A Boone Companion

By Polaris-Polus

Chapter 1

The noon-time sun made the two enormous statues look like they were crafted of silver rather than the corroded conglomeration of scrap metal sheets they were actually constructed from. They were gigantic and would have been impressive in and of themselves, but the fact that they had been erected atop a towering mountain pass so that they were visible for miles made them even more amazing.

The statues depicted a Desert Ranger from Nevada and an NCR Ranger from the New California Republic shaking hands. They were meant to symbolize the union of those two renown fighting forces into a single powerful army, underlining to everyone who saw them, especially Caesar's Legion, that the NCR was not to be fucked with.

Craig Boone didn't care about the history of the statues, their construction, or the political statement they were intended to make. All he cared about was what they meant to him at that very moment- a hot meal served on real dishes, a bed with a (mostly) clean mattress, and a bar where a man could buy enough hard alcohol to ease his hurts, physical and mental. Best of all was the knowledge that with the Mojave Outpost's entire garrison of NCR troops around them he could actually allow himself the luxury of falling all the way asleep instead of keeping one eye half open and one ear cocked.

He lowered his gaze from the towering statues to look at the Courier walking a few yards ahead of him. He'd been traveling with the man for over four weeks now. The Courier had led them on a meandering zigzag back and forth across the scrubby desert. There seemed no rhyme or reason to the man's course, but somehow it always managed to bring them to just the right place at just the right time for something interesting to be happening. More than once Boone had found himself wondering if the man was guided by some mystical, all-knowing force. It seemed like it sometimes, and there was something different about him, a feeling that the Courier was somehow special; other-worldly.

Despite long days and nights of wandering, numerous pitched battles, and a shitload of encounters with hostile mutant wildlife, Boone had never asked the Courier's name and the Courier had never offered it. He supposed it didn't matter though. It was just the two of them, so a call of, 'hey' or 'yo' served well enough.

Their only other companion was the Courier's weird little flying robot, ED-E, so named because of the numbers on a license plate used to repair a section of damage on its body casing. Normally, Boone didn't much care for 'droids, but Eddy had proven remarkably useful. Not only did it have strong attack protocols and a wicked blaster gun to bring to the fight, but it had amazingly powerful sensors which allowed them to see trouble and prey long before trouble could reach them or prey could run from them.

Boone and the Courier toiled their way up the steep road leading to the pass where the statues marked the entry to the Mojave Outpost compound. The old highway had decayed into crumbling chunks of weathered asphalt and it was heavily choked with the rotting carcasses of numerous cars, trucks, and heavy freight transports. The dead vehicles sat where they'd stopped on that long ago day when atomic fire destroyed the old world in a flash of radioactive Armageddon.

Most of the wrecks had been picked clean by scavengers, but some still had scraps of junk worth taking for the few caps they'd bring in trade. To the south was a wall of rocky escarpments and to the north was a huge expanse of sloped terrain heavily populated by rad-scorpions; from small, quick three-foot scramblers to hulking monstrosities nine feet or more in length, all of them utterly deadly regardless of size.

For the most part the scorps stayed away from the road, but occasionally one would come scuttling off the sand to try to take easy two-legged prey, so when ED-E's sensors registered a red blip onto the Courier's Pip-Boy, both Boone and the Courier stopped and shouldered their rifles. The two men peered through their scopes to assess the level of threat the blip warranted. It was a whumpin' big scorpion, easily in the eight to nine foot range, but it was oblivious to them, slowly wandering across the sand thinking happy rad-scorpion thoughts about whatever happy rad-scorpions thought about.

The Courier's rifle was a highly modified 5.56 varmint rifle he half jokingly called Ratslayer. The caliber was a bit light for heavily armored or large targets, but it was a nimble weapon, with the benefit of an excellent silencer and an extended magazine. The powerful nightvision scope it was equipped with let the Courier put his rounds on target from a distance with great accuracy, daylight or dark.

Boone's weapon was a .308 hunting rifle. It had been with him through a lot of hairy shit and he'd long ago lost track of the number of kills he'd made with it. The gun wasn't much to look at cosmetically; the stock was cracked and repaired with duct tape, the exterior of the barrel was rusty, and no matter how many times he stuck the butt-plate back on, it kept coming loose. But despite outward appearances, it was in perfect condition where it counted- the trigger assembly and receiver, the inside of the barrel, and the scope.

He used to be a professional sniper, a member of the NCR's famous 1st Recon Sniper Battalion, but that was over now. He'd left and tried to make a life outside of the military. He and his former best friend, Manny Vargas, worked as contracted snipers protecting the town of Novac. That too was over; over in a wash of betrayal culminating in the loss of his pregnant wife, Carla. She'd been the only good thing to ever happen to him. With her gone, nothing seemed worthwhile.

Then the Courier had come along and changed everything. The man helped him get revenge on the person who had betrayed him and Carla, and afterwards had asked him to accompany him in his wanderings. Now Boone didn't know what he was. Certainly not a mercenary. Mercs got paid for their work and the Courier had never offered him so much as a single cap as an inducement to follow him around the Mojave wastes. Boone followed him because his gut told him it was the right thing to do.

"You want to take it?" the Courier asked, still staring through his scope at the giant rad-scorpion.
"Pretty far," Boone replied, likewise following the nasty monster's movements. "Risky going out there to take the poison gland."
"So we leave the gland."
"Just be using up bullets for a pointless kill."
"We can buy more shells at the Outpost and one less mutant arachnid crawling the Wastes is always a good thing."
"Fine by me," Boone agreed.

He knew what the man was thinking. The Courier might not have been a professionally trained sniper, but he had a sniper's mindset and that mindset said that life was a bore unless you had something in your scope to shoot at.

"I'll take out the stinger," the man said, "and when it rears up, you take the kill shot."
"Fine by me," Boone repeated.

The Courier exhaled deeply, then took a breath and held it. He squeezed the trigger and his silenced 5.56 made its soft little pffiiitt. The rad-scorp's tail exploded in a spray of gooey venom and it jerked reflexively, raising its huge form off the hot sand and exposing its softer underside. Boone took his shot and the heavy .308 slug smashed easily through the creature's body, killing it instantly.

They lowered their weapons and the Courier grinned at him.

"Blam-blam!" he said with a wink of his silver-gray eye as he gave the sniper a friendly pat on the back. Then he slung Ratslayer over his shoulder and resumed trekking up the hill toward the statues and the Outpost, singing a little tune as he walked.

"Blue moon...you saw me standing alone...without a dream in my heart...without a love of my own..."

Boone followed, wondering for the thousandth time what it was about that guy that made him stand out from all the other nut-jobs wandering the wild wastelands.

The Courier was easy-going, with a flashing smile and a quick laugh. He was given to witty remarks, wise cracks, and good-natured teasing, completely ignoring the fact that Boone had absolutely no sense of humor. He was damn good company on the trail; skilled, personable, and even-tempered. Yet despite his pleasant demeanor, the Courier could be astonishingly coldblooded. The man had no mercy for fiends, raiders, escaped convicts, or Legionaries.

In truth, Boone agreed with that, especially in the case of the Legion, but it was still disconcerting to watch the Courier walk right up to unsuspecting Powder Gangers, draw his .357 revolver, Lucky, and calmly blow their heads apart without so much as a word of warning. One of the convicts had even called him the "Grim-Fuckin'-Reaper".

Maybe he was an angel of death, but that didn't seem precisely right to Boone. It was true the Courier was perfectly at ease with killing and very good at it, but he'd also seen the man engage in acts of genuine kindness and almost inexplicable generosity, like helping those crazy ghouls up at the Repconn Test Site launch their spaceships, or assisting the NCR in getting HELIOS One up and running, or saving two separate groups of hostages from the Legion, all of which were done at great personal risk and with no expectation of reward.

Before they'd left Novac, Boone had heard from Manny, Cliff Briscoe, and other townies that the Courier was on the trail of a New Vegas man who'd shot him in the head and left him for dead in a shallow grave back in Goodsprings. When he'd asked the Courier about it, the man had simply nodded and said that he was going after a bastard in a checkered coat. He intended to make him pay for the mistake of putting a bullet in his skull without having the decency to make sure he was all the way dead before shoveling dirt over him. Strangely, the Courier didn't seem to be much in a hurry to track the asshole down though. When questioned, he'd simply shrugged his strong shoulders and said,

"He and I will cross ways again. It'll happen when it happens."

Boone couldn't understand that. If someone had tried to kill him and left him for dead in some fucking hole, he wouldn't rest until that someone had a gory splatter where his head used to be, but the Courier seemed to believe that fate would see him to his revenge in its own sweet time.

It was early evening by the time they reached the top of the pass and walked under the joined hands of the giant statues. The setting sun had turned the monuments from silver to gold and it was beautiful. They approached the Mojave Outpost. Boone had been through there several times while in the 1st Recon, so he was familiar with the layout of the compound. He had assumed that from the way he'd talked, the Courier had been there before too, but he found himself second guessing that assumption when the man made for the door to the command center rather than the barracks where the bar, trading post, and beds were. There was no reason for two civilians to go to the command center.

They went around the defensive sandbags protecting the door and entered. An NCR officer, a major, was on duty at the main desk. He looked up and a surprised expression came on to his soft-featured face. The Courier raised a hand in greeting and the Major smiled, making a little almost nervous wave in return. It was clear the Major and the Courier knew each other. This made Boone second guess his second guess.

The Courier turned and looked at him and ED-E.
"You two hang out over there while I go talk to Major Knight. Boone, why don't you give me your rifle."
"Why?" he demanded, putting his hand protectively on it.
"Because the Major will do maintenance on it if I ask him to."
"First off," Boone growled, "no one touches my gun but me, and second, in case you didn't notice, this is an NCR military station. They only fix NCR military equipment, not civvie stuff."
"I guess we'll see about that," the Courier said with a smug smile.

Leaving the sniper and the robot to wait over in the corner, the Courier approached the main desk. He extended his hand to the Major and the officer took it, but they didn't share a quick, business like shake. Rather, it was a long, steady clasp. The Courier said something to Knight and the NCR man blushed before looking worriedly to where Boone stood and saying something back to the Courier.

Boone wished he was closer so he could hear what they were talking about, but the distance, his hearing loss from repeated exposure to gunfire, and the whirring of Eddy's repulsor motor turned their voices into mushy sounds. The Courier made a dismissive gesture at the scowling sniper and began putting his weapons on the counter. He laid out Ratslayer, his .357 revolver, Lucky, and his Legion trophy machete, Liberator. Despite what the Courier had said, Boone was genuinely surprised when Major Knight began performing maintenance on the weapons.

As the officer worked, the Courier leaned casually on the counter, chatting with him. His expression was open and his smile was even brighter than usual. Knight kept glancing up at him, almost shyly, returning his smiles hesitantly. Boone supposed the guy was nervous that his CO might walk in and find him tuning up some civvie's gear. He wondered what kind of favor the Courier had done for the Major to make him risk getting his ass in a sling over something like that.

Eventually, the officer finished the maintenance and handed the three weapons back. The Courier gave him a fat fistfull of caps in payment. Knight quickly stashed the caps under the counter.

Ah-ha! That was why Knight was so nervous! He had a little black-market repair business going and he didn't want anyone to find out!

As the Major straightened from hiding the metal money, the Courier leaned across the counter and motioned him in conspiratorially close. Knight complied and the two exchanged some hushed and hurried talk before the Courier stepped back and gave him a nod and a wave. The man walked back to where Boone and the robot waited.

"Well boys, what do you say we head over to the barracks, get some hot chow, have a couple shots of whiskey, and rest our tired asses on some real beds for a change?"
Boone gave him a scowling nod.
"Fine by me."

As they walked out into the cool night air, the Courier looked over at him and saw that his companion's tanned face was scrunched up even more than usual.
"Why are you so grumpy? I thought that the chance to have a little rest would put you in a good mood for a change. You do know what a good mood is, right?"
"I don't like seeing corruption in the NCR."
"Corruption?"
"Yeah, that black-market repair racket the Major has going."

The Courier gave him a disapproving look.
"That isn't corruption or Black-market, Boone. I've done the NCR a lot of good turns, more than you're aware of, and Knight knows that. He's repaying some of those good turns. The money I gave him is to grease the wheels under his less cooperative supply clerks, not for his personal gain."
"Whatever you say," the sniper grunted.
"I say that given everything I've done for them, I don't feel bad about using some of the NCR's gun oil, a few cleaning patches, and a blade honer or two. Now let's go have some fun, eh?"

They entered the barracks and approached the bar. The gal who ran the place greeted the Courier with a wry smile.
"Back around? Just my luck! What'll it be this time?"

The Courier engaged her in some banter as Boone struggled to remember what her name was. Macy?...Gracie?...No! Lacey! Yeah, that was it, Lacey!

After some dickering, the Courier bartered some tin cans, a badly beat-up 9mm pistol, and some fire gecko hides into two meals of squirrel stew with InstaMash and YumYum Deviled Eggs as sides. Dandy Boy Apples served for dessert. This was washed down with Nuclear Moose beer followed by several shots of hard booze which tasted more like flamer fuel than whiskey.

As they ate, the Courier made small talk with a thoroughly drunk female caravanner at the end of the bar. She was rude and foul-mouthed, but the man ignored this. It appeared that they were casually acquainted. Boone wondered if he was hoping to convince her to go for a quick fuck around the back side of the barracks. If so, the man was pissing in the wind with that one. She wasn't the type to hand out her vault passcode for some wasteland wanderer, no matter how handsome and charming he was.

Finally, the Courier decided to call it a night. They left the bar and went into the dormitory where they selected a bunk bed against the far wall.
"You mind if I take the bottom rack?" the Courier asked.
"Fine by me," the sniper replied, taking off his armor and stowing it in the footlocker at the end of the bed. He climbed into the upper bunk, taking his .308 and his machete with him.

The Courier removed his armor too, and like Boone, settled down with his weapons close at hand. ED-E stationed itself at the side of the bunk to stand alert guard over its master through the night.

Boone was exhausted and it didn't take him long to fall into a deep sleep despite the snores and movements of the travelers and troopers around him. Unfortunately, his repose didn't last long. The problem with falling into deep sleep was that was where nightmares found you, and Boone had plenty in his past for bad dreams to feed upon.

This time around he was back at Bittersprings, shooting helpless old men, women, and children. He watched their heads pop like over-ripe mutfruit each time he pulled the trigger. He could hear himself laughing and he was appalled. It was wrong. It was horrifying. It was a slaughter, but in his dream he couldn't stop laughing, at least until he pulled the sniper rifle away from his eye and realized all of the murdered corpses were standing before him with their mutilated heads gushing blood and they were reaching for him...

His eyes snapped open and he had to stifle the cry that wanted to crawl out of his constricted throat. Using sniper breathing techniques to calm his racing heart, he finally was able to let the tension out of his muscles. He closed his green eyes again and tried to will himself to go back to sleep, but just when it seemed like he might actually be able to do that, Boone heard the Courier get out of the lower bunk. He remained still, feigning sleep, believing the man was just going to offload some recycled beer in the shitter's urinal, but then he heard the Courier open the footlocker.

The sniper peeked between his lashes and saw the Courier taking out his armor. The man began putting it on. That didn't make any sense. You didn't need to strap-up to go take a piss, at least not there at the Outpost.

For a second Boone considered sitting up and asking what was going on, but something stopped him. He remained motionless, pretending to be asleep while listening to the Courier suit up. Finally the man whispered to ED-E,
"You stay with Boone. I'll be back in a while."
The 'droid acknowledged this with an affirmative bleeble and the man hushed it.
"Shhhh! Don't wake him up. I'll be back before morning."

Boone carefully peeked through slitted eyelids and watched the Courier walk out of the dorm. As soon as the man had gone out, he sat up and jumped off the bunk.
"Where is he going?" he asked the robot.
Eddy made a sound that was the auditory equivalent of a shrug.

Scowling hard and wondering what the hell the man was up to sneaking out like that, Boone began putting his own armor on. As soon as he was geared up, he too left the dorm, with ED-E following him. Entering the bar, he looked around, hoping to see the Courier sitting at one of the tables. It was well after midnight and almost no one was there, just Lacey and the drunk caravanner gal. The Courier had left the barracks.

Feeling his concern ratchet up a notch, Boone went out the main doors. Again he hoped to see the man, this time sitting at one of the picnic tables in the compound courtyard, but they were vacant. He looked to the robot which hovered next to him.

"Can you find him?"

It gave a positive bleep and began scooting toward the front gate. Boone followed. For a moment the little 'droid moved toward the chain-link pens where the traveling caravanners kept their loaded pack brahmin and the sniper thought the man might be wanting to talk to some of them, not that it made any sense for him to wake them in the middle of the night for trading or intel on what they'd seen on the trails.

Unfortunately, ED-E kept moving past the pens, leading him to the north side of the Outpost's area, where the steep walls of the mountain rose up. The 'droid skirted along this and around the edge, into the rocky terraces and sandy slopes where the rad-scorpions roamed. Boone's gut clenched up. Why in the fucking hell was the Courier going out there in the middle of the night, all alone!? Worse yet, all he had was that damned little pea-shooter rifle and a fucking 6-shot revolver! Was he trying to get himself killed!?

Boone had his .308 cocked and ready, dreading a foray deep into the dangerous terrain, but determined to find the Courier. Rather than continue further into the scorp's territory, however, the Courier's path turned east and began to parallel the ruined highway they'd come up on their way to the Outpost. Again Boone was baffled. Why would the man choose to risk encountering a rad-scorpion when he could reduce the danger by moving just a few dozen yards over and walking amid the wrecked cars on the highway?

Perhaps a half mile along, ED-E changed their course again and angled toward the highway. Boone hated not being able to figure something out and he stopped walking, forcing his brain to try to work it through. ED-E sensed that he'd come to a halt and returned to him, awaiting his next move or order.

Boone let his sharp eyes flick west, up to the glow of the Mojave Outpost's lights. Suddenly he understood why the Courier had taken that route. The garrison had a sniper post on the roof of the barracks, overlooking the approach to the Outpost. By going to the far north side of the pass, then down into the darkness, the Courier had effectively remained out of the sniper's line of sight. Only when completely clear, had he returned to the highway where the road was in a blind spot.

But why leave the Outpost at all? And without saying a thing to him about it or taking his robot?

"What direction is he going now?" he asked the 'droid.

ED-E swiveled around and pointed itself almost due south. Boone raised his rifle and looked through the scope. It didn't have the powerful nightvision of the Courier's 5.56's scope, but the moon was out and just over half full, so there was enough light for him to see the line of wrecked cars and trucks.

His trained eye quickly spotted motion and a puddle of glowing light. He focused in on it. It was the Courier, illuminating his way with the light on his Pip-Boy. The man was moving toward the hulk of a wrecked transporter. Then the sniper saw more movement. For a brief moment he was afraid it would be a rad-scorp crawling amid the dead vehicles, but it was a person.

Boone moved forward a few yards and reacquired the image in his scope. The person was Major Knight. He was standing by the rear of the abandoned freight hauler. The Courier approached him. He was carrying Ratslayer at the ready, but he lowered the weapon and set it down on the cargo hauler's deck. Knight was also armed, carrying a service rifle, but he too put his weapon down, laying it next to the Courier's varmint rifle.

The two men stood face to face, then the Courier reached out with his left hand, put it around behind Knight's head and pulled the Major forward into a deep kiss.

Boone's stomach lurched and he jerked the scope away from his eye.

He stood there for a long moment, too stunned to do anything except try to convince himself that he hadn't seen what he'd seen. It had to be another bad dream. This couldn't actually be happening.

Slowly, he raised the scope again.

Knight was now on his knees in front of the Courier. He'd gotten the man's armored groin guard off and was sucking the Courier's penis.

Boone turned away, sick to the very bottom of his belly.

The sniper returned to the Outpost with ED-E following him like a strange metal balloon. He went back to the dorm, took off his armor, and laid down on the top bunk. He'd managed to keep his brain away from what he'd witnessed until that moment, locking his mind down tight, but in the quiet stillness of the bed, he couldn't stop himself from thinking about what the Courier was and what he was doing with that bastard Knight. He had the unwanted vision of Knight on his hands and knees in the back of the cargo truck with the Courier fucking him vigorously from behind before that awful thought was replaced by the even worse idea of the Courier lying on his back with his legs spread, inviting the Major to fuck him like a woman.

He wanted to puke.

Boone was still awake, battling those nauseating thoughts when the Courier returned. He forced himself to remain still, pretending to be asleep as he listened to the man remove his armor and crawl back into the lower berth. Soon the man's soft snores drifted up to the upper bunk, but the sniper didn't find sleep again.