Standing there in the shadows of the jagged rocks were Milla and Amelia. Milla was clutching a pair of pre-war binoculars, her face set in a grim mask, while Amelia had her lever-action rifle slung across her back. Case was surprised to see Milla had tagged along; she usually stayed behind to manage the logistics of the homestead, but tonight, the air felt different.
"Well," Case muttered, "looks like the whole family is here. No doubt about it."
Below them, the Farmstead looked vulnerable. The three tanks and five APCs were lined up in the yard like a row of condemned men. It felt surreal—the local Ranger detachment was already packing their kits, preparing to hand over the keys to the NCR's heavy-metal legacy.
"You said you had a stupid idea, kid," Jacob grunted, dropping into a shooter's crouch. He ignored the women for a moment, his eyes fixed on the dust trails of the NCR convoy heading toward the Outpost, bypassng the farm for now. "If your idea involves talking, you better start now, because my finger is getting an itch only a trigger can scratch."
Case looked at the Pip-Boy, the green light reflecting off his pupils. "Oh, you'll get to shoot, Jacob. In fact, you'll be forced to. This is the only way we stay independent actors. It sounds crazy, heck, the craziest gamble of the century even, but the world just got a whole lot crazier."
"Anything is less crazy than an open war with the NCR," Amelia quipped, though her hand tightened on her rifle. "If this doesn't involve us becoming targets for a firing squad, I'm in."
Milla stepped forward, her eyes locked on Case. "I'm following you, Case. You've got the luck of the devil, hell, even more. Stick with you, and I stay alive. If you decide we go with the NCR, I'm in. If you go with whatever mad plan you've got brewing... I'm in for that, too."
Case swiped his thumb across the Pip-Boy's glass, the map stuttering as it scrolled past the familiar landmarks of the Mojave, deep into the uncharted "black zones" of the southwest. He tapped a jagged, mountainous crater on the display.
"Big MT. Or the Big Empty, as some call it."
Amelia's eyes went wide, reflecting the eerie green glow of the screen. "No one dares to venture there, Case. Are you nuts? That's a nuclear detonation site. There's nothing there but radiation, and those who venture in never return. Like, ever."
Case didn't flinch. He tapped the Pip-Boy again, bringing up a hidden data layer that pulsated with a blue light—vastly different from the standard Pip-Boy green. Bunch of old-world data, data that wasn't in the game, but it was there.
"And we have a highway to get there. There's a satellite projector at the Mojave Drive-In. At midnight, that thing isn't just showing old movies; it's a transport hub. It can move us—and the equipment—directly into the Big MT," he said, explaining the data.
"Teleportation?" Milla's voice was skeptical, her brows furrowed. "That sounds too good to be true, Case. That sounds like a fairy tale told by a drunk prospector."
"Well, it is what it is," Case replied, his voice hardening with a resolve he didn't know he possessed. He looked at the three of them, the blue glow of the Pip-Boy casting long, eerie shadows against the rocks. "If you all don't want to follow me, I'll gladly go alone. I'm not spending the rest of my life in an NCR 'processing' center or dying in a trench in Baja for Colonel Oliver's ego."
It was a half-bluff, and they all knew it. Case didn't want to go alone, but the alternative—surrendering to Major Bartholomew—was a slow death. He already had the prerequisite of not being lobotomized, being shot in the head, that was.
Jacob looked down at the farmstead, then back at the blinking blue icon on Case's wrist. The thought of teleporting tanks sounded insane, but so did the idea of the Desert Rangers being "absorbed" into a bureaucracy that hated them.
"Teleporting a tank..." Jacob muttered, a grim, reckless smile finally tugging at his lips. "It's so stupid it might actually work. Better than walking into the Outpost with our hands up. How does it work, though? Do we just... drive into a beam of light?"
"Well, we sure as hell ain't going to bring a tank," Case clarified, checking the Pip-Boy's transport mass limits. "Maybe an APC, but not a tank. This research facility has roads, but I honestly doubt a tank could move easily through the interior canyons."
"APC then," Jacob agreed, his mind already calculating how to strip the vehicles down for the move.
Milla stepped closer, her binoculars dangling from her neck. "What's so special about this facility, Case? Why risk everything for a hole in the ground?"
"It has factories, technologies, and everything the Rangers can only dream of. Self-sustaining power, automated medical bays, and weapon forges. We only have to fight robotic radscorpions and some lobotomites."
"Loboto– what?" Amelia asked, her brow furrowing in confusion.
"People without brains, Amelia. Literally," Case said, his voice grim. "Technological husks kept alive by pre-war science. They're fast, and they're aggressive, but they aren't an army of NCR troopers with a legal mandate to put us in a cage. We trade a bureaucratic master for a scientific nightmare. I'd take the monsters over the Major any day."
"How does it work, though?" Jacob asked, eyeing the bulky APCs from the ridge.
"It's a satellite-based matter-stream," Case explained, his fingers dancing over the Pip-Boy's interface. "But you're right, Jacob. The standard beam is meant for people, not steel plating. If we drive an APC into that light, we'll likely end up as a metallic smear across the Mojave. But this Pip-Boy... it has a handshake protocol with the mainframe according to this data, trust me, it'll work. It's a piece of hardware, like it or not. Trust me, beside, I have a luck of a devil."
Jacob gave a short, sharp bark of a laugh. The tension hadn't vanished, but it had shifted from dread to the kind of reckless energy that precedes a suicide mission.
"You know too much for a kid, I'll give you that," Amelia said, stepping closer. She palmed Case's face, her hand rough but her eyes softening for a fleeting second. "I'm putting my life on the line here, but I'd better gamble it on you than on the NCR's bureaucrats."
Jacob was already mentally checking off their inventory, his tactical mind whirring. "Okay, kid, you said there'd be a lot of shooting. If we're heading into a pre-war hornet's nest, we need to bring our heavy guns, don't you think?"
"I can convince Markus to let us handle his power armor," Milla intervened, her voice surprisingly confident. The thought of bringing a suit of functional T-series armor changed the math significantly.
"Okay, I trust you with that, I'll get as much guns as we can," Case nodded.
"I'll gather the medical supplies and as much high-velocity ammo as the APC can carry," Amelia added, already turning toward the supply cache.
"And I can abuse the command for the heavy guns," Jacob said, a predatory glint in his milky eyes. "The detachment downstairs still thinks I'm their senior. I can be... persuasive when it comes to requisitioning the specialized ordnance before they realize we're defecting."
"Let's get to it, then people. Let's get our thunder run to hell begin," Case grinned, the blue light of the Pip-Boy giving his expression a ghostly, manic edge.