A/N, extended
Hey there, folks. I assume if you're reading this, then you're probably a fan of the Deadlands RPG/books/video-games. If you don't know what the heck I'm talking about, hang on a minute, I'll explain. If you're a Deadlands player, skip over the next paragraph or two.
Deadlands is a role-playing game based on a hypothetical situation. This particular 'What If' hinges around a Native American known in the game only as "Raven", a Lakota Sioux whose entire tribe was wiped out in the 1850's. Raven, furious over this loss, gathered some like-minded madmen, went into the Spirit World (known to them as the "Hunting Grounds") and killed the ancient guardians of Earth, hoping to take out the rest of the world with him. This allowed eldritch abominations from beyond our understanding to begin influencing our world, mostly by gathering fear. Lacking much ability to affect our world, four of these abominations struck a pact with Raven: he would get his vengeance, and they would gain ultimate power over the Earth. These four abominations, later known as the Reckoners, used the American Civil War as an opportunity to foment fear throughout the continent: they began raising undead soldiers to fight against whichever side was winning, dragging the war on interminably. Dark, evil things began to appear throughout the world as fear began to feed the Reckoners' powers.
Deadlands: The Weird West takes place during the 1870's, and is the story of how several small posses do the impossible daily in an attempt to stop the Reckoners and destroy their influence on Earth once and for all. Meanwhile, the Reckoners have begun strengthening their foothold on our world, and are sending forth their minions to prepare for their arrival. Men begin using card-games to wield power, scientists begin dreaming of fantastic devices for mayhem and destruction, and magical powers begin to sprout up along with werewolves, vampires, and prairie-ticks (fist-sized ticks that crawl down into your stomach and drink you dry).
Deadlands: Hell on Earth takes place during around 2183, and assumes that everyone in The Weird West failed to stop the Reckoners. Those mad scientists eventually invented a better bomb known as a 'ghostrock nuke', which combined nuclear fission with a strange mineral the Reckoners had begun to sow when they first arrived. Eventually, thanks in no small part to the Reckoners pulling strings, the world nuked itself into semi-oblivion, and this act gave the Reckoners enough power to manifest themselves in our world. They appeared in the forms of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and rampaged across the West and across the Mississippi. Now, the dying West must find a way to set itself to rights before the Reckoners return to finish the job.
Our story takes place in the Hell on Earth continuity, and centers around Lt. Col. Kowalski, a veteran of the Faraway War on the planet Banshee. This story will follow him through his past adventures and up to the greatest adventure he will ever undertake: facing the Reckoners themselves alongside the posse he rounds up during the course of this story.
Chapter 1 covers the Banshee Wars as a recorded message. Every other chapter will be told in the first-person perspective.
Audio Log #1
*crackle* Kowalski's Log, September 4th, 999999999*error
Begin Recording…
My name is Lieutenant Colonel *crackle* Kowalski, United Nations Expeditionary Force, and I live in a Hell on Earth.
Dammit, is this thing even on? I hope not, that was corny as hell.
Give me a Q-tip and some wire and I'll build you a shopping mall, but a simple audio-recorder?
Okay, the red light means it's recording…I think.
Seeing as how I'm probably going to die tomorrow, I figure I should at least leave some record for the dozen or so children I've probably got out there. Look, I never said I was a saint. Far from it, actually. I'm just a stubborn cuss who's survived
Don't really know where to start. Spent my childhood at a military academy, did the same for college, joined the United States Army Logistics Division. Not the most exciting stuff, but it was my entire life for about thirty years. Now, the really important stuff happened after all of that, starting with the Banshee War.
In case you've been too busy surviving to remember history before the War and the Reckoners, let me remind you. Tensions on Earth took a bit of a backseat when Hellstromme Industries announced the discovery of another habitable planet in some system they called Faraway. Real creative, guys.
Nations stopped fighting over the few ghostrock deposits left on earth when settlers discovered metric assloads of the stuff on the new planet. What they started fighting over was who got to colonize the damn thing.
Eventually, the natives, these big, purple, reptilian brutes called 'Anouks', politely asked everyone to leave… Dammit, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. 'Military efficiency' my ass.
The Anouk were the first inhabitants of Banshee. They were, are, I guess, these seven-foot purple 'humanoid reptiles' who kinda roamed the place, herding some kind of local beef. When folks first got there, a lot of the Anouk welcomed them. From what I understand, they were fairly nice and helped settlers survive the screaming hellwinds that lash the planet.
No good deed goes unpunished, and soon people were stampeding onto Anouk lands, killing the inhabitants and mining for ghostrock in the rubble of their homes. The Anouk began fighting back, and the damn miners started blaming the whole SNAFU on the big purple guys armed with spears and axes.
Pisses me the fuck off whenever I think about how much blood was spilled because of some greedy sons of bitches who didn't bother to follow the damn treaty they had just written!
Sorry. I just get a little steamed. I lost a lot of good friends, and even a few good enemies, during what happened next.
True enough, the Anouk struck back hard, repaying cruelty with overwhelming force. Think they called it the 'Faraway War' or some such bunk. It was more of a curb-stomp, really: they had the miners and the other colonists on the ropes, killed them by the thousands. The colonists dug in, and a few of the good ones tried to reason with the blood-crazed Anouk. The rest just phoned home and pleaded for help.
Anyway, long story short, the colonists complained enough to their governments back on Earth that they stopped squabbling over mining rights for the ball of dirt and began clamoring to save the 'brave colonists' from the 'purple savages.' For you students of history, this ought to be sounding awfully familiar.
So, where was I during all of this? Heh. I've always been a career soldier, spent ten years in the United States Army fighting bandits, Natives, and the occasional troop of CSA soldiers who 'got lost'. So when the UN called for each nation to send some troops in a massive assault on Banshee, I volunteered. It seemed like a great way to get promoted. Hell, that's how I made Lieutenant Colonel.
I started out as one of General Paul "Overkill" Warfield's personal assistants. Paul was actually a nice-enough guy, used to play poker with me and crack jokes about the number of girls currently hunting for my head. Off-duty, he gave to the poor, volunteered his help in aid stations, and generally helped raise morale.
Commanding General Warfield, on the other hand, was a monster in human form. He ordered the finest and latest gear, from hover-tanks to biochem-grenades, and made me his attaché to the Quartermaster General. I got to see the kind of hardware we were taking to Banshee before we even left Earth: there was enough ordinance there to vaporize the damn planet, much less beat back a few of Barney's demented cousins. General Warfield had something special planned for the Anouk, the bloodthirsty bastard.
So we hit planet and started shooting. Now, not all of the Anouk were fighting us at this point: about half of them were still pushing for peace. After the first week, the Anouk death-toll hit the millions, and the entire race started to fight back. General Warfield wanted to exterminate their entire race, and he had the firepower to do it.
Remember how I said Paul Warfield was the salt of the Earth, and General Warfield was a magnificent bastard? Pretty soon, we said goodbye to Paul forever. Somewhere in the genocide, he gave up the ghost and disappeared, leaving nothing but a complete monster behind. I guess I kind of miss the man he used to be, but...honestly, I could say that of too many people nowadays.
Anyway, my first encounter with the Anouk was during an attack on our supply lines. I was riding with General-Lieutenant Serdukov, the Quartermaster General, trying to convince her to help 'raise morale'. She had just raised her hand to slap me when almost a thousand raging purple natives broke cover and charged the vehicles.
You'd think that spears and arrows would be almost useless against military-grade armor, wouldn't you? Guess we didn't account for the seven-foot masses of muscle behind those spears.
Still, things would have been fine if the Wolverine operator hadn't popped out of his mech for a piss not thirty seconds before the attack. Ever seen a Wolverine in action before? Twelve-foot tall walls of metal armor powered by two tons of bionic muscle, carrying enough whoopass to shame a hover tank and twice that much armor. Only problem with 'em is the blasted operators: they get more than a little uppity wandering around in those things for hours on end. And this operator was a complete idiot. General Warfield would have put him to the firing squad if he hadn't taken a four-foot arrow through the eye three seconds into the fight.
So there we were, angry dinosaurs stabbing, hacking, and chewing on anything not purple, when I got a brilliant idea. Breaking from cover, I ran toward the empty Wolverine and hopped in. Now, I'm man enough to admit that my first thought was of those wonderful inches of plate between me and the arrows, but once I got inside…
I had never had a class on how to use the damn thing, mind you, and I still to this day don't get how I even closed the cockpit. But it was as if the armor itself wanted to get into the fight, and I started tearing through the attacking Anouk like a hot knife through butter-substitute. Nothing they had could pierce my armor; I, on the other hand, had no trouble hitting them. The flamethrower mounted on my left shoulder left swathes of them dead while the chainsaws attached to both hands sent purple blood flying. I watched a UAV surveillance-video of it in General Warfield's office a week later, and I honestly felt sick to my stomach before the battle ended. I got a commendation out of it, though, and I even got to keep the Wolverine. Turns out General Warfield liked the idea of armored officers ripping into battle beside their men.
I celebrated that night by getting drunk and sleeping with a pair of cute lieutenants. The next morning, General Warfield invited me to his office again and calmly explained that those lieutenants happened to be his nieces. Picture the scene: one hung-over Lieutenant-Colonel with wrinkles in his uniform and lipstick-kisses still on his face standing across the desk from the immaculately-dressed Commanding General, who also happened to be a very upset uncle. He pulled out a set of papers suggesting me for instant promotion to full Colonel, and I watched them literally go up in smoke. Then he assigned me to a job with the UN Psychic Legion, saying 'Maybe you'll survive long enough to regret your choice in bedmates. But I doubt it.'
I arrived at Fort Reagan to meet with my new CO seven hours later. General Quantrill, the Legion commander, took one look at me and burst out laughing. Nowadays, I know that he took a peek inside my head and found out the real reason he was getting a new corp quartermaster. At the time, I thought I had missed a lipstick-mark.
Okay, General Warfield had once been a nice guy. Quantrill? Nah, he'd been an asshole from Day 1. Then again, he was the head of the most under-supplied division of the Expeditionary Force, so I can understand how much life must have sucked at the time. Of course, that was about to change.
To this day, I don't understand where the skinnies came from. We called 'em skinnies for obvious reasons: they looked like anorexic Anouk. When they were first sighted, I'm told our soldiers actually started laughing. Then, as one, they turned and started shooting each other. Next thing General Warfield knew, he was losing entire regiments to friendly fire, flaming comets from a clear sky, and just general squishing. It got so bad, General Warfield began throwing every resource he had at the damn things, including the Legion.
Before the day we first met skinnies, the Legion's job revolved around finding spies and sympathizers. Afterward, General Warfield started using them as the only thing that could 'survive' in combat against the skinnies. And me along with them.
Through several not-entirely-legal methods, I had managed to keep my Wolverine. Which is how I survived that first battle, and the next, and…well, you get the idea. I was placed in charge of the food, ammunition, and morale of the whole damn Legion. Spent most of my time alongside the 43rd and Black Lightning squads, who liked to party as much as I did.
Hell, I keep forgetting that not everybody was there. Alright, the Squads: we started out with over one-thousand sykers from all over the world. To 'enhance efficiency', the sykers were split into fifty squads of twenty or so people each. Most of them were split according to specialty, like the Firewalkers, which was composed of a bunch of pyros. Some were gender based, like the Star Swans and the Cavemen.
I'll tell you, working as a normal human alongside people who could melt the brain out of my head was a laugh a minute. I remember one particularly troublesome cuss trying to complain about not having enough chocolate ice-cream. So what did I do? I immediately put together an expedition to rob General Warfield's personal cantina. Got away with it, too. Only had strawberry and vanilla, though, which was sad. Man had no appreciation for the finer things in life.
I looked after my boys and girls as if they were my own family. I was a rich man when I came to Banshee, the only child of a long line of distinguished only-children. By the time I left that rock, I had spent every penny I had, traded in every favor I could, and spent many sleepless nights keeping the men and women in my command well fed, well rested, and in fighting condition. I'll tell you why, too.
Nobody had a tougher job in that war than the sykers did. Setting villages on fire, slaughtering entire enemy raiding parties, fighting against superior numbers with nothing more than their minds. The sykers were called on for every possible duty, from burial details to massacring Anouk civilians, and they did everything with the stalwart stoicism drilled into them from childhood. Every now and then, though, one of them would crack and either break down crying, or start killing people at random. General Warfield didn't care, and Quantrill only cared about killing more Anouk, and the Squad Captains and Lieutenants were in the same boat as their squad-mates. In the end, I guess I cared because nobody else did.
The Fightin' 43rd started out twenty-two strong, and the Lightnings started out with twenty sykers. Our first encounter with Anouk backed by skinnies cost us about five sykers apiece. After a couple weeks of defensive warfare, we were down to twelve men and women in each squad. Over those weeks I bonded more and more with the brain-blasters of the 43rd: go figure, when you need to concentrate on blowing up a Purple Scarecrow of Doom, with doombolts at the ready, you really appreciate having a five-ton mech in front of you to block bullets and arrows. And I really appreciated it when they'd take out the skinnie that'd been trying to take over my mind.
One outstanding incident comes to mind: after a particularly horrifying skirmish, I pulled together several dozen kegs worth of spook-juice and about fifty-pounds of 'morale-lifting' pictures for my boys and girls. I spent the next two days deflecting attention away from their drunken revelry, bribing my superiors with a month's supply of weapons-grade chocolate apiece. I'm told Quantrill truly enjoyed the bottle of single-malt Scotch that appeared on his desk one day. Thank God on high there were no skinnies or major offenses at the time, or they'd have had to invent entirely new punishments for my sorry ass.
My efforts went most noticed, and most appreciated, by the sykers of the Fightin' 43rd. After one month as their quartermaster, they poured a mug of beer on my head, shaved my hair, and named me one of their own. Afterward, Captain Lydia Mazzuchelli, the 43rd's CO, gave me a coin that said 'Official Procurer' with the bolt-patterned '43' of the Squad minted on the back. Still have it with me today, though it's a bit worn down. Think Sid used it for Telekinetic Buckshot once or twice.
When the Star Swans and the Dragons lost much of their officer corps to an ambush, I volunteered my free time to look after them, too. Made a good impression with the Dragons when I let their CO, Captain Mendoza, take a spin in my Wolverine. I remember that the 43rd volunteered to pass some of their loot to the Dragons, and Mendoza continually hounded me to find him more spook-juice sources. That man could drink an elephant under the table and still fly straight the next morning. God, I miss him.
The Swans…alright, I've hinted at it before, but I'll say it straight now: I've always loved the ladies. I enjoy the company of beautiful young women, which describes every one of the Star Swans amazingly well. One problem: ever tried hitting on a young woman who really can read your mind? The only one of them who could look at me without either giggling or trying to kill me was Captain Taranova, their CO. After a few days, she marched into my office and told me in no uncertain terms that if I hurt any of her girls, she'd brain-blast my balls off and then pin them in place of my rank-insignias. When she left my office thirty minutes later, she stopped and turned, thanking me for giving the Swans something to think and to laugh about. I'm still not sure quite what she meant by that comment. Not sure I want to know, really.
Regardless, I spent the next couple of weeks listening to those guys and gals. The Swans were ordered to focus on the sykers original duty of tracking down traitors and informants, and they often had to use their feminine wiles to do it. The Dragons were the air-force, flying into firefights with fresh troops and out of firefights with fresh corpses. As battle hardened as they got, they were still human, and I pulled together with all three squads in order to stay sane through that hellish war. Swore an oath along with them, too. I'll get to that later.
Anyway, after about a month and a half of fighting defensively, General Warfield got fed up. Units across the board were ordered to push forward in a massive assault. I'd had trouble procuring amenities before the Big Push: during, I worked myself to the bone just finding enough food. After almost a year of jungle ambushes and horrific bloodshed, we started pushing the Anouk back.
Ah, there's something I should mention. Most other survivors of Banshee call the natives 'grapes' after their skin-color. I don't. I watched their warriors stand bravely against me as I charged toward them in my Wolverine with a Legion of sykers at my back. Many times, I saw them fight to the death protecting civilians and families from our wrath. No, you don't mock that kind of devotion to doing the right thing. I almost respected the bastards, up until Red River Canyon.
There I go, getting ahead of myself again. I wonder how much longer this recorder's got? We're not even halfway done, yet.
Okay, so we were pushing the Anouk back. By now, the Legion had mastered their style of warfare enough to meet the skinnies on semi-equal terms. It still took half a hundred sykers to take down a single skinnie, but it could be done. This'd be about the time we started running into Anouk shamans.
The 43rd spent a lot of time studying Anouk society, psychology, and religion. I used to listen to their conversations whenever I wasn't bogged down in negotiations and paperwork. Apparently, the shamans believed that the spirit of the planet Banshee itself spoke to them, and gave them power. I don't know one way or the other, but I did see their shamans throw down some God-awful powers. Most of them were pretty handy with Anouk weaponry, though all of them refused to even touch our gear. They used some kind of psychically-chargeable stone called 'Tannis' as weapons, mostly in axes and hammers.
You remember that one guy who complained about the lack of chocolate ice-cream? Name was, is, Sargent Sid Vicious. He and I struck up a real friendship –seriously, fuck the 'no fraternizing with the enlisted men' rule – after that raid. Now, he's always run more hot-tempered than pretty much anyone else I know, but he's loyal to a fault. One time, the cockpit on my Wolverine was smashed by some shaman with a massive Tannis warhammer, and the bastard pulled me out and ran off with me. I found myself tied up in one of their tents in a hidden village while they started sharpening knives. Next thing I know, everything in the tent but me died screaming, and the 43rd, with Sid and Lydia at the head, stormed into the camp and saved my bacon. On the trip back to bases, Sid reminded me that the 43rd never left a man behind…even if Quantrill had ruled my rescue 'too dangerous'. The prick.
The next day, an Anouk shaman armed with two Tannis axes marched into camp and called out Sid by name. To this day, I don't know how he slipped past the sentries and patrols. Or why Sid agreed to face him in single combat. The two of them marched off before the rest of us could do anything but stare. Maybe it was Sid's way of cleansing the deaths of so many civilians from his soul. After an hour or two, he wandered back, Tannis axes on his belt. They've been his signature weapons ever since.
Okay, I'll wrap up what happened on Banshee with the Final Push. Red River Canyon was this thick area of jungle with a canyon running down the middle that lead straight up to Castle Rock, the Anouk' final fortress. General Warfield sent in several regiments of regulars to scout out the area, then three Squads from the Legion, one after the other, to check when there was no radio contact. I'll give their names now, 'cause you'll never meet one of their members: the Tetsukaminari, the Black Falcons, and the Hammerheads. After losing contact with all of them, the entire Legion was mustered and sent in.
I still can't forget what we saw. The Hammerheads had been skinned alive and hanged from the trees. The Black Falcons had been staked open like frogs from high-school anatomy. And the Tetsus…something melted their brains from the inside out. So when the 43rd flew in with the Dragons and the remainder of the Legion, they saw the bodies of their brother and sister sykers strewn about the jungle.
I have never spoken to anyone about what happened next. The closest I came was during a formal report to General Warfield; 'Impediments removed. sir. The army may move safely through the rubble.' Guess this tape is my last chance to get the guilt off of my chest.
'Impediments removed', I said. What I never could get out was that those 'impediments' were villages and homes as well as fortresses and strongholds. The Legion went berserk for the first day or so: I saw sykers throw around Brainblasts, Bonerippers, Arsons, and Aztec-Surprises until they collapsed, then get up two hours later to do it again. In case you don't know what those powers do…just don't think on it real hard. Aztec Surprise especially makes me kinda…gimme a sec.
God Almighty, I hate that taste. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. The Legion turned that section of the jungle, and the tens of thousands of Anouk hiding in it, into a smoking crater littered with body-parts and flaming wreckage. I did my fair share of horrifying deeds there, too. When you're piloting a walking piece of vengeance with a mounted flamethrower and chainsaws for hands, you tend to view everything as a target. Damn machine even kept a kill-total for that first day: seven hundred and ninety Anouk, and thirteen regular troopers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Quantrill didn't give a rat's ass, though, so there was never a courts-martial.
Anyway, after our day of reckoning, I thought we were done. As Sid calmly informed me when he lifted my mech and used it to bludgeon a village into rubble, we weren't done. From my position inside the damn thing, I picked up on the subtle clues that the Legion wasn't letting this go so easily.
Something had snapped in the Legion. Years of pulling each other through that hellish jungle had formed bonds between the remaining squads. Finding sixty of your closest friends dead and their bodies defiled finally set off the powder-keg. I caught several of my squads collecting Anouk scalps from warriors and civilians alike. To my everlasting shame, I didn't stop them. Don't really think I could have, but I could at least have tried.
General Warfield, on the other hand, sent out commendations to those squads who continued the grisly practice. Even sent in a set of medals to be awarded to the squad with the most scalps. Strangely, those medals disappeared somewhere between his command and my desk. Crying shame.
So anyway, we turned Red River Canyon into a wasteland and ourselves into murderers, but that still wasn't the end of the war. The Anouk had one final bastion, a fortress we creatively called Castle Rock, poised on the edge of the Canyon. We spent thousands of lives storming the place when the artillery proved useless against it. I was in the damn thing with the 43rd when we finally found the Anouk leader and her last guardians. The rest of the Legion was roaming the halls of the fortress, slaughtering everything and blasting chunks from the walls. So we were set up for a final showdown: thirty Anouk shamans versus one Wolverine and a dozen sykers. Then we heard this rumbling sound, and the fucking floor started to shift. Turns out that the rest of the Legion had blasted too many supporting walls out, and the lot of us were headed into the river far below. Needless to say, we scrambled for the exits, still blasting at each other.
We almost made it out. We were right fucking there! Sid and I were at the back, along with Captain Lydia, when we heard this thunderous crack and the entire fortress slid off of the cliff. Sid exhausted himself keeping the roof from falling on us, while Lydia tossed the rest of the 43rd to safety with Telekinesis. I grabbed Sid and reached for Lydia, ready to jump us to safety, when a Tannis spear flew out of nowhere and went clean through her. I picked her body up gently and leapt almost a hundred meters to safety, crying the whole damn trip.
Now, it turns out she wasn't actually dead, and a quick Fleshknit had her back on her feet. But for about three minutes, I understood what the rest of the Legion felt when they found their squad-mates dead. She died back here on Earth about a month after we landed, when a biker gang decided she looked like easy prey. Most of the 43rd tried to track down that gang and get some payback, but they recently joined up with Junkyard, and…Hell, I'm getting too far ahead of myself again. Suffice to say, we're still waiting on the payback.
Alright, so we blew Castle Rock right off the cliff, burned it to the ground, pissed on the ashes, and then burned it again just in case. The Anouk resistance was just about annihilated, and the entire populace went into hiding. We figured we were due some time to rest and mourn the loss of our comrades. Then something pulled the rug out from under us so fast, I think it broke the sound barrier.
The Last War had started back on Earth just after we took Red River Canyon. Remember, the Banshee War was run by the UN, and our army was made up of dozens of battalions, regiments, and even whole divisions from its component nations. After we took Castle Rock, those nation started to call their regulars back. General Warfield raged about wanting to wipe out the Anouk, but folks on Earth were more concerned with protecting their own countries and waging their own wars to care. Pretty soon, it was just the remnants of the Legion, and whatever deserters refused to head back to Earth.
I later found out that my own orders to return to Earth were 'lost' on General Warfield's desk. The man may have held a grudge, but I kept his sykers in-line and well supplied, so he wanted me right where I was. As for the Legion, nobody back on Earth wanted them: the Squads were made up of people from all different nations, so they'd spent too much time with the 'enemy'. So while all of the regular troops left, the only people left for the Banshee War were us and the Rangers, a local force of mostly volunteers.
The Anouk started pushing out tentatively, and found out just how weakened we were. With so few of us left, they started overrunning positions left and right. God only knows how we held the majority of the continent for those three years. Okay, God and me, I guess. After all, I had to order all of the body-bags.
Sometime in mid-August, the final order came through: all of the sykers were to come home ASAP. We boarded the Unity, some gigantic research-vessel the UN kinda stole from Hellstromme Industries, and bugged out. I had to sneak aboard with the Legion when my own orders still didn't trickle down, and I managed to grab a couple extra pallets of equipment before we left. Now mind, we all felt bad about leaving the colonists to the tender mercies of the Anouk, but orders were orders. I remember passing my old Dragoon rifle off to some perky redheaded Ranger just before boarding the ship and saying goodbye to Banshee for good.
I wasn't drunk, I hadn't eaten anything suspect, and Sid says he was nowhere nearby at the time, so I can't explain what happened next, but I know for a fact it happened. I heard a soft female voice whisper to me, "You'll be back." Nobody was nearby, and my radio wasn't even on.
Craziest thing. Really creepy, too.
So, we took off. Somehow. we'd managed to cram a couple hundred civilians on board, so we had plenty of company. I schmoozed my way into one of the female officers' affections, so I got to spend the trip in the relative luxury of her cabin. First chance I had in months to glance in a mirror: wondered when I had begun to gray. After almost a day, I began to feel something new to me: loneliness. Sure, that officer was great stress-relief, for the both of us, but I missed my boys. And girls, don't wanna be sexist. So I thanked her, dressed, and spent the next couple of weeks keeping the Legion company. That's when we took the Oaths.
You see, after the kind of horror we went through together, none of us wanted to fight the others. Since the world was at war, we would certainly be on opposite sides eventually, though. So what we decided to do was to swear the Oath of Unity, swearing to never harm, through action or inaction, our fellow squad-mates. Some squads made oaths to the others, like the Dragons and the 43rd. Others, like the Wendigos and Brain Dogs, swore oaths only within their own squad. Overall, it was a solemn event with lots of manly tears.
Towards the end, I stood up and was handed a microphone. I recounted the tale of how I wound up as their quartermaster, much to the amusement of those who hadn't already heard the story. Pretty young thing by the name of Cathy Griffin chimed in with a smart remark, and everybody had a laugh at my expense. After the laughter had died down, I began listing off the accomplishments of the squad; not the military accomplishments, nobody wanted to remember those. I listed off every panty-raid, every joke played on the senior officers, every strange object that made it through security onto Quantrill's desk each morning. By the time I finished, we were all red in the face from laughter. Then, the evening took a more serious turn.
One of the kids from the Wendigos stood up and asked me what right I had to be there. I wasn't a syker. I was an outsider.
The kid was just tired, I know, but I couldn't help it. I snapped.
"I am here because I have given, sacrificed, just as much as anyone here for your good. I have bled, fought, and killed just as much as you, Ashe. I have given my all for you, and for all of our lost friends. I went into the field alongside every one of you here, and you owe your lives to me as much as I owe mine to you. Whenever I wasn't in the field, I was begging, borrowing, and stealing the food you needed to eat and the tents you needed to sleep in. I'm here because I'm just as tired of fighting and killing as any of you are.
May the Lord strike me down if I ever raise a hand against any of you, my sons and daughters, my sisters and brothers. This I swear before God, man, and whatever the hell the rest of us are."
There wasn't a dry eye in the hangar we'd requisitioned as I snapped off a salute to the room. Damn, but I wish someone had gotten a picture.
I feel that what I did for the Legion is the best of my life. I could have been a desk-jockey, signing off on them just like the other senior officers. I chose not to. And I will never regret it.
Just before we jumped into the Tunnel between the Milky Way and Faraway, Lydia passed me a picture. I glanced between a mirror and the photo, which showed me standing with the rest of the 43rd on some bloody battlefield, my Wolverine in the background.. God, when had I gotten so old? So scarred and tired-looking? I had barely hit fourty!
Next thing I know, every syker in the place is screaming their head off. Even I heard something, a piercing shriek, quickly followed by a migraine. We spent the next few hours searching for the source of the scream, to the point that the ship's captain ordered us to head back to our quarters and stop clogging his ship's hallways. Sid knocked his block off, and we locked him in his rooms. I stole a shot of whiskey from his room before we left to start the search anew, passing the rest of the bottle to Sid as we walked. We never found out where that shriek came from, that I know of. Didn't have much opportunity to ask, because the moment we made it to Earth, alarms started sounding.
We were just passing through the main hangar when we the klaxons began blaring, warning us of 'intruders' on board the Unity. Sid immediately got in contact with Lydia and the rest of the Fightin' 43rd while I hacked my way into the nearby repair-ship. Most of the 43rd made it to us without running into those intruders, and we loaded up, opened the hatch, and flew for Houston. On the way, I saw my Wolverine, strapped to the deck, and reached out one of the ship's manipulators to snag it. By the time we landed, the thing was a mess, but I managed to fix it while we waited for news from the other survivors.
Not all of us made it off of the ship, however. Fifteen sykers stayed behind and fought off the intruders for a time. If I'm going to tell my own story on this log, I'm damn sure going to at least list their names. They were the best of us, and we miss them dearly.
Anna Kolinsky, of the Dragons. Anna was in charge of shielding her aircraft from harm, and she saved more lives than any other Dragon on Banshee.
Cathy Griffin, of the Screaming Eagles. God, she was a cold bitch, but she was the best syker on that damn planet. The head of the Screaming Eagles, she lead them to become the most skilled and disciplined Squad. Funny thing is, I could almost swear she went missing before the alarms started sounding.
Charles Ryan, of the Brain Dogs. Used to call him 'Chuck'. He hated that.
Tara Gallagher, of the Dragons. When the mini-gun from her chopper took a hit, she decided it'd be a great idea to poke her head out and breath fire down on the Anouk. Only person to ever use Arson that way. I remember handing her some Aloe Vera and wincing when she tried to smile.
Tim Link, also of the Dragons. Tim was the youngest syker sent to Banshee, a real prodigy. I remember getting him a handheld game for his birthday that first year on Banshee. Poor kid didn't even know how to turn it on at first. Later on, he played it so much we took to calling him 'Tetris.'
Tariz Nafsanjani, of the Banshee Blasters. I never got to know Tariz very well. A wound early on in the war left him mute, and he never quite mastered telepathy enough to communicate.
Barry Doyle, of the Phantom Brigade. Sneakiest bastard I ever knew. Used to employ him whenever I needed something 'acquired'.
Matthew Tice, of the Wendigos. Matthew was a little 'special'. He was the only syker I ever had sent to the brig when he 'missed' with a Brain Bomb and made me bleed from the eyes. Turns out he did a lot of 'missing', and he wound up with the highest friendly-fire count of anyone, including the artillery division. Still, he stayed behind to help the civilians on the Unity, so he must have been a good guy underneath it all.
Christy Hopler, of the Star Swans. A stunningly beautiful young woman, Christy and I used to tease each other unendingly. We meant no harm by it, and it was always when we were off duty, so nobody got in trouble. I remember the look on this one young trooper when she turned to me and asked, 'What do you think, Dad?' after he invited her to his tent.
God in heaven, but I miss them. Give me a second…
I've got to keep going. They deserve a lot more than this, but at least I can get their names out there.
Kevin Sharpe, of the Fightin' 43rd. I taught him to play speed-chess, and we used to meet to play every Friday. We kept that tradition going until the assault on Red River Canyon.
Jay Neal, of the Voodoo Gurus. Frankly, Neal always creeped me out. He used to play around with these voodoo dolls and some kind of talismans. Had a nice butterfly knife, though, that he always played with when he was nervous.
Zeke Sparks, of the Black Lightning. Zeke used to party hearty, but he was a one-cup drunk. Two cups of spook-juice and we'd be drawing pictures on his face 'til morning.
Nate Perkins, of the Screaming Eagles. Perkins saved my life more than once when I'd gotten too far ahead of whichever squad I was accompanying. Hell, most of us had a 'and then Perkins swooped in a and saved my ass' story.
Dave Sisson, of the Banshee Blasters. Sisson picked up the nickname 'Sissy' pretty early on. Got into so many fights over that. Even punched me in the face, once, when it slipped out.
The last of the Unforgotten Fifteen was the brat who stood up and called me out during the Oath. Ashe Marler, of the Wendigos. Ashe chafed at any sort of authority, so we never really got on well. Still, he was a good man.
So, that's the Unforgotten Fifteen. They stayed behind and demonstrated great courage and heroism, symbols of what we all strive to be as well as how far we have to go to get there.
When we landed, I expected to run into Confederate troops as a welcoming committee. The Space Center, however was strangely quiet. Looking around, we saw what was left of Houston: a big pile of burning rubble with a few skeletal towers stabbing at the sky. Checking the instruments on the repair ship, I found no radio contact from any major cities. Washington, Richmond, Denver, fucking London: all of them were gone. Lydia checked with the other survivors when their escape pods landed, and they also reported no sign of life.
Imagine coming back from this horrifying war in a far-off galaxy to find someone has wrecked your home, burnt it to the ground, and then salted the ashes. My family home in Annapolis, Sid's brother in Memphis, Lydia's nieces and nephews living in New York City: all were gone before we had even reached orbit.
We began what most sykers today call the Long Walk, splitting off with tearful farewells to try and find family amongst the rubble of the world we'd left behind. Sid stuck around with me: both of us were bachelors with no remaining family, and with nothing better to do. Lydia went off in search of her family, and ran into that gang of bikers. The rest of the Legion just disbanded and started wandering the Wasted West, looking for a purpose now that we had returned.
I bartered us passage with a small convoy of trucks, one of which had room for my recently-repaired Wolverine. And so the two of us started roaming, with no idea of the adventures before us.
A/N 2
Whew, Kowalski does tend to ramble. Okay, this was originally written as a combination of backstory and memoirs prior to our gaming group running the final Hell on Earth campaign: the Unity. I decided to publish it to kick off my Deadlands fics because the old soldier has been through some truly fantastic stories and events, and it helps to have a little background on the man before we see his adventures.
Let me explain a few of the mechanics of the game, and where Kowalski stands on those.
Grit: Grit represents a character's familiarity with the horrors of Deadlands, and his capability in dealing with them without going insane. The average character may have a Grit of 1. Over the course of the adventures we'll be covering, Kowalski accumulates a total Grit of 6. Players of Deadlands will know that a Grit of 5 signals that the character is currently being hunted by the Reckoner Death's main advocate, a walking corpse by the name of Stone. That means that, no matter what, Kowalski's days are numbered.
Arcane Backgrounds: The reason Kowalski works so well with his Wolverine is because he is a Junker. Junkers are the spiritual descendants of the Mad Scientists of the Weird West, and they communicate with technology spirits in order to construct strange and wondrous tools from scrap and spare parts. Kowalski also has a Familiar, a powerful spirit inhabiting a body he constructed, and who provides backup as well as assisting in negotiations with spirits. We'll meet FireFox in the next chapter.
Anyway, please read and review. This is going to be a side-project for me unless enough people are interested in its continuation.