The quarry was barely a quarter mile down the road from Sloan, but Courier Six walked the road slowly, constantly scanning around him and not going far without checking behind him. All signs pointed to the Deathclaws in the quarry having fucked the Legion up bad. Which wasn't a surprise, really. People with guns didn't even want to go up against them. Hell, HE didn't want to go against them unless he was somewhere he knew they couldn't reach. He'd had to face one on flat ground close to Camp Bitter Springs, and it damn near gave him a heart attack. They'd be agitated too. If it wasn't for the fact something could be up with the Legion, he wouldn't come anywhere near here right now.
So he walked along the train tracks, as far opposite as he could be on the side of the Interstate the quarry entrance was on. There was a loading dock directly opposite of the entrance they'd used to load the rock onto the trains heading for Boulder City. It'd be a good place to scope things out. The road was still littered with the occasional dead horse and rider, and there were close to a dozen when he finally reached a spot he could see the quarry entrance.
Then he saw something coming up the interstate from the other direction, and he had to pull off his helmet to make sure it wasn't a mirage. The heat haze made it uneven, but the sight of a mass of people coming was unmistakable. Six quickly put his mask back on and made a quick dash the rest of the way to the loading dock. From behind the concrete, containers, and industrial machinery, he found a spot to take aim with his anti-material rifle and get a better look.
"What the hell are those?" It was a crowd, but it wasn't a crowd of people. They were huge and ugly looking creatures of different colors all standing at least seven feet tall. Most were only wearing some loose fitting pants and shorts. Some weren't wearing pants at all, revealing they had some human 'characteristics'. They sure as hell weren't 1st or 2nd Gen Super Mutants. The Courier swept his sights over the large crowd, looking at the massive but crude hammers, clubs, and axes they were all carrying.
After a while, he could see a human: A legionnaire riding on a horse on the side of the moving brutes. When his crosshair crossed over him, Six slipped his finger on the trigger, but didn't pull. Back before Chief Hanlon had seen sense and stopped faking intelligence reports, one of the lies he'd told were Legion or affiliated groups using super mutants and trained wildlife like deathclaws. That had been bullshit then, but something like that seemed to be in front of him now. Those things looked like they could take a few bullets and punch a man into a shallow grave. But what were they, where did they come from, and why/how did these Legion looking fucks get them to help? That was the second time he'd asked that question this morning.
Courier Six suddenly sensed footsteps behind him. Setting the rifle down, he pulled a .357 revolver from a strap on the bandoleer going across his chest and spun around.
"Woah, there!" The approaching force proved to be an NCR Ranger, still more than 5 yards away. "Didn't mean to scare you. I didn't expect you to even hear me under that helmet."
"I got good ears." Six lowered the gun. "Sneaking up on a man gets you shot around here."
"In my experience, it ends with me shooting them." The Ranger came up beside him and joined him in scoping out the marching crowd. "What unit are you with? I thought the veteran platoons shipped out weeks ago.
"Not a Ranger, just a wanderer." Courier Six let out a response he'd had to say dozens of times since he got back from the Divide. While the NCR Army and regular Rangers had armor the Republic manufactured, the Veteran Rangers' intimidating black outfits and helmets were pre-war riot armor that had been common with police departments and the military way back then. They didn't own every suit, and there wasn't a law that said he couldn't keep one he found that didn't even have any NCR markings on it.
He'd pried it off the corpse of an NCR trooper that had been on occupation duty in the Divide, but no one needed to know that. NCR sure as hell wasn't going to go in there anytime soon to retrieve the gear and bodies. All of it had been his to take.
"You're the Courier, aren't you?" The Ranger pieced it together quickly.
"Yep." Six nodded his head to the side and back. That was usually the things people said after asking if he was a Ranger. "You seeing this?"
"Yeah. I followed them over here. Looks like they found something that didn't like them. There's a whole lot of Caesar's boys on that plain South of Vegas. I've been watching them since the sun came up. Couple thousand of them have shown up already, and they're building a hell of a camp. I'm Ranger Caren, by the way."
"Just call me Six. Where did they come from?" The two of them watched the marching horde of giants stop near the quarry entrance.
"I don't really know." The Ranger's voice shifted, like he didn't want to keep talking.
"You sound like you know more than you're saying." The Courier didn't take his eyes off the horde.
"I know more, but it's going to sound real crazy."
"Buddy, crazy is the norm out here." Really crazy was all the chaos now safely contained in the Big MT. Any tricks the Legion could pull were just that-tricks.
"There's some new building down there on the plains. It looks like...they're just marching out of it." That did make Six turn away from the road.
"Wait, the Legion has a teleporter?"
"They got something down there."
"A teleporter would make sense." Six nodded to himself. "Those exist, you know." He had one on his belt, in fact. And he knew from a certain someone that there were places other than Big MT that had been working on it prewar. Just one of those amazing things humanity had lost when it decided to fuck itself to near oblivion. "But where did the Legion get one?" It couldn't have been Big MT; the security was too good. The only other place he knew that had been working on it, according to his source, was some place called CIT way out on the East Coast. Too far for even the agile Legion to reach. And according to the Followers, no one in California was even remotely close to the technology the Big MT had. Maybe they found it in a vault? Courier Six had found a ton of crazy stuff in those himself.
"I have no idea." It seemed Ranger Caren really didn't believe what he just said. "They got a lot of new stuff. Looks like they have a bunch of slaves too." Courier Six straightened up. "Don't know where, but it's here with them now."
"Have you radioed this to anyone?"
"Yeah. First thing I did when I found them this morning. I've been sending reports to the Dam every hour. Had to fall back because their camp was getting too close to the mountains. They've been riding these flying animals. I think they're scouts."
"'Riding flying animals'." Courier Six repeated. "Fat thing with wings and a long tail?" He remembered those flying things he'd seen earlier that day. The Ranger nodded. Horses, things that looked like super mutants, and now flying animals. If this was the Legion, they'd gone on a hell of a recrutement binge. "And what do your bosses say?"
"They're 'analyzing it'." The contempt was obvious. If McCarren knew about a Legion camp there, wouldn't they have mentioned it to the patrol back in Sloan? Unless the Dam didn't tell McCarren, either not believing or not wanting to believe the Ranger's reports. Someone somewhere in the chain wasn't giving the right intel, AGAIN. "Other end of that camp is getting closer to the edge of New Vegas. Our patrols had to have seen it by now." This sounded like a giant camp. Too big to be believed, actually. The Courier didn't doubt that the Legion or someone like them was up there. He didn't even doubt that they could've gotten something as advanced as a teleporter. But he did doubt there were that many of them. The Legion's massive camp on the other side of the Colorado had been big enough for 3,000 people-which wasn't even their entire army they'd attacked with- and it would've fit easily on that stretch of plains before the city. He wanted to see it for himself now.
But that would be hard to do with this mass of brutish looking creatures on the road now. The Courier turned to them as that crossed his mind, and he noticed something.
There were two horsemen at the head of the column now, and it looked like they were conversing about something.
In peacetime, the Imperial Army didn't have auxiliary legions. There was no reason to give the demi-races any sort of power or standing. In truth, most of them were already individually stronger than human soldiers even if they didn't outnumber them anymore, and it was against the Empire's interest to draw attention to the fact. But the governors and military commanders in all the provinces often hired them in small numbers to deal with brigands and other small issues. It didn't risk men and they were stupid enough to do it for little pay, or even no pay at all, just plunder.
That was the philosophy that the Imperial Army had when it formed up the auxiliary legions to join the invasion. But to even call these formations legions seemed a farce. They were just masses of smelly, violent, unorganized chaos. Only one Imperial was needed to command them, which in truth just meant pointing them at what they could destroy and having them put down when they strayed out of line. They weren't prestigious positions by any means, but they were positions that needed to be filled, and ones several very young men of the higher classes had volunteered to fill.
Praefecti Tertulas and Petrus were two such young men, neither even 20 years of age. Tertuslas was from the Empire's coastal cities, and the unfamiliar desert was quite the difference to him. Petrus was the 3rd son of a governor of one of the Empire's western provinces. Neither man had any familiarity with the other until the General himself had requested to speak to them.
It was a great honor for the two who expected to just be attached to some other Legion and take orders from its legate, which ballooned to great appreciation when he told them why he needed to speak to them.
Some hideous wild beasts had attacked the army on the edge of the camp. He wanted them to take the roughly 700 orcs and other beasts they had between them and go stamp them out to ensure the safety of their thousands of fellow soldiers. They were both grateful for the important mission, and left to accomplish it immediately.
Pride had quickly turned to stomach twisting unease once they herded their hideous charges to the edge of the camp. The General had told them the Legions had been attacked, but he hadn't mentioned just how many had actually been killed. The number looked to be in the thousands, unbelievably. Even as the auxiliary legions passed the carnage, some grim faced soldiers were still searching for survivors and retrieving the equipment.
They just so happened to pass at the same time a survivor was pulled from underneath the remains of his comrades. He was completely covered in blood and screaming to the heavens, completely unaware of any words being spoken to him. He'd seemingly been driven insane. Both men were disturbed, and maybe even a little apprehensive of what lay ahead. But they pressed on with the duty bound mind of an Imperial soldier.
Now they sat upon their mounts at the mouth of the beasts' lair, cut into the mountains. None were visible, but they were certainly waiting within. "Go forward! Kill those horrible creatures and assert your strength!" For the beastmen, nothing else could be a better battle cry. Like the Imperials, their culture was one that valued raw power, but with far less civility. They wanted to prove themselves stronger, so they charged ahead as one surging mass into the quarry, waving all manners of weapons above their heads as they did.
When Courier 6 and Boone had come to clear out the quarry all those months ago, they'd killed all but seven of the original pack. They'd even killed the pack Alpha Male, but they hadn't killed the pack's matriarch. Even though Deathclaws had been artificially created pre-war to be used essentially as attack animals, they're genetic makeup remained 'wild' enough that they survived in the wasteland as any other animal, just exceptionally more dangerous. They had natural behaviors.
A pack was for the most part a family. The strongest male and female exclusively bred, and the rest of the pack, usually their offspring, endeavor to protect those two to ensure the strongest of their species came into the world. Deathclaws didn't inbreed; if you killed the only genetically compatible members of the pack, they actually might scatter. The Courier had placed a bet on that when he didn't go back to finish the pack, and he'd split that bet on the rest of the pack abandoning their home now that the Alpha Male was dead and couldn't protect them. But even Courier Six didn't win all his bets.
Deathclaw packs weren't always exclusively family. Male deathclaws would join new packs if they sensed the current Alpha Male was close to death or they felt could be challenged. Female and male deathclaws would join new packs just because social contact was coded into their biology. Six and Boone had only left three adult deathclaws in the pack, but they'd left one male that wasn't related to the matriarch. That deathclaw assumed the mantle of Alpha Male, and that was why the pack never abandoned the quarry.
And now they'd had time for their young to grow bigger or into adults, a new litter of baby deathclaws had hatched and followed their mother around, and the mother attentively attended to a new clutch of eggs in its nest. The pack had increased to eleven members by the time the NCR noticed it again, including four babies, but even a baby deathclaw had the strength and size to disembowel a man if approached. And now, one of them had been killed. The entire pack was agitated and alert. It could tell that more intruders were coming into their home, and they were ready for a fight.
The deathclaw that had decimated the legions on the highway had been the pack Alpha. It'd been on the highway that morning guarding two young deathclaws who had ventured out of the quarry for the first time in their lives when the the Saderean cavalry-all 150 of the Legio IX-had ridden upon them, triggering the bloodbath closer to the camp. That same alpha, wounded but still very much alive, was standing close to the quarry entrance, ready to defend its pack by any means necessary.
So when the auxiliaries came rumbling into the quarry, it charged at them with furious intent, and with just one swipe of its massive claws tore open multiple bodies. But the orcs behind those started to swing their weapons, making hard impacts on the deathclaw's head even as it continued to swipe with both claws and cut down several attackers each time. The deathclaw could only focus on the enemies in front of it. More orcs and larger beasts swarmed to the sides and behind it, and suddenly the deathclaw was being attacked on all sides. All of its raw power could not hold back against the numbers. Its stature weakened as clubs and hammers found its legs, and a sudden axe to the side of its face knocked it off of the attack completely. Now it was at the mercy of the auxiliaries, and they gave it no quarter, pounding on it furiously until its blood was splattered in a fine circle around where it had stood.
The strongest of the pack was dead, and there were still over 500 auxiliaries swarming into the quarry. Further in, among the machinery, were most of the rest of the pack: an adult female deathclaw and three adolescents of various sizes. This time, the fighting was more brutal. Instead of focusing on one target, the auxiliaries had to focus on multiple enemies instead of overwhelming one with numbers. They got lucky and one young deathclaw was dispatched by a single mighty blow of a club to its head, but the adult female was vicious, as were the other young deathclaws that bounded around the group, disorganizing it. But again, numbers won out.
The two Praefecti followed at a distance on their horses the whole time, at first perplexed at all the strange structures around the area, and then admittedly horrified at the violence they were witnessing. It truly was the brutality of animals and the lesser races. Over half of the auxiliaries were dead now, but they had killed most of the pack. All that was left now was the matriarch and her babies.
The mother deathclaw was at the very back of the quarry, on all fours and using its body to shield the cave where its current clutch of eggs were nested. It still remembered the last attack on the pack, and it could already tell with its keen senses the rest of its family, minus the babies skittering around its feet, were dead. It was resolved to defend them and the eggs to its death.
The crowd of ugly shock troops trudged deeper into the quarry, directly towards it.
Behind them, their handlers talked. Now that they were inside, it was apparent that this was actually a quarry for limestone. They recognized the limestone, at least, but they still had no idea what the metal structures all around it were. They certainly weren't slave quarters. But it was apparent to them they were succeeding in their mission. They were rather pleased with themselves, not sparing any thought for the hundreds of auxiliary bodies now littering the quarry and getting over the brutality that had previously surprised them.
The orcs and other creatures had surrounded the final deathclaw. They had no sympathy for what it was, but instead they saw an easy target. The mother deathclaw roared defiantly, attempting to scare them off. The babies, cautious but still full of the same killing instinct as the rest of the breed, made fake charges and skittered back towards their mother also in an attempt to get the attackers to scatter.
When the auxiliaries all started to close in at once, the mother deathclaw jumped into action. It sliced at one portion on the attacking horde, then bounded over to another to attack it, trying to keep them away from the nest. It cut down two dozen in a short moment, but it didn't stop it from losing ground. The mother deathclaw, and all of its babies, were suddenly surrounded. The mother swiped through the crowds with ease, and the babies could disembowel a single auxiliary easily, but they were surrounded and quickly losing space to maneuver. The mother deathclaw also caught an axe to the side of its face, not getting embedded, but cutting deep and causing it to stumble. And behind it, one of the babies was brutally smacked into the dirt by a hammer with a sickening cracking sound. The other three made sounds of panic and skittered away, towards the cave.
The sound seemed to abruptly snatch the matriarch out of its stumble. It's head swung over and caught sight of its dead offspring, and something seemed to change in its temperament. In seemingly an instant, it closed in and swiped at the crowd now standing on its deceased child, cutting many down. It raised its head and let about another roar, this one more forlorn. Hammers and clubs impacted it, but it didn't react or move. And when it brought its head back down, the mother deathclaw set out on a killing spree far more ferocious than any other member of the pack had managed. The death of its young had driven it into a grief stricken rage more primal then anything the pre-war government could've programmed. It was determined to kill everything in sight now, and nothing would stop it.
And nothing did. The final adult deathclaw of the pack laid into the attacking horde with seemingly impossible strength. With each lightning fast swipe of its claws, guts and gore soared through the air in every direction. The auxiliaries had surrounded it, pounding and slicing at it with all their might. They killed the other babies, but the matriarch refused to go down. It bled profusely from its face wound. The impacts of the brutish weapons did manage to break the bones in both its arms, but it forced them to move still. Axes and other sharp weapons created deep cuts all over its body, leaking even more blood into the sand, but it did not yield. The number of attackers fell below the triple digits and continued to rapidly fall.
The orcs and other creatures' bravery that had been sustained by their strength in numbers started to ebb. This was a strong opponent, one that they might not be able to overwhelm with numbers. Their immediate reaction was to attack more ferociously, hoping that would turn the tide back in their favor. They fought hard, even severing the beast's left arm and removing the threat of one of its deadly claws. But it wasn't enough either. When only a few auxiliaries remained did they start to hang back and think that it might be time to retreat, but it was too late by then. The deathclaw came to them.
After only a few short minutes of battle, the pack matriarch remained standing, bloodied but alive. None of the creatures that had come to attack its pack remained standing. Through sheer maternal rage, it had done the near impossible and killed most of them. Even if it might not survive its wounds and be able to see its eggs hatch, it had still won the battle.
"Gods…" A decent distance away from where the bloodbath had just occurred were the two praefecti. They were far away, but they could still clearly tell all of their auxiliaries were dead but that monster was grievously wounded. It was frightening to think creatures like that existed in this world, creatures where only a small amount could beat far larger groups of similarly aggressive animals.
"That creature will perish soon from its wounds." Tertulas said. "Surely." That last bit of reinforcement wasn't necessary, but the young man felt compelled to say it.
"Absolutely." Petrus sounded sure. "I saw the way those things moved. Without its arms, it won't be able to hunt. Even if it does survive those wounds, it's sure to starve."
"Yet it still breathes. Would the General accept our reasoning if we were to return with this news?" Tertulas wondered.
"We've ensured these beasts can't attack the camp again. I would say we've fulfilled the task the General gave us." Neither Petrus or Tertulas were concerned about reporting all their auxiliaries were dead. What mattered is no more Imperial lives were lost against disgusting wildlife. They were just orcs, goblins, and other assorted creatures anyway; the Empire was full of them. Both privately hoped this would mean they'd get transferred to a more dignified responsibility.
Over by the cave, the deathclaw was starting to slump to the ground. The bloodlust was fading. It became aware of the pain it was in, its missing and broken arms, and the fact that it had lost sight in one of its eyes. But as its bloodlust faded, its vision in its one good eye started to increase. It's blood-fueled tunnel vision was also disappearing.
And then it saw them. Two living things close to the middle of the quarry. They were big, but that wasn't going to dissuade the deathclaw. Like a fire when oil is poured on, its murderous rage roared back to life. It stood straight on its beaten and battered legs, let out a roar, and started a bipedal sprint towards the creatures that dared to be alive in its home.
"By the Gods…!" The two Imperials turned their horses around and tried to hurry out of the quarry. That monster had just been on the verge of death, now it was behind them. How frightening! But what could they do? If they rode back to camp, they would be committing the same grave mistake as the first scouting parties. They couldn't do that. Maybe...maybe if they stayed ahead of it long enough, it would collapse and die. Their horses were strong, the best stock the Imperial Army had available to it. They could surely do it. One of the men looked behind him, and his already panicked eyes widened further. Despite running on two legs, the creature was still well within sight. It even seemed to be getting closer. Damn!
But they were almost out of this cursed place now. The road was in sight! Petrus glanced behind him again. The creature was even closer now. As he made eye contact with it, it suddenly leaped forward, its one remaining arm stretched out to swipe at him. It missed, thank the Gods, but it was close. His horse had sensed it too and let out an alarmed neigh. The failed strike hadn't caused the monster to lose any ground. Just as the horses took their first steps on the destroyed pavement, it lept for them again. It was much closer this time. Surely, one of the praefecti were about to perish.
Then there was only what could be described as the sound of thunder. Something wet splattered on Petrus' back, and both men heard something crash into the ground behind them. They wouldn't have thought to stop, but the noise had startled their horses, forcing each man to pull them to a stop to get them under control as their own ears rang.
But when they finally did, they looked back to see the beast chasing them was now dead on the ground. It's head had been torn from its body and laid a short distance away from the rest of its body, of which the chest seemed to have been completely destroyed. Right before it harmed them.
"Are you wounded? Tertulas asked. Petrus had to feel himself just to be sure; so intense was the adrenaline spiking in his body, he could have gone unaware of any wounds. But there were none that he could find. The only blood on him was that of the monster they had just escaped.
"No...Whatever struck that creature down spared me. You heard it too?"
"It sounded like thunder." The other young man confirmed that they both had heard the same thing. "And look at it now. Torn asunder. Petrus, I think the Gods themselves just saved us."
"The Gods? They can see us in this world?" There were many in Falmart, all dedicated to different aspects of the world, and many imperials were dedicated to at least one. Most of their bidding and message was spread by their apostles, but stories were still often told of how the Gods themselves regularly aided their followers. Neither could comprehend what had just happened as anything other than an act by some higher power. "Perhaps." Petrus looked up at the slightly cloudy sky. "If the Gods have followed us here, then our victory must already be written."
The 'act of the Gods' the Imperials had mentioned calmly cycled the bolt, chambering a new explosive round. "You should've just let it kill them." Ranger Caren said as Six's finger eased back onto the trigger.
"No, I made the right call there." The Courier was adamant. The shot had been automatic. As soon as he'd seen that deathclaw come charging into view, he'd instinctively pulled the trigger. "That thing was on the warpath. I wasn't going to get another shot."
"He has a point. Those creatures aren't ones to be left alive." Someone new had joined their little observation party: Neil, an actual Super Mutant that had taken up residency at the entrance to Black Mountain. Courier Six had been surprised to see him still here; 'Utbothia', as it had been called, was wiped out last year. But there were apparently still mutants who heard about it through word of mouth and came looking, so he was still there to refer them to Jacobstown instead.
Ranger Caren had been surprised too, even starting to raise his rifle. But Six had been quick to grab the end of the rifle and force it up, with enough strength to even make the ranger lose his balance. "No, no, no." He'd said. "It's rude to point guns at friends."
All the better that Neil joined them, because he had information neither of the men knew. He'd seen the Legion ride by on their horses, over 100 over them supposedly, and he'd seen them run straight into three deathclaws that had been out on the road at the time. They'd killed a bunch of them, let a few escape South, and chased a couple others back North. Two had eventually run back into the quarry. All of them probably wandered into the Legion camp and one of them got killed.
Dead Legion, and a dead deathclaw. That was a good day right there.
Neil had come down for a closer look when he saw that same hoard Six and the Caren did, wondering too if those were supermutants despite being seemingly different. After a bit of conversing, it was still a theory on the table, but none of them were really sure. Six hadn't been wrong; supermutants didn't have genitals. But then, what were they when they were still so similar?
They'd watched for a couple minutes to see if anyone came out. Six updated the Ranger on what was going on in Sloan, and the Ranger explained he was just here to pick up some supplies from Ranger caches they needed elsewhere now. After close to ten minutes, they'd seen the two humans alone come fleeing with a deathclaw right behind them, Courier Six took his shot, and now they watched the two stunned horse riders conversing.
"I don't think any of those other creatures survived." The Courier said unnecessarily. "But shit, never thought I'd be thanking Ceasar's Legion for clearing out a deathclaw infestation. Or whoever they are.".
"I think it's pretty obvious who they are." Ranger Caren didn't seem to share his doubt. "Listen." He pointed to the two legion-looking men. "They're on their own now. The both of us together can take out those horses and capture them and interrogate them."
"Talked to one up the road." Six mentioned. "I hope someone in your army knows Latin, 'cause that might be all these guys speak."
"Latin?" Ranger Caren sounded just as confused as the Courier had been. "Maybe. We've been at war with the legion so long, I'm sure someone picked it up. Road to Vegas is blocked, but we can take them to the Outpost. Are you with me, or not?" In response, the Courier ejected the magazine of explosive rounds and reloaded his rifle with more controllable-but still deadly-normal rounds.
"I got the left one on your go." He lined up the crosshair with the horse's hind end. At this distance, there was nothing to worry about. The Ranger lined up his own sights.
"Alright...Now!" Both guns barked milliseconds apart. Both horses died and their riders fell, but in very different ways. The left one literally fell into a mess of blood and guts as his mount seemed to disintegrate under him. The right's horse made a pitiful sound and then started to tip over after the left side of its head was blown apart. The rider screamed in shock, which quickly turned into a long scream of agony as the horse landed on his leg, crushing it and pinning him to the pavement. Both were confused and in differing degrees of pain.
As the left one scrambled to stand up from the gore, Six and the Ranger ran up. "No,no,no." Courier Six warned, putting one leg on the legionnaires chest to push him back down and the other on his right hand to keep him from grabbing a weapon. "Stay down." He managed to press the barrel of the cumbersome rifle against the man's cheek, causing him to flinch; it was still hot after just firing. "You don't want to know what happens when this fires at close range. I do, but you don't."
"You are now in the custody of the New California Republic." Caren produced a short length of rope from his belt and used it to tie the pinned man's hands before lifting the body of his steed off of him. The damage to his leg was obvious: he wasn't walking for a long time. After disarming the immobile man of his sword, the Ranger walked over and started to restrain the one Six had pinned. He started to babble something neither understood.
"See? Latin." The Courier motioned. The new captive said something else unintelligible, but clearly venomous.
"I'll leave that up to the people who talk to the prisoners."
"Do you two need any help?" Neil had come up too. Before the Ranger could refuse, Six answered.
"Yeah, you can help carry them. I'm going to go ahead and have a look at this camp." He started North.
"You know, I could order you to stop." Aside from an elite branch of the NCR military, NCR Rangers were technically law enforcement officers too, with nationwide jurisdiction. "But from what I hear, you do whatever you want." Six stopped and looked over his shoulder.
"Pretty much." He gave a thumbs up.
"Well, just be careful. Like I said, it's a big camp. I wouldn't pick any fights." With another thumbs up to show he'd heard, Courier Six started up the I-15.
"West?! Again?! Damnit!" Brigadier Moore slammed a fist down on a table. The woman who'd defended Hoover Dam for several years was infamous in the ranks for her no nonsense ways and efficiency at any cost mindset. She pushed her troops hard, but she got results. Good results. She was more than just ruthless, she was smart too. Her promotion to Brigadier General-significant when sexism was starting to rear its head in NCR society-was proof.
But all these traits meant she had a really short temper when things went wrong, especially to factors outside her control. And right now, Brigadier Moore was absolutely pissed.
In the months since the 2nd Battle of Hoover Dam, she'd still been leading her soldiers in battle against the Legion. The majority of Caesar's troops that had retreated had gone deeper into Arizona. They'd sent Rangers and Sharpshooters to harass them all the way back. But things hadn't cooled off around the Dam. One of Caesar's centurions had survived with his forces intact, a real bastard named Gaius Magnus. He'd snagged some of the retreating forces to join him, over 600 men all together. And ever since, he'd been bushwacking NCR forces on the East side of the Dam. Whether he was just trying to delay them from entering Arizona or actually trying to take the Dam on his own was anyone's guess. But he was a slippery bastard that had been grinding on Moore's nerves for a while now.
But today was a really bad day. It had started out with a Ranger calling in to report he spotted a Legion camp South of Vegas. Moore took reports like that seriously. Ever since a few Legion scouts had been shot West of the river a while back, she'd been resolved to make sure they never got across the Colorado again. She had constant patrols, she had sentries at every point of the river that could be crossed, and she made sure to keep all skirmishes with that bastard centurion at least a few miles away from the Eastern bank. It should be impossible.
Even after she got the report, she kept thinking it was impossible too. Moore had been a Ranger herself; she had great trust and respect for her fellow Rangers. But to be blunt, the man's reports quickly became too outlandish to believe. Unbelievably, he claimed there were thousands of Legion soldiers, more than there were probably people in Arizona. He claimed they were all equipped with new weapons and armor, even though Caesar's Legion never had much industry. He claimed they were riding horses and flying creatures, even though no one had seen equines in California in over a century and there sure as hell wasn't any wild avian big enough to fly. Cazadores could, but good fucking luck trying to tame one. Moore wasn't going to embarrass herself by reporting this up or down the chain, but she kept listening to the reports as they came in, trying to figure out the Ranger's angle. Was he compromised? Gone insane? This info needed to be verified.
But then she started getting reports from all her sentries on and around the dam about some things flying in circles over the Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, and Camp Golf and originating from the direction of Vegas. Creatures just like the Ranger had described, and her own people swore they saw people riding them too. While her men tried to shoot one down, Moore spent over an hour making calls to all her forces, trying to find some answer to explain this.
Her forces had re-established a base at Willow Beach on the East side of the river. They hadn't seen Legion in over two days. She called up her other sentries on the river, and they hadn't seen any Legion either. Even a dozen of those fuckers would've been noticed, that's how tight Moore's defenses were. She even made the risky move of breaking radio silence to call several Rangers deeper in Arizona, but they hadn't seen anything either. She twisted the Ranger command's arm to call every single Ranger within 200 miles of Vegas and not a single other one said anything about Legion.
Her defenses were too tight for the Legion to approach from the East. Everything West of here was under solid NCR control. The South was bottlenecked by mountains and The Divide. North would've had to pass by Vegas coming South on the I-15 and someone would've seen them there. There was no possible way-no goddamn way even if they were flying- the Legion could've set up a camp near Vegas like that.
Starting to get at her wits end, Moore called the Ranger that had made the first report personally, demanding every single scrap of information he had and being rather direct with what would happen to him if he was screwing them over somehow. The Ranger swore by his initial reports and then revealed something else, something that he hadn't even believed, which could only mean it was crazy. And it was.
According to that Ranger, there was some kind of new large building on the plain, bigger than a barn even. And he claimed the Legion were marching out of that by the hundreds. He didn't explicitly say what it looked like, but the implication was obvious. Moore had immediately hung up on the Ranger and made a call to OSI, who'd set up their own separate government office now just South of McCarren. When they had the gall to put her on hold, Moore lost her temper and made it clear she'd have someone dragged out of there to talk to her if she had to. Dr. Hildern answered the phone shortly thereafter, and he spoke for the entire Office of Science and Industry when he said something like that was absurd.
The Ranger stood by his reports. Even as she stood there, her men were still shooting at some things flying around out there, meaning at least part of the Ranger's claim was true and that meant the rest very well could be. But there was no plausible explanation for the rest to be true, nothing believable anyway. Something was going on, she didn't know the extent of it, and what she did made No. Fucking. Sense.
That last report of yet another flying beast tipped her over the edge, making her throw her hands up. First she was going to tell General Oliver something was going on, then she was going to call Hsu and ride his ass since that area and the Dam's whole rear security was HIS responsibility and he should've noticed this first, and then she was going to send her own men to check things out because that that was the only way she'd ever be satisfied.
That order got shaken up when Hsu called the dam himself to report something. Moore was quick to snatch the receiver out of the soldier's hand. "Hsu, what the hell is going on in your sector?!"
"Legion infiltrated by air. They have scouts reconing the area on some unidentified flying animals." Hsu sounded calm, as he always did. Moore hadn't always seen eye to eye with her former equal, but she was always admittedly impressed by his professionalism. "A patrol was just wiped out in South Vegas, and another was attacked near Sloan. We think they've set up a camp on the plain South of the city. We're working on ascertaining the situation. We did manage to capture one of their airborne scouts."
"You captured one of them?" Brigadier Moore momentarily put aside the bad news of Hsu confirming the Legion had indeed set up on the West side of the Colorado again. "Find out how they got over the river, Hsu. I don't give a damn how." Moore knew what she was implying, and she didn't care.
"Our medics are treating him now and I'll have him turned over to MPs for interrogation when they're done." Hsu calmly stated.
"Just get me some damn answers." It was good news, but it did little to calm her down.
"We'll radio in when we have something. Whatever those flying creatures are, the Legion taught them to attack people on the ground. It might be difficult, but we'll try and recon the city South of McCarren to look for traces of them. The Courier is looking at things around Sloan for us." The Courier. Just mention of him was enough to drive Moore's mood further into the red.
A whole lot of people in the NCR might look at him as a hero, but she knew better. He was a good fighter, she wouldn't deny that; he'd wiped out half the Great Khans and sent the rest scattering far away from where they'd ever bother the NCR again, not to mention his one on one battle with Legate Lanius. He'd supposedly thrown his hat in with the Republic, but Moore didn't believe that; he'd undermined her at every term when it came to wrapping up loose ends around the Mojave, with that treaty with the Brotherhood being the biggest slap in the face. All the other 'good deeds' he did were just misdirection, and the public and the politicians ate it up because they wanted to see a hero. That lunatic was out for himself, and Moore wasn't going to be fooled.
She'd almost lost focus on her conversation with Hsu over that. "Belay that order." She told him. Technically, she didn't have command over him, but she trusted he'd listen to her. "There is a camp there, one of my Rangers called it in. We were just about to contact you over it." Moore was not amiss to the fact that this warning might've helped save some lives if it had gotten to the New Vegas garrison sooner, and she was kicking herself quite hard for it. Officers made bad calls in the field sometimes, and they had to live with the guilt. And Moore would, once she made sure every one of those Legion bastards were dead. "The numbers are unconfirmed, but the Ranger was reporting over a thousand." She was grossly understating those numbers, but that was just too much to ask her to believe. Besides, the threat level was essentially the same whether it was one thousand or eight thousand. "If they're amassing there, it's probably to attack you."
This was starting to make more sense. After the beating they took, the Legion had no hope of taking the Dam. But Vegas was a lot less defended though, but with a lot more citizens. If they overran McCarren, there'd be a slaughter all around the rest of the city. It was exactly the kind of underhanded strategies Moore should've expected. Hsu probably didn't notice them before because they were building up before attacking.
The question of how remained unanswered. The Ranger had said they were marching out of a building. The only possibility Moore could even come up with was it was the exit to a tunnel. The river canyon was too steep to cross in so many points, but maybe it was possible to bore into the canyon from near the bottom and build a sloping tunnel upwards into the West side of the river. Of course, such a tunnel would have to be over 30 miles long to come out there from the canyon, but Moore couldn't think of anything else right now.
"Just reinforce your defenses. I'll report this to General Oliver and we'll figure out how to deal with it." She told him. Hsu and all his men were in danger over there, and that was their best option. She had more forces, so she knew it it was really her responsibility to deal with this enemy force. But pulling back all those defenses she set up was going to hurt, and that Gaius bastard was probably going to take advantage of it, if he wasn't already on the NCR's side of the river. "You just keep that base under our control."
"Understood." Hsu didn't ask any questions. His commitment was always to his men above the conflict. Moore cared for the soldiers under her command too, but war was war. But she knew he would make sure his men, and that base, didn't fall. And right now, that was about the only proactive thing the Army could do.
"Damnit." She set the receiver down and stepped away from the radio. "Did we shoot any of these things down yet?" She asked the room. Everyone made themselves busy for a few moments, and the world came down that they had shot down two, but one had done in Lake Mead and the other into the Canyon. That was better than nothing. Moore went to inform General Oliver.