New Vegas: Sheason's Story - Chapter 146: Occupational Hazard

“Alright Boss,” Raul leaned against a nearby wall, keeping himself hidden from sight. “So, what’s the plan?”

“I go over there, and give Vulpes a piece of my mind, that’s what,” I said, staring at Cerulean Robotics through a pair of binoculars.

Cass, Raul, Boone, and I were inside the top floor of one of the abandoned buildings adjacent to Cerulean Robotics. We weren’t on the roof, because Yes Man was directly controlling a nearby securitron, and that giant metal box with a TV for a face would’ve drawn way too much attention out in the open. Arcade and Veronica, on the other hand, were back with Julie, Emily, April, and the other Followers cleaning up the mess and giving aid to the wounded. Speaking of which…

“Hey, Yes Man?” I turned to the robot; his face screen flickered. “What’s the status on the search and rescue?”

“It’s going swimmingly!” Yes Man beamed proudly. “Half of the securitrons allocated to the task are still busy clearing away the bigger pieces of rubble, but the rest are putting out fires, scanning for civilians, and providing aid so Julie and the others can focus on medicine! And boy – am I glad I’m not helping with that!” He lifted up a claw-arm, and clicked it open and closed several times. “These ham-hands aren’t suited for delicate surgery, but that’s okay! I don’t mind!”

“Good,” I nodded, turning back to the window. “The sooner we get that mess cleaned up, the better. Do you think you can spare a few to create a perimeter around this place?”

“Oh, I already did that!” Yes Man waved a claw arm at me, almost dismissively. “As soon as I knew this is where we were going, I pulled a few extraneous guards from the Lucky 38 interior! They’ve encircled the area, and are already scanning for Stealth Boy signatures!” Cass looked at Yes Man curiously.

“Since when d’you take that kinda initiative?” She asked. Yes Man shrugged – in as much as a securitron can shrug, at any rate.

“Since that bug in my programming got fixed a week ago,” he replied, matter-of-factly. I pulled a straight face, trying not to give away that this was news to me… and then I thought about it. A week ago… that was last Sunday. And I’d spent all of last Sunday (and quite a bit of Monday morning) in The Divide.

No wonder I’d missed that piece of news.

“Even so, don’t get too close unless you have to,” I said, checking my rifle. “If he figures out he’s been made before I get in there, he might get spooked and try to run.”

“You sure you don’t want us to come in with you, Boss?” Raul asked. It was almost like he’d never left. “More guns are always better for backup, after all.” I shook my head.

“I’m gonna need you guys out here, in case he manages to escape.” I looked over to Boone, and gave him a nod; he responded in kind, hefting the anti-materiel rifle.

“I’ll do my best to give you cover, regardless,” he grunted. “But those walls look thick. You go in too deep, and the 50 might not even reach.”

“Well, do what you can,” I clicked the button on my belt. A rainbow miasma enveloped me, and I shifted into invisibility. “If he comes out before me, cut him in half.”

PKCHOONT!

My invisible form sailed through the air, and I vaulted into the roof. Part of me wanted to just waltz into the front door, because hey – invisibility, right? But Vulpes was probably watching the front door, waiting for the mooks he’d sent to squash The King to come back. It would make much more sense to go in through the roof. Almost every single building in Freeside had rooftop access or a skylight or a big fuckoff hole somewhere.

Sure enough, this abandoned factory sitting in the middle of Freeside had one of those sawtooth roofs, so there were plenty of windows up here. It didn’t take long before I found a broken one, and I slipped quietly inside, dropping down onto one of the catwalks.

CLANNNG!

Oh. Right. I’m wearing big heavy metal rocket boots, dropping down onto a metal catwalk.

There was a loud, screechy feedback noise that echoed through the darkened factory, and I immediately grabbed hold of my rifle. That sounded like a PA system, which could only mean…

“Well, well…” Vulpes voice, just as aggravatingly refined as it had been when I’d first heard it months ago. “So, you finally arrived… profligate.” He paused before the last word, probably working from the assumption that it was some sort of shock. And yes, I suppose it would have been, had Raul not been around.

“Vulpes,” I growled, moving forward into the darkness. “Are you gonna come out of your hidey-hole and face me, or am I gonna have to level the building first?” Vulpes started to chuckle, and the sound echoed throughout the factory.

“Amusing. But your hollow bravado will not serve you here.”

CLUNK!

Suddenly, the light spilling in from the windows above my head vanished, and I was plunged into the pitch black of abject darkness. All around me, I could hear the sounds of machinery being activated one by one. Large mechanical metal arms, rusted from two centuries of disuse, ground against one another as they slowly and sluggishly returned to life.

“Hollow bravado?” Sue whispered, as I switched on my nightvision and made my way across the catwalk. “I’ve seen you blow up things a lot bigger than this place. Does he not know who you are?” I stifled a snicker.

“Yeah, well, the last time he saw me, I got my ass kicked,” I whispered back. “I had all my limbs back then. And all my organs. And my real eyes.” I patted the 9 millimeter on my hip. “The heaviest artillery I was packing was Roscoe and That Gun.”

The next thing I knew, the catwalk I was on shuddered, and it swiftly tipped, dropping into a very steep angle and causing me to slide down. I was briefly reminded of my adventure the other day with the power mad AI, and how she constantly shifted the environment to screw with me.

“You have proven yourself quite the nuisance, profligate,” Vulpes voice echoed above me as I landed at the bottom. “It will be very satisfying to finally see you fail.” I was deposited unceremoniously onto a moving conveyor belt, surrounded on all sides by mechanical arms in motion, with a couple of moving protectrons advancing on me from the darkness.

“TAR-GET AC-QUI-ERD,” one of them actually managed to say before I vaporized them both.

“Don’t tell me,” I said, loud enough to be heard over the heavy machinery on the conveyor belt that I was ducking under and weaving around. “All this nonsensical business with Los Zorroz was just to get at me to try and bring me down, right?”

“Don’t flatter yourself!” Vulpes spat into the microphone. “That gang of degenerates has been a useful tool, but you were never their goal. You’re just a target of opportunity – a fly buzzing around The Colosseum, just asking to be squashed.”

“Really,” I said flatly, jumping off the conveyor belt right before a massive platform dropped from above. It smashed into the conveyor, sending shards of metal flying. “Then tell me, honestly – what were you trying to accomplish? Because I can’t figure it out!” Vulpes then started laughing.

“Once again, you prove your ignorance! Very well. Allow me to educate your feeble mind. It’s the least I can do for you in your final moments…”

Hot damn! I thought to myself. I’ve actually got him monologuing!

“What is he –” Sue began, but I very quickly shushed her, slipping into a side corridor as another pair of protectrons emerged, looking for me.

“The Legion has been busy on this side of the Colorado, preparing the ground for our inevitable victory. Sacking Nipton and Nelson, flooding the town of Searchlight with radiation and ghouls, lashing the NCR’s pitifully incompetent soldiers to crosses for the entire world to see… these acts of terror to demoralize the enemy are mere sideshow distractions. But this town, Vegas – the future Nova Roma – has always been the goal. It will become the magnificent jewel in Mighty Cæsar’s crown.”

I passed under another series of conveyor belts as he blathered on and on. A mechanical arm swung perilously close to my head, and would’ve taken it off if I hadn’t managed to duck. I pulled myself up through a nearby floor vent, and found myself in a nearby control room. The switchboard was active and lit up, and even with the nightvision washing everything in a sickly green, I could tell – quite a lot of dust had been disturbed, very recently. Vulpes had been here.

“But that still doesn’t make sense,” I said, grabbing hold of my rifle and cautiously leading with it as I made my way down the next hallway. “If you want to ‘take’ Vegas, why make a gang that just causes chaos? What purpose does that serve?” Again, Vulpes chuckled.

“I did not create them, profligate. I found them… and repurposed them. Two years ago, they were a small group. Two dozen thugs, calling themselves the… Devilz.” He groaned in disgust. “They lacked vision. They lacked purpose. So I gave it to them.”

Ahead of me, a panel on the wall opened up, and a turret emerged. I ducked behind a nearby pillar, and the hallway was briefly lit up by muzzle flashes and tracer rounds. It shot off several bursts of machinegun fire… and then it exploded when I launched myself out from behind the pillar, vaporizing it with a LAER blast.

“Oh, I get it now.” I said, calm as you like. “You probably promised them a spot in the Legion if they could clear out Freeside for you, right?”

“You fool!” Vulpes cackled. “I never told them that they were working for the Legion! They never suspected, and even if they had… even if I had given them the false hope of admittance, like Karl gave to the Great Khans, these degenerate psychopaths would never have been inducted into the mighty Legion! Their continued insistence on using all that stolen technology made them weak… and sealed their own doom!”

I looked around the factory – at all the moving parts and the robots looking for me and the turrets blindly searching for me – and I just wanted to laugh.

“And you’ve been doing, what, exactly?” I asked. “You’re using advanced technology to try and kill me right now! And, as I recall, you’re quite the fan of stealth boys – more pre-war tech, forbidden by Caesar! What, does the word ‘irony’ not translate terribly well into Latin?”

“How very droll… but very wrong.” Vulpes scoffed, apparently unaware that he didn’t answer the question.

“So how do you go about explaining all this, you fucking hypocrite?” I yelled, trying to rile him up with the truth. He snorted again.

“I do not bore my lord Cæsar with the details of my operations. When he wishes something done, then I act out his will, and I will make it happen. He does not care how I accomplish my tasks. His only concern is that I get results.”

“Didn’t seem that way when I had my unpleasant ‘chat’ with that bald, big-nosed bastard motherfucker…” I said under my breath, shaking my head. I cleared my throat and yelled back. “Alright, so if they were never gonna join the Legion, then what was the point?”

“My plans for them were to foster their own destructive capabilities,” Vulpes spoke slowly, in the same tone of voice one would use with a child. “They were to do what came naturally – terrorize the… people… living in this slum. They would become hated and feared. I would use them as pawns, making them strong enough that none of the unwashed masses would dare stand against them. I made them into the monsters I needed them to be…”

“But why?” I asked, dropping down into a cluster of protectrons led by a Mr. Gutsy and turning them into ash or burning slag without so much as taking a scratch. “This still doesn’t make sense.”

“Only because you lack vision,” Vulpes responded. “I know where they operate. I know how many there are. What kind of weapons they use. I know everything about Los Zorroz… so when the time comes, and the Legion crosses the Colorado River in force, marching on Vegas? We would know exactly where to strike. We would cleanse this town of filth, removing a rampant plague of violent degenerates! The day the Legion arrives would mark the end of a violent gang that had been terrorizing the citizens for years!”

And just like that, it all made sense.

“You wanted to make the Legion look like brave heroes instead of a conquering army of slavers!” I said aloud.

“That’s right,” Vulpes practically cooed.

“And you honestly think people would’ve fallen for that?!” I asked, almost laughing at the absurdity. Off to my side, another panel in the wall opened up; I didn’t even bother to look at the turret, offhandedly blowing it to pieces. “It doesn’t really matter now. That attack on The Kings place failed! The King is still alive, and they’re all dead! It only took me a WEEK to dismantle what took you two years to build!”

“A minor inconvenience, profligate,” Vulpes snorted loudly into the mic. “They were always destined for the axe, and have merely met their end sooner than expected. Just… like… you.”

CLUNK!

There was a bright, blinding flash, and I shut my eyes, quickly switching them from nightvision back to normal. I found myself sandwiched between a pair of large boxes – almost like metal shipping crates – and the roll up doors on them both opened with a cacophony of heavy metal clatters.

“WEAPONS FREE.” Both sentry bot’s said in unison, rolling out of the containers on their heavy tank-tread wheels and aiming their massive weapons at me.

“Good idea!” I retorted. Suddenly, the jets in my rocket boots kicked in and I was propelled straight up. There was a burst of sound below me, and I looked down just in time to see both robots firing all of their weapons – into one another. Sparks flew through the air, and I sent down a pair of Pulse bursts, aimed square at the weak points in their heads. Both tank bots spasmed violently, complete with parts of their chassis exploding from the inside out. The rockets cut off, and by the time I landed with the heavy CLANG of metal on metal, both robots had been reduced to smoking piles of scrap.

“Hm,” Vulpes grunted, obviously disappointed.

CLUNK!

I sighed as the lights cut out again. I blinked my nightvision back on and kept going. I looked around, and saw another catwalk above my head.

PKCHOONT!

“Okay, Vulpes… I’ve gotta ask…” I said, vaulting onto the catwalk. “What do you honestly think is going to happen here? How do you possibly think this is going to end?”

“Don’t get too overconfident, profligate,” Vulpes growled. “You may have survived so far, but you’re still trapped in here.” I couldn’t hold back anymore. I just busted up laughing. “What – what are you laughing at?!”

“I’m laughing at you, fuckhead!” I paused in my laughter to wheel around, blasting a Mr. Gutsy trying to get the drop on me by hovering up from below. “Remind me – and, please, be honest with me. All of those assassins you’ve sent after me: how many have I killed? I’m seriously asking! I’ve lost track, there’s been so many! None of them have succeeded! They’ve all been sent back in bags, riddled with holes!”

“What’s your point?” Vulpes growled, clearly getting more and more agitated.

“I’m not locked in here with you,” I snarled up at the ceiling, my laughter turning dark. “You’re locked in here with me!”

I looked around, switching my eyes to thermal, to see if I could find Vulpes. Unfortunately, there were so many moving parts and so many robots still active that trying to isolate a single, vaguely humanoid head signature in this mess would’ve been impossible. I switched back to nightvision, and kept going – if I goaded him enough, he might actually get pissed off enough to face me…

“I faced off against mad scientists, mutants, madmen and monsters, Vulpes. The only thing they share?” Apart from an added alliterative appeal, I thought to myself. “They all thought they could beat me, and they were all wrong. I’ve survived things that would’ve killed anyone else, and if these pathetic robots and predictable traps are the best you can throw at me, then you’ve already lost!”

I heard a soft, barely audible footfall on the catwalk behind me. Between my yelling at the ceiling and all the heavy thuds and clunks of machinery and robots all around, he must have thought he was quiet enough not to be heard. So I stayed still. I didn’t want to give away that I knew he was behind me, just yet…

“You’re just a mortal man, profligate,” I heard Vulpes’ voice from the speakers, rather than behind me; no wonder I couldn’t find him. He’d kept the mic with him, and he was moving around the factory as well. “Even if I believed your boasting – which I don’t – one careful strike is all it will take to end your life… and prove that you are merely flesh and blood!”

I dropped the Jury Rigger at my feet and wheeled around, with my cybernetic hand open wide.

CLANG!

I was face to face with a very surprising looking Vulpes – decked out in his Legion armor, and still holding onto his gladius. It looked like he’d been trying to stab me in the back, but the blade had come to a dead stop. I was holding onto it firmly with my cybernetic hand, and he was staring at me, in slack-jawed disbelief.

“Less flesh that you think,” I said, wrapping my fingers around the blade and keeping it still.

“… What are you?” Vulpes practically breathed, overcome with terror.

“I’m the Courier,” I said closing my fist as firmly as I could; the blade cracked and shattered beneath my grip. “And this city is under my protection.”

He stumbled forward, caught off guard by his sword being unexpectedly broken. I twirled the broken blade around in my hand, and jammed it straight into his unprotected neck. He started to scream, but it was drowned out by the gurgle of his throat filling up with blood, and his windpipe being blocked with steel. He wobbled unsteadily, arterial blood spurting out from under the blade and his eyes rolling around in their sockets, completely unfocused.

“Have I made my point?” I said, smirking behind my helmet.

He gurgled.

I gave him a gentle shove, and he toppled backward off the catwalk. His lifeless body tumbled into the factory, disappearing into the darkness. For a few seconds, I stood there in silence. And then…

“That was terrible,” Sue said. I shrugged.

“Well, of course that was terrible. It’s a post-mortem one liner. It has to be a bad pun.”

I kicked open the front door of the factory, and calmly walked out.

“It is officially all clear, guys!” I yelled, holding up the burlap sack I was carrying so everyone could see. “You can come out now!” Within minutes, Cass, Boone, Raul, and one of the Yes Man securitrons emerged, while half a dozen other securitrons flooded in from various side streets, and made a beeline for the front door.

“I take it you were… successful?” Cass asked, cautiously eyeing the sack. She must have noticed the red stain dripping out of the bottom.

“Oh, definitely,” I said with a smile, tossing the bag onto the ground with a wet thud. “Vulpes won’t be getting ahead in life any more, let me tell you!”

“Enough with the puns already!” Sue squeaked in frustration. I sighed, rolling my eyes.

“Alright, fine, fine. Spoilsport. In any event, hopefully this means no more random assassins popping up when I least expect it to try and take a poke at me.” I paused, and turned to Boone, pointing at the bag. “Do you think we might be able to get a reward if we send his head to Camp McCarran? I mean, those Fiend leaders were worth some cash, so the leader of Caesar’s spies and assassins might definitely be worth something.” Boone nodded.

“Worth a shot,” Boone grunted out. “Personally, I’d rather send it back to Caesar in a box. Full of scorpions.” I started laughing.

“We’ll call that Plan B, how’s that?” I asked. Boone seemed pleased with that.

“So… you feel better, Boss?” Raul asked, folding his arms over his chest and nudging the sack with his boot.

“Absolutely,” I reached up, and unclipped my helmet, breathing in the fresh air for the first time in several hours. “I am getting’ kinda hungry, though. Wanna go get pancakes?”

All of them – even Yes Man – just stared at me blankly. I nodded, grabbing the head-bag and walking past them.

“I’m gonna go get pancakes.”