New Vegas: Sheason's Story

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to our program. This is Mr. New Vegas, and each and every one of you is wonderful in your own special way. I've got some news for you. First up, merchants are saying that there's been little contact between traders from Nipton in recent days, causing concerns that the isolated town may be in trouble. In a related story, traders from California are being turned away from Mojave Outpost, where the NCR is concerned about dangers along Nipton Highway and the I-15. You know, I think all news, whether it's good or bad, brings us closer together. Don't you? I got a great song coming up, from The Voice himself: It's Tom Jones with It's Not Unusual. Enjoy.

"You know, when y'said y'had a car," Cass paused, taking a drink from her hip flask. "I thought y'were just fuckin' with me." Cassidy was sitting next to me (riding shotgun, appropriately enough), and out of the corner of my eye I could see ED-E flying beside us, keeping pace. I didn't know how that robot moved so fast, but it kept up with the Corvega like it was nothing.

"Why would you think I was fucking with you?" I asked. She propped her feet up on the dash as she talked, slouching in the seat and watching as the desert rolled past.

"Well, who has a fuckin' car this far south? One that works? I mean, yeah, they're more common in Reno or Arroyo, but down here? Nobody has a fuckin' car!" She took another drink. I shrugged.

"Funny you should mention, New Reno was the place where I got her," She stifled a chuckle and I could swear I heard her mutter something about 'green sky' under her breath. I continued. "Most of my courier jobs were up north, so I guess I never really gave it much thought. Are cars really not that common down here?" She eyed me with suspicion.

"You a courier then?" she asked, ignoring my question.

"Yeah. Was. Am. I mean, er…" I stumbled over my words, unsure how someone would describe my current situation. "It's complicated. Let's just say I'm between jobs."

"Yeah. S'pose we both are." We were both silent for just a moment. And then the silence was broken. "Fuck! The fuck am I gonna do for money, now my goddamn caravan's gone?"

"I'm sure you'll think of something," I tried to offer helpfully. She just gave a weak sort of laugh, and took another drink from her flask. A question flashed across my mind, and I decided to give it voice. "You know, I'm curious – that is, if you don't mind me asking – how'd you find out about your caravan being hit, if you were stuck at the Outpost?"

"Ranger patrol checkin' in," she said, continuing to stare at the passing landscape. "My guess is they found enough in th' wreckage t'identify it."

"Think there's anything left?"

"Honestly? I don't think so. S'been weeks, so it's probably a Cazador nest by now."

Cazador? What the hell was a Cazador, I thought to myself. Before I could ask, she continued.

"I'm hopin' there's at least a little somethin' left. But… I'm not countin' on it. Either way, I do need t'pay my respects. I got 'em killed, so I owe 'em that much…" She paused. Then, she turned to look at me. "Thanks."

"For what?"

"Fer givin' me a lift. I'm sure I would've left that fuckin' outpost eventually, but… Well, shit, even if I'd left, it'd still take me days of walkin' in the cripplin' heat, 'neath that blisterin' sun just to find the damn caravan. An' by then, I bet there wouldn't even be any fuckin' dust left." I shrugged.

"Hey, it's no big deal. I'm heading up close to there anyway, so it won't be that far of a detour." She nodded.

The conversation trailed off rather quickly as Nipton came into view. I don't really know how, but somehow the town snuck up on us despite the fact that we were travelling in what was essentially a flat desert, on a straight piece of road. There were only a few buildings in the town, but from the rising clouds of billowing black smoke, it looked like every single one of them was on fire. The town was surrounded by what I thought was a fence, at first; when I looked closer, I saw countless trailers, broken cars, and bits of metal – all of them twisted and broken and ruined – creating a sort of wall around the edges of the town. The only break in the wall was where the Nipton road cut through the town. There were splashes of color and I couldn't tell at first if it was blood or rust that turned the metal red. When I saw the body hanging limply over the side, I didn't have to wonder anymore.

I parked the car in front of the town sign (all it said was "NIPTON" in big bold letters, something about a jackpot, and on the bottom was "Trading Post – RV Park – Camping"), and checked to make sure Roscoe was loaded, just in case. ED-E was circling around the car, looking at me and beeping frantically.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Cass asked, watching me check my gun.

"Ghost hired me to check out the town, remember? I need to find out if anyone's alive in there." I slapped the magazine into Roscoe's grip, and left the car. Seconds later, I heard Cass leave the car as well, followed by the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being loaded.

"You know, it might be dangerous – and from the looks of things, it probably is. You don't have to come with me."

"Fuck that! You think I'm just gonna stay in the car?" she said. I nodded, and moved towards the town, Cass falling in beside me; it's probably best not to argue with the belligerent drunk wielding a shotgun. ED-E beeped something I couldn't understand and floated along beside me.

Suddenly, a man came into view from behind the corner of one of the closest buildings. He was running around, pumping his fists in the air, whooping and hollering and just generally making a tremendous racket. He noticed us, and made his way towards me. I kept Roscoe at my side but pointed it at the ground, since I noticed he didn't have a gun or anything that looked anything like a weapon. When he got a little closer, I noticed that he had the same kind of blue shirt and grey slacks that seemed to be distinctive of the Powder Gangers, except they were ripped and torn in places. Pools of blood were beginning to form under his clothes near some of the rips. He wore a pair of glasses with a cracked left lens on his face.

"Yeeeeeaaaaah!" He yelled at no one in particular, stopping a few feet away from me. "Who has two thumbs and just won the fucking lottery?" He pointed both his thumbs at his chest. "This guy! Oh yeah! Smell that air! Couldn't you just drink it like BOOZE?" He started laughing hysterically, like it was the funniest joke in the world. Cass and I just looked at each other, wondering what was going on. Even ED-E made a confused sounding beep.

"Are… are you feeling alright?" I asked. He just kept grinning, his eyes wide with excitement.

"What, are you kidding me? I've never felt better! YEAH!" He pumped his fists in the air several times.

"What kind of lottery did you win?" He stopped when I asked that question, and just sort of stared at me for a second, like I'd just asked what the ground was.

"What lottery? THE lottery, man! That's what lottery! What, are you stupid or something? Only lottery that matters! Oh my God, SMELL THAT AIR! Ha-haa! Later!" And without a second word, he took off past me, past Cass, past the Nipton town sign, past my car… he just started running off into the desert, waving his arms and cheering.

The three of us just stared, dumbfounded, as he disappeared off into the distance, laughing hysterically. ED-E let off a series of beeps and whistles, and if I didn't know any better, I could've swore it sounded like the robot was saying "What the fuck?"

I felt a knot tighten uncomfortably in the bottom of my gut. Whatever had happened here, I had the distinct impression that it wasn't something as mundane as Powder Gangers. The three of us made our way slowly into the town, and I became acutely aware of an acrid, alien smell burning my nostrils.

"Do you smell that?" I asked out loud.

"Yeah, it's the smell of fuckin' houses burning," Cass replied, unhelpfully.

"No, it's… it doesn't smell like wood burning. It… smells…" I couldn't complete my thought as we rounded a corner. I just stopped, and couldn't help but stare at the sight in front of my eyes, unable to comprehend just what I was looking at for a few seconds. In an instant, I knew exactly what I smelled on the air.

In the middle of the street was a massive pile of burning tires. The fires roared and crackled, belching foul smelling plumes of black smoke into the air. But what caught my attention was the top of the pile. Rising out of the center like a macabre tombstone was a metal pole, and a half burned corpse that had been tied to it. The fires licked the body, like some sort of hungry, otherworldly monster. The face and nearly half of the body had been completely burned off, leaving only burned and blackened bones with bits of meat limply hanging on weakly.

"What the… fuckin' fuck! Who the fuck… I mean, this fuckin'… How the fuck… FUCK!" She finally yelled, staring at the burning corpse.

Well, that certainly demonstrates the flexibility of the word. But despite the lack of any real sentence structure, I kind of understood what she was trying to say with that string of profanity – this didn't seem like the work of some random gang of raiders. Raiders killed people and mutilated bodies, sure; I'd seen some horrific sights just as gory and even bloodier in the past. But this… this was something completely different, and it made my blood run cold. This wasn't violence just for the sake of violence. This was a message someone was trying to send.

"C'mon," I offered up. "We have to keep moving."

"Keep moving? Do you not see the body burning on the pile of tires?"

"Look, when Ghost told me to check out the town, she said that if there were any survivors they'd be in the town hall." She also told me not to get killed, I thought to myself. But I couldn't leave yet… not with so many questions plaguing my thoughts.

The three of us edged around the pile of tires, trying as best as we could (the two of us with noses, at least) to not breathe in the poison fumes from the pile of burning rubber. When we were clear of the tires, we were just greeted with another horror show. We were on the main street, and the building that must have been the town hall was at the end of the road… but the road to the town hall was lined with dozens of decapitated heads on spikes. Not only that, but what looked like the tops of telephone poles that had been cut down and planted in the ground like crosses also lined the way; each cross (there were little over half a dozen that I could see) had a body tied to it. The road was stained various shades of red and black from the pools of blood that were drying on the asphalt in the baking desert sun.

None of us could find the words to say anything.

Cautiously, I made my way towards one of the nearest crosses, trying not to look at any of the decapitated heads; it was a ridiculous notion, but it felt like their dead eyes were following my every move and it creeped the hell out of me. The body tied to the cross was limp and smelled positively rank. A few flies buzzed around the air. Like the crazy guy who we met when we first entered the town, he was also dressed like a Powder Ganger.

I leaned in to get a look at his face – and immediately jumped back when his head shot up and he gasped for air.

"Holy shit!" I heard Cass yell. "He's still alive?"

The Powder Ganger tied to the cross twitched weakly, and held his head up just enough to look at me. His whole body shook.

"K… kill… me…" I heard him say, barely above a whisper. His head fell, and his whole body went limp again. I did my best to regain my composure. But then I saw his wrists.

"Should… shouldn't we… I dunno… cut him down or something?" Cass asked.

"He's already dead," I heard myself say. I pointed at his wrists. He wasn't just tied to the cross – what could only be described as railroad spikes were driven through each of his wrists, nailing him to the cross. I looked around and realized it was the same with every single one of the people on these crosses. And it was just… people. Men. Women. There was even a boy – he couldn't be more than 13 or 14, I thought to myself.

Before I could ask myself what kind of a monster would do something like this, I got my answer as a voice rang out like gunfire through the silence.

"Magnificent, isn't it?"

In a flash, I had Roscoe pointed in the direction of the voice, ready to fire. I heard Cass ready her shotgun next to me, and I even heard the music that I'd come to associate with ED-E priming its laser to fire.

The speaker was standing at the top of the stairs that led into the town hall. The town hall itself was adorned with flags, I noticed, that were flying from open windows; crimson flags, the color of fresh blood, with a golden bull in the center. The speaker was flanked by a pair of dogs, and surrounded by half a dozen people, all carrying weapons; some were carrying spears or crude machetes, but the closest to the man speaking had rifles. They were all dressed in reds and blacks, and their armor looked like sports equipment that I remembered seeing from a book I'd read in my youth. They all wore what could only be described as leather skirts, and leather sandals.

The speaker walked out from beneath the shadow of the building toward me, and I could finally get a better look at him. He wore sports equipment like the rest, but it looked like it was reinforced better somehow. A short, tattered red cape fluttered behind him as he moved. On his head, he wore the top half of a wolf head, fur and all, like a hood. His eyes were obscured behind a pair of dark goggles. His left hand rested on the hilt of a sword that looked of a much higher quality than the crude machetes the others carried. His right hand was raised, and he was wagging a finger at me, a twisted smirk across his face.

"Ah-ah-ah," he said coldly, with an odd sort of refinement in his voice that didn't sound local at all. "There is no need for that now, is there? My forces outnumber you and your compatriots ten to one," He stopped about 15 feet from me, and spread his hands, gesturing to the sky. I looked up out of the corner of my eye, and realized that every roof had at least two more soldiers like the ones on the ground, with rifles pointed right at us. He continued. "But if you lower your weapons, you will have no need to worry. I won't have you set upon, and lashed to a cross like the rest of these degenerates."

I paused, not doing anything for a few seconds, weighing my options. Then I pointed Roscoe up, towards the sky, raising my hands.

"The fuck are you doing?" Cass hissed at me under her breath.

"I don't want to get shot," again, I added mentally. "And I don't want you to get shot either. Lower your shotgun." I didn't suggest she go back to the car, because of what she'd said earlier. She didn't move. "Ghost told me not to get killed, and that goes for you, too. So, please, lower your shotgun." Eventually, she relented, and grabbed the middle of her shotgun, holding it in the air. I turned to the robot.

"ED-E, wait by the car." I really didn't want the robot to start shooting right now, and get the lot of us killed. The flying metal ball beeped defiantly. "NOW!" I practically shouted. It faltered, and then floated away.

"It's useful that you happened by," the man wearing the wolf head spoke up again. "I want you to witness the fate of the town of Nipton. To memorize every detail. To see the horrors that we have inflicted on this den of debased corruption… and then, when you move on? I want you to teach the lessons that Caesar's Legion taught here." The way he said Caesar caught my attention. Everyone I'd met who spoke of Caesar's Legion pronounced Caesar with a soft "c" so it sounded like "see-zer." But he said the name with a hard "c" so it sounded more like "kay-zar."

Odd thing to notice while being held at gunpoint, I know. But my mind does that sometimes.

"So… who are you?" I asked, trying to stall for time while I thought of a way out of this.

"I am Vulpes Inculta, commander of the mighty Caesar's Frumentarii. We are those which strike from the shadows, chilling the black hearts of Caesar's enemies… and we are those who teach deadly lessons to all who would stand against the might of Caesar's Legion." Every word he spoke chilled me to the bone, partly because he didn't raise his voice, but mostly because I could just tell… this was a man who enjoyed his work.

"What 'lessons' did you teach here?" He laughed a soft, wicked laugh when I asked him, and he crossed his arms over his chest. He tilted his head, as if lost in thought.

"Where to begin? That they are weak, and we are strong? This much was known already. But the depths of their moral sickness, their… dissolution? Nipton serves as the perfect object lesson. Nipton was a wicked place, debased and corrupt. It served all comers, so long as they paid. Profligate troops, Powder Gangers…" he paused for a moment, as if disgusted with what he was about to say, but then continued. "… men of the Legion such as myself – the people here didn't care. It was a town of whores. For a pittance, the town agreed to lead those it had sheltered into a trap. Only when the trap was sprung did they realize that they were caught inside it, too.

"Everyone was captured, and herded into the center of town like the sheep they were. I recounted for them their sins, the foremost being disloyalty." He smiled wickedly, looking out at the figures hung on crosses. "I told them that when Legionaries are disloyal, some are punished… but the others are made to watch. And that was when I announced the lottery. Each clutched his ticket, hoping it would set him free. Each did nothing, even when… 'loved ones' were dragged away to be killed."

"You…" My eyes fell on the child that I'd seen before, nailed to the cross. "These people… you killed women – children! You slaughtered innocent civilians… just to prove a point?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"HAH!" He let out a single bellowing laugh, completely at odds with how he normally spoke. "Innocent? Hardly. Cowardly, perhaps. They outnumbered us greatly, yet not once did they try to resist. They stood and watched as their fellows were butchered, crucified, and burned, one by one. Each stood idle as the leader himself was burned alive on a pile of tires. Each among them hoped their turn would not come. Each cared only for himself."

My insides were burning with rage, but I just kept looking at the Legionaries on the rooftops, their rifles still pointed at the both of us. I might be able to kill Inculta with help from VATS, but there was no way Cass or I would survive the retaliation. The man responsible for this slaughter was right in front of me, and I couldn't do anything.

"If you feel so strongly about it, by all means, attack us, and soon you won't feel a thing. But I know you will make the right choice… so I will bid you 'Vale'," he turned away from me. "Until we meet again…"

He walked away, and as he did so the air around him crackled with ozone and electricity. His whole body shimmered, and then seemed to just disappear into thin air. The other Legionaries disappeared as well, and even the wolves who had been sitting at the top of the town hall steps ran off. I recognized how he'd disappeared – he must have used a Stealth Boy; pre war tech that turned the user practically invisible.

Cass and I just stood in the center of town, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The silence was deafening, but nothing happened. The only sound came from the pile of tires behind us. After a minute or two, we cautiously made out way out of town, and back to the car.

"Legion this far West?" Ghost asked me, a tone of incredulity in her voice. "You're fucking kidding me!"

"No, I'm not. It was Caesar's Legion. I know what I saw, and I know who I talked to."

"That's not outside the border, they're moving in – and fast. Nipton wasn't the most friendly town, but…" she paused, as if she had just noticed something I'd said. "Wait, talked to? Who did you talk to?"

"The man responsible – he called himself Vulpes Inculta. He had a small army of Legionaries, and held me and Cass at gunpoint while he told me why he did what he did. I wanted to shoot him right there, but there was no way out, and I didn't want Cass on my conscience." Ghost looked worried, even behind her mirrored sunglasses.

"I've heard of Inculta. He's supposedly leader of Caesar's spies and assassins. There were stories about him, from the first assault on Hoover Dam… whole companies of troops slaughtered in the night while they slept. As far as I know, nobody outside of the Legion has ever seen him and lived."

"He left me alive because he wanted me to send a message. He wanted me to tell people about what happened." She nodded, grimly

"All right… thanks for checking on that, and getting back here so quickly. Wish it put my mind at ease, but now I'm more on edge than ever."

"Did you have friends there?"

"In Nipton? Hell no. Town was a shithole, just asking to be burned… Just not by Legion. Nobody deserves that. Not even raiders." She paused and thought for a moment. "Maybe this'll be the push that gets us off our collective asses here so we can go hunting. Fucking Mojave's going to hell, and all I can do is sit here and watch. Either way, thanks for checking on that. Even if it was bad news."

Cass leaned against my car as I walked away from the barracks. ED-E floated in the air, just behind her.

"Y'know…" she said, looking at the big metal monument. "I didn't think I'd be back here so soon. It's only been, what? An hour? Maybe?"

"Don't worry, we're leaving," I said, tossing her a plastic bag filled with caps. "Here."

"What's this?"

"Your share," I said, getting in the driver side.

Cass looked at the bag of caps – which was not an inconsiderable amount – and looked back at me with a smirk as she got into the car.

"If this kind of money is what I can expect, I think I'm gonna like traveling with you."