I pushed my bolt forward, readying my rifle for another shot. I looked through my scope down range towards my enemies. This skirmish had begun a few days ago when I and my partner stumbled upon this outpost. The idiots in the shitty tent camp didn't use modern weapons so they hadn't been able to get me yet. When my partner, the bleeding heart he was, left to sneak in to free the slaves, he was quickly caught and hung on a cross. I'd put him out of his misery when he'd finally given me a pleading look on the sixth day of his torture.
We were miles from any NCR outpost and rules stated I needed to collect intelligence on the enemy we had discovered. We knew the legion was an organized enemy and that they would be our most likely opposition in taking Hoover Dam. I knew that they were a much bigger threat than what current intel told us.
I'd been reborn after an accident and had struggled to survive as an orphan child in Shady Sands. I'd never played Fallout 1 or 2 but I knew some of the lore. I'd eventually survived and been conscripted into the NCR military. The push into Nevada was just beginning and I had quickly become a forward scout sent near the Mojave. Many groups had run into the Legion. This was the first time I'd run into them.
I knew them from the game and show. Idiots in red football gear an cobbled together armor. They wielded cold steel and, although rarely, guns. The group I was looking at seemed to be more idiotic than most as only the decanus had a gun, which was a shitty 20 gauge shotgun. I looked over the camp and found the decanus of this small shithole. He was currently yelling at some recruit level legionaries.
I lined his feathered head up in my sights and pulled the trigger. His head popped as my 308 round passed through. I quickly shimmied away from my overlook position as the legionnaires vaguely charged in my direction. I cut back as fast as I could and hit a small and thin tree line. They swarmed the rocks I'd been in like they were angry bees, then slowly trudged their way back to the camp.
I'd been here for a few days and they had gotten used to me shooting them. They weren't smart enough to do anything about me picking them off and without their decanus the had no leader. Their hierarchy was quickly taken by a veteran and they started sending out search parties to hunt me down. As they passed me by I bedded down to wait for night. I lowered their numbers over the last few days and I was confident I could sneak in to do what I wanted.
Slave collars had been a problem ingame as you couldn't remove them at all unless you had the 'key' for them. In the real world however, I had found some in an evidence locker at a base, and taught myself all I could about them. I'd found a critical flaw. If the casing was removed without activating the bomb it was completely useless. The technology to do this was annoying to learn how to make, but ended up being simple. A small laser gun like device that could be used to blast the steel as close range with neutron radiation.
With a high enough dose of neutron radiation for long enough and the steel would practically crumble under pressure due to the radiation making it incredibly brittle. I'd never studied much science in my past life but I knew something like this was likely incredibly hard to do without the insane physics of this world. I always carried this small device around with me since its creation but had never gotten to use it.
I snuck into the camp at around 11 at night. I had a perfect mental map of the camp and its surroundings so getting to the tent of the slaves was quick and easy. I put my knife into a tent anchor and popped it up to slip under. The slave we're asleep on small tattered tarps, so I inched over to one and began hitting her bomb collar with radiation. I cut at the steel slowly while holding myself steady. I didn't want to hit her with radiation as I didn't know how it worked in this world.
Once I'd gone over the face of the metal brick that housed the tech I simply grabbed the plate and crushed the edge under my fingers. I pulled the plate away with little issue and pulled the explosives out. With the explosives out I removed the detonator from them and placed the plastic explosives in a small jar. Over the next five hours I continued to remove explosives.
At four I finally finished and wired the explosives into a makeshift bomb to distract from the slaves escaping. I slowly woke the slaves making sure they stayed quiet. With them awake and the sun near rising I quickly cut at the joints of their collars. The second they had the collars removed the legion would know due to control devices and no explosions.
We all slipped out the way I'd come in and I chucked the explosive I'd made. The second the explosion hit the camp the slaves shed their collars and bolted for the trees I'd hidden in. I pushed them out the other side of the trees towards a rock formation. I took up a position on the highest rock and took aim at the tree line. The legion wasn't good enough to track me, but they could track me and the slaves booking it through the woods.
As they practically charged out towards us I fired as much as I could. I made sure every bullet either killed or crippled. Inbetween the small rock formation and the trees lied multiple mines I'd laid a few days prior. The idiots charging out of the trees stood no chance against me. Multiple fell to my mines as I pick off the rest with my rifle. Only the veteran leader got close enough to do anything but didn't have a chance as I put half a mag of 9mm round into him from my smg. His power fist activated and shattered a chunk of rock as he tumbled to the ground.
I gave what weapons they had to the slaves, except the power fist, and we went back to the camp. We took everything we could before leaving, including the Brahmin and its small cart. The young slaves rode the Brahmins cart with the goods as we aimed for the nearest outpost. I buried the body of my stupid partner and hooked his dog tags to my own.
I slung my rifle onto my back beside my backpack. I holstered my smg and his 9mm pistol on my thighs and carried his service rifle in my hands. The only man in the slave group got his helmet and armor after I'd removed NCR insignia. The armor was big on the boy but he now had clothes. The rest had clothes but it was mostly unmarked rags to keep the sun off their skin.
At midday we found an old 16 wheeler and its trailer. We waited out the sweltering heat of midday in the trucks shade and I patched up a few wounds from the people's time as slaves. When the sun finally waned I pushed the ex-slaves to continue our march to the outpost. We'd make the halfway point by nightfall.
When we finally stopped with the sun setting I set up a small camp. The older ex-slaves and I would be keeping watch for the night so I didn't have to set up any passive defenses besides the last piece of tech I had. Multiple sensors made primarily from basic sensor modules with a small radio based light system to indicate which one had detected something. The dinner for the night was pretty good as the ex-slaves cooked well and geckos were abundant if you knew where to look.
The night passed without any disturbances and we started early the next morning. The roads were marked better the closer we got to the NCR outpost and the halfway point this time was an old campground with some small cabins we could hide from the heat in. I'd grown used to the heat of Nevada quickly after getting deployed here after training. I'd been drafted at 16 years old based on my orphanage papers and sent to some place outside the city for training.
I'd stood out in training for my marksmanship and for not being stupid like most. It helped massively that I knew more about pretty much everything, unlike 90% of the population. I'd been fast tracked into some kind of scout position as soon as I got to Nevada. The NCR was using massive amounts of money and resources to get troops into Nevada and the Mojave.
I'd rode here with close to 100 men in a truck convoy. I'd started like everyone else with a service rifle and 9mm pistol but had quickly gotten a scoped hunting rifle and 9mm smg for my scouting as I was a better shot than my partner.
As I walked with the ex-slaves I worked in the power fist I'd gotten. It was in a shitty condition but unlike ingame the repair kits were reusable. I disassembled the piston glove weapon and slowly cleaned it while walking. All the younger ex-slaves looked at me in wonder as they saw me take apart something that had likely terrified them and clean it.
While I was only 17 years old I stood about a head over everyone in the group. I had gotten decent care as an orphan child in Shady Sands and apparently had tall parents. They had died in a battle with a slaving Brahmin baron and his people and had only left me behind.
I was tall and strong with a large backpack and lots of weapons and armor. My armor was standard trooper armor with added plates and an armor face plate with goggles. In their eyes I was probably some kind of large mysterious savior. When we finally got to the old campground I cleared the houses and set up my sensors. We made some fresh food over a small fire and ate or relaxed till the sun was far enough down to continue without getting heat stroke. I'd put the power fist back together as we hid from the heat and it practically shined as I put it in my left hand. The gloves had been designed for the right hand but re-wiring the glove to fit a left handed glove was easy enough.
The final walk to the outpost was easy despite the increase in small creatures and we got in before the sun fully set. I was met at the walls by 10 of the stationed 40 troops and the ranger commander. He was a bit of a hard ass and yelled at me for letting my dumbass partner get himself killed. However, he hated paperwork as much as most people did so I wasn't forced to do much of it.
It was nearly dark by the time I actually got to go to my tent. It was small but more than enough for what I had. The small tent had one cot at the back with a large table dominating the area. I had remade the lighting of the base via easily gathered scarp so I had lots of my own scrap and tools from the job. We didn't have anything like a quartermaster or specialist here so I was in charge of fixing thing on account of being the only one good at it.
Most people in the military are encouraged to have hobbies so we are allowed to keep things as long as we register them. I had been at this outpost for about a month now and my project from my time off was still lying on my table. I set down my new power fist and some of the scrap I'd grabbed while I was out. My project was a basic powered frame with effective force feed back controls.
The frame itself was easy to make but the control system needed lots of specially tuned sensor modules and two fission batteries to power the entire thing. I was also missing the needed terminal for properly programming the control chip that would connect the sensors and other systems. Over the next week I worked on my frame on my off time, eventually adding the power fist.
Nearly two weeks after o brought back the ex-slaves, new orders came. My report on the legion I had written had included more than what I'd observed from the camp I destroyed. With that knowledge multiple groups were sent out to confirm what I'd reported. I was sent out to a know Legion camp to scout them.
I took a 9mm pistol and smg alongside my rifle. The rest of my gear remained the same except for me adding more mines. If I was going to fight them I wanted lots of explosives between me and them. I then began my trek towards the nearby legion camp.