Chapter 20: Burying the past

"Forget: Refuse to dwell; let go and loosen one's hold, particularly on memory. To forget is an active – not passive – endeavor."

~Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The great man waited until his audience chamber was clear, the flickering torchlight casting dancing shadows on the fabric of his tent. Once he was certain that his men were out of both sight and hearing, he clutched his head and at last gave voice to the agony stabbing through his skull. The rising pressure in his head had made it difficult to hear the reports from his Legates, the imposing Lanius frowning at Caesar's seeming lack of attention. Stepping down from his seat gingerly, every step sent a fresh wave of pain crashing through him, he knelt and retrieved a hypodermic needle filled with the blessed nepenthe he needed.

Resuming his seat, he breathed a sigh of profound relief as the pain finally subsided to a far more bearable level. Time was not an ally of his, and much remained to be done. He was growing more desperate by the day as his condition steadily destabilized. He clenched his fist in anger and frustration, fate seeming to conspire to deny him his Rome. To further salt the injury, an entire century had been lost to these 'Terrans.' So many obstacles lay in his Legion's path and now yet another had presented itself.

Glad tidings of a sort from the Legates he had left in Arizona. His forces would soon receive significant reinforcements as people fleeing from the north and east from some unknown disaster fell easily into Legion hands. The influx of slaves would free many of his men and allow them to march to Cottonwood Cove. Several Centuries were already enroute and would join him inside the week. He felt a twinge of worry at the mysterious calamity which had forced the refugees into his less than tender embrace.

His men were disheartened as well, months of inaction since the loss at Hoover Dam and the more recent loss of one of his most trusted and able Centurions had not sit well with the Legion. Before dismissing them, he charged Lanius with training and assembling an entire cohort to smash these Terrans and then deal with the Mojave Brotherhood. His men needed victories to steel their morale and resolve for the true fight against the NCR.

Vulpes Inculta, the leader of his fearsome frumantarii, was sent to infiltrate the Old Mormon Fort in Freeside. He knew that his former associates in the Followers were there administering to the sick and disabled as they always did. Despite looking down on their mission, a purpose he had once embraced as well, he needed their medical knowledge to stave off his impending doom. He sighed again at the change of plan that required such a bold move, his original plan to abduct Dr. Usanagi forestalled by her capture by the Mojave Brotherhood. Frankly he was surprised at the move, the reclusive Brotherhood rarely did something so bold. But who else aside from the Terrans had such advanced weaponry and power armor?

He took another deep breath to steady the trembling in his limbs as the drug continued to ease the pressure in his skull. It wouldn't be long now until the pain had risen to the point where he would be nearly insensate, if not comatose. The irony was not lost to him; that some tiny affliction would lay him low where the near constant madness of war had not. He could only hope that Inculta succeeded and that his former brethren in the Followers would have the expertise and ability to cure him of this affliction. Time was running out.

"Contact! We have unknown bogies at target location!" Lt. Weyland announced, her practiced hand rolling the Banshee 90 degrees and accelerating into a wide arc around the blips that had appeared on her radar. "No IFF, they are keeping on station right above the objective."

Ashur raised his eyebrows at the news, the lieutenant's voice sounding tinny in his earpiece. He turned his head toward the cavern entrance where he had already sent several of the evacuees. The vault dwellers gasped as he was seemingly consumed by crackling red energy, leaving no trace that he was ever there. Even before the cloaking field completed forming around him, Ashur raced for the exit, nimbly moving around the milling group of people, their calm façade somewhat endangered now that his psionic influence was terminated. Sliding into a crouch, he slid to the left of the entrance and looked up at the hovering aircraft and the repelling lines being dropped along their sides.

"Spectre reporting. Two aircraft are hovering over the cave entrance, covering the first group of evacuees. They are dispatching ground forces in power armor. I count five… make six tangoes. Wait, they're saying something."

An intimidating voice reverberating over one of the aircraft's tannoy, "You are now prisoners. Lay down any weapons you have and prepare to be taken into custody."

"I assume you caught that?" Ashur queried, readying his AGR-14 and loading a magazine filled with green tipped armor piercing rounds.

"What the hell is this?!" Griff roared angrily, turning to address the paladins in the passenger benches just aft of the cockpit.

"No idea sir." One of the paladins responded, deadpan.

"I thought you were the only guys around that used power armor?"

"Not exclusively, but aside from the now defunct Enclave, no other organization we know of uses power armor. The NCR has access, but haven't fielded it in force from what we've seen. Though with our self-imposed isolation, that could have changed without us knowing."

With a slight crackle of static, Ashur interjected, "I spot marking on the aircraft. An "E" encircled by stars."

"That can't be…" the same paladin murmured.

"E as in Enclave?" Griff retorted, his teeth gritting over finding yet another potential enemy.

The paladin nodded, the mood in the cabin becoming icy as the paladins gripped their weapons tightly and glanced at one another nervously.

"I need orders, Commander. They will have the evacuees surrounded shortly." Ashur urged, the lead elements of the Enclave force landing beneath their aircraft.

"Engage. We're not sitting on our asses while innocent people get taken against their will by these assholes."

'This is not going to be easy', Ashur thought as he sent a mental command to the evacuees to get down, hoping that the move will be seen by the aggressor force as a sign of surrender.

Lining up his shot carefully, he fired a three round burst against the first Enclave trooper, pausing to gauge the reaction Terran technology had against this new type of power armor.

Like the Brotherhood's power armor, ragged holes appeared in a rough triangular pattern over the trooper's breastplate. The hypersonic 8mm rounds punching straight through the layered steel armor and imparting over 70,000 joules of force. The imparted energy liquefied his chest cavity before continuing on their way through the back of his armor. The trooper fell in a clatter of metal sheathed limbs, his squad mates reacting with admirable efficiency as they crouched and brought their own weapons up, scanning the cave mouth for their assailant.

Ashur shifted to the next trooper in line and fired another 3 round burst, this time he didn't pause to observe the effects of his attack, instead pulling back into the cave a short distance and shifting to the right behind a rocky outcropping. Return fired stitched into the cave, the sizzling green bolts lighting up the darkening night and melting the rock he had vacated to sludge. One of the Enclave aircraft lifted up and rotated to the left to face a radar contact coming in hot from the east.

Its two forward cannon spat white hot fire as tracer rounds added to the light show, tinkling shell cases raining down among the cowering evacuees. The approaching aircraft deftly avoided the bulk of the rounds as the Enclave pilot shifted his fire to attempt to hit the approaching aircraft. The banshee's weapons responded in kind, releasing its fury in the form of a single rotary 20mm gauss cannon slung beneath its nose. The roar was like nothing anyone had ever heard, a cross between a zipper being pulled and an ear-tickling buzz with a volume that set Paul and Veronica's teeth to rattling. Weyland's aim was much better than her counterpart, in addition to computer assisted targeting, she simply had more experience fighting in 3 dimensional space than the Enclave pilot did.

People screamed and ran from the fireball that erupted just above them, the aircraft exploding with enough force to send several of them staggering as they attempted to shield their charges with their own bodies. The second aircraft lifted up and away, its engines almost stalling as its pilot red-lined the throttle in an attempt to get away. The pilot slapped his gloved hand against the cockpit glass as if to ward away the fire coming from the second aircraft that they had failed to spot.

The 20mm rounds tore off one of the Enclave bird's wings, the aircraft dropping on its unpowered side and slamming with a crunch onto the rocky hillside. The remaining engine continued to whine as it spun, the aircraft jerking and spinning across the ground like a crazed wounded beast. Flames leapt up from the beleaguered vessel, the fire apparently reaching its fuel or ammunition, detonating with explosive force and finally ending the aircraft's struggles.

The Terran aircraft sought altitude as the ground troopers opened up on them with their plasma weapons, the green flame clawing after them as they evaded. Griff's Banshee shuddered as a bolt of plasma found him, the energy partially melting his stab trim and locking it into a slow pitch.

"Aw crap, they got in a lucky hit, we're going to have to land."

Thankfully, he managed to level it off as they reached the treetops, the marines and paladins running off the debarkation ramp and landing with dull whumps. He let the broken and dead trees slow his forward momentum as his restraints barely able to keep his body from bouncing around painfully in the cockpit. He groaned as his arm was flung back from a particularly hard impact, the loud pop sure to indicate that his shoulder was out of its socket. His head and limbs whipped forward painfully as the aircraft's momentum was arrested courtesy of the massive husk of a long dead tree. Lights danced in his vision and competed with the pain that set his entire left side alight with agony. He barely noticed the gentle vibrations on the flight deck as one of his marines stomped up to the cockpit.

"Whar whew whokey wher?"

The voice was indistinct and sounded as though it was coming from deep underwater, "What?"

"Are you ok sir?" the marine asked again, the roaring in his ears dying down as he fought for focus.

"My arm," He grunted, forcing the words past the agony, "dislocated."

The marine took hold his arm as gently as CMC-300 power armor would allow, the servos whining as they gripped his arm as firmly as he dared without breaking his wrist. The marine bent his arm at the elbow to 90 degrees and gradually rotated his shoulder outward. Eventually, their efforts were rewarded with a gentle pop as the arm spontaneously relocated into its proper position.

Griff breathed his thanks as the pain reduced to a dull ache. He stood up gingerly, careful with his newly re-located arm and joined the marine as they descended to the main passenger deck. He made his way over to the armoring chamber, a small alcove which contained the armatures necessary to assist a wearer into their hard skin. Though he usually preferred to hit the field in simple fatigues, he needed the armor to keep his arm stabilized in addition to providing extra protection against the plasma weaponry carried by their opposition.

He took a deep breath as he slammed his boots down into the waiting platform, the anticipation of the pain radiating from his arm at the impact almost as bad as the pain. He grimaced as the arming chamber came to life and began to fit the pieces of his personal hard skin around him. His marine stood watch at the embarkation ramp for the few minutes it took for the process to complete. Steam billowed around his steel sheathed legs as he stomped ponderously from the alcove, his arm held tightly in place by the armor reducing the chance of it becoming dislocated again. He lowered his visor, the snarling visage of a wolf glaring out from the tinted armor glass. He brought up the squad's disposition on his HUD and noted with satisfaction that they had spread out and secured their impromptu landing position.

"Alright boys, I want a 5 meter spread, move up the hill to our objective."

The Terrans and allied paladins squawked affirmative, Griff moving out with his chaperone to join the blue triangles positioning themselves on his HUD's topographical map. They moved forward in unison, sweeping the area with impalers or laser rifles up and ready. He halted them just before cresting the hill and linked his battlenet with the Adjutant to get a view of what was happening beyond their line of sight. Lt. Weyland, in her own banshee, gave him real-time data on the disposition of the enemy force, the 4 of them that remained firing continuously over the heads of the huddling evacuees and into the cave entrance, the green splatters of hot plasma splashing against the rocky outcroppings in an attempt to flush out their assailant within.

With their attention firmly on the cave entrance and both of their aircraft out of the picture, his force was in the perfect position to flank the aggressors.

For the benefit of their Brotherhood allies, men who had not yet upgraded to the newest iteration of power armor that the Terran's had helped engineer, he spoke his orders aloud.

"We're coming up behind them but watch your field of fire. There are civilians huddled on the ground in front of them and our Spectre friend taking cover in the cave itself. Take out these 'Enclave' and secure the area."

He gave them a moment to acknowledge the orders before he surged forward on servo assisted legs, his massive armored form grinding as they churned the rocky ground beneath him. They rose up onto the rise that preceded the cavern entrance and took in the scene at a glance. Raising his gauss rifle and letting his armor perform the task of aligning his shots, he let rip a short six round burst which shredded the black plate girding the right most trooper. It was over in moments as his team opened fire on the hapless enclave troopers, the whizzing roar of gauss rifle fire competing with the weaponized laser energy as the sound from both slowly died in echoes around the cave.

The team moved slowly, their weapons scanning the area as they surrounded the small clearing with the still huddling evacuees. Griff strode up to the cave entrance as Ashur emerged, returning the spectre's salute.

"Sir, area is secure."

Griff scanned the area and gestured to the vault dwellers murmuring and weeping in various positions of surrender around them, "What is this, Ashur?"

"Summers' people. During her training there was a traumatic psychosis blocking her advancement. The root of which appeared to be tied to her experiences when she left this vault."

Ashur continued to fill in the commander with what information he had concerning Jacky's ordeal, Captain Johnson's gorge rising at the horror of his tale. Later, he would get the complete story from Jacky herself, who had managed to uncover the truth from the secure vault computer banks as to the nature and purpose of this 'Sandman'.

They had returned to the vault hours later, the former vault dwellers safely secured in a newly expanded section of Hidden Bunker and attended to by a small army of knights, scribes and Terrans. All three of their Banshees hovered over the cave entrance, the tinny voice of the adjutant reporting that the radiation levels in the complex below had spiked to lethal levels. Dissatisfied and prompted by his disgust of what the vault represented, he ordered a full bombardment of the cave entrance and surrounded hills. A fusillade of high explosive rocket and missile fire reduced the area to ruin, closing the cave mouth and collapsing the hills onto the vault. Vault 18 would be forever buried, the horrors echoing around its empty, radiation filled chambers trapped beneath tons of granite for all time.

Linen wrapped limbs flexed and tightened their grips on their spears, the forest of glittering metal points dazzling in the midmorning sun. The valley lit up as the sun crested the ridge and bathed the crimson armored line of legionnaires in its golden radiance. Centurion's barked and their whips lashed and sang in the air, enforcing brutal discipline and forming the lines against their monstrous enemy. Scouts had reported the oncoming horde of claw and fang the evening before, giving the Legion precious time to assemble its hosts and meet them on a field of their choosing. With the sun behind them and the gentle slope of the valley ahead of them, they were cleverly placed to take the most advantage of the terrain per the doctrine laid down by their Caesar.

The line of dust on the horizon was like a storm cloud, flocks of ravens darkening the skies as they preceded the advance. Their raucous caws echoed within the valley and robbed the men of a measure of their courage with the discordant song. Their legate, a squat and ugly man whom the men called, 'toad' bellowed like his namesake as he patrolled up and down the ranks, the dust kicked up by the buggy he rode choking the men, his passage marked with coughs and muttered curses. He pulled to a stop at the head of a formation, the gunner charging the .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the buggy.

Shrieks split the early morning air as the first of the demons revealed themselves at the crest of the hill. A staggered line of chittering dog monsters pawed at the ground and shook the dust from their shoulder claws. Almost as one, the men of the legion felt their breaths catching in their throat at the massive shape floating into view from the dust cloud, the brown billows reluctantly loosening their hold on the behemoth. It drifted sedately, claws and appendages hanging lazily beneath its bulbous mass. All along the line of demons, more of the floating shapes appeared, looking for all the world like cancerous moons tacking into orbit over a nightmare world.

The legionnaire glanced down curiously, a gentle vibration making the rock dance and vibrate beneath him and tickling his sandaled feet. He thought that his nerves were fraying, but noted with concern how the others of his century glanced about in confusion, even the acid tongued centurion pausing his pre-battle rhetoric. He opened his mouth but the words caught in his throat as the ground erupted beneath his feet and an armored carapace of purple and brown surged out from under him, the violence of the eruption throwing him bodily into his fellows. The entire front line of the legion lost cohesion as multiple eruptions of dirt and rock exploded upward as more of the creatures revealed themselves. Then, the screams began.

He held out a hand to his brother, the man's features melting away beneath the green acidic bile that washed over him. He grasped his hand and pulled, his efforts rewarded with a sickening squelch and a lurch as he fell back, clutching only a ragged and bloody arm. He rolled and tossed the limb aside in disgust, narrowly avoiding another stream of the green acid as it splashed in an arc within the broken ranks. Sporadic rifle fire punctuated the chaos, an occasional pained shriek barely perceptible beneath the weight of the screams of dying men and the exultant roars of the enemy. Convinced that his life was measured in moments, he scrabbled along the dusty ground for a weapon, any weapon! His fingers smarted as they grazed a razor sharp spear point, the pain a testament to the small triumph that surged in his chest. He grasped the handle and rushed at the nearest creature, the glinting steel spear point aimed straight for one of the creature's tiny eyes.

Mars guided his arm true, his spear popping the eye in a burst of yellowish ichor. It drove the creature mad, and he felt his arm yanked painfully as the creature tried to dive back down into the ground. He gritted his teeth and pressed the attack, his feet scrambling on the shifting earth as the demon burrowed. With a triumphant lunge, the spear sank into its skull so deeply that his hands were swallowed by the cavern of its eye socket. It rolled, carrying him with it and nearly crushing him beneath its weight as he slid down its carapace on the opposite side. With a shudder, the creature ceased its struggles, its legs curling in the air like a dying radroach.

She perceived the battle, no slaughter, through the eyes of her overlords. She felt the thrill as men melted beneath her roach's acidic bile or were eviscerated by the slashing claws of her zerglings. The Enclave men beside her murmured in appreciation as they beheld the battle with their looking glasses. The urge to swipe their heads off while they were distracted was a powerful lust building within her. But no, not yet. Her brood was not yet strong enough. Even against these paltry foes, several of her brood had been brought low by sheer luck and the numbers that still favored the Terrans. Fully a third of her attack force had been killed, though the battle seemed to be ending with the formation of hundreds dissolved in disarray against her assault.

The vespene analog that these enclave scientist had developed was not as effective as it should have been. She narrowed her eyes at the head enclave officer who had denied her request to feed on one of the scientists to punish their failure. The roaches she had spawned were somewhat lethargic and weak compared to what they should have been, their metabolisms barely able to cope with the substandard vespene she had been given. Hydralisks couldn't spawn at all, the eggs merely pulsing as their withered without a suitable source of energy. Still, the 'Colonel' had promised that the scientists would redouble their efforts and that another batch would be ready for testing in a few days' time. In the interim, they had thrown the failures into this battle, despite that lackluster performance, they proved effective enough to smash this force and reap the reward of the biomass they protected. A tribal settlement lay in the next valley, its paltry wooden palisade that much the weaker without these terrans to defend it. Her overlord noted the fleeing mass of humanity but she was not concerned. Enough of her zerglings remained to run them down and return their biomass to her spawning pools.

She clicked in irritation as the 'Colonel' gestured imperiously at her, motioning for the modified vertibird that they had arrived in. A large cage like carriage had been built to accommodate her bulk and was lifted on steel cables beneath the aircraft. She bristled at being carried in this manner, but was somewhat mollified at the pleasant thought of peeling the man's skin away. Acidic drool dripped in fat ropes from her mandibles as she squeezed her body into the cage, turning to regard the colonel as he climbed into the vertibird. She commanded her overlords to complete the task and bring as much of the biomass as they could collect back to the growing hive cluster. Soon, these 'Enclave' would herald her ascension and the zerg be unleashed to consume this world.

His weathered hands closed the journal, the damning words within taunting him and his obsessive nature making him relive the shame over and over as he read and re-read the words. He sighed as he set the tattered book down and pressed his hands against his face, as if to ease away the pressure of leadership. He looked up with eyes bleary with weariness at his lieutenants; the laconic Regis glowering at nothing in his seat to his right, the easy-going Jack lounging at the long table with a cigarette hanging lazily from his mouth, Diane regarding the chieftain thoughtfully and Melissa, recently returned from quarry junction and idly running her combat knife up and down Karl's sweating face.

The Legion man protested long and loudly against the courier's machinations. Again and again rehashing the argument that the words of some outsider could not be trusted. But if his words were so useless, why did he try to silence him with his thugs? Why were his words backed up by the book written in Karl's own hand? These and more silenced Karl, though Papa Khan credited his silence as much with Melissa's less than gentle embrace than with the evidence that lay on the table before him. He tried to make a fool of him. Tried to enslave his people, his Khans! The courier's words rang truer than ever and resonated more powerfully with each moment. Claim their own glory. That's what he had said. Four words, four simple words that spoke so eloquently to the spirit of the Khans. He allowed himself a smile, the world after all was a big place, maybe north? He looked up at his advisors and locked gazes with each in turn, the connection between them tangible in that look, the spirit of his intent clear to them despite no words being spoken. Regis got up first, and with barely a whisper slid his knife from its sheath and slipped it between Karl's ribs. His eyes bugled from their sockets, his scream muffled as Melissa smothered his mouth with her hand. Her knife came next, stabbing down into his chest next to Regis'. Jack and Diane came next, hoisting the man up to his feet and slipping their knives into his kidneys. He thrashed in agony, struggling against the grip of the four. Finally free to scream his anguish as Melissa took her hand away, he ululated long and hard into the lodge's ceiling, his life's essence granting power to the scream. Life ebbed and his head sank, his last sight the flash of steel as Papa Khan separated his head from his shoulders.

His body slumped, the blood jetting from his neck stump to splash against Papa's feet. Paying the man no heed, the chieftain addressed his advisors.

"Ready the tribe. We are leaving. We'll slip away when the Legion assault the dam. North. We'll claim our own glory north."

A/N: Sorry for the long break, I started a new job and my muse had left me for a time. I managed to finish this Chapter and am hopeful that she will gift me with inspiration to write more soon. Thanks for reading and as always, reviews are welcome.