Chapter 63 - Para Bellum

Back on Remnant, the Lone Courier had arranged for transport to one of his warehouses. There he intended to set up the pylons and send the Think Tank some more samples for analysis and potential use in new devices.

The warehouse in question was filled with his special types of Dust ammunition and various crates, marked with Snow Dust Company, that contained Dust itself. It was the latter of these that the Courier was interested in sending back. The warehouse was staffed only by guards on the exterior. He had made sure to prevent the doors from opening.

It was with no small amount of relief that the Courier materialized the pylons. They were heavy, even relative to his considerable strength. He set them up in a reasonably large area before opening one of the Dust shipping containers and taking one at a time taking one crate of each type of Dust.

As an afterthought, he doubled the amount he would send through by adding one of each type of crystalline Dust as well. The various states should give the Think Tank greater insight into its properties.

The Lone Courier was particularly interested in Dust's chemical composition. It could not be an undiscovered element as it would need to have been far denser. He wondered if Dust occurred naturally on Earth as well and had simply been dismissed as useless because it was inert without the specific conditions of Remnant. That thought led to the Lone Courier thinking to send an air sample from Remnant to be cross referenced with the combination of gases the Think Tank had used to get Dust to function. He made sure to label the containers. God knows what the Brains might have inferred it was for.

Since that seemed to be all he could come up with, the Courier activated the pylons. The materials vanished. He would attribute their disappearance to their acquisition by a nonexistent customer or perhaps "shrinkage". He dematerialized the pylons and exited the building.

During his return to his residence, he reviewed a spreadsheet of significant information. The spreadsheet comprised of a list of all White Fang raids on his company and Snow Dust Company, both attempted and successful. While his precautions had prevented the White Fang from successfully pulling off any more raids on his company, that did not mean they had stopped trying. That was, until they did. Immediately after the breach, all raids, on both Vault-tec and SDC, stopped entirely. So, the obvious question was: Why?

Roman Torchwick had been arrested. He was certainly a high ranking figure in the organization, however so was the man with the red glyphs on his mask. There were redundancies in the White Fang's leadership, so Torchwick being gone was no reason for a halt on operations.

Now, if Torchwick was Führer, there could be internal struggles about who would take his place, however if internal conflict was the reason for the White Fang's inactivity, the conflict should be more visible. Terrorists are not typically capable of having a secret civil war, especially considering the White Fang are little more than a glorified gang. People shooting at one another typically made the news in civilized places. An utter lack of any evidence to support the conclusion meant that inner strife was not why the organization was suddenly silent.

The final option, was that this was a deliberate choice by the leader. Now, the Courier had the issue that he had no idea who was running the organization. This meant that he lacked any ability to judge the character or motives of the White Fang.

The fact that they had worked with Torchwick in the first place indicated that they had some kind of plan that was on a grand enough scale that they considered it worth jeopardizing their principles and overcoming their hatred of humans enough to work with one. The Lone Courier's utter lack of concrete information on his foremost enemies here reminded him of the pressing need for a means to acquire it.

He had gotten all he could from hacking. If the White Fang were smart, information was kept solely by a few people and not even written. His best bet would be to hang around a White Fang base in his stealth suit for a few hours. Unfortunately, the White Fang seemed to have wisened up as they no longer kept the locations of any of their bases anywhere he could access. Even in messages, the bases were always referred to by code names. He would need another strategy. And he had a very good idea of where to start. All crime organizations were connected after all.

Now however, he needed to set things in motion before he could go off on what might well be a wild goose chase. One he had reached the privacy of his lodgings, he immediately transportalpondered to the Sink. A door and an elevator ride later, he was at the Think Tank.

"So, Gentlemen, and Dala," he added, "I have compiled a list things that I need you to develop for my endeavors in Remnant."

The Courier erased calculations from a chalkboard that he had no idea when it had first appeared. The calculations were worthless, someone trying to find a formula to convert light to cheese. Gouda, specifically. Anyway, he then drew up the list of things he needed from the Think Tank.

Defense Robots.

Stipulations: Must be capable of being mass produced. Dust powered. Must use only conventional (bullets and missiles) weaponry. Must have advanced IFF system and facial recognition.

Long range rocket artillery.

Stipulations: Must be laser targeted. Yield must not be nuclear. Can be based in the Big Empty and missiles transportalpondered to Remnant. Delivery time must be under five min. Must have a safe distance of 150m.

Supersonic Fighter-bomber.

Stipulations: Does not need to have VTOL capabilities. Needs to be capable of being mass produced on a fairly large scale. Does not need to be Dust powered. Cannot be fission powered. Armaments must be non-nuclear. Armaments must be conventional.

Large amounts of Saturnite alloy.

An IFV, APC, and MBT

Stipulations: See 3

Auto-turrets

Stipulations: See 1.

"Finally," said the Courier, "I first need a modification to my Pip-boy that will allow us to contact one another. I want updates when these are done. If you have any questions on the specifications, don't hesitate to ask me." The stipulations were worded as if he was trying to make a deal with a vindictive genie or a corporate lawyer. Only, the Think Tank would mess it up entirely out of ignorance rather than malice.

The Think Tank were visibly excited by the multitude of task put before them. Finally, they had something worthy of their combined ability. They dissolved into a series of conversations regarding who would do what and how.

"COURIER," said Klein, "COME OVER HERE." The Courier did. Klein affixed a device slightly over a centimeter in length to his Pip-boy.

"THAT WILL ALLOW US TO SEND YOU MESSAGES AND VICE VERSAI."

"I'll get back to it then", said the Courier, materializing the Transportalponder.

"YES. AND SO WILL I."

"Oh, and tell me if you need any materials."

The Courier disappeared. Now that his arsenal was getting ready, he would acquire the information needed to direct it. He had enough time to get that done before the tournament started.

AN: The reviews are still broken. The newest episode was interesting in terms of backstory. Head on over to the forums to discuss it.