Chapter One
The harsh desert sun shone down with total impunity, boiling away any clouds foolish enough to form and roasting any people foolish enough to step foot outside during the day, bleaching the ground a sterile white that made looking anywhere a painful experience.
John squinted for the umpteenth time that day as he used the back of his hand to wipe away no small amount of sweat from his forehead, squaring his cap back into place as he took a knee beside some disturbed dirt. Behind him, Gaz dropped to his knee as well but cast his eyes outwards, hand wrapped around the grip of his hunting rifle, wary of a potential ambush as John directed his attention to the disturbed dirt.
It was nothing more than a half filled boot print, dust and sand stirred up by wind performing the painstaking task of erasing the imperfection in the desert, but John nevertheless felt a trill of excitement run up his spine. The impression matched that of a T-45's boot, the exact same model of power armour their quarry wore, and the fact the print was only half filled meant they were gaining. They still had a few days of hard travelling to go before they might catch a glimpse of the power armour wearing individual, but it was a whole lot better than being on a trail that was weeks, months, old.
John stood and Gaz did the same, the younger of the duo watching the elder with eyes eager to learn all they could about not only surviving out in wastes but also tracking the most elusive prey to inhabit it: humans.
They were both bounty hunters, John a five year veteran and Gaz a reconditioned tribal looking to give the job a shot, and their target was mostly unknown, the few concrete facts pertaining to the armour he wore and the locations he visited. Everything else was pure speculation, like where they had come from and why they were assaulting military facilities.
'Getting close,' John said.
'You've been saying that for a week,' Gaz said. 'Since we started this job, actually. How close is close?'
'A few days, maybe,' John said. 'So quit bitching. That twenty-grand is as good as ours.'
'You mean ten-grand,' Gaz mumbled. 'Half that money is mine.'
'Maybe,' John said. 'Anything could happen in the next few days. I could die, you could die, or someone else could swoop in and kill our guy before us.'
'Hey, I'm the pessimist here. Leave all the negative thoughts to me.'
'Okay.'
Four weeks ago
The sun, while less harsh than it would be in a month, was still blinding enough to turn the sand and rocks and dust of New California white and abuse the travellers walking along the old roads and new trails that littered the land, making them sweat and wish for cooler climes or a bottle of Nuka-Cola. One such traveller was John, grimacing at the light and tugging at the collar of his armoured vest as he remained crouched behind an outcropping of rocks, a well used and well maintained service rifle resting in a small groove he had made.
His mind wasn't occupied with thoughts of catching the power armoured bounty or of spending the twenty-thousand dollar reward that came upon providing proof of death, or capture, but on an approaching gang of four men, two humans and two ghouls, known to the New California Republic as the Gecko Gang and known to any bounty hunters who were interested as a payday of two-thousand dollars.
Their list of crimes mainly consisted of robbing stores and shooting the occasional patron who tried to make a stand, showing they could be ruthless when the need arose, and spread from one end of the region to the other. They were a problem, certainly, and beyond the capabilities of the various police units given how often they moved around, but they were still too small time to be of any interest to the Rangers.
It was the grey area between the two that most bounty hunters operated, tracking down and catching or killing the various ne'er-do-wells roaming New California to make it a better place to live for those who worked hard and did right by their neighbours. Sometimes they worked alongside the police to catch their foes, and rarer still with the Rangers on the more dangerous bounties.
John had worked his fair share of bounties with both sides, more so the Rangers than the police given he was a reservist within the NCR Army and cooperation with the elite troops of New California was easier to come by as a result of that, but mostly he worked alone. He knew being part of a team could make some things easier but at the same time, personal experience taught him he couldn't always rely on those behind him when push came to shove.
So he maintained his lonely vigil in the rocks, one eye on the approaching gang and the other on the terrain for any surprises that might crop up.
He saw none so he relaxed a little, shouldering his rifle and training it onto the predetermined kill zone he had scoped out a scant one hundred metres from his little eyrie. It was within the range of his rifle and well within John's ability to shoot four moving targets, it had the sun at his back to blind the Gecko Gang and keep them disorientated that little bit extra, and it had natural cover and concealment. All they would see, provided they managed to pinpoint his location, was a lee between two rocks and a dark shape where they joined.
The gang was about a mile away from the kill zone and drawing steadily closer, walking shoulder to shoulder at a leisurely pace. What few weapons they carried, revolvers chambered in .357 magnum and a single cowboy repeater, were holstered and the armour they wore was ramshackle, pieced together from random sources with no uniformity to it, and would provide no protection at all. In a way, it reminded John of his own protective gear, cobbled together from various sources to create a unique ensemble, but where the four men had thrown everything together from what they could scavenge, John had done so with great care and deliberation.
At its core, his outfit was that of a wasteland doctor's with the bandolier and chest plate from an NCR trooper's uniform providing additional protection and storage, as did the belt from a set of reinforced leather armour, while the jacket from a roving trader provided protection from the elements and helped hide the armour from casual observations. On his head sat a rattan cowboy hat to try and keep the sun at bay, augmented by some dark aviator sunglasses, and round his neck were a pair of goggles and a shemagh for any dust storms that might arise in the wastes.
It could get a little, or a lot, hot when wearing it all together and John often left his jacket unzipped to help keep him cool but then, in the Californian wasteland, anybody wearing anything more than a T-shirt and thin trousers was going to get warm. At least this way, he could carry everything he needed in easy to reach pockets and reduce his reliance on a rucksack, relegating it to just carrying spare supplies and his food and drink, and when people looked his way they mistook him for some sort of explorer or trader, not a bounty hunter, which was fine by John.
He wanted people to underestimate him, or to see him as anything but a threat, so he could use that anonymity to sneak up on his prey and learn all he could without raising any suspicion. It had worked before on numerous occasions like yesterday, when he had watched the Gecko Gang from inside the same bar as they played a hand of Caravan, sharing glances with most of them when they won a hand.
Nothing he had seen gave him any cause for concern, seeing only a gang of four enjoying themselves between robberies and spending some of their ill-gotten gains on beer and food, and nothing he saw as they approached his chosen patch of ground detracted from that.
Until Gaz appeared.
John had seen him only once before, in the same bar as the Gecko Gang the previous day, instantly pegging him for a bounty hunter by the duster he wore and the revolver strapped to his thigh, albeit a green one at that given the lack of scarring his features bore, and by the fact he was in the same bar as a group with a price on their heads. Seldom few people travelled along the route they were on, preferring the more lively ones that ran through all the different towns and settlements in the NCR, which had been reflected by the dowdy appearance of the bar and the town itself.
With a permanent population barely into double digits, calling the place a town seemed overly generous. It didn't have a name, at least not one the eight or nine people who lived there could agree on, so to see three different sets of travellers in such an insignificant place all at once was more than a little suspicious. Well, to John it seemed suspicious but he was a cynical person, no more a believer in coincidences than magical fairies that granted wishes.
He knew that Gaz would try and take down the Gecko Gang before too long, and would probably die in the process, so John had left the dusty town before anyone else had gotten up and walked out into wastes until he found his perch, putting the rising sun to his back and his rifle towards his would be targets, and settled in to wait for their arrival.
In that time he saw a smaller cluster of rocks down by the road, just a bit closer to the town but on the opposite side of the trail to him. They provided an adequate ambush position, provided no other alternatives were available, offering concealment from view but not for a person returning fire. Whoever hid behind them would have to expose too much to be safe when they began shooting.
But, Gaz hadn't thought of that and instead banked on catching the Gecko Gang unaware to do the job, popping up once they drew within range of his revolver and firing at the nearest target. Either by luck or some natural talent, his first round struck home and threw one of the gang into the dirt where they began turning the dirt beneath them red with blood. Gaz's second round wasn't so lucky, or his innate talent only went so far, because the bullet hit nothing but air, forced to miss by the recoil of the high powered magnum load throwing off the young hunter's aim.
John watched, with no small amount of astonishment, as Gaz brought his weapon down and lined up a third shot even before the muzzle of his gun was level once again, loosing off a third shot that missed its mark and left him vulnerable as, by this point, the remaining gang members had drawn their guns and levelled them at the half exposed attacker.
Before a fourth shot could roar from Gaz's revolver, the nearest of the gang took aim and fired, just once, and hit him. Gaz span with the wound, revolver slipping from his fingers, and fell to the floor to begin bleeding all over it. This was the point that John recovered from his stupor and added his firepower into the mix, firing four times to hit three targets as they made a move to finish off the now prone Gaz, standing once the last echo faded to descend the slopes.
After making sure the four gangsters were actually dead, he went to check on their would be attacker as he lay on the ground, hand clutched to a wound in his shoulder.
'Dumbass,' was the first thing John said to him.