Chapter Seven
0906 hours, August 18, 2284 (local calendar)
Outer ruins of Las Vegas
State of Nevada, Planet Earth, Sol System
They chose one of the nearby houses as their observation post, setting up in one of the upper floors with the actual OP in one room and their living quarters in another, alternating which of them would have eyes on the manhole for if or when their prey came out of it. According to files the Ultra-Luxe would be the next casino to suffer a missing patron, assuming the kidnappers kept to their cycle, but with the exact timings of it all being somewhat ambiguous they couldn't say for certain when they would be doing it. To that end, they agreed to wait for five days before moving onto the Exchange if nothing happened.
Of course, that meant finding a way to fill five days of waiting and Camry spent part of the first one teaching Ryan how to play a local card game known as caravan which, despite coming from guards trekking the long and dusty trails, had enough rules to make playing it be less reliant on luck and more about strategy and preparation. Unfortunately they didn't have enough cards to do it justice, though it nevertheless helped pass several hours that might have otherwise been spent doing nothing.
And if not card games, then they listened to Radio New Vegas to keep themselves abreast of developments within the wider Mojave, the chief topic of course being about the disappearances followed closely by reports of the fighting in Arizona. That interested Ryan more given his profession, though according to the reports nothing much had changed with respect to the NCR's position. Guerrilla attacks continued to eat away at their position from legionaries who refused to admit their side was defeated, or were enacting some revenge plan, with many commentators saying it was essentially a redux of the fighting that had defined the Mojave campaign.
Some were even suggesting they simply pull out of Arizona completely and let the remnants of the Legion fall into fighting amongst themselves. Rumours persisted that Caesar was dead, or at least comatose enough for it to make no difference, and it was hoped the barbarous legionaries would bicker amongst themselves over who should lead in his stead given his designated successor was also dead. If not that, then perhaps any blood feuds from their tribals days could resurface without a common enemy to rally against. Then, once they were exhausted or driven into further disarray, the army could return to more easily impose order.
Even a partial withdrawal would be acceptable, if only so that those troops could be sent back home to deal with the Brotherhood of Steel who had been bolstered recently by fresh Knights and Paladins displaying a level of zealotry not seen for several years. Numerous outside 'experts' opined that some new High Elder had likely risen up within the Brotherhood, reinvigorating the flagging organisation, and that they were probably from the famous Maxson bloodline. The Brotherhood held it in high regard apparently, but Camry had said seldom few knew much of their history and instead focused on their core mission which, beneath the flowery prose and rhetoric, amounted to hording advanced weapons and using any means necessary to ensure they remained the wasteland's sole power.
No wonder they're at war with the NCR, Ryan had thought on hearing that, whilst another part of him wondered what the Brotherhood would think to his gear if they saw it, or Artoria for that matter. They held poor views on artificial intelligences, supposedly, believing machines should just be that; machines, fulfilling their function of serving human masters. Technically speaking Artoria fell into this category. She was a dumb AI after all, a result of programming rather than being a copy of a donor brain like a smart AI and thus incapable of learning outside her assigned role, but her personality was nevertheless fleshed out enough to suggest otherwise to someone who didn't know better or only spoke occasionally to her.
Ryan had finally introduced her to Camry who, to his surprise, seemed to treat her with no great amazement or wonder, suggesting he had encountered AI programs at some point in his travels so now her little holoprojector was sitting next to a radio with her avatar hovering above it. Like most AIs it was unique to her and a reflection of her personality which, being a dumb AI, had been chosen for Artoria by ONI's technical department who for some reason had thought to model her on the Arthurian knights of old, and even then they gave her the appearance of a young blonde haired, green eyed girl barely out of her teens.
Making it all the more strange was the silver armour she wore, covering her hips, torso and hands with a regal looking blue dress beneath whilst white highlights rounded it out, and to complete the knightly theme Artoria carried a longsword more than half as long as she was tall, its tip resting on the 'ground' as she kept two hands on the pommel. It made her look as though she were on watch which, in a sense, wasn't wrong. AIs never slept, technically, so they were always watching, alert to any danger that might threaten their human hosts. Provided they were plugged in of course, and had access to sensors.
Still, her presence gave Ryan that little bit of extra comfort when he bedded down at night, knowing she was monitoring things, and it gave him someone to talk to in situations he might not have done. He had even come to find her reserved, almost archaic manner of speaking endearing after listening to most other AIs use more modern modes. Perhaps that was why her programmers had settled on it.
Either that or they were bored one day and thought it would be funny to create an AI that harkened back to the times of King Arthur which, considering his time in the military, Ryan knew was a very real possibility. The amount of dumb stuff he had participated in during lulls was astounding though, thankfully, he had never done anything that led to the creation of a new safety brief. At least, nothing his superiors had discovered.
Thinking back to them made a slight smile crease his features as he sat by the room's window, looking out towards the manhole. Behind him, Camry was flicking through a number of survival guides he had brought from home at Ryan's request, all of them post-war publications likely to contain tricks he didn't know about surviving in the wastelands, though going by the unfocused look on his face Camry had already gone through them enough times to have memorised their contents and was just rereading everything to pass the time. That, or they were a little too wordy to be engaging.
Ryan had found them to dip too much into detailed breakdowns of things not necessarily relevant to the means of survival, like giving mirelurks their own genus classification or having a whole section dedicated to reprogramming robots. That wasn't exactly something anyone could do and neither was it a situation they'd find themselves in on a regular basis, instead coming off as the author just showcasing their impressive knowhow of robotics. He could understand the intent behind it, but that didn't detract from the fact it and several other sections required the reader to already have a working understanding of the subject matter that, in all likelihood, would far outstrip the entry-level information given in the guide, rendering its inclusion redundant.
There was also the fact that those kinds of articles weren't exactly in high demand here on the west coast, where civilisation had recovered enough that the population could entertain the possibility of going on vacation in dedicated resorts. Why did they need to know how to found a city when they were already part of a functioning republic almost a hundred years old?
Life must be bleak on the east coast if these kinds of things were needed in a survival guide written only seven years ago, making Ryan glad he had come out in the Mojave rather than there. Then again, it was nestled between two active theatres of war and he was in a city that may or may not be being targeted by hostile actors, looking to incite widespread violence amongst a panicking population.
Nobody said Spartans get the easy missions, Ryan thought to himself as the radio cycled through its library of songs between news segments and commercials, the latest such one being for the Ultra-Luxe that proclaimed it as the pinnacle of luxury even within the Strip. He had yet to visit the place but chances were good he would at some point in the near future, if only as part of the investigation. They still had to identify the worker or workers there who helped smuggle the kidnapped VIPs out, and maybe figure out why the Ultra-Luxe seemed to get hit half as much as the others.
Camry had alluded to some previous troubles involving people going missing from the hotel but never followed up and neither had Ryan chased it up, though now they had time to kill and with the radio spot reminding him of the casino he asked after it with Camry coming back with a single word.
'Cannibals,' he said, still flicking through the survival guides.
'Say again?' Ryan said, bemused.
'Cannibals,' Camry repeated before glancing up at his companion. 'The White Gloves used to be a tribe of them before Mr House gave them the Ultra-Luxe. No idea if it was a survival thing or it had some ritualistic association, but a condition of their becoming the White Glove Society was they could never again partake in that practice. Except not everyone agreed to it.
'One of their members conspired to bring the practice back but, because they'd lived in the lap of luxury for so long by then, some random hobo they took off the streets of Freeside just wouldn't cut it anymore. So, he and a small group took to taking people from the hotel itself. Rich and famous people, the kind who are well connected and healthy, well fed, marking them as exotic meats that a gourmet cannibal like Mortimer and his enclave had become would covet.'
'Until you put a stop to it, I'm guessing,' Ryan said.
Camry nodded his head. 'Yup. Saved their latest victim from becoming their next meal, then exposed everything Mortimer was doing to the whole Society. They covered it up, of course. Couldn't let something like that get out or it would ruin their whole image on the Strip. Status is everything for them, after all.'
'Did this Mortimer guy get his comeuppance?' Ryan said.
'Sadly, no,' Camry said with a shake of the head. 'He managed to escape alongside his followers before anyone could do anything, vowing to create an order that would eclipse the White Gloves for grandeur and splendour in due course and that we'd all hear from him again.' A pause, then 'That was three years ago and nobody has seen hide nor hair of him since.'
'That's good, I suppose,' Ryan said, turning his attention back to the manhole.
But as he did, he found himself dwelling on the similarities between what was happening now and the events of three years ago. Connected and famous people going missing from the casinos with a bias against the one that had already suffered a spate of disappearances? It could have been the more stringent policies making it harder to kidnap people, or it was because the kidnappers were known to the regular staff and had to strike when they weren't working.
'It's possible,' Camry said when Ryan suggested this. 'Mortimer struck me as a ruthless enough son of a bitch to still be alive after all this time, and prideful enough to carry a grudge for just as long. Doesn't help us right now, though. The White Gloves basically erased everything about who they were before, including their old name. They actually had it written into their contract with Mr House that he could never mention it again, ever.'
'Just another avenue of investigation if this and the Exchange don't work out, then,' Ryan said.
'Assuming Marjorie will tell us,' Camry said. 'She doesn't like admitting to the White Glove's nefarious past.'
0241 hours, August 20, 2284 (local calendar)
Outer ruins of Las Vegas
State of Nevada, Planet Earth, Sol System
It was Camry's turn to keep night watch when the manhole finally moved, rousing a sleeping Ryan with a quiet hey that nevertheless had him snapping awake in time to see the first of what would become three figures climbing out of the underground entry point. A man, dressed in the formal wear that Camry confirmed as belonging to the White Glove Society but the accompanying mask was nowhere to be seen, and neither was the dress cane most members carried in lieu of an actual weapon.
Instead, he held a submachine gun that was quickly trained onto the second person to come out of the manhole, another man, who awkwardly climbed up and out thanks to the bindings around his wrist making an otherwise simple task difficult. Nevertheless, he managed it and was followed by the third person, a woman this time, who was dressed formally as well but carried a pistol that was jammed into the kidnapped man's side to spur him forward along the road which he begrudgingly did.
'Do you recognise him?' Ryan asked in a low voice.
'No,' Camry said, shaking his head. 'But I don't keep up with who's who in the NCR.'
The kidnapper with the submachine gun took point, heading roughly east along the streets with the prisoner behind him, and the woman with the pistol behind him. None of them said anything as they went though the woman was quick to offer the prisoner a prod of her gun as a means of encouraging him to pick up the pace whenever he appeared to slacken off. Ryan and Camry waited until they were almost out of sight before following down a parallel street, relying on the former's motion tracker to keep an eye on the trio rather than risk exposure following them on the same street, or rushing to any gaps between buildings to make sure they were still there.
Nevertheless, a tense air hung over them as they kept pace with the trio, wincing at every slight noise they made or whenever the blips fell off Ryan's tracker, knowing that it would only require a few bullets for the kidnappers to take everything they knew to the grave, or just thwart any plans to rescue the captive. With how quiet the night air was they didn't even dare risk talking, remaining silent for well over an hour as the kidnappers kept to a rough east bearing towards a residential section of Vegas that Camry's Pip-Boy showed to mostly contain large plots rather than mass built ranch houses. A promising sign but it also meant the chances of stumbling across early warning measures increased, the kidnappers no doubt having something in place to detect or deter tails. Sentries at the very least keeping watch on the various avenues of approach, binoculars and high powered rifles to hand, and maybe even code words or phrases to gain entry.
Out of caution they slowed and drew their weapons, entering the grid like street layout that had once held the more affluent residents of Vegas in two and three story houses, most of which sat behind two-metre high walls. Some even had traces of barbed wire around the tops or spiked strips of metal intended to deter intruders and in others cameras remained in place, any of which could still be active. Artoria wasn't detecting any signals coming from them but that didn't rule out a hardwired connection, meaning that someone somewhere could have a direct feed of the streets surrounding their home.
Coverage was sporadic though, and about half of the cameras they saw were either rusted out hulks or had been used as target practice. Nevertheless, their presence forced Ryan and Camry to slow all the more as they took the time to both look for the cameras and then determine if they posed a threat, allowing the kidnappers to slip further away each time. At least in daylight it would have been easier to keep track of them given the nice long sightlines afforded by the straight roads, but the sun had yet to rise and with so few lights around to provide illumination the kidnappers were hard to spot at a distance, even for Ryan's augmented sight.
About the only saving grace was their almost dogged adherence to a straight line path whereas, in the city, they had drifted left and right even when there was no reason to. Presumably part of their efforts to see if they were being followed, and on determining that wasn't the case they were now hurrying to get home before their captive could mount any kind of escape attempt. It made catching up to them easier than it would have been otherwise with them eventually slowing near one of the properties that sat towards the edge of the residential estate.
Like all the others it was a little dowdy looking after many years of lax care but otherwise intact, sitting three full storeys high and behind an intact wall, the only way through which was a heavy duty gate that slid open at the press of a button. At least, that was what it looked like from afar as each of the plots were easily a hundred metres to a side and Ryan and Camry were a good three plots distant, and peering out from behind a wall to avoid being seen. There could have been a keypad with a code, or an intercom that required a passphrase to enter without triggering an alarm, but being so far away it was hard to tell.
Regardless of the entry procedure, it looked like the kidnappers had finally made it home which meant they had at last tracked down the source of the missing people. The VIPs, at any rate, and Ryan imagined they would be asked to look into the other half as well given the progress they had made in so relatively short a time. Camry had passed on the revelation about the sewers being used as a smuggling route and how the path out was marked to Boyd, but with how ineffective her people had been so far Ryan had his doubts their efforts would amount to much.
There was also no guarantee that was how the non-VIPs were being smuggled out too, though investigating that was a matter for later as right now, he and Camry had to deal with the kidnappers they did know of with their first step being to get eyes on them. That was accomplished easily enough by circling around to one of the adjacent plots of land and climbing to the top of the house there, a two storey affair, allowing them to see over the walls that encircled the property.
Almost immediately they could see signs it was inhabited, the most obvious being a quartet of guards keeping watch from small makeshift eyrie on the roof, two with bolt-action rifles and two with carbines, warily scanning for any threats that might come their way. Elsewhere, they saw glimmers of light peeking through from behind curtains and blinds whilst part of the grounds had been converted into an allotment where scraggly looking crops were trying to grow.
'How do you want to play it?' Camry said.
'There's a few ways that spring to mind,' Ryan said as he panned his gaze across the house's grounds, seeing nothing of any immediate concern. 'Directly is one. Most of them are going to be asleep, and whoever's awake will be dealing with the newly arrived captive so they're going to be distracted. Just burst through that front door and if it moves, shoot it.'
'Unless it's the captive,' Camry said.
'Unless it's the captive,' Ryan said.
Camry offered up a slight grin at that but said, 'How about something that doesn't see us taking on twenty or thirty or however many people are holed up in there with just the two of us? Or have us cross that much open ground whilst under the watchful eyes of four people with guns? Two of which, I should note, have a strong enough punch to break through power armour. We could wait for backup, then hit them together.'
'Chances are the captive could be dead by then,' Ryan said. 'Or passed off to someone else. We also don't have anyone standing by to back us up.'
'We can call on the NCR,' Camry said. 'I'm sure Boyd would more than happily send some troopers our way to help get the VIPs back. Maybe even Rangers.'
Ryan shook his head. 'It'd take too long for them to get here. By that time everyone inside will be up, eliminating the element of surprise.'
'What, you want to go in now?' Camry said before gesturing quite emphatically at the house. 'There could be thirty people in there, all of them armed. Those are long odds, even for someone in power armour.'
'I've faced worse,' Ryan said. 'A lot worse.'
He shifted his attention to the wall that surrounded the house which, like on the other properties, was two metres tall. Nothing a Spartan couldn't vault or jump clean over, whilst the ground beyond would only need a few seconds to cover at a flat spring. Too fast for the sentries to keep track of him but even if they could, none of them carried weapons with a strong enough punch to break through his defences. At best they'd make his shields flicker briefly and then he'd be out of their field of fire, bursting through the front door to engage whoever he found.
With any luck, and provided they weren't fanatics or terrified beyond rational thought of whoever they might work for, the people inside should surrender once enough of them were dead or wounded at the hands of a superior foe.
Should being the operative word there, Ryan thought, but he had more than enough ammunition to deal with everyone. If not, his hands would more than suffice.
Of course, they could always wait for backup like Camry wanted to do and to a certain degree, Ryan saw the merit in doing so. With more people on hand they would be able to hit the building from multiple angles, capitalising on the surprise factor whilst increasing the number of entry points their foes would need to cover. Equally, however, those reinforcements would take time the captive might not have to get here, and there was every possibility the kidnappers had informants in or near McCarran with orders to report when a sizeable detachment of troopers left the base but weren't going to Hoover Dam and Arizona. And because of who was being kept at the house, Ryan had no doubt the NCR would send a platoon or two of troopers to get them back.
By striking now, they had the element of surprise against an opposing force that wasn't going to be dressed or equipped for battle, and most of them were likely as not on the upper floors. If they came down to engage him, they'd have to bunch up on the stairs and become easy pickings for someone with a fully automatic weapon or grenades. Nothing of any real concern, then, with the only thing to give Ryan pause being the fact he was going in blind, essentially. As Camry had pointed out they had no true idea as to how many people the building contained and with how big it was, there could easily be thirty or more hostiles contained within.
They also had no real clue as to where they would be in the house, and nor did they have any kind of floorplan with which they could plan their moves once inside or guess where the captives might be kept. This many unknowns would normally have been grounds for halting the operation or awaiting the arrival of extra resources, but Spartans were known for their ability to make even bleak tactical situations work. It was just a question of figuring out a plan that made maximum use of their scant resources.
Ryan gave the grounds one last look around and another to the sentries atop the house in their little eyrie, gauging distances, before explaining his plan to Camry who, though still wearing a look that hovered between dubious and disbelief, nodded his head in agreement and hurried to get down off the roof into position. As he did, Ryan unlimbered his MA5K and centred the crosshairs onto the first of the bolt-action wielders. Then, once Camry was in position, pulled the trigger.