Happy Halloween! Thank you to all my ptreons for their support! If you like my work, consider becoming one yourself: /scbm
Follow my website for earlier, and regular updates: scbmstories dot com
Artwork by Hynvale
This story contains adult and sexual themes, please use discretion when viewing
Have fun
Heart and Claw
Cooper trudged through the ankle-deep snow, the powder emitting a watery-blue light that made the entire landscape look like some kind of polluted ocean. The glow was subtle, especially this late into the night, but his Geiger counter was starting to ramp up, the little ticking sound suggesting he better hurry it up before he started walking around on three feet.
His leather boots dug furrows into the snow as mounted the next dune, the disturbed dust staining the leggings of his cargo pants, also made from leather. His upper half was clad in a metal chest piece, the rusting metal catching the light of the glow as he shuffled between two decaying trees, the skeletal branches shaved clean of their leafy coats long ago. The armour trailed down to his wrists, the plating segmented near the elbows, so it didn't limit his range of motion. It had burned a hole in his pocket to pay for the custom fittings, but with a bit of luck, money wouldn't be an issue for much longer.
He pulled his hood over his face as a strong gust of wind hit him from the side, kicking up a sheet of swirling snow and making things hard to see. When it cleared, he was greeted with a vantaged view of a valley, the adjacent humps of earth winding towards the horizon, the ground littered here and there by a few patches of trees just barely clinging to life, the monotonous glow of the powder broken up by a solitary building in the near distance.
It had a triangular roof, a single chimney rising from the sloped tilework, a little plume of smoke curving into the sky. A deck extended out of the left and right sides of the main structure, held aloft by maybe a dozen wooden pylons with concrete bases, just made visible by the dim, yellow lanterns attached to the corners of the walls.
As Cooper approached it, he could make out a few more details. Sprouting from the sides of the lodge were piles of junk – rubber tires, crates, wooden planks – all of it stacked on top of each other in a haphazard pile, though there was a method to the madness. It was all arranged to form a wall maybe five meters high, parts of it covered over with wire meshes, the occasional barbed wire sprouting from the top. The junk formed a perimeter wall that encompassed both flanks of the building, likely wrapping around and meeting on the other side. There was an opening near the middle, with wooden crates stacked here and there to provide the defenders a strong position to ward off frontal attacks.
Speaking of defenders, a pair of humans stepped out into the open as he waled up onto the adjacent road. It wasn't exactly a road, but more of a track that had been carved out through overuse. Cooper could see footprints in the disturbed snow, animal prints, even the long strips left by wheels. Caravans, if Cooper had to guess.
"You the guy from NCR?" one of the defenders called out, his face capped by a woollen toque. He had a lot of winter gear on, but Cooper could just make out the glint of an armoured vest between the zipper of his coat. He was pointing a hunting rifle somewhere between Cooper and the ground. His counterpart was similarly geared, though they were carrying a submachine gun, aiming it right at Cooper's head.
"Mister Hendrix asked for me," Cooper replied, the guards lowering their guns at the mention of the title.
"Boss's waitin' inside," the guard informed him, gesturing with his rifle for him to follow. The other guard eyed Cooper warily as he stepped toward the gate, the ornate design of the lodge drawing his gaze up.
The roof slightly overhanged across the front façade, casting the slatted windows into shadow, Cooper noting there was barely a scratch on the pieces of glass. Even the wooden logs making up the faces of the building were pristine, the oakwood sitting perfectly flush against the glass panes. It felt like this place had been plucked straight out of the Old World.
"So is it true?" the guard asked, Cooper following him up to the porch. "You the waster who took down thirty fire geckos with just a ten millimeter?
"It was actually nineteen," Cooper replied, adjusting his collar. "And I mostly used frag mines. Wasn't cheap, had to sacrifice half the bounty just to make it work.
"Won't have to worry about tight funds here, the boss is sitting on a pile of cash. Hell, I get paid just as much as I did back when I was running with caravans, and I get to sit around a gate all day."
The guard pushed a pair of double doors open, holding them so Cooper could walk inside. "So what's the job?" Cooper asked, the humid air of the lodge warming him through his armour.
"Hendrix wants to give you the details himself, but I'll give you this," the guard added, bringing his voice down to a low, conspiratorial tone. "You'll need a lot more than frag mines for this, these ain't geckos you'll be dealing with. I'll go tell the boss you're here."
The guard sauntered off, Cooper rubbing his cold hands together as he surveyed the spacious interior. The lobby was wider than it was longer, with the far wall occupied by a long bar flanked by shelves stacked with differently coloured bottles, a pair of men giving him the side-eye as they sat at the counter. Tables were arranged throughout the open-planned space, and a balcony ringed all four walls above him, maybe half a dozen doors visible above the wooden railings. Two wings branched off to the left and right, connected to the lobby by doorless arches, the guard who'd led him inside disappearing into the one on the left.
All of this was cast in a yellow glow by an impressive chandelier hanging from the ceiling, the hundreds of little glass shards sparkling as they caught the light of several smaller lanterns placed throughout the lobby. There were tall glass display cases lining the left and right walls, Cooper moving over to the closest one and craning his neck up at what was being kept inside.
Standing within the glass tube was a suit of armour, but not just any kind. The suit was bulky, easily twice the mass of the average man, the limbs and torso layered over with steel plates thicker than Cooper's arms. A black, slatted visor peered back at him above a set of respirator tubes, the helmet stencilled with the letters T45 above the left brow.
It was a suit of power armour, one of the more common variants found throughout the Wastes, though that wasn't to say they were easy to come by. Most of the pre-war suits had been hoarded away by the Brotherhood, a group of tech-crazed humans who kept all the best toys for themselves. Cooper had only ever tested out a frame like this once before, but the nuclear fusion core that powered the armour was damaged, and gave up the ghost an hour after he'd started up the suit. It had been a pretty fun sixty minutes, though.
The gate guard returned before he could investigate the other displays, the man jerking a thumb down at the left wing. "He's ready to see you. Watch where you step, though, Bessy's around."
The guard returned to his post without elaborating, Cooper shrugging his shoulders as he moved to where he'd pointed. This wing of the lodge wasn't as spacious as the lobby, but no less impressive. A cobblestone fireplace dominated the far wall, the gentle flames sizzling over a row of logs casting a warm glow over the room. Bookcases lined the walls, the shadows made harsh by the light of the fireplace, the number of pre-war books easily in the hundreds, Cooper resisting the urge to pluck one off a shelf at random. He'd spent most of his younger years reading the teachings of the Old World, and he never went anywhere without a few on hand.
There was something on the floor in front of the mantle that caught his attention. A giant, furry mat stretched from one wall to the other, not quite long enough to cover the entire breadth of the room, but very close to it. Cooper blinked as he picked out bulges in the mat, the texture shifting into very hand-like shapes, the digits tipped with long, black claws.
A bulge on this side of the mat drew his gaze, and he realised this was no mat at all. A pair of creamy eyes watched lifelessly at some far point behind Cooper, the skin below it tapering out into a long muzzle, capped with a dark nose. Mangy fur draped over a splayed set of powerful jaws, the neck flattening out into the rest of the skin. It was a yao guai coat, a deadly predator that hunted man and beast alike, reduced to a carpet.
There were two seats atop of this exotic rug, and one of them was occupied. A man maybe a decade or two older than Cooper peered across the room at him, his body clad in a crinkled green suit, the kind Cooper had only seen the rich types in New Reno wear. He wore a pair of dress shoes, and there were gold and silver rings on some of his fingers. He would have looked right at home in the Bishop's Shark Club.
Although getting on in his years, the man had a calm, collected voice, weathered by many years of thriving in the Wastes. "Not another step, Mister Cooper," he said, holding up an authoritative hand. "if you value your legs."
At first he thought it was a threat, but then Cooper heard it, a muted rattling sound filling the room. He looked down, noticing a slight shimmering in the air by his boot, his instincts warning him there was something right in front of him.
As he watched, the shimmering began to solidify, the tapered end of a tail defining itself into his vision. The appendage wound up to a pair of backwards-shaped legs, sitting flush against the hind of a long, serpentine body, the legs ending in four, padded toes. The torso was covered over with fur in places, and scales in others, a winding neck narrowing into a long muzzle. A pair of green, reptilian eyes with vertical pupils scrutinized him from below a pair of fuzzy ears like those of a dog, Cooper's eyes drawn to the two long fangs protruding from the tip of its mouth. If a dog and a snake had a baby, this was probably what it would look like. Cooper reached for his pistol, but the older gentleman spoke up before he could draw.
"Relax, Bessy," the man in the suit said, snapping his fingers. The strange creature stopped producing that disturbing, rattling sound, turning its winding neck to look at its supposed master. The man beckoned to it, and the creature stood up, winding between the legs of a table, and disappearing again. When Cooper blinked his eyes, the creature was visible and by the man's side, laying down to nuzzle itself against his smart shoes.
"How'd you tame the Nightstalker?" Cooper asked, warily approaching the man.
"Oh, Bessy isn't tame, hardly any of my animals are, she's just been around long enough to know she'll get fed if she behaves. Isn't that right, darling?" he added, reaching down to scratch behind Bessy's ear, who crooned in reply.
"You have more?" Cooper looked around warily, wondering how many Nightstalkers he'd passed on the way in.
"Don't you know who I am?" the man asked, quirking a brow. "The Hendrix business is known throughout the west coast as wildlife traders. If you've ever seen a pet, be it dog or cat or whatever, it's likely travelled through this very lodge."
"I deal with wildlife in other ways," Cooper replied. "I'm not gonna be your handler if that's why you sent for me."
"I'm aware of your expertise," Hendrix said, leaning back in his cushioned chair. "A bounty hunter, equally adept in hunting man and beast. People have taken to calling you the Tracker, from Reno to the Boneyard you've accumulated quite the reputation for solving problems."
"Always hated that stupid name," Cooper grumbled.
"Nevertheless, it's your tracking skills I wish to purchase, not your animal handling ones, though you should consider it, keeping the wastelands beasts in line can be just as thrilling as hunting them. But I digress," Hendrix muttered, shifting through his coat to produce a cigar and a lighter. He shielded the flame as he lit it, taking a small puff. "You see, some of my stock have managed to escape the lodge, and I need someone to find them."
"Sounds simple enough, what's escaped?"
"Straight to the point, aren't you? I chose you well." He took another draw, speaking around the cigar in the corner of his lips. "We'll get to the matter of details in time, but answer a question first. What's the most dangerous thing you've ever hunted, Mister Cooper?"
He took a moment to reflect over the years, flashbacking to the weeks of travelling interspersed by fights ranging from trivial to brutal. Mantis', geckos, raider gangs, yao guai, hunting and killing had become his life ever since he'd struck out on his own, but there was one encounter worthy of recalling to Hendrix.
"Have to be the Fire Ant Queen that burrowed in next to Junktown," Cooper said. "Big bitch had dozens of bodyguards."
"Not a bad trophy, not bad at all," Hendrix mused. "Ants never relocate their burrows, however, that makes them easy to predict. What I want you to find is anything but predictable." He leaned forward in his chair, fixing Cooper with a hard look. "I've watched this beast tear apart soldier ants like they were made of tissue paper, but it's not its vicious claws, or its innate ability to shrug off superheated flames that makes it so dangerous. It's the way it thinks," Hendrix said, tapping his temple with a finger. "Devilishly clever creature it is. It doesn't fall to its primal needs like the instinctual nightstalker, or the predictable fire ant, this creature knows when to be patient, and when to strike. Subject Omega as my men have taken to calling it, is the perfect predator, that's what makes its recovery so invaluable to me."
"Recovery?" Cooper echoed. "You want me to bring this thing back alive?"
"Not just it, but several others of its ilk that escaped as well."
"You're painting a pretty grim picture, Mister Hendrix," Cooper said. "You're asking me to track down a whole pack of these creatures, these things you claim to be more smart and deadlier than anything else in the Wastes, and bag them?"
"I'm aware of how it must sound, Mister Cooper," Hendrix replied, Cooper blinking at him. He'd expected assurances, or maybe even some threats, but instead the older man just leaned back in his chair, like he'd expected him to be hesitant. "I know I ask a lot from just one man, but I wouldn't have brought you all the way out here if I didn't think the Tracker himself could pull it off, or at the very least, point my men in the right direction, as we have no idea which way Omega went after it broke free. You would be paid for your time, of course, and as my people would tell you, I can be quite generous to those who are helpful."
"… How generous?" Cooper asked, his age-old vice rearing its head.
"Three thousand caps for Omega's recovery," Hendrix said. "Half that if you can find where it's gone, and five hundred if you just want to pick up the trail and let my people handle the rest. If you'd prefer NCR money or some other currency, we can exchange it for an equal amount."
Cooper whistled at the generous reward. He'd only been paid a thousand for that ant queen's head he'd mentioned. "You're throwing a lot of money around for this 'Omega'," he noted.
"As I said, apex predators like Omega are worth their weight in gold to the right buyers, and it took a lot of resources to secure several of them, I'd rather not let all that effort go to waste."
"I'll take a look around for tracks," Cooper said after a bit of thought. He'd found dead trails hundreds of times before, it would be a nice haul of caps for an easy job.
Hendrix leaned back in his chair, a relieved smile on his weathered face. "Splendid," he said. "I'll show you to where we held it, come Bessy."
The nightstalker wagged its reptilian tail as it followed Hendrix to the door, the man stopping to retrieve a cape hanging from a rack, Cooper following him back into the lobby.
He was led around and behind the bar, the two men there still drinking and chatting away, though they did stop to greet Hendrix as they walked by. Frigid air whipped at Cooper's long hair as his new employer pushed a sliding door on the far wall aside, the two of them walking out onto a porch.
Snow and woodland stretched out before the rear of the lodge, the junk wall Cooper had seen from the front ringing around maybe an acre of land in a rough circle. The right side of the yard was occupied by a long, two-storey shack, definitely hand-crafted judging by the rickety supports and the glassless windows. It was surrounded by a tall metal fence, the gaps between the bars wide enough for a human to squeeze through them. This fence extended into the majority of the yard, dividing the space into walkways and secluded coops.
"This pen is where we keep our more dangerous animals," Hendrix said, waving a hand at the area as he leaned on the railing. "We have automated turrets set up every twenty meters, guards every thirty, and they're rotated out every night at one o'clock."
"What's that building over there for?" Cooper asked, gesturing at the handmade shack.
"That's the processing kennel, caravans load and unload stock from there. We were a day off from sending Omega through before it snuck out. Its holding pen is this way."
Hendrix grabbed a lantern off a nearby stool, trudging out into the snow, Cooper following behind. Sections of the pen were walled off by metal fences, breaking up the area into several smaller spaces, the occasional gate allowing the handlers to corral the different animals without having to get in close.
Within these pens were things that looked like bird cages, only scaled up tenfold, with colourless tarps draped over their tops, the plastic ruffling in the breeze. It was obvious these were intended to protect the occupants from the cold weather, but what exactly these occupants were was impossible to tell without getting inside the coops.
"This is the one," Hendrix announced, the pair coming to a stop in front of a series of storage containers twice as tall as Cooper was, and just as wide. There were seven in all, sitting flush against the west side of the junk wall in a neat row.
Hendrix gestured at the first one along, Cooper's eyes widening as he appraised the cage, though calling it that wouldn't do it justice. The container looked sturdy enough to withstand grenades, with the sides and back wall made from planks of wood, which were layered over with metal pipes on the outside, arranged like a mesh. The front frame of the container looked like it had been welded to the main body, the steel brackets melting into the underlying wood.
The thing looked sturdy enough to keep a yao guai in heat contained, if not for the giant hole occupying the middle of the front side, the interior of the container visible as a pond of inky darkness, despite the lantern's light.
"How big is this Omega?" Cooper asked, running his hand over the breach in the cage. The wood was splintered at the edges, the reinforcing brackets snapped clean apart under what must have been a tremendous amount of force. The bend in the wood appeared to curve in a convex direction in relation to the cage.
"About nine feet tall," Hendrix answered. "And maybe eleven from head to tail."
"May I?" Cooper gestured for the lantern. He held it out as he stepped through the breach, the hole wide enough his shoulders didn't even graze the edges. The lantern's yellowy glow created a small circle, cutting back the darkness of the cage as he moved inside. The smell of musk was strong enough to make Cooper pull his scarf over his mouth, the man crouching down to examine the floor. There wasn't a single hair or scale in sight, but the textured ground caught his attention. The floor was layered over with a smooth, almost rubbery material, dark gray in colour. Cooper noted that even the walls of the cage were protected by this odd fabric.
He stepped out into the open air again, handing back the lantern and asking Hendrix about the cage's inlining.
"That's Kevlar," Hendrix explained. "It's the only material aside from reinforced steel that can withstand a slice from Omega's claws. We thought our yao guai cages would be enough to hold it, but it seems I was wrong."
"You got that right," Cooper replied, turning his eyes on the metal mesh that enclosed the container. The pipes that should have lidded the container were instead lying in the snow, suggesting something powerful had busted clean through it. "So it punched straight through the wood and freed itself. Any witnesses?"
"Jade, one of my guards, took the afternoon shift the night Omega escaped. She traded places with the night guard, and when she turned around, the cages were empty. She's up there now, if you want to talk to her."
He pointed up at the wall, where a small ladder led up to a platform overlooking the cages. A woman was standing there, her back to the cages, an assault rifle clutched in her gloved hands as she looked beyond the wall. Next to her was a rotating gun, mounted on a set of custom-built legs built into the wall's roof, the barrel swivelling back and forth across the pen.
"Sure, couldn't hurt."
Hendrix called up to the woman, and she climbed down the ladder, her boots splashing the snow as she stepped off the last rung. Her leather jacket creaked as she sauntered over, her pale skin contrasting with the dark material. Her raven-black hair was tied up in a ponytail, the woman flicking it aside as she addressed her boss.
"You called me?"
"This is Mister Cooper," Hendrix began, waving a hand at him. "He's here to recover Omega and its pack."
"Considering it," Cooper corrected
"Of course, my apologies," Hendrix replied. "Jade, why don't you go ahead and tell him what you saw the night Omega broke free?"
"Just like any other shift, really," Jade said with a shrug. "Critters were sitting tight in their cages, still out cold from all the tranquilizer we pumped into them, could hear their snores from up there." She pointed a thumb over her shoulder at her post. "Marcus came over to relieve me, we got to chatting, like always. Next thing we hear this bang." She clapped her hands, letting her rifle hang in its sling. "We turn round, and there's this blur, going down the line and snapping off all the cage lids, fucking thing was peeling off the wood and metal like it was canned fruit! Marcus starts firing, he's always been trigger-happy, but he's barely gone through half his mag before the whole pack's scurried off into the dark."
"The turrets didn't shoot them?" Cooper asked.
"Nah, they kept out of its line of sight. Stupid things are only good for things out in the open, easy to avoid if you're smart. And Omega's super smart," Jade added. "You ask me, that thing remembered when Marcus comes up to swap places with me. Best chance it had to get out."
"Which way did they go?" Cooper pressed.
"Back of the pen," Jade answered, jerking her head at somewhere behind him. "All of them was walking in single file like, you know? Omega at the head, juvvies at the back. Too dark to see much else."
"They didn't just jump the wall?" Cooper asked, turning to Hendrix. "You said Omega was nine feet tall, this wall would be nothing to a creature that big."
"That's true," Hendrix replied. "Perhaps it was aware it would make an easy target if it took the most direct escape? There's not much cover on that side of the wall, it would be cut down by turret fire before it got very far."
It was a bold assumption, but if that was the case, this Omega was a lot more intelligent than Hendrix gave it credit for. "That's everything I needed," Cooper said, nodding to Jade. "thanks."
"Good luck, Cooper, you'll need it."
As Jade climbed back to her post, Cooper walked down the line of cages, noting the damage to the rest of them was far less superficial. Like Jade had said, the lids on these cages had been torn right off the hinges, rather than being shredded from the inside like Omega's container had. The slabs of wood were laying right where Omega had left them, Hendrix telling him he'd told his people to treat the area as a crime scene while they waited for Cooper to arrive. They'd been thrown away a fairly good distance, giving Cooper a good idea of Omega's strength.
"Did Omega damage any of the other pens?" Cooper asked, noting the scratch marks on the Kevlar in the last cage along, whatever was held in this one must be feistier than the others.
"No, just these ones," Hendrix answered. "it did leave a trail of destruction before it slipped away, however. I'll take you there, if there's nothing else you need?"
Cooper couldn't find any evidence to help hone in on his quarry, save for the strong stench in Omega's cage, but that wasn't much to go on right now. He nodded, and Hendrix ushered him towards the rear of the pen, Cooper looking down to see dozens of tracks printed into the snow. There were boot marks, hooves, talons, paws, all less than a day old. Whatever tracks Omega's pack left were too muddled for Cooper to pick out.
"Where were you going to send Omega?" Cooper asked as they walked. "You said before you were going to send it off before it escaped. Where exactly?"
"Does that matter to your investigation, Mister Cooper?"
"No, just curious as to who'd want to buy an apex predator."
"Plenty of groups are interested in the Wasteland's wildlife. The Followers of the Apocalypse like to keep topped up with venomous samples to develop antidotes, and there are many fighting pits out east that like to test their mettle against the Wastelands toughest predators, just for sport, but Omega specifically? It is the magnum opus of all creatures. There's this organization that's willing to part with a lot of caps for Omega's capture, but they weren't all that eager to say why. Too many questions spoil the broth, as they say."
"How'd you capture it and its pack?"
"The same way I secure all my assets. You see, when I discovered this lodge, there was a cache of Etorphine and Ketamine locked away in the basement – immobilizing agents used back in the day to sedate big game," Hendrix explained. "I took sampled to the chemists in New Reno to have them mass produced, but they weren't quite designed to bring down the kind of animals we have on Earth today, so we had to make new, specialized agents unique to each category of animal. It wasn't cheap, but the creation of the new compounds paid dividends once business was up and running. Who says we can't create something new out of the old?"
"Pretty self-sustainable," Cooper noted. "How many doses did it take to bring down Omega's pack?"
"Enough that we could have brought down a family of yao guai twice over. They were still somewhat conscious when we loaded them onto the caravans, and the men were uneasy the whole return trip, and I couldn't blame them. Omega was the most aware out of all of them, I swear it watched me the whole time as we brought them here."
"You go out on the hunts yourself?"
"Have to find ways to keep my eyes sharp. And there's nothing better than that feeling you get when you corner your target after a long time tracking it down. You know what I'm talking about, Mister Cooper."
There was a wood and metal stockade built into the far side of the junk fence, the unhealthy squeak of rusty hinges filling the air as the gate parted at their approach.
"This gate was found broken when the alarm was raised," Hendrix said, gesturing at the stockade. "As you can tell by the noise."
Beyond the gate was open space, more of the vast wilderness that Cooper had seen from afar stretching out before him. The terrain flattened out for a ways before transitioning into rolling hills that blocked out the horizon, the dark trees contrasting against the cold blue sky.
Beyond this point, the junk fence was replaced by something a little more familiar. Wooden posts were hammered into the snow every couple of feet, with angled boards connecting them, like something one would see at a farming settlement. The two fences splayed out to either side, stretching across several more acres before looping back around, disappearing too far into the haze for Cooper to judge the distance accurately.
"Here's where we keep our more docile creatures," Hendrix explained. "Brahmin, dogs, livestock and the like. Plenty of room to graze when it isn't snowing."
"A lot less security here," Cooper added. He could see a few mounted turrets down the sides of the fence, but they were few and far between compared to the pen and the lodge. "No surprise Omega escaped this way."
"Are you implying there's a connection?" Hendrix asked, raising a skeptical brow. "How could it know to come out here? It had never seen the lodge before, and we kept it locked in the cage the whole time."
"Maybe it took note of your defences on the way in, you said it was awake when you were bringing it back."
"You're starting to see how intelligent this thing really is, Mister Cooper. Having said that, our grazing fields aren't entirely unprotected. Come look at this."
He led Cooper down the length of the junk fence to the right, where a small metal box stood inside the wall's shadow. The metal was arranged into a mesh, with gaps big enough to fit one's fingers through. Inside it was a large machine with a plume of smoke rising from one of the exhaust pipes jutting out of its side, the motors and pipes protected by metal casing bolted into the chassis. Laying beside it was a man in oil-stanned coveralls, his arm buried up to the wrist in the machines guts.
"This is one of our power generators," Hendrix said. "See the copper wire trailing out of the top? That cable winds down into the ground, which travels the entire length of the fence, powering the pylons we've set up on the posts. Those things will shock anything that gets too close. It's enough to keep the occasional nightstalker away, at least until…"
"Until Omega fixed that," Cooper finished for him. "Destroyed your generator, did it?"
"More n'that!"the man in the overalls grumbled, fixing Cooper with a glare. "Damned animal didn't just cut the wires! It made off with the rotor, too! Irreplaceable, that thing was!"
"Our generators are powered by solar," Hendrix added. "We have panels on the roof of the lodge, but its connected by underground conduits as well, and Omega didn't go digging for them, it just took out the part and knocked the fence out of commission in one go."
"As if I needed more proof that this thing's smart," Cooper muttered. "So it took out the generator, then booked it out of here, no sweat."
"That's the most likely scenario."
"How long ago did you say this was?" Cooper turned his gaze towards the frozen landscape, watching what few trees still stood out there shake in the breeze.
"Ah, it would be four days back when Omega made its move."
"I don't know why you bothered to send that messanger for me when you did," Cooper said. "Your Omega's long gone by now."
"Not necessarily," Hendrix said. "You see, Omega may be viscous and resourceful, but it's still a cold-blooded creature, and like most of the animal kingdom, it cannot travel very far in the heart of winter. I have also been led to believe its den is right here in the valley somewhere, as we tracked it passing from north to south a couple of times before we captured it."
"Can't your nightstalker go sniff it out?" Cooper suggested.
"Bessy's tried, but one sniff of Omega's scent and her tail goes between her legs. She's gone a little soft now that I've spoiled her, isn't that right, girl?"
Bessy appeared by the man's foot, simply appearing in one moment and hissing contentedly as Hendrix scratched it behind its furry ear. The idea that this thing could just appear at any time made Cooper uneasy.
"If only she could talk," Hendrix continued as Bessy wandered off into the snow. "she'd point us in the right direction, save us the trouble."
Cooper hunkered down next to the generator box, seeing various human tracks muddling the ground around it. He thought there might be evidence of some creature, but too many of Hendrix's people had walked through here for him to be sure.
"I'll go poke around," Cooper said, standing up. "see if I find anything."
He left Hendrix with his grumbling engineer while he stalked into the night, scrutinizing the ground for anything out of the ordinary. More boot prints suggested the guards had combed the grounds already, but despite his personal beef with the nickname, they called Cooper the Tracker for a reason.
He soon came across the electrified fence, the boards standing a little higher than Cooper was tall. At the top of each post was a smooth, white ball, surrounded by a winding spool of copper wire. Yellow electrodes poked out of the sides of the sphere, suggesting that the stored electricity would lance out at anything that got too close.
Just to be on the safe side, Cooper tossed a rock at the pylon, moving closer when the stone wasn't electrified. He still kept his hands clear from the fence just in case as he ducked beneath the barrier, adjusting the strap of his pack as he headed deeper into the wilderness.
A crow flitted out of a tree as Cooper passed beneath its branches, keeping the fence to his left as he circled the lodge's property. Omega could have cleared the fence from any direction after it knocked out the generator, so there was a lot of ground he'd have to cover.
He could see his breath wisp out in front of him as he distanced from the lodge, the crunching of snow the only thing to break the silence. He came across a set of tracks after a couple minutes of searching, but frowned when he recognised the paw prints belonging to a canine. The mutt had circled the fence for a while before looping back into the wild, too afraid to get any closer to the pens, like Hendrix had said.
It took another ten minutes of searching, but the next clue he found was much more promising. He was towards the very rear of the fence in relation to the lodge when he came across an indent in the snow, maybe ten or so meters away from the formerly electrified perimeter. There were no human footprints nearby.
The wind tugging at his hood, Cooper crouched down, checking the area for movement before examining the snow. There were several divots here, as if someone had fired cannonballs at this specific spot. Cooper didn't have to be a genius to know something heavy had created these imprints. He drew an imaginary line from here to the fence, judging the arc to be very much possible for nine foot-tall creatures with a good run up.
He moved over towards the treeline, his canteen clapping against his hip as he scanned the snow, eventually coming to a stop by the base of a tree. Piles of snow had gathered on top of the lowest branches, Cooper's presence disturbing them as he placed a hand on the wood.
Three long scars marked the trunk, trailing from left to right, the splintered wood wide enough that Cooper could have fit his fingers inside the gap between. If the marks had gone a few inches deeper, this tree would be lying in the snow. No wonder the cages had been lined with inches of Kevlar, the claws on Omega must be truly massive.
Keeping the fence at his back, Cooper moved further away from the lodge, and soon found a set of tracks he'd never seen before. There were three, pointed toes capping a long, thin heel. The print was huge, bigger than a yao guai's, and there was an identical one about two meters ahead. This thing had very long strides.
There were also a few handprints, five digits a piece, the palm uncannily similar to a human hand. There were also little piercings in the snow above each digit, likely the result of the claws burying into the earth for leverage. The talons on these things had to be just as long as his arms, if the theory was correct.
Whatever had come through here had been running on all fours, judging by the displacement of the hand and foot prints, but it wasn't alone. Several other identical tracks surrounded this one in particular, slightly smaller in comparison, but the size gave him pause. He could gauge that the smallest packmate had to be no less than seven feet tall, and the biggest to be nine or ten, probably Omega itself. The tracks wound up the incline, and Cooper followed them, noting that there were seven sets of tracks in total, sticking close together.
As he reached the top of the small hill, a patch of colour drew his attention. A fern in the process of dying had been splattered with drops of red, Cooper pausing to lift one of the stained leaves. The cold air temperature had frozen the blood solid, falling snowflakes giving it an icy sheen. Perhaps this Marcus had managed to land a shot or two before Omega escaped.
The tracks continued down the incline on the other side of the hill. Coupled with them, and the blood, Cooper didn't think it would be too hard to track down the pack. A conflicted expression grazed his face as he stared into the distance. He'd already secured five hundred for finding the trail, should he push his luck and take the job? He had a rough idea of what he was up against, and he was already jumbling ideas on how to deal with these things in his head, but there were seven of them, including Omega. Taking them all down wouldn't be easy, to say the least.
And yet, from this opportunity came a prize that set his mind wondering. He could do anything with that kind of money, he'd no longer have to scrounge through ruins for trinkets, or craft his own ammunition, he wouldn't even have to do either of those things if he so wished, as long as he lived to collect the reward. One never gets far without taking risks, so his father had said.
He turned back to the lodge, the sounds of clattering turrets and muddled conversations reaching his ears as he neared the junk fence. Hendrix was still waiting by the broken generator, the older man leaning off the wall at Cooper's approach.
"Any luck, Mister Cooper?"
"Blood trail, up on that hill over there. Tracks move north into the valley. Perspiration's low, so they should keep for another few days."
"I knew hiring you would be worthwhile. The five hundred is yours. Let's go back inside, the cold's doing hell on my bones."
"Gonna need someplace to tinker in peace," Cooper added. "and if you got any spare ammo to sell, I'll put the five hundred towards a restock."
"Oh?" Hendrix asked, turning around. "Does this mean you'll take the job?"
"It does. I'll also need someplace to put my head down, been walking all day."
The older man's expression was reserved, but Cooper could tell he was pleased at the news. "Of course, of course, anything you need you are welcome to take. Come, we have a workshop in the east wing that should suit your needs."
-xXx-
Cooper followed Hendrix back into the lodge, the warm air quickly staving off the cold. They moved into one of the many doorways leading off from the lobby, Hendrix plucking a hanging string just inside, a lightbulb illuminating a garage. It was filled to the brim with crafting benches littered with weapon parts and supplies, the walls lined with shelves stacked with components and tools. It was a pretty tight fit, but Cooper could make it work.
"I have collected hundreds of weapons over the years," Hendrix said proudly, gesturing to one side of the garage, where the barrels of guns were sticking out of several bins stacked against the concrete wall. "Automatics, rifles, pistols, a few launchers as well. You are free to take whatever you wish."
"I thought you said you wanted these things alive?" Cooper asked, placing his pack on the nearest workbench.
"Although I would like to have all my assets returned to me, it is Omega that really matters. The rest you may deal with as you see fit, as I have no doubt they'll get in your way as you hunt down my prize. Wound it if you must, but keep in mind I will reduce the bounty appropriately."
"I prefer my own gear, but thanks for the offer."
Cooper peeled off the sling over his shoulder, setting his rifle down next to his pack. Every part from the muzzle to the stock had been jury-rigged from a different weapon, no two parts quite alike, the rifle custom-made to tailor to Cooper's needs specifically. It was very compact, almost stitched together at a glance, but he had only experienced a handful of jams in his long years in the Wastes, and he wouldn't trade it for anything.
He also placed down his sidearm from his waist holster, a bulky ten millimeter. This was one more streamlined, the black paint chipping away in places. He'd been using this model since he was a kid.
"Might need something to replace this, though," Cooper admitted, brandishing his final weapon. It was a machete, the blade dulling towards the point, the metal failing to catch the light of the overhead fluorescents. "Doubt it'll penetrate the skin of Omega's hide, from what I've seen."
"Yes, you'd barely do anything superficial with that," Hendrix noted. "Wait here, I'll fetch you something more appropriate."
Cooper was left alone for a few minutes, and he rummaged through the ammo boxes stacked on one of the shelves, soon finding one marked as 7.62. He was loading the bullets into the magazines for his rifle when Hendrix returned, two weapons clutched in his blemished hands.
The first one was a sword, with a silver hilt and black cross guard. The blade was thicker at the base, tapering into a wicked point at the tip.
Hendrix flourished the blade, his movements surprisingly practiced for one of his age, holding the blade out horizontal as he thumbed a little button built into the handle. Arcs of blue energy danced up the blade, the sharp metal glinting as Hendrix sliced the sword through the air.
"Stun-baton meets sword," Hendrix explained. "There's enough juice in this thing to drop a man, it should help you stun Omega or any of its packmates that might get in close, though I wouldn't recommend that happening."
He cut off the electrically-powered blade, offering it to Cooper, who gave it a practice swing, listening to the blade whistle through the air. "What about that one?" Cooper asked, gesturing at the other thing Hendrix was carrying.
He held it up, and at a glance, it looked like a bunch of pipes and brackets welded into the shape of a gun. A long, bronze barrel made up the majority of the weapon, with two branching pieces of lead pipe capped with bolts welded onto one end, creating the most uncomfortable stock he'd ever seen. Between these two pieces was a small gas tank, connected by a rubber pipe to the trigger well. A tray jutted out of one side of the barrel, flanked by a little pressure meter that also looked like it had been welded on.
"This is a syringer," Hendrix explained. "it uses air pressure to fire these tranquilizer darts." He held up one of said darts. It looked like a needle, with a point on one end, and a cluster of red feathers taped onto the other. "Inside each one of these darts is enough sedative to knock out a yao guai for a day. From my experience it takes five darts to knock out Omega, and four for its packmates. It's quick, quiet, perfect for hunting and capturing."
Cooper took it, the thing as big as a submachine gun, but as light as a pistol. He noted that the loading tray could hold six darts before needing to reload. "No safety latch?" Cooper asked, careful to aim the barrel away from himself.
"Don't worry, my chemists have developed the agent to work on irradiated blood only," Hendrix said. "Still, maybe take a bit of Radaway before you set off, just in case."
"I'll do that." He set his new weapons down, his hands on his hips as he examined his new arsenal. "I'm gonna need a few bags of fertilizer if you've got any spare," Cooper added.
"We've got plenty to go around now that it's winter. May I ask why?"
"Ammonium nitrate goes up when exposed to a bit of heat," Cooper replied. "Might be able to cook up some frag rounds or some mines."
"You seem well-versed in chemistry, Mister Cooper."
"Mom was a bit of a bookworm, passed it on to me."
"I'll have someone fetch a bag or two. Do you need assistance while you work, my men can help speed up the process."
"Explosives aren't the kind of thing you want to rush, I'll be fine."
"Can I ask how you plan on approaching this task?" Hendrix asked. "You have a rough direction on where to go, what do you plan on doing if you find them?"
"If they're hibernating in a den somewhere like you said, I'll be able to get the drop on them," Cooper said. "If they're out in the open, I'll pick them off at a distance, and mine up the place in case they get too close."
"I see, mines may work on the pack, but I hope you haven't started underestimating Omega's intelligence already," Hendrix said, shaking a finger at him. "It learned to avoid the fence, I doubt it will fail to notice your traps. It may wait in its den and make you come to it."
"If that's what it takes, then so be it. I'll assess my options once I find it, this my first den-walk."
"You won't last long in close quarters with Omega," Hendrix muttered. "Your metal vest couldn't take a single swipe of its claws. You saw the cages."
"That's what the sword's for, said so yourself."
"You'll need a bit more than that if you want to stand a chance, expert or no. I have a suit of power armour I can lend you for your hunt, it should be adequate enough for your task."
"You're just giving me power armour?" Cooper asked, exasperated.
"Lend, not give. You know how much I need Omega back, Mister Cooper, and if I don't invest in you, you're sure to fail, and Omega will be even harder to track down."
And the reward will go to someone else, Cooper thought, but instead he said: "I guess you've got suits to spare, that T45 in the front looks sturdy enough."
"What? Oh, that old thing? No, no that hasn't been powered in years, I'll get you a more used model. That being said, don't count on it lasting more than a handful of attacks, Omega has claws longer than your arm."
"I'm aware. Unless you got any more info for me, I should get to work."
"Of course," Hendrix said with a curt nod. "When you're done, come find me in the dining hall upstairs, the nightshift will be switching soon and there'll be plenty of food to go around. I'll have the armour ready in the morning for you."
"Appreciate it."
Hendrix nodded, moving through the door. Three thousand caps, Cooper thought as he leaned on the bench. Three thousand for one more den, and he'd walk away a rich man.