Chapter Five
Hank Camry
April 23, 2284 (Local calendar)
Somewhere in Nevada
The bounty notice had been up for a week by the time Hank saw it and the targets, a raider gang responsible for terrorising and attacking various farms and homesteads in the Mojave's western reaches, had only added to their list of crimes which changed the notice from capture to kill, though not for the first time Hank had to wonder why all such bounties weren't just put down as kill from the very start.
No matter how many gangs he and the other people working for the newly established Mojave Bounty Offices took down, more filled the void, which meant an ever-expanding need for jails and prisons to hold them, and people to staff them which was still an issue for the NCR that, even after defeating the Legion and declaring the Mojave secure, continued to face a manpower shortage.
The problem lay in their newly opened front inside Legion territory soaking up bodies and war wear senators successfully lobbying to downsize the army by around twenty percent, thinking the threat from the east was dealt with, and though while most of those returned to civilian life were the old, wounded or conscripted, the jobs they had filled remained and had to be done by troopers who already had tasks of their own to carry out.
Hank had seen what became of correctional facilities that were understaffed and overcrowded, having dealt with the Powder Gangers during his first few days and weeks in the Mojave, and knew that a second generation could well come into being if the mistakes of the past were repeated.
It was a concern he had expressed several times to the head of the bounty offices and one they shared, but the problem lay in actually getting the politicians so far removed from the realities of life on the frontier to listen and understand. The closest they or anyone in their office came to it was reading about the Mojave in itemised reports, assuming they even did that.
So far, life in the Mojave hadn't changed all that much other than the looming threat of the Legion now being a distant memory. The army was still spread too thin to patrol the region, forcing them to once again rely on people like Hank to do the work instead though they, too, were hardly numerous enough to provide security to every isolated settlement and farm that filled the wasteland, just like the place Hank was approaching.
It appeared as he broached a hill, a small compound consisting of a large shack, barn and small shed, with a pen for some brahmin and bighorners off to one side, though after the raiders had visited it everything was just a charred ruin. Smoke still rose from a select few places and the livestock on the farm was lying dead on their sides, surrounded by clouds of flies whose incessant whining was the only sound in the air.
Several carbonised skeletons were located in the barn, two of which were small enough to have been children, clustered around what had been a central support column before it collapsed during the fire, and a few dozen yards from the barn was the only intact human body Hank could see. It was that of a young women, her clothes torn to the point of not being there, and covered from head to toe in cuts and bruises.
At a guess Hank would have said she was either the farmer's wife or eldest daughter, and that she had been brutalised by the raiders whilst the dying screams of her family filled the air before being choked to death, her killers moving on to continue their spree elsewhere. It was a grisly scene but one Hank had seen before many times, so there was no solemn vow of avenging the girl and her family being made out loud.
They were dead, for starters, and he had already committed to killing the raiders after accepting the contract. Seeing this just affirmed his belief that any and all bounties on raider gangs shoulder be marked as kill orders right from the start, so Hank moved on from the ruined farm and resumed his pursuit of the raiders as they headed north, passing by several other spots they had hit.
Each told the same story of the inhabitants being captured and corralled into a single location as one of their number, usually the women, was treated as a plaything whilst their friends and family were burned to death just yards from them. Hank counted upwards of thirty people dead by the time he reached the latest farm, this one still ablaze which suggested the raiders weren't too far away.
Smoke drifted across the land as Hank drew his marksman carbine and approached at a slow pace, sweeping his gaze from side to side but saw nothing living that was moving. As with the others, the brahmin and bighorners were dead in their pens and not too far from the barn was the still body of a woman who looked barely out of her teens.
The raiders had finished with her and strangled her to death, leaving her to stare up at the harsh Mojave sky with glassy eyes that were raw from crying. Hank took a moment to close them before making for the nearest rise, a small hill, and when he reached it he scanned the horizon for any sign of movement. A longshot but the fires were still burning, meaning the raiders couldn't be too far away.
He strained his eyes and looked north and was rewarded with the vague, indistinct shapes of five or six people moving away from him. They were close to two miles away by his estimate, which was hardly anything. He was travelling light, wearing only reinforced leather armour and carrying just his marksman carbine and a small pack, and had the endurance necessary to maintain a quicker speed than the raiders who, he guessed, were walking at a more relaxed pace.
As far as they knew, there was nobody hunting them and neither were the farmers they preyed upon in any hurry to go anywhere. They could afford to take their time, especially as the Mojave's climate was a harsh place. If they pushed too hard they wouldn't have enough energy when it came time to enjoy themselves.
Hank put this slower pace to good use as he slowly closed the gap over the next hour until the raiders were just a few hundred metres away, the vague shapes resolving into five distinct people clustered in a loose group. They were all wearing the ramshackle armour typical of raiders, exposed skin grimy, and carrying a mixture of cowboy repeaters and caravan shotguns, none of which were in the hands of anyone.
He closed the gap a little more then dropped into cover behind a rock, centring the sights of his carbine onto the back of a raider with one of the repeaters, pulling the trigger. The raider seemed to pitch forward as the round struck home, dead centre mass, and the remaining four jumped in alarm following the sudden movement, spinning around on hearing the gunshot.
They began reaching for their weapons but one would be too slow, dying just as their hands gripped the stock of their gun courtesy of another shot from Hank. They tumbled to the ground as the last three got their guns to bear on him, all of them caravan shotguns he was well out of range of.
Either the raiders didn't know this or were too amped up on adrenaline and whatever chems they were on them to remember, each of them unloading both barrels at the defiladed Hank who ducked behind his rock on reflex, popping back up to take aim at the third raider and down them with a quick double-tap, leaving just two raiders behind who in the process of reloading.
They looked to their dead buddies and assessed the situation, each coming to a different conclusion over what needed to be done. The first turned tail and ran away from Hank, realising he had them outgunned and outmanoeuvred, whilst the second seemed to abandon all semblance of rationality, choosing to charge him instead.
The only problem with that was Hank was still a few hundred metres away and the fastest human alive, who this raider was not, would still need twenty or thirty seconds to cover it. He had time enough to aim at the other raider, fire, hit them somewhere that sent them to the ground, and then take aim at the raider rushing him, ending him with a trio of rounds to the chest.
With that the fight was over and silence fell over the area, Hank cautiously emerging from behind the rock to approach the downed raiders with his carbine still kept at the ready. Though all of his targets had fallen to the floor there was no guarantee they were actually dead, but just badly wounded or playing possum until he came close and let his guard down.
He stopped by each of the raiders and put another round into each of them for good measure, the exception to this being the second-to-last raider he had shot as they ran away. His round had hit them low down in the back, roughly where their liver was, and the ground beneath them was thick with blood as they tried to crawl away, one hand vainly clamped to the wound in an attempt to slow the bleeding.
Hank holstered his carbine but drew a 9mm pistol instead, holding it down by his side as he approached the raider who continued to try and crawl away for a few seconds more, only to give up when he realised he wasn't getting away from him.
'Just fuckin' do it, man,' the raider said. 'Fuckin' put a bullet in me.'
'It would be the merciful thing to do,' Hank said.
'Yeah,' the raider said, only to start laughing a few moments later when no shot rang out. 'Oh, fuck, man, are you gonna just let me bleed out like this?'
'Any reason why I shouldn't?' Hank said.
The raider laughed again. 'Oh, it's gonna be like that? Huh? Because me and the boys did all that shit to them farmers, you ain't gonna show me no kindness, neither.'
'Sounds fair to me,' Hank said.
The raider gave a mirthless chuckle and struggled to flip himself over, so he was looking up at Hank, and fixed him with a crooked grin as he said, 'Like you're any better, letting a guy you shot in the back bleed out. Don't think me and the boys didn't do that, either.'
Hank crouched down. 'I don't recall beating and raping any young girls recently, or setting fire to their families. Do you?'
'Whatever you have to tell yourself, man,' the raider said.
He managed to summon enough strength to bring his hand up and flip the bird at Hank, as though it were some brazen act of defiance in his final moments, before it fell limply into his lap as life finally left his body. Hank was unmoved by the gesture as he holstered his pistol and drew a knife, using it to sever one of the raider's fingers as proof of death.
It was a somewhat grisly act but tame compared to the first time he had hunted a bounty for the NCR, back when a head had been needed for proof of death, but then again they had been high profile cases where confirming the target was well and truly dead was a must, and simply handing in a finger was no certainty of the fact.
He did the same for the other four raiders and stowed them in a leather pouch, ready for delivery back to the Mojave Bounty Offices, then stripped the bodies of everything else they had of value. Caps, chems, ammo, their best guns, anything that Mick and Ralph might want to buy, Hank shoved it into his pack.
Finished, his stood and began making his way back to Freeside, not even bothering to give the raiders a second look.
Hank Camry
April 24, 2284 (Local calendar)
Outer Vegas
The Mojave Bounty Offices was located in a drab looking building that, before the Great War, had been an office of another kind whose purpose was lost to time but the internal layout remained more or less the same. The foyer had a reception desk where a pair of secretaries sat, each with a terminal to help with the seemingly never-ending clerical work, and a small waiting area for people coming to either claim a bounty or start the paperwork to establish one.
Behind them were a plethora of desks that sat the officials who actually dealt with all things bounty related, ranging from not just issuing payments and tracking which targets had been claimed but reviewing and issuing licences to aspiring bounty hunters, a newly implemented system that irked many of the old hands but was deemed as a necessity by the NCR, if only to ensure some measure of accountability on a profession that revolved around the capture and, sometimes, execution of criminals.
Hank had been one of the first to receive a licence from the office, if not the first, and most of the people who worked there were well acquainted with him by that point, including one of the receptionists who flashed him a coy smile as he approached. They had gotten to know each other over breakfast several times, usually after spending the night before on the town in some of Freeside and New Vegas' more upscale clubs.
'I'll let the boss know you're here,' she said.
'Thanks, doll,' Hank said.
He walked past the desk without slowing towards an office at the back of the building, sharing the occasional hello with some of the officials who weren't engrossed in their work, knocking once on the office's door before pushing it open. Inside he found Gene, the man in charge of the office, sat with both feet up on his desk and reading through a thick file that bore NCR Army markings on the cover.
Before leading the Mojave Bounty Office he had been a captain in the army's military police, earning a reputation as a keen investigator but one who would, when it suited him, cut corners to get a confession. He had never explicitly broken any rules, only bent them, but it gave his superiors pause enough to keep him from getting an honourable discharge when his time in uniform came to an end, receiving a general discharge instead.
'So returns the mighty Courier,' Gene said. 'Hunt go okay?'
'Well enough,' Hank said, dumping the pouch on the desk.
Gene put the file away and reached for the pouch, opening it up to see the five fingers contained within. He nodded and pulled out a plain manilla envelope, tossing it Hank's way. Inside was a thousand dollars, the bounty, and as Hank transferred the cash to his wallet Gene reached into a desk drawer to pull out a bottle of whiskey and two glass, pouring them both a measure.
'To another group of scumbags gone from the wastes,' Gene said, clinking his glass against Hank's.
They both downed their drinks in one and Gene poured another, larger measure as he said, 'So, anything special to report about this group?'
'No,' Hank said, shaking his head. 'Just your average, run of the mill raider gang. No encoded messages, no maps. Nothing.'
'Good to hear,' Gene said. 'The last thing we want is those bastards getting organised, hoping to replace the Khans or the Fiends.'
'I don't think anyone's in a hurry to do that,' Hank said as he took a sip of his drink.
'For now,' Gene said. 'Remember, nature abhors a vacuum. Even a power vacuum. Mark my words, some slimy piece of scum is going to make a go of it.'
He downed his whiskey in one and poured another glass before pulling out a second envelope, passing it to Hank and saying, 'Oh, and a message for you from the good colonel. One of his underlings stopped by just as we were closing, saying this needed getting to you as soon as.'
'And here I thought I was due a rest,' Hank said as he tore open the envelope and shook out a single sheet of paper.
On it was a short message requesting, in typically clipped military speak, his presence down at Camp McCarren with all due haste to attend to a situation that had arisen needing his particular attention. At the bottom was Colonel Hsu's scrawl and not much else. Hank flashed it at Gene who grunted.
'Been a while since they've called on you,' he said. 'Must be serious.'
'Let's hope so,' Hank said. 'Don't suppose you've got an idea?'
'Not one,' Gene said. 'About the only thing of interest in the area is the reports of people going missing over the past two months, but that's about it. Unless he's planning to send you east into Arizona. Caesar's still at large, isn't he?'
'Last I heard,' Hank said. 'But why send me for that? Rangers would be better.'
'Because he likes you,' Gene said.
Hank laughed at that and downed the rest of his whiskey, plus a refill from Gene, and made his goodbyes as his mind thought ahead to just what Hsu could have need of him for, especially after it had been more than a year since he had done any work directly for the NCR Army. For its intermediaries, sure, but not the army itself after their shift in focus from the Mojave to Arizona, and as Gene had said there were no major problems occurring in the area beyond some disappearances.
They were something to be looked into, sure, but not by the army, and if they had wanted him to attend to the matter personally why summon him to their main base of operations to say so? A letter would have sufficed, as would just letting him investigate it on his own initiative. He would have done so at some point in the near future, or some other bounty hunter.
That meant this summons was to do with something import, Hank knew. He just couldn't imagine what.
