"For fuck's sake, Charley, it's me, Red. Don't you recognize me?"

 

There's no way she grew all that hair on her own since the last time we crossed paths. So yes, in fact I had not recognized her. And I had so many questions about what I was seeing. 

 

"Sorry, Red," I said, "I didn't. It's the hair, I think. I like the color coordination though - carpet, drapes, and upholstery."

 

She scowled a little more. "Now you're just trying to embarrass me. But yeah, it's a wig. Gonna take a while to grow out my real hair." 

 

"Can I ask you why you're growing your hair out? And where you got that vault suit?"

 

"I'm going for a new look," she explained. "Beautiful, but frighteningly confident."

 

 

"Or just frightening," Nick muttered.

 

"Hey, zip it, synth," she hissed, before turning back to me. "And the vault suit's a gift from, ah, what's her name? The old bat who lives up in Sanctuary."

 

"Mama Murphy?" I asked.

 

"Yeah, that's her. I guess after she heard about us trying to rescue your people here, she started saying we deserved to be welcomed into the family, if you know what I mean. She talked to the Ainsleighs, they talked to the Abernathys, and next thing you know, we're bona fide," she pronounced it all as one word, like 'bonified,' "citizens. Probation over, collars on, pants off, you know the drill."

 

"I... do..." I said, slowly, wondering exactly when decisions like this started getting delegated to the settlement leaders. Well, I guess if I didn't want to be queen, I'd have to accept some devolution of power, especially when I was out of town.

 

"Anyway, the reason I'm here is because my rangers..."

 

"Your rangers?" Nick asked. "Do I want to know?"

 

"Red's Rangers," she clarified, a bit forcefully. "That's what my boys and girls are called now. Since the Minutemen are all independent and stuff, I guess we're your private army now. And we've got some army-ing to do."

 

"Oh really? Care to explain?"

 

"Well, as it happens one of my patrols ran into some of the Hagen boys snooping around our base."

 

"The Federal Ration Stockpile?"

 

She nodded, "that's the one, though I'm thinking of renaming it... Fort Tourette. Has a nice ring to it. But anyway, we grabbed them and took them for a little tour of our facility. We were still in the middle of cleaning up after the big party and it left them with quite an impression. After that, they were real excited to talk with us if we'd hand them over to the Minutemen."

 

"I can imagine," I muttered. I had a creeping feeling that cleaning up 'Fort Tourette' wasn't a big priority for Red. "I take it they told you something interesting?"

 

 

"Oh, very interesting," she said, grinning. "They told me that a week ago, the Rust Devils raided their base with a big swarm of robots. The mercs trashed 'em all, but before they could, the Devils blew up their main water tank. So until the mercs fix it, they're relying on water caravans from Natick to keep them, you know, watered. Right now is the perfect time to cut off Natick, while the mercs are vulnerable."

 

"That's kind of an aggressive move," I pointed out, "and risky. The plan was for the Minutemen to dig in here and build up their forces before we marched on Natick."

 

"Yeah, but you made that plan before you had Red's Rangers. Now we can go right now. And don't worry, I've got a plan. Natick's like my back yard, used to go there all the time."

 

"OK..." I said, "what's the plan?"

 

"We're going to put the squeeze on Natick and make them bend the knee to you."

 

"Seems like some details are missing there, Red," Nick observed.

 

"Jesus Christ just shut up," she growled, "I'm getting there. Natick gets its electrical power from the old Poseidon Energy plant. So we're going to take over the plant, and now we've got leverage. Easy peasy. The town council'll fold in no time."

 

"That sounds very, raider-y," I observed. "I'm not sure I like the idea of just shutting off the lights on them."

 

"Trust me," Red said, now practically beaming, "one night, that's all it'll take. Then you can cut your deal and turn the power back on. And this way, nobody gets hurt. That's the new plan, right? We don't shoot up farmers and traders and stuff? Well this way you don't have to massacre them."

 

"And what, we just walk there?"

 

"Yup," Red said. "I've got some of my guys headed down there already. We'll probably have to scrap with some Rust Devils on the way, but you were counting on that already. But come on, daylight's wasting, let's hit the road."

 

I had mixed feelings about this plan. On one hand, I really felt like I Red wasn't the kind of person I'd trust with making a war plan. She was impulsive, reckless, and now seemed desperate to show off and impress me. On the other hand, she'd stumbled upon a real opportunity, and the Minutemen weren't ready to march west from Forest Grove. Hell, they were in a pretty tenuous supply situation until we got things rolling with Oberland Station. 

 

"What do you think, Nick? Want to watch the Red Rangers' trial by fire?"

 

"I admit," he said, "I'm curious."

 

"It's Red's Rangers, and we already had our trial. Remember how a whole patrol died saving your pansy-ass Minutemen? Now let's go get ourselves a power plant."

 

"Alright," I said, "you lead the way. But if it looks like we're in over our heads, I'm pulling back. This is a good chance, but we'll have others."

 

We passed through Forest Grove and then headed west along the road, watchful for signs of trouble. This was very similar to the route that Dogmeat led us on earlier, and that time we'd had several encounters with the Rust Devils in this area.

 

 

And speaking in the Rust Devils, we encountered them all right. Twice, in fact. The first time, we only found corpses, leftovers from some recent skirmish. The second time, they were very much alive. Red swore when she saw them, "they've got the same idea as us, I bet." A moment later, she calmy unslung her rifle and plugged the leader of their patrol in the head. That got their attention, and the rest of us joined in the fight. 

 

 

Soon, all but one of them were dead or fleeing - and that one threw down his gun and put up his hands.

 

"I surrender," he said, "don't shoot."

 

"You're awfully far west for Rust Devils," I said. "What are you folks up to?"

 

"Uh, we're just on patrol. You know, looking for the mercs who kicked us out of Hagen."

 

 

"I don't know, Charley," Red said, "I'm not really convinced. Didn't I hear somewhere that there were too many guys up at your little base on the lake?"

 

He she'd heard that I didn't know, though I was curious to find out. Still, I nodded, "true, though I don't follow what it has to do with this one."

 

"I was just thinking, if he doesn't tell us what's really going on, we could cut off his cock and balls, then send him up there to balance things out. I'm sure all those lonely men would welcome a new girl at the camp."

 

"Oh my," Curie bubbled, "if you decide on such a radical operation, I hope you secure proper medical assistance."

 

Red grinned, "you seem to know your way around a medkit, Curie. Would you do the honors for me?"

 

"I am programmed to uphold the Hippocratic Oath and to follow relevant regulations pertaining to informed consent," she answered primly. "Though I must concede that modern medical ethics may have evolved in the last two centuries."

 

"Hear that?" Red said, "ethics have evolved. That's fancy talk for saying her buzz saw is going to be getting to know your junk if you don't talk."

 

"Fuck fuck fuck," the man was muttering. I was about to step in and stop the farce, but then he seemed to crack. "OK, listen, we were supposed to set up a roadblock at Natick, stop them from sending water and stuff to Hagen."

 

"Fucking amateurs," Red interrupted. "You hear that, Charley? They were just going to set up a fuckin' roadblock. Pathetic. OK, so why are you coming back from there?"

 

"We ran into the raiders at the old motel. Ran into 'em like a brick wall. They've got power armor! Serious! Shredded half our guys."

 

"Well, that might be a problem," Nick admitted.

 

"No kidding," Red chimed in. "Shit, I hope my guys are OK. I told them to keep their distance till I got there, but... OK, no point stressing out, let's go. What are doing with this loser?" she asked.

 

"We're going in the wrong direction for taking prisoners, but he helped us so I don't really want to shoot him. Take his gun and cut him loose. Hey you," I directed to the raider, "go tell your bosses, again, that this is Vault 111 turf and that they need to find somewhere else to live."

 

"Uh, uh, sure. Whatever you say," he stammered as he slowly got up and then dashed off into the underbrush.

 

As he fled, I turned to Tourette. "You know, Red, we need to talk about how we do things in my outfit. I don't allow torture, and I'm not really happy with even threatening it. You need to work on a new interrogation technique."

 

"Pfft, sure, maybe have your synth dick give me some lessons in police procedure. But for now, let's go take over that power plant... and clear out that motel."

 

As it turned out, Red's... 'rangers' had indeed managed to stay out of trouble and were waiting not far from the power plant. Their leader came to report in; he told us about watching the Rust Devils get chewed up by three suits of power armor and a bunch of well-armed and fairly disciplined raiders. However, before they ran, the Devils had wrecked two of the armors, so now we only had one left to deal with.

 

 

"OK," I said, "if we're going to pull this off, then I think we need to take over the power plant tonight. Then at dawn, we roll into the motel. I hate to give those raiders a night to rest, but the power plant is more important, and if whoever's in there hunkers down, they're in a very defensible position. Any objections?"

 

Red shrugged, "none here," then pointedly she looked at her minion, "and that means none from him either. Time to go get ourselves a power plant."

 

In retrospect, we should have tried for the surprise attack on the raider camp. The power plant wasn't occupied by raiders - it was full of ghouls. Apparently, the system had been running on automatic for centuries, without any help from the inhabitants. With Red's rangers backing us up, we cleared out the facility without too much trouble. The main issue was getting into the restricted area containing the control room, still locked down after all these years. 

 

 

Fortunately, with some help from Nick's sleuthing skills, we were able to find a manager's terminal that contained the right credentials to release the maglocks. On an aside, did you know that the bombs fell on 'take your kids to work' day? I wonder if any of the families were able to shelter in the plant when the war started - though if so, it doesn't seem they were able to ride out the initial collapse. That, or the ghouls we were encountering were all that's left of them. 

 

Either way, now we had control of the plant. The water tanks for the thermal treatment system had long ago failed, but the fusion reactor was humming along nicely, like nothing had ever happened.

 

"Are we sure we want to turn this off?" I asked no one in particular. "What if we can't get it started again?"

 

"Don't turn off the plant," Red countered, "just shut off the um, you know, the part that pipes the power to town."

 

Finding "that part that pipes" took us several hours of working our way through consoles and control stations, but at last we found the grid interconnect switch. 

 

"Here goes nothing," I said, as I flipped the chunky switch. I didn't hear any obvious change in the ambiance, but I could see a series of lights flip from green to red, one at a time. 

 

"OK, Charley," Red said, "now that we're done with that, what do you say the two of us get to know each other better?"

 

The sudden request took me by surprise. "Um, what do you mean exactly, Red?" Though I had a bad feeling I knew exactly what she was getting at.

 

"Don't play coy, Charley. I know all about how you've got a girlfriend in every town. And now your reporter friend's away, I think it's my turn to get in your good graces. Don't you agree?"

 

She sidled up next to me, rubbing the small of my back. "Why don't you get out of that suit and have some fun?"

 

I could hear Nick drawl in the background, "I think I'll pass, if you don't mind. You girls have fun." Curie, for her part, was silent, but I could hear the gentle whoosh of her jet in the background.

 

 

"I don't know if you realize this, Red, but this suit takes a bunch of time to get out of. How about... hey!" My efforts to offer her a rain check were cut off as her hand moved down between my legs and started tugging at the plug in my vagina.

 

"Come on, Charley, let's at least get that part opened up so I can get a look at you."

 

"That doesn't work that way, Red, it's a little... more... ah, stop pulling on it."

 

"I've almost got it, just one good tug and..."

 

"Ahhh! Stop it!" I shouted as a sharp pain ran up through my belly. Red, undeterred, leaned into it and pulled, hard, actually shifting the plug slightly.

 

"Enough!" I shouted as I pushed her away. "I've been cutting you a lot of slack because as far as I can tell, you're working your damnedest to help, but you need to learn to take 'no' for an answer."

 

She huffed, planting her hands on her hips as she considered me from behind her omnipresent glasses.

 

 

"So is that it? You're rejecting me? I'm not really accustomed to people saying no to me."

 

"I'm not rejecting anything," I said. Tourette was pretty, and full of energy - she'd probably be fun to play with. But not now. "I'm just asking you to take a rain check." It was right at that moment that I realized, Red Tourette reminded me a lot of the girl we'd met in Vault 114. Confident and vicious on the surface, but concealing a hidden depth of insecurity. I was wondering how I'd balance that when a voice chimed in. A very French sounding voice.

 

"You know," Curie said, "if you are looking for some companionship, I have been without a partner for a very long time."

 

We both turned to the robot, a little surprised. "Shit," Red said, "I didn't know robots had a sex life."

 

"I suppose many do not," Curie conceded, "but the scientists I was trapped in the vault with had unmet needs, and I became very skilled at relieving them. Over the course of our relatively short time together, I found it to be a pleasant diversion. I would be happy to do the same for you, Red. Can I call you Red?"

 

"Fuuuuck," she muttered, "I've never done it with a robot before. How does that even work? Oh and sure, Red's fine."

 

Curie seemed to shiver a little in the air at her byplay with Tourette. "Why don't you come over here," Curie said, "and I'll sho-o-o-w you."

 

 

Tourette did as she asked, and soon Curie was hovering close, drawing the ex-raider into a close embrace from behind. With practiced precision, Curie curled her manipulator claw into a tight ball and began to push deeper and deeper into Red's pussy. Tourette, obviously enjoying the sensation, pushed back and ground her rear against Curie's segmented arm. 

 

"I'm glad you're enjoying this, Red. I only had male scientists to practice on before, so I'm very happy that I'm not going too rough or too deep for your comfort."

 

"Ha," Red laughed, "I like rough. Give me all that robot lovin' you've been keeping cooped up."

 

They continued their canoodling until Red was lying in a very satisfied heap on the floor as Curie hovered behind her.

 

 

"Oh, you're good, Curie. I'm up for more of that whenever you want."

 

"Well, seeing as it's been so long, I have no objection to another round," the robot offered.

 

Red laughed, rolling over, but shooed her away, "hey, I gotta get some sleep, too you know. Some other time, Curie, but thanks for the offer."

 

And with Red's libido satisfied, we finally did get some sleep. When morning came, we rendezvoused with Red's people and moved into to put a quick end to the raiders at the motel. I could see why the Rust Devils had gone after the site earlier - it was well positioned to command the road, and no one could really make a move on Natick from the north without first contending with that camp.

 

The rangers had some limited anti-armor in the form of a couple missile launchers, but in practice they used those to suppress the regular raiders while we advanced. Instead, it was me with the powersuit and Danse's laser rifle who had to deal with the raiders' power armor. That was a dicey and wholly unpleasant experience, but fortunately their remaining armor was in such ramshackle condition that I was able to identify some weak spots and go after those. For one, the left arm appeared to be down to just its internal skeleton, with no armor plating. For another, we'd got enough of a surprise with our attack that the pilot hadn't had time to button up his helmet - so I knew if I could get a little closer, then I could just shoot him in the face.

 

 

I was able to fuse that left arm with repeated laser bolts pretty early on, causing him to have to shoot back one-handed. A couple times I tried to close in for the kill shot, but he was good enough that he evaded me, always keeping the distance open. Unfortunately for him, as he got more and more focused on me, he stopped paying attention to the others, and one of those missile tossers finally put his weapon to good use and blasted him right in the side of his torso. The suit seemed to freeze up for a moment, before a series of internal explosions ripped it to pieces.

 

 

I'd like to say it was just simple mop-up after that, but taking down the raider's armor was more about evening the playing field than making a decisive stroke. The gang that was holed up here knew what they were doing and made several well-organized counterattacks against us, keeping us out of their fortified position inside the motel and taking out several of Red's rangers. We pressed on, however, and side by side with Red I finally breached the main building. The raiders started to crumble at that point, and before long the survivors were fleeing south towards Natick.

 

 

While her men moved in to set up new positions around the motel, I asked Red, "so, was that the easy part, or the hard part?"

 

She shrugged, "I don't know, but that was definitely the fun part. The boring part's next."

 

 

"The boring part?"

 

"Yeah, going down into town and convincing everyone that you're the new sheriff. It's gonna put me to fuckin' sleep."

 

I shrugged. "You could stay here if you want?"

 

"Tempting," she admitted, "but no, I think I need to see how you do things. I've got some learning to do, like about taking 'no' for an answer and not threatening people, and stuff. Oh, shit," she added, turning to examine (admire?) some of the raiders' victims.

 

 

"Look at that one on the left. They peeled her fuckin' legs right off the bones. I never thought of that one. Did the whole 'guts out, spike in,' routine a few times, but never the legs. Man, and now I'll never get the chance."

 

"Sorry, Red," I said, "that one's going to just be a fantasy for you now. Maybe I'll have to find you a copy of, damn, what was that artist's name? I should remember this. Nick, you ever work the vice squad? You remember that Canadian artist, the one with the lawsuit? BADTAFL rounded up all the books and burned them afterwards."

 

"Vice? Only at an arm's length. My gig was organized crime. I did a lot of work with BADTAFL though. This was the one with the alias, right? Italian, I think? Dolce something?"

 

"Something like that, I agreed. Anyway, Red, if any of his books survived the incinerator, and survived the war, it'd be right up your alley."

 

"I'm not a big reader," she said hesitantly.

 

"They're comic books, pictures on every page."

 

"Oh, fuck, why didn't you say so? Yeah, if you've got comics of stuff like that, I would, um, find that very enlightening. Seriously though, those fuckin' legs. That must have hurt like hell."

 

"Has anyone ever told you that you have an unhealthy interest in violence?" Nick asked.

 

"Once or twice. They stopped saying it after I put them on a spike, though."

 

"Jesus, don't encourage her," I muttered.