Chapter 79: The Better Part of Valor

Chapter 79: The Better Part of Valor

The next morning, Veronica and I were in the kitchen getting ready for the day's events by checking all our weapons and equipment. And if I'm honest, I had a bit more to do than her.

"Are you seriously going to bring all of that?" Veronica asked with a chuckle, staring at everything laid out on the table. Nearly two dozen different guns and energy weapons, ammunition for everything, several grenades, a couple of mines, five different types of knives (including the butterfly knife I'd stolen the other day), and a pair of brass knuckles were all laid out. Sitting alongside the weapons were several dozen stimpacks, a few syringes of Med-X, some vials of antivenom, and three bottles of Rad-X. I was already wearing the Riot Gear. Minus the helmet; I'd keep that in the car until I needed it.

"Uh... yeah. Why not? I'll probably keep some of the bigger guns in the trunk of my car, but most of this I can carry myself..." Absentmindedly, I picked up the 12.7mm SMG, and checked to make sure the magazine was seated properly. Veronica just shook her head, resting Oh, Baby! against her shoulder. (I still couldn't quite believe that's what she actually named that rusted super sledge from the Mt. Charleston cave...)

"What, no gatling laser?" She laughed. I shrugged.

"I thought about it, but Raul took a look at the Sprtel-Wood the other day. It's still way too spent to use. Apparently, it needs some internal re-wiring..." I set the SMG down, and picked up a laser RCW, checking the sights of the energy weapon styled to look like an old Thompson.

"I..." Veronica was staring at me, mouth agape. "I was kidding. You were seriously thinking about bringing the gatling laser." I set down the laser RCW and grabbed a few plasma grenades, attaching them to my armor.

"If you're right, and the Brotherhood patrols McNamara wants me to find are dead, that means something killed them. I'm through fucking around, I'm not taking any chances. Just one last thing. Hey, ED-E!" As soon as I called out his name, the eyebot sped into the room, beeping happily. "Think you can be our eye in the sky today?"

ED-E let out a burst of patriotic marching music in response.

"So why are we going to see Pearl first?" Veronica asked as we rolled past Nellis' front gates. "I thought one of the holotapes was located south of Nellis? Shouldn't we go after the closest one first?"

"Well, you're right about it being close," I held up my Pip Boy. "According to the map, it's somewhere in the bombed out no-man's land. I thought, after asking Pearl about the Pulse Gun, we'd have a quick word with the artillery spotters and the gun crews. I mean, I know they recognize the car, since I'm not having to drive like a maniac this time, but..." Veronica nodded slowly.

"You want to make sure they don't even fire near us while we're looking for the paladins. Gotcha." Recognition dawned, and her smile evaporated. "But... hang on, if they're in... then that must mean..."

"Yeah..." I nodded slowly.

We found Pearl in the main hangar with the B-29, and I'll be honest - I was in for a bit of a shock. The main hangar doors were open, and I could see dozens of Boomers surrounding it, all working on the bomber. It was completely in pieces just a few days ago, but now it looked... well, halfway intact, at least. If nothing else, the nose and one of the wings were intact. Pearl and Loyal were near the nose, talking to each other about something.

"Hey Pearl, Loyal!" I called out after parking the Corvega. Both of them turned at the sound. "The bomber is looking good. When do you suppose it's gonna be done?"

"Oh!" Pearl said, smiling widely as I approached, giving me a friendly wave. "Welcome, Sheason! I didn't expect to see you back here so soon."New novel chapters are published on

"Hello, outsider," Loyal grabbed his goggles, and set them on his forehead. "Yeah, I can't give you an exact figure on when Pearl's gonna be finished. Jack and I are still running a lot of the pieces from the Lady through inventory." I raised an eyebrow; Loyal chuckled, patting Pearl - that is, the woman standing next to him - on her shoulder. "Yeah, we decided to name the bomber after our girl here. Take a look!"

Loyal pointed at the plane; there was a pin-up painted on the metal of the bombers nose just behind the canopy. It was a painting of a rather... lets be honest here, a gorgeous looking blonde, sitting with her back to us and looking coyly over her shoulder, wearing a practically skin-tight Vault 34 jumpsuit. The name "Pearl" was painted in red script next to her, and she was framed by a yellow cog-looking thing: the outline of a Vault door. It was kind of hard to reconcile the foxy lady painted on the plane with the 70 year old standing right in front of me.

"Damn." That's all I could manage to say. I pointed at the pin-up and turned to Pearl. "Is that you?" She nodded, positively beaming.

"Oh definitely," she smiled like a cat. "I used to model for a Vault magazine when I was a teenager - that picture was actually from my 'Miss January, 2222' photo shoot. But that was long before my hair went grey." She winked at Loyal, and the two of them started laughing. It took Veronica to bring all of us back down to earth.

"Sorry to interrupt," Veronica said. "But we're not actually here for that. We're here because we're looking for something."

"Uhh... yeah." I shook my head, trying to focus. "It's a weapon we're looking for. Something called a Pulse Gun. Veronica thinks it might be somewhere here in Nellis, so we thought we'd come to you first." I smirked to myself, and added: "I wouldn't dream of removing it from the Homeland without asking permission."

"Pulse Gun, Pulse Gun... Why does that sound familiar..." Pearl scratched her head, and looked pensive - then she snapped her fingers, and her face lit up. "Ah! Yes, I think I know what you're talking about. Come with me."

Pearl led us to her house: the old Commanding Officers quarters. At least, I think that's what it was, given the sign outside the building had the image of a stylized eagle, and the words "COL. R. BLACKWELL, USAF" painted in big bold letters.

"Make yourselves at home," Pearl said, quickly running deeper into the house, into a room behind the stairs; she kept talking from the other room. "I just need to check the office, I'll be back in a minute!" Veronica and I didn't actually make ourselves at home. Instead, we just sort of nervously hung around the entryway.

"You don't suppose she's actually got the Pulse Gun, do you?" Veronica asked. "That would be great if she did, would certainly make my job easier."

"That'd be nice..." I shook my head. "But when has anything ever been easy?"

"Good point." Veronica sighed heavily. Sure enough, Pearl returned a few minutes later, not with the Pulse Gun, but with an ancient military file folder in one hand, and a piece of paper in the other.

"Here you go," Pearl said, handing me the document. "That's why I remembered the Pulse Gun, I read about it when I went through the files in the HQ a few years ago."

"Alright, let's see..." I scanned the page and started to read aloud. "Inventory transfer... yadda, yadda, yadda... Okay, 'Due to current events, Staff Sergeant Daniels... hereby authorized... transport item number T-11836A, codenamed CIRCUITBREAKER... installation... Vault 34 to be sealed... armory... safekeeping... retrieve the prototype... signed Colonel Roy Blackwell, United States Armed Forces.' Oh for fuck sake!" I sighed, handing her back the paper.

"So it's in the armory of your old Vault, then?" Veronica asked. Pearl nodded.

"Hang on, that doesn't make sense," I thought back to when Pete told me the 'History of the Boomers.' "Didn't you guys break open the armory before you left?"

"Actually no," Pearl smirked, putting her hands on her hips. "The Overseer denied everyone who lived in Vault 34 access to the armory. That's one of the main reasons we left... after the riots, anyway. I was in my late twenties for The Exodus, and I can say for certain everyone who left did so with their own guns. None of the heavy-duty hardware in the armory."

"Alright, so we have to go to a Vault? " I asked.

"Looks like. I can make it a little easier for you, at least." Pearl reached into the file folder, pulling out a small rusted key. "This key came with the file." She tossed it to me with a smile.

"Can I take a look at that folder?" Veronica asked. Pearl nodded, handing her the file, and V started flipping through the documents. I only got a quick glance before she closed it again, but it looked like blueprints and test results.

"I will warn you though..." Pearl said to me, her expression suddenly becoming serious. "Us Boomers may not have left the Nellis Homeland for 50 years, but I still hear about things that happen in the outside world. If you do end up going to our old Vault... prepare for the worst." Veronica and I looked at each other curiously.

"What do you mean the worst? It's a Vault, how bad could it be?" I asked.

In retrospect, that was probably the single dumbest thing I have ever said in my entire life. But I wouldn't know that till much later...

"I don't know exactly what happened down there, after we left... but I can say for certain that it was definitely bad. About ten years ago, I heard a report on the radio that things started coming out of the Vault again. Ghouls. And not like your friend Raul, either, all well spoken and the like. Packs of ferals - Glowing Ones, even - still wearing Vault suits and roaming the hills. If you're going to go down there... be careful. Expect a fight."

Half an hour later, Veronica and I were in the bombed out no-mans land beyond the Nellis gates, trying to track down the Brotherhood team. It was surprisingly difficult, because all the various craters everywhere made the whole place feel like an obstacle course. Eventually, we got close enough - at least, according to the Pip Boy - that we left the car and started in on foot. Even ED-E flew down low enough to join us in the search.

"I'm beginning to think your guns may have been overkill," Veronica said, scanning the empty, pockmarked horizon.

"Day isn't over yet," I said gripping the marksman carbine, a few craters away from Veronica's position. My foot slipped on a patch of loose gravel, and when I tried to regain my balance, I got a good look into the crater next to me. "Hey V! I think I found 'em!" I yelled over to her. I looked back down, and couldn't help but wince, muttering: "Well... at least part of them..."

By the time Veronica arrived at the edge, I'd already slid down the crater's walls to inspect the corpse. It wasn't a whole corpse, though... I'm not entirely certain where the legs had gone. This definitely was the paladin we were looking for, since even mangled, blackened, and charred as it was, I was still able to recognize it as the T-51b I'd seen so much of yesterday. I hesitated to call whoever this used to be a he or a she, because I couldn't really tell.

"Damnit," Veronica slid down the side of the crater, using Oh, Baby! to steady her descent. Her expression darkened as she placed a hand on the charred chestplate.

"Alright, there's two things McNamara wants me to retrieve - the mission holotape, and the tags. Do you know where they are?" Veronica didn't say anything. She just nodded, and fiddled with something on the armor that I couldn't see. There was a pop and a hiss, and a small hatch on the underside of the chestplate opened up, revealing the holotape. As I plugged it into my Pip Boy, Veronica reached near the neck, and pulled off the dog tags. She held onto the tags, staring at them silently, and I read the contents of the holotape:

Mission code: KH-792

Temporary Password: And to dare to do it.

Summary: Paladin Raseleanne, you and an escort are to investigate the military base to the northeast for the components we need. We've had reports that the current occupants are fiercely territorial, but it's highly unlikely that they have any weapons that can seriously threaten someone in full power armor. The threat level is considered minimal.

"Are you even going to use it?" I asked. Veronica shrugged.

"Probably not. Shooting things isn't really my style. I like punching things. And beating things. And smashing things to a bloody pulp. Even with plasma weapons, you don't get that same satisfaction." Veronica beamed at me as she put the rifle in the backseat. "Punching is the gift that just keeps on giving."

The last stop was in the western Black Mountain foothills, close to Hidden Valley. And it was strange: I was longing for the terrain of the bombed out no-mans land outside Nellis. It may have been tough, but at least it was mostly flat. We had to abandon the car almost a half mile away from the holotape signal because anywhere beyond the broken up road was entirely too steep, too narrow (or both) for the car.

Veronica, ED-E and I spread out, and started making our way cautiously in the vague direction of the signal. The closer we got, the more the feeling of unease in my stomach grew. Something was wrong here. It wasn't like before. There was definitely something wrong here...

Tik.

"Hold up!" I called out to Veronica; luckily, she was behind me.

"What's up? What's wrong?" I took off my helmet, reached into the medicine pouch, grabbed a few Rad-X pills, and then tossed her the bottle.

Tik-ik.

"The Geiger counter is going off. Wherever this patrol is, it's in the heat somewhere..." I popped the Rad-X pills in my mouth and put my helmet back on. "Alright, V, I got a question."

"Yeah?" Veronica tossed me back the bottle after taking a few of the pills herself.

"Does power armor come with radiation shielding?" Veronica's grip on her super sledge visibly tightened at the question... or maybe it was the sound that was making her tense.

Tik-tik-tikik-tik.

"Yes. And a built in Geiger counter, same as a Pip Boy," Veronica motioned with her head at the audibly clicking device on my wrist. "There are also built-in systems for delivering medicine and chems to the armor's user during combat actions..."

"Right, I get the picture. Whatever killed the patrol out here, it wasn't the rads." I adjusted the grip on my G36. "Get military. Something stinks."

The two of us didn't spread out as much after that. ED-E sped off ahead, buzzing well above the winding paths in the hills. The deeper we headed, the louder and more frequent the Geiger counter clicked. There were pockets of radiation everywhere... at least it didn't seem as heavy as the radiation in House's bunker under The Fort.

Before long, red pips started to appear on both the Pip Boy's radar and the helmet's motion tracker - just as ED-E returned, beeping urgently. Veronica and I kept low as we ascended the ridge. Even ED-E kept quiet. And a good thing too.

We weren't climbing a ridge at all. It was the mouth of a crater, and inside... The creatures crawling around the inside of the crater made my skin crawl. I'd never seen centaurs this close before. But the writhing masses of flesh crawling around the irradiated crater weren't the only things down there.

"There," Veronica whispered next to me. "In the center of the basin. I can see the two paladins..."

"We have to go back," I whispered, my eyes transfixed at the grisly sight below me. Veronica seemed confused. "That hunting rifle of mine, Pinpoint, is in the trunk of my car. It has a scope and a suppressor... Everything I'm carrying is for mid-to-close range, and I'd rather not-"

The edge of the crater underneath me exploded.

I remember tumbling and falling down into the crater. The armor was cushioning most of the impacts, but I could barely make heads or tails of anything as I fell. I grabbed the edge of the crater and managed to slow my descent just enough to grab hold of the rifle still clinging to my neck by the leather strap.

I managed to right myself just in time to come face to face with one of those... things. If you've never seen a centaur up close, consider yourself lucky. I don't know where they come from, but if I had to guess I'd say they were probably human once. Once. People call them centaurs because it has a head and a torso that are vaguely human, but beyond that their bodies are mutated into something truly and utterly alien. They only have stumps of twisted muscle and bone where their real arms should've been, and the rest of their bodies look like a radscorpion made out of a writhing mass of melted flesh, with cracked and broken bones sticking out at odd angles. I counted six limbs, but it was like what should have been legs were fused together with arms, ending with hands instead of feet... hands with too many fingers in all the wrong places.

Worst of all, though were the three massive, fleshy, slimy tentacles writhing and squirming out of its open mouth, headed straight for my face. At least, I assumed its mouth was open. I couldn't really see a lower jaw anywhere.

"Son of a bitch!" I brought the arm with my Pip Boy up, but it was no use. One of the tentacles wrapped itself around my arm, another wrapped around the middle of my chest, and the third clamped down hard on my head. It lifted me off the ground like I was made out of feathers. I could feel it squeezing against me like a vice, threatening to crush me, despite the armor... I grabbed hold of one of the tentacles to pull myself closer, and planted my feet against the monsters chest; I buried the carbine against the centaur's eye and squeezed the trigger.

The gun barked and flashed against the melted flesh of its face. It screeched and howled, a glutinous yellow-green ichor spraying in every direction. The grip it had on me loosened, and I fell to the ground with a thud. The centaur thrashed it's swollen and tumor-ridden head, tentacles flailing wildly. I didn't even bother to get up - I just took aim, flicked the selector switch to full auto, and emptied the rest of the magazine. Each muzzle flash brought with it more spurts of filthy inhuman pus and bile where there should have been blood.

"Sheason!" I heard Veronica from behind me as the centaur fell, still thrashing. ED-E zoomed overhead, as I got up, replacing the magazine. I looked over the collapsed and twisted form of the centaur just in time to see half a dozen more shuffle and shamble in my direction.

"I'm alright, don't worry!" I fired at the oncoming horde, and Veronica rushed past me, Oh, Baby! at the ready. "What was that explosion?"

The nearest centaur reared back, and the slimy tentacles parted, revealing a misshapen mouth, full of entirely too many teeth in all the wrong places - and it vomited a stream of bright green liquid filled with darkened black chunks like it was shot from a fire hose. I managed to duck out of the way, just in time to hear it explode on the crater wall behind me. Well, that answers that question, at least.

I climbed over the dead centaur as quickly as I could. The flesh and bones yielded and cracked underneath my boots as I kept firing round after round into the pus-filled sacks of meat. Streams of bile were being fired off into the air by the centaurs in the back, away from me - probably trying to hit ED-E, impossible moving target that he is.

The G36 clicked empty just as the nearest centaur succumbed. There were still three more heading to me - at least - and I didn't have time or cover to change the magazine. So I threw the weapon aside, pulling out the 12.7mm SMG. It may have felt like I was holding a box in my hands, but it still did the trick well enough... for a few seconds. Twenty seven rounds may seem like a lot, but on full auto it only lasts about three seconds. I'm just glad that in that three seconds, one of the centaur's faces turned into a yellowish-green pulpy mass, flecked with bits of bright pink skin and purple muscle.

Two more now. While I pulled the sawn-off shotgun off my leg, I cast a glance in Veronica's direction. She was fighting off two of the damn things at once. One of them definitely had its tentacles wrapped around Oh, Baby! and the arm that was holding it, but it was definitely struggling against her. And the other? I couldn't be sure if it was the centaur who was holding onto Veronica's arm, or if Veronica was holding onto the centaur's tentacle-tongues.

Speaking of tentacles, one of them wrapped itself around my helmet. Or maybe it just hit me really hard. Either way, I grabbed the tentacle with one hand, trying with all my might to pry it away, and with the other I took aim with the shotgun, and fired both barrels into its face. The whole left side of its head was blown apart, sending ichor and chunks of bone everywhere.

Only one more now, and it was getting perilously close. I had plenty of ammo, but no time to grab my discarded guns to reload, and I seriously doubted the three pistols - Roscoe, That Gun, or the Ranger Sequoia - would do anything to the monster besides piss it off. Well... maybe the Ranger Sequoia, but...

I shoved the corpse (was it dead? The tentacles were still moving, even though the rest of it was as limp as a sack of meat...) out of my way, and lunged for the nearest centaur, pulling one of my knives off my belt: the combat knife with the serrated edge. It reared back, exposing it's misshapen mouth; I ducked out of the way as it fired its explosive bile, and before it got a chance to bring the tentacles back down onto me, I rushed up and buried the knife into the central one. I buried it so deep, that it went completely through, and then I pushed until the knife went into its face. And there was it's open mouth, the other two tentacles flapping uselessly out of the way.

"Suck on this," I growled, pulling one of the plasma grenades off my chest, priming it, and shoving it into the monsters open mouth. Before it was even completely out of sight, I was already running. If I remembered right, plasma grenades have a three second fuse, and the-

The shockwave knocked me face-first into the ground. The whole world behind me lit up in green, and I was showered with gore and chunks of meat. Aside from that though, I was fine. Either I'd managed to run out of the worst part of the blast radius, or the armor had taken the brunt of it. Either way, when I turned around, there wasn't a centaur anymore. Just a smoking, smoldering pile of meat and bone.

By the time I'd gotten up and collected all my weapons, I saw Veronica, finishing off the last of the centaurs with a swing from Oh, Baby! that practically evaporated its head and most of the torso. She was breathing heavy, and covered from head to feet in gore... so was I, for that matter. For a minute, neither of us said anything, and the only sound apart from our heavy breathing was the steady clicking noise of the Geiger counter.

"We should... uh..." I pointed feebly at the center of the crater; amazingly, the two paladins seemed untouched. At least, untouched by this round of fighting.

"Yeah," Veronica tried to wipe some of the gore off her face, but stopped when she realized her sleeve was just as disgusting. "Good idea."

In no time at all, we'd recovered the tags and the holotape. While I was plugging it into my Pip Boy, I glanced at the paladin's armor. Based on the burns, and how it looked melted in places, I'd say these paladins took one too many hits of the centaurs explosive projectile vomit.

Mission Code: CB-03

Temporary Password: The better part of valor.

Summary: Paladins Hughes and Fairbanks, I need you two to head north to the nearby communications array and look for the components mentioned in the briefing. The mutants there have been reasonable in the past and may prove helpful.

-McNamara

"Right..." Veronica pushed up against the ground with her super sledge. "Let's go. I need a shower."

"I need a drink," I said. ED-E hovered into view. He seemed pleased with himself, the way he was beeping. It looked like he hadn't taken a scratch. "Yeah, yeah, shut up." ED-E beeped and squawked almost like he was laughing.

"You know... I admit it. You were right." Veronica said, nodding, as the two of us made our way out of the crater. When I didn't say anything, she continued: "Your desire to bring an armory's worth of guns wasn't overkill. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it was just the right amount of kill." I chuckled to myself, looking over my shoulder at the scene of carnage and devastation and smoking meat behind us.

"Yeah... overkill is underrated."