Welcome to the New Europe
New Orleans. Reeked something fierce. His business took him everywhere. Town to town. State to state. Country to country. Continent to continent. Shithole bar to shithole bar.
Desmond set down another small handful of caps. The bartender swiped them away, sliding another bottle towards him. Desmond half-nodded as he helped himself. Snag at Point Lookout aside, he was on schedule. At the very least, he had the east coast cleared. Plan was at the end of the week, he'd stay south, swinging through Texas and Mexico before hitting up the west. Finding House wouldn't be a problem. Finishing the job would require assistance. The competent kind.
He checked his watch. Late. Or worse. Neither was endearing. The city had a reputation of being dangerous. Then the bombs dropped and the levies broke. The swamp took its revenge on the city, nearly sinking over half of it. Beneath the bar on the French Quarter was nearly five feet of water over the street. Stank. Full of gators. Little buggers used to be smaller.
Door swung open. Desmond didn't turn as he heard the footsteps approach. His visitor took the seat next to him. The ghoul took a drag before knocking the remaining ash into an empty cup near him.
"…Took you long enough."
The visitor pulled out a folder. Desmond took it, opened it, and examined the contents. He looked it over before placing it back, nodding slightly. "Not bad. Nice to see there's some room for professionalism in this cesspit," he stated as he turned to see her.
Nothing about her screamed wastelander. Coke-bottle sunglasses. Waistcoat vest over dress shirt. Pistol holsters on full display. Clean hygiene. You wouldn't think a spy who looked so obvious would be so good at the job. But Vana was as good as they came.
"My uncle instilled the value of being indispensible."
"Clever man. Pity about what happened to him," Desmond stated as he put aside the folder. "I'm impressed. You tracked me here and did as I asked. So, I guess you have me at your mercy. It's time for everyone's favorite question. What do you want?"
Vana leaned forward. "Where is Brendan Conroy?"
"I don't know," Desmond replied, honestly. "I don't keep tabs on just everyone I work with over a week. Smart ass can rot for all I care."
Vana grimaced. "Well, easy question didn't last long." She pulled out a notebook. "Well then, time for my alternative."
Desmond attempted to cock his eyebrow. "Alternative?"
"You are what they used to call a "limey?" You aren't from here. Most people only ever know the folks they know from their settlement and few from outside. I've only ever met one other person who came from another continent. Knowledge is power. I can name a few entities that may take great interest in something that only I may be able to provide them. Tell me what happened to Europe?"
Desmond let out a sharp laugh. "You serious, doll?"
Vana betrayed a smirk. "I have a little more ambition then waiting hand over foot for some geriatric. I have dreams and goals as well. And knowing what's out there will help me a great deal."
Desmond almost laughed. "And how will you know I'm being honest?"
"If I think you're wasting my time, I'll leave and you can find someone else to help with your House project."
Desmond mulled it over. "…Where do you want to start?"
"From where my own knowledge stopped. I know the European Commonwealth fell. I want to know why and what happened after…"
Well, in order to get the last days of the European Commonwealth, you need to understand what the death knell was. For the purposes of our little discussion, we'll call it what the papers did in London. The Tenth Crusade, or the last one if you feel like being romantic. While Washington and Beijing whipped their cocks out and compared sizes, Europe was running out of gas. The wells in Africa and South America had tapped out for about a decade, and Russia didn't feel like sharing, leaving us with two options; beg the Yanks for a favor, or ransack the Middle East. We chose the latter option.
I got my teeth cut in the art of espionage during that fiasco of a crisis. Tel Aviv, Tehran, Baghdad, Riyadh, Cairo, and a bunch of other cities and places that clearly mean nothing to you. Waste of fucking time, it was. The European Commonwealth was running out of answers to the energy crisis, so to save their political skins they orchestrated the whole war to placate the media and give the voters something entertaining. But, good little public servant I was, my group fostered uprisings, leaked secrets, and overall botched any chance the Middle East had of forming any united alliance while Europe stitched together the biggest army it had ever seen.
The Crusaders marched once more, only this time instead of G-O-D; we were looking for O-I-L, something that people had considered to be so much more important. Still, the iconography was too good to pass up. We split the army into three groups and called them, get this, Templar, Hospitaller, and Teutonic. Between the three of them, we overran nearly every oil field from Egypt to Iran. They resisted, as history told us they would and we pretended they wouldn't this time, even after they broke out the nukes and leveled Tel Aviv. I'd call it a shit show, but I wouldn't want to imply that our leaders, military and civilian alike, would be qualified enough to run something that well. As we tore the throats from one another, and as I did my duty to Her Majesty, we realized too late that the oil was being destroyed faster then we could pump it out. Turns out some radicals figured that the war over the oil would end sooner if they just burned the damn stuff before anyone could get to it. Fucked up part was, they were right. War didn't so much as end as it just stopped, the final crusade ending up like the rest while the Middle East went back to the way it had been in the early twentieth century, only now with better guns.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand, the army came back just in time to see the Commonwealth fall apart. With the energy crisis spiraling out of control, there wasn't much to stop the nationalists from taking over pretty much every single nation. Without any way to avoid the inevitable, the nations took to doing what they did best and blamed one another for the lack of gas, which of course led to borders being locked every other week and what meager trade we had grinding to a halt. Britain at least had it easy, what with being surrounded by water. Every country on the continent started jealously guarding what little they had left, and those with the nukes were more then happy to threaten those who didn't.
After that, things just started to spiral apart. Some of the more remote regions fell to anarchy with the rule of law stretched thin as it was. The Mafia had another hay day running contraband across the continent. Some of the larger businesses and banks started hiring out veterans from the last war to "secure their interests." Germany and France eventually started shooting at each other as per fucking usual. The world was falling apart so fast we, by whom I mean those who didn't read the damned briefings I sent out, didn't realize the big threat until it was too late.
While you've probably been bored to death hearing about the war between your country and China, I feel it should be fair to remind you that they probably weren't the only group of …"commies"
Desmond could barely suppress an eye roll
That threatened our very existence. Despite taking a back seat to China at the turn of the century, the Soviet Union merely bided its time until it felt like there was a weak enough opening to finish what it had been trying to accomplish for the last hundred or so years. We should have realized something was wrong when the Kremlin sat out the Final Crusade. Surprising no one who did not have a sack of waste in their skulls, the Soviets had spent the last few decades quietly building up their forces, keeping their shit secret as they played around with some… unconventional approaches to conventional warfare. Shit that would turn out to be some of the main reasons I don't look back across the pond with wistful eyes.
Still, there was no avoiding the fact that nuclear war was on the horizon. Project Safehouse wasn't the only post-apocalyptic plan the world prepared. As I'm sure the Enclave and House could attest, some groups were better prepared for the end then others. Britain focused on air defense, hoping to blow every missile out of the sky that didn't aim to land on Paris. Others, like in the Scandinavian countries, looked to hide out in the countryside. And some cheeky fuckers, like the Swiss, had been preparing for the atomic age since Hiroshima, standardizing their bunker networks in ways that would put Vault-Tec to shame. (Not that difficult an endeavor, I realize.)
In the decade leading up to the light show, I'd been… running something of a nostalgia tour, let us say. Trying to convince certain groups that had once been members of the largest empire in the world to reunite after MAD took care of the two biggest kids on the block. Of course, that didn't happen. We can thank the Kremlin for that. On the day that the nukes launched, the Soviet Union couldn't hold itself back any longer, launching a massive assault through the Balkans, catching the Polish and Hungarians off guard. Germany, France, Italy and ours truly responded predictably, stalling the advance with our nukes even though we knew the reprisal. So as with China and the United States, so too with Europe and the Soviet Union.
Desmond finished his drink as Vana eyed him up. Desmond would let her down gently. She wasn't his type. Besides, he'd had more then enough fun before deliberately rotting himself to live forever.
"So Europe is dead?" Vana questioned.
"About as dead as North America," Desmond responded sarcastically. Outside, the thrashing of a gator was nearly drowned out by sounds of automatic fire. A blood-curdling scream betrayed that the reptile had survived the attack and got his meal.
"…So," Vana began again, "History lesson aside, what is there now?"
Gaunt almost grinned. "Controlled chaos. An ecosystem of death and despotism. A hostile environment to hero and monster alike."
Vana leaned forward. "…I'm waiting…"
The little bird was threatening to make him like her. She knew this information could be dangerous, that if the wrong people knew she had obtained this information, she'd be next on the menu after him. If she wanted in on this suicide pact, who was he to argue?
"So, whom do you want me to fill you in about?" Desmond asked.
"The main players. Asking for information on everyone would be equivalent to putting the Republic of Dave on the same order of importance as the Brotherhood of Steel. Who are the guys worth knowing about?"
Author's Note: This here is a little side project I've been mulling over for the last two some years. I've kind of been inspired over something I'd seen in a map by someone named QuantumBranching, specifically their imagining of the world right before the Great War. If you were wondering, this fic does occur simultaneously with New Vegas: Lucky Dragons. Mostly it's filled with ideas that Lucky Dragons will probably never get to. Then again, this will largely be a side project, and will go as far as people seem interested in it. I'm hoping this fic will end up inspiring others to branch out from the parameters set by the games. After all, there is more to the world then California and parts of the east coast.