Chapter 15 Part 1: Double or Nothing
House dismissed me from his quarters. Said he had something to think about. I went to my suite and prepared myself for combat and grabbed equipment we would need to make this casino a defend-able fortress. I first had to hook up the radio to the broadcast tower on the roof to contact our allies in the area for their parts of the defense. I tied the ham radio to my back, went to the cocktail lounge and took a crowbar and smashed one of the window panels. I threw a grappling hook over the roof and latched it to the broadcast tower. As I was about to climb out, my assistant, Veronica, hopped out of the elevator and asked me what was going on.
"I leave for two days to find another C-Finder and you lose your damn mind! What's going on boss?"
"No time to explain. NCR reentering with Legion support. I need you to get to Helios immediately. Power up Archimedes II, not I." She looked scared, but she nodded confidently and reentered the elevator. With that, I scaled the rope and I went to the broadcast tower, unlatching the hook in the process. After hooking up the radio, I aligned it with my emergency signal. My allies all knew that if this signal was on, the shit was about to hit the fan. Within minutes, the radio was bustling with activity.
"This is Elder McNamara. Who is transmitting?" The brotherhood were the first ones to respond.
"This is the Head of Oz. The bears are coming for a second hunt with the Romans. This hunt is of the entire Mojave, but more focused at dealing with the man behind the curtain. McNamara, I need you to arm your troops and when the NCR arrives at McCarran, ambush them. Also, send reinforcements to Helios One. Veronica will be arriving shortly. Rig explosives at McCarran if they have not already arrived. Make it easier for yourselves."
"Same one-track mind as always. See you after the dust settles I hope, Paladin."
"Same here." The brotherhood went offline right as Papa Khan turned on his radio in Red Rock Canyon.
"This is the man in the canyon. Whatever you want, spit it out Courier."
"I need you to hold off NCR reinforcements coming from both east and west. This is our final stand. And this time, the Mojave will walk away victorious, and Bitter Springs and Nipton will be avenged. I don't care how you do it, do you think you can?"
"Think, Can, and Try are three entirely different things. We think we can't, but we can. And even if we fall short, we will try until we're all gone. NCR reinforcements will not make it into the city. You have my word."
Soon after the khans deactivated the radio, old friends who have hidden away for decades spoke up. "This is Pete, artillery master for the Boomers, who is contacting us via this emergency signal, and how can I be of assistance?"
"Well I'll be damned, how did you make artillery master? Last time I remember you just a small little kid telling me a story."
"Well old man, things changed over the years. You haven't stopped by in what? Ten years? What do you need outsider?"
"I need you to give assistance to our forces facing off against legion and NCR at the Dam. Use the howitzers to hold off reinforcements. And if we've already lost the dam, I'll be frank, I want you to pile into that B-29 and bomb the hell out of them."
"You're asking us to do what we do best. And considering everything you did for us, we'd be honored."
Finally, Freeside's head king, the king, tuned into the signal.
"This is the king, how can we be of service?"
"Hey king. Listen we're about to have a_"
"Well, well, what do we have here? A trooper boy in my town? What are you here for?"
I heard something drop and then a tussle. Seconds later, I heard an explosion. Not from the radio, from outside. I looked out onto Freeside and watched fire spill out from The King's domain. House was right, the time for civility has passed. My fear turned into hate, now this is personal. The King was an old friend, a close one, dare I say. I turned off the radio and scaled back down through the window. From there I rigged up 3 makeshift turrets out of miniguns. I ran down to the casino and planted plenty of C-4 on the main casino floor. I busted out of the door, rigging explosives everywhere. I even hooked up the Omertas' old chlorine bomb. No one is going to walk out of here without more than their fair share of scars. I went to the main power box that all the power in New Vegas runs through and I opened it up, disengaging all power to the strip other than the Lucky 38 and the neon lights of the strip. It was a sight to behold the strip, completely abandoned. I heard a ruckus outside the gate.
"It's time I suppose."
A legionary appeared behind me, "Yes it is."
I grabbed his Machete, did the ranger take-down and ran his blade through his leg. I spoke to him, "Give the rest the message that if any of them want to walk away, they'll give me the man who killed The King." I left a C-4 block at his head to assure he wouldn't try anything. I ran inside the Lucky 38, and returned to the penthouse. The doors were once again open and House was still standing there, as if time had stopped. He didn't look at me, and made small chit chat.
"Heavy cloud cover tonight."
"Hey you got the time?"
"About 8 o'clock"
"Hey listen, I'm sorry about your friend. But regardless you were always one to go above the call of duty when you were motivated by outside events. Maybe we can give these assholes a fight to remember."
"They're outside our walls. Are you ready?"
"Been ready for years."
I turned around to Victor. His body had grown rusted over the years. Hell, he still had the scorch mark from where got caught by the weak end of a Mini-Nuke explosion. Regardless, that damn smiling cowboy never left his screen. Used to get on my nerves, nowadays it was just a refreshing change of pace.
"You need something pardner?"
I held out my hand and said, "Yes I do. I need to thank you for saving my life and everything else you've done for me over the years." Victor went from the slight bend in his back to standing straight up and he shook my hand with his robotic arm. I said to him, "I'm sorry that this is goodbye pal."
House beckoned me over, and he had his binoculars in his hand. He handed them to me and point to the gate.
"Looks like you left a good impression on the rangers kid." I looked through the old binoculars and saw something that shocked me. Chief Hanlon was yelling at Hsu for something.
"Man what I'd do for a pair of ears down there..."
"I could have you as an employee for the rest of your life with those words, but one hundred caps for our assistance in this fight will do." I spun around to find Gloria Van Graff behind me, with a hand-held radio.
"Where it being broadcast from?"
"Chief Hanlon himself. You made quite the impression on him or something. He asked me to deliver it to you."
I quickly handed her a sack of more than a hundred caps, and she turned on the radio. It drowned with static, but I could hear Hanlon's rage over it.
"Dammit, you can't take this by force! You're already weak as it is,taking this will just weaken you further, if you CAN claim it. Just let the Mojave be as it is."
"I invested over 20 years into the Mojave campaign. Hanlon, you are ordered to stand aside."
"We are the desert rangers, we take orders from no mere man. Not anymore, consider the Unification treaty disbanded. We are done here, let's get moving boys."
A few seconds passed in-between the argument and the next thing I heard from the radio. "Hanlon to the courier, can you hear me?"
I was speechless for a moment and then said, "Hanlon, this is the courier. How may I be of assistance?"
"I don't need your assistance, but I would like you to know that you now have the desert rangers' full support."
"Well, in that case I need you to help tie up some loose ends that I've been too busy to fine-tune. I need your troops to evacuate Freeside, assist the Khans in holding off reinforcements, and lastly, I need a good sized group to assist the brotherhood at McCarran, they tend to deal with problems head on, so we need some snipers out there."
"Well I'll be, you must have a lot of informants in the NCR to be well prepared enough to just have me wrapping up small things like that. Anyway, the NCR should be detonating your front door open in 3...2...1."
Sure enough, Hanlon was right. The second his radio went dead the entire Casino shook from the explosion. I looked down below to see a mass of NCR troops charging through the gate to an abandoned strip. I saw House emotion change from one of thought, to one of grimness and anger, like them barging through the door sparked something in him. He picked up his bottle of whiskey and stuffed a cloth on it beckoning victor over simultaneously.
"Victor, light this with your Gatling laser, will you?" Sure enough he did as he was told and it ignited. With that, he handed it to me. "We need to teach this assholes whose land they're treading on. This is the literal double or nothing. We win, we walk away possibly having claim the Legion and NCR under the symbol of the lucky 38; we lose, we die."
"Same as always." I threw the Molotov through the window and watched it land on some poor schmuck of a soldier. Seconds later the lights dimmed on the strip. They killed the power from Hoover Dam, and also apparently the substations we had running. After the light went out I used the Binoculars and saw legion scaling the walls. I ran over to the bookshelf where I kept my favorite weapon of mass destruction. At least the wasteland equivalent. My old Tesla-Beaton Prototype that I recovered, interestingly enough from the same crashed vertibird that House salvaged sat lying there. I picked it up and mounted it on my shoulder. I told Gloria to grab the the ammo box next to the doorway. It was filled with electron charge packs I had collected over the years. I always had the feeling I'd be holed up in the penthouse for a final stand against someone. I was about to use it to deal with a large clump of soldiers scaling an old metal fence. And then, the big chess pieces arrived in our streets. A vertibird landed in front of the casino, carrying Caesar and Kimball. Hsu ran up to them, and so did a face, I had not seen in many moons. The Legate was alive, and had scaled the fence when I wasn't looking. But at the moment I had something else to worry about.
"Gloria! Max Charge ECPs now!" She knew what I was talking about and changed the ammo type over to max charge so we might be able to deal with this quickly. After I was armed, I took a shot at the vertibird that was start it's engines back up. We weakened it defenses, but it was still starting to leave. We tried to fire again before the thing got of the ground, but the damn Tesla cannon jammed. And then out of nowhere, I hear a deafening rifle shot right next to me, and I look with my binoculars and see the pilot is missing a skull. I looked beside me, expecting it to be Gloria, but rather, the man behind the curtain had fired the first shot with my old Anti-materiel Rifle.
"Even back before the war, it was a good idea to know how to use a gun effectively around here." He said as the vertibird spun wildly out of control and crashed into the old ambassador's office of all places. "Had that happened when they were still in here, I would have been even happier." With that, they firing small explosives at us at us. House ran to his desk and slammed down a button and they stopped firing at us and instead started firing at the base of the casino. I looked down to see securitrons slaughtering the soldiers. With that, I decided to scare the troops a little. I ran down to the cocktail lounge and activated my turrets and grabbed the detonator to my fireworks. I pressed the detonator down and watched the monorail station explode in fiery display. The troopers down below backed up towards the Tops when I pressed the second trigger for the explosives rigged at the casino's door. But something happened, the explosives didn't explode, and rather a man stepped out. I couldn't see his face because I didn't have the Binoculars. He didn't fire at anyone, and no one fired at him. But then he lit a cigarette, dropped it on the ground, and then a radio signal came through.
It was silent for a minute and then all the man said was, "Ring-a-ding baby. Ring-a-ding." suddenly a bright red spark exploded on the ground where he had dropped the cigarette, and the man stood in front of the doors. The Tops casino exploded in its entirety, not just the small amount I had managed to rig up before they charged the gates. Fire poured around him but did minimal damage to him. House ran up behind me with Gloria and handed me the binoculars and when I looked, I was amazed to find who it was. It was Benny. I didn't understand how he had done it. I shot him, in the head, upwards of 15 years ago. Oh the irony. My entire world was upside down right now, probably like his was all those years ago. I sat down and double checked through the binoculars and he was gone just like that. I asked house if he had seen who it was as well.
"Kid, I don't know how he did it, but that was Benny alright. But how he did it is irrelevant at the moment. We need to worry about the mass of soldiers ready to kill us, instead of the one who is on our side."
Right at that moment, a small party of troops arrived in the room via an elevator with two old men that I knew well.
"Well well, this is an rather strange sight... Vulpes Inculta and Ambassador Dennis Crocker. How did you get past our little army?"
"They allowed us to pass because we're the negotiators."
House spoke to them in his usual tone, "Well then, allow me to put up the first roadblock, I refuse to negotiate with anyone other than Caesar and Kimball." He grabbed Gloria's plasma pistol and shot one of the troopers. "That's the only warning shot you'll get."
"We won't risk the lives of the mighty Caesar, or president Kimball for your silly amusement."
"Fine then. Do it." I followed orders and detonated the explosives in the Ultra-Luxe and Gomorrah simultaneously. The entire casino shook and knocked the troopers off their feet.
House's anger climbed, he grabbed Crocker's collar in his hands and held him up, with a mad glint in his eyes "Do you see now? I'm not about to deal with some measly underlings! Now bring me your superiors or I'll destroy the very ground beneath their feet! I've already done unrepairable damage to my own casinos. Imagine what hell I will wreak on you! This is MY city! You will not come in hear and make demands, especially when my troops are decimating yours!" The last time I saw him like this was when we first met. I was trying to get more money out of him for the platinum chip, on account of being shot in the head and all. When he offered me 1000 caps, I knew good and well that it was worth more and I told him I'd hold onto it. He nearly had his robots turn me into Swiss cheese. This has been the first time in over 15 years since he got legitimately angry. He threw Crocker at the others and told them to get out of his casino.
"Also, bring me the soldier that bombed Freeside. I want a word with him." The NCR in the group nodded fearfully and scrambled for the elevator. The Legion troops looked at us with a sarcastic smirk, and walked casually until I fired off my shotgun. After we saw them exit, we returned to the penthouse, taking the radio with us. When we got back, I activated the radio and tried to get a hold of Hanlon.
"Alright, kid. Freeside has been evacuated and we saved as many of the kings as possible. My teams are holding off reinforcements on both sides and my best snipers have arrived at McCarran. I have my personal squadron left, where do you want us?"
I thought for a moment and realized that we still had a large group of rangers in the basement. "Hanlon, I need you to break into vault 21 and take the subbasement routes into the Lucky 38 basement. At that point, I need you to wake up the captive rangers that we have and get topside and help us thin these numbers a bit. You don't have to kill NCR, even if your just sniping Legion troops off, everything helps. But I can understand if you don't want to kill NCR, them being your own men at one time."
House snatched the radio from me and spoke into it, "No actually I can't have you being here when the fail-safe happens, you are to get your soldiers from the basement and evacuate the strip and get outside the Freeside gates just to be safe. That goes for anyone else whose on our side listening on this frequency. Your orders are to keep your distance from Freeside and the strip, while the walls are indestructible, it's better to be safe than have any unnecessary damage done. Take it from someone who knows."
He handed me back the radio and I changed the broadcast frequency to the Helios One intercom transmitter. "Veronica, are you there?"
"Yeah boss what do you need?"
"I need you to get to the tower, and adjust the Archimedes II laser coordinates for 36º 10' 30" N and 115º 8' 11", got it?"
House grabbed my shoulder and said, "Why are you giving her the coordinates of the Lucky 38?"
"Because we are going to need power to activate your fail-safe aren't we?"
"Okay fair enough. Veronica, how long will take Archimedes to power up?"
"I'm assuming this House, but it will be ready in an hour and a half. Which means the laser will strike the casino at precisely 10:04 PM. That should produce the amount of electricity needed to power this fail-safe, and probably most of the strip for a brief moment. According to the current reading, it has 1.21 gigawatts of electricity stored up since it hasn't been used in a few years."
"Ok then, I guess we will see you after the fireworks."
"See you then boss."
The radio went offline and the elevator dinged. We turned around and saw only 3 men. President Kimball, the might Caesar, and a trooper who had bandages on his hands.
Caesar spoke first, "This? This is what handed us our asses at the dam? An old man and his subordinate!" his anger rose.
Kimball calmed him down, "Caesar if we don't cooperate both the NCR and Legion will be gone in a matter of years. Let's be nice, at least for now." Caesar grumbled and calmed down.
I spoke up, "Look, we are prepared to allocate 25% of the Dam's energy to the legion and 10 percent of the strip's funds. And for the NCR, we are prepared to offer securitrons as assistance in dealing with the Enclave out east. In exchange, you leave now, and leave me the man who killed the King. If you will not accept that offer we have nothing to talk about."
Kimball was furious with our offer and nearly pulled out the .357 in his pocket. Caesar grabbed the revolver, apparently satisfied by my offer.
"Have you lost your mind? If we take them out now, we can have all of both."
House spoke up, confident of his actions, "Look, we already have ambushed McCarran Airport, and your reinforcements are being held off by the Khans and the Boomers who have probably turned your men on the dam into artillery practice. If you kill me, the AI of the securitrons will hunt you down in my territory until every last one them falls, and even then, the independent factions of New Vegas will stay that way until we all are gone. So go ahead. Kill me. But the House always wins, and Vegas will always be free." He gave a big sarcastic grin after his speech.
I looked at him for few minutes and contemplated his original idea and said, "Ok then, since Kimball won't negotiate, we'll do this the way , Caesar, kill Kimball and the Dam is yours." It didn't take two seconds for Caesar to run his Machete through Kimball's torso and thrust upward. After that was done, I knocked Caesar unconscious and grabbed Kimball's body, complete with the machete, and chucked it out the window and let the carnage ensue. It didn't take 2 minutes for NCR to start taking shots at Legion. And then I remembered the soldier, I looked at the bandages, recently applied.
I strolled over to him, cracking my knuckles, "So...you're the one that killed the King? You don't look like you have the stomach to detonate and explosive right next to you." I grabbed Kimball's .357 and stuck the barrel up to his face. "Give me one reason why I should spare you. And keep in mind the King was a close friend, so think long and hard before you answer."
He didn't have anything to say at first, but then he muttered out, ready to die, "It's just business." With that, I snapped. I put down the revolver, smiled a big grin which quickly turned into a psychotic snarl. I lifted him off his feet, took him to the window, stepped out onto the ledge, looked at him for one moment and wrapped my hand around his skull.
"I'll show you just business." I lifted him over the ledge and crushed his skull in one quick move. Blood and gray matter showered on my clothes. I climbed back into the window. House was standing there with the radio.
"It's McNamara."
I snatched the radio, "Yeah, McNamara?"
"We took McCarran Airport. Minimal casualties. How are things on that end?"
"Good. We killed Kimball, Caesar is unconscious, and the Legion and NCR are trying to destroy one another."
"And you needed us why? Excellent work Paladin."
"Thanks for the status update, tell your troops to keep their distance from the strip and Freeside. I can't thank you enough for all you've done."
"Well I'll keep you updated on anything going on out here. McNamara out."
Suddenly I got another person on the radio frequency, "This is Pete and the rest of the Boomers talking to you from inside a B-29 bomber plane! We are prepared for lift-off, all we need is your green light."
"What's the condition of the Dam, Pete?"
"The thing is crawling with NCR and Legion, they're dug in deep. This will be our last chance to decimate the troops unless you can live with the entire dam destroyed."
"NO! We cannot have that! You are ordered to go! Good luck to you Pete!"
"Thanks outsider, it means a lot."
With that, I deactivated the radio and checked my old watch. 9:54, we had ten minutes.
"Kid, we need to get to hangar now! I need you to rig the engine in the vertibird for a little bit more power. If we want to escape the blast, we're going to need to be going 88 miles an hour, Vertibirds generally can only go up to 60." House said to me.
We ran to the hangar at the top of the casino as the two armies continued to fight one another. When we got to the hangar, I grabbed a thermic lance and opened up a pair of panels on each of the vertibird's engines. Using some Abraxo, I cleaned the sludge off the key gears and replaced a few broken gears with a few pieces of scrap, lastly I tethered a extremely long piece of cord to the vertibird from a connection to the casino so when the laser struck, it would give us a little boost. Within 2 minutes, the thing was ready to go. I hopped into the driver seat and tried to start the thing, but it stalled. I had to try two more times after that, and it finally started on the fourth try. I flew the vertibird as fast as I could, but all I could get in way of speed was around 75. And then it struck. Through all the cloud cover and darkness, this piercingly bright light struck the casino and gave us the boost we needed. We were right outside the strip gates when Gloria noticed we had unexpected company. I looked out and saw the mighty Caesar with a rusty machete, burnt slightly from the laser, pulling himself along the cord.
"House can you fly a vertibird?"
"Kinda."
"Good enough, I have to go deal with the mighty Caesar, take the controls." I leapt out of the seat and opened the cockpit door and looked at Caesar, and he yelled to me,
"Don't you see you fool! We could have built a new Rome and brought back the empire!"
I pulled out a old .44 Magnum I had received from a friend and only used on special occasions, loaded a shot, and aimed it at him. "If I miss, than you live, if I don't, well the result is obvious." I took the shot, and missed purposefully. Instead the bullet hit the cord and broke it. I saw him land in outer Freeside. Just as we crossed the outermost gate, House's fail-safe went off. The top of the lucky 38 was blown off but that was the only structural damage. Instead, it was just this sweeping wave of energy that swept through the strip and Freeside. It took me a minute to realize what that actually was; it was a hydrogen bomb. I didn't event know one even still existed. I was speechless for quite a few minutes and then all I could mutter out was, "That was some serious shit."
House said to me, "The same could be said for that lighting strike kid." And then, a very weak radio signal came through the damaged vertibird's radio.
"This is Pete, we have in conjugation with the Khans and Rangers, reclaimed Hoover Dam with minimal damage and casualties on our side, can't say the same for them."
"All right, we'll be there immediately. Nice work everybody. Vegas still stands."