Dear Ma,
I have been making some new friends, fixing stuff and playing at being Sheriff. This was not casual idleness. I got paid for it, so it's real work by your definition. One of my new friends is tagging along with me and keeping me safe. This one is fortunately not into girls, like so many of the others. Just seems a little lonely and wanting someone to hang around with.
Regards,
Billie
P.S: Although I have enclosed some money for you, please be aware that my future income remains uncertain, so for your own sake, be frugal.
Dear Pip-Boy,
Well, the bad news is there's more Powder Gangers in Primm. The good news is that they're some sort of splinter group
, so by the time the rest of the Powder Gangers start checking on them (presuming they care) I should be long outta there.
They seem to have the run of the town and the NCR are just hanging out using a bridge as a chokepoint. Just to make sure the message is clear the bridge was mined. Past tense because I wanted to cross it and mister "I'm too good to show the lower half of my face" wasn't willing to disarm the mines for me. So I kept 'em.
Immediately upon crossing the bridge I see a Mojave Express office. I've been thinking about this for a few days now. Chances are pretty good that someone may still be gunning for me and I can see a multitude of great angles from which a sniper could blow my pretty little head clean off.
So, in the interest of not making life unnecessarily easy for people who may or may not be trying to kill me, I decide to go round the other way. This turns out to be a good idea.
I can't tell if that's a uniform or not. But I guess if I can't tell it's a uniform, then it's not a uniform. Or at least not a good enough uniform. So I shoot him anyway. When his friend turns up, it's pretty clear that it's just a shabby, patchwork imitation of a uniform, perhaps intended to fool those who follow my line of reasoning that people in uniform are less likely to be dangerous. Admittedly they were less dangerous than the other powder gangers back in Goodsprings, although not for lack of trying.
There doesn't appear to be anyone else around and although the Mojave Express and the presence of a corpse just outside the office leads me to suspect my paranoia about snipers was not totally unfounded. I don't see any right now. It's quite possible a sniper shot this kid, believed he "got Billy" and then went to collect payment on a job well done. Once again, my ridiculous name may have saved my life.
The only part of town which shows any signs of life is the Vikki & Vance Casino. To my good fortune, I'm immediately greeted by the operator of the local Mojave Express franchise. He's not terribly helpful with regards to my situation, merely responding by rambling about how weird he thought the job was. I got shot in the head, how's that for weird? One thing I noticed while I was busy biting back the witty comebacks I wanted to say was a mention that the job came from a "cowboy robot".
If that's the one that dug me up from my grave, that's quite the co-incidence. It does explain why he'd take enough of an interest in me to haul me out of a grave and to the doctor's place. I'm tempted to confront him on the matter, but I've got enough experience with robots to know that they don't just lie, but are better at it than humans.
Unfortunately, much as he seems to like carrying on at length about half-baked gossip, he has little to say about the guy I'm looking for. He claims the Deputy Sherrif is the only one who would know something about that. He is kidnapped of course. By the powder gangers. Oh wonderful.
I get so bored of conversing with this guy that my eyes start to wander. Eventually, I notice a broken display cabinet over in the background that everyone's doing a great job of conspicuously not noticing. I politely disengage from the conversation and go take a closer look. There's supposed to be a very clean gun in perfect working order there. Even the robot is in on the "Pretend it's still there" business. By this point, my patience for these ridiculous shenanigans has reached its end, so I just override the robot and get it to tell me what the hell's going on.
It would appear from his recovered data log that the locals figured the gun with be perfectly fine with just the robot guarding it. The theif apparently knew about this little mix of ignorance and arrogance and brought a hacker along with him. An amateurish and sloppy hacker. "Wipe the memory file" indeed. Robots do not work that way. That's like a corny line from an "Amazing Tales" science hero comic. Robots are nice, but letting them run around unsupervised tends to work out badly in the long run.
Speaking of robots, it turns out that the old feller was sitting on one back in his office and didn't bother to tell me about it. He seems keen to get rid of it, though. For a learned woman like myself this is childs play. Most people do not seem to grasp that the reason why so much pre-war stuff still works is because back then people seemed to be obsessed with multiply redundant backup systems. Heaven knows why because if the primary systems are damaged, the thing shuts down anyway. But a lot of the time you can get something to work well enough by clearing out the crap after you've activated the backups. They won't engage by themselves, so you have to know what to look for.
And hot diggity! I got me a new robot buddy! She totally flies and stuff, too! The courier company guy is pretty impressed and true to his word lets me keep her. I also decide to "keep" a Sweet knife some idiot decided to jam into a gambling table. I figure anyone who treats a knife like that won't miss it too much.
Well, time to go get that Beagle Guy. This is where my little robot buddy turns out to be very useful indeed. While I was poking around trying to locate the backup systems, I noticed the distinctive tell-tale signs of a breeder-powered laser. Those things were classified even before the war. I found it pretty difficult to believe I'd found a working one in order connected to an autonomous armored flying platform. But I just had to find out. Turns out I've stumbled onto the biggest salvage jackpot of the decade, if you ask me. In gratitude for my getting her up and running again, she gleefully murders anyone who so much as ponders inflicting harm upon me.
My role in the process seems to extend mainly towards pointing it in the appropriate direction and carefully trying to shoot people from the shadows as a distraction from the floating death ray thing.
She doesn't kill Beagle. In a way, this is fortunate becasue he knows important stuff. In another way, this is unfortunate, because he's a pompous ass who has spent far too much time doing amateur theatre and fancies himself a smooth talker as a result. I show him what persuasion looks like when done right.
After I save his sorry ass, he then starts whining about how the town needs a new Sherriff (since he's lacking the stones to step up to the position like he's supposed to). Just to annoy him, I go and Reprogram that stupid museum robot to be the new Sheriff. If he insists upon a sissy job, then I'll go make him the official babysitter for a robot. While he's been comically hopeless at stopping crime before, I suspect he'll do fine now that he's allowed to shoot people.
Beagle, ever the whiner, spots the insult a mile away and quits. In a very long winded way that includes every unfortunate "robots are dumb" stereotype he can possibly think of. So he's a bigot in addition to being a wuss.
The rest of Primm is appropriately grateful, however. Dutifully Filing out of the Casino and back to their homes in gratitude. It's a good feeling. Two towns, two successful Sheriffing escapades.
