Cold Winter
It was June 10th, 2282. Just four days ago, the course of history had been changed when the New California Republic Army emerged victorious in the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. The battle, which began in the afternoon of June 5th and ended on the morning of June 6th, had been the largest and fiercest battle in recent memory. Even the First Battle of Hoover Dam in 2277 was hard to compare to this. The Legion had held nothing back the last time, but this time, they had known the stakes were even higher than before. Caesar's Legion had built a reputation for itself as an entity that had never known failure, never known defeat. They had managed to pin the last battle's outcome on the Malpaise Legate, and made an example of him at Caesar's command.
But this time, Caesar was dead, the victim of, some said, a Courier and a former NCR Army sniper who had done the unthinkable- not to mention the impossible- and simply stormed The Fort and killed the dictator right after gunning down all his Praetorian Guards. There was still a Legion, but there was no Caesar, and the fearsome Legate Lanius, Monster of the East, had assumed command.
There was another reason for the increased stakes of the battle. The Legion may have exacted a high price from the NCR in a five-year campaign of attrition, but they had not exactly gotten off easy themselves. NCR Rangers, the Republic's shock troops, inflicted heavy losses wherever they appeared, and gave ground in the most grudging manner possible. Even the common NCR Army troopers, armed right down to the last man and woman with their semi-automatic service rifles, were dangerous in numbers and held on stubbornly even as morale sagged.
The Legion had needed to finish the NCR in this battle. Not just defeat it, but do as much as possible to kill it. General Lee Oliver needed to die or be disgraced, Chief Hanlon, hero of the NCR, the much-beloved leader of the Rangers, had to go, too. President Aaron Kimball's cause of expansion and reconstruction had to be ruined. The NCR needed to be sent packing with absolutely nothing to show for more than five years of war with the Legion and thousands of lives lost. The Legion had to show that their victory was not only total, it was inevitable, and that the NCR stood no chance against them as they marched West.
Instead, the opposite had happened. Though they attempted to divert and distract NCR strength with amphibious assaults across several points of the Colorado River, hitting Camp Forlorn Hope, the liberated Nelson, and Ranger Stations Echo and Delta, and had slammed headlong into the defenders of Hoover Dam with everything they had, the Legion had gambled big and lost.
The staff officers and gravediggers were still tallying up the losses on both sides. It would be a while before anyone knew the totals on that. But the sheer number of dead from the battle, and the skirmishes and desperate assaults and no-quarter firefights connected to it, said plenty. The NCR Army was battered, but it still stood. The flag of the Bear still flew over the Dam.
The Legion… it brought smiles and sighs of relief to many a weary face as word spread of just how many ranking Legionnairies had died in the fighting. More than forty men wearing the armor and insignia unique to a centurion, a commander of some 80-100 men, had been found among the dead, and it was estimated that some six "cohorts", rough equivalents to battalions numbering around 480 men, were effectively hors de combat by the end of the battle.
Over two thousand experienced, well-trained men lost. Caesar dead before the battle, Lanius, dead afterwards. Limited elements of the Army and the Rangers were hastening the Legion as it fell back, retreated East in disarray. No one in NCR Army Intelligence or in the top brass had any idea who was commanding the Legion now. Maybe nobody was. Either way, an empire that had built itself on the myth of the invincibility of its forces and the infallibility of its leaders was staggering away from its second major defeat, hurried along by volunteer troopers and Rangers whose main purpose in chasing after them on the other side of the Colorado was not to actually destroy the remaining forces, which were still considerable in size, but to simply add to the body count with skirmishes and sniper attacks. To tell the Legion, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."
XX
Formerly a first lieutenant, Alex Winter had been promoted to captain for valor in the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. While most of the surviving forces stayed at the Dam and a select force of volunteers pursued the Legion as it withdrew to the East, Alex was given command of 2nd Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. The "Fighting First", the regiment that was "First in Everything," served proudly under the command of Colonel James Hsu, headquartered at Camp McCarran. The regiment had taken a beating in the past five years in the Mojave Campaign, and elements stationed at the Dam had taken further losses. But the Legion was hurting a lot worse, and that was the truth. So were the Fiends, who like the fucking idiots they were had launched a head-on assault on Camp McCarran once word of the fighting at the Dam reached their drug-addled ears. With NCR snipers and the Courier having killed off all their best leaders, the Fiends paid dearly for their poorly-planned, poorly-executed attempt at overrunning McCarran.
Hsu was personally leading the efforts to run down the last of the Fiends, sensing rightly that the time had come to break their influence over New Vegas forever. He was a damn good officer, and Alex was proud to have gotten the chance to meet him when, as a second lieutenant, he had reported in to Hsu's headquarters a couple years ago. Back then, he had been sure the war with the Legion would be over before he could even seriously get in on it. How times had changed.
There was plenty for the Army to do, even with the big fight now over. It was rebuilding lost strength after the battle, repairing all kinds of damaged equipment- not the least of which was Hoover Dam itself, which, thankfully, had avoided any serious damage to the machinery. The Legion had tried, but failed, to damage it irreparably when they realized they would be denied it a second time, but counterassaulting NCR soldiers had put a stop to that.
The piece of business that 2nd Company had orders to take care of immediately was the control the Powder Gangers had established over the NCR Correctional Facility, a few miles east of Goodsprings, Nevada. About a year ago, a prisoner riot had been staged after Alex and some other troopers in the garrison had been re-designated from MPs to regular infantry and shipped east to the Dam as the Army tried to build up strength there in anticipation of the second battle they knew was coming.
Andrew, Alex's twin brother, had stayed on as a MP officer, commanding the company of military police that remained in control there. An understrength, overworked company. And the prisoners had figured it out and taken the place over, and spent a year- a fucking year- terrorizing the Mojave Desert for miles around. They were calling themselves the Powder Gangers after the chain-gangs they had worked on, and the gunpowder and dynamite they had been allowed to use as part of clearing the railroad tracks that ran past the facility down to Nipton, California.
No one among the NCR Army guards at the facility had been heard from for more than 12 months. The Army had simply lacked the strength to take the facility back at the time of the uprising. Fighting for its life against an aggressive and ever-present Legion, against Fiends and raiders and criminals of all kinds, the NCR Army had been unable to do anything when they heard about it. Command cared, but it was helpless to act. The Brotherhood of Steel was still out there, deathclaws were out there in the mountains and hills near the NCRCF… so much could have gone wrong back then, at any time.
So for a goddamn year Alex had sat on his fucking hands, getting nothing more than the occasional skirmish to help him forget about the fact that he had no idea if his brother was alive or dead. But word did filter in that recon elements had been to the area, and not one sign of any captives being held by the Powder Gangers had ever been seen. No word of any ransom demand had ever reached Camp McCarran, and the one attempt at sending a messenger under flag of truce to the NCRCF had resulted in the two men getting driven away by a hail of bullets.
Now, though…
Having won the big battle it had been reserving so much of its strength for, the NCR Army could turn its attention to those motherfuckers at the Correctional Facility at last.
It was hard marching, making their way across the desert in either scorching heat or freezing cold. Alex hated the fucking desert. Sand everywhere, either hot as hell or cold as shit, and everywhere it seemed like there was somebody else trying to kill you. If it wasn't raiders or gangs, it was Fiends. If it wasn't Fiends, it was Khans- before that Courier brokered a truce and got 'em to fuck off to the northwest somewhere. If it wasn't Khans, it was Legion. And if it wasn't Legion, you had radscorpions, geckos and those fucking deathclaws, giant horrible spiky monsters that never, ever seemed to die for good and could wipe out a whole company if they caught you off guard.
But Alex didn't mind the marching like he used to. None of the men did. About a hundred men and women hefted their gear and sucked it up and marched with an ease, a humor, that was unthinkable just weeks ago. Maybe it was the lingering thrill of victory, of having survived when so many others didn't- especially among the enemy.
Maybe it was hope. It was the one thing Alex had heard of that was stronger than fear, and it had been in short supply in the days before the Courier had shown up and started appearing all over the Mojave, lending a hand to NCR forces and not even getting paid a cap to do it. The tales of the Courier's heroism and prowess in battle were incredible, yet every time you heard a new one there always seemed to be evidence that it had really happened. But whipping the Legion at Hoover Dam was what really made the difference. The troopers talked and joked much more often than they had before, and they didn't even complain when they got ordered to stand up and march off to attack the Correctional Facility after two days of rest.
Alex knew it was hope and boosted morale that helped his troopers march, and that it was helping him too. But there was something else. The twenty-year-old officer was out for answers, for rescue, and if he couldn't, for revenge. It looked likely that the Powder Gangers had killed all their guards as they took over the prison, or just afterward. Andrew was almost certainly dead. A year of no ransom demands, no sign of anyone besides Powder Gangers in the prison. It didn't speak well for Andy's chances.
But if the Powder Gangers really had executed all the guards, Alex was going to make them sorry. They'd be sorry like they had never understood the word in their lives.
XX
First Sergeant Jesse Astor, the senior NCO who had been among the personnel transferred to 2nd Company before it marched on the Correctional Facility, came up alongside Alex as he marched beside the two columns of troopers. They were past Nelson now, swinging north along the rail line.
"Thinking of any changes to the plan, sir?" Astor asked in a low voice, not meant to carry.
Alex shifted his Service Rifle on his right shoulder, hanging on a leather sling, and considered that question. The plan was to demand the surrender of the prison with most of the company safely out of sight. If the Powder Gangers gave up, that would be the end of it. It would be life in prison without the possibility of parole for every single one of them, and they'd be damn lucky to get off that easy.
But if they resisted, if they refused… the sentence was death.
"No," Alex answered. "I think we've got this pretty well in hand, First Sergeant. Main thing is we can't get sloppy. We just kicked the Legion's sorry asses back across the Colorado-"
"Yeah!"
"YEAH!"
Corporal Thompson, one of the fire team leaders in 1st Platoon, heard the blond-haired CO's words and raised a cheer, and a bunch of the others joined in, enthusiastically voicing their agreement.
"Alright, that's enough outta you!" Astor barked. "Weapons off your shoulders, you lousy troopers. You almost gave away our position. You wanna let those convicts know we're coming?"
"No, First Sergeant," several troopers replied, shame-faced.
"Then shut your traps and get your SRs ready. I'm betting my weight in caps those Powder Gangers are gonna put up a fight."
Alex dispersed the column as they moved into the hills, spreading them out. 1st and 2nd platoon would stay with him, while 3rd and 4th would take the long way around and prepare to assault the prison from the east. Before Astor took the other two platoons with him, Alex gave the order to fix bayonets. If they were going in, they were going in hard and no one would be getting in the way.
XX
Carefully shouldering his SR again, its bayonet gleaming in the morning sun, Alex stood and walked slowly up the tan, dusty hillside that had let them get within a hundred meters of the prison. He held a white flag in one hand.
"The fuck you want?" a voice shouted from one of the guard towers. "What you want, asshole?"
"Your surrender!" Alex shouted back. "You have been surrounded and will be overwhelmed if you resist. Lay down your weapons and submit to the authority of the New California Republic. If you comply with these instructions, you will not be harmed."
"Fuck you, buddy!"
"I say again, surrender, or-"
Alex dropped to the ground as the man in the tower shouldered his weapon, so the shot went right where he had been standing a moment ago. Rolling down the hill out of sight, Alex dropped the white flag and unslung his Service Rifle again. The rifle already had a 5.56mm round chambered, and Alex snapped the safety off. "Okay," he said easily, "we do this the hard way." He turned to 2nd Lieutenant Royez, and 2nd Lieutenant McCormick, the two brand-new platoon leaders 2nd Company had been handed before marching off from Hoover Dam.
"I want suppressing fire from 1st Platoon, spread out along this hill overlooking the prison. McCormick, with me. Get some wire cutters out and we're going on. Royez, I'll wave you forward once we have a foothold and you can move 1st Platoon up."
"Yes, sir."
"You got it, sir."
"All right. Up and over, people!" Alex waved with one hand and the two platoons charged the rest of the way up the hill. 1st Platoon went prone and immediately began firing on targets they picked out- which was literally anybody they could see within the Correctional Facility. 2nd Platoon followed their lieutenant, sergeants and captain as they led them over the top and downhill, charging for the perimeter fence, firing as they went.
Bullets whizzed past, and a few troopers dropped suddenly.
It wasn't me, it wasn't me, Alex thought feverishly, sprinting forward, firing from the hip.
Across the way, the other half of the company was doing the same thing. While one platoon charged and cut the fence, the other lay down covering fire.
As a handful of troopers set down their rifles and started cutting the fence, Alex shouted, "Gimme some suppressing fire! Take out all those bastards in the towers, wipe 'em out!"
One of the privates cutting at the fence spun away, clutching at his hand. A medic immediately moved forward and began bandaging the wound, administering Med-X to numb the pain. Meanwhile, a young woman called Hendricks sprang forward, took up the wire cutters, and continued as if nothing had happened.
Meanwhile, the roar of dozens of firearms filled the air. Most of them belonged to the NCR, and that meant that several Powder Ganger sentries soon tumbled from the guard towers, hung dead and limp over the sides, or crumpled to the ground as they rushed outside from other buildings and began shooting. Alex's Service Rifle jumped in his hands, barking with each shot, and he wanted to cheer as a line of some five or six Powder Gangers came flying out of one of the cell block buildings and were stretched out, lifeless, on the ground before they could even figure out who to shoot at.
"Captain! We're through!" McCormick shouted, as his troopers broke open the fence and peeled it apart in section more than twenty feet wide.
"ROYEZ!" Alex screamed, turning to face up the hill. "MOVE IT! COME ON!"
Shouting battle cries, 1st Platoon charged downhill and rushed through the fence after 2nd Platoon, which had a few troopers staying back to finish the job of pulling the wrecked fence open.
"Shit! Oh, shit!" a dark-skinned Powder Ganger shouted as he sprinted for the cover of the administration building. Alex shot him and he jerked forward, flinging his arms wide, and went face-down in the dirt with a puff of dust. But several other troopers had fired on him at the same moment, making Alex unsure whether he had gotten the guy or not.
Cell Blocks A and B were cleared in a hurry. Elements of 3rd and 4th Platoon swarmed the structures and hurled grenades inside, setting off explosions that hammered even more at Alex's ears than the gunfire did. They charged inside, and moments later herded out a few terrified-looking men in blue prisoner's uniforms.
The grenades might have been a reckless act, if any guards were held here and still alive. But snipers watching this place for weeks had reported that, by all accounts, the prisoners still lived in the blocks they had resided in before. In theory, if they had any hostages at all, they would be in the Administration Building, where muzzle flashes blazed away from the windows.
"Take 'em down!" Alex roared, pointing at the windows. "Come on, move it up, people, move it up!" He waved as he ran forward, and this time 2nd Platoon, taking cover behind the bases of watchtowers, piles of junk and heaps of debris, covered for 1st as it advanced. 3rd and 4th fired away at the Admin Building, using any cover they could find.
A handful of troopers stormed into the Visitor's Center, and after a volley of gunshots, they brought two men out with them, both of them raising their hands high in surrender. Those men were almost shot by both sides, and their captors hurried them to the rear amidst the crossfire.
"Give up, you bastards!" Alex screamed as he fired at the windows, tracking the muzzle flashes. "You're pinned down!"
The only response was more gunfire. Troopers fell, dead and wounded, but almost a hundred Service Rifles still barked and barked, tearing up the front of the Administration Building. Cries of fear and pain could be heard inside, and those multiplied a dozen times over when 4th Platoon broke out their flamethrowers. The operators pressed in close and poured streams of flame in through the ground-level windows. Then they kicked in the front door and fired in there, too.
Alex listened as the men inside screamed and screamed, audible even over the gunfire. It seemed like it would never end, but eventually, it did.
Finally, when Alex was about to lead a platoon in storming the building, a hand appeared at one of the two second-story windows and began waving a white shirt, marked with grime and blood. It was no white flag, but it was noticeable as such, and Alex and other unit leaders began shouting "Cease fire! Cease fire!"
The heat of Alex's rifle barrel radiated through the wood of the foregrip. It was almost hard to even hold onto it. But hold into it he did, emerging from cover with the rifle's wood buttstock pressed against his shoulder.
"Come outside! NOW!" Alex shouted.
It took almost a minute, but grimy-faced men in prison uniform began emerging from the billowing smoke on the ground floor, hands raised high in surrender.
"Step forward!" Alex ordered them.
They did, some half-dozen in all. Combined with four from the cell blocks and another two from the Visitor's Center, that made for a dozen prisoners taken in total.
The troopers stayed in cover, waiting and watching for signs of treachery. But smoke just spread across the yard, carried by the wind, and the dead Powder Gangers lay where they had fallen. Alex decided it was over when he looked at the faces of his prisoners, each and every one. They looked down, rarely, if ever meeting their captors in the eye. They looked like broken men.
Lowering his rifle but keeping it firmly in his hands, Alex felt a sense of disappointment that he hadn't gotten to use his bayonet. The red blades on some of his troopers' rifles testified that some of them had, though. Alex gestured and his troopers began standing up, a few at a time. About a platoon's worth moved forward and herded all the prisoners together.
Alex walked forward and looked at all of them, not bothering to hide his contempt. "Who's in charge here?"
None of them answered. Alex sighed in irritation. "Who is in charge here? You better talk, boys, or we'll have us a little barbecue in the yard."
A black man wearing makeshift body armor spoke up. "I guess that's me, Boss Man, sir. I'm Hannigan, the doctor. You troopers killed Eddie and Scrambler."
"I know you," Alex said suddenly. "You got kicked out of the Army for selling medical supplies on the black market."
"Is that right? Well, ain't this a fun little reunion?"
Alex smiled. "Where are the guards, Hannigan? The real ones, I mean, not the chickenshits my boys and girls just wiped the desert with."
"Oh, what, the MPs?" Hannigan laughed, seeming to relish the memory. "The Warden got himself before we could take care of him, but the other ones, we rounded 'em all up and blew their brains out. It was something, Boss Man, sir, you should've seen it."
Alex felt his control slipping, his pulse racing even as the battle was over. "And where," he asked quietly, "is my brother?"
"Man, don't you know?" Hannigan asked incredulously. "We took over this place a long time ago. I just said we shot everybody 'cept the Warden. Where the fuck you think he is?"
Alex went still. Even after all this time, he had held out hope. He had tried and tried all this time to believe there was a chance they would have at least spared his brother. That Andrew, no matter how battered and traumatized, would still be here for his twin to come along and rescue.
Hannigan sighed, shrugging. "It was how it went, man. The bodies are all buried off in a corner. Don't think we marked 'em but we threw 'em in there with their tags and all, so probably you can find out who's who."
Alex felt himself tearing up, but he wouldn't let himself do that. He wasn't gonna admit to his grief here. He took a deep breath, then said, "First Sergeant Astor, over here, if you please!"
Astor trotted over from the cell blocks after a moment. "Yessir."
"Please tie the prisoner's hands behind their backs, and line them up."
"Yes, sir."
While Astor and a few troopers took care of that, Alex thought of his brother, of the contempt he'd always had for the prisoners, the cold, cold hatred that Alex had harbored for them at the idea that they might have risen up and murdered the young man who shared Alex's face.
"Prisoners," Alex said, "your crimes include multiple homicide, attempted escape, and attempted murder of soldiers and officers of the New California Republic Army. Had you surrendered without resistance, NCR law would permit your imprisonment for life without the possibility of parole. As it stands, your sentence is death, to be carried out immediately."
The troopers finished tying the hands of the Powder Gangers behind their backs, and pushed them up against the wall of the Admin Building. Alex gathered several troopers at random, stood with them and raised his rifle.
"Ready!"
"Hey, man, hey! Come on!"
The prisoners all started shouting in protest, some begging.
"Aim!"
"Come on, why are you-"
"FIRE!"
Ten Service Rifles all fired at once, and prisoners dropped with thuds and thumps. One, and older guy wearing a cowboy hat, took a round through the head and collapsed. Halligan got a bullet in the throat and lay there on the ground choking and coughing blood. Alex walked up and stood over him, aimed his rifle, and fired again. Halligan went still and that was that; the yard was silent.
XX
Alex immediately set his troopers to work cleaning up the damaged prison. Fires still burned on the 1st floor and had to be put out. More than three-dozen bodies had to be dragged and carried to the corner of the yard that was set aside for the dead prisoners. Alex watched his troopers work, rifle slung over his shoulder.
He would be the warden of this empty prison for now, as his troopers worked to restore control and hold it until an MP company could be moved in to take it over. It was a post Alex didn't much relish, holding command of the ruined place where his brother's men had fought and lost in an uprising back in 2281. Sitting behind the desk in the Warden's office, Alex began filling out a report on blank sheets of paper about the assault and its outcome.
He visited each one of his wounded troopers, thanked them for their courage in the battle, promised them recognition for their injuries.
Alex also talked with his platoon leaders and squad leaders, and with First Sergeant Astor, getting accounts from each of them through their responses, and through the pieces of paper he handed them to write whatever they thought pertinent to the mission report.
The young captain also just circulated among the troopers alongside First Sergeant Astor, talking with them, asking them how they were doing and encouraging them to share anything that was on their minds. They were glad the fight was over, glad that they had only lost eight troopers dead and nine wounded. Few, if any of them seemed bothered by the executions. They were soldiers and summary executions of convicted felons was something you had to expect you might be called on to do. NCR Army soldiers were not all military police and disliked being forced into the role, but if they had to, they were taught not to hesitate.
The killings were what was required under NCR law.
They were what the Army had demanded be done if the prisoners fought back.
It was the law. What had to be done to these prisoners in response to all that they had done.
Plain and simple.
And to Alex, as he watched his men dig up the remains of the dead guards and begin the grim work of identifying them, of marking his brother's remains and getting them ready for a graves registration unit to come by and ship them to the military cemeteries of California, there was one word that kept coming up.
It was a simple word, one which Alex thought of over and over as he looked at those skeletal remains, at the bodies of the Powder Gangers, some torn by bullets, some seared and scorched by flamethrowers, some mangled horrifically by fragmentation grenades. One word.
Justice.