The first week is quiet, on account of the cease-fire, and I drill my team hard. Makarov and Ferra tug at the leash from time to time, but only by principle now. Our bunks are clean, our uniforms sharp, our guns smell like oil and steel and we're clean, washing ourselves with bleach and cold water, because there's no soap, no shampoo and no hot water. We all end up blond, from the bleach.
The name comes naturally, without any input from anyone in the team. Cole's Wraiths.
Cole's Wraiths are bristling with pride as I evaluate their written English skills. Only two of them managed to find a tutor. Esprit de corps kicked in and they ended up splitting in two classes of four, studying together late into the night. The material they read is technical documentation, copies of mission reports, discipline rules. Anyone poking their head in our bunk room would see nine troopers, rough and angry, sure, but clean and busy reading up intel reports.
A lot of the other squads resent us putting the bar higher, making them look shoddy. So they get a bit rough with my boys.
Once.
The atrium still has blood splatters from where Ferra cracked a skinny guy's arm open.
My squad is good. I'm lucky, nothing more. They're healthy too, mentally and physically. No psychopaths in Cole's Wraiths.
Makarov, angry as always, once admits to us that he enjoys killing. "Some of the best surgeons in the world enjoy the blood, cutting the flesh," I tell him, loud enough for the whole team to hear, "It's not sick, so long as he shows restraint, cuts only as much as is needed. Nothing wrong with enjoying violence, we're violent animals, just don't let fun get in the way of the job."
After that, Cole's Wraiths never give me trouble again. Tuned like a violin, Lieutenant Calico puts it when she drops in, on the second week, to check what all the fuss is about.
She leaves without telling us to stand easy. Without another word.
The next week, A runner brings us a box full of comic books. Curtesy of Mama Mamba, my former CO. Calico must know her.
The comics shave a full month off the learning process for my team. Kerner and Ferra score as high as you can expect from people learning in a warzone, the rest are lagging behind, but still know enough to decipher written instructions.
We volunteer for every patrol that comes up, I want to keep them from slacking off, easing back in their old habits.
With Makarov's dead eye, Ferra's speed and accuracy and Kerner's quick mind, the team runs itself. Makarov spots, Kerner calls, Ferra exterminates and the rest of us just pick up the slack when needed. Not to say the others are bad, Carpenter must have gained some insight from tearing down the same barricade three times in a row, because he can clear roadblocks, breach doors and pick locks faster than I can order him to.
Smith is the most vanilla crew cut soldier I've ever seen, but he's got the focus of a machine, pouring his soul in everything I ask. Whatever I task Smith with, I know it'll be done on the bounce and satisfactorily.
Hannigan, Hangman, is the best rear guard you can hope for; he must have been a meercat in a past life, judging by the way his head snaps around. He carries a Stoner too, so I know he's got taste, and, more important, that anything trying to cut us off will be suppressed the moment it tries to move in.
I use every opportunity to teach them something new. How to traverse rough terrain by giving one another a leg up, which Kerner calls Räuberleiter. I don't question. How to track, kill, skin and eat wild cats and dogs. First time, Moreau spills his lunch in the rubbles, a few steps from our fire, second time, Ferra and I spill our guts.
That dog wasn't cooked quite right.
We get in a few scraps and all my training is useless the first time. Hangman drains two hundred rounds in an unauthorized cover fire, jamming his weapon and leaving me as the only gunner in the patrol. Hard to give orders when you have 7.62 rattling inches from your face. So I roar short instructions, trying to keep the mutants down, we lose Beckett, but I didn't even know his name, so he musn't have been that great.
Kerner panics, tries to go back for the downed TC, gets hit square in the chest and everything goes to shit.
Ferra is gone, I'm too busy to find out where, Carpenter's huddled in a corner, his AK forgotten at his feet, Smith… Smith soldiers on like the proud warrior he's shaping up to be. Rattles out short and precise bursts, keeps himself in cover, doesn't shout obscenities…
Makarov keeps repeating "I don't have a shot!" and "I don't see them!"
He's useless.
I cease fire. Twelve super mutants are moving to surround us. They'll close the net and slaughter us to a man if I don't act.
"Everyone! I'm about to do something. Don't ever do the same, or I'll have you court-martialed!" I call on the radio.
Doesn't matter if they understand, they know something's about to happen. Either it works and they'll learn to never panic this way again, or it fails and, well, I'll be too dead to be tried.
I take the mutants in close combat. Closing the distance by pounding the asphalt of this parking lot with my combat boot and eroding the buildings surrounding it with rapid burst fire. I'm not aiming wildly, I line up anything green, any muzzle flash, and spray it once before moving on. This gets me into the target building, surrounded by four mutants. They are all aiming at the door, but I don't come in from there, I smash through a boarded up window, crash to the floor and, winded but alive, unleash a hail of 7.62 rounds into knees, ankles and shins.
I'm in a side hallway, just where it meets the lobby. Twisting to my feet, I spin and, sure enough, catch two hostiles taking aim at me with bolt action guns. I pump them full of hole, then, leaving my weapon hang off my chest, on nylon straps, pull out my .44 and finish off the four in the lobby.
The reason why I wasn't pumped full of lead on my way here? The mutants in adjacent buildings were so focused on me, they forgot about Makarov, and paid no attention to Ferra when he moved to flank them. Kerner's been hit, but beyond cracked ribs and bruised pride, she's fine.
Eight TC just took down twelve super-mutants. That doesn't usually happen, not without air or artillery support. We lost someone, but they're all veterans, they're used to losing people.
We make it to base soberly quiet and wash blood off ourselves and our kits for the better part of that evening. All extra duty is belayed that day.
Carpenter, with a pen and knife, carves a skull into the door of our bunk room.
Over the next month, he carves a new one for every patrol and mission where blood got spilled, until the door looks like the gates of hell and no one dares knock without some immensely urgent business.
It's only after the second month that we're informed the cease-fire has ended. I'm sitting at my desk, which doubles as a dinner table now that our team terrifies the others so much, we were asked to eat… Anywhere else. It's late, my team is rostered off, asleep or reading in bed.
The Fat Man shell hits the northern wall, on my right, and brings it down, burying the four bunk beds there in rubbles.
I get blown off my chair and smacked against Carpenter's locker. Pictures of his kids and recreational holotapes are knocked onto my laps. I try to brush them off, but can't. My right arm is numb, probably got a shr…
It's gone. My brain helpfully informs me that I just had a limb ripped apart, like if you dug a hundred hooks in all of its tendons and muscles before pulling it apart.
Must be an hour before I'm rational again. I have a tourniquet set up, morphine pens are discarded around me. Gear too, I got my stoner from somewhere…
"Sound off!" I yell, but can barely hear my own voice. Kerner is trying to walk up to where smith's upper body juts out of the rubble, but she's uneven, shaky.
She's missing a foot and most of her lower jaw is dangling from her shirt.
I dig with one hand. Pull Ferra out and he's perfectly fine, so I let the big fuck dig Makarov out.
He's not fine. Mak's got a hole in him, size of a watermelon, under his left armpit and we can't figure a way to stop that mess of ground meat from pissing blood. Kerner screams. She's just ripped what's left of Smith's torso… No, Smith is screaming. All he has left are lungs and a twitching spine, so he screams and I get Carpenter, who's unharmed, to lead Kerner away, to the infirmary, before she realizes how badly she's hit.
Smith's eyes are wild, no coherent thought should be possible in that husk of a human being, but he finds the wits to scream "I'm hit! Lance! I'm down… How bad is it, boss?!"
"It's nothing." I say, then I put a full burst in his skull. One round might not have sufficed. Tough bastard.
"Headcount!" Kerner and Carpenter makes two. Smith is gone. That's three.
Ferra's just dug out Hangman. Who's doing okay.
That's five. I'm six. Mak's seven… Who are we missing?
"Where's Moreau?!" The guy explodes from the rubbles, bleeding from every pore in his body, but with every limb attached and a 10mm pistol in hand. "I'm up! I'm… Okay!"
And then the lumbering shape of a knight in full power armor comes looming through the gaping hole in our wall. Hooking my stump under the Stoner's foregrip, I take aim and wait.
"What the fuck are we gonna do!" Ferra is about to lose it. Makarov is choking on his own mushed lung. My gun is too shit to even dent the knight's armor…
"Get out of here!" I order, "I'll hold 'em!"
They don't point out the insanity of that suggestion. The knight raises his laser rifle, aiming it at Ferra, the biggest target in the room. I put five rounds into the weapon. Shattering it and pissing off the brotherhood soldier far more that I'd have likes. He backhands me through the wall and into the nearby corridor. Somehow, I roll through the stucco and land on my feet, right behind my team.
I turn around. The Knight rips through that same hole I made, brandishing a laser pistol now. I disable that weapon as well with a quick burst.
Our pursuer turns out to be female, she groans and cries out, "You really want me to punch you to death!?"
"Don't suppose death by snu-snu is on my list of options?"
She doesn't get it. Figured she'd be a Grognak fan. Guess not.
We move faster than her in these tight quarters and end up in the atrium just in time to meet the main BoS assault. The knights just knock down our fortifications, barging in like they own the place and, seeing them rip our men apart, they pretty well do.
"Target their weapons!" I scream, leading by example. Ferra picks up a weapon when Hangman and Morreau help Makarov to the infirmary. The word spreads quickly. Soon, this gets down and dirty. We outnumber them and, now, we outgun them, but they're suited up, so we use wolf-like tactics, harassing them, wearing them down.
Our gunfire scrapes the paint off their hood, barely more, but once that paint is scraped off, we start scraping off metal, then the hood ornament falls off and, soon enough, we're through to the meat inside.
It's messy. Men are crushed alive, maimed beyond recognition, liquefied within their armors. I think I spot the bitch that hit our dorms with a fatman, but only in passing and a moment later, someone saturates the air around her with napalm.
Karma's a bitch.
I'm so jacked up on morphine, I don't even realize I've taken a laser shot to the leg until the cauterization gives and it spurts blood so far, I think I've been hit by friendly fire for a moment.
I rip what's left of my shirt off and tie it tight above the wound. The bleeding slows to a trickle. "All points, push!" I leave cover, confident that I'm not gonna get shot again, our boys have had time to disable any sidearm by now. The brotherhood stops, seeing us advance and I feel their eyes on me. Helmets or not, I can tell they've identified me as the source of their problems.
One armed, shirtless, limping and scorched all over by radiated heat from the fatman and laser fire. I walk them to the door, Stoner roaring the entire way.
Now this is the moment that matters, understand this. We slack off, celebrate, their reserves will wipe us all out. We get mad, charge after them, same result. With no officers in sight, we're as likely to do either of those things.
I seize the opportunity, since everyone's looking towards this door, towards me.
"Gather those who can't walk! Get them to the doc! Everyone else, take up firing positions on the rooftop and windows. I want LMGs on this door… Get some sentry bots in here! They'll be back!"
They get to work, I catch a sergeant who's turning my morphine-fueled set of instruction into clear military orders, and am surprised to see him stand straighter when he notices me coming. "Where's Lieutenant Calico?" I ask him.
"In the comms. Centre, sir." Why he sirs' me, I don't know, but I nod and limp towards the rotunda.
I am greeted by a face full of assault rifles. Twelve officers and non-coms, set up around a data centre and tactical map, trying to figure out their next move,
Jabsco's here, fully suited, bloodied and shouting. I'd salute, but I'm short one arm.
"Hostile forces…Why's that molerat… Where…" Up and down switch places. The ground becomes a wall and I walk into it before blacking out.
