Chapter 564 - Churning Tides

A couple more days pass and recent events have slowly been pushing the Mojave to outright war... Not just with the Legion, New Vegas, and the NCR... But with Bulwark as well.

The NCR recently reported Bulwark's actions around Mount Charleston, destroying encampments and killing their soldiers. Of course, they made no mention of how they were conducting secret experiments on the peaceful supermutant population, which is why Afton made a 'surprise' appearance on Mr New Vegas's radio station.​​

He explained his 'operatives' actions and declared the NCR to be unlawfully experimenting on innocent civilians. Of course, most people didn't consider ghouls or Supermutants as 'people' but even the nay-sayers would be wary of projecting the NCR's actions in a good light.

His appearance on the New Vegas Radio did have a variety of effects though... For one, the NCR increased the number of Military Police on the New Vegas strip, probably to pressure House to side with them, as well as reminding the populace of who is 'in control'.

Still, Tamia, Josie, and Boone and proven to Marcus and the other supermutants that Bulwark and New Vegas was firmly on their side, and were fully willing to go against the NCR to prove it. Though, what the trio didn't realise was that Afton had used this as a test of loyalty as well.

It'd become something of an obsession for Afton to consider his friend's loyalties and wonder what they'd do in certain situations... But now he could say or sure that Boone and Josie were no longer loyal to the NCR... After all, what loyal person would willingly massacre hundreds of their allies? The only people Afton could think of would be Psychopaths, but neither Boone nor Josie had shown any inclinations of such thus far.

With Jacobstown becoming a firm ally of New Vegas and Bulwark, Afton had Glados send a number of robots and other defences to protect the mountain town should the NCR wish to retaliate. If any hostile groups attempted to attack, they'd quickly find themselves stuck in a forest surrounded by Cyberdogs... The were already a nightmare to deal with anyway, let alone in a forest setting where they easily thrived.

Doctor Henry was ecstatic about their presence, but Afton and Glados continued to disallow him from researching or experimenting on them. He was actually already on his last warning, since a Cyberdog nearly took his arm off when he tried to fiddle around with some Cybernetics on its leg...

Regardless, it wasn't as if it was likely for the NCR to attack Jacobstown now... His recent orders to the cloned Caesar had forced a considerable influx of troops near the Hoover Dam. What had he ordered exactly? Well, the operation was essentially designed to kill two birds with one stone.

He'd have the NCR and Legion destroy themselves, afterwards allowing New Vegas and Bulwark to claim what's left. The plan was relatively simple to be honest, just have the Legion slowly but surely increase their military presence near Hoover Dam, this would force the NCR to react, increasing their own numbers to match the enemy.

Afton didn't know how long the plan would go on for, as he wanted Clone Caesar to relocate Legionaries from his more eastern territories for the attack. This would weaken the Legion in other areas, while also forcing the NCR to send more troops from California... This in turn would weaken their own defences back home.

The plan was pretty foolproof, no one would doubt Caesar, and the NCR wasn't willing to let go of the Hoover Dam. Afton wondered just how many troops would be gathered for the final battle, but it certainly wouldn't be considered a 'few'.

Aside from that, Bulwark was also beginning to train their own soldiers. He was using the non-criminal slaves he'd acquired from the Legion and training any that were willing and able to fight. He'd equip them all with Bulwark power armour and state of the art weaponry, but that was a far off dream currently...

They'd be far harder to train in some aspects, and easier in others... The Legion was a militaristic culture, so most learned how to fight regardless of their rank. This made melee combat somewhat easy to train them in... The only problem was their lack of scientific, engineering, and other simple technological knowledge.

A culture that forbids any technology above what the romans used would be difficult to quickly introduce to such innovations... As such, Afton didn't think it was likely the army would be ready any time soon... It'd probably take a couple years to properly get them all trained to his liking.

This wasn't to say that there weren't a few exceptional individuals, because there were... But they were few and far between, most likely because any exceptional individual wouldn't have ended up as a slave in the first place...

This was actually the reason the women seemed far more competent than the male slaves... Women were considered lesser than men in the Legion, so any exceptional woman would be completely disregarded...

Afton smirks to himself, if things continued the way they were, he'd have to call his first unit the 'Valkyries' or something. Honestly, that didn't sound like a bad idea... Have them all fully suited in Power armour, jetpacks and Vertibirds?... Sounds like a plan!

Speaking of 'exceptional women', he'd begun training Tamia and Josie on how to properly utilise Power armour. They were picking it up quickly, but that was to be expected for the Protagonist and engineering expert respectively.

Other than that, the only other thing Afton was having trouble with was Christine and Veronica... Yeah, Christine still wasn't sure how to feel about Bulwark and their apparent separation from the Brothehood... Which is why she decided to go visit the Brotherhood of Steel to see what they were up to.

Of course, Afton would have denied them if he'd been asked, but he'd not been given the option, as Veronica took Christine without permission and teleported away. Christine obviously didn't have access to teleportation, so she'd either manipulated or guilt-tripped Veronica into helping.

Afton releases a sigh, "Women are going to be the death of me..."