Chapter 9: Aggressive Negotiations
Kenzie sat at the head of the table, staring down the other man as he gorged himself on the meat he had brought with him. The outlaw leader smiled patiently, as this talk was too important to concern himself with things like petty etiquette and table manners. On his right side, Nemesio sat with his hands folded in front of him, eyeing the guest warily (to the best Kenzie could tell.) Their guest ripped into the raw gecko leg, juices dribbling down his lips as he glared disinterestedly at his hosts.
Braxus was the chief in charge of the Pelt-Brutes, possibly the most vicious tribe to inhabit the southwest upon the expulsion of Caesar's Legion. As one of the few tribes who voluntarily joined the Legion specifically due to their brutal methods and savage depravity, Braxus led a rebellion against the main host upon the greater host's failure to secure a victory at Hoover Dam twice, in addition to the death of its so-called "savior." Clearly, the tribe hadn't read Mr. Sallow's literature, provided any of them could read, to begin with.
The Pelt-Brutes were the best stalkers and killers within the Unclaimed Wastes (the word hunter was taboo, on par with a slur, due to its suggestion to the possibility of failure), and as such, when they chose to rebel against their former masters, they were able to pick off leaders, scouts, and separated parties with impunity, decimating any cohort sent to bring them back to the fold. In the end, Lanius figured they weren't worth the effort to suppress, and allowed them holdings in New Mexico, another uncharacteristic action by the former legate that some would call generous and others a sign of weakness.
"So, that's what we're looking at," Kenzie confessed. "A couple hundred troops from Cali with a few dozen Vegas lawmen-wannabes. Invading our sovereignty."
"Your sovereignty," Braxus spat as he cast away the picked-clean femur. "They have not invaded our lands, poached our game, put our huts to the torch. I came because you say you had something to offer me, and instead you come mewling to me for help like a slave's infant."
Kenzie had, prior to Braxus' arrival, ordered all non-combatants to keep together while the tribal warlord was in the city, watched over by some of his better gunslingers. The Pelt-Brutes believed that those who could not defend themselves were fit only to be used by their betters as they wished. This was an attitude that predated their tenure within Caesar's Legion, and was something that should be at the forefront of the minds of whatever group chose to deal with them. It was hardly unheard of that caravans who did so would find their guards and animals slaughtered before they looted anything of value.
"They are traveling east," Kenzie explained. "They are in no way content with merely violating our territories. They will come for yours. And I doubt you intend to show them any more hospitality than I do," Kenzie suggested.
"You want to fight them, fight them," Braxus sneered. "Make war on them your way. When they kill the lot of you, give me your territories, then I will lose sleep over having my "sovereignty violated," the war chief chuckled.
Kenzie looked over the warrior's massive frame, further emboldened by the hide of a yao gui hugging his back with its head covering the top of his face. There was little doubt to him, if Caesar had been successful in his western ambitions, the likelihood of having Braxus sent north to eliminate his kin would have been high and too cruel to think about.
"You think your tribe is enough to stall the invasion by themselves?" Kenzie asked.
"If you and the cult can put up as much of a fuss as you two think you can, I see no reason why I cannot dispose of the remnants by myself," Braxus grinned as meat dribbled down his chin.
"Interesting," Nemesio said as he stroked what little of his chin broke through the mask. "I expected you to be more… ambitious."
Kenzie shot a look at his "partner" while Braxus' eyes bore into the self-styled preacher. "You got something to say, monk?" he snarled, derisively.
"I mean, this is the greatest western army to grace our side of the Colorado in the last twenty years," Nemesio said as he took a hit from his rebreather. "I figured your tribe wouldn't merely be content to break from the Legion. I mean, if you were content to hide, you wouldn't have come this far west, to begin with."
Braxus slammed his fist onto the table, leaving behind splintered indents. "YOU WANT ME TO KILL YOU, MEAT?!"
"No, no, you misunderstand me," Nemesio said as he held out his hands, apologetically. "I merely wish to ask you a question?" For this, he leaned in. "Is it enough to have separated yourself from Lanius' Legion, or will you take this opportunity to help us surpass it. To strike a fatal blow against the Bear and the Tower?"
Braxus just stared at him, breathing heavily as his shoulders rose and fell. Kenzie's eyes darted between the two. Slowly, the end of Braxus' lip on the side began to twitch upwards. "…Heh heh, guess you cult types do have a brain, after all. You guys got a plan, and I'll see what I can do about providing my warriors," Braxus said as he leaned back.
Kenzie let out an exhale, shooting a quick and grateful look at Nemesio before returning to his business with the warrior across the table. It just when to prove that old wasteland adage true; one did not need to follow the customs to speak the language. That night, the Pelt-Brutes celebrated their new alliance with a Frenzy. Kenzie, grateful he had most of his people out of the city and secure, watched alongside Nemesio as the Pelt-Brutes shot themselves up with a strange concoction and began to revel, scream, and dance under the moonlight. No one knew when the first punch was thrown, but the first stabbing followed not long afterward, and an ear was ripped off almost immediately later. Upon daybreak, seven Pelt-Brutes lay dead, with five mortally wounded. At least for the Pelt-Brutes, that would take care of breakfast.
Barabbas had arrived at the council meeting before the majority of the members had arrived, flanked by four of his honor guard and two of his concubines. Senator Quincey attempted to welcome him, but the Legate waved off his attempts at flattery and bade the meeting to continue as it would. Resting an elbow on the table, Barabbas listened as the eventual cost of the San Antonio insurrection was tallied. Ultimately, San Antonio was due to pay for all damages through monthly tithes for the next twenty years, a move that would cripple its economy for a generation. The price for disloyalty and it would dissuade any further cooperation with those Mexican instigators from further meddling with Texan affairs. Naturally, an invasion had been proposed, but the Oracle had been adamant that Imperial Dallas could only expand so much so quickly. After all, California was reaping the price for its premature expansion, and Barabbas' father had quickly came to learn the value of consolidation.
Next was the result of the northern conquests. While territory was not prioritized, crushing the local tribes before they could form a confederation was a top military priority. With Dallas surrounded, it was integral that factions that they did not ally with, like the Voodoo Convent to the east or various bandito tribes to the south, were mitigated and regularly destroyed, as to disincentivize hostile actions against Dallas. The resulting slaves and hostages were little more than a minor strategic bonus in the grand scheme of things.
As the quaestor began rattling off the various accomplishments of Scorpio Oklahomus, Barabbas tried to keep his temper in check. Scorpio was ambitious and talented, that much even he could not deny, but he was also brutal, callous, and merciless, even to his own troops. Barabbas had learned from his father how Caesar's Legion had acted in its formative years, and while he could tolerate the necessity of certain actions during that period, he could not put it past him that as time went on, the soldiers should hold themselves to a higher standard. More than lifting the restrictions on certain equipment usage and using more tactically flexible maneuvers than human waves, the troops, particularly under Barabbas' own command, were instructed to behave in a manner befitting of those considering themselves civilized. Wanton rape and looting were abolished, and even captives were permitted basic dignity, even if they were to be executed.
Scorpio believed in none of that, subjugating his enemies to trauma that would last generations. Were it not for the proconsul's martial success, he would not have earned the favor of Caesar Lanius, and Barabbas would not have to endure considering him a peer. As it were, Scorpio was amassing even more influence, with some particularly salacious rumors indicating that he was planning on supplementing Barabbas as co-heir to Dallas. The thought made his blood boil, and to calm himself, he thought back to the times he played with the dogs alongside-
He slammed his fist against the table. All conversation came to a halt and all eyes fell on him. "…Have the Frumentarii reported anything, yet?" he rumbled.
"…Our scouts in the west haven't reported back, yet," Hoovus, leader of the Frumentarii, replied.
"It has been months," Barabbas growled. "Someone had to have seen something by now."
"My Legate, need I remind you that these things take time. We know she was last seen in Colorado, and the very act of retrieving her would put us in a rather delicate…"
"I will deal with the consequences," Barabbas rumbled. "You will follow my commands or I shall find someone who will. …Have your men made contact with any of the Legatum Saeva?"
The room as a whole balked. "My Legate, you cannot be serious? Those… traitors…"
"They know Colorado the best, seeing as they have no trouble covering territory. Not bad for a group of less than a hundred men, wouldn't you say?" Barabbas sniffed. "Hoovus, I would like a message to be sent to any contacts you have within the Legatum Saeva. Tell them… I offer full amnesty to any member who assists in the location and safe retrieval of Pariah."
"Have you gone mad?!" the quaestor shouted.
"In addition, upon her safe return to Fort Wrath, those who were involved shall be generously rewarded, all crimes and treason against Dallas shall be waived, in addition to full reinstatement within the Legion proper, and they shall be henceforth promoted to centurion posterior immediately.
The rest of the room just gaped at him. "My lord, I know her absence weighs heavily on your heart, but could you please take a moment to consider-" Senator Quincey began.
"This deal will apply to any member of the Legatum with the exception of its leader," Barabbas added.
The room exhaled, relieved. Barabbas was reckless but not stupid. Offering amnesty to a man who forsook the Legion out of loyalty to a dead man rather than his mission would have been a dangerous precedent for the rest of the Legion. While welcoming back former deserters wasn't unheard of, the Legatum Saeva's leader had made it abundantly clear that he despised the Legion's new leadership. Barabbas was fully aware that appealing to its leader was a wasted effort, and wanted to focus on the men who, at this point, had to be growing disillusioned with whatever their nihilistic mission had been.
As the meeting was adjourned, two of the men broke off down the hallway. Senator Quincey and Hoovus both muttered amongst themselves.
"He's going mad, Scorpio was right," the Senator whispered.
"He should be over it by now. Offering that much to find that brat? We were better off without her," Hoovus concurred. "The Oracle said as much, and she gave birth to that thing."
"Not that I ever believed in luck, but I have no faith in any good fortune coming from such a pitiful creature as that," Quincey agreed. "The only one who enjoyed Pariah's company was the Legate, and aside from that, not even her parents seem to mind her disappearance."
"Well, if he thinks I shall entertain the notion of sending that message west, I'm afraid I must disappoint our leader," Hoovus said. "I know that Caesar and Oracle will back me on this decision." He leaned closer to his confidant. "Maybe once he escapes whatever clouds his mind, perhaps then his loins will finally provide a successor," Hoovus whispered.
"Another forsaken duty Scorpio will be more than happy to take upon himself," Quincey giggled in response.
As the two joked, Quincy's foot landed in a pail of water while Hoovus nearly slipped. "By Mars," Quincey hissed as Hoovus steadied himself. They both then peered at the unfortunate soul scrubbing the floor on her knees with a sponge in her hands. "Useless whelp!" Quincey snarled as he flung the bucket off his sandal and towards the woman. "Respect your betters, quim," he snarled.
Kyra averted her eyes as the two continued on their way. It appeared that the gossip within the dorms had been true, things had improved slightly for those in bondage to the Legions. According to some of the other girls, such an incident would have been proceeded by a beating and a rape, particularly by high-ranking members of Imperial Dallas. Under Barabbas' leadership, at least, the treatment of the serving staff almost bordered humane. At least it was one less thing she could cry to herself about before bed.
Speaking of, Barabbas came down the hallway sometime later, flanked by his guards along with Misty and Estelle, two of the friendlier girls she knew. "Rise," the Legate said. She obeyed, dropping her sponge beside her. "Master, there was an incident earlier where I caused some measure of embarrassment to Senator Quincey and Lord Hoovus. I just wanted to offer my humblest apo-"
"Serves them right," Barabbas interrupted. "Shall I partake of you this evening?" he asked, bluntly.
Kyra blushed as he and his guards stared her down. Misty and Estelle shot looks at another before joining in. Get it over with, Misty's eyes screamed. You're making it worse than it has to be, Estelle added. As the two closest things she had to friends, Kyra wanted to take their "words" to heart. In the end, however, she couldn't. "I… say no," she shook her head.
"So be it," Barabbas replied, unconcerned. "Estelle, I'll be seeing you later. Until then, you two are dismissed. Barabbas then strolled down the hallway, his honor guard continuing to flank him. Misty and Estelle joined with Kyra as the Legate's men turned the corner. Misty punched Kyra in the shoulder. "You little coward," she heckled.
"I'm sorry," Kyra said as she looked away.
"Leave her be, Misty," Estelle sighed. "Least I have something to do tonight."
"I didn't know he'd just…" Kyra tried to explain.
"The only reason he keeps us around, little girl, is so one of us can give him an heir," Misty scolded. "What did you think would happen?"
Kyra felt guilty, knew that there was no point in being afraid with circumstances outside of her control, but after having witnessed how Barabbas treated some of the other girls in his room, she would always hesitate and get cold feet. Much like his armor's imagery, Barabbas played the role of a bull in heat, and the other women his much smaller heifers. It didn't look or seem very pleasant.
"For what it's worth, he wasn't always like this," Estelle admitted. "But lately he's been getting more and more… terse," she finally settled.
"Who is Pariah?" Kyra asked.
"The Legate's sister, the girl whose bed you've been sleeping in," Misty said. "C'mon, Estelle, the games are about to start and I'm not going to miss a second. You coming, new girl?"
Kyra politely refused, and soon she was left by herself in the middle of the hallway. Barabbas was offering a bounty to whoever found his sister. With his considerable power, it could be anything. Riches, land, glory, nothing was beyond the realms of what she could imagine. Perhaps, she thought to herself, maybe even freedom?
The fires of industry had been lit over a century ago, and had not stopped burning in the time ever since. The age of the scavenger was over in Detroit. Now was the age of the manufacturer, of the industrialist, of automated steel at the behest of skin and muscle. The prototypes had already been deployed towards a particularly vicious and inhospitable section of the Blight. Scavs had driven out some of the ferals and had figured that the Tek-Baron of Detroit would part with whatever leftover scrap they could come across. They were wrong, as the boot to the gateway attested.
A suit of power-armor stormed inside, a belt-fed machine gun at his hips as he fired indiscriminately into the paltry gang. Most of the scavs were cut down as they fled, with others finding cover and returning fire, their rounds peppering off the demonic-looking helmet of the assaulter as his companions filed in, a few with other machine guns and others with high-caliber, double-barrel shotguns. It was inaccurate to call the scene a battle and rather generous to consider it a massacre. It was a demonstration, nothing more, of the new symbol of a rising Midwest Confederacy.
The leader placed a hand on his helmet transceiver. "Sixteen hostiles eliminated. No wounded. Cosmetic damage to new suits, primarily. Mission successful."
Atop the Chapel, the architect of these new weapons sat impassively as he looked over the schematics and blueprints of his creations. For too long, the Brotherhood had been holding onto relics and antiques. For as much value as the Brotherhood had assigned their tools, in the end tools were all they were. Liable to break, to be stolen, to fall and fail as any other. The Midwestern Confederacy fancied itself an expansive power, but it was built on alliances with other… lesser powers. Tribes, militias, super mutants, even his own people, the Reavers. The Midwestern Confederacies central power, the Brotherhood Chapter, had been diluted, split up and divided between a scant few dozen or so paladins and their holdings spread throughout the wastes. It was a problem that would rear its head sooner or later, so Jefferson went ahead with the solution.
Manufacturing power-armor, even in this day and age, was thought to be something of an impossibility. So much so that even the Codex had not bothered to put forward a decree over its usage, a rare feat for such a pedantic piece of literature as it had been. No, Jefferson had spent the last fifty years relearning the secrets of power armor and bringing this mechanical behemoth back online. His first test with the new suits, an experiment in seeing how he could improve quantity without sacrificing much quality, proved to be… adequate. Once the Blight was thoroughly purged, he would send forth the order to begin mass production at once. Within a decade, the scant few hundred paladins under Barnaky's command would balloon into thousands. And when that happened, no one, not the Neo-English Commonwealth, not the NCR, not Imperial Dallas, no one would be able to stop the Midwestern Confederacy.
A machine in the center of his workshop began to spark to life. This drew even Jefferson's attention, whose focus rarely ever was diverted to anything on his peripheries. The mangled and skewered eyebot slowly began to reactivate, and Jefferson strolled up to its telescreen, his mechanical pack extending out several multi-tools to normalize the surviving audio-components.
"…Jefferson? Jefferson! Do you read?" a clipped voice spoke over the transceiver.
"Abacus. What is the meaning of this interruption? I'm on a deadline," Jefferson snarled as he continued looking over his schematics.
"I just received a report from some of my associates that I believe your master will be very interested in," Abacus explained.
"What is it? I do not have much time to waste on you, so be quick with it or leave me in peace," Jefferson barked.
"Now, Jefferson, you know I don't work for free," Abacus explained, dryly.
"Then speak of your price and I'll assess it on those merits," Jefferson snarled.
"Whatever your plans with Barnaky regarding the west, I would like sole and exclusive access to New Vegas for my organization," Abacus said.
"Then whatever your information is had better gain my attention," Jefferson rolled his eyes.
"An expeditionary force consisting of Californian and Mojave elements has entered the Unclaimed Wastes. We agreed that territory was mine, did we not?"
"Well, that sounds like your problem, my friend," Jefferson said, sarcastically.
"Are you so uncurious as to not inquire why they are in Arizona, to begin with?" This earned Jefferson's attention. "They mean to establish contact with Imperial Dallas. We might be looking at an alliance that extends from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Once that happens, no amount of go-karts you send to your western allies will be enough to entertain thoughts of Barnaky's further conquest. She might have to declare a cessation to all hostile actions, as this would encourage a war even beyond your abilities to win."
Jefferson's lip curled. The RMX had been his greatest ally and his most bothersome nuisance. Without the RMX, he would have been stuck playing politics with the Reaver leadership, so having material and information bypass the rest of his old tribe was what gave him an edge in having his project come to fruition while keeping ahead of the petty squabbles that hamstrung the rest of the R&D departments. Of course, it also indebted him to Abacus and the Board, so over the years he had tried to find ways to ween himself off of his reliance on the RMX, only for the bastard to dangle vital information inches away from his face, once again.
"I will inform Barnaky of your request," Jefferson snorted. "Not directly, of course."
"Thank you, old friend," the voice stated. "Discretion is superior to valor."
"Now, what do you have to offer?" Jefferson asked as he placed his long, skinny green arms on the worktable.
"I have men in the area. They can shadow the AEG, provide constant updates to their position and status, while giving you, my friend, the discretion to deal with them as you see fit."
"Sounds interesting. I can think of a few ways that can be useful. And in exchange for this, you get Vegas?" Jefferson concluded.
"I may be working on just such a project at this very moment. But I wouldn't dream of stepping on Barnaky's toes. It wouldn't be my place," Abacus said.
"So, not in a position to fight California or the Confederacy, but not against instigation, am I reading you correctly?" Jefferson asked.
"It's almost like you know me so well," Abacus stated, dryly.
"…Well, you have my attention now," Jefferson grinned. "Let's see if we can make something mutual?"
Excerpt from the Judicial Marshal Basic Training Guide and Manual
Midwestern Confederacy: STRICTLY OUT OF YOUR JURISDICTION! You are well trained, armed with the best weapons, and one of the finest fighting forces in the wasteland. ENGAGING IN COMBAT WITH THE MIDWESTERN CONFEDERACY WITHOUT EXPRESSED PERMISSION FROM THE JUDICIAL COMMISSIONER, VEGAS CITY COUNCIL, OR GOVERNOR UNDER THE EMERGENCY POWERS ACT IS EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN, AND GROUNDS FOR IMMEDIATE TERMINATION FROM THE JUDICIAL MARSHALS! Their resources dwarf ours, their manpower seemingly inexhaustible, and as of the time of this writing under no rush to enter open warfare with us. Saber-rattling is best ignored, we have other concerns to worry about. If Confederate activity is spotted within our borders, inform the closest securitron, and hold your position until further orders are relayed- Deputy Chief Natalie Boone