Chapter 6

Force Majeure

"Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels."

~Albert Einstein

The desperate wails from the ragtag and pitiful group didn't impact him in the same way that their thoughts, awash with tremulous energy and drowning in desperation did. An overwhelming sense of loss and abject fear hit him over and over again like ocean waves, the undertow of powerful emotions almost pulling him physically down into their swirling foaming depths. The sensation went beyond empathy; he WAS the tired and broken man who had failed his family, he was the terrified mother almost insane with the need to protect her young.

He had intended to skirt the group in the shallow valley below him after observing their behavior for a short time, reasoning that he shouldn't get involved in local affairs without a full understanding of the politics governing the area. This plan was rent asunder as he opened his mind to the full extent of his otherworldly perception, rendering himself vulnerable to the powerful emotions boiling amidst the people he observed. He tried to shut them out and relax his breathing, the residual feelings causing him to tense up and his muscles to tremble in sympathy to their torment. He focused his mind to discern the truth of what his eyes told him, peeling back the layers of subjective empathy to divine the facts.

There were several men deployed in an almost soldierly way, whose thoughts broadcast their discipline, loyalty and brutality in service to their leader, their "Caesar". They were well armed and kept careful watch on their surroundings, but even their keen overlapping gazes could not penetrate the light warping stealth field of his Nex stealth module. Their prize, a small group of families huddled beneath them, were intended as slaves to serve their growing Legion. It was bitter irony that their slavers were themselves slaves to the Legion they served, being bereft of that vital component of free thought. Their individual liberties freely subjugated to their all-consuming desire to conquer in the name of their ideology.

His lips curled in disgust as he allowed himself a moment of reminiscence, the memory of his indoctrination as a ghost operative and subsequent recruitment into Project Shadowblade bringing unwelcome anguish in tandem with the torment of the slaves. When the project seemingly failed, he had then festered in the depths of New Folsom, discarded like refuse by that bastard Mengsk with his fellow spectres for the simple sin of being individuals. He relished the day that Tosh and Raynor had liberated them, and felt a deep and abiding respect for both men; especially Raynor, who held up liberty as one of the worthiest purposes one could embrace.

His mind braced with determination, he took up his AGR-14, focused anger tightening its grip on his weapon as he harnessed the wash of emotion to drive his actions. The stealth field faded with an electrical sizzle, the loss of one of his greatest tactical advantages subordinate to his selfish need for the slavers to fully realize the doom coming upon them. He ignored their shouts of alarm as irrelevant as he raised his rifle and sent hypersonic death into the first two sentries, the kinetic force of the impacts blasting their bodies back explosively. The other slavers reacted with appreciable alacrity, throwing spears with accuracy and strength; their intimate course slicing through the air to penetrate his flesh. His gifts allowed him to 'see' their intention and the trajectory of their attacks even as they made them, their lightning fast reflexes paling in comparison to his precognitive ability. He stepped to the left as he walked, dodging two of the thrown missiles with contemptuous ease and then adjusted the muzzle of his weapon up and to the right to deflect the last spear.

The nearest legionnaire drew a machete and assumed a combat stance, hesitating for only a moment before slicing vertically with his sharp weapon at the undaunted spectre. Ashur halted abruptly to let the blade whistle by in front of him and then stepped in and rammed his fist into the man's throat, crushing his larynx and sending his foe to the ground futilely attempting to gasp past the crushed cartilage. Bullets whizzed by as the remaining slavers disregarded muzzle discipline towards their new property or even their fellow soldiers by spraying the area with fire in the vain attempt to put down their mysterious assailant.

He fired point blank into a young legionnaire frantically attempting to clear a jammed round from an old bolt action rifle, the man's head snapping back and sending a spray of blood and brain matter arcing through the air. Ashur caught him before he fell and braced him up to shield him from the continuing small arms fire. The slaves, the taste of their terror reaching sharp new pungency on the back of his tongue, sprawled low to the ground. The women cradled their children protectively while the men shielded their wives and mothers. Laying his weapon on the shoulder of his corpse shield, he sent the last 3 rounds of his magazine into the face and chest of the deadliest of his remaining threats, the large Legion soldier's better training and armament marking him as the leader of this group. The threat was erased vividly and literally, everything from the navel up disappearing in a visceral spray of heat spill that decorated the ground behind him.

He let his rifle slide down the left side of his meat shield and caught it in the angle of his foot and lower leg. He jerked the machete free from his shield's belt with his right and grabbed a firm hold of the man's limp neck with his left. Heaving clockwise, he used the weight of the dead man to propel his body and accelerate the machete with the centrifugal force straight into the neck of the last Legionnaire. The last man fell back onto his rump with a wet scream, the sound contorted by the blood welling up into his mouth and the steel imbedded in his vocal cords.

Ashur kicked his rifle up and caught it, reloading and charging the weapon with well-practiced ease. He crouched and panned through the cardinal compass points, extending his senses in tandem with his augmented sight to scan the area for additional threats. Sensing none, he relaxed slightly, holding his weapon up against his right shoulder as he glanced down at the shivering family.

Moving towards them slowly and calmly, he channeled his talents to send soothing thoughts to them, effacing the ragged edge of their adrenaline fueled fear. He removed his mask as he crouched a short distance away, holding it and his rifle away from his body to present a docile demeanor and reinforce his peaceful intentions. He was patient as the seconds turned to minutes, the rustle of dried plants and tumbleweeds the only sound to accompany the low mournful wind. The youngest child, a boy of perhaps 4, though it was difficult to tell due to the state of severe malnourishment wasting his limbs, looked up first. The child, looking for all the world like the very embodiment of famine, peered at him with wide startling blue eyes. Ashur felt the barest brush of contact in his mind, a gently curious zephyr ghosting across his psychic perception. He narrowed his eyes as he concentrated on the boy and felt in him the stirring well of psychic potential in his young developing brain. They reached out to one another, both psionically and physically, their hands outstretched to mirror the invisible waves of energy meeting each other for the first time. The physical touch was like a shock of static, his gloved hand lightly touching the boy's emaciated fingers.

A mere hour later, Specialist Shalev walked ahead of short line of refugees, his quiet voice soothing the young boy in his arms as his parents trudged along behind him, their thoughts burdened with the uncertainty but daring to hope. A single mother and her daughter followed after, more optimistic than their erstwhile fellows; their hope lending their bodies with enough strength to keep up with the spectres long strides. A ragged but youthful man took up the rear, his expression thoughtful even through the weariness.

Captain Griff was on the comm with him, affirming his plan to take the refugees back to the base camp along with the supplies he had liberated from the slavers. Signing off, he glanced at the boy in his arms, the child's unruly hair tousling in the wind as he quietly gazed at the passing landscape, his mind open and eager.

The chain gun roared like a long metal zipper being pulled, the sound magnified a thousand-fold and punctuated by the sounds of disintegrating rock and the shocked 'tinks' of steel meeting steel. Vasquez laughed as she swung the weapon from tower to tower, erasing the powder ganger guards stationed there in a storm of hypersonic metal.

In the many conflicts that she had been engaged in during her time amongst Raynor's Raiders, they often found themselves outclassed, technologically by the Protoss and numerically by the Zerg. More often than not, victory was snatched from the whimsical hands of fate more by pure moxy or luck than any other factor. But not here; here, she had the edge, her CMC-300 armor whirring with power from the heat exchange turbines on her back and the gentle tinkle of raining brass as her chain gun bellowed its fury. Powder gangers fired back ineffectually from their heights, the rifles barking back single shots which pinged off her armor which did little more than scratch the paint. She moved forward from the building that served as the entry control point to the compound, letting Ramirez and West come out behind her and begin laying fire down on the scattered convicts in the yard.

Thus far, they had secured the former sheriff Meyers and one other convict who also bore no inclination to meet oblivion with his former compatriots. The man had simply been serving his time for petty larceny and was nearing the end of his sentence when the riot broke out. Though he was somewhat craven, he had felt that sense of obligation to fulfill his term rather than be branded a greater outlaw than he already was and face the consequence when the NCR eventually retook the facility.

Marco, though as excited as the other marines to be involved in this level of asynchronous combat, was wholeheartedly committed to maintaining both his honor and that of the Raiders. He reiterated to his fellow marines that the rules of engagement were to be fully observed. Noncombatants were not to be engaged and anyone who surrendered would be given quarter. Still, it was satisfying on more than one level to be directing righteous wrath at these men who stood against them, knowing that most of them were violent offenders and had taken up their old professions with enthusiasm after having slaughtered the prison guards and taken the compound for themselves.

A screaming bald man, laughingly wearing nothing but cut off shorts and suspenders, jumped up from behind his cover with a fizzing stick of dynamite clutched in his dirty fist. Ramirez used his HUD assisted targeting to send a 3 round burst at the insane prisoner, dropping him before he could throw his explosive. A loud bang added its voice to the clamor as baldy exploded, remnants of his body tossed up and out in a grisly fountain of pink mist and dirt.

The yard quieted as Vasquez's metaphorical husband ran dry on ammo, the whirring of the chain mechanism winding down in an almost saddening decrescendo. Marco and Nathan could both see the reluctance in her stance as she set down her favored weapon and pulled the standard C-14 Impaler from its magnetic grapple on her back. With the chain gun silenced, it became evident that there was no return fire, every tower having been thoroughly voided of life and the yard littered with the detritus of their enemies.

At a nod from the corporal, the three of them spread out to secure the compound. He and West each took one of the out buildings, cell blocks by their appearance, and rammed in their wooden doors. The splinters violently foretold their entrance as their greeting was met with more gunfire from within. They re-emerged moments later, the handful of prisoners within each cell block having been put down with ruthless efficiency.

They reconvened with Vasquez at the entrance of what appeared to be the largest building in the complex, a two story structure that bore every resemblance to a main administrative center. The tactical scans courtesy of their power armor showed several heat signatures inside, as many men rushing about as they had already encountered outside. Disinclined to allow the prisoners more time to prepare, Vasquez led the way, kicking in the door with far more force than necessary; splintering the age-rotted wood and sending chunks of the door flying inward.

They moved with methodical precision, clearing corners and covering one another as they moved through the first floor of the complex. They quickly disposed of one man standing behind a bed in what appeared to be a medical station and apprehended another huddling behind a flimsy table and chair.

"Aw man! I'm just the medic! I didn't have anything to do with the riot, I swear!" The prisoner cried, as if he could convince them by virtue of the sheer volume of his protest.

"Name and status, convict." Marco spoke, the monotone voice issuing from his helmet speakers granting the simple words an ominous aspect.

"Hannigan, I am… er was, er am the medic. I was just doing my time when the guys led by that scary fuckin Cooke guy kicked this shit off. I didn't know anything about it!"

"Why are you here?"

"Safer behind walls, besides, they can't risk their only medic to go out on raids and shit, am I right?"

"No, why were you a prisoner?" Marco grimaced, his patience quickly eroding.

"Oh that, thought the quartermaster wouldn't notice a few supplies going missing now and again… I was wrong."

"Petty thief." Marco grunted, "Disarm him, tie him up, toss him in a corner."

In moments, the hapless medic was fettered like an animal and tossed like so much refuse onto one of the beds. Not sparing the moaning prisoner another glance, the three moved on and finished clearing the first floor.

Bullets immediately began pinging off his armor plate as West led the way up the stairs to the second floor, several men in black vest-like body armor firing down the staircase at them with submachine guns. The sheer number of rounds was problematic, like a heavy rain on a tin roof both in sound and effect. Eventually, something is going to get through. His HUD showed his armor integrity dropping from green to yellow as the storm of lead found weaknesses. An alarm resounded in his ear as a single round actually penetrated one of the armored cable feeds.

Anger spiked his combat haze, bringing into sharp relief how reckless he had become facing these inferior opponents. Now his hardskin was damaged to the point where his effectiveness was down 40%, a fact that will earn him some sharp words from the engineers who were already overtaxed trying to get a command center up and running using only the rusted metal hulks they found on the highways.

He ducked back behind the first landing, using the wall as defilade against their fire as he primed one of the few grenades in his kit. Terran marines rarely carried fragmentation grenades, their effectiveness was very limited when in combat against other marines, the hardened carapaces of the Zerg or the plasma shielding of the Protoss. Instead, they had taken to carrying a few stun grenades, modified flashbangs created by that egghead Stetmen that could overwhelm the sensory systems of even the EMP hardened suits they wore. Against, an unarmored enemy, their effects should be suitably impressive.

After Marco and Vasquez gave him the thumbs up, he underhanded the grenade up the stairs at the bulwark of ex-convicts above them. Bracing themselves around the corner, they waited for the telltale flash and ringing to indicate the detonation. Instead their ears were greeted by sounds of panicked alarm which were quickly followed by pained screams and thuds as the men flailed about.

Ramirez took the lead since stairway had been designed for normal sized people and as such was too narrow for more than one marine to ascend at once. He drew his stub pistol in his right as he held his Impaler in his left, firing down at the stunned prisoners as he moved through their former blockade. West and Vasquez came up behind him and spread out just as another group of prisoners emerged from a room to their right.

Vasquez could have laughed at the ridiculous sight as a man sporting an impressive Mohawk and wearing an eyepatch lunged at her with spiked knuckledusters on his fists. The veins stood out in his neck and his presumable good eye flashed with chemically induced rage, spittle flying from his mouth as he shouted incoherently. With a tap on the side of her Impaler, a nano-forged blade sprang from beneath the muzzle with a 'schinkt'. She drew back as if wielding a spear and drove it into the man's midsection just as he lunged forward to attack, his momentum halted as surely as if he had slammed into a brick wall. She easily lifted him up and over, letting the inertia pull him off the blade as his body slid on the floor. He yowled at his split abdomen, messily grabbing at the intestines pouring out of the grievous wound in stinking ropes of flesh.

A bright green flash interrupted her macabre fascination with the dying idiot as heat blossomed on her right side. Her HUD indicated an alarm condition as another bolt of green energy splashed against her armor, the 'plasma' beginning to melt the plate. Apparently, the locals did have some impressive technology, as the last of the prisoners fired bolts of plasma at them, the angry grimace on his face broadcasting his hate almost as effectively as his pistol. Marco ended his ranting fusillade with a full burst into his face. Overkill as the first round obliterated his face with finality, leaving nothing but pink misted air for the second and third spike to pass through before they embedded themselves into the far wall.

By the time the three marines updated Sgt Petreko with their SITREP, over twenty enemy combatants had been neutralized and four had surrendered. They created a pile of the various arms and equipment the 'powder gangers' had left for later cataloging and laid the bodies out along the back fence for later burial.

Their comm beads chirped as they worked, indicating an incoming communique from the big guy.

"Ramirez, I got your report from Petreko, fine work. I want you to hold station there, put the prisoners to work clearing away enough space for the command center to land. Send West back to get his hardskin checked out. If it's as bad as it shows, he will have to stay at basecamp and stand watch there. That leaves Vasquez on scrap duty."

"Aw fuck man." Vasquez moaned, hearing the orders.

Marco chuckled at her expense as West muttered with chagrin, his armor protesting stiffly as he headed back to base camp.

"I wish I could say I didn't remember much, cuz all it does is remind me of how crappy it is out here."

Sunny Smiles and Cheyenne listened to Jacky talk about her younger years as they walked, heading to the springs to the south to clear out the latest nest of geckos that sent one of the residents into Doc Mitchell's care.

"What can I say? It was home. Clean but cramped, plenty to eat, clean water, a bed to sleep in that actually had pillows and blankets and no bed mates aside from the human sort. Invitation only."

Sunny raised an eyebrow at that last part, but had the wherewithal not to comment. It was obvious that there was some history there, of the traumatizing sort and Sunny wasn't one to pry.

"I guess I was just a coward, as I was nearing the end." Jacky hung her head as the painful memories came to the fore, "I've heard it's different for the other Vaults, but in ours once you reached 20 years old, you went into the sleep chamber for the long sleep. That way there would always be room and stuff for the new generation of people."

"So you ran when your time came?" Sunny asked, masking her astonishment at the revelation.

"Well, no, I was only 16 then. But I loved someone, someone older. His time came and instead of throwing him his Lastday party, I convinced him to run away with me, to the outside." Her eyes brimmed with tears at the heartache of that lost first love. "We actually made it through the vault door, no one suspected anything, or so we thought."

Sunny didn't interrupt her musing as Jacky paused telling her story, her eyes very far away and tinged with a hint of fear.

"We called him the Sandman." Jacqueline spoke so quietly that Sunny had to strain to hear her, "It was just a story, told over and over to scare the little ones into behaving. Can you imagine the panic that comes from seeing a childhood ghost story come to life in front of you?"

She didn't wait for Sunny to respond, "He was tall, dressed in a sandy brown overcoat and a mirrored mask that showed nothing of his face. Or her, could have been a her I guess. One minute the vault door was opening and we were all smiles and full of hope. The next he was there, standing between us and the way out."

Cheyenne barked a warning, startling Jacky for a moment before she wiped the moisture from her eyes and drew 'Lucky'. Sunny raised her rifle and together they began to fire at the geckos running at them, their high pitched warbling cries punctuated by the roar of their guns. Most of her shots went wide before she relaxed and remembered her lessons.

"Line up your sights, breathe out, and… pull." Jacky murmured to herself.

The shot tore through the air and entered the geckos head with a wet squelch, dropping the hapless creature to the ground with hardly a whimper.

"There you go, now you got the hang of it!" Sunny beamed, slapping Jacky's shoulder affectionately.

Jacky nodded and smiled back at her, trying not to blush too much from the embarrassment of killing one little gecko while Sunny and Cheyenne methodically took out the other four.

Jacky continued her story while Sunny set about the dirty job of skinning the lizards and harvesting them of their meatiest bits.

"Adam… he just started yelling at me to 'run run!' and he… he charged at the thing. So I did, I ran. Adam wasn't a big guy but he grappled with the Sandman and let me squeeze by into the cave outside the vault door. I expected to hear him beside me at any moment, instead I heard Adam cry out in pain…"

The tears were now pouring down Jacky's cheeks as she spoke faster, as if to lessen the pain of the memory by getting through it in a rush.

"Oh god, I will never… NEVER forget that sound. It was the purest agony I had ever heard. I almost didn't believe Adam could have made that sound. I turned around, just in time to see Adam fall to the ground like a mess of wet rags, like he was fucking trash. The Sandman, Adam's blood was dripping from his hands, and he just looked at me. I was petrified by it, that damn stare. All I could see was my reflection in his mask, a tired and scared little girl facing the boogeyman. He hadn't moved, he hadn't breathed or said anything or did anything but stand there, even as the vault door started to close. I was stuck, frozen in shock as the door squealed shut right in my face. I don't know how long I stood there. How long I banged and yelled and pleaded and cursed and cried; at the door, at the Sandman, at Adam, fuck… anyone. I don't even know what I wanted."

Sunny tried and failed to stymie the flow of her own tears as she sympathized with Jacky. Her horror at the story only eclipsed by the overwhelming sadness she could almost feel coming off of Jacky in waves.

"And shortly after that, some people who were running from NCR troopers saw me, as dirty and worn out as they were, and picked me up. Maybe they thought I was one of them that had gotten lost. Maybe they just saw a kindred soul, or maybe they just saw someone weaker than they were and were just trying to take something from a world that had beaten them."

"The Viper gang? This is when they took you in?" Sunny asked.

"Yeah, about a year ago. Though my life with them… well let's just say that if the courier had put a bullet in me instead of letting me go, I would have thanked him just the same for it."

Sunny had no response to that, so she simply pulled the younger woman into a sideways hug as they walked companionably to the next spring.

I am heading out for vacation tomorrow, and I probably won't be doing much writing then. I had this Chapter done already, so I thought I would go ahead and post it. You'll just have to wait a little longer for the next update. Here's a little spoiler for the next Chapter, the courier and the captain are in Quarry junction, Jacky heads out for Primm, and our little band of Raynor's Rangers meets the Brotherhood of Steel.