Chapter Twenty-Eight Part Two
16:00 PST, March 3 2332
Indianapolis
Edmond Shaffer looked up at the TV mounted in the wall, hearing the newscaster blithely talk about another human interest story. Even as he cleaned up the bar, the voice of the radio could be heard - a country music song made in honour of the man who the President had chosen to command the war.
“Give ’em Hell, Alex, don’t let ‘em knock ya down,
Give ’em Hell, Alex, you’re a man so stand your ground,
Give ’em Hell, Alex,you should be our President,
Give ’em Hell, Alex you’re a name we won’t forget.”
He could appreciate the sentiment. The NCR army had occupied the city for some weeks during their invasion, and the scars were still healing. Two hundred thousand half-starved conscripts had taken over everything between Lafayette and Greensburg, looting like mad. Food had been the most of what they’d taken at gunpoint, but coolant, alcohol, and any sort of valuables had also been stolen. Hell, he’d heard of washing machines and refrigerators being loaded onto NCR army trucks, with scarcely any thought of how they were going to be taken back to Cali even.
Then there’d been the talk of locals being roughed up, a number of cases of women being dishonoured - the rebels had hanged their own who’d done that, Shaffer had to admit, but that it had happened at all boiled his blood. There’d been releases of criminals in the surrounding towns, and arrests of prominent locals by the rebels’ military police. That was the sickest thing of what they'd done, like they just wanted to turn everything sane and decent and normal upside down.
He hated the bastards, truth be told. The news switched – it was O’Hare AFB, General Vicky Cantrell on stage. He’d heard the lady was one of Alex Autumn’s top commanders – damn I wish I’d been able to vote for the man, Shaffer mused. Old Autumn saved the nation.
--*--
Victoria Cantrell was by definition a serious woman. Raven-black hair done up in a neat bun was beginning to fade to grey despite the dye set in it, and she wore an immaculately cleaned female dress uniform for a four-star general – dark blue from the hem of her skirt to her collar, a white blouse with a red tie beneath her dress jacket. She took a quick glance at the eyebots from the Federal channel and a half-dozen private news companies that were hovering about her, constantly adjusting the angles of their video feeds.
She took a deep breath as she looked over the assembled troops on the airfield before the podium. Men of the 101st Airborne, army troopers clad in T-90 Hellfire painted in arctic camo colours. Scattered here and there every so often were the new Ridgeway light tanks – USMC Lejeunes with the railgun replaced with a laser cannon to spare ammo, light enough to be airdropped by cargo plane or in extremis one of the many VB-03 gunship transports that were also parked on the airfield. Further back were soldiers from more conventional units. Guess when they’re under the Army they can call them tanks then, she mused. She sighed.
Her career had left no time for romance or children – she knew that made her a very odd duck – and part of her still regretted that sacrifice, but when she looked at the scene before her it seemed inconsequential. She was one of America’s top field commanders acting as an architect of the long-awaited Restoration. There would come a day soon when the rebels had been completely ground under heel, the land once again and forever more reunited, and she would be remembered as one of the people who had brought that about. She took a deep breath. Ever since she was a little girl hearing reports about the fighting down at DC, she had waited for this moment.
She looked down at her chest, the new medal hanging down from there amongst the others. A silver “E” with its middle bar divided in three, surrounded by a circle of stars, all on a black ribbon with orange-yellow trim. The Californian Insurrection Suppression Medal, they called it. Hundreds of thousands, millions, were being stamped out for each and every soldier who was fighting the campaign against the traitors out west in Cali. Enough time pondering. It was time to give her speech.
“Men and women of the Army of the Rockies, tonight we begin our part in the great task that awaits the American people – the work of redemption, restoration, reclamation, and reunification of every inch of sovereign land owned by the United States of America. For almost three centuries our great nation has been blighted by disorder, anarchy and rebellion since the Chinese nuclear attack. The lawful government of this great nation has reclaimed almost half of our territory, but much still remains to be restored to legitimate rule and democratic governance.”
“The Great Plains of this nation, which we in particular have as our orders to reclaim, lie under the control of a paramilitary terrorist organisation known as the Brotherhood of Steel. Believing itself to be the arbiters of access to advanced technology, the Brotherhood – acting in alliance with the Californian rebels – has been unremittingly hostile to the United States Government, attacking us in our very capital, squatting in the very headquarters of the War Department. Tonight, we teach them that there are consequences for their actions.”
“You are fighting not only a rebel organisation, but one founded in a direct act of desertion and mutiny against the United States Government. The Brotherhood was started by soldiers who rebelled and murdered their commanding officers shortly before the atomic war, only surviving by virtue of Federal forces being faced with far greater challenges scant days after. Without the American Anarchy, we would have smashed this overgrown gang of deserters two hundred years ago. Well, it’s about time to collect on that promise.”
“The descendants of deserters and mutineers lack the courage and honour their forefathers spat on. We are the descendants of those who were true even through the greatest hardships this nation has ever endured; those who stood by the star-spangled banner of America’s legitimate government under President Jones, and those who waited long generations of hardship and misery for the star of hope to shine once more in America’s skies under President Autumn. We have the strength of sinew, of mind, of heart and will to overcome anything they can throw at us. I have full confidence in you to perform your duties to the level that the Commander-in-Chief expects.”
The band began to play its song, an old army classic from the Civil War.
“In the Army of the Union we are marching in the van,
And we’ll do the work before us that the bravest soldiers can,
We shall drive the rebel forces from their strongholds to the sea,
We shall live and die together in the Army of the Free!”
“We are the best division of half a million souls
And only resting on our arms till the war cry onward rolls;
When our gallant brave Commander calls, why ready we shall be
To follow him forever, we’re the Army of the Free!”
“Then hurrah for our division, may it soon be called to go,
And add its strength to those who in battle meet the foe,
God bless us for we know right well, wherever we may be,
We’ll never fail to honour our great Army of the Free!”
==*==
2,000 miles above and far to the west of Kansas City, the Bradley-Hercules orbital bombardment station fired its payload. The release system was automated and could not be stopped once started; once the signal made its way from the Pentagon, human agency was no longer relevant. Targeting algorithms moved the station into an ideal position to launch at the designated target. A hatch on the underside of the space station opened up, followed by another, plasma microthrusters aligning it pitch-perfectly with its enemy. Two cylindrical capsules shot out of the station, turned round, and began deorbit manoeuvres.
As they struck the atmosphere, hitting it head-on like a brick wall, the pods burned cherry red then white hot, breaking up as their furious speed and the intensity of the air burning around them proved too much for them to withstand. This was itself intended by the system’s pre-War designers – the broken fragments would serve as chaff, confusing radars and serving as decoys against enemy air defence systems. And they had shielded their deadly cargo – forty-six tactical fusion bombs, each with a yield of up to five hundred tons of TNT.
To say Kansas City never saw it coming was a misnomer. There was about half a minute of panic, of laser air-defences frantically firing at the ominous streaks swooping down from a chill, star-spangled night sky. One or two of the warheads was even taken out by the laser fire, but it was little use. Forty-three artificial suns blossomed into short-lived life over the Kansas City Brotherhood Citadel, just below the height of the hundred-foot concrete walls that barred it off from the lower city where the “outsiders” who lived under the Brotherhood dwelled. The 250-ton airbursts pummelled buildings flat with the weight of their overhead shockwaves, smashing high-tech factories where Brotherhood PA suits and tanks were born, huge blocks of reinforced concrete splashing down into the Kansas River below as the citadel’s walls crumbled. However, even as they succumbed to the shockwave, the walls reflected it back inwards into the district itself. Another round of collapses tore down what little remained aboveground. Yet, amidst the burning ruins, the bunker doors within the district’s gates remained resolutely sealed.
--*--
Scribe Liam Chase could barely stay awake, but kept on fighting the urge to sleep. He had been up all night serving at the radar controls, and now – now there were reports at some kind of attack on the Kansas City citadel? Word was unclear, and radio communications seemed to be down. Fear filled his heart, but he worried too what Knight-Captain Brandeis would say if he raised his concerns. The man had fought in the great eastern campaign with the hope of becoming a Paladin in the new marches that would have been gained – if the NCR hadn’t stabbed the Brotherhood in the back by running off with their tails between their legs, forcing them to retreat in turn.
Chase knew the man still had a temper over that, and he did not want to make undue requests of his commanding officer while he was still in a dark mood. The Marshall bunker oversaw a sprawling stretch of farmland due east of Kansas City, and the man who ruled it never had time for trouble at the best of times Then Chase saw something on the radar screen. A signature that was … it was too small to be any kind of plane. Just a stray flock of birds, most likely. An observer on the ground would have seen nothing more than a fleck of blackness across the starry sky. Chase took a moment to rub his tired eyes and sighed at the radar screen, scant seconds before underground all hell broke loose.
60,000 feet above, Colonel Francis Slade checked the GPS coordinates and loosed two bombs from his B-120 Dragon II. The diamond-shaped stealth bomber’s rotary bomb bay opened up and two GPS-guided munitions released, swooping down out of the night sky with a fatal mix of firepower and scientific precision. As the bomb hit the small concrete facility that housed the entrance elevator to the Brotherhood bunker, its magnetic confinements deactivated and a massive pulse of high-density, high-temperature plasma was released, making a small crater and utterly destroying the base’s entrance. Another hit over what had been estimated to be the base itself – this carried at its front a shaped plasma charge which burrowed through earth and concrete and metal, carving a path for the main killer to break in and do its work within the walls of the bunker.
The secondary charge – thermobaric – detonated seconds later. Consisting of a small block of TNT surrounded by a mass of nanothermite particles within a steel shell, detonated by an impact-activated electric charge, the weapon was more effective by far than its pre-war counterparts. A wave of burning air, set alight by countless millions of superheated nanoparticles, lashed out at supersonic speeds, reducing men, women and children to finely ground mincemeat in fractions of a second. The smell of charred flesh filled the bunker, though none were left to sense it as the lethal wave of fire and force washed over all its nooks and crannies then ran back multiple times, thoroughly eliminating anything that could have survived its initial passage. A small puff of earth and fire up top, almost indiscernible, was all that could be seen from the plane above.
Slade sighed. He could feel some pity for the bastards, despite how much they’d had it coming, but he was more concerned by the amount of work that lay ahead of him. Three squadrons of Dragon II stealth bombers and Gryphon II tac-bombers were at work tonight, along with six squadrons of the new vertihawks – with practically every enemy installation between Des Moines and Kansas City a target. He checked that the planes under him were okay and doing the work required of them over the radio, then ordered his copilot to swing him round to the next target on the list and took his oxygen mask off to allow himself a sip of cold coffee. It was going to be a long night.
--*--
Colonel Aguilar Flores, 101st Airborne, gritted his teeth as the V-hawk descended. Even through his Hellfire armour he could hear the blaring music – a rhythmic, pounding bass line that put a man’s blood up like nothing else. The new musical trends sure were useful at least in this sense.
The aircraft levelled out and the underhatch opened up, letting in a chill wind as the craft blazed through the night. Harnesses automatically disengaged and Flores jumped, along with his command squad, into the chill of the night. There was a slight bump as his armour’s shock absorbers did their work of protecting him from the thousand-foot drop, then he looked over the ruins, his command squad about him. The first wave – some 2,000 soldiers of the 101st Airborne – seemed to have landed with little issue. Around him were scattered the remains of concrete and brick structures, recently taken out by the orbital bombardment. There were no signs of movement or even any life apart from blast shadows burnt onto the walls and charcoaled corpses.
They spent the next half an hour casually setting up a perimeter, vertihawk recon establishing that the lower city - the area of Kansas City outside the walls of the Brotherhood’s fortified district - had weathered the bombardment, with units in the outlying barracks of Brotherhood Militia even aligning with US troops, having slaughtered their Brotherhood overseers at a prearranged signal. CIA bullshit, Flores thought when he heard the news. We could have won without killing them in their beds. Would have been cleaner.
It was then that the bunker doors located throughout the area opened. Breaching teams fell back in confusion and terror all around the citadel as squads of Brotherhood soldiers began a fierce counter-attack, spearheaded by giant robotic creatures the size of trucks, each with six legs that they crawled on like insects high above the ground. The Brotherhood soldiers accompanying them, all in their bat-helmed power armour that mocked the T-72 suits of US forces, stood up to the monsters’ knees, giving off covering fire for the creatures with their plasma rifles, stripped-down P94 designs with added pistol grips, stocks and scopes.
Aguilar took a breath of disbelief a moment before he opened up a frantic burst of plasma fire. The monster’s armour was scored, but not pierced, and it replied with a volley from the two autocannons located in its doglike snout. Power-armoured soldiers ran to find cover, some being hit directly. Aguilar saw T-90 armour give way with casual ease, men’s whole torsoes disintegrating as their viscera flew out across the ground. He received a priority message telling that the Brotherhood airbase with its Hellion fighters and vertibirds had been overrun by US forces. Thank heaven for small mercies, he grimly mused, and gritted his teeth as he prepared to fight for his life.
==*==
1400 CST, 4 March 2332
Seven Sisters, Texas
Sergeant Royez looked south with a steely look and sighed as he looked over the approach to Seven Sisters, a small town – little more than a dot on a road map, truth be told – on the leading edge of the NCR advance. A few cottages clinging to a roadside – not even fully paved in places -- stood before him, with outlying farmhouses scattered around. The plan, so far as Royez knew, was simple - push the Enclave back into the sea at Corpus Christi, then slam down the door on their forces in the south. Two Enclave corps formations, one of their elite Marine groups amongst them, would be annihilated, just like that. He’d heard talk on the radio as well that Waco had fallen to NCR troops, cutting their formations at Houston and Dallas off from each other too. Defeat in detail seemed just around the corner.
But still .. he had a sense of unease. In his experience fighting the Enclave, he’d learned that it was never so dangerous as when it seemed things were going well.
The APC was going poorly, and he was fitfully waiting for a proper NCR mechanic to come up and service it – it had been days already since the engine had started showing problems, but the higher-ups had just made noises about supplies being tight. The old depots here had been destroyed or stripped bare by the Enclave, and while the convoys were pretty safe from aerial attack on account of the contested skies the bastards liked to hit ‘em with their artillery pieces. Their own guns were far more precise than the NCR’s pieces, they used some kind of satellite guidance system – or so he’d heard at any rate. It was sometimes hard to tell fact from fiction when it came to the Enclave.
They’d been at the vanguard of this opp since it had began. The PA forces were the strong right arm of the NCR Army, and his team had done pretty well of it. They hadn’t encountered Enclave forces since the fighting at San Antonio though, just their friends from over the sea. Soldiers in olive-green who didn’t speak English but their own, harsh language – Germans. That a world existed outside North America had been an academic reality at best for the NCR’s people for many decades. Royez still remembered the taunts he’d gotten at middle school for not being from the “Core Region”. Would staying in Baja have been better? Still, it was the poorest state in the NCR for a reason, and papa had no real other options.
Of course, the very term itself varied based on who you asked. Ask a Phoenixer and the Core was California; ask a Redding gold miner and the Core was Socal; ask an Angeleno and the Core was Shady Sands; ask a man from Shady and the Core was Whitney Heights. “New California” was a new official term being introduced, he’d heard in the paper, but any sensible guy just said “Cali”. But still, at any rate – Royez fought to get his train of thought back in order – the presence of troops from Europe fighting alongside the Enclave was something he’d never seen before. They still fought and died like any other soldier though. That was the deal. But still, the lack of Enclave troops in this area worried Royez. He hadn’t seen an actual eye-guy in weeks, so they were obviously holding back their main troops, waiting for something, preparing some kind of plan. Still, that was above his pay grade. He had his orders, and they were to take this little hamlet.
He sat back and gritted his teeth. Something was wrong here, but he wasn’t sure what. He kept a close eye as he took point, leading his squad in the approach to the town. The place had already been cleared of civilians by the Enclave – nothing but their auxiliary soldiers there. Every building had been turned into a firing position – windows blocked except for firing slits, sandbagged entrances, a tank and several APCs placed between them to provide fire support. He saw the telltale signs of disturbed earth on the obvious approaches - mines.
He fired his LAER out and took out one of the mines, motioning the men under him to do the same. With their APC providing suppressive fire, they were able to make good progress, until-
One of the enemy tanks, marked with their iron cross symbol, lashed out with an energy weapon, some kind of large-scale Tesla gun. Lightning danced over the APC as the beam’s main force hit one of the tires, melting it completely, the glass of the headlights shattering as the electric filaments shorted out. The APC listed to one side, but kept on firing its autocannon, switching its target to the enemy vehicle, but with a noted decrease in speed of fire. The autoloader electronics must have been fried.
These aren’t Enclave tanks, Royez mused. Energy weapons fire – orange laser beams – and HMG rounds lanced out from the buildings – Royez had the squad’s Gauss gunner open up, firing his single shots through the walls of the nearest strongpoint in an effort to suppress them, while the anti-armour man fired his one-shot Cazador missile launcher, named for its powerful sting, at the Tesla tank’s turret. The capacitors banked within it went up in a blast that sent the vehicle’s turret flying into the air. Royez signalled his men to move forward and storm the enemy firing point.
Half a klick behind them, the auto-mortar that was supporting the assault opened up, releasing a 4-round burst that sent roof-tiles flying as it opened up the roof the enemy were sheltering under. Royez led his men forward on a run, leaning forward to break down the adobe wall with the weight of his armour. It crumbled before him – but the enemy were already fleeing. Royez took one more step – and crashed down into a pit. The bastards had dug away the floor and put the boards back up. Clever.
He hauled himself up with a grunt of frustration and sent a hail of shots forward, power-armoured troops fanning out behind him to cover all the rooms of the house. He could see the enemy now – young men like his own boys, faces gritted in a mix of fear and determination, rapidly shifting to fear. They threw their hands up and dropped their weapons.
Royez took call – two soldiers taken out by stray heavy-weapon rounds, another squad of the three that had converged on this place had lost five to an ambush involving IEDs. The op had lasted an hour in total. He sighed. Every little farmstead and village they encountered was fortified by the Enclave – no big defensive lines, just a mass of skirmishes that were draining the NCR’s momentum and slowing its troops down.
==*==
1000 CST, 4 March 2332
Carrizo Springs, Texas
Several dozen miles away, just to the south of another small town called Carrizo Springs, Sergeant Jim Fields looked over the scene as he loaded another ECP into his laser RCW. Broken shells of Mexican tanks and other vehicles were still rusting on the field, killed by Enclave firepower, as the squad warily advanced under cover of the moving Cougar MBTs and Bobcat AT vehicles towards the slowly rising hill that housed what had once been a Mexican command post but had now evidently been made into an Enclave one.
Approximately two-thirds of a klick in radius and 200 metres in height, it would be nothing remarkable if not for the flat expanse of scrubland all around. A dried up creekbed to its right and a pond to its left meant that a serious assault was only possible from the north. Bushes and a scattering of trees covered the hill, providing no small amount of cover – Fields was worried about what may be concealed there. Even here, warily creeping through the tall grass and scrub, taking positions, he felt uncomfortable. Then, the enemy showed themselves.
Fire came from the tall grass around the hill and on its slope, assault rifle bursts from troops lying prone or hunched over to hide their presence. Light machine guns opened fire from concealed positions, and Fields rapidly led his squad to safety behind the remains of a Mexican truck. Mortars opened up, and the Bobcats and Cougars lashed out in reply. They made little impact. Laser cannons were a dream come true for penetrating Enclave armour, but when they hit anything else they made an explosion barely comparable to a hand grenade, with none of the shrapnel.
Something was odd though. Since when had the Enclave used assault rifles? Even the light units he’d fought at San Antonio used lasers. No matter. He kept up the advance, leading his men to sprint from cover to cover, opening up with laser fire whenever he saw a glimpse of movement. The grass was too wet to catch light, but every so often they heard a cry of pain or the thud of a falling body. That was when he saw moving faces through the grass, approaching. The enemy were almost on top of them!
That was when he heard the war cry, spoken in an accent he’d never heard before.
“King and Country lads, King and Country! Go get the bastards!”
They charged forwards through the grass, carrying bullpup assault rifles with bayonets on the ends of them. They were dressed in beige khakis somewhat like NCR desert tan, the leader of the group wearing a beret while the others wore basic pre-War combat helmets. The look on their faces was a snarl of pure ferocity and the advancing NCR men gave way, making a fighting retreat with bursts of laser fire to a new defensive line.
One of their support weapons on the hillslope opened up with a series of loud barks unlike the rattling of their machine guns. It sure isn’t firing normal bullets, Fields thought, and his suspicions were confirmed when it hit Jacobs, one of the men under him. The man’s whole chest and torso opened up as the rounds detonated on impact, each hit blowing fist-size chunks out of the man. He fought the urge to retch and directed Cassie with his hand to open fire on the enemy position with her Sequoia. She fired and the gun, whatever it was, stopped firing. The enemy were moving their machine guns to new position as sporadic auto-mortar fire started to target them, giving the NCR troops a breather. They advanced once more.
Meanwhile the enemy kept pressing on, firing short ranged bursts of rifle fire as they closed in with their bayonets. And up on the hilltop – Fields could see Enclave powered troops in their desert camo pattern, just a squad or so, hanging back. Where the hell are B and C platoons?!
The battalion auto-mortars opened up at their position two or so klicks away, gunners loading in the four-round clips that made them so effective. Explosions struck amongst the enemy squads, taking down a fair few and scything down the grass they were using for cover. The SAW troopers kept on firing, providing covering fire with their duo-RCWs and multiLAERs against the foe. They were making good progress, until -
One of the Old World roaches up on the hilltops fired one of their nuclear launchers - fucking glowie! - hitting the company command squad. The CPT went up in a ball of nuclear fire, and panic spread on the radio net, shortly before another micro-nuclear round annihilated the LT and platoon sergeant. Enclave must be tracing our radio transmissions, he guessed. Or they just got lucky. Either way, the situation was FUBAR. The greater part of the battalion - including the new PA company - was pushing southwest to the Rio Grande. Those folks were dealing with their own issues and couldn’t spare anything. He was on his own now.
Fields looked up. The angle was all wrong for Gauss or laser fire, and that meant-
Fuck. Power armour was something the NCR had learned from bitter experience at Navarro and Helios One was best engaged at range. At range, they were essentially just tougher infantrymen. At close quarters - very few who got into close quarters combat with powered troops ever lived to tell the tale, let alone win.
But at range, Fields thought, that rad-brain of theirs can just pick us off with that fucking nuke launcher while we can’t=
The nuke launcher fired off again, sending a hit just to the right of a Cougar tank. The hit was enough to knock the vehicle on its side and blow the turret capacitors, black smoke leaking out as fire burst from hatches blasted open by the explosion. The foreign troops had shifted to holding their ground, turning the craters churned up by the auto-mortar fire into new firing positions, keeping their MGs firing up.
Fields took a deep breath and looked at the ground, seeing the fallen body of one of the enemy sergeants. He had a patch on his armour’s shoulder pad of a blue banner with a pattern of red and white crosses forming an elongated eight-pointed star, corner to corner. It reminded him vaguely of something but he couldn’t tell what. Enough time looking at scenery. He could see the enemy’s APCs now - four-wheel drive trucks, heavy machine guns mounted on top, V-shaped hulls - and hear the loud banter of their troops.
“All in a day’s work, mate!”
“They don’t like it up ‘em, don’t they?”
“Good show, lads, good show! Yanks love their fancy tech, but we can sure show ‘em how real scrappers fight!”
That last was from what was clearly an officer – Fields had Cassie take him out. Her Sequoia made its camera-unspooling sound, and then there was a sharp crack of displaced air as the hypervelocity projectile hit the enemy officer square in the chest, leaving a trail of blood and viscera behind as it flew out the other side of him and knocked a hole in one of the enemy APCs’ windscreens.
The Bobcats and Cougars opened up again, this time focusing on the enemy vehicles – they were a lot more effective against that than their infantry positions. One after one they went up in spectacular blasts, hydrogen fuel cells blowing with great balls of fire. For a
There was only one option. Fields hurriedly ordered the auto-mortars to open up all at once at the Enclave hilltop position. They fired up, churning up the ground. Nothing could have survived that. There was a hole in the foreign lines, and Fields pushed his men through it, firing off short bursts of suppressive laser fire at any enemy that dared show his face. He was dimly aware that B platoon was pushing through the breach he’d made, holding it open, while A and C platoons were keeping up the flanks.
They reached the top of the hill, and -
Fuck. Mother of God.
Among the dead and dying Enclave troops in their battered power armour, three enemies remained – armour reasonably intact, alert, carrying their laser assault rifles with deadly intent. Fuck
Just then a pair of NCR vertibirds swept down from the north, opening up on the foreign troops below. The Enclave soldiers – outnumbered and surrounded, almost all their squad dead, their allies overwhelmed – fell to their knees and dropped their weapons, raising up their hands before getting out of their armour. For all their toughness, they were men and not machines inside. It was hard to believe that but … maybe that meant they could be beaten. Maybe.
The fighting kept on for a few minutes after that, but despite the loss of one of the vertibirds to a lucky missile hit, NCR victory was already guaranteed.
Fields looked down from the hilltop, counted the cost. Almost a third of the company had been lost in this action. All in one measly little skirmish, to take out one Enclave powered squad holed up on a hilltop outside the town. And that didn’t count the Cougars lost, the Bobcats, that Vertibird
He took a deep breath. Can we really keep this up against these fucking Delilahs?
As it turned out, there was something more valuable than a hilltop captured that day. The town had been a regimental command post before Enclave forces had largely retreated south of the river, and though everything of strategic importance had been taken with that, one thing had been forgotten. Opening up the crates, Fields laid his hand on one of the first Enclave regimental banners captured by the NCR.
The thing even had one of their E-symbols on it – that was very rare these days, Fields had no clue who they were trying to fool – and Simmons, the SAW gunner from Redding with his duo-RCW, spat on it. They drank some beer the Enclave troops had stashed to cool down and sent the POWs west.
Under a tree on the hilltop, the perimeter secured and the foreign troops either captured or in flight, Fields took off his helmet to breathe unfiltered air, drops of his sweat falling to the ground in the mid-afternoon sun. Cassie came by to him, smiling.
“That was a hard-won fight,” she said. “Tough work.”
“Hey, at least you didn’t get hurt,” Fields replied, taking another deep breath.
“I … I think I may have broken a nail,” Cassie chuckled, and he laughed along with her. Must be the drink that’s making me do this.
“I think that’s an occupational hazard in the army. You’ll have to go to the infirmary about that. So much paperwork!”
Cassie laughed a series of deep guffaws, and turned her face to him, an altogether more serious look in her eyes.
“You led us to victory today, Jim,” she said with a smirk. “I think I know a way we can celebrate tonight.”
He knew very well what she meant. To hell with fraternisation regs, Fields mused. To hell with getting her pregnant, to hell that we’re not- I need her and she needs me. Those are the facts of it.
“I’d be very glad to celebrate with you,” he smirked back and leaned down to her face. With a glad smile, he pulled her face close and kissed her under the tree.
==*==
0630 CST, 6 March 2332
Reynosa, US Rio Grande Territory
Staff Sergeant Walker gritted his teeth in the old as the shrill sound of the alarm woke him up three hours before dawn. Verses from the hymns they had sung in the evening service before kept ringing through his head, clear as they’d been back then. Where are you going soldiers, with banner, gun and sword? We’re marching west to Canaan, to battle for the Lord! They were being quartered in a pre-War hotel building in the city’s north - it had been child’s play for US Army engineers to restore power and water supplies, then tear out filthy double beds with king-sized mattresses rotted away, to replace them with standard-issue foldable field cots, remove keycard-locked doors for ease of entry and exit, then turn the hotel restaurant into a mess hall and replace all the facilities intended to entertain and comfort tourists with housing for troops. What captain leads your armies against the rebel coast? The Mighty One of Israel, His name is Lord of Hosts! There was even a restaurant that served Mexican-style food across the street, Walker recalled with a smile. When Canaan's hosts are scattered And all her walls lie flat What follows next in order? The Lord will see to that! He liked this place, truth be told. It was amazing what even a few days of good food, good sleep, and good beer could do for a soldier’s morale. When half the world is Freedom’s, then all the world’s our own! The locals even seemed non-hostile, if wary.
Last night’s sleep had not been easy though. Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the Cross of Jesus going on before. The enemy’s detachment heading along the coast had pushed the line south from Raymondville to Santa Rosa, fighting in every farm and town and hamlet all through the night, against the National Guard and allied units that had battled like lions to slow down the onward push of their powered infantry. Christ the Royal Master leads against the foe; forward into battle see His banners go! He had slept fitfully, dreaming when he wasn’t kept awake by the roars of artillery fire of Arlene. Seeing her, touching her, kissing her, loving-
He didn’t want to think about that right now. He thought he could see the shape of the enemy strategy manifesting itself – separate the Marines at Corpus Christi from the army units across the Rio Grande, defeat them all in detail. Make him a soldier, heed now the call! Clever, but devising a plan to deal with that was above his pay grade. Granite, and under him Curling, already had that sorted, he knew. Help win the victory, He died to save us all! It was just his job to help implement the details. Do whatever you can do, and the Lord will see you through. The appointed day for the counter-attack had come and there was no time to delay. He reached for the staywake chems at his bedside and injected them, checking the date and time on his Army digital watch. 06:30, the 5th of March. His own vitals seemed to be okay.
He looked over the others – Ray, Tyler, Michaels with the scar, Young, or “teach” as most of the squad called him, Rita with her midnight-black locks and honey-coloured skin. All there, all present. They got out of their sleeping bags, injected the staywake, and walked to the temporary armoury - what had been the hotel’s underground car park.
Ray was idly singing as they went through the hotel halls, some old Southern song that had acquired new lyrics in these days.
“’Ole Autumn was the President, ‘ole Autumn was no fool,
‘Ole Autumn rode a big white hoss and that Tandi rode a mule,
So lay ten dollars down, or twenty if ya choose,
That I can whip the hide off the rebel that stole our Abner’s shoes …”
The man did have a good singing voice, Walker had to admit. Give him a recording studio and he’ll be a sensation. He climbed into his already-opened armour, felt the familiar feel of it lock around himself as it’s sensors recognised his presence. He took up his Peacemaker, taking a moment to enjoy the familiar hum and feel of it in his, and maglocked it to his waist along with his power helmet. No US soldier had any valid reason not to show his face on base when it wasn’t under attack; they’d put on their helms in the APC en route to the fight.
Walker took a deep breath within his men, feeling the worry in his squad’s faces. He had a feeling the coming days would be his toughest yet.
