Chapter 6: Motivation

As Phil stood in the corner of the tent, Six could see him biting his finger-nails down to nubs in anxiety as the Legionnaire's worked Burt over. He had awoken with less silent rage than Six had, swearing and cursing Phil, only to be silenced with fist and boot. Burt had already been the subject of their attention, possibly because he had already woken-up before Six, so this new session re-opened some old wounds that hadn't quite healed.

Cuts across Burt's face began to flow with renewed rivers of blood. His ribs were probably already cracked and busted from the amount of kicks that had assailed his torso. He was in terrible shape and it would only get worse for him as the Legionnaire's merely hit him over and over again.

It went on like this for what seemed like hours. The heat in the tent became sweltering and Six knew that it had to be near midday. Burt spat blood from his mouth at one of the Legionnaires, as they backed off to catch their breath.

"You candy-ass sons of bitches all tuckered out? Untie me and we'll have us a fair fight and I swear to God I'll murder you both even with all these cuts and bruises. I'll make you look just as pretty as me Legion-boy!" Six had to admire Burt's backbone. He hadn't stopped threatening the Legionnaires since they started. Not to mention his curses were becoming more colorful towards Phil.

"You snake-tongued, cross-eyed piece of mole-rat meat! I'll piss on your grave and dance on your bones for this!" As Burt continued to hurl vocal feces at the man, Phil merely looked more and more concerned. To his credit, a bound man with blood flinging from his mouth and one beaten-closed eye shouting obscenities was a somewhat terrifying and bizarre site.

"Jesus take it easy on him," Phil bleated, his hand curled in a pained fist in front of his mouth. "You'll kill him at this rate like you did the girl!"

"Shut your mouth, you!" The Legionnaire's response was layered with heavy breathing and frustration as he pointed a blood coated finger at Phil.

If the Legionnaires were telling the truth, Phil's deal for what could only be amnesty or asylum within the Legion would indeed be worthless if neither Six nor Burt relinquished any information about whatever it was that they wanted to know.

This was the rub though. The Legion torturers hadn't asked either of them any questions. Maybe they had already done so with Burt the first time, or maybe not, but it seemed that he was more sport for them now, than anything.

That didn't bode well for Six as he knew that if they began asking him questions and assumed he would be just as unresponsive as Burt, they'd really put the screws to him.

Burt began another string of colorful language but was cut short by an interrogator.

"Oh shut the hell up!" The man's boot came down hard on Burt's face, and knocked him out cold. They hadn't been that rough to begin with, which meant that the blow was meant to do that, because it was Six's turn now.

The second Legionnaire cracked his blood-flecked knuckles and eyed Six with a tired and distasteful gaze.

"Alright, Ranger. Your friend wasn't very forthcoming now was he?" The other man moved over to Burt's unconscious form and twisted his face to look at Six. The poor man's left eye was swollen shut and his cheek had a gash the length of a person's middle finger slowly oozing blood down his chin.

"He's a brave one isn't he? All bark and no bite I bet." He waggled Burt's head in a sick puppet fashion and laughed cruelly. Letting the man's head flop down to his chest, he stood up and inhaled deeply. "But I bet you're the smart one, eh? You're the one who knows what we wanna know."

"What's that saying?" The other man now loomed over him, tilting his head from side-to-side to crack his neck. "A fool speaks, a wise man says nothing?"

"What's that say about you?" Six's response was flat but his tone was hard. The two Legionnaire's looked at each other and laughed.

"I like this one. He's funnier." The man in front of Six chortled as he drove his boot into Six's abdomen roughly. "See, the death threats and insults wear thin after a while so your friend became boring quickly." Another boot, this one in his shoulder.

The footwear was typical Legion issue, no steel-toe or hob-nails. The leather was thick and the pain reflected that.

The other man moved quickly behind Six and pulled his head back into the pole he was tied to. Gripping his hair roughly, the man whispered softly into his ear as his compatriot continued to thrust his boot into Six's stomach and ribs.

"See, we actually want to stop this. We want you to talk, so you can get on with helping us build this wonderful camp up. We need all the labor we can get." He adjusted his grip on Six's head as it had flown forward out of pain from a particularly rough kick. "They're simple questions really. Maybe your friend was just too stupid to know the answers." Thrusting Six's head forward roughly he stood up now and walked into his field of vision.

Kneeling in front of his compatriot this time, facing Six's pained face; his voice became much softer and consoling. "This can all end. We just want to know the locations of all those little hidey-holes you use to get out of the heat."

Twisting slightly, he jerks a thumb toward Phil, "See he doesn't know all of them. Just a few, and he thinks that you all know more. He gave use those few near the quarries and close to the dam. Yeah," He licked his lips at Six's expression of anger. "Yeah we found your friends and gutted them all, but we want more."

"Give us the locations near New Vegas and Camp Golf, and we might actually give you the same deal as your comrade here." Gripping Six roughly by his throat he slapped him hard several times. Six shook his head slowly and defiantly, the man continued, this time not stopping.

Lights popped in Six's field of vision and he could feel himself becoming light-headed. The world was spinning and he had to keep fighting. If they knocked him out, it was no trouble, but if they killed him then it wouldn't matter.

The locations of the Ranger caches and lookouts were not common knowledge to each soldier. They were given regions to learn and memorize so that they could be spread out among the rocks and dirt of the Mojave like so many grains of sand. Six didn't know the locations they were asking for, but it didn't matter.

Obviously he couldn't give them the information they wanted, but he couldn't just lie there and take this. He had to find a way to escape, with Burt and whomever else he could find.

As the Legionnaires backed away for a moment to catch their breath, a voice outside the tent caught their attention.

"You two! Get out here. Debrief." Dusting themselves off and trying to regulate their breathing the two interrogators nodded to each other. While one immediately left the tent after whipping the tent-flap to the side, ruddy light bursting through the new opening, the other turned on his heel with a wicked grin to Six.

Reaching underneath his armor, he produced a pair of mirrored sunglasses that looked sickeningly familiar. Clenching his fists behind his back, even curling his toes in fury, Six realized that those were his glasses.

The Legionnaire placed them on his face and whispered only loud enough for his captive to hear,

"Thanks for these, by the way."

Phil continued to stare at Six and Burt, sweat beading on his brow as if he'd just stepped out of a rainstorm. Six stared back.

Raz had been doing a lot of manual labor that day. The Legionnaires were using his height and strength to their advantage for much of the heavy lifting and construction that was necessary to complete the infrastructure around Cottonwood Cove.

All the while, he had kept his eyes darting for any signs of weakness, and pressure points his soldiers could utilize to their advantage.

Unfortunately, he saw no signs of an armory, no indication that their gear was being kept close by, and definitely no sign of the Rangers.

"Pull that rope you piss-ants!" The slave driver behind him was getting tired of his daydreaming and had decided that it would be more entertaining to get his charges to actually do the work he was tasked with overseeing.

Making makeshift structures out of tents wasn't a difficult task, but when the tents were rather large in size and required at least four people to work them, it became an arduous one. Raz and a few of his men had erected two previous pavilions like this one earlier in the day, and the Mojave's cruel sun had beat down upon them like an angry drunk.

His hands were becoming raw and cuts were beginning to dot his palms. NCR soldiers weren't strangers to hard work, but the amount of rest in between jobs was significantly more than this. He could tell his men were fatigued, but they wouldn't show it to these Legionnaires. They wouldn't give them the satisfaction.

A small ray of pride shone on his heavy cloud of frustration. These men had performed well under stress, more than anyone could have asked or expected really. The women, when he had a chance to catch up with them in the murky dawn light, reported that they had survived the night without incident. Their resolve was staunch and steadfast as well.

Alpha company was rising to the challenge and beating back adversity with hands and feet. They were not giving up, which meant that he could no sooner let them down than kill himself out of desperation.

As the tent's completion was nearing an end, Raz ran around to the rear of the structure to help secure the ropes to the large metal stakes they were sledgehammering into the ground.

Kneeling down and fumbling with the rope for a moment, his hands slipping with sweat and pain, one of his men quickly rushed to his side.

"Sir, word from the women on the other side of the camp." Neither of them looked up from their work, but Raz's ears strained to hear every whispered syllable.

"Diaz snuck into a supply tent and found our gear. She got a beating for it, but she's alive."

A frown began to form across his face but Raz knew that it was a risk Diaz took willingly to gather that information.

"Anything else?"

"There's a generator two tents over from that that's linked to some of the lights around the cove. Cutting that might be a nice distraction."

"Good work." The man leapt to his feet as their Legionnaire keeper rounded the corner of the tent to see what was taking them so long.

"You two! Faster! We've got three more of these to make! No Legion soldier sleeps in the cold like you NCR dogs do. We take care of our people." He sneered as Raz stood, finished with the rope. He was taller than the Legionnaire, but the rags he wore were not much protection in comparison to the other man's armor.

Striking him out of anger would do him no good, neither would giving him sass. Raz resigned himself to a silent, hateful stare that seemed to unsettle the man a great deal.

"Get over to the other tent and get to work," he hissed through his teeth. Raz smirked ever-so-slightly and did as he was told.

They could be scared.

While they had numbers and weapons in advantage over their captives, the Legion may not suspect or even want to contemplate their slaves rising up from their control.

The NCR were not mere tribals, threatened and coerced into subservience under Caesar's heel. These were seasoned soldiers with weapons training and iron-wills. They were much deadlier than just any kind of slaves.

That generator blacking the camp out to some degree could cause the right amount of confusion for the soldiers to gain the upper hand on the Legion, and things could go from bad to messy very quickly. Raz just had to ensure it got messy for the right people.

By the time his wandering feet had taken him to the location his masters had wanted him, he had come back to Earth from the orbit of his machinations. It was then he realized just where he was.

Whipping his head around as quickly as possible, he found the tent he was looking for. It was right where the soldier said it was.

The tent that housed the Rangers, or at least appeared to house them, sat in the heart of the camp. Obviously this presented a problem for Raz, but he had already stated his intentions in front of all of his soldiers and despite the many variables that still floated about the contents of the tent's interior, he could not go back on his word.

Just as he was about to turn to his work, he saw them. Two Legionnaires exited via the flaps, one following shortly after the other. Each had blood covering his fists and shoes and they spoke in hushed tones to the other man who apparently had called them out into the midday sun.

The man who had summoned them from the tent had been moving around all day. Raz pegged him as someone of importance by the way the Legionnaires spoke to him and gave him messages. Whatever they were talking about, he couldn't hear, but he needed to get closer.

Checking over his shoulder, he saw that his task master was occupied with sending some of Raz's men to get more supplies. Seizing his chance while his back was turned, Raz tried to move as quickly and silently as possible to the corner that was out of the line of sight of the interrogators and their leader.

"I don't care that they haven't said anything yet," while Raz couldn't see them now, he was sure the man in charge was speaking. "I want you to work them until they do. Even if you kill one of the last two."

"Yes, Canyon Runner."

"Our only concern," the man's voice halted as Raz suspected he received a cutting look from Canyon Runner. "Our only concern is we may injure them too much. At a certain point they might begin saying anything just to stop the pain."

There was a pause as Canyon Runner began to consider this possibility.

"Which one seems the most useful?" Raz imagined that the two men looked to each other for a moment before one of them answered.

"The quiet one seems to have more to hide. At least that's what we gather. Though the loud one might be doing it up to make us think he has nothing to say."

Canyon Runner took his time now to respond. Raz looked back to see that the tent was beginning to go up, which meant he had more cover but if the task-master looked hard he would notice that Raz was missing.

Sweat collected on his brow and he tried to breathe as quietly as possible through his nose. While it was hard to say that they would have heard him breathing to begin with, the tension altered his perception.

"We have our time to work on these ones before the reinforcements arrive. Lay off of them for some time," Canyon Runner's heel ground against the dirt as he turned on it. "But do not stop checking in on them. Make sure they're uncomfortable and looking for some way to relieve it. We can provide that."

"Yes, sir." The two men responded in unison and went back inside the tent as Raz quickly jumped back into the frenzy of activity that was erecting the large pavilion again.

The soldier closest to Raz noticed his return and murmured quietly while the bent and picked up the rope to raise the tent.

"What's the word, sir?" He grunted the question out between pulls. The sound of the rope becoming taught several times provided them with sufficient pauses as their task-master passed behind them.

As the man moved out of sight, Raz whispered back through gritted teeth as his hand began to trickle hot blood down his palms onto the parched cove dirt, "We move tonight."