The Courier remembered walking the well ordered and even better trampled lines of Kaiser's road to the fort before. He had been chasing down Benny then. Arcade remembered it even more clearly in his mind's eye. He'd had to stop himself from ripping every chain, link and noose from the slaves that trammeled the shifting ruddy hued roadway.

"You see profilgate, how can the republic match Kaiser's will when they can't even keep a road tended?" It was the centurion who led them to the fort with a troop of stave and javelin armed guards behind them.

"So enslaving these people is worth a road without a brick out of place?" Arcade demanded to know, instead of asked. The centurion was a head taller, a chest wider with his pauldrons. He sneered and hunched over the doctor in the second it took to clear a troop from his place between them. The man's eyes were glistening.

"All are here to serve Caesar's will in glory." He told the doctor. He meant every word more than anyone had meant any word spoken before. He stopped himself from enforcing this with a fist, but barely. "He is a god who orders this broken world together towards order. He is the man who has done more to save it with a road - a house - a farm - all that stretch between the Dog City to the falls of the Rapids." He shot out a metal cloistered digit. "Your words speak of those of the old world; who were full of avarice and wanting of things like that whore city shining. They shied away from the hard work and labor that could build a worthy society. You now advocate for more shying away of using hands for mans own betterment. They wanted their godless metal-beasts to serve food to their mouths and sweep away their shit. Our slave brethren are weak and witless, but they are also freed from the sin of possession for possessions sake. Weak as they are, they do more than you do to save humankind from it's own folly."

Arcade bit back a retort. He thought about it for the remainder of the trip and was sullen for it.

"Doesn't it make you feel better knowing that the centurion asshole is dead." The Courier asked it as he walked. He had a rifle slung and was marching behind Hughes at the head of their scattered six man group. Ahead of them was smoke above sand. Rocks fell either side of the sloping picketed pathway. No one was ahead of them until at least the bend. The road held all the typical imprints of hundreds of slaves and soldiers and the wide splay of cart wheels. It was only them on the road.

"I'd just like to see his face when one of House's wheelie army snap his spear around his neck." He replied. He had his own rifle and a duster for the sand that was always kicking up. He still looked like a doctor. "Small mercys."

The foremost road between the Fort and the road east - Kaiser's road - was still empty until they caught first of the fort. Coming across the top of the slope they saw natural fortification of brown jagged rock straddling the rotten metal carcass of the place. Atop the sheet metal skin that stretched far to the east into a wide dip where gun positions made off metal and sometimes freshly cut white rock from a quarry that Kaiser had named 'his tarpian place' - nearer away from New Vegas into the broadly defined 'east'.

It seemed like half the gun positions were shredded and flipped off their lids or ripped apart. The other half were smoldering or aflame. Closer to them and moving was moving people rushing towards them from between the broken rampart that ended at the end of the highway. The fort seemed like a fortress still, but its guts where hoofing out above it.

"Do we shoot?" One of Hughe's men asked. Bradbury. Another Vegas urchin.

"Guns at hip level for now." No one really wanted to kill Kaiser's slaves. But then they did have a habit of being human booby traps for the legion.

As the few dozen ragged stumbling bodies came on, it didn't seem that the legion had time to put them to any murder of any sort. As they got closer the Courier's men all saw the desperation and fear in their faces. When the slaves saw the Courier's men in response they broke entirely. They fell to their knees and held their hands up while bending their heads. Arcade went to the first rung of them and offered a hand, but they babbled in languages he didn't understand through tears and wails.

It took five minutes of them navigating the bodies and the grasping fingers of the bodies underneath them, themselves held by all the terrors they had witnessed and survived as the victims of Kaiser's legion. They couldn't resist or show bravery; all they thought of was a new troupe of men who would crucify their husbands lying among them, or take the same mewling children away who were curled underneath their fathers and mothers.

They marched past and were at the wide gates of the fort in minutes. There were no guards on the walls or bodies at all present. The heavy gate doors had been let open just enough to let two people abreast slip out between the thick wooden frame over the iron wrought bridge. It hadn't been pulled up by the chains that ran transposed along the frame of the gateway. Looking inside with a quick snap peek they saw no legionary's, no violence, or any sign that the world of Kaiser's had been upended. Once they finally plunged over the metaphorical side and pushed through into the purposefully and artificially narrowed entrance that made up the second line of the forts defences, they began to see the outline of the damage wrought as more than smoke over burning towers.

It came via sound first however. Once they reached the inside of the Fort it was like walking into the Tops on a Friday night once the NCR patrols, loud and baying from right up in your face and somewhere off behind that you couldn't quite see. Like any fortress, Kaiser had made sure that anyone entering his base would have to fight their through hell. His was a way of two diverging slopes that could have whatever dropped down upon them either from their exit points further into the fort itself; or over the second bastion wall that spawned atop them, on their entire trip further into what was just hours ago one of the most impenetrable areas of across the wasteland far and wide.

What they met wasn't firebombs or rocks or javelins or any other arm of the legion; instead it was something more peculiar than worse. The sprawl of the Fort was before them as they turned up the hill: the camp of the legion was across a flat spill of crimson skin on piss brown body more or less, with natural dais holding bloated pavilions and tents around a central hill. Below and around them were fortresses, huts, taverns, barracks, blacksmiths, barricades, schools, hospitals, guard posts, merchant stalls and markets; all in a brown huddled and cramped buildup no higher than two stories high at it's farthest reaches. All of it was tacked on, non-zoned and built atop each other in the scramble of the post-war approach to building. The Courier supposed that he had to give the legion the credit of having more signposts than any distance in the NCRs zones; it was more organised, upkept and made on it's own bones than any other civilisation that existed in the wasteland.

"Jesus Christ. House was thorough." The Courier didn't hear who said it. He knew what he meant though.

The weird over the worse was that they didn't face a heavily armed brotherhood cadre that had melted the securitron army to slag. Instead there was a force that Caesar had left himself to be defended by was annihilated as intended. It was as damp an acknowledgement that the Fort's guards had been dealt with, but that's how it looked and felt for them.

There were no signs of slagged robots. There was no electric fires hissing across the casings of the securitrons that rolled to greet them in an orderly line amongst the thoroughfare of Caesar's fore camp. They were in their dozens, and the way they moved reminded Arcade especially of how they would whir about the place like their sweeping clean variant cousin models on the strip - metal brush in hand that could cleave skin if prompted - tilted forward in an inhuman pose, and picking up drugged out bodies or trash in the same uncaring repetitive manner. With their comic looking clamp-hands, they lifted the bodies of the legionary's they had battered, shredded in complete halves and exploded into meat chunks; and all together tossed them into piles amongst all the brown low store rooms and high standing pavilions of Caesar's shit brown coloured camp, like they were tramps from the tops and overdoes from Gomorrah.

"When we were kids some of the khan's tried to invade the strip by the maintenance tunnels." Boulder, Hughe's companion remarked. His Bozar was now slung. "The cleanertrons strangled them to death once they ran out of bullets. Caeser's army reduced to being beaten to death by a robot-mop like Crazy Jimmy the Khan."

"Funny we didn't do this first time round." Arcade said. Maybe it was snark or just a comment.

The securitron's finally approached, calm blue mimicked features rather than the angtsy red. "Sir. We've secured the designated enemy area."

"That's one way of putting it." The smoke seemed to pick up. It became more black and soot filled as the wind changed. Arcade walked a few feet and gasped at something. The Courier ignored it. "Where is Mr. House?" There was a sudden flop of some of the more sturdy buildings some ways away in the maze of the lower tranches of the Fort that they had came too. Flames burst out and up, the smoke wafted freely towards them in larger clumps now.

"Commanding the networks behind the dam. Republic air forces are approaching this position. The signal for lethal force is bad deal on the cards."

"God damn it." Arcade shouted. "God damn it all." The Courier ignored him.

"Are the legion still alive on our side of the river?"

"The legion are retreating in good order across the Colorado."

"Then why is Mr House focused there?"

"If the NCR assassinate you in the upcoming confrontation, he intends to direct all forces towards eliminating the NCR threat following this event."

"That fucking asshole House!" Arcade finally caught there attention. Hughes and the Courier followed to the man staring down at open faced tent, operating as a store store that held ruptured vegetable crates with two thin bodies lying under them.

They were dead slaves. A sticking point of negotiations between himself and Robert. What to do with the people in Sallow's camp that thought he was a god but weren't a threat outright? Feed them, kill them or take them and use them to fire House's industrial dreams in one arguments alleged mollifying suggestions?

"It was never going to be clean and dry Arcade." Alex offered. He crouched down beside the man and looked over the two withered husks that had been violently thrown against the brick wall of the storefront. One of held a small machete blade. "The deal was that anyone who offered resistance was dealt with. House wouldn't budge on that."

Arcade breathed heavily. Arcade walked away to stand apart. Alex, the Courier felt exhausted by the man even more than usual. It might have been the guilt. More likely it was frustration at Arcade's weepiness. What did he want, a victory without anyone dead?

He expected the man to scream or shout or accuse him more. Instead he trailed the man's eyes as he watched a near securitron drag what was half a body across to a nearby trench of bodies just hidden by the lip of the hole. It held no legion red. The clump of meat was old, withered and held alongside some of the old wool rags that the legion made their slaves dress themselves in.

It wasn't just those single samples of the cost of war either. More and more, amongst the fires and the smoke, there was evidence that the securitron assault had utilised all of their assets against all of the forts occupants to subdue it's occupants.

"You - robot. Where are the remaining occupants of the camp?" Arcade half expected to hear some business like euphemism for murdered the Courier was sure.

"Held three hundred yards south of the area known as Caeser's hill in the area marked as slave trading bazaar." The Securitron's face stood up like it has been electrocuted. It twisted it's body so much that he thought it might fall over in the rush. Above Alex heard it late - the throaty hum of high-power fusion engines.

Arcade gave him one last look of concern or disgust and marched off towards the areas that the fat clamp pointed. Alex watched him go.

Something caught Alex from his reverie on what to do; it was the sudden closer power of an engine rumbling underneath the sound of the securitron wheels. It was pre-war in it's velocity and a whirr spoke of it's sophistication. There was a slight oncoming of movement in his peripheral vision. It was a VTOL, swinging and winding around the only standing soldiers below. The Courier saw the gun mounts at the fore of it's nose and wondered if they still had the ability to manufacture the ammunition for the pre-war and un-matched weapons that would kill him before he saw the barrel flash, hundreds of meters if not miles away.

He thought it was here to annihilate him after sending surrender terms via it's loud speaker. Instead two more sister craft veered past low and hard to rotate around the hill of Caeser. Bending and cradling the crest of the hill near, they took in the situation around him at a drift. He knew that it was an impromptu invasion then, or at least guessed as much as he could.

The first set down fifty down paces away from them. Beside the tan skinned vehicle was more bodies not yet cleaned up. In fact the Courier if he looked anywhere long enough could see bodies. Mostly being dragged and lifted by the securitrons more often than not if he looked long enough.

Another of the craft listed off behind. He turned to see it spew out smoke from a rent in it's side. It landed behind out of sight.

The Courier turned and he saw the six of the NCR's elite rangers in their full armour and cloaks approached him at a half pace. Everyone of them could blow his brains out through his armoured helmet with frightening speed. He put it at fifty fifty that he could get his hand up first.

How many securitron's did he have around him? For the near area it was perhaps six, but he could see their glints of movement far across the sloping declines of the forts.

Following them after a moment of calculation was another shorter man. He wore an unusually well pressed tan uniform, golden bars and a felt officers cap. All of it was so pristine that the Alex hardly noticed the lethal looking around him now eyeing the surrounds angle to angle. He realised how far he had came. He was dealing with the NCR's chief war leader now. He could be dead in minutes. Would House betray him and level them both if Oliver twisted in his trap?

"…Some fight you boys put up here. Damn fine work son! Not one crimson survivor it looks like! We sure could have used more of these friends of yours at the Dam."

There was crimson the Courier knew. He wanted to wait and see how many of Caesar's men had survived, if he did. Arcade was there now, the slaves of Caesar were there too.

It was part of a larger plan he'd outlined to House, something that the autocrat had called a distraction from the real matters ahead of them.

"General Oliver?" The Courier didn't offer his hand, but he did feel awkward suddenly. He didn't know why, or wouldn't admit it to himself at least.

"These were the best of the legion, hot damn!" It had to be Oliver. He'd heard that the man was an egoist, but the way he didn't even meet eyes with him was so obvious that it surprised the Courier. Only his own words mattered. "You gonna run these robots down towards the river there…we still got butts to kick."

"Caesar still isn't dealt with." The Courier was annoyed that Oliver then stepped past him. He looked around at his faceless guards and imagined them taking him in as wasteland scum. The general was already thinking past him.

"Caesar? Don't worry about that asshole. He's just one man. Once we cut his last soldiers into dogmeat they can feed the dogs together in Denver for all I care." Caesar's mound raised up prior had now had his flowing a pavilion into the black dirt. It was no taller than a refuse pile dumped outside a shit house. "Maybe some of these wheeled boys can dig his body out of that. Is he alive?"

"It isn't rubble. That area wasn't authorised to fire in. The securitron's were under orders to capture Caesar."

"Smart. If I can drag his ass back to Shady Sands for trial, I might just be graveling in the next senate session myself."

"Edward Sallow won't be going back to the NCR general. He's a prisoner of the New Vegas directorate authority."

Oliver's eyes focused on him. He was confused and a second later his eyes narrowed "The what?"

"The New Vegas directorate authority."

The Courier saw the apprehension on the general's face, and he realised the man's political mindset was already kicked into overdrive.

"Vegas…what? The fuck are you talking about…the families…or House? You're talking about House by himself I guess, those families are thick as brahim shit." The man's eyes narrowed, he was instantly gaining in anger. He snorted. "What is this? House trying to negotiate some extra deal on the god damn best battlefield the NCR has won in thirty years? Listen here boy. I'm not spending the time I should be chomping on whiskey and cigars talking about economic directories or some such bullshit. Talk to the bean counters about it."

Oliver looked him over. He looked around him and harumped. He propped his hands on his hips and gave the Courier a don't fuck with me stare. "I'm afraid I can't allow House to screw around here; so I want you to listen. Caesar's going to have to be tussled up for the folks back home." The general at least looked at him this time he supposed. "I'll have my boys take him and looked over. It'll make for good reading over the chow lines for the troops once they're all healing up. You'll be mentioned alongside House as well in the press I'm sure."

Oliver talked to him like the way Alex spoke to the newsboy on Healer's corner. The Courier realised that it was his moment now. He'd have to give Oliver the hardest sell of the century, but he had to make him fear first.

"Get your robots to haul Caesar out here. Then take them up the legions backside."

"I'm afraid not general. They stay here. Caesar stays here."

The general didn't want to lose face, he took a step into getting within grabbing distance - or given his flabby exterior poking finger in chest distance - but a securitron rolled up and held out a warning clamp interrupted: "Halt! You're interfering with a Nevada directorate authority officer." The rangers behind Oliver snapped to attention with an imperceptible finger on their weapons, their right shoulders tilted slightly.

"Look you scrap-bucket, I'm here on the orders of the god damned army command of the NCR military and the president!"

The Courier watched more securitron's drift towards them in a sidewards, circular pattern. It was a holdover from their strip programs. They didn't want the drunks seeing them zooming towards them.

"What is this brahim shit…I'm getting the feeling we're not about to start singing koombahyah here."

Alex carefully went for a sleeve on the innards of his Pip-Boy, produced a thin piece of paper that he held out for Oliver, who snatched it away.

"Our terms for a future relationship between our states. Including Caesar."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Oliver snorted, "What is this…The Free Economic Zone of New Vegas…what hell does that mean…oh here we go?"

"Demands NCR's immediate withdrawal..." Snarling anger…"Withdrawal? Like fucking – hell we're withdrawing...we just held the dam, we didn't do it to let it go!"

Oliver threw the paper away in a fit.

"This paper of yours? Isn't fit to wipe my ass. If you think after all that's happened, I'm going to grab my ankles and take it like the Legion..."

"You have no choice. If you think we're using this army to sweep the deck clear for you and Kimball. Wrong." The Courier stated, watching weapons, anticipating responses.

"I won't surrender the Dam, and certainly to the ghost man of Vegas and his new right-hand-man-of-the-week. I came here to talk to you as a courtesy before I keelhauled Caesar back to Shady."

The Courier held his nerve as Oliver's men closed around him at their languid half steps. He saw more securitrons now in the outside of his vision. They could slam them all after the Courier hit the floor.

"General. You might want to take seriously the man who is surrounding you with robots with freshly minted multiple rocket launchers sitting on their shoulders. Have your men got one heavy weapon with you?"

"Or you'll what, kill me? We held this place for years, kicked one Legate out of here so hard Caesar burned him to a crisp. It's our post, we've fought for it! I'll fight for it again today. If you're looking to convince me otherwise, then you better have a lot more reasons than you threatening me with weapons you won't dare use. I'm one man, one hard bastard. But I'm standing in front of fifty thousand soldiers son. And you might have noticed the vertibird's" Oliver chuckled, attempted to put on a sweetened face, but he looked suddenly deranged. "Look, House... Vegas... it's pretty, got you blinded a bit maybe, but NCR's got perks, too. Think about it before you sign on with House. You'll not be hunted to the ends of the wastes for one."

Alex shook his head, "General, right now I can have you and your men blazed into crisps. What makes you think I won't go father, or better yet that I'd think that you'd allow me to walk away after threatening to massacre your armies flanks? More likely, if you don't take what I'm saying to you seriously very soon, I'll die; but that's what the hazard pay is for."

"What do you think happens then? House will send every securitron you see here over towards the Dam to jab a blade so tight in between your armies ribs that it'll never recover, let alone escape. Imagine the damage that two thousand securitron's fully armed and loaded could do to you're army now?" He allowed the man to think about it, allowed the men behind the same luxury. He inflated the numbers of course, even he didn't know how many securitron's they really had.

Then, ever so delicately he mentioned quite a few other cards he'd held up for display, no holding back now.

"You remember the brotherhood chapter that your army lost in Nevada?" The Courier lifted out another piece of paper. A photograph. It was him standing beside a brotherhood platoon that could reduce Forlorn Hope if they were caught unaware at least. He handed it to Oliver who snatched it away and swore. "One word and they'll be racing for your Mojave boundary positions, meaning complete encirclement and destruction…meanwhile, remember the super fortress we couldn't get off the ground a few days before the battle? Imagine what it could could do to Shady Sands, or a relief army on the move…"

"You fucking snake!" The man snarled. He almost, almost went for his own gun.

"General. Your fifty thousand men are far away, and I doubt they'll have much luck getting through the hairpin passes once we drop every bomb in Adams Air Force base on top of them. The few thousand you have on hand are turned the wrong way away from our army. McCarren is already cracked by the fiends. Forlorn Hope is held together by recruits. Your defences at the Dam already broke in the battle, and we didn't send that Brotherhood paladin that killed a few hundred of your men already. If you want to think that the average republican citizen will vote to send you to Shady Sands after you let yourself lose a few thousand men and your entire army command to some allies you promoted in the press from, go for it. You won't see it, but maybe you'll get a mention as a martyr. We'll push you and the legion into the Colorado right now and your men can swim to Denver together."

"I came here as an ally to drag out that slaving son of a bitch Caesar. And you're really gonna kill me? We never should have trusted you."

The Courier laughed. "General. We know about Crocker meeting with Swank. The man told us himself. You planned to use Benny's old securitron to infiltrate House's tower. The big EMP bomb remember? Me killing you for you attempting to kill House seems fair enough. I did appreciate that you had an even bigger chemical bond in mind if the EMP failed, wasn't that why the Followers pulled out? House doesn't like his life's work being dropped onto his strip, but it shows a level of dedication to getting the job done."

"You're not thinking clearly son." Oliver didn't even bother refuting the claims. "The republic has stood for hundreds of years. House is some flush radio man in a tower. Those fifty thousand soldiers, they'll come, sure as you're born. They'll all come after you as well, not just House. We've played nice with House, but there's things you don't know. We don't just have fifty thousand poor sons of California. We have old world planes, old world tanks, we have as much power armor as any of the Brotherhood chapters, and enough fat man grenades to level your entire army. From our estimations your two thousand units are more like five hundred. There's a hundred different things we can do to twist the screws. You could catch a bullet in the Tops, and you'll never wanna live with eyes painted on the back of your head. House can catch a rocket just an easy."

"General. You have fifty thousand sons and daughters, and a hundred thousand parents who are going to see every son and daughter in service here sent to Nevada gone in one night at the hands of a pre-world robot horde. We have robots ready to roll over every scrap of mountains so that no one escapes. A few will of course, and your vertibirds will kill dozens of our robots until they catch the wrong missile. The heavy army of Baha will probably hold out for a few weeks, but they'll die to a man if they do. That grunt army you have over the hill will be slaughtered. You'll be the man who lost his entire army, with a few survivor's who can tell the tale of the pre-world rocket fire that annihilated them."

"Fuck you." Was Oliver's return. His eyebrows were quivering.

"Thousands of parents lose their sons and daughters, and the rest are going to offer theirs up as sacrifice to the robot army? Are those the same people who rioted across the Boneyard when the last conscript order went out? What's that make, six thousand parents looking at you for the thousands that'll be dead by the end of month when news spreads, another one hundred when the call goes out to your fifty thousand? As far as I recall general, Reading still isn't rebuilt from the brotherhood attack, and the governor as I hear it has just been caught taking bribes beside the president's wife with the funds to rebuild it. The Shu have just rejected a levy on them from Shady and walked out their embassy, while the Navarro separatists are rearming and federal troopers are reinforcing in the Hub." The Courier tried his own matter of fact stare, but he offered his hands out also. "General, we won't destroy the republic, but we'll hit it so hard that Kimball won't even use the stairs on the way out."

"A soldier doesn't concern himself with squawking civvies."

"A general does. And a civilian themselves would care enough about sending their fellow sons and daughters to their deaths. General this is my final reminder, you don't walk out of here alive. But you can walk out with a deal and as the hero of the war."

Oliver looked at him like he was offering him a million dollars. The man's jowels were tight, his skin had turned pale from a Nevada bronze, and his hands shook as he realised he was about to die. The Courier met him somewhat there, he knew that anyone of those rangers could be exiting his brains through his skull in the next minute.

"Go ahead Courier, give me your final bullshit line."

The Couier pulled out a second and final terms of deal.

"New Vegas will take ownership of the dam. However they will allow a small contingent of NCR soldiers to guarantee the safety of NCR supply, alongside a small contingent of engineers to monitor the health of the supply. We will for the first two years only require a small fee for the upkeep of the Dam, and promise to increase it's supply by two fold; owing to Mr House's prior designed upgrades that he will now put in place. Beyond the two years, the fee that we will charge will be minimal in the budget lines of the NCR, and we will make it a condition of our ceasefire that the NCR receives at least 95% of the Dam's output for the next thirty years."

"So you're giving me something we can already take?"

"I'm giving you free power that you won't be able to repair after we melt down the equipment, even if you were to assault and defeat our Securitrons. Beyond that, we're giving you something to actually power. You're using cannibalized pre-war power infrastructure, even in the council district of Shady. House can provide you with his newest invention yet: pre-fab towns using reconstituted wasteland components. Two hundred units free, varying sizes from warehouses to plain old houses. They're insulated, equipped with solar arrays and can be equipped with a pre-war quality toilet and shower for a premium. They catch rain, purify it and conserve it for the whole household."

"What about the whole warehouses Courier - will they have enough water?"

"Last but not least, we have the gene-edited plants from Vault 22 that Hildern and the OSI wants; and we can make it work. We're willing to sell it to the NCR, after we demonstrate exactly what it will for your crop growth that's currently falling behind replacement rate."

"Last time I checked the assholes tearing up the hub didn't want candy apples and barley..."

"We will additionally allow the pass through of republican forces farther into the east, through Cottonwood Cove. If you want to fight the legion, or take their territory, we won't stop you; in fact we'll resupply you at six monthly prior agreed fees for resupply by securitron convoys. Day or night, they don't stop running with bullets on their backs like the gun runners."

"Jeeze boy...you and House really thought this out huh."

"You could push all the way to Denver with our support. Build an NCR on both banks of the Colorado."

"And House will just sit there as our nursemaid the whole while? You don't have anything else to say about us bordering you both sides?"

"A customer on both sides. You worked with the Shu, why not with us?"

"And me Courier? That's good enough for the suits, but I'll be the general who surrendered his army just when the NCR is about to win it's greatest battle this side of Peterson's old corn fed ass."

"We will donate one hundred thousand caps for your re-election bid, and every single agreement we lay out, we'll put down to your good work. We have quite a few more sweetener's up our sleeves as well general for you especially."

"What, you gonna offer my brahim backers free suites in the Lucky 38?"

"General, the Lucky 38 isn't as nice as the Luxe, or as rowdy as the Gomorrah. How about we give you a choice?"