So long, so long. .
==*==
Chapter Seventeen
07:45 EST, December 15 2331
New York City, NY, ATLA, USA
The cold air of the city hit John Ellis like a hammer-blow as he got out of the street-car and onto the sidewalk. Snow was falling, as it usually did, but in flakes so fine they were like gleaming white dust drifting down in an almost magical way – not the terrible blizzards of the past few weeks. He had learned in elementary school that back in 2130 there’d been a great winter covering all of California in ice – there were no memories of such an event here and since that freak event, the West Coast had returned to its pre-War climate – balmy, mild winters in which the worst that could be expected was heavy rains.
God, how I wish I could go back there someday. From the majestic mountains to the warm beaches, the memories of California sustained him even in the worst times.
But then, his only option in that regard was for the Enclave to achieve victory. Should they lose, he would surely be hanged as a traitor after betraying so many of his fellow agents – some almost certainly to their deaths. If the Enclave deemed him no longer of use they might well kill him as well – but there was the possibility they would spare him. The NCR, despite his own natural sympathies, offered no such chance of mercy. He had thought of flight, to Europe or South America, but deemed it too difficult, and certainly not certain of putting him beyond the Enclave’s retribution – and he could not abandon his children like his father had. That had been the hook they’d used to snare him, and it had worked so damn well.
An eyebot – an NYPD one, not one of the privately-owned mobile advertisements or the “Public Information” ones issuing war propaganda – floated breezily by across the street, reminding him of how the whole city was under continuous surveillance. There was not a citizen who would not one day or the other be caught on one of the mobile cameras or the fixed ones located overlooking almost every street and intersection, in every public or commercial building, even in apartment blocks. They all seemed to blithely accept it, which was even worse.
He walked over the snow-covered street to his workplace, the offices of the
New York Clarion – noting as he usually did the propaganda posters faced up against the stone walls of the tall Midtown buildings, holding his overcoat tight to him to keep out the chill. There were Britain, Germany and “America” represented as warrior-women (brunette, redhead and blonde) in arms and armour of ancient, medieval and modern eras emblazoned with their nations’ distinct iconography; four Old World soldiers, one from the Revolutionary War, another from the Civil War, another from World War Two and the last from the Great War, saluting soldiers who marched past them in the Enclave’s power-armour, the slogan proclaiming “AMERICANS WILL ALWAYS FIGHT FOR FREEDOM”; and last of all a firing squad of NCR soldiers shooting children in Texas, with the ominous warning “IF YOU TOLERATE THIS – YOUR CHILDREN
WILL BE NEXT!”.
A fantasy as lurid as any the Enclave government ask me to conjure up, he thought, then entered the building. The first thing he noticed was that the lobby was far less busy than normal – with a notably absent receptionist and a number of security men – and he thought of how the recruitment station he had passed in the street-car had a crowd around it lately of no less than 100, compared to the three or four dozen or so he had seen in the last six months, and the ten or so in the year before this.
The PA system was blaring a warlike tune which made it hard for Ellis to hide his distaste:
“
I wish I was in Arroyo,
I’d lay those murd’rous traitors low,
Right away, come away! Right away, come away!
We’ll put the rebels all to rout,
I bet my boots will whip them out,
Right away, come away! Right away, come away!
We’ll all go west to Cali, away, away!
Each Cali boy shall understand
That he must mind his Uncle Sam!
Away, away! We’ll all go west to Cali!”
He went up on the elevator to the floor where his office was situated, to see the editor of the newspaper – an old, tall man with dark skin who had started working at the newspaper in the days when Manhattan had been an independent city state – giving a ferocious rant to some of his immediate subordinates.
“Whaddya mean Hayes went over to West Point?! First the interns, then the fucking staff go and join the Army? And now the senior guys wanna play office-”
Just then the man realised who had just entered the room, and immediately snapped out of it.
“Mr. Ellis,” he noted. “You were able to make it on time today.”
“The weather has let up a bit. Not nearly so good as it is in Texas, or so I heard.”
“Good to hear. Now, you’re in line for a promotion, since so many-”
“I heard.”
“You’ve just turned 32, haven’t you? It’s a wonder you aren’t joining up at the recruitment office yourself. A minor miracle if I may say so myse-”
“Wife wouldn’t allow it.”
“Well, that’s good to me at any rate. Paper won’t run itself.”
“Certainly. Can you give me some more details on my new job? ...”
==*==
07:50 EST, December 16 2331
Lexington, MA, NELA, USA
“
I heard tell of your greatsires, John, they fought at Bunker Hill,
How they counted all their life and wealth their country’s off’ring still,
Would you shame the brave, the old blood, John, that flowed on Concord plain?
No, take your gun and go, John, though I may never see you again.”
The radio kept on its song as Martha Stanstead listened to it bitterly, making the final preparations to open the convenience store owned by her husband and her. From the window she could see across the Battle Green, to Old Glory still waving where it had for almost six hundred years and a statue of President Autumn precisely where he had stood making his famous speech after the cleansing of the raiders that had once used the town as a base, and beyond that to the Town Hall next to Buckman’s Tavern.
Raiders. Either a child’s bogey or the villains of a thousand adventure stories set in the days of lawlessness, it was hard these days to believe that they had ever existed physically, never mind murdered her great-Aunt Mary back in the summer of 2287, or used the auto factory in the town’s southern, industrial district as a lair from which they ravaged the region.
Sure am glad I got out of working there, she mused. Growing up on a small farm south of Sanctuary Hills and near the eastern edge of Concord as the youngest of five siblings, she’d never liked working in industry, though obviously somebody had to do it. She heard the place wasn’t making cars and trucks any more – the Hermes Automobile Company – which owned it – was due to begin making Custer tanks there under contract with General Atomics, or so today’s
Publick Occurences said at any rate.
Maybe my husband’s going to ride in one of those tanks, she grimly mused. He’d gone off to join the Service two days ago, and she would have gone too, despite her newborn son, save that someone needed to mind the family business. Lots of folks were heading off – the State and Commonwealth Governors were campaigning endlessly, along with the Feds, to get Massachusetts to fulfil its recently-raised quota of recruits to the Armed Forces.
She sure hoped they met it soon. The news from the front had been nothing but defeat after defeat since the enemy invasion started, and apparently the rebels were on the border of Indiana already despite the best efforts of both the National Guard and the winter weather.
==*==
06:00 CST, December 17 2331
The Ozarks, Arkansas
He was in the Museum of Technology, looking on the images of America’s fighting forces, but something was wrong. They were all glaring at him with a fiercely disappointed expression – from the 17th-century militiaman through the blue-uniformed armsmen of the 18th and 19th centuries, helmeted khaki-clad warriors of the 20th and early 21st centuries, and the power-armoured heavy infantry of the late 21st century onwards. They looked at him, and they started running after him. He ran and ran, but they were behind every door and every corner, and they turned into rebel soldiers and started holding him down and though he was in armour he was helpless to fight them off and-
Sergeant Walker woke up with a jolt as the Dornan IFV he was driving in stopped, wakeup drugs automatically clearing the vestiges of sleep from his system. He put on his helmet with a pneumatic hiss and got out of the vehicle through one of the side doors, the squad following him easily as he switched his vision to thermal mode. There were a number of armed men visible in thermal mode, about two or three dozen by his initial estimate, in front of a broken-down truck. They were tanned with dark hair and eyes, and as the US soldiers approached they threw down their guns (semi-automatic bolt-actions) and threw up their hands. They were wearing what seemed to be NCR basic fatigues with light pre-War combat armour thrown on top – and on their right shoulders was threaded the flag of Gran Colombia.
“Who are you?” Walker asked, levelling his rifle – not yet loaded – at them. “And what are you doing in United States territory?”
They did not respond, uttering exclamations in a language Walker didn’t understand. He asked the question more forcefully, and made a show of loading his gun.
They did not respond, again.
Rita spoke up, translating his demand into Spanish. They were very talkative after that.
They were soldiers of Gran Colombia who had volunteered to join the NCR military in hopes of avenging the humiliation of 2320. They had marched south from Springfield to try and take Little Rock, but the attack had swiftly run into problems. There was too little clothing fit for the cold weather, and the trucks were constantly breaking down. The higher-ups hoarded most of the maps provided to them, so they quickly got lost on entering Arkansas and had ended up on this backcountry road between two hills. Their radio had broken and the NCR had given them incompatible spare parts, so they could not communicate with their commanders or the rest of their army.
They wanted, above all, to go back home and to escape this cold, mad country where a war was going on little of them now saw as particularly important, with such intensity that even the women would fight as soldiers. Rita translated all this to Walker, who then conferred with Cpt. Elliot Washington and Col. Constantine Autumn over helmet radio, the latter of whom discussed it with Lt. General Christine Curling.
Walker then told them, through Rita, that they would be taken as prisoners of war and remanded to the PoW camp at Guantanamo Bay then repatriated on war’s end, under a lifelong ban on entry to the United States. The US Ambassador in Bogota would presumably send a sternly-worded message to the government of Gran Colombia encouraging him to withdraw his troops from the NCR’s service and warning him that if Gran Colombia decided to engage itself in the war as an active belligerent rather than a pro-NCR neutral then a state of war would naturally exist between the United States and it, with all attendant consequences.
The Dornan IFV quickly moved on.
“Poor wretches,” Ray commented. “Soldiers from a tropical country in the middle of this awful winter?”
“They had it coming,” Tyler enthused. “Invading our country like this.”
“I’m glad they didn’t try and make a fight out of it, at any rate,” Corporal Young noted. “It’d have felt terrible dealing with them. Like watching one of my students frying ants with magnifying glasses.”
“I hope any others we meet are as sensible,” Rita finished. “For their own sakes more than anything.”
==*==
08:00 CST, December 17 2331
Western Illinois
Agent Pierce panted as he let down the heavy steel box he was carrying, then took a knee and looked out over with his binoculars from the steep western edge of the wooded bluff at the NCR pontoon bridge over the Mississippi, just to the south of a wooded islet known as Morse Island. Seven hundred metres long and able to carry eight trucks – or four tanks – abreast, it was an impressive feat of engineering, and he was one of the first US soldiers to look upon it. Almost continuously overcast skies had hindered satellite or aerial reconnaissance, though reports from patriotic homesteaders in the area had established a rough location which had now been confirmed.
With only a general idea of where to attack, a strike from Bradley-Hercules had been mooted, considering the cost of its warheads and of resupply – and enemy air defences made an air strike too dangerous to be worth risking. The NCR had furthermore built a short highway, connecting the pontoon bridge to the road networks both in Illinois and in Iowa. The Brotherhood’s supply convoys used it just as much going to and from their depots – but the NCR had built the construction and fiercely maintained sole responsibility for its defence, or so it seemed.
Nevertheless the Brotherhood had just yesterday deployed many troops via vertibird into the surrounding hills and the plains as far east as Freeport, seemingly with the intent of randomly looting and killing the civilian populace – Pierce could dimly see the burning homesteads to the south from the top of the wooded hill. He suppressed the anger that welled up within him at the sight – marauding techno-barbarians were a threat that would be dealt with in time once this, the more critical danger, was dealt with.
Pierce looked it over up and down, double- and triple-checking – there were several hundred power-armoured soldiers with entrenched APCs parked around the northern side of the NCR road, along with eight laser AA vehicles facing the north-east and east , each surrounded on three sides by a berm-and-trench system, each with a firing position to the front and two others set diagonally forwards on the other sides, with an emplaced P94 Winchester or derivative of such manned by a soldier in combat armour. There had once been 44 such constructions – but most of them had been abandoned, seemingly in haste, and were empty. To make up for these losses, the NCR’s diamond-shaped fighters were on patrol flying low over the riverbank, and Pierce found himself grateful for the thick trees of these heights. On the west bank of the river, south of the bridge was a fire-base housing a battery of artillery, but no AA lasers and another of the same type to the north.
The NCR had made their key supply line almost immune to any conventional force that could be sent so deep into their occupied territory – so this mission would depend, as High Command had made clear, on a mixture of subtlety and overwhelming force.
He put down his binoculars, put his helmet back on and opened the large box that had been dropped from a transport plane at a pre-designated point some days ago, that he had recovered just yesterday; removed its cargo’s covering of impact foam, attached the modifications, assembling the weapon within with great care before loading its projectile into the back.
It was an M42B Enola mini-nuke launcher with two modular add-ons – a foldable tripod that enabled it to be used by non-powered infantry, and two additional elmag coils that along with the elevation enhanced its maximum range from one-point-five to three-point-twenty klicks. There was only one shell – if he missed his target, the whole mission would partially fail in its objectives. The enemy would certainly not allow an opportunity for another attempt.
He lased the target with the greatest of care, his helmet HUD interlinking wirelessly with the weapon’s own systems. A range number appeared in the lower left corner of his vision, and the projected arc of his shot covered most of the centre. Right on target. He conferred quickly over helmet radio with the other Secret Service men and the Rangers that all designated targets were accounted for, and waited for the CO’s instruction.
“All units, you have your targets sighted and ranged, over?”
“Affirmative, sir, over,” Pierce replied.
“All units, you are clear to fire on my mark, over.”
“Understood, sir, over.”
“Three, two, one, fire!”
Out of the blue 36 micro-nuclear shells descended on the NCR fortifications guarding the bridge and the road that led from it. The result was sheer devastation, the majority of the explosions themselves hidden from sight as snow instantaneously flashed to steam, creating a great cloud of vapour that for a moment obscured the effects of the blasts. As the initial brilliant cobalt-blue flashes faded from his retinas, Pierce saw APCs and laser AA vehicles turned over on their sides or even their tops, corpses in slagged power armour strewn about like his action figures always had ended up when he was a kid.
Utter and total devastation, he thought.
Pierce turned over his helmet radio to the main channel, and spoke.
“Designated targets down, first phase of Operation Javelin is a success, over.”
There followed a chorus of confirmations for the planes already approaching that the defences of the enemy’s main supply route for their northern armies had been stripped away. Pierce then abandoned the Enola as he and the others ran east as fast as their legs could carry them, turning on their suits’ stealth equipment. Explosions rocked the forest scant minutes later, as the artillery turned and levelled to fire a full-scale barrage – but Pierce and the others were already gone. He kept on running, as the enemy fighters swooped in, firing missiles, rockets and frenetic microsecond-long bursts of explosive bullets, scything down trees and blasting craters in the rugged earth. For ten horrible minutes they kept up their ground bombardment, until they swooped up to engage their approaching enemies in the air.
Pierce moved through the forest half-exhaustedly when it was over, barely able to remember the designated meet-up point. An hour later when they met up on the shallow side of the bluff, he noted that of the US Army Rangers seven were unable to join up with the others, though thankfully none of the Secret Service had met that fate. Two of them would be picked up some hours later, having activated their transponders after being injured – the rest had certainly been killed in the bombardment.
--*--
Flight Lieutenant Arlene Autumn felt the rushing G-force as her F-97 Aurora cruised along at 15,000 feet, aiming to intercept the enemy planes before they got the chance to hit the fragile VH-01 squadron which was slightly behind and 10,000 feet below.
Man, there’s no feeling like this, she mused.
I’ve never felt so alive
apart from when I was with George the evening before I- She steeled her mind from such lurid remembrances, and put her train of thought back on track. There was a battle to fight, the NCR planes already rising to meet the USAF fighters. The ECW plane at the back had turned off its systems and the planes were already in combat configuration – the 216th Fighter Squadron
wanted to be noticed right now.
She was in the perch position – one mile horizontal and 1500 feet vertical from her wingman, Fl. Lieutenant Ostlund. The two, along with the rest of the squadron, simultaneously moved into a shallow dive, already drawing the attention of an NCR fighter plane to take out what seemed a vulnerable target. She moved to intercept-
Fuck!. The NCR plane had turned, practically on a
dime, towards her own plane as it approached. The damn things were more maneuverable than the USAF’s own fighters – she knew from experience, but now it was no mere encyclopedic fact.
Well, she was no rabbit in the headlights. She moved into a zoom climb, hiding her plane in the dazzling rays of the sun. The enemy pilot turned round to hit her wingman from behind, having lost her trail.
It was a mistake he would not live to repeat.
Just as fast as she had climbed, she dived into an attack, raking the enemy fighter with gatling-laser fire.
The sapphire beams struck true, cutting a diagonal line of holes in the Condor’s wide wings. The fusion flare in one of its two engines died and it began to lose altitude. Arlene delivered a
coup de grace with one of her missiles, sending the flaming fragments of the enemy aircraft tumbling to earth.
Six, she mentally counted.
She then moved into a cruise at seven-five-hundred feet, moving with her wingman to take on a pair of enemy planes that had just shot down an Aurora. The two split up, and she lost track of her partner as she chased down the plane to the right. It went through desperate loops and spirals in an impressive effort to escape a target lock, and Arlene was having trouble matching the enemy pilot.
She knew if she spent too much of her attention chasing him, the huntress would become the hunted.
She opened up with her gatling laser in frustration, cyan beams shooting aimlessly into the air. The enemy pilot, in blind panic as some veered too close for comfort, went into a barrel roll. That was his undoing.
The Condor lost stability, spinning helplessly in the air. Before the enemy could try and get out of it, Arlene opened up again – this time right on target at the enemy’s cockpit. “Laser-proof” glass, not meant to stand up to such firepower, gave way. He didn’t even have time to scream as the merciless cobalt beams reduced him to free-floating vapour and blew a hole straight through the front of his airplane.
The Condor kept on spinning until it smashed into the ground.
Seven.
Two US planes had been taken out at the end of the battle – the NCR squadron’s remnants were in full retreat.
And far below, the Vertihawks had done their work with terrible precision, swooping down with terror-sirens blaring for a bombing run. The micro-nuclear and plasma explosives destroyed the pontoon bridge utterly, leaving what few remnants remained floating just under the ice of the frozen river. They were now disengaging, breaking off into groups of two for attacks of opportunity on Brotherhood “patrols” and NCR supply convoys in the area.
As for Arlene, the 216th took out an NCR supply column with their remaining missiles and rockets then headed back to base at O’Hare.
--*--
Knight-Sergeant Collins looked at the burning house with a grim look. The Brotherhood had enacted its sentence on them for harbouring enemy partisans. It would be a message to the rest not to support those lawless self-proclaimed soldiers, little better than raiders.
In time, the Brotherhood would eventually be sending the same message to the people of the NCR. The great slaughters of the 2260s and 2270s still cried for vengeance, and the NCR was no different than the Enclave in practice – both polities using advanced technology without the moral wisdom to use it appropriately, refusing to put their trust in the noble fraternity whose moral authority on the matter came from their rejection of perverted science at their founding, whose sole purpose was to preserve it and use it wisely …
He turned round, and prepared to head back into the verti-
There was a high-pitched wail that pierced deep into his bones, even through his armour and the craft parked a dozen or so paces away disappeared in a sphere of brilliant blue-white light, its fusion reactor going up in a secondary blast. Cobalt-coloured flames licked at the charred remains, giving off a cloud of noxious black-
Another explosion seconds later took out three members of the team located to his left in a blast of smoke and fire, and Collins could hear loud
music playing from above, could see glimpses of a craft through the veil of smoke. He opened fire with his automatic laser rifle as the other squad members dispersed and went to ground, not expecting to seriously hit it.
The smoke cleared and for a moment he saw clearly what it was – like a vertibird but all angular and harshly-lined, more like a bird of prey than an insect, its colouring black with an Enclave lightning-bolt decal on its side. A nose-mounted chaingun spat out blue-white bolts of plasma, forcing them to disperse further, as an attached automatic grenade launcher released Enclave plasma grenades. The craft swooped over them and turned for another pass – Ames struck a glancing hit with his gauss rifle, knocking off a speaker attached to the side of one of the engines. The damnable music stopped-
A volley of gatling laser fire struck from the flank, hitting Ames and one other. They fell over dead.
The enemy had another aircraft of the same type, which seemed to be turning in a circle round them, before sharply turning and releasing two of its missiles as it started playing the grandiose song in turn. Four Brotherhood Knights fell. The first aircraft fired two missiles also – only one died, but it was enough to seriously damage the squad with the casualties already sustained.
Collins spat and fired his rifle defiantly at the Enclave aircraft as it swooped for another attack. Two missiles simultaneously hit him, killing him instantaneously. The rest did not long survive him.
==*==
CST 13:00, December 17 2331
Detroit, MN, GRELA, USA
Sentinel Brandt jumped out of the vertibird twenty metres into the crowded streets of Detroit. As he looked round to get his bearings, his expression quickly turned to disgust.
Sheer decadence, he mused,
of the sort that doomed the Old World. Advanced technology used for frivolity, not with wisdom. The wisdom that Roger Maxson learned at Mariposa and handed down to us in the Codex.
He snapped out of his ruminations and swiftly moved with his men towards the industrial district of the city, ignoring the outsiders who milled about senselessly in panic. But nevertheless they met fire as they moved through the city’s commercial areas – from behind fast-food kiosks, clothes-store mannequins, restaurant tables, shop counters and car windows. It was a relatively insignificant mix of ballistics and red-spectrum lasers – nothing to worry about, and short bursts of suppressive fire were sufficient to frighten the outsiders into letting off.
In the distance, a Hellion fired a missile at the city’s train station, swooping up in celebration at the damage done to the platform when an AA laser detected it and scythed it down, sending its burning wreckage flying down to hit another.
They began facing more resistance – platoons of Enclave light soldiers armoured with the typical light armour used by their troops and armed with rapid-fire blue laser rifles, along with small groups of power-armoured men armed with the same. With vertibird and Hellion assistance, the Brotherhood teams were able to push through these groups and begin converging as they hit the industrial district – though the craft couldn’t fly too high lest they become susceptible to AA laser fire.
They quickly split up – Sloan led his 500 men to try and take out the munitions dumps on the outskirts, Barber the air factories, and Volz the vehicle factories. As for Brandt and his men, they were heading for the power-armour and small arms factories. As they approached that area, they quickly subdivided into four groups of 125 – Brandt led his force to a factory with a sign on it saying NEMEAN INDUSTRIES.
No surprise the Enclave have done that, he thought.
Revived the wretched “free-market” system of the Old World. The system that pointlessly reduplicates effort, spends so much on convincing the populace to buy frivolous things, uses advanced technology recklessly and arrogantly in the way that put the last nail in the coffin for mankind …
He was so engrossed in his mental rant he barely realised it as a laser-shot hit his breastplate. The Brotherhood group moved up rapidly, easily breaking through the hastily-assembled barricade that lay in their way and its emplaced gatling laser.
There was a great explosion to the north – Sloan, or one of his teams, had taken out a munitions dump, which was quickly confirmed as he announced it over the radio. Brandt conferred with the others – Volz and Barber were also making progress towards their targets.
Reports from the other cities targeted also indicated more resistance and higher casualties than expected, but nevertheless they were still making progress (though less than planned) in their effort to destroy as much industry of military value as possible before moving on at the end of the day.
Good.
Another barricade was not too far away, and they moved through a hail of laser and mortar fire to break it as they had the first, swiftly pushing through the lobby.
The fighting in the corridors lasted a lot longer. It was an hour or more, and some men died, but light infantry could ultimately not hold back powered troops – especially in the confined spaces they excelled in. Brandt led the group deeper in, taking point, the demo team bringing up the rear, throwing the doors of the main factory floor off their hinges in his haste to see the Enclave’s industrial might destroyed.
The great hall of industry was utterly empty, its brick walls barren and its floor covered in dust, only the supervisors’ catwalks remaining. The machinery that was the real source of its strategic importance had been moved elsewhere – perhaps to underground storage, perhaps to the eastern seaboard.
Brandt turned round, leading his men to run back through the corridors of the abandoned factory, to leave it and sweep another target.
He had just gotten out when a pulse grenade slammed into his chest and detonated. His armour’s systems sparked out a moment, started to automatically reboot as he turned leftwards – then a Lafayette tank which had moved in position round the corner fired its railcannon at him. The solid slug of tungsten-steel alloy, intended for use in urban combat, punched right through Brandt’s chest in one shot and tore a divot in the sidewalk. Life left him instantly. His compatriots broke out of the building to face a wall of gatling laser and plasma caster fire from three directions.
They did not last much longer.
==*==
PST 14:00, December 17 2331
Nellis Army Air Base, NCR State of Mojave
Staff Sergeant Boone Russell looked on at the expanse of the base as he prepared to run laps on the PT field, as he had for so long after his number had come up. The folks up in the Midwest may be complaining about the cold, but here in the State of Mojave it was pleasantly mild. A couple days ago, he had even gone to visit his grandfather – but the old man had been absent. Locals had said he’d gone on a long journey with one of Mr. House’s robots, and wasn’t sure himself if he’d return or not.
He remembered reading his grandfather’s memoirs about the place – of the tribe of former Vault Dwellers that had lived over here, shooting at anyone who came near until his grandfather befriended them. Well, after the First Legion War they had entered into an agreement with the NCR Army Air Corps to share the base – which they had tried to renegotiate in their favour some twelve years later, back in 2297, well before he was born. Their shenanigans had pissed off the AAC, so their special arrangement had been nullified and they’d had been dealt with as the NCR did with any other tribe – shuttled off to a reservation, over north-west of New Vegas near the mutant reservation at Jacobstown.
They should count themselves lucky they weren’t sent over to New Nevada with the Khans and Jackals and Vipers, Boone mused. But anyway, he was anxious to see action along with the 100,000 other soldiers in and around New Vegas – not to mention the 50,000 at the Dam (it had been renamed Kimball Dam some years ago, but nobody bothered using that name save in official memos and documents) and an additional 100,000 at Fort Cassandra Moore, on the same mountain where Caesar had placed his encampment as he looked to conquer the Mojave. The Enclave had bombed it some years later, and collapsed a corner of the pinnacle, but the NCR outpost destroyed in that attack had been replaced by an invincible fortress.
He had been to the Dam once, on liberty, and looked north to see the NCR’s greatest achievement. Two and a half square miles of military base and airfield, raised up three-seven-hundred feet above the desert on sheer walls of black basalt. From twelve artillery batteries, to a laser defence system capable of defending against everything from artillery shells to nuclear missiles, to virtually limitless supplies stored underground for decades, it could hold out against an Enclave siege for five years according to the latest estimates.
But it would likely never see action. Once Robertson took O’Hare, the Enclave’s subjects would rebel – at the same time the forces in the Vegas region, to be followed soon after by all the troops assembled along the Kimball Line, would be able to travel by air to the Midwest to reinforce him. That blow would leave them staggering and reeling – then the knockout would swiftly come.
==*==
CST 16:00, December 17, 2331
NCR Staging Ground for Operation Kodiak Eyrie, 20 Miles North-East of USAF Base O’Hare, Illinois
Lance Robertson looked on at the assembled men. The situation had grown desperate indeed with the enemy air attack – the bridge south of Dubuque and a good number of truck convoys had been annihilated – at a stroke halving the amount of supplies he was receiving regularly. There was a crude landing field to the north of the base where supply vertibirds could land, but its capacity was not great – new ones would be established at the villages of Aurora, St. Charles and Elgin as the assault carried on, but even that would be insufficient for all his troops’ needs.
His men also had a great supply of food and ammunition already with them, but it was limited. And with all of his own engineers needed for the coming assault on the fortifications around O’Hare, it would take the Brotherhood’s own too long to rebuild the pontoon bridge at the crossing south of Dubuque.
Ultimately all the factors led up to one conclusion - he had to take AFB O’Hare within three weeks at the most, or his men would simply be unable to proceed further.
He would not be meeting up with the 60,000 from Davenport before attacking - at any rate, it would be better for fresh troops to join a battle already in progress than to have a larger army at the outset.
He would have given a speech to mark this new stage in the offensive, but what would he have said to the newsmen, to the soldiers, to the millions at home waiting on his words? That they were fighting another democratic society to maintain the political independence of Shady Sands from Washington DC? That the Enclave would be brutal in conquering them if they won, but relatively merciful after the conquest had been achieved, so long as they accepted its rule as legitimate? That they were not seeking their extermination or enslavement, but simply the acceptance of their self-proclaimed authority?
He could have easily lied; but that would have shown on his face. And if anything, the result may be even more damaging to morale. So now he was curt to his men, his face bitter as he spoke.
“Soldiers,” he said plainly. “We will be advancing on O’Hare through the night. I know this is hard on you – but I expect no less from myself. We will be beginning offensive operations at nine-hundred hours on the eighteenth, with the aim to take it by the beginning of 2332. The NCR is counting on us, and expects no less than victory. For the Republic!”
==*==
CST 06:00, December 18 2331
Seven Miles East of Danville, IL
Lt. General Ortez awoke from slumber at his accustomed time in his command tent, full of doubts and fears. The moon still shone in the western sky, pale light coming in through the tent-flap to shine on his face – lately he had started to fancy that it was peering into his dreams, mocking him.
A superstition brought on by stress, he reminded himself again.
It’s just a big hunk of rock in the sky, reflecting the Sun – what God put it there to do some billion years ago. No power to harm or heal.
Enemy attack yesterday had destroyed the crossing south of Dubuque – engineers present in the area were not sufficient to rebuild it. Which in turn meant that supplies would have to move through the Burlington, Keokuk and Quincy crossings, as well as eventually St. Louis. His role in the stages of the initial operation could right now not be carried out, as the main force needed all the supplies necessary to take O’Hare and what had been relegated to him was insufficient for a sustained attack on Indianopolis, never mind the march south to Louisville and the following curve northward through Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland before swooping south-east to take Pittsburgh.
But it was not those mere military matters that worried him – it had been what he had seen at Peoria, Bloomington, Champaign, Danville. Prosperous, peaceful towns like many in the NCR.
Maybe the Enclave’s totalitarian rule focuses on the cities, Ortez theorized.
Maybe they don’t have the resources to police the areas outside as they would like to. His men had passed through those towns as well, and he had been forced to issue a general order against speculation, theorising or rumour-mongering as to the nature of Enclave governance and politics.
Leave that to Military Intelligence.
The lack of movement and clear purpose in any army was a source of restlessness and disciplinary failure. Unfortunately, his options were limited in that regard. Retreat? High Command would not tolerate it, not when he had broken so far into Enclave territory. To stay in one place would make him a sitting duck and only breed further discontent. The remorseless logic of the situation forced him into one option – to move on Indianopolis and hope he could take it as soon as possible, then winter in the city and resume the offensive with the spring thaw and the coming supplies from Chicago and the St. Louis crossing.
A long shot, but his only one.
