Chapter 10
Trivialities
"In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes"
~Julius Caesar
"Damn Marco, you look as bad as I feel." Iara quipped, as she raised her tired head to regard her slowly waking friend.
"Is that a joke?" Marco moaned.
"Mmm, I wish it were." Iara joked languidly.
The lithe young woman stole a glance around the medical bay of the newly finished barracks and spotting no one, quickly stole a chaste kiss from the recently conscious corporal.
"Hey," Marco soothed quietly, noting the suddenly distraught expression on the normally unflappable young woman, "it's alright. I'm alright."
"Pendejo!" The fury for which she was well known came back, "You don't fucking get to do that! You can't get hurt like that and make me worry."
"Hey, ow.. Ow!" Marco feebly protested as he fended off her not so gentle slaps.
Iara collapsed onto Marco, her arms draped limply over the bed and her head and chest resting on his broad chest. He ran his brawny hands through her short hair and made soothing noises, feeling oddly content despite the pain lancing through his body.
Griff halted at the entrance to the med deck, hesitant to disturb the two during their 'moment'. In the end, prudence won out over his desire to check in on his trooper and he stole away quietly.
The massive clank of the bulkhead door easing open on hissing hydraulics foreshadowed Engineer Luca's arrival.
"Sir", Luca saluted lazily, the greasy spanner arcing in the air with his movement, "I was just looking for you."
"Walk with me." Griff murmured, his thoughts still nestling on the image of the two soldiers finding solace with each other.
Luca fell in beside his commander, the silence unbroken save for the staccato metal tapping of their boots on the corrugated metal deck.
As they reached the lift, Luca coughed nervously before shattering the silence with a sudden question.
"We're not ever going to get back are we?"
"What makes you say that?" Griff asked.
"We don't know how we got here. Flight computer is jacked to hell. Adjutant can't make heads or tails of our telemetry or flight path. Even if we knew how we got here, that doesn't help us get back. We set the scanner to probe for vespene deposits and so far they've scanned jack and shit."
"I'm no engineer Luca, but vespene isn't strictly necessary for us to expand our tech base and get a drop ship built."
"True, true. Old Earth didn't have access to vespene yet still managed. But we don't have the industrial capacity to replicate a suitable substitute. Hell, there are backwoods border colonies better off than we are!"
Griff patted the air consolingly to forestall the engineer's increasing frustrated arguments.
"The best we can do, everything we can do, will be done. We'll see Haven again, somehow. We just need to focus on what's in front of us."
Though Luca was far from mollified, he quieted in appreciation of the Captain's effort. Not one for long silences, he simply offered a terse nod of farewell before disappearing into the bowels of the command center, leaving the commander alone with his thoughts.
Despite his assurances to the fiery engineer, Griff had doubts about their ability to get back into space, let alone retrace their steps and get back to Haven. There had to be a solution, he just needed to have the wisdom to recognize it and the courage to see it through.
"Ha!" Veronica punctuated her strike against the thick carapace of the radscorpion, even her augmented power fist having little effect on the massive arachnid.
"Incidentally, I blame you for this." She hissed, dancing back as the scorpion angrily jabbed at her with its stinger.
"I thought it'd be a good shortcut." Paul gasped, reloading so fast his hands were a blur.
Veronica dropped down just avoiding having her face impaled and rolled out of the way, noting with dismay the rumble that accompanied yet ANOTHER radscorpion joining the fray.
Paul lunged, barely avoiding the first scorpion's attack, its claws snapping inches from his torso and snagging some material. He winced at the tearing sound, grateful that it was his duster that got torn and not his skin. He fired point blank into one of the scorpions eyes, the shock and pain forcing the creature to miss with its tail strike, the barbed stinger burrowing several inches into a small boulder.
Paul allowed himself a laugh at the radscorpion's expense. The amusement dying on his tongue as the massive creature easily lifted the boulder and tossed it aside with seemingly little effort. His dismay blunted his reaction time as the scorpion rushed him again, his side step not quite removing him from the behemoth's path. Hundreds of pounds of armored flesh knocked him bodily aside, his rifle flying from his hands in the opposite direction. He rolled over, choking on the dust and looked frantically around for his lost weapon.
Too late! The scorpion had turned around and was bearing down on him again. Whispering a prayer for the stupid thing he was about to do, he drew his broad machete and leapt up to meet the scorpion's bull rush, managing to avoid its grasping claws to land on its back. The scorpion's forward momentum coupled with his running leap granted strength to his machete as it slashed at a groove in its tail armor. The shock travelled up his arm and actually bounced him off and away from the scorpion, the creature hissing and screeching at the machete still stuck fast to its tail. Paul yelped just before hitting dirt, the landing driving the air from his lungs with a 'whoof!'
"Get up!" Veronica shouted, dodging and ducking the smaller, second scorpion's attack.
Paul wheezed and huffed, trying to unlock his lungs as he fought to regain his feet. His rifle slammed into his chest painfully, the impact somehow convincing his lungs to expand. He coughed and gagged while trying to gulp in mouthfuls of air as he fumbled with the rifle Veronica had angrily thrown at him.
"For a courier, you really suck at... Hey!" Her insult was interrupted by a brace of explosions that rippled mere yards away. The pair of scorpions were suitably distracted from making her or Paul into their next meal by the unexpected assault. She rose into a crouch to see a securitron wheeling towards them, its arms spitting grenades and bullets at the scorpions.
"Victor! Good to see you!"
Whatever answer Victor may have given was drowned out by the pained squeal from the smaller of the two scorpions, its carapace cracked and oozing orange ichor as it thrashed at the battling robot. Paul raised the Survivalist's Rifle, slamming the newly loaded magazine in with a crunch and immediately began to pepper the scorpion with precision fire.
Veronica was always impressed with the almost super human accuracy he displayed. Every bullet striking the scorpion within an area no bigger than her fist. Even the vaunted radscorpions were no match for the sheer number of 12.7mm rounds that had impaled it, and with a final twitch the monster finally fell dead.
"Oh no."
Veronica looked up at that, seeing the courier walking over to the securitron and scorpion wrapped in each other's embrace, both silent and still. She walked over and noted the damage the scorpion had inflicted on its metal body, gouges and dents everywhere and the thick glass of its face screen shattered around the claw that the radscorpion had impaled him with. She joined him and examined the carnage, slamming her fist into the scorpion when it started to twitch. The impact broke them apart, the scorpion rolling down an incline and Victor slamming into the rocky ground with a thud of finality.
"Ah, sorry about that Vic. Thanks for the help... again."
With a nonchalant whistle, Maxson began to open up the ammo hoppers on the securitron and pulling out 9mm rounds and a pair of grenades.
"Boy aren't you just the sentimental type."
"What? Oh. Yeah, he's fine. He'll pop back up in another securitron eventually. He's already done it once before when I wandered into a cazadore nest shortly after stumbling my way out of Goodsprings."
Veronica's ears tickled as she swore she heard more skittering in the distance, the sound compelling her to grab the protesting courier by the arm and half dragging him back and away from his so-called 'shortcut'.
"Ok, yeah let's go this way." Paul said consolingly, his mind already racing with ideas on how he would make this up to Veronica.
Though scowling from beneath her brown hood, he detected an edge of amusement from the scribe and hugged her shoulders once she finally deigned to let go of his arm. He started to rethink his plan, as he didn't feel as though he had a timeline to convince the Great Khans per Mr. House's instructions, but he did make a promise to see Cass soon. Steering Veronica in the general direction of the Mojave Outpost, they began to chat and joke, the incident with the radscoprions all but forgotten.
The elder NCR sergeant hissed, "Careful everyone, keeps your eyes open. Lost a patrol around here last week."
The young lieutenant, though inexperienced and cocky, tilted his head at the sergeant and kept his breathing steady despite the spike of fear that froze his heart for a moment. He had never been on this side of New Vegas before and from the looks of things, he would avoid coming here anytime in the future.
Jackie plopped down onto a convenient rock, despair sapping her of the vitality and hope she felt when first leaving Goodsprings. She reached up to rub her sore shoulders before the chains of her bondage stopped her short. She let her hands fall into her lap with a sigh and looked up as the beating sun abated in the shadow of the older man fell over her.
He glanced down at the young woman, a tenderness in his gaze that alleviated some of Jackie's apprehension. He opened his mouth as if to say something when something hot and wet splashed against her face. A high pitched keening howl rose in a crescendo of sensation until it plucked at her pain threshold.
The older man fell without a noise, slipping loosely to the ground like a pile of rags to drape ignominiously at her feet. Her vision was painted red and with trembling fingers Jackie wiped at the wetness on her face and stared with muted horror at the thick ropes of red gore dangling from her fingers.
It was only then that she woke to the chaos reigning around her. Bullets whizzed and buzzed like angry hornets as men and women in NCR livery shouted to one another in barely controlled panic. The lieutenant stood stock still, the color drained from his face as his lips moved without sound. His eyes were wide and locked onto the slumped corpse of the NCO at her feet, as if he was expecting guidance from the dead to somehow check this reality.
She rolled back from the rock and hid behind it, using it and the former sergeant's body as cover. Try as she might, she couldn't tear her gaze from the scene unfolding around her. The lieutenant's agonized screams cut through the din like a scalpel through pliant flesh. His heart stopping shrieks were punctuated by the hysterical laughter of a raider who bathed the young officer in sheets of flame.
The frenzied screams and wild eyes of the attacking raiders meant only one thing... Fiends. The NCR patrol displayed their lack of experience as they panicked, some fumbling with their weapon while others fired wildly at the screeching Fiends. A croaking gasp accompanied the death of another trooper, his hand clasped on the garish wound on his neck.
One trooper, clearly overcome and whose compass had pegged firmly into flight mode, knocked Jacky over in her haste. Dogs rushed over Jacky's prone form and try as she might, she couldn't shield herself from the terrible ripping sounds as the dogs tore flesh from the rundown woman.
The last trooper straddled her, unintentionally shielding her as bullets riddled him, his body jerking wildly before collapsing on top of her, his dying sigh breathing death right into her face.
Jackie tried with minimal success to stop trembling. Her body shook and seized of its own accord and set her teeth chattering in her skull like a rattle. The silence that fell was deafening and she was convinced that her heartbeat would betray her to the raiders like a beacon. She heard them giggling as they moved among the NCR patrol, sudden panicked begging cries ended with the brutal smack of metal chopping into meat. She tightened her eyes against the inevitable as a far more ominous shadow fell over her, the stink rolling off the raider almost making her gag.
"Oi! Let's go! Cook-Cook's bringing the stew and I got the brew!"
The formless darkness above her chuckled and moved away, leaving only the stench of charred meat to whisk her off into unconsciousness.
Insects buzzed and chirped in the cooling desert as Jackie clawed her way back to wakefulness, the panicked jolt coursing through her body and sending her reeling with terror as she kicked and rolled up, the body of the NCR trooper sliding off of her. The stench of burned flesh reeked and caused her stomach to heave uncontrollably.
Her still bounds hands hampered her movements and in a way, brought her out of the imagined nightmares of her somnolence into the very real nightmare of her circumstances.
She jerked her head in the direction of a sudden moan, the breathy rasp sending shivers down her spine. She crawled towards the noise, a trail of smoke wreathed about the blackened and shriveled form lying amidst the devastation. An earnest croak wheezed from cracked lips as she gasped and attempted to control the bile rising into her throat.
Though charred beyond recognition, she somehow knew that the pathetic thing clinging to life before her was the cocky lieutenant. All pretense of hubris had been immolated away by the cackling flames of cruelty leaving nought but this brittle shell of a man.
Tears flushed away some of the dried blood ringing her eyes and she tried to soothe the young man.
"Puuuhh… leeee …" The living dead moaned, his voice a cold whisper rising like a long forgotten eulogy from a cold sepulcher.
Eyelids burned away left only the ruined craters of his eyes to stare uselessly into the sky, his skin cracking and flaking as his arms quested for surcease from his ruin.
Her hands felt the burn as she grasped the knife still tucked into the man's belt, the hot handle searing itself to her palm as she yanked it free from his charred waistband. With a lover's care, she whispered cooing nonsense into the holes where his ear should have been as she deftly slid the knife with surgical precision into his neck. It crackled as it parted charred flesh, like sawing through old cardboard.
Bright blood spurted onto her hands as she withdrew the hot steel and the young man drew in his final breath and let it rattle from his lungs in his last sigh.
Reversing the knife in her grip and heedless of the slippery mess of arterial blood covering the weapon, she sawed it clumsily at the knot of her binds, her mind lost in the simple rhythmic motion delaying the inevitable processing of that eternal question, 'what now?'
Ashur sighed in relief at the image coming into focus on his rifle scope. Though he had arrived too late to intervene in the ambush on the NCR troopers, he found that fate itself had seen fit to spare the young woman, his hoped for prodigy. He observed for a short time, finally deciding that his hours of watching from a distance were at an end. Moving slowly and with deliberate care, he walked towards Jacky, careful to not startle the young woman who was obviously locked deeply in the prison of fear and shock.
She made no response when he knelt by her and offered no resistance when he scooped her up in his arms. Surveying the site one last time, he set off at a jog to the campsite he had set up at the abandoned Basincreek building. He slowed as he approached the dilapidated ruin, his keen eyes and psychic senses expanding his awareness and seeking…
He noted that his trip lines and spider mines were intact and he sensed no living creatures nearby, yet entered the building as quietly as he could burdened with Jacky on his shoulder. He gently set the young woman down behind the old reception desk that he had cleared into a small living space. Ashur paused, and in an uncharacteristic move, removed his helmet with the hissing gasses purpling the air in a wreath around his head.
"I know you." Jacky murmured, her mouth barely moving while the lightest whisper zephyred past her chapped lips. Ashur nodded, though the movement was lost on the young woman, as her gaze was locked firmly on some distant point, her mind failing to cope with the recent slaughter of her captors.
"How do I know you?" She croaked, the severe lack of moisture robbing her of elocution.
"Because we are the same, in time you will learn how. For now, you need sustenance and rest. Focus your energy on that. We will speak more when you are ready."
He stood and toed some ration packs in her direction before unceremoniously slamming his helmet back into place and striding from the room to take up watch outside.
Exhaustion, both physical and emotional weighed her down and made her feel as though she were deep under water, the cold pressure pulling at her limbs. She slumped to the side and crawled a few inches to grasp one of the ration packs and pulled it tightly to her chest, the rest of her body coiling around it in a fetal position. Cool water rinsed the ash and grit from her mouth and soothed her with instant relief from the thirst she didn't know assailed her. Strength finally left her completely and she fell into a blessedly dream free sleep.
Half a dozen men and women sweated under the stern gaze of the petite blonde woman, her powerful strides accentuated by the firm musculature which rippled beneath the form fitting body glove she wore. She walked the line of them, pointing out even the most minor of infractions with all the unyielding finality of any martinet throughout history. These yokels were recent recruits, a small group of families fleeing the path of destruction being paved by Caesar's Legion. Every one of them lost someone to the Legion or to the subsequent frenzied diaspora that succeeded their tribe's defeat. Though fearful of the slight woman striding back and forth before them, their courage was molded by virtue of their survival and a core of determination was birthed within them to never fail their families again.
Even the trainer's barks were nearly drowned out with the clash and clangor of the three SCV's at work. The stanchions of the virgin barracks already reached for the sky, the robotic armatures welding plates under the SCV pilot's direction. Likewise, the other two SCVs were busy in their own industrious ballet, lifting and drilling and slamming repurposed steel into supply depots to feed, clothe and arm the growing Terran camp.
A former NCRCF resident, Hannigan, sat on a rock next to a short brunette, Nadia, both of their rapt attentions focused on a holographic 3 dimensional display of human anatomy as their instructor manipulated the controls to focus on each system in turn. The sunlight gleamed off of her pristine white armor as she pointed and explained each display as they scrolled through the medical database. Hannigan considered the path his life had taken to lead him to this point. He considered his comrade for a moment, the worry lines creasing Nadia's forehead as she made notes. The two of them were going to be the first in a batch of combat medics, the sheer technology of these Terrans boggling his mind.
Even the children were put to work, dragging bits of refuse and debris for recycling in the bins scattered throughout the settlement. Despite the hard work, their toil was marked with joviality as the foursome made a game of their efforts. Calling out points as they tossed their salvage into the bins and making up rules seemingly at random.
Nearly all the metal from the towers and security fence that had surrounded the NCRCF had already been repurposed, the ugly scars in the tan colored dirt the only testament of their existence. The 3rd supply depot had finally been completed, providing the necessary supplies to maintain their growing encampment. 2 of the 4 bunkers were complete, each actively manned by a veteran marine and at least 1 of the virgin inductees who had until recently, called the NCRCF home as inmates. They had only received preliminary training on their weaponry, the rest of their training and outfitting awaiting the completion of the barracks. The arming chamber of the barracks had the necessary equipment to forge new CMC-300 hard skins and gauss rifles for the Terran's needs, as well as a neural relay which could imprint their minds with the information they would need to function within their new paradigm. The commander had firmly rejected the notion of re-socializing the former inmates, trusting more in the ability of well-trained men eager for redemption over re-socc'd marines.
He nursed his coffee on the operations deck of the command center, looking down over the bustling camp with an air of satisfaction. He always felt more comfortable cradled within the support offered by a fully functional camp. He still felt vulnerable though, the lack of information about the area irking him to no small degree. A Commander's lifeblood lay in good situational awareness and it was the one area he lacked.
Making up his mind, he turned to the communications console and tapped into the squad's network, "Sergeant Petreko, Command."
A slight blurt of static preluded her response, "I read you Commander."
"I need you to do some recon of the local area. Take some of the newbies with you and see what you can see. Start with that town the courier told us about, Primm."
"Solid copy. We will move out within the hour."
On the plateau above the camp...
The old soldier's ribs ached from the long hours spent laying still among the hard rock of the plateau yet dismissed his body's discomfort in order to watch a bit longer. Finally satisfied that he had gathered what information there was to be had, he curtly gestured to the other men beside him. They slithered back from the ridgeline, careful to not disrupt the natural flow of the landscape and kept the dying daylight at their backs. The setting sun had aided them in this, for its glare would discourage scrutiny while not impeding their own. When they had reached far enough back to avoid detection, they stood in a circle and awaited the older man's word.
"This must be conveyed to Centurion Aurelius at Cottonwood Cove. Let nothing stand in your way. These degenerates must be removed before the Legion marches on the dam."
His comrades nodded, the light of the setting sun gleaming like blood on their spears and in the fanatical gleam in their hard eyes.
"Ave Imperator."
