anovelconsole Chapter 116: Shadow Intelligence
Chapter 116: Shadow Intelligence
Chapter 116: Shadow Intelligence
"So, Johnson," I glanced over my shoulder at Hannibal 'The Cannibal' sitting in the backseat. "Arcade here tells me you have a bit of a problem with authority?"
"Oh, he did, did he?" Johnson leaned forward, grabbing the back of Arcade's seat... and then laughed. "Yeah, sounds like me. Although it wasn't so much a problem with authority as it was a problem with fascists."
"You and me both," I said with a smile, turning back to the road. "Happy to know you, man."
"Technically, I said I was surprised you were never court-martialed," Arcade clarified. Johnson snorted.
"Nope... never court-martialed. Demoted more times than I can count, though. I think the highest rank I ever held was corporal, and that was just for two weeks. I'm positive that if it hadn't been for Arcade's father vouching for me so many times - and my skill as a marksman - the brass probably would've had me shot," Johnson leaned back in the backseat and chuckled softly to himself. "I hold the dubious distinction of being the only Enclave slick sleeve to ever serve in combat operations on the mainland."
"Slick sleeve?" I asked. I'd never heard that particular phrase before.
"You know how enlisted soldiers in the NCR have chevrons on their arms to denote rank?" Arcade said. I nodded. "They got that from the old US military, and the Enclave had a roughly similar system. The lowest rank of private doesn't have any rank insignia."
"Most of the time, the only slick sleeves around are in basic training. Soon as you finish basic, you get at least one stripe. Maybe two, if you went to school first." Johnson said, continuing the clarification. "But Arcade's pop, Gannon Senior, he knew I was too good of a shot. So he fought tooth and nail to keep me in the field."
"I'm surprised you agreed to that," I said. "Wouldn't it have been easier to 'serve without serving' if you weren't shooting at people?" Johnson shrugged.
"Maybe. But it was either that, or spend my days in the bowels of the oil rig, scrubbing latrines with my toothbrush, or somebody using my face as a dish mop. At least in the field, I had fresh air. Plus," Johnson coughed a bit before finally getting it under control. "If I hadn't been on the mainland, I probably would've been stuck on the oil rig when it went boom. So, I suppose it all worked out."
There are a lot more neighborhoods and communities around Vegas than most people realize. It's not just Freeside and The Strip. Those are just the places behind the walls that House built. Some places, like North Vegas for instance, are where people go when they've fucked up one too many times on The Strip, and aren't even allowed in some of the low-rent "budget" casinos in Freeside. Even by wasteland standards, North Vegas is a slum. It's a collection point for fuckups, junkies, drunks, losers, and people who have reached the lower back-end of life.
Not that you would ever figure that out just by talking to the people who lived there. According to them, they were doing just fine with their falling apart buildings, the constant threat of raiders, and the awful smell from all the open manhole covers that led into the sewers. They didn't want or need any help from anyone. Especially not NCR. They just wanted to be left alone.
And in that respect, our next destination of Westside was very similar. The people who lived in that walled-off community almost directly west of The Strip just wanted to be left alone. There was one thing that made all the difference, however. If you found yourself in North Vegas, it's because you had nowhere else to go. Nine times out of ten, the people who settled in Westside were there because they wanted to be.
Westside was not as rich or prosperous as Freeside, but it was a relatively stable community. They'd organized their own militia to fend off the raiders, and the 'Westside Co-op' - basically just a glorified grocery store - provided enough revenue in trade for the locals to keep the small town independent. There were (apparently) even a few small farms inside the ramshackle walls.
The last time I was here, it was just to drop off Calamity, Doc Henry's ghoul assistant, when she needed to get some supplies and I needed to find a dog's brain for Rex. She'd explained all this about Westside and North Vegas to me during the drive down the mountain. A bit understandably, she'd been a bit too scared out of her wits to say anything of the sort on the way back up.
Either way, I parked my car in roughly the same place as before - right near a big sign that pointed down at a manhole cover and said, in a large sign made out of bits of scrap metal and red paint: "THE THORN." The three of us got out of my car, and ED-E buzzed down out the sky, and hovered near my roof.
"Shall I keep watch over your vehicle, Friend_Courier? Or do you require my presence to recruit Enclave_Remnant Number: 4?" ED-E beeped at me. I shook my head, and held up the keys.
"Yeah, you can join us. The car should be fine," I pressed a button on the key fob; the deadbolts in the doors locked with a solid metallic thud. I looked up at the sign to that 'Thorn' place, and then down at the manhole cover. "I still gotta check out that place..."
"What, the Thorn?" Arcade said. "Yeah... I don't think there's much to see. Some kind of blood-sport arena held down in the sewers. I think. Never been down there, myself."
"I'm just glad to be out of that backseat!" Johnson muttered. I looked over at him, and he was visibly grimacing while holding his back with one hand, and leaning against my car with the other. "I mean... don't get me wrong, I appreciate the ride, but I don't think my joints can take much more of being cramped up back there..."
"Sorry man," I held back a laugh as the three of us walked through one of the gates into Westside. ED-E floated over the wall with a happy sounding buzz. "If I'd known we were picking up passengers, I would've waited to grab all that stuff later."
The hustle and bustle of the Westside streets behind the gates was a bit of a surprise. Despite all I'd been told about this place, I hadn't expected the place to be this crowded. Or maybe it was just busy because it was Friday afternoon, and old habits - old world habits, even - are hard to break. As we walked, I shot a glance down an alleyway, and finally understood what Calamity had meant when she said "farms." Situated between two squat concrete buildings was a small open square, filled with row after row of planter boxes, each filled to the brim with different types of wasteland flora in varying shades of life. By which I mean varying shades of brown.
"You know, it's been a while since I came around this way..." Arcade mused as we walked.
"Are you talking about that last get-together from four years ago I keep hearin' about?" I asked. Arcade laughed softly and shook his head.
"Oh, no. No, I came around this way relatively recently - about 8 or 9 months back. I passed through with another member of the Followers. Scientist by the name of Tom Anderson. He mentioned something about checking on the water supply, but that was the last I heard of him..."
"You're with the Followers?" Johnson asked from behind us.
"What, I didn't tell you?" Arcade said, looking over his shoulder. "Thought the labcoat gave it away."
It was at this point, I halted in my tracks and held up a fist to get them to be quiet. There had been a rhythmic, heavy drumming that I'd heard in the background, and the further we got into Westside, the louder it was getting. It almost sounded like extremely heavy footfalls. The sort of heavy, weighty footsteps that accompanied something like power armor or -
A super mutant stepped into view not two feet in front of us from us around a nearby corner. Every step hit the ground with a resounding thud. The green-skinned mutant with goggles on his head and a tire on his shoulder turned to look at us, looming over the three of us like a skyscraper made of meat... and then he smiled with a mouth full of teeth. Or, at the very least, he gave the best attempt at a smile that he could. Given the tops of his mouth were held up in a permanent sneer by the leather face harness, it didn't really work.
"Uh... hello?" I said, waving feebly. I'll be honest, I was caught with my pants down. The super mutant, not perturbed in the slightest, mimicked my wave.
"Nng," the mutant grunted out. "Hi." In retrospect, it was obvious why that 'hi' didn't sound natural. But at the time, it sounded strange, and I couldn't put my finger on what I thought was odd.
"Uh... can we... uh..." I pointed behind him, unable to form the words to properly ask if we could pass. He was quite large and in our way. At least, I think he was in our way. "Who are you again?" The mutant nodded.
"Mahsohfabish," he slurred. I blinked.
"What?" Arcade slapped me on the back.
"He said his name is Mean Sonofabitch," I looked over to Arcade, who just smiled. I looked back at Johnson, who looked as confused as me. "So, how are you enjoying Westside?" Arcade asked, turning back to the mutant. "The locals finally getting used to you yet?"
"Ha ha ha!" Mean Sonofabitch opened his mouth wide, and I got a gruesome look at what was clearly just a mangled stump of a tongue. That... okay, that explained the voice. "I wash ma bown. Wesibe!" He looked up, and sniffed the air. "I have bo go bow. Fiebs aroub." He started to stomp off, but waved over his shoulder before disappearing around another building. "Goobye!" Two out of the three of us stood there in stunned silence as Mean Sonofabitch stomped off.
"What the hell just happened?" Johnson asked.
"Ah, don't mind Mean Sonofabitch," I heard a voice say from behind me. It was a smooth, authoritative and very calming sort of voice. Try to imagine if a really rich, creamy, and thick molasses could speak, and you're about halfway there. "He may look tough as old boots, but he's a real softie. Like a teddy bear. A great, big, green, leathery teddy bear."
The voice belonged to an old man wearing a black leather jacket, standing not five feet away from us. By a happy accident, we'd run into exactly the man we were searching for: former Enclave Captain Judah Kreger. His skin had the shade of a very strong cup of coffee, and his short frizzy hair (on both the top of his head and the rough goatee on his face) was mostly white, but flecked occasionally with dark greys. Around his eyes I could see lots of tiny dark spots - they'd look like moles if they were a bit bigger. It was like someone had dusted his cheeks with pepper. His mouth was upturned in a slight smile when I turned around to get a look at him, but the instant he realized who was here with me, his face broke into a wide, toothy grin, accentuating and deepening all the lines on his face.
"My, my! Johnson!" He shouted with a laugh. Johnson smiled, nodding; his hand twitched, like he was holding himself back from saluting.
"Good to see you, Captain," Johnson's beard twitched, letting me know he was smiling. In seconds, Hannibal The Cannibal was caught in the middle of a hug.
"It's good to see you," He let Johnson go, and moved over to Arcade, slapping him on the shoulder. "And Arcade, too! Both of you, it's good to see you! How've you been, my boy?" Kreger held up a hand, and Arcade grasped it, the two of them doing some sort of complicated secret handshake - or maybe they were making it up as they went along?
"I'm good," Arcade said with a smile. Kreger shook his head and chuckled.
"I've heard the stories, mostly from you guys. What does that monster have to do with this assassin running around?" Arcade said, finally regaining control of his voice. Judah looked over to Arcade, and then back to me.
"There was one time the squad was deployed alongside Horrigan. They called it one of the 'Field Tests.' I saw him pick up a raider with his bare hands, and rip him apart lengthways like he was made out of tissue paper." Judah stared me straight in the face. "Horrigan pulled off half a dozen physical feats like what you described before breakfast every day."
Arcade and I both looked at each other, and I'll be honest: he looked exactly how I felt.
"If he was such killing machine... then what the fuck happened to him?" I finally managed to ask.
"Nobody knows for certain," Judah said plainly. "After the oil rig blew up, he was never seen again. Everyone assumed he went down with the ship, but... the most we ever heard about the oil rig explosion was that 'internal sabotage was responsible,' and we never got the full story. Nobody ever found Horrigan's body, but if he was on the oil rig when it went up, I'm not sure there would be any atoms left. And if he was alive... trust me. People would know."
"So, you think this assassin could be related to this guy Horrigan, who or whatever he was?" I asked.
"I don't know," Judah admitted. "But I can tell you who might. Adolphus Henry."
"Henry?" I blurted out. "Doc Henry, who we're going to see next? That Henry?"
"What would he know about this?" Arcade asked.
"Before he was attached to the squad, Henry spent a lot of time with the Enclave research teams on the oil rig. Once or twice, he let slip that he knew a few of the people responsible for 'manufacturing' Frank Horrigan, whatever that meant. It's possible he might know something more useful than me." I scratched at my beard, still processing.
"A few things..." I said aloud, the words taking root in my head. Judah took a step back, confused.
"What?"
"You said a few things were bothering you. What else is bothering you about this? I mean, there's plenty to be bothered about, but what, specifically?"
"Ah. Well, it's just..." he paused, as if trying to look for the right word. "Why now?" When he realized I wasn't quite sure what he meant, Kreger continued. "It's been forty years. The Enclave as an organization just doesn't exist anymore. Nobody left except us Remnants. There's no command, there's no orders, and even if there were, it's not like everyone who used to be Enclave would jump at the call. We've all moved on... or, most of us have, anyway. So why come out of hiding now? There's something here we don't know."
"There's a whole hell of a lot we don't know," I said.
"Maybe they haven't been hiding..." Arcade offered up. "If this person is really a Shadow Operative, then maybe they've been running their own personal guerilla war non-stop for decades. You said it yourself, they're able to operate without support behind enemy lines for extended periods of time. I remember the early days. Sort of. The Devil's Brigade fought a guerilla war for years before finally going underground." Judah just laughed.
"Yeah, and do you know why we stopped?" he asked. Arcade shook his head. "Because as time wore on, and we all started actually being forced to live in the real world, every one of us found out about what the Enclave was really doing. Not just the propaganda they fed us on the oil rig. You know what I came to realize, in the months that turned into years? The Enclave didn't lose because of Communists or traitors or internal sabotage or even a lack of a will to win. That wasn't the Enclave's problem. The problem was... the leaders of the Enclave were evil. Greedy, selfish, evil men." Judah took a very deep breath in, and sighed out heavily. "Evil will only prevail when good men fail to act... and back then, many good men decided to."
"Didn't seem like that was the case when we had our very unpleasant encounter with Orion earlier," I said with a nod to Arcade. "He seemed to be under the impression that the Enclave was doing what was right, and that he'd be called a hero if the Enclave had won."
"History has always been written by the victors," Judah nodded. "And maybe that's colored my opinions of the past. But I've made my peace with what happened years ago. And Moreno... well. Mercy was never exactly in his vocabulary, so I don't think he would've cared one way or another."
"Sounds like he would've been perfect for Shadow Ops. You know, with the 'moral flexibility' you mentioned?" I shrugged. "Maybe they should've gone after him instead of you."
"Maybe they did," Kreger said, a slight smile inching its way onto his face. "But maybe they rejected him because they were looking for candidates with brains." I laughed out loud at that, and Judah shook his head, waving his hands. "That was mean, don't tell him I said that. If we really are putting the team back together, then we're gonna need Moreno to bring the heat. I may not like him, I know he and Johnson don't get along - and I can tell you feel the same way - but he's good. He's good at what he does because he's a killer. Johnson may be a soldier, but Moreno is a killer. And that - a killer - is exactly what you're going to need for any mission that brings the five of us out of retirement."
"There is no hunting like the hunting of man," Arcade said softly. "And those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it... never care for anything else thereafter."
"That certainly sums up Moreno pretty well," Judah said with a nod.
"Did you just make that up?" I asked, a bit curious. Arcade shook his head.
"No... No. That was Hemingway."
A few minutes later, we were all down in the garage. Like Daisy, Judah Kreger had a 'bug-out' bag all prepared with all the essentials he needed for getting out of town in a hurry. The only thing he didn't have in the bag - and almost forgot - was a hat.
"I don't get it," I asked, as we made our way down the stairs to the small garage on the other side of the building. "What's so important about a hat?"
"Well, if we're getting the team back together..." Judah held the black cap in his hands, right where I could see it. "Then it's only fitting that I wear my officer cap." Despite being a little dusty, the cap was still in pretty good condition. The most distinguishing thing about it was the symbol above the brim: a silver circle made of stars, with a large "E" in the center. The middle spar of the "E" was made up of three lines.
"Hey Johnson," Arcade said. "Waiting long?" I looked up, and realized we were at the garage; Hannibal was sitting on the hood of the rusty CHP car. It almost looked like some of the abandoned NHP cars that littered the sides of roads around here, except the roof lights on this car were still intact.
"Nah," Johnson shook his head and smiled. "I'm used to waiting long stretches."
"Sorry," I said. "I didn't think we'd-."
"I said, forget about it," he slid off the hood with a grunt, and walked over to the passenger side. "So, are we gonna to hit the road, Captain?" Judah nodded, tossing the duffel bag into the backseat.
"We're going to head straight for the bunker," Kreger said to both of us. "See you boys there. And it was nice meeting you, Mr. Fisher." I nodded to him with a smile.
"See you later then," Johnson said with a wave, paused, and then added, a bit darkly: "...maybe."
Arcade and I stood there as the patrol car rumbled to a start, and rolled on down the road and out of sight. A few seconds later, ED-E floated down out of the sky.
"Were you successful in recruiting Remnant_Judah, Friend_Courier?" ED-E asked. I nodded.
"Yeah. Four down, one to go." I scratched my beard, and looked over at Arcade, who was still leaning against the brick wall. "So, here's a question I have in my head, now I know we're dealing with someone who actually used to be part of the Enclave." Arcade perked an eyebrow.
"Yes?"
"It's been forty years. Many different people have mentioned this many different times. Which means that, for this person to be Enclave black ops, they'd have be at least in their sixties now, wouldn't they? At least." Arcade nodded his head.
"It certainly stands to reason. Discounting me, the youngest member of the Remnants is Daisy Whitman, and she's 64."
"Exactly. That assassin we fought did not fight like a sixty year old." I shook my head, trying to fit all the various pieces together that just simply would not fit. It was like I was trying to reassemble a jigsaw puzzle, and half the pieces had disappeared. "Can you think of a single person over sixty who'd be able to drop seven stories without even breaking stride, or even just move that fast? Hell, can you name a twenty year old that could do that shit?" Arcade shrugged.
"Super mutants can do that, and a lot of them are at least a hundred years old. Maybe more."
"Yeah, well... that black-clad waif with a right hook like a freight train doesn't look like a super mutant." I shook my head. "Something stinks. I can't figure out what it is, and it's driving me insane."