Jacks closed the door to Curtis’ office and stepped past the floating robot and pink pony. He knew exactly where to go next, and motioned for his friends to follow him across the lobby again. After they were out of earshot of the office Jacks slowed his pace and turned his head to Pinkie.
“Not bad, Pinkie,” he said pleasantly, prompting a smile from the pony. “I’ll be honest; it was risky asking him whether he was involved. Frankly that might have been a bit too far. However, I think his response provided an interesting clue. Care to guess what it was?”
“Hmmm…” Pinkie blew some bubbles out of the pipe in her mouth as she contemplated. “Was it… the awkward pause after we told him our plan? OH OH, was it that he wants us to tell him if we find anything out?”
“Very good guesses Pinkie, but sadly not the zinger. The real clue was his blatant attempt to get us to bark up the wrong tree.”
“Huh? What you talkin’ about?” Pinkie replied in a mock-sassy tone.
“Elementary, my dear Pinkie. Curtis clearly tried to point us towards the possibility of Contreras being the spy. It would be a decent strategy if not for the fact that Contreras is currently being held in the brig for illegal arms dealing and drug trafficking. I should know; I was the one to put him there.”
“Well how was I supposed to know all that, you silly goof?”
“I…” Jacks stopped in his tracks. “I dunno, I just sort of assumed you would know something like that. I mean, you can hide who knows what in that dimensional rift you call a mane, not to mention your ‘Pinkie senses…’” He concluded with a befuddled shrug.
“Oh, okie doke!” Pinkie replied nonchalantly as she started walking again.
Jacks sighed, wondering if he would ever understand this alien. Hell, for that matter should he even try? He stopped himself before he started asking too many questions and decided to get back to the point.
“Anyways, like I was saying, the fact that Curtis seems to be intentionally mislead us, I figure we have only one viable lead to follow through with.”
“You mean…?”
Jacks smiled deviously.
-
Lt. Boyd sat at her desk, filling out paperwork. As much as she wanted to get back to Silus’ interrogation she was hoping the stench that the Courier left behind would help whittle down his nerves a bit. That and she really didn’t want to stand in there for hours at a time having to smell that stench. The very thought of that putrid smell made her shiver. In fact, just thinking about it seemed to make her start smelling it all over again…
Her door suddenly opened as a gut-wrenchingly familiar figure stepped in.
“Guess who wants a word with you?” Jacks said in a musical tone.
“And look at that, Pinkie’s here too!” Pinkie chimed in as she bounced into the office.
Last but certainly not least, an eyebot floated in and hovered above the pony. “[Series of unamused beeping]”
“Oh come on ED-E,” Jacks said with a sigh, “Don’t be such a Debbie Downer.” Pinkie bounced a bit higher than usual, bumping into the robot and causing its flight to waver momentarily.
“That fucking smell!!” Boyd cried out angrily to nobody in particular. She spun her chair around and stared at Jacks with an intensity that could melt a hole through power armor. “What do you want?!”
“Besides a bit more politeness, I have some questions that need answers,” Pinkie said in a mellow tone, blowing more bubbles from her pipe. “Have you noticed any suspicious goings-on around the base lately?”
“Besides the arrival of you three?” Boyd replied with a sigh. Her onset of frustration was beginning to pass. “What kind of MP would I be if I didn’t notice anything suspicious? Besides, why should I be telling you any of this?”
“Hsu has us looking for the spy,” Jacks replied plainly. “Let’s leave it at that in order to maintain a level of subtlety in the investigation.”
“Wait, there’s a spy on the base?!”
“Yeperoonie! Silus told me about him, then I told Hsu, who already knew I guess, so he asked us to look into it, so here we are!” Pinkie said giddily. “We’re solving a mystery!”
Boyd stopped to consider the situation. “…Fair enough. I suppose you did help me out with Contreras and White, so a bit of trust isn’t too much to be expected. So, to answer your question Pinkie, I have noticed some odd occurrences lately. The most notable example I know of is a series of break-ins at the control tower, where we keep some of the older communications equipment.”
“Break-ins, you say?” Pinkie rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Very intriguing… please, go on.”
“Well, I suppose ‘break-ins’ isn’t technically accurate. We’ve not found any signs of forced entry, plus there have been reports of someone sneaking in there at night. I’d thought it was just some steamy love affair amongst the troops, but now that you mention the spy…”
“Well that sounds like a super-amazing lead! We’ll be sure to look into it immediately. Thanks a ton for the intel Miss Boydie,” Pinkie chimed happily.
“Wait, do you need any help with the search? Maybe I could spare a few troops to help you-“
“No,” Jacks interrupted. “I appreciate the offer, but I think anything like that would risk alerting the spy to our progress. We’ll be able to take care of this faster and more efficiently if we did it alone.”
Boyd was cross over Jacks cutting her off, but she couldn’t help but see the logic behind his words. “Fair enough. I can give you the codes to access the tower and its records, however,” she continued as she pulled a holodisk from her desk.
Jacks stepped forward and took the disk from the officer’s hand. “Thank you. I’m sure this will come in handy.”
“Is there anything else I can do for you three?” Boyd asked.
“That’s about the long and short of it, Miss Boyd,” Pinkie chimed. “But we’ll be sure to come back by if we need anything else.”
“Alright, if that’s the case…” she took a nauseatingly deep breath. “Then would you please go take a fucking shower before the whole base smell like a Fiend’s ass-crack? PLEASE?!”
“Oh come on, I don’t smell that bad, do I?” Jacks asked innocently. As he looked over to Pinkie, he realized she’d had nose plugs on this entire time. “…do I?”
“Well, I don’t mean to be rude, but-“
“YES!” Boyd concluded, cutting Pinkie off.
“--Jokes on you, organics. I couldn’t smell anything even if I wanted to.--“
Pinkie took a long, drawn-out gasp. “ED-E? Exhibiting a sense of humor?! oooOOO I’m so proud!!”
Boyd pinched her brow. “SHOWER! NOW!”
Jacks held his hands up defensively. “Alright alright, I’m going.”
- - -
After concluding their business with LT. Boyd the trio went straight to the communications tower, leaving a trail of confused and sickly troops in their wake. Pinkie almost side tracked them by wanting to go to the dining area, but Jacks managed to keep her on track. Upon reaching the tower, they discovered a terminal that kept records of every time the door was accessed. Jacks let Pinkie discover the deviation in the schedule that Boyd had mentioned. According to the terminal, someone was entering the tower at 1AM every few nights.
With a solid lead established and the day still young, the team found themselves with some time to kill. They headed back to the camp out front of the defunct airport and began looking for Major Dhatri. They found him after a short while and handed over the three heads of the fiends. Dhatri was almost ecstatic as he handed over the bounty.
With the bounties collected, they had effectively run out of objectives for the time being.
Jacks, after much consideration, decided to utilize the base’s facilities by freshening up. Pinkie passed on the idea and said she would be at the dining area making up for the food she’d lost earlier in the day. Jacks agreed and told ED-E to keep an eye on her, pun intended.
Jacks hated the stench of death on him, even though he joked about it at times. It was affective at striking fear into his enemies on the battlefield as well at keeping away some wildlife out in the wastes, but it made even him sick if it got bad enough. That and he’d even been booted out of Gomorrah because of the smell, and that’s saying something.
Despite its advantages however, he still loved it when he had the chance to freshen up. It made him feel young again, despite only being in his early 30’s.
Once at the showers he politely asked everyone else to leave, even going so far as to pay some of them off. Once alone, he carefully removed his cloak and customized Desert Ranger combat armor. He placed the stack of clothes and ordinance on a nearby bench. If anyone had been there, they might have been taken aback by what they would have seen. And no, I’m not talking about what you think I am.
His body almost resembled a beefy ghoul with how scarred it was. Out of the multitude of burns and bullet wounds, a few scars stood out above the rest. Most notably was the large U-shaped line across his head, as well as four massive lines streaking across his back. Much of the tissue was older, but there were a few fresher patches here and there.
He gauged the water’s temperature carefully, finding the right balance so as to not agitate any of his fresher wounds. He grabbed a few medical supplies from his gear and began looking over some of his injuries. Most of them were from bullets that had squeezed past his armor plates during the recent assault of the Fiends. He took his time to be thorough as he washed and doctored the wounds.
Stimpacks were great at healing injuries in the field, but they came with a catch. Such rapid healing never let his body take its time with the healing process, resulting in what could be called a ‘rushed patch-job.’ The scars were the result of this impatient healing process, his flesh having been forced together like someone squishing some clay together to fill seal a gap.
Any time he found a wound that still had a bullet lodged inside it he would have to inject himself with a Med-X before cutting the wound open to extract the object. As much as he hated to use drugs in excess, he tended to get short tempered when performing precession work while in pain. The Med-X, however, helped him keep calm and avoid any further damage to the wound.
After a short while of doctoring himself, he grabbed some soap and set to work washing the rest of his scar-riddled body. Once finished with himself, he grabbed some of his clothes and did his best to wash out any blood or other anomalous materials. The whole process took more than a couple of hours, but the result was well worth it.
Jacks was probably as clean as he was ever going to be, and he had scrubbed as much of the smell out of his clothes as he was able. He suited back up and exited the showers, apologizing and throwing some caps to the massive line waiting for him to finish.
As he was making his way back to the dining area, he thought he began to hear music and laughter. In fact, the sounds grew as he got closer. When he entered the large central room of the airport he was taken aback by what he faced. Balloons, confetti, streamers, and so much more was scattered across the large circular hub. NCR soldiers stood around with cups or small plates of various confectionaries.
A sudden blast of streamers and balloons drew his attention to the dining area, where the crowd seemed to be the thickest. However, it seemed had formed a circle around the source of the celebration. Jacks worked his way through the bustling room as best he could; apologizing any time he bumped into anyone. When he finally reached the party’s ground zero, he was surprised by what he found.
Well, maybe surprised is the wrong word. Let’s face it, after spending so much time with Pinkie he was beginning to expect such crazy occurrences.
Pinkie was sitting on a light blue cannon that resembled something from the 18th century. As he squeezed into the opening he was blasted by a barrage of confetti from the artillery piece. Pinkie jubilantly greeted the Courier, bombarding him with how it was Gary’s birthday and she just HAD to throw him a birthday party and it wasn’t exactly her best work but it was made with love so it still counts and so on and so forth.
As the pony rambled, Jacks looked over to ED-E, who simply explained “--You told me to keep an eye on her, not stop her. Besides, I couldn’t keep her from a party even if I tried.--“
Jacks looked back to the pony, an unamused expression apparent on his face. Pinkie slowed her rambling to a halt and looked him in the eye. The party seemed to slow down as people silently waited to see what would happen. After what felt like an hour, Jacks simply held out his hand. Pinkie grinned, pulling a cherry pie out of her sweets sack and handing it over. The second Jacks got his pie he screamed with joy, kicking the party back into high gear.
The party raged for hours.
As the day grew late, Jacks began to keep an eye on the time. About an hour before midnight he reminded Pinkie of the stakeout they had planned. She begrudgingly accepted, laying out a few more goodies for the patrons to enjoy and wishing Gary one last happy birthday before sneaking out of the party with Jacks and ED-E.