The Kid
Camp Forlorn Hope had an appropriate name; that much Dr. Alex Richards- or Major Alex Richards, depending on which title you preferred- had to admit. The long-vanished United States Army, protectors of a pre-War empire called the United States of America, had been big on titles, and the post-War New California Republic Army was no different. Regardless, Richards knew that the camp he was stationed at, high in the rugged hills overlooking the Colorado River, had been named by someone who either known exactly what would happen to this front-line base, or otherwise had a sick sense of humor.
Either way, the name was all too fitting.
The camp had originally been established so Major Polatli's 4th Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division could have a dedicated forward position from which to send out patrols and monitor and intercept attempts by Caesar's Legion to cross the Colorado River. Initially, it had gone to plan, with 4th Battalion moving to the designated site and building the camp over a couple days and improving it in subsequent weeks.
But then, in September 2281, the Legion had stormed up from Cottonwood Cove, a small town right on the banks of the Colorado that had once been a resort and camping town before the Great War in 2077. They took that town so quickly, the single company defending the next settlement up, the town of Nelson, had barely gotten a heads-up from Ranger Station Echo before the Legion slammed into it. Everyone at Camp Forlorn Hope got ready, expecting to be next.
Instead, the Legion sat there and waited. Just as suddenly as their rampaging advance had started, it had stopped. They were believed responsible for the nuclear radiation that had suddenly spread out within Camp Searchlight to the southwest, poisoning the town, but nobody had made it into the town and back out to say for sure. Besides, Camp Forlorn Hope wound up with its own problems soon after the Legion took Nelson.
There was a saying before the War: "When there's a knife at your belly, you keep your hands at your side." What it meant in this case was, with Caesar's Legion encamped at two towns to the south, one of them right on their doorstep, the garrison at Forlorn Hope had no prospect of fulfilling its original objective. The would-be besiegers became the besieged, and life in Forlorn Hope settled into a grim routine of deprivation, fatigue, injury and death.
The NCR Army as a whole did not seem to understand what had happened. Orders still came down informing Forlorn Hope that interdiction of Legion patrols was expected, that the original orders for 4th Battalion had to be carried out. The only real sign that anybody up top knew things had changed came in the form of repeated orders to patrol, patrol, patrol to find out what kind of Legion force was holding Nelson, and then to wait and see what would happen next. Action was demanded and yet simultaneously forbidden. It was maddening.
All the more so for Alex Richards, as the chief of Camp Forlorn Hope's Combat Surgical Hospital, because he got the dubious honor of patching up one wounded soldier after another. Every time someone got shot, stabbed, burned, or harmed in any way, they were brought to Richards' medical tent and he and a few other medics did what they could. Some days, they had to perform amputations, and sometimes there wasn't enough anesthetic. Sometimes they had to dig another grave out back. Sometimes, they were able to manage to completely save the patient, in which case he or she was back on the lines soon enough to repeat the process all over again.
It was like a nightmare that never ended, one that went on day and night until Richards could not distinguish between what he saw when he was awake versus what he saw when he was asleep. And that was when he even managed to sleep. The Legionnaires loved to sneak a man or two close to the perimeter without being seen, throw a grenade or two in over the sandbags and the barbed wire, and disappear again while the whole base stood to amidst the explosions, every man and woman from the officers down grabbing their weapons and running to defensive positions. Sometimes the Legion inflicted casualties that way. More often they just scared the hell out of everybody, and made it that much harder for their opponents to even get decent sleep.
Richards had been with the Army for years. He remembered the First Battle of Hoover Dam- everybody and his cousin knew that there was going to be a second one before 2282 was over- and he remembered the flood of wounded troopers and Rangers that had resulted from it. They had lost so many men and women. For every soldier Richards and his colleagues in the Army Medical Corps managed to save, they seemed to lose five, or ten, and at least as many would suffer injuries that, while they survived them, would put them out of a combat unit and sometimes, clear out of the Army.
For some people, then and now, that was a dream come true. For others, grim as the situation was on the lines, it was the exact opposite. Some troopers begged to be sent away from the lines. Others begged to stay. Even with a three-week basic training program for enlisted soldiers and two-thirds of the troopers being conscripts, you had those men and women who seemed to run towards the danger as fast as they could, who wanted to be out there, doing what they could.
Most of them didn't last very long.
The worst was the kids. You had these boys, some of them from all the way back on the coast in California, who either volunteered out of boredom or for a steady paycheck, or to stay out of legal trouble they'd gotten themselves into. Even more were conscripts, but whoever they were, they were young and naïve and had hardly the slightest idea of what Caesar's Legion was or why they should be afraid of it.
They would show up on the lines with their issued gear bags and Service Rifles, barely having the slightest idea of how to march or shoot or follow a chain of command. They didn't know about sniper fire, and the need to keep your damn head down and move around the camp with one eye always turned towards the perimeter- especially towards Nelson. They would go out on patrol and not come back, because they eagerly engaged the first Legionaries they ran into, intent on proving all the pessimists and doubters wrong.
Within the base, morale was right at the bottom. Or, if it hadn't found the bottom yet, Richards shuddered to think of what that was gonna look like. There was not enough food, not enough clean water, not enough ammunition, not enough medical supplies, and there were just not enough troopers. Major Polatli did what he could to communicate the situation and the needs of the base to higher-ups at Camp Golf, at Camp McCarran, and Hoover Dam, but it never seemed to get through in the way it needed to.
Somehow, day after day, Camp Forlorn Hope's garrison held on. The Legion would rush the perimeter occasionally, just send a dozen or two dozen guys running straight for the base out of nowhere. Neither Richards nor any of the other officers at Forlorn Hope had been able to figure out of that was the Legion probing for weaknesses, keeping their enemy on their toes, or if they were trying to overrun the base and wanted to see if it would work. Either way, those charges were probably the most terrifying thing of all. Every time all those Legionnaries bull-rushed the perimeter like that, you didn't know if the end was finally here, or what.
The Legion were cold, hard bastards, but the intel said that these days, that was because they'd been raised from birth to be. With the years it now had behind it, an increasing number of soldiers in the Legion had never known any other life, and were completely committed to doing things Caesar's way. Whether you were assimilated as a child or adult, or whether you were born into the Legion, you spent months, years training before they ever sent you to the front lines.
And the NCR Army gave its enlisted personnel three weeks.
It was madness. The new troopers would show up here barely knowing anything. The squad leaders, platoon sergeants, platoon leaders and company commanders had to pretty much do all the training themselves. They had to teach the new troopers how to fight and stay alive, all the while planning and leading patrols and guarding the base perimeter, and fighting to get another group of brahmin caravan through with supplies.
The men and women here weren't cowards. At least a third of them had volunteered for service, and some had volunteered for front-line duty. Even the conscripts weren't entirely unwilling to fight. It was better to be with the NCR than with the Legion; few on this side of the Colorado doubted that. But when it felt like the NCR didn't care about you, didn't much give a shit whether you lived or died and the chance to even go out and simply attack the enemy to the south was denied you, it was hard to get very fired up about anything.
Richards remembered a time, years ago, when he'd joined the Army to help people and do the right thing. He'd imagined he would travel the wasteland, sewing up handsome men with piercing eyes and deep, sensitive souls. Back then, he had believed that he would be able to make right everyone who was brought to him for treatment. He had believed that he could win every battle he fought in surgery- every one.
It was amazing how naïve he had been at the time.
There seemed to just be no end to it. Patrols would go out, and as regularly as the sun coming up in the morning, they would come back with troopers wounded, or dead. As demoralized as these men and women were, Richards had yet to hear of an instance when a patrol had deliberately left somebody behind. Even if they did, the next patrol would move up their departure schedule and go and get them- or what was left of them. When the shouts of "Doc! Doc!" and "Medic! I need a medic over here!" went up as a patrol came back or a Legion assault was barely repulsed or a grenade got somebody as a Legionnaire hurled it into the camp, Richards never seemed to miss the looks in the eyes of the troopers.
Running up to him in twos and fours, carrying boys and girls in every condition imaginable on stretchers, doors, pieces of corrugated steel or just carried by hand, the troopers would beg with Richards. They would offer him a month's pay, a year's, their rank, their few personal possessions, if only he would save this man, that woman. That father who had joined so his kids and wife wouldn't have to live in fear of slavers or Fiends or Legionaries. That son who volunteered so his parents would have one less mouth to feed on their struggling farm. That sister who heard her draft number was going to get picked, and volunteered first because there was no sense putting off what was gonna happen anyway.
Worst of all were the siblings, the cousins. Anytime family managed to get to serve together, it boosted their morale and that of the troopers around them, but it made it that much worse when one of them fell, and for that reason the Army tried hard to keep family from being placed in the same units. Even so, it happened now and then. But out here, brothers and sisters were made by more than just biology. Family bonds came from more than just blood. Many a trooper would plead with Richards as they brought some shot, stabbed, cut or burned trooper into his CSH, beg that he save them, that he make it right, that they would give him anything. It was as if he was being asked to save their brother, their sister, their daughter, their son.
Sometimes, Richards managed to. But it seemed like the only ones he really remembered were the ones who he let down. The ones who died from infection, from blood loss, from trauma, from shock. The ones who just didn't make it to the tent in time. It was them that Richards seemed to see the most when he closed his eyes. Not just the ones he failed to save, but the ones with whom there had been no chance in the first place.
Yet though he was overworked, overstressed, undersupplied and understaffed, Richards had never seriously thought of quitting. The NCR Army had never once even hinted that another doctor, especially one with his qualifications, experience, and time in service was coming this way. They'd have to find somebody in the event that Richards took a discharge when his tour ended or if he deserted, but neither one was something Richards could imagine himself doing. As bad off as these troopers were… if he left them now, they would be even worse off. And if he left them now, he'd never be able to live with himself. He'd feel like he was abandoning them.
Richards hated the Army more days than not, it seemed like, and he had had a bellyful of war like everybody else at Camp Forlorn Hope. A bellyful of war, and then some. But at the same time, he still felt a lingering sense of the reason he'd joined up in the first place. Help the good people serving in the Army, meet some handsome guy, lend a hand where he could and all that.
Was it ever so simple? And what was he doing at this damned base, working miracles on a daily basis just so the troopers he worked on could go out and get shot and stabbed and burned and blown up some more? What the hell was he doing here if his goal was to help people? The Army would never be able to continue on if Richards, and the others they had like him, just said "Fuck you, I quit" and walked, whether they had discharge papers or not. Oh, sure, they could shoot them for desertion and make a big show of doing so… but they'd still lose their doctors, either way. If every combat medic, every military surgeon and every military doctor, just up and left, the years-long NCR-Legion War would end in a day.
But it wouldn't end because the Legion would respect that moral choice and just let the NCR be. Oh, no. If the Army Medical Corps quit en masse one day, Caesar himself would order the largest offensive ever launched by the Legion the minute he heard of it.
And why? Simple. Caesar did not care how his enemies felt about war. He didn't care if you were tired of seeing people die, sick to death of healing people who then went right back to the front lines. Caesar did not care if you were just plain sick of war, of the blood, the death, the endless poetry.
What he did care about was winning. Taking more ground, forcing another town into the Legion as recruits and slaves. The generations of children who would be lost, irreversibly destroyed as the Legion took away and killed their families and neighbors and made them into future "breeders" if they were girls or future Legionaries if they were boys, was horrifying to think about all by itself. What was happening to people in Arizona, in New Mexico, in Colorado and Utah, as the Legion expanded and absorbed more people and land into itself? What would happen to everyone there? What would happen to them?
It was questions like that- questions you didn't know the answer to, or didn't want the answer to- that made Richards stay. "What would happen to them?" was the phrase that came up every time Richards thought of leaving the Army, leaving the troopers. He didn't know what would happen to the boys and girls in khaki if he left the behind, but he didn't want to find out. Not as long as there was a war on. But even if there wasn't, Richards knew he would probably stay.
It sure would be nice to find out what it would be like to serve in the Army in peace.
XX
There was one thing about Camp Forlorn Hope that wasn't so bad, though. Well, two, actually. For one, a Courier had come by and started lending a hand around the base a few times. The Courier was like a ghost, here one minute, gone the next, accompanied by an ex-NCR sniper with a scoped rifle and a hard stare. Camp Forlorn Hope still had strong connotations of "You're screwed", and with good reason, but the Courier's interference with Legion raiding parties had enabled more supply convoys to get through in the past weeks. Added casualties on the Legion side gave them more to think about and keep busy with, leaving less free time to go and harass Camp Forlorn Hope. If that Courier showed up some more and lent a hand in a big way to get the garrison's numbers up and its condition improved, Richards figured there was a chance, at least a chance, that the NCR could pull this thing off. Maybe it was all a fantasy, but it was nice to think about.
The other was Private Zack Connors. He was this baby-faced lean blond kid who'd shown up at Forlorn Hope a month or so back with a handful of others. He claimed to be from Arizona, said that he had run away at the insistence of his brothers and father just as the Legion began to overrun their town. He said that it was his goal to free Arizona from the Legion, to repay the Legion a thousand times for what they'd done to him.
The story went that Zack Connors had run, walked, crawled, hiked for well over a hundred miles until he made it to the Colorado, Legion slavers and raiders on his tail all the way. He claimed to have made it to the banks, swam across with nothing but the ragged clothes on his back, and then hiked it the rest of the way to Hoover Dam where he got shot in the ass by a patrol that came up behind him while he was about to approach the sentries. From there, he was taken to McCarran and patched up, and afterwards volunteered for service in the Army, hungry for a chance at revenge.
Of course, Private Connors was such a teller of tall tales, half the battalion was sure he was making all of it up. It seemed like the kid changed the story every time you asked him if he was telling the truth or not. If you asked, sometimes he'd stick to it and say that yep, that was it, sure enough. But other times, he'd laugh and say no, he was actually from Redding, California, and his parents owned a ranch there. Sometimes he had four older brothers, sometimes he had eight. Other times he was one of the older siblings, amidst a veritable sea of cousins and brothers, boys and girls, all of them workers, farmers, prospectors and fighters.
The only consistency was that, whoever they were and wherever they were, Zack Connors thought highly of his family. He hated the Legion, and had a sense of humor that even living here for more than a month couldn't seem to suppress. This was a dangerous place to be funny, but Connors found a way to make it work. He would joke about the Legion, make up stories about them in which he mocked them relentlessly, inventively, right up to the mighty Caesar himself.
Connors would laugh it off every time a Legion marksman almost nailed him. He was cool under fire, and had been put up for the Star of Sierra Madre twice for his bravery when the Legion rushed men at the camp perimeter. He had listened and obeyed when he first turned up, respected the veterans to a hilt, and made fun of everybody. He had been in several fistfights, gotten promoted and busted and promoted and busted again, been thrown in the stockade, and made even the grim-faced Major Polatli and the ever-professional Technical Sergeant Reyes laugh with his impish grin and his jokes and tall tales.
And to top it off, Connors was incredibly good with his hands. There wasn't a weapon he didn't know how to clean and fire and repair like an expert. He taught men and women twice his age- which nobody was exactly sure of, although he claimed to be seventeen- how to fire their Service Rifles, how to fix a bayonet, clear a jam. Once, he had been called in to the headquarters tent and ordered to fix a misfiring diesel-powered generator, and had it working in fifteen minutes.
There was probably not a trooper on this base who was better-liked than he was.
Richards worried about him for just that reason. He had been lucky for a long time, by the standards around this place. He had not grown withdrawn, or bitter, or cynical, though Richards had seen him weeping, inconsolable, after an attack killed someone he knew and liked, or a buddy was brought back wounded and died on the operating table in Richards' tent. Losing a friend hit everybody hard, but rather than withdraw from it, become cold and hard to isolate himself and protect his emotions and his sanity, Zack Connors seemed to draw strength from embracing the emotional connection he felt with his fellow troopers.
He would cry over a fallen brother or sister, and it would seem as if he had finally lost it when he pulled off his helmet and ran his hands through his short-cut, messy blond hair and sat down wherever he was. But no sooner had he done that than you would see him up again, all his gear on, Service Rifle in his hands, scurrying from one sentry post to another and bringing them Fancy Lads Snack Cakes he'd gotten from God only knew where, or some Nuka-Cola he'd bought or outright filched off the last Crimson Caravan to pay this base a visit.
And always, always, he wanted to know how you were doing. His platoon sergeant would yell at him for talking too much, and he would say "Thanks for setting me straight, Sarge," and then come by the platoon sergeant's area and apologize for messing up, and offer some contraband snack or bottle caps as a peace gesture. He always seemed to know who the new guys were, and as much as his antics annoyed some of the older troopers, even they conceded that Zack Connors did a lot to integrate the new troopers into the garrison, to make them feel at home. Even if no one else around here really wanted to do that some days, Private Connors would do it like it was his job.
Connors was emerging as the mascot, the good-luck charm of 4th Battalion. As long as he was alive and unharmed, there was hope. He was annoying and charming, insubordinate and skilled, irritating and courageous. None of the blood, the death, the plain shitty living the men and women around here had to put up with, seemed to really get to Zack Connors. And though he kept his head down and never behaved stupidly when it counted, he seemed to relish every chance there was to take a shot at the enemy.
Alex Richards worried about Private Connors a lot. One of these days the brass were going to want the Camp Forlorn Hope garrison to take back Nelson, and when that happened, the trooper everybody called "The Kid" was almost definitely going to volunteer. He would put his hand up, say, "I'll go, send me," and that smile would be off his face and he'd be deadly serious, the way he always got when the prospect of hard action with the Legion came along and he got to see it coming.
And if it wasn't in the big attack, it could be a Legion sniper, an ambush on the next patrol Connors went out on. If it wasn't today, it could be tomorrow, or it could be the day after that. And as much as they would deny it if you asked them, the men and women on this base loved Zack Connors. They loved his jokes, his endless creativity in mocking the Legion and taking some of that terrible aura of fear out of them, puncturing Caesar's myth of invincibility. They loved how he knew their fear and shared it, knew their hardship and shared that too, and yet remained bright and happy and convinced that there was hope.
It wasn't anything that could happen while Connors was with Forlorn Hope that worried Richards. It was what could happen if one day, they didn't have him anymore. The garrison would deny it to a man if asked, but Richards knew they had gotten emotionally attached to the kid. They had pinned their hopes on him. They had made him their brother, their son, their mascot, their friend. Some of the troopers even had a theory that Connors was absolutely serious about his stories about Arizona, that he put the painful truth of his story in plain sight and then hid it as a joke. The theory held that Connors' love for the unit around him was derived from his love for his family, and, having lost that, he had hidden his pain in his sense of humor and decided to fight on and help the people around him anyway.
What would become of this place if they lost this kid? What would happen to morale then, bad as it was now?
XX
Alex Richards was passed out on his cot, thanking all that was holy in the world that things had quieted down over the last month. The Courier had come back and the Legion had paid the price for that, especially when the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, the best marksmen in the entire 1st Infantry Division, finished their business of whacking the Fiend leaders of Outer Vegas one by one and transferred from Camp McCarran to Camp Forlorn Hope.
Colonel James Hsu had finally broken through the seemingly-infinite radio and telegraph communications foul-ups and moved the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment to McCarran, meaning the garrison had, by this point, more than doubled in size. It went from housing one overworked and undermanned battalion to housing three, all of which were at full strength or close to it.
And there was talk that the 1st Ranger Division was getting the best of their men back from the campaign down in Baja California, and that they would be joining 1st Infantry in full to prepare for the coming second Legion assault on Hoover Dam.
Radio communications had actually gotten a whole lot easier, over the past weeks. The outlandish and terrifying stories of things like Legion-trained deathclaws and a Super Mutant army getting ready to help the Great Khans ally with the Legion and take revenge for Bitter Springs had ended. Radio reception was better, and Tech Sergeant Reyes had a newfound spring in her step as, up and down the Colorado, it seemed like the camps and stations were finally getting the supplies and the assistance they needed. Or, at the very least, more than they'd been getting before, which all too often had been absolutely nothing.
Yes, things were going better for Forlorn Hope, and the black humor that surrounded that crappy name had fallen away a bit. The meetings that Major Polatli convened with his staff and the battalion and company officers and NCOs were much less depressing than they had been, and Richards didn't feel like the damned undertaker reporting how many troopers he'd bagged and tagged this month as much as he used to. It used to be nobody had wanted to hear him talk at meetings, because then they'd get to hear the numbers, the awful numbers of the latest additions to the wounded and the dead. Now, it wasn't as bad and fatalities had dropped considerably.
With 1st Recon watching the hills around them and sneaking out of camp on patrols of their own, the average Legionnaire had no time to creep up to the camp perimeter and throw a grenade in. Legion snipers had not been heard of in weeks. They were either all dead, or had learned it was their turn to keep their fucking heads down. The troopers loved debating that one a lot, because either way, it was good news for them.
But although Richards had found it easier to smile lately, had found himself getting better rest and having to rush out with his semi-automatic pistol for a sudden defense of the base perimeter much less often, he was worried. Maybe it was part of his nature to be pessimistic. Maybe it was something he'd learned from being an NCR Army doctor- always think of downsides, of ways you can get handed more people to treat thanks to some officer's bright idea. Always be ready for it all to go wrong and the casualties to be rushed into your hospital tent.
It was something besides his usual doctor's pessimism, though. Richards was worried because this much improvement in the state of things meant that sooner or later the brass was gonna figure it out, and they were going to order an assault on Nelson.
There were other signs, even if Major Polatli was keeping any official talk on it strictly confined to himself and his fellow battalion commanders and company commanders. The infantry officers were all becoming quite focused on cleaning everything, checking gear, packing stuff up. Either a lot of men and women were preparing to move back to California, or they were preparing to attack.
Richards was still sleeping, thinking about that even as he dreamed, when someone shook his shoulder.
"Huh?" Richards said, his right hand instantly going to the 9mm pistol he wore on his right hip. "What?"
"Officers' meeting in ten minutes, sir," Staff Sergeant Lyman said, his tone carrying hints of apology for waking Richards up. "Major Polatli wants every officer there."
Fuck. "All right, thanks, Lyman," Richards grunted, rolling over and swinging his feet out. He had his combat boots on already. Even with the improvements lately, he tended to pretty much sleep in uniform. A quick visit to the field latrine, a shave with the hot water some supply troopers had managed to get going somehow, and Richards was off to the headquarters tent.
"Sir," the MPs guarding the entrance flap said, nodding. They, like everyone at Camp Forlorn Hope, were under strict orders not to salute any commissioned officers. Legion snipers loved to take out officers, and a salute rendered could be a death sentence, even now, for the man or woman you gave that courtesy to.
"Boys," Richards said, nodding back. He was in his thirties, and calling those men "boys" seemed a little ridiculous, but being a field-grade officer meant you were an official "old man" in the eyes of many of the common troopers, whether you were all that old or not.
XX
The meeting started just a minute after Richards sat down in one of the open folding chairs.
"People, this is it," Major Polatli said without preamble. "For months the men and women at this camp have been sitting here and taking it, except for some skirmishes on patrol and returning fire whenever they get the chance. Today, that all ends. We know where those Legion boys live, we have a hell of a lot more guns than they think, and I say it's time we head over there, free that town, and take those Legion sons of bitches out. We're sending four of our infantry companies, with Major Dhatri's boys and girls providing support. 1st Recon will advance first, but on the quiet, so they can be in position to open up and provide cover when elements of 4th and 2nd Battalions move forward."
Major Dhatri stepped up from his chair and turned around as he stood beside Major Polatli. "The strength estimates my snipers and spotters have given me on the garrison at Nelson are at minimum battalion strength. From what we've seen we figure two, maybe three companies. That's by our standards, not theirs, since we use different unit systems, but the numbers are the same. We outnumber them, I can guarantee that, and as well as we've done at making them keep their heads down in the past weeks, I can also guarantee they don't know how many troops we've moved in here. More important, the harassing sniper fire my troopers have been conducting over the past several days has made certain they haven't noticed our preparations. They'll see you coming and stand to inevitably, but my boys and girls will start picking them off and give them something else to worry about."
Tech Sergeant Reyes came up to the front next. She was now officially designated the S-6 for 4th Battalion and for Forlorn Hope, and was awaiting a battlefield commission to 2nd Lieutenant for her initiative in taking charge of and improving communications up and down the west bank of the Colorado. She was one of the youngest members of Polatli's staff, but carried herself confidently enough as she looked at all the officers and senior NCO's gathered in the headquarters tent.
"With the breakthroughs we've had recently in bugging the Legion's radios in Cottonwood Cove and thus cracking their codes, we've learned that the Legion has enough of a sense that something's up that they've ordered about two companies' worth of men moved across the river and up to Nelson. Thing is, that happened only twenty-four hours ago, and from the traffic we've been hearing, those elements have not linked up with the Nelson garrison yet. In fact, latest comm traffic on them indicates they are either about to cross to Cottonwood Cove, or just did. Either way, if we overrun Nelson and secure it on time, the reinforcements will be too late to be of any help to the Nelson garrison."
Over the next twenty minutes, Major Polatli briefed each of the participating company commanders on their role in the attack, then opened the floor to a limited number of pertinent questions. A few officers and noncoms asked about details, or requested clarification on something, but mostly everyone looked ready to get outside and get back to their units. Every single trooper in the base would be standing to for the attack. If you weren't going, you were providing covering fire, since some parts of Nelson were at long range for the Service Rifle as well as medium range for the scoped .308 rifles so popular in 1st Recon. If you weren't providing covering fire, you were watching the perimeter, every inch, just in case the Legion tried something or had, by coincidence, already put some attack into motion that the NCR's offensive failed to disrupt.
And if you weren't doing any of that, you were manning the radios, dispersing supplies last-minute, standing by for when the wounded and dead inevitably came back. That last one was Richards' responsibility, him and the handful of enlisted and officer medical staff he had in the CSH. Richards felt hope, felt almost a sense of savage joy at the idea of finally bringing the party to the Legion after months of living under the shadow of an ever-present, fanatical enemy.
But attacking meant fighting, and that meant troopers were going to be wounded. It meant some of them were going to die.
Even though he was not going, the combat medics in the assigned companies were, and though they were not, strictly speaking, part of Richards' staff, he felt a responsibility to them all the same.
It was 0300 when the meeting was dismissed, and the attack was set to commence at 0400, with the first elements of it beginning at 0350. Richards made his way out of the headquarters tent into the dark, giving his eyes a few minutes to adjust as he gathered supplies from the medical supply tent he had squeezed a cot for himself into. Gathering a couple bags' worth of Stimpaks, Med-X, bandages and Doctor's Bags, Richards headed out into the dark and silence of Forlorn Hope, accompanied by Staff Sergeant Lyman and Lieutenant Ward, the best two he had in his CSH unit. They made a stop at each company, each platoon, dropping off supplies to the medics and to the troopers. A small medical kit had been created for every trooper to carry, including a single Stimpak. It was hoped that with everybody having one on hand, it would save the medics some trouble and maybe even save a few lives.
As Richards reached 3rd Platoon of 2nd Company, he couldn't help but notice that there were no jokes, no pranks being pulled by The Kid. Private Zack Connors was sitting among the men and women in his squad, face drawn and tense, as his squad leader, Sergeant Cooper, spoke quietly to him and the others in 2nd Squad. Somebody asked him if he'd written any letters to any family, and Connors shook his head. His reply was quiet, but Richards heard it as he moved closer.
"The only people left who care if I live or die are right here with me."
Troopers reached for Connors, shook his hand, let him know they understood. He returned the gestures, nodding appreciatively.
Richards stopped at 2nd Squad, handed out the medical supplies he'd come to give.
"We're gonna make it, aren't we, sir?" a trooper asked. "I don't wanna die out here." That was Private Stone, just out of the stockade after being busted to E-1 and slapped with a field-grade non-judicial punishment for stealing medical supplies. In exchange for volunteering for reassignment to a company participating in the attack, and the promise of flawless conduct until the end of his enlistment next year, Stone had been released.
Richards started to say something, but Private Connors beat him to it.
"Aw, shit, Stone, you'll be fine. Them Legion turds're all a worse shot than you, anyway."
The men and women around Connors all laughed, too loud, and sergeants quickly barked them back into silence. But from the way some of them glanced appreciatively at Connors, Richards knew that The Kid had worked his magic again and consoled not only Stone, but everyone within earshot.
"Thanks for everything, Doc," 1st Lieutenant Nathan Finch said, coming over and patting Richards on the shoulder. "But with all due respect, I need you to get the fuck out of my company. We're running out of time and you got someplace to be." He looked at Richards from under his helmet and winked. "Sir."
Richards nodded. "Sure thing, Lieutenant. Give 'em hell for me."
"Hell of a thing for a medical officer to say, Major."
The troopers chuckled, and Richards just nodded to Finch and headed to the last companies he had to visit. After that, he made his way back to the CSH and ducked inside the tent. Inside, his enlisted and officer aides were all standing by. The smell of rubbing alcohol and sterilizing chemicals was quite strong, and every bed, every cot had been freshly cleaned in addition to every tool they could find. All this, done while Richards was getting some sleep.
The young faces of his staff, the young faces on the handful of already-occupied beds in one corner, all looked his way as Richards came in.
"So it's really happening, sir?" Sergeant Tomlinson asked, clutching a Doctor's Bag. "They're really going for it?"
Gunfire, a steady pop-pop-pop from distant .308 rifles, answered before Richards could. 1st Recon had gotten into position and was opening up. Richards didn't bother replying; his people all knew what was up. He just nodded in confirmation and started getting his own tools ready. They had stocked up on everything they needed, been brought loads of Med-X, Stimpaks, Super Stimpaks, scalpels, scissors, surgical tubing, Doctor's Bags, leather belts and tweezers by the Courier, who was, so Richards had heard, playing a special role in the assault.
Richards just prayed it would all be enough. Or better yet, that it wouldn't be needed.
5.56mm bullets tore into the night outside as the supporting companies on the line facing Nelson started shooting, a steady fusillade that seemed to have no end.
"COMPANIES," an officer shouted, "REPOOORRT!"
"2nd Company ready!"
"3rd Company ready!"
"1st Company ready!"
"5th Company Ready!"
"ON THE SIGNAL, COMPANIES WILL ADVANCE!"
Moments later, the whistle blew, followed by several others up and down the line on the south end of the base.
"GOOD LUCK, EVERYONE!" a youthful voice shouted, and Richards knew it was Connors, knew it was him bellowing that wish of good fortune. Somehow, Richards just knew the owner of that voice. It had to be him, was just what he would do at a moment like this. With a great, howling "Hurrah!" the troopers charged, and Richards stood there, frozen in place, listening to it all and praying for the impossible, for him and his staff to have absolutely nothing to do this morning.
XX
The attack had taken weeks to prepare for, was the result of months of fighting and hard work. But it was over inside of an hour. Word kept filtering back to Richards from the HQ tent that troopers were entering Nelson, that 2nd Company had flanked and overrun a group of Legionaries that had succeeded in pinning down 5th Company, that captured and crucified troopers were being rescued, that the Legion officer, Dead Sea, had been shot and killed by the Courier. The gunfire in the distance went on for some time, but eventually, it dwindled and then came to a stop. There was a brief silence, but the cheers that went up in the HQ tent told everybody else what they needed to know.
In the CSH, Richards allowed himself to smile gratefully as his medics cheered and clapped, and even the handful of sick and wounded privates on bedrest whooped and carried on. But the assault ending meant that only the first part of the day was over. Richards shouted them down suddenly, and said, "I want every bed cleared if you can walk. Sergeant Lyman, relocate every trooper we've got in here to the stockade, the barracks, I don't care. I want these beds cleared."
They all got real quiet then. Suddenly remembering what the attack had to mean, Richards' staff raced to carry out his orders. The wounded and sick who could walk got themselves out, and the rest were carried out. It was a timely move, because the first wounded came in on stretchers not five minutes later. Their stretcher-bearers were sweaty, exhausted from the long run uphill to the base, yet no sooner had they safely turned over their charges than they were racing back outside to get more.
"Y'all better brace yourselves!" a corporal shouted as he and a private hurried back out. "We overran the bastards but they hit 5th and 2nd Company hard!"
Richards wasted no time on talking about it, and neither did his staff. They immediately began treating the gunshot wounds, the machete cuts, the dog bites, the burns and scrapes and broken bones. Richards got his bonesaw and carried out the first of all too many amputations he carried out through the day, on a sergeant whose leg had been mangled in a melee battle with a Legion soldier.
News filtered back to him by word of mouth, bits and pieces of it making it through to Richards even as he worked and directed and advised his staff. The town had been taken, and all who were able to fight were taking positions and setting up land mines for the coming counterattack. Major Polatli had moved up one full company to reinforce Nelson. Lieutenant Finch had survived, but his company had advanced farther and faster than all the others and was thus the hardest hit. Three platoon leaders had fallen, four squad leaders, half a dozen fire team leaders, one company commander. Their names swirled around Richards; their faces flashed before his eyes. Those officers, those noncoms… he knew them all. He had seen them just this morning. There was no way that Captain Edwards was dead, Lieutenant King was dead. No way that First Sergeant Hendricks had bought it as he stormed a barracks with his men.
Someone was tugging at Richards' arm as he quickly cleaned blood off his hands, re-sterilized his tools. Richards ignored them at first; this tent was so crowded and busy, and he was so busy, they were gonna have to figure it out for themselves, whoever they were, unless it was damned serious. If they were a private asking for Richards to save their buddy, he was gonna have to kick them out so he and his staff could work.
But the tugging continued- increased, in fact- and Richards turned to see who it was. It was Sergeant Lyman.
"Sorry to interrupt, sir, but- we just had another man brought in from 2nd Company. He got knocked out, but… he wants to see you, sir. He asked for you."
Richards wordlessly followed Lyman as he led the veteran doctor through the busy, noisy medical tent, filled with the cries of wounded men and women, their moans and groans, and the steady chatter of medics as they worked, raced to save and heal everyone they could.
He was barely recognizable at first, the private in the corner. Bullets had punched through his body armor, and the holes were lined with red. His helmet was gone, and blood coated the whole left side of his face, running from a gash higher up on that side of his head. His uniform was battered and torn, the front plate of his body armor barely even holding itself together.
Richards' step faltered as he recognized that face, realized that with that much blood on him, on the cot, with just the wounds he could see, there might very well be nothing he could do. It couldn't have happened. His luck could not have run out just as victory was won, just as the odds for this perpetually-screwed unit really and truly began to turn.
But there was no doubt, from that blond hair and the tags sitting on his chest. Private Zack Connors had gotten hit at last.
Later, from Sergeant Cooper and Lieutenant Finch and some of the other men in 2nd Company, Richards would learn of what Connors had done, of the depth and detail of his courage. That he was up for the Star of Sierra Madre yet again. But right now, Richards went up to the bloodied, badly wounded boy and said, "I'm here, Connors."
The boy's eyes had shut again, but they fluttered open as he heard his name. He looked around, seemed to focus on Richards and recognize him. He struggled to hold out a hand, and Richards took it, trying not to focus on how slick with blood it was.
"Did we- do it, Doc?" Connors asked. "Take Nelson?"
"We did," Richards confirmed, and Sergeant Lyman nodded. "Nelson's ours again, Connors," the noncom said.
"No doubt about it," the corporal on the next bed declared. "We done whipped 'em good today. We beat 'em, Connors."
"Good," Connors said, smiling with relief. "We won."
Then he squeezed Richards' hand, sighed, and closed his eyes. The doctor instinctively felt for a pulse. Nothing.
"Yes," Richards said bitterly. "We won."
A/N: 12-31-2017.
I got the idea for this story in February 2017, as I was doing some brainstorming for story ideas about "Fallout: New Vegas". I greatly enjoyed playing that game, and my first playthrough of it was my introduction to the "Fallout" universe and made a big impression on me. Some of this was inspired by S1E17 of "M*A*S*H," called "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet". It is also inspired by a scene in Halo: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund, during the Battle of Reach itself.
More than one military unit throughout history has had that member everybody calls "The Kid", and I depicted Camp Forlorn Hope being one such unit in fiction.
This work is in part based off of my own impressions of the NCR Army and Caesar's Legion in playing the game, and the way I chose to play the game and imagine my Courier behaving beyond what the game portrayed.
In every way I could, I worked to write this accurately and faithfully to "Fallout". Obviously, I made some changes, like drastically increasing the size of the Forlorn Hope and Nelson garrisons, taking it from a few dozen people in total to an engagement of several hundred. As important as the Nelson and Forlorn Hope indications are shown to be in the game, both sides would have had a lot more people invested in the battle.
Alex Richards is a doctor in the NCR Army stationed at Camp Forlorn Hope, running the field hospital there. His military rank is never specified, but Army doctors are always commissioned officers, and with his experience, it looks like Richards has been in more than a couple years, so he could easily be ranked as a major (O-4).
The NCR Army uses the same system of rank as the United States Army does in 2017, although it is not specified if they have warrant officers or not. A notable difference- or similarity, if the US Army used this in the world of "Fallout" post-1948, when Fallout history diverges from real-life history- is that the NCR Army does not have Alpha, Bravo, etc. for company names, nor any variant of that. Instead, they use numbers, like "5th Battalion, 1st Company" and so on.