, Friend_Courier?" I steadied the steering wheel with one hand, and hit the button to transmit on my Pip Boy.

"Yeah, I'm here ED-E," I said into my wrist computer. "What's up?"

"We may have a problem, Friend_Courier..."

"Lay it on me, ED-E," I said, with a sigh. "You know how I love bad news..." The bottom of my stomach fell out as I spoke. This was gonna be bad, whatever it was. And as ED-E explained, another conversation took place in the car.

"Who's he talking to?" Veronica said from the backseat. "I mean, it sounds like ED-E's beeping, but..."

"It is ED-E," Cass replied. She turned around in her seat and looked back and forth at the two sitting behind us. "What, d'he not tell ya?"

"Tell us what?" Arcade asked.

"Whatever happened to him in th' Big Empty did somethin' with his mind," Cass circled her ear with her finger several times. "I don't know if he's tellin' the truth or if he's just gone completely koo-koo bananas, but it seems like he can understand ED-E now."

"That's... not possible," Arcade said, shaking his head.

"But... hang on..." Veronica pointed at my Pip Boy as I listened to both their conversation and ED-E rattling off what he'd found. "That- that's just beeping. Are you trying to say that Sheason can understand that gibberish?" Cass shrugged.

"Maybe, I dunno. Seems t'be workin'..." Cass looked around with concern; clearly, she'd noticed that the car had been slowing down to a stop for the last few seconds. "Shea? What's -" She blinked several times as I looked at her. I'm pretty sure my face was conveying the nervous feeling of trepidation in my gut. "What's wrong?"

"Gear up," I said, pulling Roscoe off my hip to make sure it was loaded. "Something has gone horribly, badly wrong."

About 15 minutes later, I pulled my car to a screeching halt just outside the entrance to Red Rock Canyon. It was far too narrow for my extremely wide Corvega to even attempt to drive through...

"End of the line," I said, grabbing the anti-materiel rifle I'd stashed next to me. "Everyone out... and get military."

All four of us poured out of my car and walked into the canyon entrance. We all looked ready for combat, each of us wearing very obvious armor and laden down with weapons - well, with the possible exception of Veronica, that is. But then, she always wore that power armor under her robe anyway. There wasn't anything else she needed to do but grab Oh, Baby!

I wasn't wearing Susan the stealth suit, though. When I'd gone to the Gun Runners to re-supply and re-arm, I picked up a replacement chest piece for the riot gear that had been destroyed when my arm got cut off. This one wasn't a gift like the first set of armor Raphael gave to help me deal with Alice McLafferty and Gloria Van Graff, and it cost a fucking fortune. Buying all the munitions to re-arm all the hidden weapons in my Corvega didn't cost as much as that single piece of armor. The bill was absolutely astronomical, I just want to make that clear.

Ah well. Still worth it. The Gun Runners do good work, after all. The armor would provide better protection than Sue if things got loud... and as I took point, leading us into the narrow entrance to Red Rock Canyon, I was certainly expecting them to get very loud.

How did I know we were even in the right spot? Well, there were a couple of clues. The first was the simple fact that all the rocks in this canyon had a sort of burnt reddish-orange color to them. Would definitely fit for a place called Red Rock. The second were all the totems and war banners lining the canyon entrance. Pictures of yellow skulls with thin black mustaches and wide, bloodshot eyes staring out from underneath red horned helmets, lined with fur. Vaguely human-shaped effigies made out of scraps and topped with a brahmin skull, painted red. All very pseudo-Mongolian, Khan-like. That sort of thing.

But the thing that clinched it most of all, however, was what I saw as we walked further into the slowly widening canyon. Conformation of what ED-E had told me he'd seen only moments before.

Everything was on fire.

"What the..." Cass stared wide eyed at the spectacle before us. And I couldn't really blame her. All around us, at every layer of the multi-tiered canyon, I could see tents... or, more accurately, the blazing remnants of tents completely consumed by flame. There were more totems like the one I'd seen mounted to the entrance, except these were also on fire. Enormous, dirty clouds of oily black smoke were billowing and swirling into the sky from every nook and cranny above us in the canyon. And the smell... was awful.

"What... what happened here?" Veronica asked softly. I shook my head slowly, taking the time to scan the area.

"Don't know," I grunted out. "But whatever it was, it happened recently. Whoever set these fires might still be around, so stay alert." From behind me, I heard Arcade let out a strained, wavering sigh.

"Where is everyone?" he asked. That's when I realized, he was right: all the buildings around may have been on fire, but there were no bodies anywhere. No wounded Khans. No screams. Here and there would be a bit of blood - splotches against the canyon wall and on the ground. They were mostly red, but swiftly turning black in the sun and the heat.

I took a long sniff of the foul air. I grimaced as realization dawned. I had a feeling that I knew exactly why this fire smelt so bad. And if that was true... it likely meant that nobody got out of here alive. A smell that bad could only really come from burning bodies - a lot of burning bodies. Piles of them...

"Damnit. Alright, well... she's probably long gone, but keep looking, just in case." I turned back to Veronica. "You alright?" She grimaced and shrugged.

"Yeah. Bitch just wounded my pride. Gave me a hell of a headache when she slammed my face in the rocks. Why would she be here of all places?"

"I don't know..." I walked over to one of the more noticeable pieces left from the fight: the mangled box that came off the assassin's face when Cass shot at her. I picked it up and turned it around in my hands. It looked like a pair of goggles with three lenses, almost like a night-vision kit or something. I looked up. Even with the oily smoke clouds still spewing up into the air, I could clearly see the sun beating down brightly. Something wasn't adding up. Quite a few somethings weren't adding up, in fact...

"Maybe we should ask someone who might know something..." I said finally, tossing aside the mangled wreck to join the rest of the discards littering the canyon floor.

"Who?" Cass and Veronica spoke in unison. I walked right past them - straight at the man who'd been standing in the same place, stiff as a board, since the fighting started. He was staring blankly at nothing in particular with a slack-jawed open mouth. He was limply holding onto the plasma rifle with one hand, and it was hanging from his fingers at his side.

"Arcade," I grabbed his shoulder, trying to shake him out of his stupor. He seemed to be in shock, so I shook him some more. "C'mon man, snap out of it."

"That's... that's not..." he muttered to himself. I let out a frustrated grunt, spun him around to face me, and gave him a soft backhand... with my cybernetic hand. So, who knows how soft it actually was. That seemed to do the trick. He wasn't giving the thousand-yard stare anymore, and instead was reaching up to clutch his jaw. "OW! What the -"

"Alright Arcade, c'mon," I grabbed him by the edge of his combat armor and held firm. "Start talking. What do you know?" Arcade looked like a molerat caught in the headlights, seconds before a wheel turned it into a pancake.

"I... I don't..." Arcade stammered out. I grabbed him by the top of his head, and stared at him with the most intimidating scowl I could muster. He let out a surprised squeak, and dropped the plasma rifle completely.

"Now is NOT the time to be fuckin' around with me, Arcade," I snarled in his face. I shoved him away and let go of his hair. "No more secrets! What. Do. You. Know?" He stumbled backward, but kept his footing... mostly. He looked up, straightened his glasses, and tried desperately to compose himself.

"That... uh..." He gulped loudly. "That armor pattern she was wearing. I recognize where it came from. I didn't make the connection earlier, because your descriptions didn't have enough detail, but that... that's definitely..." He ran a hand along the top of his head, still clearly distraught.

"What?" Veronica asked, definitely interested now. Arcade looked over at Veronica with a very, very worried expression on his face, and then looked back to me with renewed resolve.

"Enclave." He said, finally. "That was an Enclave pattern armor. Or at least the helmet was. The suit wasn't... I've seen stealth suits, but nothing that... that looked way too advanced, even for them. I don't think..."

"Enclave?" Veronica asked in a hushed whisper, advancing on Arcade slowly. "How on earth would you know that?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Cass chimed in from behind us; all three of us turned to look at her, as she casually reloaded her shotgun. "Oh, c'mon. If I could figure this out, then it should be easy for you chuckleheads. I bet he used to be part've the Enclave, am I right?" Veronica let out a short, sharp laugh.

"No... no, that's not possible," Veronica looked back and forth between Cass and Arcade like they were both crazy. "The last time the Enclave were seen in the wasteland was... like... 40 years ago."

"34, actually," Arcade coughed, pushing his glasses further up his nose. I decided to ask the obvious question when nobody else seemed to.

"Arcade, how old are you?"

"35." He looked at the ground and cleared his throat. "And... no. I... personally was never a member of the Enclave. As far as I know, the last holdouts stopped fighting the NCR and the Brotherhood around the time I took my first baby steps."

"You were brought up by one of those holdouts, weren't you?" I said, everything falling into place. Arcade nodded somberly.

"You hypocritical son of a BITCH!" Veronica yelled, stamping her feet angrily. "Accusing the Brotherhood of being genocidal, when all this time, you had ties to the ENCLAVE, the most vicious, genocidal vestige of the Pre-War government!"

"Hey, V, hold on-" I started to say, inching myself between Arcade and Veronica, hoping to stop a fight before it started.

"I know what you're going to say," Veronica snorted. "And... and... I'm not going to... As much as I'm gritting my teeth right now, I'm not going to try and beat Arcade to a bloody pulp for his dishonest hypocrisy."

"Okay..." I said cautiously. Veronica continued, pointing at me.

"But you need to understand. You need know what the Enclave tried to do 40 years ago." Veronica shouted at me angrily. "FEV Curling-13. That was the codename of their doomsday weapon. A viral agent based on the Forced Evolutionary Virus, and dispersed in aerosol form. It was capable of killing indiscriminately, and the Enclave were planning on deploying it against everyone in the wasteland. EVERYONE. Why? Because everyone who didn't come from the Oil Rig - everyone who wasn't ENCLAVE - was a mutant in their eyes! They tried to kill everyone and damn near succeeded! Every member of the Brotherhood knows that story, either because they fought the Enclave first-hand 40 years ago, or learned it from the people who fought them!"

"YES," Arcade finally shouted out over Veronica's ranting. "My parents were Enclave. I can't change that. I can't change who gave birth to me or where I came from. And yes, the Enclave did terrible things! Terrible, horrible things... but an organization is more than just the leaders responsible. There were good people in the ranks. Honest, decent patriots, who felt that the Enclave... they were just trying to do what they felt was right."

"Oh, yeah?" Veronica sneered. She didn't sound convinced.

"Yes. And you know? I didn't think there were any good people in the Brotherhood for a very long time. I thought they were just as bad as the Enclave. And then I met you, Veronica. You managed to disabuse me of several of my preconceptions. And you showed me that, like the Enclave, there are still good people in bad organizations."

The air between us was silent for a very long while after Arcade said that. The only thing any of us heard were the creaking embers of the fires all around us finally starting to flicker away.

"Why didn't you tell us any of this before now?" I asked. Arcade actually laughed.

"Yes, well, believe it not, telling people about my ties to a genocidal para-military organization, linked to the government responsible for ending the world? Not really all that high on my list of priorities." Arcade looked around. "But that's not... my association with the Enclave isn't what's important right now."

"It isn't?" Cass asked.

"If that assassin was really and truly a member of the Enclave..." Arcade shook his head, running a hand through his hair. "Well. That answers one question..."

"...and raises dozens more." I finished for him. Arcade nodded.

"It doesn't seem possible..." Arcade looked very worried. "But if she's truly working for the cause of the Enclave - even if she's just a rogue element, still fighting the same war from 40 years ago - then that's going to cause some serious problems for everyone in the Mojave." Veronica laughed, picking up her discarded super sledge.

"Tell me something I don't know," she laughed again, setting the giant mallet on her shoulder.

I paused as a perverse idea popped into my head, and I briefly wondered if it was entirely appropriate. Probably not. But I decided to say it anyway.

"I had sex with a hologram in the Big Empty," I said, pulling a straight face. Everyone stared at me like I'd gone insane. I couldn't blame them, so I shrugged it off. "Hey, you said to tell you something you didn't know."

"That... is true. I... didn't... I didn't know that." Several separate and rather distinct emotions - all variations on shock, amazement, disgust, and thinly-veiled interest, to name a few - all tried to manifest themselves on her face simultaneously. All it ended up doing was making her look like she was having a stroke. "Probably could've gone the rest of my life without knowing that particular factoid." She finally managed to squeak out after shaking a few facial muscles free.

"The point is," Arcade rallied himself quickest of anyone. "At least... I hope the point is that we're not going to figure this out standing around like idiots in a dead canyon where everything is on fire."

"Agreed," I said, reaching down to pick up Arcade's discarded plasma rifle. I tossed it to him, and he caught it in midair. "Let's grab all the weapons and whatever else might be useful..." I found the mangled goggles, and picked them up again. "...and head back to the 38. We can regroup there, and maybe... just maybe we can try and figure out what the fuck is going on."

The four of us worked in silence for a few minutes until we were sure we'd grabbed everything. I was the last to leave, unable to keep myself from staring at the still burning wreckage of the tents all around the canyon. As much as I wanted to feel sorry for the Great Khans, and as disappointed as I was at not getting the chance to talk to them, and finding out their side of the story... I couldn't help but shake a feeling of immense dread and unease.

Dozens of questions were swirling around the inside of my head, bothering me. But the one that stood out in my mind and was bugging me most of all? I'd seen the weapons she'd used in the past. Energy weapons that made my laser rifles look like squirt guns. Why hadn't she pulled out any of those and just turned the four of us to ash?

Something had gone seriously, badly wrong with the world. I was more confused than relieved about why I wasn't dead.