Notes From New Vegas 16
Nov. 21st, 2010 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynNotes From New Vegas 16: QUESTS QUESTS QUESTS YAY QUESTS
When last we saw our heroines, Janice had decided to go and have a chat with the colonel in charge of Camp McCarran about dealing with intel leaks and getting paid for it. Pretty straightforward, right? Maybe if she hadn't had Veronica in tow. The instant they set foot inside the airport terminal proper, Veronica muttered that there were a lot more NCR soldiers around than the Brotherhood had ever expected, and no wonder they couldn't hold HELIOS One. Janice turned around at that. Veronica admitted that she was starting to have some serious second thoughts about the Brotherhood, and about how nobody even really seemed to realize they existed out here, and... well, she needed some time to think, that was all. Maybe they should keep doing what they were doing for a while until she could sort her thoughts out. Janice shrugged and agreed. Seemed harmless enough.
McCarran Terminal was a little on the dark side, whether because the light fixtures were two hundred years old and couldn't all be replaced or because the power was being equitably distributed she didn't know. It had two major visual features, to her: the airplane hanging from the ceiling, and enough slot machines to choke a Brahmin. Seriously, the whole ground floor was covered in 'em. I'm told this is actually the case at the real world McCarran, which wouldn't surprise me one bit. Janice didn't seem to be able to persuade the machines to work, though, so she went looking for Colonel Hsu. She found him; he was a pretty mellow guy who was doing his best to prioritize the NCR's distribution of manpower and materiel in the region. Seemed like one of the more sensible people she'd met so far. He gave her some details on the situation and promised to pay her if she could uncover the person who was leaking info on NCR troop movements to Caesar's Legion, and then suggested she go talk to Captain Curtis and Lieutenant Boyd about it.
Fine by her. Curtis greeted her courteously and suggested that she investigate Sergeant Contreras, as there'd been something suspicious about him for a long time now. Lieutenant Boyd was grouchy and sarcastic as hell, mostly because she was having a difficult time getting the Legion prisoner to talk, but she was decent enough to tell Janice about break-ins at the old airport control tower she hadn't had time to investigate. She figured they were probably just teenagers using the tower to get it on, but it was still worth looking into, and she gave Janice a key so she could get in there and have a look. Janice and company wandered over to the tower after that, mostly because it's easier to find an air traffic control tower than it is to find one guy in an entire hugeamongous airport, and poked at the computer terminal at the tower door until she found access logs for the past week. Apparently the break-ins had been happening around one AM or so every night for some time. When Janice went up the stairs she found no evidence of canoodling, but she did find a functioning radio setup...
Hm. Hm hm hm.
She probably should've told somebody at that point, but there wasn't a whole lot to go on. The way she saw it, if there was a spy breaking in every night and radioing the Legion, she'd be in a better position to deal with things once she knew who it actually was. Just telling people what she'd found didn't mean anything. She'd... she'd go and do something else, and come back after dark and hide and wait for the spy. Yeah. That sounded good. And once she found the spy she'd run like hell because even in close quarters, anybody who was ratting out the NCR to the Legion probably had solid brass where their gonads should be and would therefore be all too willing to gut her like a fish. So find out who they were, then report them. In the meantime, best she make herself useful and not get seen poking around the tower again. Who else was there to talk to?
Why, the people under the stairs, of course! There were a couple of rooms under one set of escalators that she hadn't seen yet. Turned out they were chock full of computers and scientific equipment, and two scientists working with them. The boss, Dr. Hildern, was a smarmy self-assured fellow who claimed to be just the most scientific thing to ever science, and he asked Janice to go check out Vault 22 to the west, since there were expedition reports of incredible plant growth research in the Vault's computers. Janice figured she couldn't get it done before finding out about the spy, but should be able to manage it the next day, since getting the hell out of the area after exposing somebody who worked for Caesar's Legion was probably a good survival mechanism. She said yes. She then turned around to go talk to the other scientist.
And ED-E started talking again. OH-KAY. Looked like the second recording was supposed to be given to Enclave scientists at Navarro, wherever that was, or possibly to the scientists at Enclave camps in Chicago, whichever the robot hit first. Apparently ED-E had some nice stuff in its databanks for whoever managed to get it decrypted, but Hildern didn't seem to give a damn about that. Veronica, on the other hand... well, Ronnie didn't talk again until Janice had spoken with scientist #2, who was a lot less pompous than Hildern and who wasn't surprised at ALL that Hildern had forgotten to mention that virtually everyone they'd sent to Vault 22 didn't come back and could Janice please see about finding out what happened to their researcher Keely? Please? Janice said sure, and then got out of the room and turned around to talk to Ronnie. Ronnie had officially made up her mind; she really needed to get the Brotherhood to listen to her about the outside world again. If she could just talk to Elder McNamara she was positive she could get him to see sense; could they go home to Hidden Valley soon? Please?
Janice considered this for a while and then said sure, why not. Veronica and her punchings had been very helpful so far, and she didn't see any reason why it should be a real problem to reciprocate. They'd just take care of the spy first and maybe check out Vault 22 and then they'd go. Veronica was good with this.
Most of the rest of the day was spent talking to various people just to see what they were like. There was a group of NCR First Recon soldiers on the premises- snipers, Boone's old unit. They were kind of fascinating. One of them hit on Janice like you wouldn't believe. Turned out when Janice talked to the First Recon CO that Corporal Betsy had been captured by Fiends at one point and raped, and her idea of dealing with the resultant PTSD involved hitting on any woman she thought seemed reasoanbly attractive. (I got the impression Betsy had been gay before the incident and that this was her asserting her right to sexual self determination rather than the old, tired 'sexual abuse makes you gay' thing. Apparently if you've got a male character she says she prefers them 'tall, blonde and female' rather than hitting on you.) The CO said it was unprofessional and didn't help unit cohesion any, so he'd be grateful if Janice could talk her into getting some help. She wound up going back to Betsy and barking at her that psychological injuries were just as much of a weakness as physical ones and if she wanted to be a real asset she would GET SOME TREATMENT, SOLDIER. Which, apparently, was the right approach; Betsy blinked and said that she thought she was talking to her old drill sergeant for a minute there, and agreed to get help. A quick run over to the New Vegas Medical Clinic nearby to warn the doctor in charge that she had a new psych patient on the way, and everything was sorted out. Well, at least as far as Janice was concerned, anyway.
After that Janice wound up finding herself a concealed spot to go and wait for the Legion spy, since she didn't really want anyone else to drop any obligations on her. Pity there wasn't any coffee to keep her up, but hey, she had some Nuka-Cola to work with. That was something. (Literally. Nuka-Cola decreases your Sleep Meter by several notches, so you don't have to go find a bed for a while longer.) Come 1:30 in the morning she happened to notice somebody moseying over towards the control tower at an oh-so-casual walk, so she switched on her last Stealth Boy just in case. And wouldn't you know it, it was Captain Curtis. Son of a bitch.
(Fun fact: as long as YOU are concealed, your companions don't have to be. Janice was crouched in the shadows and busy being as invisibly invisible as she could manage. Veronica was crouched in the open. ED-E was hovering in the vicinity. Captain Curtis? Did not notice.)
She waited for Curtis to go into the control tower and then veeeeeery carefully crept in herself. Just in case Curtis had decided to catch the spy himself and take the credit. But, no, he was the spy all right; he fired up the radio and announced himself to the Legion dudes on the other end as Frumentarius Picus. Again, son of a bitch. Oh, and he confirmed that the bomb on the monorail to the Strip was ready to blow and would be going off in a few minutes. One more time, everybody...
Janice figured she'd heard enough at that point and took off at a run. She'd tell Hsu about it later. The monorail to the Strip had an entrance in McCarran near where she'd talked to Lieutenant Boyd and she'd seen guards near it; she figured she could tell them and they'd deal with the problem. Only, they didn't seem to know how and wouldn't follow her. Well, screw that. Janice figured if nothing else Veronica could probably help her recognize the thing and rip it out, or something... fortunately it didn't come to that. The bomb was crammed into an air vent and was relatively easy to recognize, and was of the 'cut the red wire to defuse' variety. (Which is to say that Janice had an Explosives skill of 35 by this point.) Hooray.
Bomb ripped out and defused, Janice headed back to Colonel Hsu and gave him the news. But no, Hsu said, that was impossible! Curtis had been leading the investigation! (Janice gave him a Look.) And anyway, Curtis had been here for years, long before trouble with the Legion! (Janice gave him proof.) Well, damn, Curtis was going to have to be rounded up and shot, then... Hsu gave Janice some caps and promised to let the rest of the NCR forces in the area know that she was good people. Janice was glad of this, because it was late at night and she'd just done a lot of running around and nearly getting killed and was very easily pleased at that point. She staggered out to the nearest place the NCR would let her sleep and conked out for the night. She'd deal with her other stuff in the morning.
When last we saw our heroines, Janice had decided to go and have a chat with the colonel in charge of Camp McCarran about dealing with intel leaks and getting paid for it. Pretty straightforward, right? Maybe if she hadn't had Veronica in tow. The instant they set foot inside the airport terminal proper, Veronica muttered that there were a lot more NCR soldiers around than the Brotherhood had ever expected, and no wonder they couldn't hold HELIOS One. Janice turned around at that. Veronica admitted that she was starting to have some serious second thoughts about the Brotherhood, and about how nobody even really seemed to realize they existed out here, and... well, she needed some time to think, that was all. Maybe they should keep doing what they were doing for a while until she could sort her thoughts out. Janice shrugged and agreed. Seemed harmless enough.
McCarran Terminal was a little on the dark side, whether because the light fixtures were two hundred years old and couldn't all be replaced or because the power was being equitably distributed she didn't know. It had two major visual features, to her: the airplane hanging from the ceiling, and enough slot machines to choke a Brahmin. Seriously, the whole ground floor was covered in 'em. I'm told this is actually the case at the real world McCarran, which wouldn't surprise me one bit. Janice didn't seem to be able to persuade the machines to work, though, so she went looking for Colonel Hsu. She found him; he was a pretty mellow guy who was doing his best to prioritize the NCR's distribution of manpower and materiel in the region. Seemed like one of the more sensible people she'd met so far. He gave her some details on the situation and promised to pay her if she could uncover the person who was leaking info on NCR troop movements to Caesar's Legion, and then suggested she go talk to Captain Curtis and Lieutenant Boyd about it.
Fine by her. Curtis greeted her courteously and suggested that she investigate Sergeant Contreras, as there'd been something suspicious about him for a long time now. Lieutenant Boyd was grouchy and sarcastic as hell, mostly because she was having a difficult time getting the Legion prisoner to talk, but she was decent enough to tell Janice about break-ins at the old airport control tower she hadn't had time to investigate. She figured they were probably just teenagers using the tower to get it on, but it was still worth looking into, and she gave Janice a key so she could get in there and have a look. Janice and company wandered over to the tower after that, mostly because it's easier to find an air traffic control tower than it is to find one guy in an entire hugeamongous airport, and poked at the computer terminal at the tower door until she found access logs for the past week. Apparently the break-ins had been happening around one AM or so every night for some time. When Janice went up the stairs she found no evidence of canoodling, but she did find a functioning radio setup...
Hm. Hm hm hm.
She probably should've told somebody at that point, but there wasn't a whole lot to go on. The way she saw it, if there was a spy breaking in every night and radioing the Legion, she'd be in a better position to deal with things once she knew who it actually was. Just telling people what she'd found didn't mean anything. She'd... she'd go and do something else, and come back after dark and hide and wait for the spy. Yeah. That sounded good. And once she found the spy she'd run like hell because even in close quarters, anybody who was ratting out the NCR to the Legion probably had solid brass where their gonads should be and would therefore be all too willing to gut her like a fish. So find out who they were, then report them. In the meantime, best she make herself useful and not get seen poking around the tower again. Who else was there to talk to?
Why, the people under the stairs, of course! There were a couple of rooms under one set of escalators that she hadn't seen yet. Turned out they were chock full of computers and scientific equipment, and two scientists working with them. The boss, Dr. Hildern, was a smarmy self-assured fellow who claimed to be just the most scientific thing to ever science, and he asked Janice to go check out Vault 22 to the west, since there were expedition reports of incredible plant growth research in the Vault's computers. Janice figured she couldn't get it done before finding out about the spy, but should be able to manage it the next day, since getting the hell out of the area after exposing somebody who worked for Caesar's Legion was probably a good survival mechanism. She said yes. She then turned around to go talk to the other scientist.
And ED-E started talking again. OH-KAY. Looked like the second recording was supposed to be given to Enclave scientists at Navarro, wherever that was, or possibly to the scientists at Enclave camps in Chicago, whichever the robot hit first. Apparently ED-E had some nice stuff in its databanks for whoever managed to get it decrypted, but Hildern didn't seem to give a damn about that. Veronica, on the other hand... well, Ronnie didn't talk again until Janice had spoken with scientist #2, who was a lot less pompous than Hildern and who wasn't surprised at ALL that Hildern had forgotten to mention that virtually everyone they'd sent to Vault 22 didn't come back and could Janice please see about finding out what happened to their researcher Keely? Please? Janice said sure, and then got out of the room and turned around to talk to Ronnie. Ronnie had officially made up her mind; she really needed to get the Brotherhood to listen to her about the outside world again. If she could just talk to Elder McNamara she was positive she could get him to see sense; could they go home to Hidden Valley soon? Please?
Janice considered this for a while and then said sure, why not. Veronica and her punchings had been very helpful so far, and she didn't see any reason why it should be a real problem to reciprocate. They'd just take care of the spy first and maybe check out Vault 22 and then they'd go. Veronica was good with this.
Most of the rest of the day was spent talking to various people just to see what they were like. There was a group of NCR First Recon soldiers on the premises- snipers, Boone's old unit. They were kind of fascinating. One of them hit on Janice like you wouldn't believe. Turned out when Janice talked to the First Recon CO that Corporal Betsy had been captured by Fiends at one point and raped, and her idea of dealing with the resultant PTSD involved hitting on any woman she thought seemed reasoanbly attractive. (I got the impression Betsy had been gay before the incident and that this was her asserting her right to sexual self determination rather than the old, tired 'sexual abuse makes you gay' thing. Apparently if you've got a male character she says she prefers them 'tall, blonde and female' rather than hitting on you.) The CO said it was unprofessional and didn't help unit cohesion any, so he'd be grateful if Janice could talk her into getting some help. She wound up going back to Betsy and barking at her that psychological injuries were just as much of a weakness as physical ones and if she wanted to be a real asset she would GET SOME TREATMENT, SOLDIER. Which, apparently, was the right approach; Betsy blinked and said that she thought she was talking to her old drill sergeant for a minute there, and agreed to get help. A quick run over to the New Vegas Medical Clinic nearby to warn the doctor in charge that she had a new psych patient on the way, and everything was sorted out. Well, at least as far as Janice was concerned, anyway.
After that Janice wound up finding herself a concealed spot to go and wait for the Legion spy, since she didn't really want anyone else to drop any obligations on her. Pity there wasn't any coffee to keep her up, but hey, she had some Nuka-Cola to work with. That was something. (Literally. Nuka-Cola decreases your Sleep Meter by several notches, so you don't have to go find a bed for a while longer.) Come 1:30 in the morning she happened to notice somebody moseying over towards the control tower at an oh-so-casual walk, so she switched on her last Stealth Boy just in case. And wouldn't you know it, it was Captain Curtis. Son of a bitch.
(Fun fact: as long as YOU are concealed, your companions don't have to be. Janice was crouched in the shadows and busy being as invisibly invisible as she could manage. Veronica was crouched in the open. ED-E was hovering in the vicinity. Captain Curtis? Did not notice.)
She waited for Curtis to go into the control tower and then veeeeeery carefully crept in herself. Just in case Curtis had decided to catch the spy himself and take the credit. But, no, he was the spy all right; he fired up the radio and announced himself to the Legion dudes on the other end as Frumentarius Picus. Again, son of a bitch. Oh, and he confirmed that the bomb on the monorail to the Strip was ready to blow and would be going off in a few minutes. One more time, everybody...
Janice figured she'd heard enough at that point and took off at a run. She'd tell Hsu about it later. The monorail to the Strip had an entrance in McCarran near where she'd talked to Lieutenant Boyd and she'd seen guards near it; she figured she could tell them and they'd deal with the problem. Only, they didn't seem to know how and wouldn't follow her. Well, screw that. Janice figured if nothing else Veronica could probably help her recognize the thing and rip it out, or something... fortunately it didn't come to that. The bomb was crammed into an air vent and was relatively easy to recognize, and was of the 'cut the red wire to defuse' variety. (Which is to say that Janice had an Explosives skill of 35 by this point.) Hooray.
Bomb ripped out and defused, Janice headed back to Colonel Hsu and gave him the news. But no, Hsu said, that was impossible! Curtis had been leading the investigation! (Janice gave him a Look.) And anyway, Curtis had been here for years, long before trouble with the Legion! (Janice gave him proof.) Well, damn, Curtis was going to have to be rounded up and shot, then... Hsu gave Janice some caps and promised to let the rest of the NCR forces in the area know that she was good people. Janice was glad of this, because it was late at night and she'd just done a lot of running around and nearly getting killed and was very easily pleased at that point. She staggered out to the nearest place the NCR would let her sleep and conked out for the night. She'd deal with her other stuff in the morning.
