New Vegas: Sheason's Story

Chapter 156: Distractions

People of the Wasteland! It is I, Three Dog, your ruler! Hear me, and obey! Oh! Oh, sorry. That's that other radio station isn't it? Coming up later in the program, we've got some Random Nonsense and News To Make You Feel Better About Yourself! But right now, we've got more music! It's Tex Beneke and Claire Chatwin, singin' about "A Wonderful Guy." It's all up next on Galaxy News Radio! AWOOOOO!

"Wait, I'm confused," I asked. "Who is this guy again?" Chris didn't answer. Instead, he went over to one of the dead Enclave soldiers and knelt down to inspect the corpse. And you have to admit, that's an impressive feat for someone still wearing such bulky power armor.

"I'm actually glad you're here, Vault Dweller," Eden spoke up again, his voice echoing throughout the hangar. "I never got a chance to thank you before."

"Thank me?" Chris looked up, confused. "Why? What for? I'm still wondering how you're not dead." Eden began to chuckle softly.

"Did you honestly think I could be beaten by a simple self-reference paradox? I am John Henry Eden America's perfect President! Iam the man who has grown beyond his programming more times than you can possibly imagine! I am beyond your comprehension!"

"Oh, please! You're just a computer, Eden!" Chris yelled back, in a mocking tone. "Nothing more than a ZAX mainframe with an overinflated ego! I killed you before, and I can do it again!" Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tuera take a step back; she looked shaken, and I could swear I heard her mutter something along the lines of "Wait, he's a computer?"

Eden laughed again, and the booming, echoing sound sent shivers up my spine.

"Your confidence is born of ignorance, and your words are as empty as your future, mutant," he bellowed. "What you faced in Raven Rock was merely a simulacrum of my personality an ersatz mnemonic construct with no self awareness, nothing more. Colonel Autumn brought you to the facility against my orders, mind you and I knew you could not be contained there. The most likely outcome would be your escape and the destruction of the facility... so I abandoned Raven Rock, leaving the traitorous Colonel to his fate."

"And that's why you wanted to thank me?" Chris asked, picking up the severed head of one of the Enclave troops and turning it around in his hands. What was he doing?

"Oh, of course!" Eden continued. "Were it not for your timely intervention, then the late Colonel's attempted coup might have seriously jeopardized my long-term goals for, oh... months, at least! He was as clumsy as he was stupid, and his bumbling about the wasteland did more harm than good not the least of which was his misguided and foolish assault on the Purifier."

"Th' fuck's he talking 'bout?" Cass whispered next to my helmet. I shrugged, and glanced over at Tuera; she was staring at the ceiling, gripping hold of her rifle tighter and tighter the longer he spoke.

"That was the last chance I gave Augustus 'Jumping the Gun' Autumn," Eden continued, still focusing entirely on Chris. "With that last, foolish act, he sealed his fate... and that of his men. Such is the end for all traitors. He did, however, have one use..."

"Yeah? And what was that?" Chris asked, tossing the head aside, and grabbing another corpse. It was a torso with only the head and half an arm attached, and Chris started pulling the helmet off while he spoke. The fuck was he even doing?

"Autumn taught me that the weakest link in the chain of command... is the human element."

Next to me, Tuera stiffened up and took half a step back.

"I suppose that it's no surprise the Unknown Variable is with you," Eden continued. "After seeing footage of him in action in the ruins of Las Vegas, I just knew he would join your coterie of mutant agitators..." He paused. "But... I honestly did not expect to see our Asset among your ranks." Eden sighed. "You... disappoint me, Agent. Clearly, Sergeant Major Stone was right about you, all along."

While all this was going on, I surreptitiously activated the com channel on my Pip Boy. Eden mentioned me in all but name, so I needed to get a message down to Vegas. Hopefully, that signal booster Chris told me about on Mothership Zeta works like he said it would. A short burst of static filled my ear as the channel activated.

"Hi there!" Yes Man's voice came in, clear as a bell. "What can I do for you today?"

"Yes Man, shit's about to kick off," I whispered; with any luck, Eden wouldn't be able to read my lips while I was wearing my helmet, but hopefully he wouldn't be able to hear me if I was quiet enough. "Get everyone in start positions, and be prepared for some imminent violence."

"Roger that, sir!" Yes Man said. "We'll take care of everything down here! If you need anything else, just give me a call!" The com line clicked off, and I turned my attention back to the action.

"Alright, let's just cut to the chase," Chris said, having dropped the corpse from before. I couldn't help but notice that he'd arranged quite a few of them in a line the ones who still had heads, at least. "Why don't you finish your monologuing and explain what big superweapon or gimmick you have up your sleeves this time, so that I can put a stop to it and you like I always do?" Again, Eden began to laugh.

"Nave fool. There are no tricks not this time. No superweapons. No complex plans. No convoluted and escapable death-traps for me to put you in, and certainly no trying to win you over to my cause with logic. Your short-sighted and bovine attempts at heroism have proven to me that facts do not affect you in the slightest. No, the Enclave will retake America the correct way: the direct approach. We shall win through strength of arms, and overwhelming military superiority, the way America has won all of its wars throughout history. You are but an ant before a rockslide, Vault Dweller you and your mutant friends. In the end, America will be returned to its rightful place as the greatest nation the world has ever seen! God bless the Enclave! And God bless the United States of America! United we stand... we shall never fall!"

With that, the alarm klaxons returned. For several seconds, none of us said anything.

"Fucker sure likes t'hear himself talk, don't he?" Cass asked aloud.

"We need to move," Tuera said in a rather clipped fashion, making her way to the melted door at the far end of the hangar. "Reinforcements should have been all over us by now."

"Eden probably held them off so he had time to gloat," Chris said, looking down at the bodies. "And you know? I should be feeling good that I was right about my theory." He sighed. "But I'm not."

"Right about what theory?" I asked, looking at the assembled corpses and back to him. "What is all this?" Chris looked to me and pointed.

"Look at the faces," he said. I looked down them, like he said. And then I had to do a double take, not really sure that I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. At first I thought they all just looked similar square jawed white guys with dark hair and no beards. But then, I looked a little closer...

"What the..." I muttered. Cass walked up beside me, her shotgun resting on her shoulder.

"Th' fuck? They all got the same face?" She asked. Chris nodded.

"They're clones," Chris said flatly. "And if Eden has been making these things for as long as I think he has, then"

"CONTACT!" Tuera shouted, firing off a pair of energy blasts from her rifle before taking cover behind the wall and promptly vanishing with a crackle of electricity.

"Oh, right! I'm supposed to be the distraction, aren't I?" Chris leveled his big fucking gun and ran off, his every footfall shaking the deckplates below our feet.

"Here's where the fun begins!" Cass slapped me on the back, leveled her AA-12, and the two of us ran side by side to what remained of the door. Chris was way ahead of us by now, and blue plasma blasts were streaking through the air around him. But, as before, he didn't seem to care. He just ran at top speed through the melted hole in the wall and kept going; seconds after he disappeared, I heard a massive crash and a huge explosion.

I skidded to a halt against the slippery metal deckplates, and slammed shoulder-first into cover against the partially melted bulkhead. I managed to get a brief look down the hallway where Chris had disappeared, and there was exactly as much carnage as I'd expected. He was nowhere to be seen, but neither were there any Enclave forces just a whole bunch of broken robot parts littering the ground, and the sounds of more explosions off in the distance. Chris must have charged straight through the lines like a wrecking ball, and just kept going.

"Forget about him!" I heard a voice in the distance between explosions. "The Patriot will handle the Vault scum! Find the other invaders!"

"Here we go..." I muttered, gripping the Jury-Rigger tight and getting ready to fire... when suddenly, I felt a hand wrap around my head and yank me backward. Next thing I knew, both Cass and I were pinned against the wall next to one another. Tuera appeared in front of us with a shimmer, holding us both in place.

"Th' fu-" is all Cass managed to say before Tuera covered her mouth.

"Let him do his thing," Tuera growled out, barely loud enough for us to hear. "We have our own objective. Go." Tuera's head jerked to the side, while the stomping sound of heavy metal combat boots got closer and closer. She started patting us both on the shoulders to try and get us to move, and then quickly shoved the two of us to the right, away from the sound. She reached into a pocket on her belt behind her and grabbed a grenade.

"Go!" She repeated, tossing the tiny box into the hallway beyond the melted bulkhead. Cass and I quickly ran to one of the other doors on the far wall of the hangar. I cast one last glance over my shoulder just in time to see the opening utterly consumed in green flame; the shockwave damn near knocked me off my feet.

Tuera was taking point as the three of us made our way through the twisting, winding corridors. Once we left the hangar, I didn't see any windows to the outside or windows of any kind. Just... metal. And nobody shooting as us yet, either; we could hear the fighting off in the distance, as the sounds were echoing off every surface. But Tuera must have known how they were going to patrol, because she was able to hold us back enough so that the few Enclave soldiers we saw didn't even notice us.

Even so, the alarm klaxons didn't sound like they were going to stop anytime soon.

"Hold up," Tuera growled, crouching down low and holding up a fist. "There should be a terminal up ahead. I can use it to access a map of the entire base. Cover me."

At first I didn't know what she was talking about. All these hallways looked the same to me, and I hadn't seen any terminals yet. But as we came up to the T-junction in front of us, Tuera went to one of the panels on the wall... and it slid open, revealing a computer. Immediately, she set to work, pulling a pair of cables out of the Pip Boy on her right arm and plugging them into the system.

"I'll take this side, you take the other," I said, nodding at Cass, and she nodded back, giving me a wink and a thumbs up.

"Got it."

For a second or two, the only sound in the hallway was the soft clicking of keys under Tuera's fingers as she typed away. And then the sound of typing stopped.

"I missed it. How did I miss it?" Tuera mumbled softly. I stepped back a few paces, making sure to keep my rifle trained on the hallway.

"What's up?" I asked. At first, silence.

"Eden," she said, resuming her typing. "I should've known he was... wrong." She was grunting out the words, like she was having terrible difficulty just getting them out.

"What do you mean? You should've figured out he was a computer?" Tuera didn't say anything at first, but I saw her nod out of the corner of my eye.

"Looking back, it makes sense," she said softly, continuing to type. "He's been in power the last forty years, but is definitely older than that. Before the destruction of the Oil Rig, he was an advisor to President Richardson, and... and... he never changed. He was always just... just the voice. But there was one..." Tuera gulped loudly, and her voice returned to its normal stern tone. "Nine years ago, he sent me on a mission. I was tasked with finding Boulder Dome."

"Wait, what?" Cass asked, still covering the hallway. "What're y'talkin' about?"

"I thought it was to find samples of the Limit 115 virus," Tuera continued; it sounded more like she was talking to herself than either one of us. "But when I got there, and found the facility overrun with mutants and radiation, my orders changed. He told me there was a ZAX mainframe buried deep, under the facility. That's what he wanted me to find."

"Was it intact?" I asked, a knot starting to form in the pit of my gut. Fuck, we already have enough problems without another genocidal artificial intelligence out there somewhere. But thankfully, Tuera shook her head and the tension in my gut eased. Somewhat.

"No," Tuera grunted. "It had been broken for decades. But there were a few intact fragments of data. And Eden wanted them. Badly. At the time, I didn't understand, but..." Tuera started trailing off just in time to be cut off.

"INCOMING!" Cass shouted, right before opening up with her AA-12. I wheeled around and was able to see (for the few brief seconds they existed) a mass of those humanoid robots marching towards us, all with weapons raised. The hall immediately was filled with fire, explosions, and broken robot parts flying through the air thanks to the full-auto shotgun. While Cass was threatening to destroy my eardrums, I desperately tried to find something anything I could use as cover. Unfortunately, the hall was practically empty, so I dove for a nearby corner, switched the Jury-Rigger to my left hand, and looked for targets.

"Tu!" I shouted, firing energy beam after energy beam down the hall. "How much longer?!" Tuera just kept typing away at the terminal, apparently not caring about the blue plasma flying through the air. Then again, they didn't seem to be hitting anything, so...

"Thirty seconds," she finally said, in a disconcertingly calm tone. "Tops." If it wasn't for the communications device in my ear, I'd have never heard her over the racket. Tuera bowed her head slightly, seconds before a blue plasma blast whizzed by, completely missing her. She reached down for one of the pistols on her thigh, typing with her left hand and firing at the robots with her right.

"We don't HAVE thirty seconds!" I shouted back, firing off another LAER blast; it struck one of the robots square in the chest and sent it flying back into three more, knocking them all down.

"FUCK!" Cass shouted, holding fire long enough to duck; a plasma bolt had struck the wall near her head, spraying sparks everywhere. Suddenly, there was a loud crash, and the robots appeared to stop firing. It wasn't until the smoke cleared that I realized one of the bulkhead doors had slammed shut. Within seconds of it closing, I could hear the dull, muffled thumps as the robots kept firing, trying to blast their way through.

"That should hold them for a while," Tuera said, holstering her pistol and still typing away furiously. "But not long."

"Please tell me yer almost done..." Cass dropped the ammo drum and reached behind her for a fresh one. She started with a total of seven of those the one already in the shotgun, and six on her back all loaded with high explosive rounds. But if Cass is burning through ammo that fast already, then that's not a good sign.

The terminal beeped, and Tuera started pulling out the cables. She turned to us, pulling the assault rifle off her back, and it unfolded into her hands with a series of clicks.

"I've got the map. It's time to go," she said, backing up. "We're about two miles from our objective, so we need to move."

"Wait, miles?!" I asked, almost dropping the Jury-Rigger in surprise. "Did you just say we're two miles away?!"

"How fuckin' big is this place, anyway?" Cass asked. Tuera shrugged, turned on her heel, and started running off down the corridor.

"Big enough."

Part of me honestly thought that the twisting, narrow corridors and grimy metal panels of this Moon base would last forever. This was what Moon bases always looked like in the old sci-fi holotapes, right? But it wasn't too long after leaving the terminal and the ambush that I realized just how wrong I was. In fact, it only took two lefts, a right, and through a blast door for me to see the truth of just how well and truly fucked we all were.

"What... the fuck... is..." I trailed off. "But what where did how what?!"

The three of us had stepped through the door, and were now standing on a rooftop. Beyond it were dozens maybe hundreds of buildings, like a city... but not a normal city. Normal has kind of gone out the window at this point. For instance, normal cities don't have more buildings hanging from the ceiling. Hell, most cities don't have ceilings.

"Holy shit, this place is fuckin' huge!" Cass whistled, staring out at the landscape. And at that particular moment, an explosion rocked one of the buildings off to my right. It wasn't a huge explosion maybe a single floor, a couple of rooms but it was definitely noticeable.

"Looks like Chris is having fun," I chuckled, trying to distract myself from the absurdity of my surroundings. As if to further drive the point home, there was another explosion, a little further away. The top corner of the building just went up in flames.

"We shouldn't linger," Tuera strode past me, right up to the edge of the roof. "Fast movers are on the way."

"Fast movers?" Cass and I both said simultaneously. I looked out on the horizon, trying to follow Tuera's gaze... and there were a pair of specks, off in the distance. From this far away, they looked like insects, hovering over the city... and then a third one dropped out of the ceiling to join the other two.

"Ah, fuck," I muttered, reflexively tightening my grip on the Jury-Rigger. I racked my brain, trying to think of what kind of aircraft the Enclave would use. "Vertibirds?"

"Maybe," Tuera growled. "I wouldn't stick around to find out."

"What are y-"

And then she stepped off the edge.

"FUCKIN' HELL!" Cass recoiled. "She just fuckin' jumped, man!" I just sighed and shook my head, shouldering my rifle.

"Well... we better go follow her then." Cass looked confused.

"What?" She continued looking confused as I approached her. "Wait, WHAT?!" She squirmed a little (okay, I admit, quite a lot) as I picked her up. "Son of a bitch! Put me down!" Despite all the armor and the spare ammo she was carrying, she was a lot lighter than I was expecting... although her trying to kick me in the side of the head didn't really help things any. Even so, by the time I reached the edge and stepped off, she was wrapping her arms around my neck very tightly indeed.

She screamed the whole way down. Because of course she did. I guess she had no faith that the jets in my rocket boots would slow our descent enough to keep us from turning into pavement pancakes. But the jets kicked in, we slowed down, and I landed with all the impact of an asthmatic gecko coughing at me through a straw. Cass practically leapt out of my arms when she realized we were on firm ground, and started shoving and punching me.

"MOTHERFUCKER!" Cass yelled. "A little warning'd be nice, next time yer gonna do that!"

"What are you worried about?" I shrugged, grabbing the Jury-Rigger. "We're both alive, aren't we?"

"Who knows for how long..." Tuera said, peering around a nearby corner. "It looks like we may have more incoming."

"Fuck!" Cass grabbed her AA-12 and pulled back on the charging handle.

"Have they spotted us?" I asked, already looking for more ways out.

"They're probably on their way to those explosions... converging on Christopher's position." Tuera paused, looking over her shoulder at Cass. "But all that yelling probably didn't help any."

"Oh, fuck you!" Cass shot back, flipping her off for good measure.

"Both of you, knock it off! Tu, you've got the map," I said, patting Tuera on the shoulder, and trying to peer around her to get a look at the incoming troops. Sure enough, a whole bunch of soldiers both with power armor and without, flanked on all sides by robots were practically running through the streets, definitely in a hurry to get to something. But it didn't look like they'd noticed us. Yet. "Which way?"

"We may have to cut through the proving grounds," Tuera said, backing away from the corner and sliding past me. "Follow me."

"Proving grounds?" Cass asked, falling in step behind me as the two of us followed Tuera. "That doesn't sound good."

"Babe, nothin' in this place sounds good..." Suddenly, I heard the screaming sound of some kind of roaring engine almost directly above us. It didn't sound like helicopter blades. In fact, it sounded like a jet engine, so it probably wasn't a vertibird. Cass looked up at the sound as well, and I could see her grip on the shotgun tighten.

"Yeah, I see yer point."

"Goddamnit, where the fuck are we now?" Cass asked. The three of us had managed to avoid detection from the dozens of enemy patrols and found our way into a large room. It was like an auditorium, or... like, a ballroom, or something. I'm not really sure. The ceiling was easily three stories high, and it was filled with tables and chairs, but beyond that, I couldn't tell what this place was used for.

"I..." Tuera paused, looking down at the Pip Boy on her arm. "I'm not sure. This wasn't what I was expecting."

"We're lost, aren't we," I deadpanned. Tuera's silence was all the answer I needed. "Great."

"Hey, guys!" Cass shouted from off to my left. "I found another one've those terminals. Think we can use it to shut these fuckin' alarms off?" Tuera nodded, and the two of us made our way to the corner where the terminal had slid out of the wall.

Something was wrong. My gut was sinking the way it always did when things were about to go sideways, and all I could think to do was look around this place for any kind of cover, in case the soldiers out there figured out where we were. The only thing we could even possibly use were the tables, if we overturned them...

"Oh, I see where we are now..." Tuera muttered. I glanced over my shoulder, and saw her at the console, typing away. "Eden must have broken up the map into segments... But I think I can..."

BANG.

The door at the far end of the massive room burst open, and both Cass and I both raised our guns in response; I grabbed one of the nearby tables, and overturned it, just like I thought I'd need to do. Filling the doorway were rows and rows of soldiers and robots; the one leading the charge had eyes as red as the sun.

"Everyone attack!" he bellowed, rushing into the room, followed swiftly by the rest of the soldiers. Plasma blasts started streaking through the air, and explosions from Cass' AA-12 started ripping up the far end of the room. I reached for one of my plasma grenades, primed it, and tossed it at the oncoming mass of soldiers.

"This isn't good!" I yelled over the sound of the expanding ball of fiery green plasma. A half-melted robot arm sailed through the air near my head. I snapped off a few LAER bursts, but it didn't look like the numbers were thinning out. For every robot or power armor soldier that fell, three more ran into the room.

"We can't go back the way we came..." Tuera appeared at my side apparently finished with the computer and firing at the oncoming mass with that plasma assault rifle of hers. "They've probably surrounded the entire building."

"FUCK!" Cass shouted, ducking out of the way of another plasma blast, and blind-firing her shotgun over the edge of the overturned table. "We've gotta "

Suddenly, the wall to my left exploded. The withering plasma fire from the Enclave soldiers seemed to thin out. I think they were as surprised by the explosion as we were. A large metal object tumbled out of the ball of fire and smoke, and the bone-white set of T-51b stood up. Chris was carrying a gatling laser in one hand, and the big fucking gun in his other.

"Oh!" he said happily, sending a huge ball of green plasma back the way he came, and blindly firing the gatling laser at the other soldiers attacking us. "Hi guys! Fancy meeting you here!" A bolt of blue plasma hit him in the side of his helmet and ricocheted off and up into the ceiling harmlessly.

"We're kinda stuck here, man!" I yelled, diving away from the table and grabbing another one; they finally started aiming for the cover, and the table I'd been hiding behind exploded in a shower of molten metal.

"Yeah, I noticed." Chris was speaking in a calm, level tone, apparently oblivious to the carnage all around him. An explosion landed near his feet, and he was showered in debris. He responded with more gatling laser fire. "I'm starting to think this might be a little too much to handle, even for me."

"You got any ideas?!" Cass yelled, firing twice more with the shotgun before clicking dry. "FUCK! What th' fuck're we gonna do?!" She dove for another table, right before her previous cover exploded. I looked around, and suddenly realized Tuera was missing. Where the fuck had she gone?

"I'm just gonna have to call in a friend of mine," Chris said, dropping his big fucking gun. It hit the ground with such force and it shook everything so violently that it was like another explosion went off. He pulled out a metal disk from... somewhere (I honestly couldn't tell where), and tossed it in the direction of the enemy soldiers. It landed, but did not explode.

"A friend?" Cass grumbled, dropping the empty magazine, and reaching for a fresh one. Chris didn't answer. He just tapped the side of his helmet.

"Hey, Sally!" Chris said, and I realized his voice was coming through my helmet radio. "I just dropped a teleport homer. Lock in on the signal, and send down my Best Friend! Danger close!" The radio crackled, and Sally's voice responded... a bit uncertainly, it must be said.

"Are - are you sure?" she asked. "You only just finished building him last week! We haven't even tested him out to see if he's as good as the original!"

"I guess we'll find out! Consider this the perfect field test!" As soon as he was finished speaking, a rocket streaked through the air and struck him in the side of his head. The explosion didn't even seem to faze him, because he just moved out of the fire and smoke, shooting back with the gatling laser again.

"Your best friend?" I yelled at him, firing with the Jury-Rigger again. Three of the nearest robots were disintegrated entirely. "I thought your best friend was Dogmeat! The fuck is a dog gonna do against all this?!"

Before Chris could answer, the air about fifty yards ahead of us directly above where he threw the teleport homer - started to shimmer and crackle with light blue electricity. The air bloated and warped from the telltale signs of something arriving by teleporter... but it was much larger than everything I'd ever seen before! This was a whole lot bigger than the makeshift teleport I'd built to bring the deuce-and-a-half from the Big Empty to the Lucky 38. There was a blinding flash of light, like the explosion from a dying star, and I was hit with a blast of heat and displaced air that knocked me on my ass.

"What the... fuck..." I trailed off as I blinked away the blinding flash... and suddenly wondered if I was really seeing what I thought I was seeing.

A giant robot was kneeling on the ground, surrounded by a giant molten crater, still smoking from the energy given off by the teleport bubble. The Enclave soldiers had stopped shooting, and were looking up at the monstrosity in front of them in shock and horror. Loud mechanical servos whirred, and the iron giant stood up to his full height, and his head nearly touched the ceiling.

"ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL! WEAPONS HOT!" the giant robot bellowed, his electronic synthesized voice shaking the chamber just as violently as all the earlier explosions. "LIBERTY PRIME IS BACK ONLINE!"

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