Interlude #2: Hit the Road Jack.

AN: Apologies for the delay, I only have a short one for you this time. Another Interlude. A bit talky, and more worldbuilding and foreshadowing. At least we finally leave Novac behind.

My sincerest thanks to Aegon Blacksteel, partevoli and Pro Assassin for their reviews; to DocMarten2525 as well, whose stories you should go read if you love Fallout 4 and you're looking for writing of such quality, I've rarely read on this website in years. And finally, to WastelandScribe, a faithful reviewer, associate writer and the talented artist behind the covers for both the Wasteland Legend stories.

Also, the prequel – companion fic to Missing in Action, The Thin Line, has updated again. If you appreciate John's adventure, go and try to give Hogarth's some love as well.

0 = MiA = 0

Night came, but the moon didn't. Burning barrels of garbage cast the shadows of gathered sentries in long stripes that played on the building's walls or merged with the encroaching darkness. At times, the ground shook, and armored suits gleamed orange and red in passing.

Echoes of gunfire rolled across the wastes like clockwork: close, then far off, then just a few steps beyond where the eyes could see. Dropping eyelids snapped open and stared at grey shadows shifting on the canvas walls; ears stretched to catch muffled steps on the other side of closed doors and fluttering entrances. There was little yet precious comfort in the heat and presence of dear ones, but only despairing solitude for those plagued by raw loss.

Shut-eye was a privilege for the drunk, the numb or the dead. John left that challenge to Cassidy. He waited the night out on the barricades, rubbing elbows with troopers who shared stories and stomped feet to ward off the cold. Tense like guitar strings, jittering nerves played a song of their own.

His nose regenerated too soon, the clogging gone: with renewed health came the smoke and the stench of metal and cooked meat hanging off the town like a epitaph. The musty stale of his new kevlar vest was a begrudging rock in the fuliginous storm blowing from the pyre once the wind changed after midnight. Whispers of an imminent attack blossomed within the smoke and were crushed by the hour, then the minute, by grey-capped, hard-voiced officers.

Enforced discipline did little to assuage the slithering fears however. Every lap of wind was the breath of the Legion on the back of their necks; every wandering tracer round lighting the dark above Nelson and Forlon Hope in the distance, an object of elation, prayer, dread or all of the above together. John's own hair stood at attention in eager anticipation.

And yet, the Bull didn't come. Minutes bled away into hours, and the curtain covering the Mojave parted. When dawn broke, it delivered a sense of relief mixed to disappointment with the crisp morning breeze. Adrenaline seeped out in an almost tangible flow, thick and greasy and wasted.

Novac still stood, Cretaceous monstrosity and all, its fields pauper of still, red corpses. The shift came, orders rung out, soldiers assembled. Patrols ranged out East, to Forlorn Hope, and more numerous, South. As the synchronous stomping of metal feet faded in the distance, John found his own legs carrying him over the perimeter rather than the grub hall or a bed, his path retracing a path flattened by hundreds of feet the previous day.

The fraying plaster of the execution wall was flecked with a dark orange, not the near black red of congealed human blood. He traced with a gloved finger the holes where the bullets punched through the festooned carcass, then scrubbed it clean of the clinging remains, grimacing.

In the end, the Prophet had smiled, all crooked teeth and swollen gums, but serene. At his executioners. At the hateful crowd. And, one among dozens, at him.

'You bled like the rest of them. They dragged your body in the dirt, spat upon. You burned.'Yet the ghoul's words and what they implied in their self-entitled righteousness echoed stubbornly, stronger with every counter, with every round of denial, a mallet falling like a pendulum losing momentum.

A pair of boots stopped crunching the dirt a deliberate dozen steps away, snatching him back to the brisk Mojave morning. "Gloating this early already?"

John sighed, the heavy vest loose enough on his frame not to chafe. He didn't know why he'd bothered to visit in the first place. The smell was probably better than at the pyre.

"Aren't you?" he said.

A pause. The sloshing of liquid. "You can't go around half-naked after every scrap. More so if you play meat shield all the time. Try to make it last you 'till Vegas."

"You used their money."

"Nope. Mymoney, cowboy. Neither you or Boone wanted any of it. Rectitude, blockheadedness: knock yourself out. Way I see it, it's mine now."

The next retort was on the tip of his tongue, but there it remained. She would follow along until either one of them stormed away or she hit him, again. It was too early in the morning - or too late, semantics - for that.

He stopped his contemplation and turned to face her. She'd bought a change of clothes to go with her suede at the Dino shop, a shirt and jeans, and a travel backpack rested against her leg.

"How much have you got left anyway?" The fat, jingling satchel of the day before at her hip had shrivelled to a fist-sized pouch of wrinkled brahmin leather.

She quirked an eyebrow, and he noticed how bloodshot and ringed her eyes were underneath. "Five hundred and somethin'. Just enough for the trip and a ride back to California when this mess's over. Maybe a couple of extras on the road, if you don't eat like a nightstalker."

'She's leaving?'

He bit the inside of his cheek hard, holding her gaze. Moments later, his words were cautious, probing. "From more than three-thousand?"

She shrugged. He smelled an evasion. "Prices skyrocket with the military goin' around requisitioning. Twice so if they do more than one round. Right now, Briscoe's shop's good for the shadow and not much more: he delivered you the stuff as a way to say thank you. I think he'll take up running the motel on the side once the NCR vacates."

"Better him than slavers." He nodded at the backpack. "Are you one-hundred percent sure he didn't rip you off though? That seems awfully light." She rolled her eyes.

"Good for your shoulders then. Not much booze left either," she added, burping into her fist. John wondered how many bottles he'd find on the moquette if he bothered hiking up to the motel. The Cheshire grin spread behind her hand, thin and mocking. "I wouldn't mind another round of your drunken flailin'. Makes for good entertainment, if pricey."

"I could hit your boots rather than a close miss this time," he grumbled back.

"Then maybe Jackson'll lend ya the mop-stick again, if you ask him nicely."

0 * MiA * 0

Even in the orange hues of dawn, Highway 95 was just another slab of broken tarmac overgrown with dry bushes and strewn with dislodged concrete roadblocks; a variety of odd, rusted-out vehicles, shoved by the wayside to allow for traffic, completed the picture in a sprinkle of Mojave home-flavour. It resembled a dried up snake, one long body slithering through the cracks and hills of this stretch of the Mojave.

Despite the early hour, it wasn't empty of travelers either. Garbed in a mixed ensemble of NCR drab browns-and-greens, armed to the teeth, Craig Boone waited where Novac's road met the Highway; even as he leaned against a roadblock, his straight posture and turning head belied alertness.

"'Morning," John greeted. Boone nodded back, then hefted a rangy, patched satchel on one shoulder and adjusted the strap of the bandoleer crossing his chest.

John exchanged a look with Cassidy. After a few moments of just standing there, she cleared her throat and turned to the sniper.

"You're moving North too?"

"McCarran, yes," he said. "Back to my unit."

And like that, with considerable less alcohol and personal humiliation than last time, two became three.

0 * MiA * 0

Being on the move again felt good, there was no two ways about it. More than that: it feltright, even more than putting a mutant into the ground. With every step that the air cleared of the stench and the Dino's scaly back became a little more vague, the echo of raspy words became weaker and easier to seclude away from the fore of his mind. It wasn't long before that empty space was reclaimed by its rightful owner.

'Benny.'John's heartbeat quickened at the sole thought, projecting a single throb through his scar. A frown knitted his brow. 'I need to know, I need to know more. It's going to happen on his home turf. New Vegas.'

Cassidy had taken rear-guard duty, Boone the front. After a moment of pondering, John lengthened his stride and locked step with the sniper.

"Benny and these Chairmen. You know of them."

The slapping of soles on the warming tarmac filled the next few minutes. John stared at the road ahead, eyes gliding over the hilltops and cratered desert floor, while Boone gave no sign of acknowledgement. He just walked, the shades giving his face a stern, glaring quality.

Eventually, just as John's nerves were starting to fray, the sniper grunted.

"Are you planning to kill him?"

John nodded, frown darkening. "But first, I want answers." He took Boone's silence as a sign to continue. The sniper didn't twitch, or show any other disapproving reaction. "He chose to dirty his hands for a reason. I want to know why."

'I want to know who I am.'

"What if there isn't one?"

John ground his teeth, nostrils flaring. 'Therehas to be one!' "Then he just dies."

Silence settled between them after that, stretching longer than a few minutes. Behind them, Cassidy drew from her hip-flask once, then again. John eyed the sniper, focusing on his shoulders and his hands for telling signs of exploding violence: it did dawn on him he was discussing murder with a military enforcer, or a soon-to-be-one-again. But at the same time, if somebody could begin to understand, that was probably him.

"Lunch," Boone said eventually, pointing a finger east.

Less than mile off, a family of molerats scurried over the crest of an hill and caracoled down the side in a straight line; pink, hairless pups kept up with the oversized mother with little effort on stubby legs, bodies swaying in rhythm. Boone knelt, shouldered his rifle, peered down the sight; a few heartbeats and a muffled bang later, the mama molerat swayed, toppled and momentum carried it further down the hill in a landslide of dust.

Cassidy whistled, long and low, tilting her hat back on her head. "Nice shot."

Boone nodded, then started off the road. John fell into step behind him on one side, one hand resting on Sunny; Cassidy took the other, Remington out.

The going was smooth, the crunch of dirt and dry bushes as familiar as the dull tapping on the tarmac. Only when they settled down to strip and eviscerate the mutant rat and a couple of its over-affectionate cubs did the conversation resume.

"How much do you know of Vegas?" Boone asked. His bowie parted hide and flesh in linear, practiced motions.

"Big, shiny, lots of caps changing hands." John's were jerky in comparison, due to the broader blade of the gladium. "Another acquaintance of mine comes from there." 'Probably. All roads lead to Vegas.'

Boone grunted, but Cassidy, on guard duty, butted in off-handedly. "Now, that's new. Who's him?"

"It," John spat. He pulled out the abdominal sack, careful not to rupture it and cause an even nastier mess. "A Securitron named Victor. I met it back in Goodsprings: it bailed out when the Gangers attacked the town. Killed a... An acquaintance of mine that tried to stop it."

"... Motherfucker," hissed Cassidy.

"Securitrons mean Not-at-Home," said Boone, brows furrowing behind his glasses as his bowie cut into one of the pups' side. "Mr. House," he clarified. "One of his enforcers."

"That's odd, you know," Cassidy said after a full minute of metal parting flesh and the dripping of blood. John's head whipped from the carcass to stare at her. "You barely ever see one of the rolling boxes into Freeside, and that's at his doorstep. What's one doing all the way down in Goodsprings?"

John shook his head, continuing to bleed a good-sized molerat steak dry. "One thing at a time." He turned to Boone. "You were telling me about Benny."

"I wasn't," Boone said. John almost spluttered. "You can't go after a Family Head without knowing how Vegas works. You'll fail, and get more than yourself killed." Behind him, Cassidy turned away, grumbling under her breath, and chugged down some more whiskey.

Something hot and ugly started to uncurl into John's stomach. "Then tell me. Know-how or not, I'm doing it."

The sniper regarded him for a long minute from behind his shades, his face set in blank, calm plates dusted with a day's worth of shave in the early-morning light. For a moment, John had the clear feeling he'd said something terribly stupid, but he squashed that line of thought ruthlessly. Doubt was something he couldn't afford.

"You can,"Jason Bright's voice whispered in his ear, rasping and tantalizing. "You must."

Eventually, Boone sighed and wiped his hands clean-er with a strip of cloth, before he wrapped a steak into it.

"This will take a while."

0 * MiA * 0

"Ain't you a man of many talents," Cassidy said, turning the sketch around like a lost explorer trying to figure out a map. Nibbling at her balled-up lower lip, she passed the sketch back at John, who almost snatched it out of her hands. "I'd imagined him more on the pretty-boy side, from what I heard."

"He's a former tribal. Each Family was, once," Boone said. "Some adapted. Some just put on new clothes."

John listened only with half an ear. When they had stopped to cook the molerat bounty for a late lunch under a dilapidated Sunset Salsaparilla house-sized advert, Boone had fished out a yellowed, cracked sheet of paper from his satchel and bent over it for a good ten minutes with the stub of a pencil.

Benny stared up at him, his face sketched out in quick, hard lines. A wide jaw and high cheekbones framed curled lips and narrow, slightly slanted eyes. The head surmounted seemingly wide shoulders and hinted pattern of black and white stretched the whole of lowest edge of the drawing.

'So this is him.'

"Something's comin' back?"

John shook his head, and the corners of the paper curled into his fingers. "Not a thing. Did you have to draw him smiling?"

"He does that. A lot," the sniper said between bites. "The Chairmen are the strongest of the Three Families, and the richest. He has reason to."

"Rich off the NCR's money," John said, stressing a point from all he'd been told in the past few hours. "Your soldiers waste their pays in Vegas, the caravans load and unload there. You give him the energy he needs from the Dam, for free." He tilted his head at Cassidy, who stabbed a chop of rat meat hard with her fork. "Lots go in, but little comes out. What's the point of it?"

"You'd need to see the caps and cash the big wigs throw 'round the casinos to really get the scope it," Cassidy grumbled, then gulped down a bite and continued talking around it. "But you're wrong. Lots of cash flows out, feedin' and paddin' all the caravans and big names from all over the Coast. The Families grow and breed some of the foodstuffs they need, but that's not nearly enough to provide for everyone behind the shining walls. And let's not get started on the chems." She huffed and her eyes lowered to her dish again. "Then there's Freeside and boy , ain't that a mess of its own."

John grunted and folded the drawing in four, tucking it in his new jacket. He could still feel it, even through the thick fabric. "My point is, Mr. House is paying the caravans and everyone else with the money the NCR drops at his doorstep for fun in the first place." He turned to Boone, who'd already started to pack up again. "Pays you back with your own coin. Why do you allow it?"

The sniper didn't answer. If nothing, his face grew even harder to read, smoothing in inscrutable blankness. In a few seconds the leftover meat was nearly packaged against leaks and his satchel was slung across his back.

"There's no other choice."

John rolled his eyes, but was ready to follow moments after. A few kicks of loose dirt dealt with the last of the cooking fire.

"Well, that's really helpful."

"Stop sulkin', cowboy," Cassidy groaned as they stepped back on the road. "Whatd'ya think? It's those tin cans, like your friend up in Goodsprings. Mr. House has hundreds of them, and they pack a mean punch."

"The Brothehood's was worse," Boone offered flatly, a few steps ahead of them. "But they were men under the suits, at least in body, and there were few of them. With machines, it's different."

"How so?" John prodded. "Securitrons field 9mm SMGs and 40mm launchers, but that's small ordinance compared to lasers and plasma. Sure, they have thick plating, but not nearly as much as a T-60, or even a T51. Armor piercing rounds would do, not to mention your own Power Armour units and what armor you must have left from old army deposits and the Enclave. And those wheels are quite the Achilles' tendon."

Cassidy's bemused glance was all the warning he needed and had that he'd just spewed a lot of peculiar information she, at least, didn't expect from him. Information that would draw unwanted attention. As if he hadn't enough already.

He met her look with one of his own that only lasted a moment, a mix of warning and pleading, then he returned his attention to Boone's back, wary of any reaction.

The sniper didn't give any sign he thought he'd said anything odd. Stiffening, flinching, nothing like that. He didn't turn either, didn't miss a step. His voice remained the nearly flat monotone it had been for most of the morning, skipping right over John's oddly informative remark.

The hair on the back of John's neck prickled and stood on end in alarm.

"They're unlike any other robots the Brotherhood threw at us," Boone said. "Securitrons move as fast as trucks, but aren't bound by roads. No morale. No need for logistics, and automated coordination. House commands them directly from his tower, which is protected by plasma cannons." Boone shook his head. "The NCR's fighting on many fronts. Too many. We don't need another one to throw people to die at." His mouth set into a thin grimace, once he almost thought he had imagined. "Can't handle one like House, not with the Legion pressing all over our borders. The army is stretched too thin as it is."

John frowned, and mentally went over again what he appeared to know - or was it remember? - of the Securitron model. Boone's notes on speed and other capabilities sounded new, but at same time plausible and not really shocking. Which meant even those memories he still had had holes and missing pieces.

Just like Doc. Mitchell warned him what seemed years before.

"It all comes back to you, doesn't it Benny?"

An idea, even a solution, came to him, simple and obvious enough for a moment it surprised him it hadn't happened years before. And that made him scowl at the implications.

"The Securitrons would carve through the Legion," he stated, utterly sure.

Boone regarded him with an inscrutable look, then nodded. "The fodder, yes. 9mm chew through their sports gear and leather, even their shields. Legion veterans however, their Triarii, Pricipes and Centurions, those are better kitted."

"And scuttlebutt on the roads has there's lots more of them further East than the NCR tussled with at Hover a few years ago," Cassidy said, pausing for a moment to relax her grip on the Remington and find her hip flask.

"And yer Mr. House hasn't fielded anything to support the NCR so far, has he?" John continued after the silence dragged too long. He stared ahead at a looming tower in the West, its bottom half and most of the complex underneath concealed behind the broken, rocky hills that hugged the Interstate on each side. Further ahead, however, they gave away to what seemed the dried bed of another lake.

"And why would he?" he continued, addressing Boone. "The NCR is fighting for him, protecting him, and he even gets to take your money for your effort." The pieces were slowly slotting together, and John, to his own belated shock, found that the realization bothered him less than he thought it should. It was selfishness on a whole new level to him, but still selfishness. What ground but Easy Pete's grave did he have to condemn that?

Benny's sneering picture burned a hole in his pocket. It was an almost physical mass, churning in his brain and leeching on his every thought, growing fatter and more ravenous.

"No matter how you look at it, he wins, and the NCR loses," John concluded. Boone nodded. "So why are you still here? Because I don't think the NCR brass sees the people of the Mojave as worth the effort."

Primm and Goodsprings burned in his memories, undying examples validating his words.

Cassidy snorted, finding something funny in what he said, but all the answer he got from the sniper was a pointed finger. John followed it back to the same tower he'd been looking at only moment before.

"That's Helios One, the solar plant we took from the Brotherhood," Boone offered, and John mentally linked the tower to the mark his map. "Together with Hover Dam, it provides around forty-five percent of the electricity powering up the Core States."

"We lose those, and our infrastructure, hospitals, industry… everything will just break apart. The NCR would collapse on itself in days."

John glanced back at the tower. "So it's either dripping lives and cash on an altar to the Legion and House, or implosion and chaos?"

"Yeah," Cass said, then hiccupped and burped into her fist. "Whichever way you look at it, the NCR is pretty screwed. But it's still home."

0 = MiA = 0

If you're still reading this after almost 100k words, you have my thanks. Also, don't forget to review. Even a few lines of feedback are very important to me.

'Till next time,

Alexeij