Author's note:

This is the first Chapter and a half of Neither God Nor Master, My Fallout: New Vegas Fanfic which follows the story of my unique courier, Lilith Arthur Rhysling, and her fight for an independent and dominant New Vegas. I will of course be adding content to the game, primarily in the area of backstory and the way the main questline plays out, especially in terms of political maneuvering (playing factions against each other, etc.) This Fic will be continued on this forum in future.



Neither God Nor Master
A Fallout: New Vegas Fan Fiction
By CmdrSlander


Chapter 1:

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”

-Thomas Hobbes


The pale, lazy light of a desert sunset filtered through the cracked, grimy glass and landed upon the dusty, battered desk that occupied the rear third of the executive office. A scrawny dark haired man in a tattered lab coat was seated at the desk studying a thick, coffee stained book entitled Your Friend the Parentheses: RobCo’s Abridged Guide to Computer Programming. His hands and eyes flitted back and forth between the book and the glowing terminal in the middle of the desk. Overcome with a sudden flurry of brisk activity he punched in a string of numbers on the terminal’s keyboard and waited intently.

LOCKOUT IMMINENT

Frustrated, the lab coat garbed man reached for a mug of stale coffee and took a long drink. He sat the mug down and shouted toward the door of the office:

“Lili, I need your help in here! Blasted thing won’t let me in no matter what I type!”

Lilith Arthur Rhysling opened the ancient office door and strode across the room. Now standing behind the man seated at the desk she scrutinized the flickering terminal screen for a moment and then turned towards him.

“I take it the book I gave you was of no help, Rupert.” She said to him.

“It was, for a while. I can program the boot sequence now…” He pointed at a string of numbers on the terminal’s display “…but whenever I get to the ‘admin’ screen I get stuck.”

Rupert looked up at her. He was afraid to admit it aloud, but the Lilith made him a little nervous. She was pretty, especially by wasteland standards, with long sandy blonde/brown hair that was tied back with a small length of pre-war twine. Her face was lightly freckled and marred with a few scares and cuts that came with life in the wastes. Though she wore glasses, her face did not reveal any bookishness or shyness, but razor sharp intelligence, this coupled with her refusal to wear a uniform or lab coat of any kind, aside from jeans and a white button-up collared shirt set her apart from the other Followers that Rupert was used to working with.

Lilith, took a drag from her cigarette before responding. She blew smoke toward Rupert venomously but playfully. “Sometimes I think you’re an idiot Rupert, fortunately for you, I am rarely that lucid.” Lilith made an impatient shooing gesture at Rupert and he vacated the desk chair, allowing her to take a seat. Her fingers danced across the keyboard, each press followed instantly by a satisfying mechanical click. She had to give RobCo credit - despite their lax data security, they built their tech to last. After about a minute’s work, Lilith was into the system.

“Download whatever you can and see if you can locate the specs for this facility’s fusion power station, if we want use this place as an outpost we’ll need more than reserve turbine energy.”

“On it.” Rupert replied as Lilith gave him his seat back.

“I’m going to check on the others, yell if you need me.”

Lilith walked out of the office and through the decaying corporate complex, soon she was outside again, standing in the cratered plaza the lay in front of the imposing structure. She welcomed the open space, pre-war buildings made her nervous, she understood their value, and, on an intellectual level, realized that the Mojave was lucky to have as many relatively intact pre-war buildings as it did (by the will of some perverse deity and/or missile defense planner, Las Vegas and its surrounding areas had been spared full scale nuclear bombardment) but something about them made her hair stand on end. Too much death. Too many secrets concentrated in one place. Maybe it was the tribal blood in her. Maybe it was simple common sense.

A small camp had been erected in the plaza, two Brahmin laden with scientific equipment grazed idly near several tents. 15 Followers of the Apocalypse scientists and guards milled around, fiddling with salvaged tech and chatting amongst themselves. The Mojave stretched out before them, barren hills pockmarked with boulders and rubble. Lilith saw a faint glint from behind one of the boulders. Mirage. It must be. She told herself. Lilith approached the lead scientist, who was examining a dented sensor module.

“It’s clear in there now, if you would like to go in.” Lilith informed him. “Not much security to speak of, a few Protectrons, but they weren’t a problem.” She rested her hand on a .45 Caliber Combat Pistol that was suspended in a well-worn leather holster on her hip, alluding to the Protectron’s fate.

The chief scientist nodded thankfully and called together a few other Followers, leading them into the building. A few moments later Lilith heard Rupert’s familiar frustrated bellow:

“Piece of….. Won’t let me download anything from the network drives.”

Looking up at the pre-war building she saw him leaning from the office window. Lilith took one last pull on her cigarette and flicked it onto the ground.

“Come on Lili! I wan’t to be done with this!”

A shot from a large caliber rifle rang out, thundering through the hazy dusk. In an instant Rupert’s head had splattered into a pulpy mass. His decapitated body went limp, half of it dangling from the window.
Lilith unslung the M1903A4 Springfield rifle that she carried with her and sprinted for cover. Ducking behind a pillar in the complex’s entryway she took a sharp breath and brought the rifle’s UNERTL eight power scope to her eye. The glint had been another sharpshooter’s scope - in tribal vernacular: the hills had eyes.

She caught the glint again, just as she focused in on it, another shot rang out from a completely different direction, cutting down a panicked scientist. Multiple shooters. Coordinated strike. The first sharpshooter shifted, his scope glinting again. Lilith steadied her rifle as best she could and squeezed the trigger. The .30-06 JHP round jetted forth from the Springfield’s barrel at 2,800 feet per second and caught the sharpshooter in the skull, liberating it from his shoulders and landing its mangled remains a few feet away.

Lilith relaxed for a sweet second before the cries of a raiding party filled her ears. She heard the angry tromp of boots and pointed her rifle in their direction, its scoped view settling on a Legionnaire wielding a machete in one hand a flaming torch in the other. He was followed by at least ten other soldiers armed with a variety of bladed weapons and small arms, most carrying torches as well. The raiding party was charging down a hill toward the Follower’s encampment. I can’t hold off that many. The guards are useless, they’ll run first chance they get.

The lead legionnaire fell as did two others. Lilith was doing her best to thin their ranks, placing shots center mass as fast as she could cycle her Springfield’s silky-smooth bolt. Followers scientists were cowering behind whatever cover they could find, but shots from the remaining soldiers had put down at least half the group. A missile cut a trail of fire across the sky, its warhead slamming into the facade of the pre-war building. Debris rained down around Lilith, throwing her aim off. Recovering as fast as she could, Lilith scanned the horizon for the source of the missile. A lone Praetorian was standing atop a hill in the middle distance, missile launcher perched on his shoulder. Lilith steadied her aim and pulled the trigger. Instead of the ear-shattering report that she was accustomed to, Lilith heard no sound from the Springfield. In the chaos, she had forgotten to cycle the bolt. Ratcheting the bolt backward saw the empty casing fly free, revealing an empty internal magazine. She reached into a pocket of her torn jeans, pawing around for more ammunition. Nothing.

The raiding party had closed within melee distance of the remaining Followers, forcing Lilith to retreat into the building and switch to her side arm. The largest surviving legionnaire, who had apparently assumed command of the group, strode over to a wounded Follower and drew his machete, Lilith fired her .45 twice, both shots striking the legionnaire in his left arm. Barely noticing the wounds, the legionnaire reached down and hauled the struggling scientist up by the neck, stabbing her through the chest with his machete and casting her aside like an empty Nuka-Cola bottle.

15 Minutes Later:

There were no survivors save Lilith. She had moved to the second level of the building, and was observing the legionaries pile the Follower’s corpses into mounds. The leader, who had hastily wrapped his wounded arm, poured gasoline on the pile and lit it with a torch, but not before selecting one body to be crucified as a warning to any who would visit the site in future. Lilith fought every noble urge in her body not too attack the legionaries, reminding herself every few moments that she had no ammunition and a nasty leg wound. Why the soldiers had not pursued her was unknown to Lilith, perhaps they did not wish to enter the tight, possibly ambush laden quarters of the pre-war office complex to flush out an already wounded foe. Then again, the Legion did like to leave one alive to the tale.


Chapter 2:

"Death is an inconvenience now…"

-Jack Hargreave [fictional]

Two months following the Legion Raid on the Followers of the Apocalypse Expeditionary Team.

Outside Goodsprings, Nevada:

The road was cratered and barren, but devoid of hostiles as far as Lilith could tell. The Mojave Express kept their couriers on established and cleared routes as a rule. Nevertheless, something about this job had Lilith’s nerves on edge from the start. Maybe it was the fact that she had been paid an exorbitant sum to carry a package no larger than holotape, maybe it was the fact that she had been instructed to prioritize this job and this job alone over all others.

A single tumbleweed skittered across the road.

Lilith turned off the main road for a moment to take shelter in the shade of a weathered billboard. She dug into the Mojave Express satchel bag that contained the mysterious package, avoided it, and extracted her cigarettes. Striking a match across the steel of the billboard’s support struts, she lit a cigarette and tried to relax. There was something seriously off about this job.

Being a courier was easy work most of the time. It lacked the regular mental stimulus that working with Followers provided, but walking the roads of the Mojave left her ample time to think - an enjoyable pastime. She slipped her glasses off, cleaning the lenses against her shirt. If there was ever a time when one could least expect a shovel to the back of the head, this was it. A shovel to the back of the head, was, of course, exactly what Lilith got.

Eight Hours Later:

Lilith’s immediate instinct was to find her glasses (this was her instinct whenever she woke up), but it quickly faded away as she realized she was bound at the wrists and ankles. She could barely see, but made out three figures standing before her.

A gruff voice spoke from her left: “You got what you were after, now pay up.” It demanded.

Lilith heard shovelfuls of earth being heaved away, she could barely see the hole being dug was about the correct general size and depth for a grave…

Another voice, uniquely accented, spoke from the foreground:

“Guess who’s waking up over here.”

Lilith identified the speaker as a man in a patterned suit of some kind… checkered maybe? Her vision was too blurry to tell. The familiar smell of tobacco wafted from where he was standing, and she saw his indistinct shape stomp out something, likely a cigarette.

“Time to cash out.” He continued.

“Will you get it over with.” The gruff voice demanded.

Lilith took stock of the situation: Three captors, obvious ringleader, after her delivery? That was most likely. She was fully clothed at least, she hadn’t suffered that particular indignity. I ask for so little, and boy do I get it...

The ringleader raised a finger.

“Maybe Khans kill people without looking them in the face. But I ain’t a fink, ya dig?”

Distinct Strip accent. Influenced by pre-war pop culture… Even in mortal peril, Lilith noted, her restless mind continued anolyzing. That’s what I get for reading too much…

Checkered-suit reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a round object…

“You’ve made your last delivery kid.”

Digging his hand back into his coat he fumbled around for a moment.

“Sorry you got twisted up in this scene.” He drew a gleaming handgun from his coat. Lilith could only see in fuzzy object without glasses but she knew a gun when she saw one, no matter the condition of her vision.
“From where you’re kneeling it must seem like an 18 Karat run of bad luck…”

Trying to be witty at the execution. Classy.

Checkered suit aimed the pistol at her head. A few stray thoughts fluttered through her mind… some fond memories of past lovers. The New Canaanite legend about the afterlife…

“Truth is, the game was rigged from the start.” Checkered-suit squeezed the trigger.

I really should have asked for a last smoke…

btt