Chapter 110: Claws

Chapter 110: Claws

I cracked my eyes open, and for half a second, I wasn't sure I had. A vertical line of light sliced through the darkness in front of me; the hissing of releasing gas filled my ears. I smiled and sighed as the Auto-Doc doors slid open, letting me step out onto the cold metal floor of The Sink.

"Good morning, sir," Jeeves spoke to me in a calm, pleased tone as I emerged out of the darkened chamber. "It is currently 6:42 in the morning, and might I say, sir, how nice it is to see you fully functional again." I inhaled deeply, patting the fresh scar tissue on my chest. I could tell already that everything was where it was supposed to be. I still felt a bit heavier than I used to, but I no longer felt as empty.

"Well, it seems the procedure was a resounding success, if I do say so myself," The Auto-Doc chimed in from behind me. "To be honest, I didn't expect you to wake up and be on your feet so soon. You've only been under just shy of 10 hours. In all my years practicing medicine, you're the most resilient son-of-a-bitch I've ever encountered. So... how do you feel?"

At first, I didn't say anything. I inhaled deeply again and cracked my knuckles. Finally, I turned to the Auto-Doc with a broad smile on my face. Not only did my body feel more complete, but my mind... now that my mind was back in my head, all of the information and knowledge he'd been studying the last few days was flooding into me. My mind was filled with brand new thoughts, images, and ideas...

"I... feel... FAN-TASTIC!"

"There we go..." I snapped the last panel in place, and wiped the sweat from my brow. "That should do it. Jeeves!" I tilted my head up to the ceiling. "What's the time?"

"Just after one in the afternoon, sir," Jeeves said calmly.

"Thank you, Jeeves," I said, stepping back to admire my handiwork. I'd been building the device in the room that used to contain the tanks that held my organs. Shortly after the tanks became empty, I had Jeeves break them down to their base components, and stored as raw material for the replicator. In fact, most of the components in this device were made by Jeeves' replicator. "Not bad. Not bad at all for half a days work."

The major focus of the device was the large circular pad in the center of the room. It glowed from beneath with a blue light that filled the whole room. Next to the circular pad was a computer console, mounted on a rotating swivel, so it could be used by someone standing on or off the pad. Wires and cables snaked around over every surface in the room - along the walls, up to the ceiling, and occasionally disappearing down holes I'd cut in the floor. Based on the schematics, the power requirements for this thing were absolutely immense, so I'd had to wire it in to the main reactors. Note to self: don't tell the Toaster. There was another circular disk, slightly larger, mounted in the ceiling directly above the disk on the floor. A few small mirrored panels lined several of the walls, along with a few slowly rotating fan blades orbiting the disk in the ceiling.

It was a teleporter. I'd built it using schematics my brain had found while in the Forbidden Zone. Now that I was looking at the finished product, I had to admit... it looked remarkably like the teleporter Elijah had built outside the Sierra Madre, only a bit smaller. Probably because, unlike that old genocidal bastard, I wasn't forced to build the thing out of scraps, and I'd been using a complete schematic.

It was actually kind of interesting where I'd found the plans, really. Like the information to implant a brain back inside a body, the schematics were scattered throughout half a dozen files my brain had uncovered - hidden between important lines of code. On their own, they meant nothing. The digital equivalent of coffee stains. But put them all together... Mobius' fingerprints were all over this. But really, that wasn't the most important thing:

In just a few short hours, I'd built my way home.

"Does this mean that you're going to be leaving us, sir?" Jeeves asked from a speaker in the ceiling. I nodded... but instead of stepping onto the teleport pad, I turned on my heel and walked out. There were still a few things I had to do, and a few things I had to collect.

"Is that a note of disappointment I hear in your voice, Jeeves?" I asked with as smirk as I stepped away from the teleporter room. Jeeves coughed, clearing his non-existent throat.

"I must admit, sir, that sirs presence here within The Sink is most comforting. Were it not for sir's intervention, then this domicile would feel much less..." Jeeves paused, as if searching for the words. "...inviting. Thanks to sir's actions, The Sink now bustles with the voices of a small town." I raised an eyebrow.

"I thought you didn't like the other personalities, Jeeves?" I asked, collecting my weapons; as I spoke, I made sure all my gear was secure for the trip back.

"Yes, well..." Jeeves coughed again. "Despite the constant chirping, arguing, and snarling at each other, it is all happening productively to further your scientific research interests. And... despite my inversion code, I must admit to sir that I am... comforted by the sense of community the other personalities provide. And it is all thanks to the actions of sir. I was rather hoping that sir would stay."

"That's rather touching, Jeeves," I said with a smile. "But you don't have to worry. I'll be back - because I have this."

I held up a small device, about the size of an explosive detonator (complete with pistol grip) in my hand. It was small and black, with a tube on top. The cap on the end near my thumb was orange, and both the top half of the tube and the end nearest the trigger were clear with blue electricity arcing along the inside. A small antenna stuck out of the top, and the trigger was covered by a red flip-up trigger guard, just like a detonator - the kind specifically designed to keep you from using it accidentally.

"Now that I have the Big Mountain Transportalponder! in my possession, I can come and go as I please," I said with a smirk - and yes, before you ask, the exclamation on the end of its name was actually written that way in the schematics. "All I have to do is pull the trigger on this anywhere in the outside world, and it'll instantly teleport me back to the pad in there, able to crack open the secrets of the Big Empty, one by one."

"Will sir be taking any of sir's companions with sir, beyond the confines of the crater?" Jeeves asked as I slid the last of my gear - a small metal disk I'd built in the last hour - back into my duster. You'll see what that's for later.

"Not yet," I sighed. "Thing is, I checked the notes while I was building the transporter, and..." I grimaced, scratching at the back of my head. "Well. Apparently there's a limit to how much weight can be sent by a teleporter this small. Which means I can't take Sasha with me until I build a bigger one." From behind me, I heard Sasha mutter something in Russian from his spot on the bed. "There also appears to be an issue with multiple biolectric fields interfering with the teleport beam."

"Appears, sir?" Jeeves asked.

"The notes I read didn't really go into too many details, but it seems that the teleporter had... issues during testing when they tried to transport more than one living being at a time." Yeah, no details except for one line: the animals appeared inside-out. Probably best to wait on that, before trying to take Roxie and Stripe with me. "I'll work out the problem between now and when I come back."

"Then the Sink will sit vigilant, sir," Jeeves said as I put the Transportalponder! back into my duster, "waiting for sir to return, shoes covered in Mojave dust."

"Thank you, Jeeves." I said, walking past the jukebox, and patting the top. Blind Diode Jefferson spoke up as I passed.

"So, you beat the big brains at their own game, huh?" He asked. I nodded. "Guess you'll be puttin' your walkin' shoes on again... hittin' that old lonesome road."

"Already got my walkin' shoes on," I said, nudging the bottom edge of the jukebox with the toe of my boot. "But I don't know how lonesome the road is going to be. It's not like I'm that much of a lone wanderer, you know." I gave the old jukebox a lazy salute as I walked away. "I'll see you around, Jefferson - and I'll work on getting you some replacement music modules when I get back, like I promised. Get you back to singing the blues, like you used to."

"I can dig it, daddy-o," Jefferson laughed. "See you later, alligator." I turned to Roxie, who was sitting next to the sofa, looking up at me intently and wagging her tail. Stripe was curled up on the couch, fast asleep and purring away softly. I knelt down, and started scratching her behind the ears.

"Alright, Rox... I gotta leave for a while. There are people waiting for me back home. And I can't take you with me just yet." Roxie went all doe-eyed as she looked up at me and whimpered. She pawed at my shoulder, and nuzzled against my face. "Yeah, I know. I'm gonna miss you too. But I'll be back. You're a good dog. You're a very good dog."

Squeak!

I looked up just in time to see Stripe leaping off the couch and throwing himself at me. After a bit of flailing about, I managed to peel Stripe away from my face. I grabbed him by the mohawk, set him back down on the couch, and started to pet him.New novel chapters are published on

"I'm gonna miss you too, you little gremlin," I turned to Roxie, and pointed at Stripe. "I want you to look after him. Keep him out of trouble, alright?" Roxie barked in the affirmative, and I turned to Stripe, pointing at Rox. "And that goes for you, too. Look after each other, I'll be back as soon as I can."

With that, I got back on my feet, hiked the anti-materiel rifle further up my shoulder, and walked back to the teleporter. I stepped onto the platform in the center of the room, and swiveled the console around. The left side of the console was a large monitor that flicked to life when I turned it around, and the right side was a mass of buttons and dials. The monitor provided a map, allowing me to pinpoint where I wanted to teleport myself.

A pang of curiosity hit me. It was in that moment that I realized: I didn't actually know where the Big Empty was located. So, I centered the map... and I still didn't know where I was. None of the terrain looked familiar. I widened the image, and kept going until the map contained The Big Empty at the northwest corner of the screen, and New Vegas on the southeast corner. I pressed a few buttons, and suddenly a straight line connected the two. A label appeared on the line: 115 miles. I tightened up the image, back onto the Big Empty... and smirked when I saw that this place was just a few miles due west of Area 51.

That fits.

The possibilities of what I could do with this teleport device were just immense. The range on this thing wasn't infinite, based on the notes I'd read. But despite that, it was still very large. Theoretically, it could potentially reach anywhere in the same hemisphere. If I wanted to, I could go places I'd never even dreamed it was possible to visit! And if I got lost, all I had to do was pull the trigger on the Transportalponder!

A thought struck me. I twiddled one of the larger knobs, and the map panned down, and finally stopped on a location in Mexico. A label appeared, indicating that I was focused on a spot just outside a small town called San Felipe de Jess.

The Sierra Madre.

Christine was still there. Trapped in that hellhole. Except... not quite trapped. She was staying there in that poison hellscape surrounded by Old World ghosts of her own free will. Until I could find a way to destroy the place and get her out, she was going to stay there, out of a sense of duty to her cause. I now had a way to get there... but still no way to destroy the Madre. It would take more explosives than I could carry with me through the teleporter - hell, more explosives than I even had. And even if I had the sheer number of explosives needed to level the place, I had no way to teleport both of us back.

I sighed heavily... and moved the map north. The panning slowed to a crawl when it got near Vegas... and I hovered it over Caesar's Fort on the east side of the Colorado River. I thought of another promise I'd made that I hadn't been able to keep. A promise I made to a scared little girl, tormented by the Legion. Beaten. Raped. Scared out of her mind... Melody was trapped there by Legion, subjected to horrors that no human should ever have to endure, day in, and day out...

I gritted my teeth... and moved the map away. There were still too many problems. Even if I teleported myself there, I had the same problem I faced with trying to get Christine out. The Transportalponder! was just... like the name suggested, it was just a transponder for the teleporter. It was a one way device, and I couldn't take more than just myself. And worst of all, it wasn't just Melody there, either. There were hundreds of slaves in the Fort. I couldn't take all of them.

The air was shattered by the sound of a terrifyingly loud, ear-splitting, screeching roar.

All three of us froze.

I willed myself to look up, if only to confirm my worst fears. There was a ridge to the southwest, overlooking the drive in... and standing on top of it was a large, hunched over, vaguely humanoid figure of immense proportions. Even from this distance, I could see that it had to be at least twelve feet tall - maybe larger - and it had a body covered completely by a skin of thick, slimy, interlocking scales. A row of highly visible spikes protruded out of its spine, and a pair of curved horns stuck out of its angular and altogether alien head. A tail was swinging back and forth behind it, visible behind its digitigrade legs. A pair of extremely large - but disproportionately lanky - arms extended out at either side. It was clutching onto the edge of the ridge with enormous paws, about three times larger than you would expect, and each of its four fingers and thumb were tipped with extremely long, razor sharp claws.

This wasn't a cute and cuddly deathclaw like Stripe. Oh no. This was a real, fully grown, and very hungry looking adult deathclaw, poised and ready to rip us all to shreds.

Boone was the first one to speak, and I think he summed up things rather succinctly.

"Ohhhh... shit."

"Go... GO!" I hissed. "In the car! Now!" After making sure both right side doors were open, I practically vaulted over the hood with my keys in hand. I slipped through the door and planted myself in the drivers seat, and cast a second glance back up at the ridge. I just about lost all control of my bowels: there was no longer one deathclaw perched on top of the ridge. There were three.

"Fuck!" The engine rumbled to a start, and I slammed down on the accelerator. It was only a few seconds, but it still felt like it took six years before the car even started moving. The wheels spun furiously, kicking up massive rooster tails of dust behind the car. Mercifully, they eventually found some traction on the loose dirt and gravel; it was a solid four seconds before I saw 40 mph on the speedometer, even with my foot welded to the floor.

The earth - and by extension, the car - shook, and I quickly cast a glance in my rearview mirror: the first of the deathclaws had dropped off the ridge and was now running after us, both arms extended as far as they could go on either side of it.

"Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!" Cass babbled feverishly from the passenger seat. She was trying to load her AA-12, but that was no easy task with the stupidly bumpy ride. "We gotta get outta here! Can we outrun 'em?" She looked over her shoulder through the rear window. "Wait, how fast do those fuckers run?!" I glanced up at the rearview mirror again. All three deathclaws were on the ground, giving chase. A laser blast cut through the air from above, and hit the deathclaw in the lead; the bolt fizzled against the scales on its chest. ED-E might as well have been throwing spitwads at it...

"I don't know!" I yelled, trying to get us onto the nearest piece of unbroken tarmac as quickly as possible. "I don't think anybody has ever lived long enough to check!" These things were fast, sure, and I heard stories of them running people down in tanks and ripping them up like they were made out of tissue paper. But I think if I could get us onto highway 95... I remembered seeing the speedometer get close to 190 mph on some of the straights of the Nellis Speedway when I'd raced Shelby in his Cobra. There was no way these things could run that fast.

I hope.

"Keep it steady!" Boone yelled over a sudden and unexpected cacophony. He'd rolled the window down - it looked like he was going to try and hang out the window to shoot at them with his MP5. I certainly did my best, but we were heading through a ruined old-world neighborhood now, full of broken ground, broken tarmac, and broken buildings that had collapsed in on themselves decades ago.

One of the deathclaws roared, and the sound drowned out the bark of submachine gun fire. I looked over my shoulder just in time to see the beast leaping through the air - somehow still keeping up with the car - and swing both claws at us, like it was trying to catch us in a bear hug. I swerved the car violently. The claws missed us by inches, probably, and in exchange I rammed the left side of the car through the corner of a ruined building. There was a shower of wooden shrapnel that was thrown behind us, and the car went up on two wheels; I struggled against the steering wheel to maintain control and powered through it,

"What about the guns?" Cass asked; she was still holding her shotgun, but Boone had beaten her to hanging out the window. If she tried that while he was out there, she'd just end up blowing his head off and she knew it. "Doesn't this thing have guns and shit hidden on it?"

"Well, yeah, but -" I looked down at the center console, with all the buttons and switches that Hamilton had installed when he'd rebuilt my car. Grenade machineguns, rockets, assault shotguns... "They're meant for a frontal assault! I don't know if there's anything that shoots out the back!"

"I'm out!" Boone yelled, sliding back into the car. "Didn't even dent them. You got a plan?" I swerved, narrowly missing another broken house. Cass, on the other hand, just shoved her hat at Boone.

"Here, hold this. LET'S ROCK!" Rather than stick the top half of her body out of the car (like Boone had done), Cass just switched the AA-12 to her left hand, stuck her head out of the window, and braced herself against the door. Boom after boom echoed in quick succession around the inside of the car as she aimed in the general direction of the deathclaws and held down the trigger. Unsurprisingly it clicked empty after a few seconds. All 32 shotgun shells: gone. "FUCK! Might as well be shooting blanks!"

"Like I said," Boone grabbed the back of my seat; one of the deathclaws roared again. "You got a plan?"

"Kinda..." I'd found two buttons on the console that looked promising. I hit the one marked: MORTAR. There was a heavy clunk that came from the back and rumbled through the whole car. There was a pair of metallic 'thwump!' noises...

BOOM! BOOM!

A pair of explosions ripped up the ground behind the lead deathclaw. That definitely seemed promising!

"The fuck was that?!" Cass grabbed at the roll bar above her head. I kept hitting the button; I had no idea how many mortars I had, so I figured I'd just keep firing until I was out. Two more explosions shredded the ground behind us; I looked over my shoulder just in time to see the last few seconds of a deathclaw's face before it was vaporized by a mortar. A huge explosion buffeted the back of the car, and a massive cloud of dust and smoke obscured my view of everything behind us. I just kept driving as fast as I could...

One of the deathclaws roared and burst out of the fiery smoke cloud right on our tail, followed by a second. The third was nowhere to be seen.

"LOOK OUT!" Cass yelled. I snapped my attention back to the front: a line of concrete Jersey barriers were directly in our path, and there was no way to dodge them. We'd just have to go through.

"Hang on!" I yelled, hitting another of the buttons: the one for the rockets. A pair of mechanical clunks sounded off from the doors, and two rockets - one from each door - screamed off in a trail of fire and smoke ahead of us, straight at the concrete blocks. A huge ball of fire consumed the concrete, billowing out and up into a small mushroom cloud. I didn't even bother to slow down. The car plowed straight through the ash cloud. We went over a massive bump that threatened to knock us all out of our seats, and I twisted the steering wheel to the side...

The tires squealed and skidded like they'd only ever do on tarmac. We'd reached the highway! I straightened us out, poured on the speed, and sure enough, we emerged out of the cloud directly onto the highway.

"They're still behind us!" Boone said, urgency creeping into his voice. Even his stoic demeanor had limits, it seemed.

"Alright!" I said, with a bit more confidence now that I was back on (relatively) smooth tarmac. "Let's see if they like This Better Then!" I hit one of the buttons with my thumb. I wasn't sure what it was actually for, because it had been taped over with a handwritten note that just read "This Better Then"

There was a series of heavy clunks from out of the back of the car. And then? Even more explosions! It almost was like... yep. The car was dropping mines out of the back! Explosion after explosion ripped up the highway behind us. At least, that's what it sounded like. I was too focused on not crashing. There were a lot more burned out wrecks littering the road then I remembered from the last time I drove this stretch of highway... or was that just because we were going so fast?

"Did that do the trick?" I yelled, swerving around a truck parked on its side. Cass started to say something, but then she was drowned out by the last explosion behind us; my finger was still on the button, but the clunks of deploying land mines had stopped. "WHAT?"

"I SAID!" Cass yelled, "THERE'S STILL ONE BEHIND US!" I looked in the rearview mirror, and sure enough, there was still one deathclaw left, still keeping pace. I glanced down: we were touching 80 mph. I looked back over my shoulder; terrifyingly, it looked even closer with my own eyes than it had in the mirror. Before I turned back to the road, my eyes settled on something in the backseat: my anti-materiel rifle.

A crazy, stupid, potentially suicidal idea popped into my head.

"Cass!" I smacked the "cruise control" button on the dash, and lowered the back window behind me. "Drive for a minute!" And without another word, I popped open the driver door and got out of my seat.

"What?!" Cass yelled, scrambling for the wheel. "Wait, WHAT?! Where the FUCK are you going?!" I was leaning out of the side of the car, that's where I was going. With my left hand, I was holding onto the central pillar between the front and back seat, and I had my feet planted as firmly as I could manage - left foot on the door sill, right pressed up the back wheel arch. The wind hit me like a freight train, and my whole body felt like I was being dragged along the concrete we were driving over... but I held firm, and shouted into the open back window.

"BOONE!" I held out my empty right hand. "GIMMIE THE FIFTY!" Boone nodded curtly, and grabbed the massive rifle, handing it to me stock first. I took hold of the grip and pulled it out of the car like I was drawing a sword. Despite the wind, despite the vibrations of the car going so fast and swerving, despite the pants-wettingly terrifying sight of a deathclaw keeping up with a car at a distance of no more than 5 yards away, I held firm.

I held up the enormous anti-materiel rifle with just one hand - my cybernetic hand. The synthetic muscles kept it steady as a stone, and I aimed the end of the weapon directly at the deathclaw's face. As I did so, it started to leap, drawing one of its claws up, and readying to slice right through the back of the Corvega. It opened its maw wide, letting out another ear-splitting roar, showing me every single row of razor sharp teeth.

"ALRIGHT, YOU SON OF A BITCH!" I yelled over the sound of the wind; I aimed the end of the barrel straight down its gullet. "YOU WANT SOME?! GET SOME!"

I squeezed the trigger.

The muzzle blast was just as loud as any of the explosions that had come before. The whole car seemed to shake and slide, as if the force of the gun discharging was enough to knock it off course. The flash was like a miniature sun, and the after-image burned into my eyes, momentarily obscuring my view of the deathclaw.

My vision cleared, and I let out a sigh of relief (that I couldn't hear or feel because of the enormity of the wind pressing down on me) when I saw the deathclaw limply tumbling over and over on the road behind us.

"QUIT SCREWIN' AROUND!" Cass yelled at me. "AND GET THE FUCK BACK IN THE CAR!"