Heart And Claw

Heart and Claw

Cooper trudged through the ankle-deep snow, the powder emitting a watery-blue light that made the entire landscape look like some kind of polluted ocean. The glow was subtle, especially this late into the night, but his Geiger counter was starting to ramp up, the little ticking sound suggesting he better hurry it up before he started walking around on three feet.

His leather boots dug furrows into the snow as mounted the next dune, the disturbed dust staining the leggings of his cargo pants, also made from leather. His upper half was clad in a metal chest piece, the rusting metal catching the light of the glow as he shuffled between two decaying trees, the skeletal branches shaved clean of their leafy coats long ago. The armour trailed down to his wrists, the plating segmented near the elbows, so it didn't limit his range of motion. It had burned a hole in his pocket to pay for the custom fittings, but with a bit of luck, money wouldn't be an issue for much longer.

He pulled his hood over his face as a strong gust of wind hit him from the side, kicking up a sheet of swirling snow and making things hard to see. When it cleared, he was greeted with a vantaged view of a valley, the adjacent humps of earth winding towards the horizon, the ground littered here and there by a few patches of trees just barely clinging to life, the monotonous glow of the powder broken up by a solitary building in the near distance.

It had a triangular roof, a single chimney rising from the sloped tilework, a little plume of smoke curving into the sky. A deck extended out of the left and right sides of the main structure, held aloft by maybe a dozen wooden pylons with concrete bases, just made visible by the dim, yellow lanterns attached to the corners of the walls.

As Cooper approached it, he could make out a few more details. Sprouting from the sides of the lodge were piles of junk - rubber tires, crates, wooden planks - all of it stacked on top of each other in a haphazard pile, though there was a method to the madness. It was all arranged to form a wall maybe five meters high, parts of it covered over with wire meshes, the occasional barbed wire sprouting from the top. The junk formed a perimeter wall that encompassed both flanks of the building, likely wrapping around and meeting on the other side. There was an opening near the middle, with wooden crates stacked here and there to provide the defenders a strong position to ward off frontal attacks.

Speaking of defenders, a pair of humans stepped out into the open as he waled up onto the adjacent road. It wasn't exactly a

road

, but more of a track that had been carved out through overuse. Cooper could see footprints in the disturbed snow, animal prints, even the long strips left by wheels. Caravans, if Cooper had to guess.

"You the guy from NCR?" one of the defenders called out, his face capped by a woollen toque. He had a lot of winter gear on, but Cooper could just make out the glint of an armoured vest between the zipper of his coat. He was pointing a hunting rifle somewhere between Cooper and the ground. His counterpart was similarly geared, though they were carrying a submachine gun, aiming it right at Cooper's head.

"Mister Hendrix asked for me," Cooper replied, the guards lowering their guns at the mention of the title.

"Boss's waitin' inside," the guard informed him, gesturing with his rifle for him to follow. The other guard eyed Cooper warily as he stepped toward the gate, the ornate design of the lodge drawing his gaze up.

The roof slightly overhanged across the front façade, casting the slatted windows into shadow, Cooper noting there was barely a scratch on the pieces of glass. Even the wooden logs making up the faces of the building were pristine, the oakwood sitting perfectly flush against the glass panes. It felt like this place had been plucked straight out of the Old World.

"So is it true?" the guard asked, Cooper following him up to the porch. "You the waster who took down thirty fire geckos with just a ten millimeter?

"It was actually nineteen," Cooper replied, adjusting his collar. "And I mostly used frag mines. Wasn't cheap, had to sacrifice half the bounty just to make it work.

"Won't have to worry about tight funds here, the boss is sitting on a pile of cash. Hell, I get paid just as much as I did back when I was running with caravans, and I get to sit around a gate all day."

The guard pushed a pair of double doors open, holding them so Cooper could walk inside. "So what's the job?" Cooper asked, the humid air of the lodge warming him through his armour.

"Hendrix wants to give you the details himself, but I'll give you this," the guard added, bringing his voice down to a low, conspiratorial tone. "You'll need a lot more than

frag mines

for this, these ain't

geckos

you'll be dealing with. I'll go tell the boss you're here."

The guard sauntered off, Cooper rubbing his cold hands together as he surveyed the spacious interior. The lobby was wider than it was longer, with the far wall occupied by a long bar flanked by shelves stacked with differently coloured bottles, a pair of men giving him the side-eye as they sat at the counter. Tables were arranged throughout the open-planned space, and a balcony ringed all four walls above him, maybe half a dozen doors visible above the wooden railings. Two wings branched off to the left and right, connected to the lobby by doorless arches, the guard who'd led him inside disappearing into the one on the left.

All of this was cast in a yellow glow by an impressive chandelier hanging from the ceiling, the hundreds of little glass shards sparkling as they caught the light of several smaller lanterns placed throughout the lobby. There were tall glass display cases lining the left and right walls, Cooper moving over to the closest one and craning his neck up at what was being kept inside.

Standing within the glass tube was a suit of armour, but not just any kind. The suit was bulky, easily twice the mass of the average man, the limbs and torso layered over with steel plates thicker than Cooper's arms. A black, slatted visor peered back at him above a set of respirator tubes, the helmet stencilled with the letters

T45

above the left brow.

It was a suit of power armour, one of the more common variants found throughout the Wastes, though that wasn't to say they were easy to come by. Most of the pre-war suits had been hoarded away by the Brotherhood, a group of tech-crazed humans who kept all the best toys for themselves. Cooper had only ever tested out a frame like this once before, but the nuclear fusion core that powered the armour was damaged, and gave up the ghost an hour after he'd started up the suit. It had been a pretty fun sixty minutes, though.

The gate guard returned before he could investigate the other displays, the man jerking a thumb down at the left wing. "He's ready to see you. Watch where you step, though, Bessy's around."

The guard returned to his post without elaborating, Cooper shrugging his shoulders as he moved to where he'd pointed. This wing of the lodge wasn't as spacious as the lobby, but no less impressive. A cobblestone fireplace dominated the far wall, the gentle flames sizzling over a row of logs casting a warm glow over the room. Bookcases lined the walls, the shadows made harsh by the light of the fireplace, the number of pre-war books easily in the hundreds, Cooper resisting the urge to pluck one off a shelf at random. He'd spent most of his younger years reading the teachings of the Old World, and he never went anywhere without a few on hand.

There was something on the floor in front of the mantle that caught his attention. A giant, furry mat stretched from one wall to the other, not quite long enough to cover the entire breadth of the room, but very close to it. Cooper blinked as he picked out bulges in the mat, the texture shifting into very hand-like shapes, the digits tipped with long, black claws.

A bulge on this side of the mat drew his gaze, and he realised this was no mat at all. A pair of creamy eyes watched lifelessly at some far point behind Cooper, the skin below it tapering out into a long muzzle, capped with a dark nose. Mangy fur draped over a splayed set of powerful jaws, the neck flattening out into the rest of the skin. It was a yao guai coat, a deadly predator that hunted man and beast alike, reduced to a carpet.

There were two seats atop of this exotic rug, and one of them was occupied. A man maybe a decade or two older than Cooper peered across the room at him, his body clad in a crinkled green suit, the kind Cooper had only seen the rich types in New Reno wear. He wore a pair of dress shoes, and there were gold and silver rings on some of his fingers. He would have looked right at home in the Bishop's Shark Club.

Although getting on in his years, the man had a calm, collected voice, weathered by many years of thriving in the Wastes. "Not another step, Mister Cooper," he said, holding up an authoritative hand. "if you value your legs."

At first he thought it was a threat, but then Cooper heard it, a muted rattling sound filling the room. He looked down, noticing a slight shimmering in the air by his boot, his instincts warning him there was something right in front of him.

As he watched, the shimmering began to solidify, the tapered end of a tail defining itself into his vision. The appendage wound up to a pair of backwards-shaped legs, sitting flush against the hind of a long, serpentine body, the legs ending in four, padded toes. The torso was covered over with fur in places, and scales in others, a winding neck narrowing into a long muzzle. A pair of green, reptilian eyes with vertical pupils scrutinized him from below a pair of fuzzy ears like those of a dog, Cooper's eyes drawn to the two long fangs protruding from the tip of its mouth. If a dog and a snake had a baby, this was probably what it would look like. Cooper reached for his pistol, but the older gentleman spoke up before he could draw.

"Relax, Bessy," the man in the suit said, snapping his fingers. The strange creature stopped producing that disturbing, rattling sound, turning its winding neck to look at its supposed master. The man beckoned to it, and the creature stood up, winding between the legs of a table, and disappearing again. When Cooper blinked his eyes, the creature was visible and by the man's side, laying down to nuzzle itself against his smart shoes.

"How'd you tame the Nightstalker?" Cooper asked, warily approaching the man.

"Oh, Bessy isn't tame, hardly any of my animals are, she's just been around long enough to know she'll get fed if she behaves. Isn't that right, darling?" he added, reaching down to scratch behind Bessy's ear, who crooned in reply.

"You have more?" Cooper looked around warily, wondering how many Nightstalkers he'd passed on the way in.

"Don't you know who I am?" the man asked, quirking a brow. "The Hendrix business is known throughout the west coast as wildlife traders. If you've ever seen a pet, be it dog or cat or whatever, it's likely travelled through this very lodge."

"I deal with wildlife in other ways," Cooper replied. "I'm not gonna be your handler if that's why you sent for me."

"I'm aware of your expertise," Hendrix said, leaning back in his cushioned chair. "A bounty hunter, equally adept in hunting man and beast. People have taken to calling you the

Tracker

, from Reno to the Boneyard you've accumulated quite the reputation for solving problems."

"Always hated that stupid name," Cooper grumbled.

"Nevertheless, it's your tracking skills I wish to purchase, not your animal handling ones, though you should consider it, keeping the wastelands beasts in line can be just as thrilling as hunting them. But I digress," Hendrix muttered, shifting through his coat to produce a cigar and a lighter. He shielded the flame as he lit it, taking a small puff. "You see, some of my stock have managed to escape the lodge, and I need someone to find them."

"Sounds simple enough, what's escaped?"

"Straight to the point, aren't you? I chose you well." He took another draw, speaking around the cigar in the corner of his lips. "We'll get to the matter of details in time, but answer a question first. What's the most dangerous thing you've ever hunted, Mister Cooper?"

He took a moment to reflect over the years, flashbacking to the weeks of travelling interspersed by fights ranging from trivial to brutal. Mantis', geckos, raider gangs, yao guai, hunting and killing had become his life ever since he'd struck out on his own, but there was one encounter worthy of recalling to Hendrix.

"Have to be the Fire Ant Queen that burrowed in next to Junktown," Cooper said. "Big bitch had dozens of bodyguards."

"Not a bad trophy, not bad at all," Hendrix mused. "Ants never relocate their burrows, however, that makes them easy to predict. What I want you to find is anything

but

predictable." He leaned forward in his chair, fixing Cooper with a hard look. "I've watched this beast tear apart soldier ants like they were made of tissue paper, but it's not its vicious claws, or its innate ability to shrug off superheated flames that makes it so dangerous. It's the way it

thinks,

" Hendrix said, tapping his temple with a finger. "Devilishly clever creature it is. It doesn't fall to its primal needs like the instinctual nightstalker, or the predictable fire ant, this creature knows when to be patient, and when to strike. Subject Omega as my men have taken to calling it, is the perfect predator, that's what makes its recovery so invaluable to me."

"Recovery?" Cooper echoed. "You want me to bring this thing back alive?"

"Not just it, but several others of its ilk that escaped as well."

"You're painting a pretty grim picture, Mister Hendrix," Cooper said. "You're asking me to track down a whole pack of these creatures, these things you claim to be more smart and deadlier than anything else in the Wastes, and bag them?"

"I'm aware of how it must sound, Mister Cooper," Hendrix replied, Cooper blinking at him. He'd expected assurances, or maybe even some threats, but instead the older man just leaned back in his chair, like he'd expected him to be hesitant. "I know I ask a lot from just one man, but I wouldn't have brought you all the way out here if I didn't think the Tracker himself could pull it off, or at the very least, point my men in the right direction, as we have no idea which way Omega went after it broke free. You would be paid for your time, of course, and as my people would tell you, I can be quite generous to those who are helpful."

"... How generous?" Cooper asked, his age-old vice rearing its head.

"Three thousand caps for Omega's recovery," Hendrix said. "Half that if you can find where it's gone, and five hundred if you just want to pick up the trail and let my people handle the rest. If you'd prefer NCR money or some other currency, we can exchange it for an equal amount."

Cooper whistled at the generous reward. He'd only been paid a thousand for that ant queen's head he'd mentioned. "You're throwing a lot of money around for this 'Omega'," he noted.

"As I said, apex predators like Omega are worth their weight in gold to the right buyers, and it took a lot of resources to secure several of them, I'd rather not let all that effort go to waste."

"I'll take a look around for tracks," Cooper said after a bit of thought. He'd found dead trails hundreds of times before, it would be a nice haul of caps for an easy job.

Hendrix leaned back in his chair, a relieved smile on his weathered face. "Splendid," he said. "I'll show you to where we held it, come Bessy."

The nightstalker wagged its reptilian tail as it followed Hendrix to the door, the man stopping to retrieve a cape hanging from a rack, Cooper following him back into the lobby.

He was led around and behind the bar, the two men there still drinking and chatting away, though they did stop to greet Hendrix as they walked by. Frigid air whipped at Cooper's long hair as his new employer pushed a sliding door on the far wall aside, the two of them walking out onto a porch.

Snow and woodland stretched out before the rear of the lodge, the junk wall Cooper had seen from the front ringing around maybe an acre of land in a rough circle. The right side of the yard was occupied by a long, two-storey shack, definitely hand-crafted judging by the rickety supports and the glassless windows. It was surrounded by a tall metal fence, the gaps between the bars wide enough for a human to squeeze through them. This fence extended into the majority of the yard, dividing the space into walkways and secluded coops.

"This pen is where we keep our more dangerous animals," Hendrix said, waving a hand at the area as he leaned on the railing. "We have automated turrets set up every twenty meters, guards every thirty, and they're rotated out every night at one o'clock."

"What's that building over there for?" Cooper asked, gesturing at the handmade shack.

"That's the processing kennel, caravans load and unload stock from there. We were a day off from sending Omega through before it snuck out. Its holding pen is this way."

Hendrix grabbed a lantern off a nearby stool, trudging out into the snow, Cooper following behind. Sections of the pen were walled off by metal fences, breaking up the area into several smaller spaces, the occasional gate allowing the handlers to corral the different animals without having to get in close.

Within these pens were things that looked like bird cages, only scaled up tenfold, with colourless tarps draped over their tops, the plastic ruffling in the breeze. It was obvious these were intended to protect the occupants from the cold weather, but what exactly these occupants were was impossible to tell without getting inside the coops.

"This is the one," Hendrix announced, the pair coming to a stop in front of a series of storage containers twice as tall as Cooper was, and just as wide. There were seven in all, sitting flush against the west side of the junk wall in a neat row.

Hendrix gestured at the first one along, Cooper's eyes widening as he appraised the cage, though calling it that wouldn't do it justice. The container looked sturdy enough to withstand grenades, with the sides and back wall made from planks of wood, which were layered over with metal pipes on the outside, arranged like a mesh. The front frame of the container looked like it had been welded to the main body, the steel brackets melting into the underlying wood.

The thing looked sturdy enough to keep a yao guai in heat contained, if not for the giant hole occupying the middle of the front side, the interior of the container visible as a pond of inky darkness, despite the lantern's light.

"How big is this Omega?" Cooper asked, running his hand over the breach in the cage. The wood was splintered at the edges, the reinforcing brackets snapped clean apart under what must have been a tremendous amount of force. The bend in the wood appeared to curve in a convex direction in relation to the cage.

"About nine feet tall," Hendrix answered. "And maybe eleven from head to tail."

"May I?" Cooper gestured for the lantern. He held it out as he stepped through the breach, the hole wide enough his shoulders didn't even graze the edges. The lantern's yellowy glow created a small circle, cutting back the darkness of the cage as he moved inside. The smell of musk was strong enough to make Cooper pull his scarf over his mouth, the man crouching down to examine the floor. There wasn't a single hair or scale in sight, but the textured ground caught his attention. The floor was layered over with a smooth, almost rubbery material, dark gray in colour. Cooper noted that even the walls of the cage were protected by this odd fabric.