Chapter 67: Beer and Steak

Chapter 67: Beer and Steak

Good afternoon, Mojave Wasteland! It's me again, Mr. New Vegas, reminding you that you're nobody til somebody loves you, and that somebody is me. I love you. Word out of Camp Golf is that many NCR Rangers can expect re-deployment in the near future. One anonymous soldier said it was part of a new strategy. And now, ladies and gentlemen, this next song goes out from me to you. Have you ever been in love with a celebrity? Now, don't be shy... I feel it between us, too. Sometimes you just can't help being Mad About The Boy.

Getting back to Nellis was... pretty uneventful. Nobody shot at us, at any rate. For the first mile or so, things were abnormally quiet between the three of us. The Jeep trundled us along at a steady chug; the dull pounding of the diesel engine provided a heavy background noise to the uncomfortable silence.

"Hey, V?" I said, when the simultaneous noise and silence got too much to bear. "You alright?" Veronica didn't answer for a long while. She had her elbow propped on the edge of the door, and her chin was resting on the palm of her hand. She was watching the cracked and broken landscape roll past.

"I... I'll be... fine." She paused, then added: "Actually, no. No, I'm pretty far from alright."

"That makes sense," I heard Arcade say from behind me. "I mean... I can see how destroying ARCHIMEDES would be a big no-no as far as the Brotherhood was concerned."

"Uh..." Veronica quietly took her elbow away from the door, and she started leaning back in her seat, looking up at the sky. "Technically no. That's not the issue."

"What do you mean, technically no?" I asked. Veronica shrugged, and when she spoke up again, it was... she had the tone of voice of someone just parroting off something they had memorized by rote.

"One of the primary tenets of The Codex states that if a particularly valuable - or dangerous - piece of the Old World cannot be retrieved or properly defended, then it must be destroyed to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands," She sounded just so... emotionally drained. It was like she couldn't even put inflection in her words. "I don't think ARCHIMEDES was destroyed during the retreat because... well, frankly, I don't think Elijah told anyone what it was. Otherwise, Hardin or McNamara would have blown up the whole facility once the order to retreat had been given. Probably."

"Still..." Arcade paused, thinking on it. "I hate to say it, but that rule makes a lot of sense. I didn't know that about the Brotherhood." Veronica shifted in her seat, and gave Arcade a tired look.

"There's a lot you don't know about the Brotherhood, Arcade."

"Fair enough..." Arcade shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"You said probably?" I asked, wondering if Arcade hadn't picked up on that, or intentionally let it go. Veronica shrugged again.

"It's been a very, very long time since any Chapter Elder has had to destroy something that dangerous. At least... as far as I know. Usually the Brotherhood thinks that, no matter what, anything can be reclaimed at some point in the future if it's lost."

"If it makes you feel any better, Veronica..." Arcade leaned forward in his seat, "...we did the right thing back there."

"I know we did," V started nodding.

"So, what's wrong?" I asked. I thought she was silent and down because we had to destroy ARCHIMEDES. She was silent for a long time.

"When I reintegrated with the... survivors, one of the first things I did was review the operational reports. I wanted to piece together what happened, and what went wrong for myself. And it... I always thought that we fought so hard, and so many people lost their lives, because Helios was sheltering something truly important. A game changer. This whole time, I thought that because... well, because of the one time I tried asking Elijah what ARCHIMEDES was. All he said was that activating it would be like the deployment of longbows at the Battle of Agincourt."

"The battle of what?" I asked. She was saying words, but they meant nothing.

"Look, nevermind!" Veronica sighed, and buried her head in one of her hands. "The point is... this wasn't what I thought it was at all! ARCHIMEDES was never a game changer - it was just a piece of glorified artillery! And not even reliable artillery at that!" Veronica sighed, and shook her head. "I saw some of the data before we wiped the files, and at its best, Poseidon Energy could only ever get it to work once every 24 hours."

"Still, it was an orbital superweapon. Seems like that's a small problem compared-" Veronica cut me off before I could finish.

"That wasn't the only problem. That mushroom cloud we saw in the recording? It may have looked impressive, but it only had a blast yield of about five tons of TNT. Not to mention that the rangefinder - the device needed to actually give that 'space laser' a target - only worked if you were outside, and if the skies were clear. It could be defeated by a cloudy day."

"Wait, I'm still confused," Arcade spoke up. "Why are you so upset about all of this?"

"Because ARCHIMEDES wasn't worth it!" Veronica let out a single heavy sigh. "According to the reports I read, the NCR troops sent to assault Helios outnumbered us 50 to 1. The initial defense of the plant took place over fourteen hours once the NCR started sending in troops. After Elijah disappeared in the chaos and confusion of the fighting, and McNamara took operational control, he made sure the plant was held for three more hours before finally signaling the retreat. Over seventeen hours, my friends and family died trying to defend Helios. And in the end, it was lost, and we were forced to escape. All of that... all that death and loss, and for what? A piece of the Old World that was flashy and impressive... but completely impractical and useless."

The dull thrum of the engine hung heavy in the air, like a lead blanket, for a few minutes.

"It's not your fault, Veronica," Arcade finally spoke up. "You couldn't have done anything. There's no way you could have known. In fact..." Arcade gave a tiny little cough, like he was clearing his throat. "I want to apologize for, er... what I said earlier. I'm sorry I accused you of holding out on us. That was a shitty thing for me to do, and I apologize."

"... Thanks," Veronica gave him a small nod, and she went back to trying to sink into her seat.

When the three of us rolled back into Nellis, my first thought was to head to the solar array - with any luck, ED-E would have brought back all the parts to Raul and everything was now fixed. But I was a bit distracted along the way by a very odd sight on the main runway.

"Uh... what are they doing?" Arcade asked, taking the words out of my mouth.

"Don't look at me, I have no idea," Veronica peered around the windshield, looking as confused as I felt.

I'd stopped the car just short of the airstrip, and stretching from one end of the pavement to the other was a whole bunch of Boomers, all shoulder to shoulder, and walking from one end to the other in about three lines. Men, women, children, old people... it almost looked like everyone living here was walking along the runway. They were all advancing very slowly, staring down at the pavement as they marched from one end to the other. Occasionally, one of them would bend down to pick something up off the tarmac - and as they did so, one of the Mr. Gutsy robots hovering along the perimeter would zip through the air to the Boomer with a bag hooked around one of their metal claws. Whatever that Boomer had picked up would go in the bag, and then they'd both be on their way again.

It was all very orderly and precise, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what they were all doing, or why.

"Maybe we should ask Raquel?" Veronica spoke up, sitting back in her seat and pointing to a spot on the edge of one of the advancing lines, near a group of Mr. Gutsys. I nodded, driving the Jeep to a spot just shy of the Boomer's Master-At-Arms.

"Hey, uh, Raquel?" I asked, She paused at the noise. "What's going on?" She glanced over her shoulder at me.

"Oh, it's you, Outsider. Good, it looks like you brought the Jeep back in one piece. We're just -" As she spoke, she turned to face me fully, and then stopped mid-sentence when she got a good look at the vehicle. "What is that?" She asked, pointing behind me.

"Huh? Oh! what, you've never seen a bighorner before?" I pointed a thumb in the direction of the giant dead animal strapped to the back of the Jeep.

"I have, but..." She stared at it, blinking her one good eye. "Why has it got no head?"

"I needed to punch something," Veronica answered with a shrug.Read latest chapters at nov(e)lbin.com Only

"Why do you have a bighorner carcass strapped to the back of my jeep?" Raquel asked, her eye never straying from the giant wooly slab of meat.

"Well, what else am I going to use when I borrow that barbeque from Gregory? There weren't any wild brahmin between Helios One and here, and I'm not all that fond of giant ant meat."

"That's too bad, it's not like there's a shortage of ant meat," Arcade chimed in. "I mean, what with that colony you cleared out yesterday."

"Skin the sucker," I continued, trying to ignore Arcade, "carve it up, season it, put in on the fire... that's some good eatin' right there." I finally turned the engine off; I had a feeling that we were going to be here for a while, and one of the most annoying sounds in the world is a diesel idling. "Alright, so I explained my oddness. Your turn."

"Huh?" Raquel seemed to mimic my expression from a few seconds ago. I pointed behind her at the line of Boomers slowly advancing along the airstrip.

"All this walking along in a line, picking up stuff. Why are you guys doing housework on a stretch of concrete tarmac outside?" I asked.

"You enjoying the grill?" I felt a thick hand slap me across the back, followed swiftly by a slightly portly black man grinning at me. He didn't have a flight jacket like most of the other Boomers around, and his vault jumpsuit was only zipped halfway up his chest.

"Gregory! Yeah, this is a great barbeque - most creative use for an oil drum I've ever seen. Where'd you get all this charcoal, anyway?" I asked, poking at one of the half dozen steaks I had over the fire.

"Forget about it. Didn't you say you had a special way of cooking these you wanted to show me?"

"Oh! Right!" I turned to Cass, still drinking her whiskey. "Cass, think I could borrow a shotgun shell?" She was halfway through a drink when she paused, eyeing me suspiciously.

"Why?"

"Trust me, I got something cool to show you," I held out my hand and gave her my best shit-eating grin. She didn't seem convinced... but grabbed a shell off her belt and handed me one anyway. "Thanks, Cass." I pulled the brass head off with my teeth, and tapped the case, sprinkling buckshot and gunpowder on one of the uncooked slabs of meat waiting to be put on the grill.

"Uh... y'sure this is safe?" Cass asked, backing up slowly. Gregory, on the other hand, just looked more interested.

"Don't worry, I saw this in a movie once," I slapped the steak on the grill, and BOOM! There was a flash, a bang, and a huge cloud of hot smoke blasted me in the face. I waved the smoke away as best I could. "Ah-heh-heh... Aw yeah! Flash grills it in seconds, and tenderizes the meat all in one!"

Things had suddenly become incredibly quiet. Well... less noisy than before. I looked around, and realized that Gregory was staring at me, with a stupidly wide grin on his dark face. About two dozen other Boomers were gathered around him as well, all staring at me with the same expression... and then they all broke into tumultuous applause and cheers.

"That was awesome!" I heard from somewhere in the crowd, along with a round of "Do that again!" and "Damn, that looks fun!"

"You are nuts, Shea," Cass just shook her head and laughed. "You are seriously outta yer fuckin' mind."

"Maybe," I shrugged, peppering the uncooked side of the steak with the rest of the gunpowder. There was another flash and a burst of smoke when I flipped the steak over, followed by more cheering. I waved off the smoke, and turned back to Cass, grinning as wide as I could. "Of course, if you guys want more like that, I'm gonna need more shotgun shells." Cass looked unimpressed and rolled her eyes.

"Alright, fine. But yer gonna owe me fer all that ammo yer wastin', Shea."

"Thanks babe," I winked at her. "You're the best."

Several hours later, all the meat was gone. As it turns out, the Boomers really liked the taste of the steaks I'd nuked. Gregory said he was going to try that next time he got his hands on some steaks. The best part was that all those shotgun shells Cass let me use certainly made the cooking of the steaks go a whole lot faster, so I had more time to enjoy the party.

Before anyone asks, no, I didn't 'nuke' the ribs. My one regret about the ribs is that I didn't have more time to slow cook them. They were still good, just not... fall-off-the-bone good.

Of course, just because I wasn't cooking any more meat didn't mean that the party was over. Far from it. Someone had found a keg from somewhere, and someone else had found an old rusty boom-box. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, and there was even some dancing going on in the center of the roof... or was it a fight? I couldn't tell from my spot on the edge of the roof.

"You're Sheason Fisher, right?" I heard a voice out of the darkness from somewhere to my right. I didn't answer him right away, because he caught me right in the middle of finishing off my beer. I set down the glass, and looked at the new arrival, and there were three things about him that immediately stood out to me: his hair was completely shaved except for a short mohawk, he was wearing a pair of sunglasses (despite the sun having set), and he was wearing a necklace visible through his partially zipped up Vault Jumpsuit. Except unlike the necklaces of spent rifle casings that Pearl and Loyal wore, his was made up of... sparkplugs?

"Uh... yeah. Yeah, I'm Sheason. Who are you?" I held out my hand, and he shook it vigorously, sitting down next to me.

"I'm Sebastian. Sebastian Hamilton. I gotta say, it's nice to finally meet you!" He smiled widely.

"Um... thanks?" I wasn't really sure what to say.

"Oh, don't mention it!" He just seemed to smile wider. "Because of you, I've had the most fun I've had in months!"

"What, the party?" I gestured to the group of Boomers out on the makeshift dance floor... at least, I was hoping it was a dance floor. "Glad you like it. I thought you guys would enjoy an excuse to cut loose."

"Oh no, not the party." Hamilton shook his head and kept smiling, "I mean, the party is great, don't get me wrong, but that's not what I'm talking about. Pearl wanted me to keep it a secret, but I -"

"Fisher," Boone's voice cut in. As per usual, he was wearing his beret and sunglasses... and he looked incredibly uncomfortable. "Do you think I can talk with you for a minute?"

"Sure man, sure," I got up, shaking hands with Hamilton again. "If Pearl wants you to keep it a secret, you should probably keep it a secret. I'll be sure to talk to you later, alright?" Hamilton nodded, and looked a bit confused as Boone and I walked off to a quiet part of the roof. "What's up, man?"

"Uh... it's..." Boone looked around, clearing his throat. "It's just... I'm not really sure what I should be doing here."

"What do you mean?" I asked, a bit confused. "It's a party, you should be having fun."

"That's what I mean," Boone looked incredibly awkward. Maybe even a bit nervous, but why? Boone nervous? That was just ridiculous. "I just... You can probably guess, but I'm not very good with... social... situations."

"So don't socialize," I said with a shrug. "Grab a brew, snag a deck chair, and loosen up a bit, away from the fight-slash-dance going on over there," I grabbed a beer bottle from a nearby ice chest, twisted the top open, and set it in his hands, slapping him on the shoulder. "The whole point of this is to have fun. You're thinking too hard about this, man."

"I... uh..." Boone finally took a swig of the beer after staring at it for a minute or two. "I guess I am. Thanks."

"Don't mention it, man. Stop thinking so much, and have some fun," Boone nodded, and wandered off. As he did, however, I suddenly became aware that the sounds from the party had changed considerably.

"What's that in the sky? Are those meteors?"

"Is that fire? Why is the sky on fire?"

"What is that? Are those shooting stars?"

I looked up, and saw the clear, cloudless mostly-night sky marred by several streaks of yellow and gold. The streaks twinkled and shimmered like stars, but looked much more like fire than the rest of the pure white dots in the sky, and the icy-blue sliver of moon. It seemed like every single one of the Boomers was looking skyward, transfixed by the spears of light streaking across the night sky. I couldn't count how many there were, because for every streak that disappeared, another streak would suddenly emerge and start to glow a fiery reddish-gold, or a big streak would break up into several smaller streaks.

I looked around, trying to find - aha! There she is.

"Hey V," I approached Veronica as carefully as I could. She was staring skyward, a rather somber expression on her face. I looked up when I joined her. "So, is that what I think it is?"

"ARCHIMEDES has entered the atmosphere," she said with a sigh. "Most satellites aren't designed to handle atmospheric re-entry," Veronica pointed at all the streaks in the sky. "That's why it's breaking up into so many pieces like that. The heat and friction are... it can't take it."

"We did the right thing today," I said, patting Veronica on the shoulder. She closed her eyes and nodded slowly. "It's breaking up harmlessly in the atmosphere, and it will never hurt anybody again."

"I know," she said quietly. I nodded, reached into my back pocket, and handed her the bottle I was saving for myself.

"Have a beer." I said, trying to get her to smile. "You're gonna be alright, V."

"I know," she took a sip of her beer... and smiled quietly to herself.