July 1st, 2282 Anno Domini, 6:34 AM
Private Jack Smith brushed past another of the "elite" troopers that had showed up within the last few months on his way into the mess hall. "Another pompous ass that won't move for anyone enlisted and even wears their sunglasses inside." The private walked over to his usual table while muttering a colorful curse under his breath involving finding one's manners in the smellier end of a brahmin, then pulled out a chair and plopped onto it with a creak next to his friends, CPL Andrews and PFC Hernandez.
They had already gotten their meals, early breakfasts of nearly fresh brahmin milk and molerat bacon over mashed potatoes. It smelled great, tasted bland, and got them through the day; between the last part and their good fortune to not be assigned a scant two meals of brunch and late dinner due to shortages, they had little to complain about.
Hernandez looked up from his food and greeted Jack with a smirk under his greasy mustache: "'Morning "Ace", up for a hand or two again tonight?" Andrews chuckled next to him, causing Smith to turn the slightest shade of pink. He had been spared the Mojave sun ever since his assignment to the Hoover Dam garrison.
Jack quickly regained his composure. "I've had a bit of a dry-spell lately, but my luck will pick back up soon, just you wait."
Hernandez met his cocky gaze and replied: "I hope so for your sake, or I'll end up owning all your spare socks, and maybe your lucky knife too."
"Keep dreaming Guillermo, I've killed two legionnaires with this knife, and I'll kill a dozen more before we get sent to vacation at New Arroyo."
Andrews chimed in: "That toothpick?! As if... Where did you say you were deployed before this again? Shady Sands?" The corporal grinned as he saw their newest squadmate's wounded pride turn to anger.
Ace's tone took on a chill, cold as the grave. "Searchlight, before the attack." His friends paled, turning a shade of off-white after that before he continued: "Can you believe those assholes that Lee brought in lately? Their fancy guns and bandanas aren't impressing anybody."
Hernandez nodded in agreement, glad to change the subject. "Some of 'um have that ranger armor too, built like the old pre-boom 'shroom suits. All we get is cheap leather and sheet metal, probably made by dumb-ass Super Mutants in the Old Town part of the Hub."
The clatter of stomping boots preceded the arrival of their sergeant, Matthews, who walked purposefully up to their table, his unibrow creased in annoyance, or perhaps dread. "Quit your bitchin' and listen up. I've got a bad feeling about today and I want you all no more than a foot from your rifles. Magazines loaded, helmets on."
The three nodded in the affirmative before Smith spoke up: "Gotcha' sir, but I'm sure it will be another dull day. If those inbred legionnaires try to take the dam, I'll show them all how much good a machete is 'gainst a hot 5.56 to the face."
"Just keep your head down and try not to shit yourself, private. Things don't look like business as usual topside. No gambling on duty, either. The civvy engineers might be getting paid to waste time sitting on their asses, but you fine examples of the worst the NCR can produce are not." The sergeant walked away before "Ace" could make any other smart-ass remarks. When he was out of earshot, Smith started to ask Andrews if the sarge' really had the unibrow to cover up a scar from being born with a mutated third-eye, but a blaring alarm pierced his eardrums.
He clammed up, looking across the table to Hernandez' concerned expression, then past it to the table-full of elites picking up their rifles and scarfing down what was left on their metal trays as they stood-up. "Think this is another drill?"
Andrews shook his head and hammered a nail through Smith's naive hopes, "You heard Matthews. You can take the rest of my plate if you'd like, I've had my fill. Long day ahead of us."
Hernandez put a hand on Jack's shoulder, looking him in the eyes. "We'll be alright, Ace. Just shoot anything red and stay low." Smith nodded while gulping down his fear.
The LT marched into the room and scanned around for his men. He barked out an order in a youthful baritone, "5th platoon, topside, through the visitor's center."
Andrews wasted no time getting up, "That's us." Smith stared at the floor as he followed behind him, intense dread pinning his gaze like gravity. Guillermo let out a quick snort behind him, followed by spitting out a glob of grease that would've landed him cleaning duty in the mess for a solid week under normal circumstances.
"Hope it's cloudy today. Ah, who am I kidding? Only clouds we'll get are dust and chlorine."
NCRA troopers stood side by side behind sandbags, under sheet-metal roofs held up by stacks of yet more sandbags. A massive log fort obscured the way to safety a few hundred feet behind them, pockmarked by cross-shaped openings and large gaps jutting with machine gun barrels.
Mortars continued to whistle up over the rocks in the distance, crashing down around, behind, and in-front of them with pops and puffs of foggy smoke that grew to envelop everything in sight in brief seconds, obscuring the sounds of those that sailed harmlessly over the sides of the dam, splashing far below. The constant bombardment had already claimed a casualty, an asthmatic volunteer who had to be rushed below to the infirmary. Most of the men posted around him considered him lucky to be away from the coming battle, or highly unlucky if this turned out to be another false-alarm. Smoke and probing attacks went hand-in-hand, and those who had been on guard duty the last time it had happened weren't too worried. The fission battery-powered spotlights on the nearest intake tower and atop the timber fort were unable to cut through the dense, opaque mist, their beams of light outshone by the sun cresting the far ridges.
The minefield along the eastern approach to the dam exploded into life through the haze, sending clouds of shrapnel high into the air, tearing through bodies unseen by the soldiers on guard. Distant screams raised the hairs on more than a few of the troopers' necks. The mortar shells continued to sail overhead, but otherwise a silence reigned after the initial explosions. One trooper spoke up to alleviate the tension, "'Guess it was just another probe." Long ropes made with the fibers of agave and yucca plants, knotted around several stones each at one end, were hurled onto the ground and top of the dam, detonating low-yield fragmentation mines. With paths cleared through the stretch that promised of certain demise, ground cursed by dark gods according to the superstitions of tribals, the attackers pressed on. Past the mines, careless feet pressed down upon trip-wires, setting off fire bottles filled with ethanol and metal fragments intended as shrapnel, hidden amongst piles of refuse and stones. The shelling intensified following the brief bursts of flame and death.
The forward post shouted back unintelligible information over the din of sailing and landing shells for a bit, before opening fire with the distinctive chatter of their service rifles. Dull muzzle flashes illuminated the thick smoke despite the rising sun cresting the ridges ahead and overhead of the amassed riflemen. The soldiers on the very frontline fired at every moving silhouette that came their way, stopping only to reload.
A lull came about in the firing, as the shaded figures stopped shuffling and running towards the defenses. The sky, obscured by a bank of man-made fog, was finally free of falling light artillery, allowing an eerie silence to settle over the frontline. Winds wafted up from the flowing waters below, cutting past the ancient stone walls of the canyon and thinning the blanket of haze enough to see just a few more feet ahead. More humanoid-shapes began shambling or sprinting at the poorly trained troopers with arms raised high. Armalite-pattern rifles and emplaced machine guns on bipods spewed death into the shadows of the moving crowd, until one of the troops let a shaded figure get close enough to see what his target looked like, and froze.
The stinging stench of gunpowder filled his nose and his stomach lurched sickeningly as he stared down his sights at a starving man in soiled grey rags. A cold sweat broke out along the back of the soldier's neck; the gaunt old man had tribal markings covering his face, a metal collar around his neck propped up by knobby shoulders, and tears streaming freely down his sunken cheeks as he stared ahead at the rifles bellowing out his fate. To the volunteer's left, another service rifle roared to life and cut down the feeble old man mid-stride before he could reach their fortifications. "They're civilians! Cease-fire! CEASE-FIRE!" the soldier screamed, choking up as he realized the implications of what he had done.
A sergeant ran by and barked right behind their ears: "Bomb-collars privates! These people are already dead either way! If they get to us, we'll be dead too! You wanna' learn what your insides look like from shrapnel, or do you want to pull those triggers and put these sorry sons of bitches out of their misery!?" The troopers replied with their fingers after a brief moment, firing their rifles in a subdued, half-hearted stagger of noise and unenthused death.
They aimed for the heads of their hapless targets, hoping to give them mercy as painlessly as possible, but missing their marks half the time and leaving old women, old men, and almost healthy young men with permanent scowls of hatred and defiance in their eyes to bleed to death from their throats, mouthes, and chests. One such man flinched when a round impacted upon the collar around his neck before leaping over the side headfirst. Men and women alike screamed, sobbed, stood in shock like molerats before the beam of a flashlight, collapsed to the concrete in despair, cursed at Caesar or their gods, shouted for help, pleaded not to be shot, played dead in the thick man-made fog, or simply hesitated, fearful to turn back and be tortured with whips, spears, torches, and machetes like the examples made before the charge, yet realizing that their torturers' promises of safety and freedom did not truly await them on the other side of the dam.
The gunfire didn't let up for a solid few minutes as the troops' arms shook, mental exhaustion and disbelief weighing far more than their rifles. The mortars started whistling through the air again momentarily, but ended abruptly, restoring the opaque wall of smoke where it had begun to fade. More people ran half-heartedly and stumbled disoriented through the haze towards them, deathsquads just like those of Chairmen Cheng so long ago, in the history books the Desert Rangers brought with them to unification.
Some of the men coughed through their face-wraps, some had donned old gasmasks with tubes running down below their chins, and others endured the choking mixture of gunpowder, shame, and grey clouds unaided. Their targets, their victims, became a bit more varied; bruised and scarred young and near-middle-aged women with the front of their shirts torn open, the remnants of red 'x's crossing their ragged clothes barely remaining. Sickly young men with dark hollows around their eyes and dog-tags dangling over their collars, worn-out NCRA uniforms hanging from their malnourished bodies. Blood-splattered lunatics with matted hair and greasy, unkempt beards, attacking their doomed fellows with glee upon their faces, pock-marked by years of chem-use, as they rushed to their deaths.
Some had nails strung around their collars with wire or rope, some had knives or short clubs in their hands, and others held onto live grenades that burst with smoke as their grips slackened with the coming of their deaths. The continuous volley of high-velocity rounds finally ceased after a few agonizingly long minutes, then a simultaneous beeping was prelude to a crescendo of small explosions throughout the smoke along the eastern end of the dam. Bits of blood-soaked brain, steel fragments, and nails tore into sandbags, exposed flesh, leather, cloth, and the insides of many of those unlucky enough to be caught at the front of the fortifications.
The bravest among the second line mantled sandbags and ran under scrap roofing dented by mortar shells to reach wounded comrades and drag them back to safety, or man machine guns that had been disused since their operators had realized their targets and sought to conserve ammo. The sounds of mortars filled the air once again, but instead of mildly harmful smoke, deadly mustard gas spewed forth from finned metal canisters.
Those without gasmasks, or with the misfortune to have one that wasn't on properly or simply wasn't functional, began to scream and cry out in anguish. Covering their faces with goggles, facewraps, rags, or simply their bare hands, in vain attempts to diminish the pain, they ran for the safety of the dam's interior, behind the wooden fortress that divided the dam. Young conscripts and volunteers coughed, choked, and vomited as tears leaked out of their stinging eyes. Most of them died before they could reach it, sputtering and wheezing on their backs or curled up on their sides. The only solace granted to them as their lungs all but burst in their chests was the cloudless dawn sky. A temporary retreat was called for all those without proper gasmasks, and several veteran rangers mustered outside of their timber-built checkpoint. Soldiers ran for their lives through the doors of the intake towers, barely surviving, their red faces akin to the blood-shot ones of their fallen brothers-in-arms.
The masked troopers marched forward, bolstered by their elite allies to reclaim every inch before Caesar's playthings could set foot upon any of it. The yellow clouds lingered long enough for the men to begin hauling corpses away and checking the gear of the fallen for use. The sinking toxic clouds cleared briefly, falling like a curtain of yellow feathers to concentrate around the defenders' feet, allowing the rising sun to nearly blind them. Another barrage came from over the rocky canyon walls, once more a batch of smoke that filled the air around them.
Muffled barking and snarling reached their ears within moments as the runts, old, lame, and sickly of the Legion's mongrels and dogs of those breeds unfit for training limped or sprinted through the dense fog-like vapors. Adorning the starving hounds, covered in patches of burnt or still-burning fur from torches and wet spots that had pooled out around the tips of spears, were a myriad of bomb-collars, wire-meshes with nails and broken blades arrayed about them, and often-studded saddle-bags full of IEDs in bottles and cans.
Machine guns unleashed streams of half-melted steel rounds, mass-produced by the Gun Runners, Hub merchants, New Arroyo's workshops, Junktown's ammo presses, the Shi, or some insignificant reloading company. Regardless of manufacture, the result was the same; .308 rounds tore through dogs and human corpses alike, impacting the top of the ancient dam only to crumple like paper. Those troops that had made it to safety earlier began trickling back into position in cautious jogs. Service rifles joined in once again, catching most of the dogs before they could reach the barricades.
The few that made it through, driven onward by fear, hunger, pain, and the shrill sub-sonic screeching of dog-whistles leapt for the throats of soldiers, snapped at their legs, or kept running past the smoke and muzzle flashes. Many of the hounds turned tail and ran back towards their tormentors, only to be shot from behind like so many retreating soldiers in wars throughout history, or impaled upon spears held ready by a phalanx-like section of legionaries. Volatile explosives carried by the enraged and panicked beasts burst upon impact with the floor or a stray round, releasing flames, fragments, and death atop the surface of the dam, often amidst the entrenched troopers; the legionary handlers had only strapped packs upon the backs of those able to run. The stench of piss, shit, singed fur, and blood mingled with the harsh vapors of gunsmoke and haze as the smoke began to clear once more.
Jack Smith mustered outside of the Hoover Dam Visitor Center with the rest of his squad in front of the LT, Sergeant Matthews, and the remainder of the platoon. Mortars whistled a shrill melody off in the distance on the far side of the dam, and service rifles joined in, creating a constant, steady drumbeat, drowning out the war-drums from the Legion's side of the river that had been everpresent since before Ace had even been transferred months ago.
The LT cast his gaze from side to side, slowly scanning the assembled enlisted infantrymen, hands clasped behind his back, before giving a curt briefing. "Gentlemen, it is our duty to hold the rear in case of a Legion pincer from the West. I'll be operating the radio to call in ranger support as necessary."
As he opened his mouth to speak again, a deafening shockwave swept over the assembled men; a fireball flung the base of the massive AA gun into the air above their heads before gravity tore it down again onto the concrete. Andrews barely flinched. Matthews looked around for a threat. Hernandez covered his head with both arms. Smith stared in stunned awe at the plume of smoke that drifted into the early morning sky.
Distant sounds of gunfire from the West joined those of the East, and with them came a heightened sense of dread. They were pinned on both sides, fish in a barrel. The men began scrambling to cover behind sandbags; Oliver wasn't expecting an attack from the West, or if he was, he didn't give a dam about fortifying against it. There were no roofs or machine guns, and the half-circles of cover were facing the approach from the East.
The LT wasted no more time after the explosion and quickly went to his post. Smith followed Matthews and they formed a four-man fireteam behind one ringlet; the other five in the squad, men that Jack hadn't had time to get acquainted with beyond last names, were hunkering down in a similar fashion to their left. Three lines of defense lay between Smith's squad and the road to Boulder City. Andrews was focused, scanning all around them for red and black. Guillermo gave a brief shudder after bracing his rifle atop the stacks of sediment. Matthews squinted on the right side, positioned just far enough around to catch the sun in his peripheral vision. The LT was perched atop the visitor center's roof, radio in hand, a pair of binoculars in the other.
The dulled sounds of combat from the East no longer reached them as they waited, watching for whatever the Legion would throw at them. Ace had heard rumors about radio reports from ranger posts mentioning Super Mutant legionnaires, packs of feral ghouls, even legionnaires covering themselves in pitch and charging headlong at NCR patrols. He spared a glance over his shoulder towards the fortified middle of the dam and saw NCR soldiers, army troopers and rangers alike, scrambling around the wooden fortress and intake towers.
His sense of dread grew and grew until finally Smith saw a single, tiny shape running along the road to the dam with reckless abandon. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding and fired a single shot at the sprinting shape. A split second later the figure dropped to the ground, rolled, and came up with his hands raised as if in surrender, yet continued to run towards them at an uninhibited pace. The LT shouted down to him "HOLD FIRE! RANGER INCOMING!"
Matthews shot Jack a glare under his greying, dark unibrow, and spat up a smattering of words, "Don't lose your head, kid." The ranger closed the distance soon enough, stopping in front of the doors to the main entrance of the dam to bend over and wheeze out a few breaths with his gloved hands on his kneecaps, before he took the steps three at a time up to the LT and his radio.
Smith could hear him from yards away as he stated with stoic professionalism: "Legion came down from the hills, cut us off from Station Delta, Station Alpha, and Boulder City." The ranger let out a loud gasp as he took a deep breath before continuing, "Looks like a full century."
The LT repeated what the ranger had said into the radio before asking, "Recruits, primes, or veterans?"
"Mixed unit, lots of rifles from what I gathered in a glance. Shot out the checkpoint's radio before they took aim at us."
"ETA?"
"A minute or two if they're in a hurry. Maybe ten if not. Of course, they might just hold the approach to cut-off our retreat and reinforcements."
Smith focused on the road again, and tried to wipe the newly-formed sweat off of the palms of his hands on a sandbag. He checked his rifle once more; safety off, mag full, and wished he had a bayonet, or better yet a grenade launcher. His "lucky knife" was a switchblade he had bought off a shifty trader on The Strip the day that Searchlight was bombed, and it wouldn't do him much good against a spear or a machete.
A bead of sweat dripped from the corner of his left eyebrow, splashing inaudibly upon the collar of his uniform. The disturbance focused his mind once more on awaiting the Legion attack, just in time to see a pebble fall from the cliff to his right. He looked up and saw the gleam of metal and glass scopes, and the flashes of numerous rifles firing towards him. The private grabbed the lip of the sandbag ringlet as his world exploded with gunfire, hauling himself over to shelter in the corner as screams cried out around him.
As he pressed his back into cover, facing away from the cliff, he saw the spark of the LT's radio being shattered from FMJ rounds atop the visitor center. The LT stood up with his service rifle raised into the air before crumpling onto the roof from bullets tearing through his center-of-mass. Smith tried to lift his rifle off of the ground in front of him before he saw a small, bloody shape lying atop the sandbag to the left of his face. The fingernail and tan complexion made it unmistakable; it was Hernandez's severed finger. Private Jack "Ace" Smith shit himself and fell off of his feet back into it while covering his head with his forearms.
AN: This story will include elements taken from and references to the Wasteland series, Fallen Earth, RAGE by iD Software, cancelled Fallout titles such as Van Buren, F1, F2, and Tactics. Healing mutations such as Bethesda's ghoul radiation-sponge idea will not be featured in this story. The captures used in the attack were inspired by the deathsquads sent out by the USSR against their enemies in WW2. The women with torn clothing are meant to be slaves that rebelled within a few weeks of the attack, but instead of being crucified or otherwise made an example of on the spot, were used by the Legion as bullet sponges. The red Xs were therefore removed from their clothing to signify their loss of status as slaves, being considered by the Legion to lack virtue once more as mere captives, as well as to demoralize the women themselves. The men with dog-tags are NCRA POWs. Those mentioned as being violent and having histories of chem-use are raiders. The elderly and other young men are tribals unfit for assimilation. All of the companions from the game will be featured in the story, although some will be more recurring than the rest. No-bark Noonan and Fantastic will appear as well. The power armor system from F4 had both positives and negatives in my opinion; for this story, consider the armor to have the same size, but the frames to be irremovable parts of the armor system, although the armor plates can simply be removed as is the case with the NCR's salvaged armor. In addition, the power core system will not be present, as a miniature nuclear reactor capable of powering local parts of cities' electrical grids would be more power than necessary for a single set of power armor, and if such external power sources were implemented, they would most certainly be armored rather than exposed.