POV of Ronald Curtis
"Ronald Curtis, for your brave actions and swift decision-making during... the initial phases of the siege of New Vegas... you are hereby promoted to Major," said Colonel Cassandra Moore with that same dry tone she always used, as if reading from a report caused her physical discomfort.
I couldn't help but smile — internally, of course. It wasn't the moment for joy, but inside... everything was going exactly as it should.
I had escaped the siege because we —the embedded frumentarii— had fed precise information to Legate Gaius about the route my unit would take. The artillery hit that sector with less intensity, just as we planned. It wasn't perfect. Some of our vehicles were caught in the blast, and a few frumentarii, men who had been embedded in the NCR for years, died in the firestorm. I knew their names, their faces, their voices.
But duty is duty. And luck —luck is just another weapon in the frumentarius arsenal.
When Gaius' forces sprung the trap and sealed off the retreat, I knew it was time to act. Without hesitation, I turned my weapon on the men closest to me. The other frumentarii did the same in their transports. The real NCR soldiers never saw it coming. Quick. Clean. Efficient. We collected the dog tags and cut the ears —a necessity, considering the NCR's only accepted proof of a dead legionary was a pair of ears. And as luck would have it, most people come with two.
Bloodied, smoke-stained, and stinking of death, we pushed forward with the shattered remains of our units. Wounded, yes. Battered, of course. But alive. And more importantly —useful. In the chaos, we were the only good news the NCR thought it had: survivors. Heroes. Men who'd supposedly broken through the lines of the invincible Legate Gaius.
When we crossed back over the line, I presented the bloodstained sack myself to the officers still trying to make sense of what had happened in Vegas.
I lied with the calm only a frumentarius could muster. I showed the tags of those we executed, claiming they were our fallen. That the enemy had left nothing but ears. They didn't question it.
The ears were proof enough. In the aftermath of disaster, no one wanted to inspect the details too closely. They needed heroes, not answers. And there I stood —decorated and promoted for killing men who thought I was one of them.
Without realizing it —or perhaps choosing not to— they celebrated traitors.
Every survivor of our unit, every man honored for their "heroism" in breaking the Legion's siege… was frumentarii. All of them.
Each had been planted years ago. Trained, embedded, loyal to the Bull. Some had been inside the NCR so long they spoke and thought like true republicans. But under the blood-soaked mask of the war hero, they were Caesar's to the core.
They applauded us at parades. Gave us command posts, access to sealed doors and sensitive channels, control over logistics, oversight of new intelligence officers. Murphy's government, desperate to claw back an image of strength, held us up as proof the Republic could still win.
And as they wept and embraced us, they never once stopped to consider the reason we survived... was because we were never truly on their side.
From the inside, we saw everything. Heard everything. Touched everything.
It all felt too easy. As if Mars himself were guiding my hand. But it wasn't Mars smiling.
It was Caesar, watching from his throne as his will unfolded in the heart of his enemy.
Then came another opportunity.
I was called in by Colonel Cassandra Moore —rigid, dry, always the same— and introduced to the new general appointed directly by President Murphy. The Republic was desperate to project strength, competence, control. They needed results. They needed symbols.
And I was exactly that.
Because of my 'extensive experience' identifying and eliminating Legion frumentarii, I was offered a position in the newly restructured counterintelligence division. I barely kept a straight face while pretending to be surprised and honored.
Experience? If planting evidence counts.
A drunken grunt with a spotty record, few friends, and no connections —the perfect target. I loaded his locker with forged reports, altered documents, marked maps, and a box of Legion denarii. Even a ciphered letter he never wrote. A little acting, a few well-placed words, and suddenly he was the most dangerous spy the NCR had ever caught.
I did it to bury my own tracks. A simple play to deflect suspicion, to make sure even the most paranoid eyes in the new regime never looked too closely in my direction.
And it worked.
They held me up as the ideal —the soldier who had sniffed out a mole during the Republic's lowest moment. A man who survived New Vegas. A man who, in the NCR's narrative, was a symbol of loyalty and vigilance.
So they gave me the job.
One of the new officials tasked with purging the Republic of Caesar's influence.
The reason was obvious: after the "peace" —what we called our time to expand slowly— the NCR leadership finally admitted what we'd known for years. The Legion hadn't just won on the battlefield. It had won in the shadows.
The signing of the non-aggression treaty triggered an institutional panic: speeches about hidden traitors, blacklists, preemptive purges. A full-on witch hunt. Any soldier who'd fought in the Mojave, any bureaucrat who got rich too fast, any merchant who once traded in Flagstaff, anyone caught skimming food rations… all were suspects. Paranoia became policy.
And I stood at the center of it all.
They didn't want another open conflict with Caesar —not yet. But they feared, rightly so, that another infiltrator might pass critical information to the most feared general in the Empire: Gaius. It pained them to admit it, but deep down, they knew the truth —the Legion had a strategist who, so far, had proven unstoppable. Even with the NCR's propaganda machine running at full capacity, they couldn't fully hide it.
From the limited —but precise— intel I received, Gaius wasn't just brutally effective. He was something far more dangerous: intelligent. Cultured. Methodical. And worse, he actively worked with the frumentarii. He didn't just tolerate them —he empowered them. Treated them as part of the strategic core, not as disposable tools. A clear sign of brilliance.
Only… they were already giving him everything they feared he might steal.
Because I was there. In their meetings. In their files. In their operations. I was the one who defined risk profiles, interrogation methods, and the names for the blacklists. Me. The so-called expert in detecting frumentarii… being one of them.
And it seems it backfired. Badly.
It didn't take long for them to assign new personnel to my unit. Some were my own "recommendations," others came from "trusted sources." All were frumentarii. One by one, we climbed. Quietly. Consistently. Invisibly. Until, before anyone noticed, the NCR's counterintelligence office started to look a lot like an administrative extension of Legatus Gaius himself.
From within, we began leading the witch hunts.
Naturally, we started with the easy targets. The brahmin barons —public enemies, corrupt profiteers, Kimball-era allies, heartless businessmen who bled the Wastes dry while settlers starved. No one liked them. Not the people, not Murphy's new political circle. They were perfect.
We began reviewing financial records, interviewing their workers, making "routine" visits to their ranches. And while supposedly cleaning the NCR's house, we planted small seeds along the way. A forged letter tying them to corruption in Redding. Falsified documents suggesting illicit dealings with Boneyard merchants. Alleged secret talks with Vault City to support its independence from the NCR.
A little of everything. Just enough to confuse, distract, and muddy the waters.
And it worked.
The NCR's hunger for justice and redemption focused entirely on them. Meanwhile, the real frumentarii —us— kept growing, solidifying our positions, and feeding disinformation to those few who still had clear minds.
Next, we decided to test the political trust —measure the paranoia, seed panic in just the right dose. So we picked a senator.
Not an important one. Not a vocal dissenter. Just someone influential enough to cause a stir, but replaceable. He was perfect: destroy his life, his reputation, his legacy —just to see how the Republic would respond to the idea of a traitor in the Senate.
We planted the usual.
In his home, we hid a dusty box filled with aureus and denarii from the Legion —just aged enough to look authentic, but not decayed. We added a coded letter, encrypted with a cipher only a frumentarius would recognize… and that, "miraculously," NCR analysts managed to crack with suspicious speed.
On his computer, we inserted forged documents: future payment schedules, caravan maps he'd "leaked to the Legion," classified strategic reports only someone of his rank could access. Even his Redding office was staged —decorated with antique tapestries and a small bronze statue bearing the Bull's emblem, all hidden in compartments he'd never opened.
And then, when all was in place, a "concerned citizen" stepped forward. An anonymous whistleblower, perfectly scripted, with a detailed account: the good senator had been meeting shady figures outside city limits far too often to be coincidence.
That was all we needed.
Counterintelligence mobilized. Full surveillance. Controlled interceptions. Fabricated recordings. We let the tension build until the rope was taut —and then we snapped it.
The raids were swift. Precise. Merciless.
We searched his home, his office, his vacation house, his private warehouse —all at once. He was cuffed in front of his family, forced to kneel in the dirt while his children cried and his wife screamed words no one heard. And when I opened the hidden chest beneath the basement stairs, revealing the gleaming Legion coins… I knew it was done.
Colonel Cassandra Moore's face in that moment was music.
A mix of fury, disbelief, triumphant restraint, and pure rage. Her jaw clenched, her lips drawn tight, her grip on her data slate so firm her knuckles went white. She looked at me. Then at him. Her eyes hardened into stone. And even the most naive among us could see —this man was finished.
The senator was screwed. Completely.
And we didn't have to do anything else. We just stood back and watched the NCR's political and judicial machinery grind into motion, clunky and loud, still pretending to be efficient. The headlines exploded. The networks screamed "traitor" over and over. The Senate suspended him without appeal. The people cried for blood. No one doubted. No one asked questions.
We gave the first push. Fear did the rest.
And as the Republic bled itself out in its own purges, as it turned inward and began devouring its own, we kept working. We lowered our profile. Took on less glamorous duties.
We went back to the gutters. The unions, the ports, the supply caravans. Where the dirty money flowed and loyalties were thin. We planted more. Broke networks. Stirred up noise. And occasionally… we killed a Brotherhood spy.
Not because we cared about their secrets —but because they made excellent theater.
Sometimes we took them alive. Sometimes half-dead. We made them talk in windowless rooms, then leaked just enough to the press: "Brotherhood infiltrator exposed sabotaging power grid," or "tech alliance with anti-government cells uncovered." Useful. Effective. It built the illusion that the enemy was everywhere —except within us.
And when a body needed to be found in a ditch, or a confession recorded with shattered fingers… we knew how to get it.
We did it all with the kind of efficiency only true believers of the Bull could offer. Because this wasn't just espionage. It wasn't revenge.
It was purification. Preparation.
It was the ritual before Gaius raises his hand… and the world burns again —so Caesar may rebuild it from the ashes.