Chapter 9: Yakety Yak
It was later in the day and Raven decided to go to Camp McCarran to thank Colonel Hsu personally for his diplomacy. The King had insisted she take Rex with her so Raven obliged her lover. When she got to Camp McCarran and found Hsu again, she shook his hand and thanked him. However, he seemed troubled and it made her curious. "Sir, are you alright?" she inquired.
"Yes, what is it?" he asked.
Raven decided it was tir for tat. "I was wondering...is there anything I might be able to help with? After all, you helped out with the Kings and I feel I should return the favor."
"Why would you want to return the favor? Did this affect you personally?"
Raven crossed her arms and smiled. "The King is my boyfriend. I wanted to make sure he wouldn't get hurt."
"Ah, I see. Well, in that case..." He motioned for Raven to sit down at his desk and she did. "Hmm, you don't cook by any chance, do you? Farber's doing his best, but it's hard to manage an army with half my staff in line for the latrine. Honestly, we're fighting a lot of fires right now. The Fiends keep pressing their position from Vault 3. We've got the Legion breathing down our necks across the river. We actually took an officer alive last week, but so far he hasn't spoken a word."
Raven raised her eyebrows as he said all this. "Any other problems?"
"Yeah. In top of everything else, I can't send a patrol on a bathroom break without it being ambushed by someone who heard they were coming. So somebody's getting the word out."
"You seem calm given that things are as bad as they are," Raven said with sympathy in her voice.
Colonel Hsu rubbed his face and leaned back in his chair. "Calm is what you have to be when people look to you. And it's all you can be when things are out of your hands."
Raven nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. "So I've had my fair share of fighting them, but what's your take on the Fiends?"
"As in chem fiends. Biggest gang of raiders I've ever seen. Nothing like addiction to swell your numbers. Psychotic, and completely unpredictable. They've set up shop in Vault 3 to the west. Every day they attack our positions and my men repel them. But every day there's more of them and less of us. I sent one of my rangers after their leader to try and destabilize them. He didn't return."
Raven leaned forward in her chair, resting her arms on his desk. "I'm sorry to hear that."
"Hell of a thing, losing a ranger. You come to depend on them. And they come through for you so often, you forget it can happen."
Raven looked down for a moment, deciding if she could help. She could. She lifted her eyes and spoke her next words with determination. "I'll go to Vault 3 and see if I can find your ranger."
Hsu gaped at her. "That Vault is a hornet's nest. If you have second thoughts, no one would think less of you for it. But if you can get him home, it'd mean a lot. Watch for civilians, too. The Fiends have been kidnapping locals. They just walk right into people's homes in the middle of the day and take them. But the man you're looking for is Bryce Anders. Anders was trying to find the leader, Motor-runner."
Raven scrunched up her brow. "Motor-runner?"
"You hear something like a chainsaw, you've found Motor-runner. Put a bullet in his head, and you'll have some new friends around here."
Raven leaned back again and grinned. "I'll do that, but first, I bet I could make that Legion prisoner talk."
"I have Lieutenant Boyd on that already, and she's excellent. But I think she's hit a wall. Talk to her, if you like. See if she has any use for you. Her office is right above mine, but I think she might be interrogating right now. So she'd be upstairs on the other side of the building."
Raven agreed to help with a few other things before she made her way with Rex across the building and up the stairs. She found Boyd and waved at her. "Hello."
"You stick out like a sore thumb around here. You sure you're in the right place?" Boyd barked out.
Uh, okay. This woman was a bit tense, and rightly so. She heard one of the guards outside say Boyd was pissed. "I just spoke with Colonel Hsu. I was wondering if you needed some help with the prisoner?"
Lieutenant Boy'd demeanor changed almost immediately. "Yeah, so far this has gone exactly as expected - poorly. But with the work you've done for the NCR already, you might be just what I'm looking for. We captured an honest-to-God centurion of Caesar's Legion recently."
Raven blinked a few times. "Is that a big deal?"
Boyd crossed her arms. "You better believe it. Everybody, everybody in Caesar's Legion from Caesar on down will kill themselves before they can be captured. They're so twitchy they'd probably do it if you reached out to hug them. But here's the guy who's an elite commander in their army and he just gives himself up, even as his men are slitting their own throats around them."
Now Raven was intrigued. "What do you think it means?"
"Well, I don't know about you, but to me that sounds like a man who's willing to cooperate. Except he hasn't. Only times he speaks up is to insult you. He's a real prick, by the way. And I'm supposed to get information out of this guy."
"Hmm. What about a truth drug?"
"Don't have anything like that. Sounds nice. Like the kind of thing I'd want to take home and use on my husband."
This made Raven laugh. "Really?"
Boyd made a soft chuckle. "Oh yes. But anyway, even if we did have that, I don't know that I'd be comfortable using it. If there's any risk of an overdose, it's not worth it. Asshole's too valuable."
"Hmm." Raven looked behind Boyd at the prisoner, then she locked eyes with Boyd. "Why don't you just beat your prisoner senseless?"
"I like the way you think. Have I said that yet? Problem is that the NCR frowns on using that sort of tactic. There are some restrictions still in place from President Tandi's administration. But here's my favorite thing about you. You're not in the NCR. Plus, for all this guy knows, you're completely insane. That's a winning combination."
Raven wasn't too sure about this. "So you want me to do what you can't."
"I think if you rough him up enough and really put some fear into him, he'll sing like a choir boy. So let's do this. When you're ready, I'll go in give him a little intro. Then I'll leave the room and you make him regret the day he was born. We go back and forth a couple of times until either he talks or he can't move his jaw anymore. Either way, we've had our entertainment for the day."
"Hmm. Think maybe I could try talking to him first before we do any of that."
"Ah, tear my heart out, why don't you? Well, maybe you can find a way to play with his mind - get him out of his comfort zone. People lose their heads and say things they regret. Especially if they underestimate you. This dickhead would underestimate a nuclear missile. Plenty of ways to skin a cat, as they say. Hey, what if we skinned him? Bet he wouldn't be so smug then."
"Okay. Let's get started."
Boyd turned around and walked to the prisoner's door. Raven stood and watched through the glass window as they talked. The more the prisoner talked, the more Raven wanted to beat the shit out of him...but she would try talking to him first, see if she could fuck with his mind a bit. That might actually be more satisfying. When he got to the bit about why he liked slave collars and making them fit snugly, her fists clenched tightly. This guy was in league with fucking Caesar? And Caesar actually allowed this shit? Boyd called her in and Raven walked through the door, having Rex trot in behind her. The dog sat next to her and growled a bit. Already she could tell the prisoner, Silus, as she heard Boyd call him, seemed a bit uneasy with Rex being in the room. Good.
"So, your name's Silus, huh?" Raven asked.
Silus glared up at her from his seat. "What an ugly little worm you are. What pile of excrement did the lieutenant pluck you from, worm?"
Raven smirked and leaned her weight on one leg while crossing her arms again. "I think you're confused. I'm with the excrement right now."
The man looked taken aback, but only for a moment. "You must have some reason to be in your line of work. Tell me, what did the Legion do to you? Did we enslave your children? Slaughter your family before your eyes to teach you a lesson? Whatever it was, I hope I was there to give the order."
"Oh blah blah blah, spare me the dramatics, Silus," Raven blurted out. "You really are such a bore, but you must miss giving orders, now that all your men are dead."
"Foot soldiers of the Legion are trained to not have to think for themselves - to have conflict removed from their minds. They kill themselves to evade capture because they are not trusted to make such a decision rationally in the heat of battle. But I'm no foot soldier. I knew I could escape captivity on my own, without revealing the tiniest iota of information to my captors."
Raven rubbed the bridge of her nose. This guy was so full of himself. In fact, he was so full of himself, Raven wondered what would happen if she played on the fact that he did not kill himself. Was he a coward, perhaps? Suddenly she gave him a smug grin. "Sounds to me like you were too gutless to follow Caesar's orders."
The man sneered at her angrily. "I'll show you gutless, you sniveling bastard! I'll spill your guts all over this room!"
Rex barked and growled, standing on his haunches and eyeing the prisoner with bared teeth. The man backed up as Rex charged but Raven whistled. "Rex, no."
Rex stopped a few inches from the man's legs, still growling before going back to Raven. Just then, Boyd came into the room with a cigarette. "Is something the matter, Silus?" she asked with a grin. "You look upset. I dunno, I thought she seemed like a nice lady."
Raven exited the room with Rex and smiled down at him. "Good boy."
Raven listened carefully as Silus continued to threaten the Courier and she snickered. This was actually kind of fun. Boyd sighed and looked at her through the glass. "Come on back in. I think he misses you."
Raven chuckled and looked down at Rex. "Ready for round two?"
Rex barked up at her and they both walked back into the cell. "We don't have anything to discuss, worm."
Raven smiled innocently. "You sure talk tough for someone who's afraid to die," she said with a smug tone.
"You think I could get where I was in the Legion army if I feared death?" he asked her. "I've led charges against men with guns carrying only my knife, and I can tell you, it was they who feared me. But suicide is a weak death on a battlefield. It says to your enemy that you fear capture. It says if you're caught, you can be broken."
Raven put her arms behind her bent down at the waist, and smiled as she went eye level with Silus. "And if you can't go through with it, you look even weaker."
"You think I'm going to slit my throat for some megalomaniacal self-appointed dictator? I didn't work my way up to have it all taken from me out of some irrational paranoia. Caesar's losing it. I believe that. He's been shutting himself up in his tent. Privately, he complains of headaches. Whatever it is, it's affecting his ability to lead."
Raven looked over at Boyd for a moment. Well, this was certainly some juicy gossip, but she kept silent as he continued on. "Time was essential for my mission, but we waited three days for him to dispatch us. Another of his headaches. Does that sound like a man in command? He has an operative planted in this very base, but does he use his agent to rescue me? No. He's content to have the agent spend his nights radioing troop position back to our bas camp. He knows I'm here, and he's left me to rot."
Raven eyed Boyd again who looked quite pleased, and the courier crossed her arms once more. This was in relation to something Colonel Hsu had mentioned earlier about having a mole in his ranks. "Who's the operative?"
"I don't know. I know he sends intelligence by radio in the middle of the night. Sometimes that intelligence would find it's way to my century."
Raven sighed, dusting off something on her leather armor. This guy was an idiot. She wondered if she could get more out of him. "I don't believe you. You're lying."
"Then you're a fool. The man reports back to Caesar on what I do here. The Legion isn't going to take me back. My only hope is to escape and disappear. But if he escapes and he reports it, they'll hunt me down as long as I live. It'd serve me to report him as much as it'd serve you."
"Hmm. See? Don't you feel better now that you've divulged all those stare secrets?" Raven asked nonchalantly.
"I hope the Legion burns your wretched body at a stake when they conquer this place. Nothing I could tell you would do anything to stop that."
Raven hmphed. "That's what you think." Raven left the room, smiling to herself as she looked at Boyd.
"You did well. I don't know how you did it without putting a scratch on him, and I'm a little disappointed personally, but it saved the NCR some face. And it could save us more than that when all is said and done. I'm gonna talk to some people when we're through here. This is about double the standard fee we'd give a "consultant", but from what I saw, you're more of an artist. So think of this as your commission."
Raven blinked in confusion. She didn't realize she was getting paid for what she just did, but she was more than happy to accept the caps. She needed to report back to Hsu on her findings.
