Chapter 35: First Blood

"War does not determine who is right – only who is left."

~Bertrand Russell

The dirt was insidious, working its way into his uniform, into his eyes, and down his throat. Sweat made the brown dust clump beneath his arms and all along his forehead. Despite the discomfort of carrying around several pounds of dirt, it paled in comparison to the blood that seemed to fall like rain.

He huddled behind the body of his sergeant, the asshole having cursed and cajoled the platoon forward until a laser pierced his throat and robbed him of any further need to extoll the virtues of patriotism. Now his corpse served a new purpose, shielding the young conscript from the torrent of weapon fire erupting from the Brotherhood's defensive line.

He had been deceived… he thought bitterly. Not that he had a choice, as an able bodied man of appropriate age, he had been grabbed from Arroyo and rushed through training to march all the way to this god forsaken scorching desert for nothing more glorious than to die under the power armored boot of the Brotherhood of Steel.

The drill sergeants had filled the recruit's heads with visions of carrying on their glorious campaign against the Legion and the hold outs in the tin cans. Why wouldn't he believe it? After all, the Legion eschewed technology and in his own lifetime had the mighty bastion of the Brotherhood been brought low by the might of the NCR.

He carried that optimism forward, marching with his friends under the stern but somehow reassuring gaze of the famous Cassandra Moore. They had enough artillery to pound their foes back into the stone-age and enough men to trample the survivors under their boots.

He was quickly disabused of that notion earlier that morning when combat aircraft annihilated their artillery and cut dozens of troopers to ribbons. They were surely toying with them, as despite the fact that one of them had been shot down, there remained enough to punish the NCR for their intrusion. But they had left, and now the conscript understood why.

The vanguard had charged forward, hundreds of men and women clad in the finest armor to break the entrenched defenses and pave the way for the thousands more than awaited their chance for glory. Those little machines had other ideas. They looked like robotic spiders, bursting up from the ground and skittering forward at the charging vanguard. Heedless of their peril, the soldiers had laughed at the small machines… laughed all the way to the moment that those spiders exploded and shredded the entire advancing line.

By the time the dust had settled, it had served only to blanket the carnage under a thin veneer of red tinged dirt. Wailing moans from the survivors rose up like a mournful dirge and sent shivers down his spine. He had heard the lieutenant… the walking mines hadn't actually killed all that many… maybe a hundred. But hundreds more were horribly maimed. Even now, as he peeked over his sergeant's hip, he could see a lone assault trooper wandering the field, one of his arms ending in a bloody tatter at the elbow, picking through the wreckage of human bodies, looking for his missing arm.

It made the entire force hesitate, until forced forward by irate officers and NCOs. They continued to believe that despite that trick, this battle would play out much like Operation: Sunburst did. Only then he remembered that hundreds of trooper died at that battle. He really didn't want to be one of them.

The courier huffed in annoyance as soon as the telltale shimmers of matter transport died away, leaving him and his team deposited in what had to be the lobby of the infamous Sierra Madre.

"Adjutant? What the hell just happened?"

"The Sierra Madre security mainframe attempted to activate a failsafe. I accessed its systems and disabled its sedation protocols so that you would arrive unimpeded by chemical interference. There was insufficient time to stop both protocols."

"Well, I guess being teleported but not put under is better than being put under but not teleported. Especially with those ghost people still lurking about. Good job, adjutant."

Paul Maxson looked around, making a mental note of the apparent condition of everyone. The two paladins had already spread out and were covering the group from the apparent access points in the main lobby. Christine had her rifle up and was watching the gaudily grand staircase, Veronica crouched beside her.

Dean glowered at everyone while attempting to brush imaginary dirt from his rumpled suit, his sunglasses hiding the no doubt conniving eyes.

Sophia and Dog were standing near a holo-console of some kind, likely the same as those scattered throughout the plaza. Jacky was nowhere to be seen, though he had the distinct feeling that she wasn't far. Lastly, he and Cass appeared to have made it unscathed as well, aside from some bruises from their mad dash along the rooftops.

"Maxson." Jacky hissed in his ear.

"Jesus!" He shouted, more loudly a bit less manly than he would have liked.

"Damnit woman! Must you? Really?" He growled through gritted teeth, pointedly ignoring Cass's snickering.

"Sorry sir." The expression on her face indicated that sorry was the last damn thing she felt, "I need a moment of your time… alone."

"Fine, fine. Just refrained from scaring me to death and I'll be happy to hear whatever you have to say." He spoke louder for the other's benefit, "Just hang tight here for a few."

At their acknowledging nods… or in Cass's sake, snarl, he moved off to the side of the lobby after the ghost.

"Alright, what is…"

Jacky held up her hand for silence, appearing to concentrate for a moment with her forefingers pressed against her forehead and her eyes closed tightly.

Her eyes opened and she nodded before beginning, "Just thought you'd like to know what's been running through Mr. Domino's head."

"I don't suppose he's going to put on a show for us later."

"He is putting on a show… but not one we'll enjoy. Apparently, he had it in for Sinclair… the man who built this place. He felt slighted by the man for some reason. In any case, he convinced Vera Keyes to betray Sinclair, who had keyed the vault beneath the casino to her voice. They had some plan to get at the vault and take off with everything. The war seems to have gotten in the way of their plans but Dean is still determined to play out his century's old plan. Now that you've treated him disrespectfully, he is going to use the casino's security system to take care of you as well."

"What a piece of work." Paul whispered, shaking his head. "Imagine holding on to a grudge for over 200 years."

"I suggest that we let him play out his plans… he apparently has some knowledge of the casino's inner workings. Using him against Elijah will further enhance our advantage."

"That sounds good." He murmured, "You do your thing to keep an eye… or whatever you call it, on him and I'll do what I can to lull them both into a false sense of security."

Not wanting to raise suspicion, they kept the conversation short and returned to the group. Having a certain knack for thinking on his feet and gifted with a silver tongue, the courier allayed any of the team's possible suspicions.

"Alright team, it appears that we have a minor issue. The security holograms are active and we can't rely on the adjutant to hack into them. Jacky will scout ahead and see if she can redirect the holograms before we arrive. Dampening field is still in effect, so Elijah is probably getting a bit anxious to hear from me. Cass and I will hang back while the rest of you split up into teams and do some recon. Any questions?"

As the teams slowly formed and the Courier answered questions from the various members of the team, Sophia found herself drawn to a faded image on the wall. The color had lost most of its vibrancy and the poster itself hung on the wall more out of stubborn tenacity than any remaining adhesive.

Careful, lest the paper crumble, she straightened the curling edges to get a better look at the advertisement. It portrayed a smiling mother leaving her children at some kind of child care clerk while her off page husband pulled at her other arm.

The image grew in her mind until the woman leaving the child was her, but she was handing her little boy off to her sister. Claudia was boarding the last transport leaving for Haven as the Hyperion and its battlegroup prepared for the coming campaign to Char. Raynor had asked that all the non-combatant civilians they had picked up over the last several weeks load up on the transports and help Dr. Hanson and the Agria colonists get set up on Haven, and Claudia had been eager to go. Sophia smiled wistfully when she remembered why, a young engineer that she had become enamored with was also going, and to her teenage self, it was a romantic adventure in the offing.

Sophia had felt badly having to both send her baby boy away and putting the care of a precocious toddler in the hands of a young woman who wasn't entirely an adult herself. But the war had cut short many childhoods, some with horrifying finality.

The Hyperion has made the warp transit to Char and was holding orbit over its pole, its attendant battlegroup spread out above it, trusting in the planet's magnetic field partially screening it from the zerg below. With the Dominion armada making no effort to hide itself, the zerg largely ignored the Raiders, allowing Raynor's taskforce to land surreptitiously.

Though the campaign ended in a victory, with the zerg threat largely nullified, she was largely numb to the celebratory mood on board. Her husband was dead. Little could have penetrated the haze which grief had shrouded her with. But fate had a sick sense of irony, as it found something that cut her down to her soul.

It came in the form of an encrypted transmission that Captain Horner showed her in private. From the look on his face, it was clear that he had already seen it and that the news was not good.

Her sister's voice rose above the static, shouting something about being boarded. It was difficult to make out over the hysterical crying but it sounded like she was sobbing about people dying. Sophia felt her heart stop as the sound of her child cut through the din, crying 'mommy!' over and over again. Her sister's voice rose as she shrieked, "Oh my god! They're at the door! They're getti…"

She remembered hitting the deck with a thud, then nothing.

She woke up hours later in sick bay, having fainted at the horrible message and the certain sense that she had just lost her child and her sister. A part of her died that day… the very best part.

BLAM!

Sophia was startled from her memory with a cry. She turned and wiped the tears from her cheeks to see that Dog was slamming the side of a holoterminal, roaring in frustration at the device's obstinance and wondering aloud at where his 'sasby stick' was.

Her heart was heavy as she loitered over the crash site, her crew looking at one another and at the distant battle with more than simple apprehension. Mere minutes had passed since one of her squadron had been shot down and she strained her eyes and the limits of her ship's sensor technology looking for some sign of life amid the wreckage.

"Pearl, a company of NCR troops is moving toward our position. We have go." Her copilot reported, his attention to duty far more diligent than hers had been.

What had come over her? She had lived her life and led her people with caution and prudence. There was simply no excuse for her flagrant departure from the mission plan. She wiped away the tears coursing down her wrinkled cheeks and gently coaxed her banshee to climb, murmuring, "I'm sorry" as they left their wounded and dead behind.

He slammed the mic down with more force than he intended, shattering the delicate instrument against the hardened glass tabletop in the Terran command center. He winced at the wanton destruction of the technology… a tech that, unlike the Lancer Captain, did precisely what it was supposed to. He stiffened when he felt a soft hand over his, but relaxed and forced a smile for Sara.

"Easy Elder. She made a mistake and it cost lives. Were I a betting man, I would put good odds that she won't pull a stunt like that again."

"What was she thinking?" McNamara seethed, his anger resurfacing.

"I've seen it before. It happens when you put someone in a situation that they've not experienced before. This is the first time they've been able to fulfill their dream and fly, and doing it under combat conditions. No amount of learning through simulators or manuals can compensate for hard earned experience. Believe me, this is a lesson none of the Lancers will soon forget."

Captain Griff spoke so calmly in the face of the loss, his expression maintaining a stoic demeanor despite the numerous reports flooding into the command center. Nolan saw the truth of what he was saying, recognizing it something he too had to learn as a young paladin.

He had thought his team invulnerable cased in their war plate and wielding the kind of weaponry that the rustics could only dream of. Yet he had lost half of his patrol to just such a band of primitives. A larger than normal raider gang, despite their low tech, had acquitted themselves with ferocity and overcame their power deficit. A dozen raiders could die and be replaced the next day. A paladin lost is a lifetime of training, experience and expensive and hard to replace equipment.

While he mulled through it, Griff looked up at the adjutant, "Adjutant. Contact Sergeant Meyers. Order him to deploy a force to the crash site and recover our people… dead or alive. Scuttle the ship."

"Acknowledged."

"The NCR hasn't approached Primm, so he should be able to get to the crash site unmolested. Have a squad of vultures harass that company moving that way."

Nolan nodded, gratefully accepting another earpiece from Sara before issuing the orders. On the display, the force reacted quickly, a force of 6 vulture bikes wheeling away from their position on the right flank to parallel the NCR company heading for the crash site. They ate up ground quickly and were soon conducting strafing runs against the lightly armed infantry, their concussive grenades greatly slowing the NCR's advance.

"Elder. It's time." Griff announced.

Nolan glanced up at the man and nodded grimly, then turned his attention to the holodisplay which automatically zoomed in along the area immediately surrounding the main defensive line. A mass of red silhouettes slowly moved in along one side, representing the advancing line of NCR infantry. The spider mines had exacted a heavy toll, blunting the vanguard of the NCR assault, but they represented only a tiny fraction of the total numbers present.

He took a deep breath ahead of the plunge, "Let's begin."

With a bellicose roar deriving more from sheer volume than to any enthusiasm on the part of the participants, the first rank of NCR troopers rushed forward, firing as they came.

Their rounds flew through the air like a rain of molten lead, the staccato tinkles against the metal of the defensive wall sounding nothing more ominous than a heavy spring rain. With remarkable discipline and precision, a line of a hundred power armored figures summited the wall and charged their weapons, their movements so eerily in tandem that it seemed as though a giant series of mirrors reflected the movements of a single soldier.

No command was given or necessary, each Knight or Paladin simply raised their weapon and aimed at the charging mass of NCR infantry. The adjutant, her processing power stretched to the limit, aligned each soldier's aim for maximum efficiency, so that when ninety men and women fired their rifles, ninety NCR troopers fell into the dust. The other ten defenders hefted miniguns and gatling lasers, and did not concern themselves overmuch with aiming. They simply sprayed the front ranks with their devastating weapons, causing as much havoc as possible.

The advance faltered as conscripts fell screaming, cauterized holes burned into their stomachs or limbs coming away in hot sprays of blood. Their screams mixed with the din and added a nightmarish cast to the cacophony of battle all around them. It unnerved even the veteran troopers, their reckless charge faltering in light of the firepower pouring from the Brotherhood's line.

This was not like Helios One, where the brotherhood fought without cohesion or suitable defenses. Here, they were in their element, supported on either side by trusted brothers and sisters and bonded by the steel in their hearts.

Despite the hammering of his heart, his breathing was deep and steady, just as he had been taught. It was difficult to believe that a few weeks ago he was nervously anticipating his time to be released from the vault. And now he stood on the precipice of annihilation, as thousands of soldiers from a distant ideology tried to crush him beneath their combined weight. Yet he felt no fear. He heard the soft commands spoken through his comm, he felt the cooling jets of air circulated through his suit by the environmental control unit attached to his back armor, and the reassuring weight of the automatic laser rifle he held in his armored fists.

The onboard HUD adjusted his reticle to a young NCR soldier crawling over the bodies of his fallen comrades. He felt a twinge of guilt as the spear of laser energy penetrated his left eye and caused his head to explode from the sudden pressure of super-heated blood. He murmured a quick prayer for the young man; if not for the behemoth of the NCR's need to expand, a man who might have been a friend.

He shook away the thought as he fired again, firmly pushing the scared faces of his enemy from his thoughts. It did no good to attach a story to each foe he vanquished… though in his heart, he knew that such torture was merely waylaid. He would feel a measure of the grief he was the cause of when the battle was won… provided he survived it.

Despite their mounting losses, the NCR were well led by BG Cassandra Moore and she directed her forces with a grace that spoke of both natural talent and a fierce determination to succeed. Ashur watched as detachments of engineers repaired several artillery pieces and prepared to move them into position. He nodded in grudging admiration for their ingenuity, pulling what spare parts they could find and using everything they had at hand to put three of the light artillery back into action. He channeled his respect for them as he shot them from over six hundred meters away, making sure that each round ended their lives as quickly and cleanly as possible. He slammed a new magazine home and re-surveyed the rear echelons, satisfied after a few moments that no others were in a hurry to take the engineer's place.

"Ashur here. NCR is attempting to get their artillery back into play. I've taken out their engineers, but the artillery itself is still operational."

"Roger that. Weyland is inbound, paint the target for her."

Ashur squawked an affirmative and activated the laser attached to his AGR-14. He busied himself with pinpointing the location of the enemy commander while he waited, knowing that the next phase of the operation would soon commence and he was nothing if not efficient.

A distant wavering echo somehow broke over the gunfire to his trained ears and he tensed down in preparation for the high speed attack run.

Rocketing through the sky like an avenging angel, Weyland's Viking broke through the cloud cover from high altitude on a ballistic course, a maneuver that few pilots could have pulled off without blacking out from the overwhelming G-forces.

Though the Viking was not normally a ground attack platform in its aircraft configuration, Terran ingenuity always seemed to find a way to make their equipment bend to do what they wanted, regardless of what the designer's intended. Dropping straight down, her salvo of Ripwave missiles' taking mere moments from launch to slam into the ground, annihilating the trio of artillery pieces foolishly placed close together. She pulled up at the last moment, the cloud of dirt and smoke curling about her Viking as she sped along mere feet off the ground.

Ashur smiled as she banked hard, knowing what she was about to do.

Cassandra Moore didn't bother to hide her frustration at the way the battle was progressing. What was supposed to be a clear march to victory had been stalled at every turn by the infuriating tactics the Brotherhood and their Terran allies were employing.

She grit her teeth in determination. Regardless of their stalling tactics, she had enough will to see this mission through for General Oliver. A quick survey of the board assured her that she still had plenty of forces in play, despite the loss of her vanguard and the artillery. Nearly 1500 infantry were on the march compared to the maybe 2-300 hundred for the Brotherhood.

It irked her somewhat that NCR intelligence had slipped up so much on this op, she had expected to face maybe 100 knights and a dozen or so Terrans. Still, she outnumbered them by a comfortable margin.

"Battalions, send all Charlie companies to assault the left flank. Detail Bravo companies to hit the right. Echo companies stand in reserve and all others press for their center. Let's end this."

A chorus of 'Yes, General' announced their acceptance of the orders, and they even managed to do it without reservation tinging their voices. She looked up and fixed her staff with a glare, not one of them meeting her gaze as they relayed their orders through the radio operators. Attendants began pushing the corresponding unit models along the map as the forces re-deployed.

"Why are we getting updates along the northern ridge?" She snapped, pointing at the edge of her map.

"Observers have gone dark, General. We have had no reports from that area since the battle began." A lieutenant nervously offered.

She sighed and pinched her nose with her fingers, "Get a pair of binoculars and get some elevation. Give me a preliminary report on what's out there before we send replacement observers."

The lieutenant grabbed his non-com second and made for the tent flap. The ground shuddered under some kind of explosion and he nearly lost his footing before his grizzled sergeant grabbed him under an arm and helped him get his footing. He laughed nervously and stepped out of the tent. BG Moore glanced in that direction just in time to see the Lieutenant disintegrate in a brilliant yellow-white flash. The sergeant didn't have time to stop himself before he too exploded into pieces.

"Everyone! Get down now!" She screamed, recognizing the streaming tracer fire that took down her impromptu observation team.

She dove to the ground and clamped her hands over her ears. Rolling slightly to look up, she was dismayed at how slowly her staff was responding to her warning. It played out in her mind as if the scene was unfolding frame by painful frame. The tent was torn asunder, flaps of heavy canvas ripped open by a literal storm of heavy rounds. Her officers seemed to fall in slow motion, most of them perforated by heavy caliber slugs before what remained of their bodies hit the ground in a patter. Precious few actually managed to land intact as the fire continued, bullets whizzing by over her head with an alarming and constant high pitched whine.

The sound vibrated deep into her gut. A sudden flash of pain sent her vision flashing white as a heavy object bounced off of her head. Nausea roared up from the depths of her stomach like a tidal wave and it took everything she had to keep from vomiting all over the blood spattered ground.

Cassandra gasped out a mouth full of dust and nearly choked on the cloying smell of blood and cordite. A slow staccato tremor rattled her teeth as she wiped the gore from her eyes, looking up at a heavy assault walker stomping past, its twin gatling cannons continuing to spew death at the rear echelons of her Brigade. She tenderly explored the back of her head with trembling fingers, wincing as she drew her hand away and found it covered in blood.

Fully in shock at the devastating attack, she barely reacted when a dark skinned man suddenly appeared above her, red lightning cascading over his black and grey skintight armor. His mask gave him the visage of some otherworldly demon, clouds of smoke billowing forth with every exhale. Her vision swam and finally failed as his hand reached down for her.

The NCR assault seemed to stall, the explosions rippling across their rear doing a great deal to unman the forward elements even as they crawled toward the increasing levels of laser fire from the Brotherhood's defensive wall.

It appeared as though several companies were beginning to make some kind of tactical shifts toward the flanks, but the movement was clearly impeded by the other units not making way or moving in unintended opposition.

Nolan lowered the binoculars and smiled grimly, having just witnessed the command tent erased from existence by Lt Weyland's swift and brutal assault. They must have been caught in the middle of relaying orders as the NCR lost momentum. Company Commanders screamed into the din, trying to rally their own units of men, but the chaos and fog of war made their efforts laughable at best. He turned and met Paladin Hardin and Commander Griff's eyes, nodding almost imperceptibly.

No verbal orders were necessary, they had prepared for this moment and committed the plan to memory. At the very instant that the NCR showed any measure of reticence the allied forces would strike with full force.

The left and right of the NCR formation was where the initial hammer blow would fall, Terran marines and Vulture bikes sweeping in on either side and pounding away at the troopers, forcing the men and women to fall back in toward the center.

McNamara saw that the strategy was proving effective, the concussive grenades and nearly constant gauss rifle fire cutting their morale even faster than it was cutting through their ranks. A small trickle of the enemy were even beginning to run, their tenuous grasp on courage having long been lost.

Hardin barked the order, and as one, two hundred Brotherhood knights and paladins tossed frag grenades as far as their power armor enhanced strength allowed. A rapid series of explosions rippled through the leading edges of the NCR ranks, adding the pained screams of crippled men and women to the cacophony. The enemy fire was merely sporadic at this point, allowing the Brotherhood to jump down in front of the wall and begin to march forward, their weapons slicing through the milling troopers with deadly precision.

Griff noted that the NCR still heavily outnumbered them, and though they teetered on the breaking point, the core of the brigade sent against them were BG Moore's personal Battalion and would not easily rout. If allowed to continue, eventually another officer will rise above the others and enforce a measure of discipline in their ranks. A cohesive push now could still end badly for the Brotherhood.

'Looks like it's time for a little incentive.' Griff murmured softly, both McNamara and Hardin nodding in silent assent.

The commander pulled a small device from his pocket and examined it for a moment. It was about the size of a pistol, and was built very similarly to the handheld weapon. Where it differed, was in the vacuum tube filled with a luminous blue energy which crackled like bottled lightning. Griff sighed dramatically and strode with purpose to the central lift in the command center, pausing for the two Brotherhood leaders to join him. He tapped the 'up' button and waited calmly while it elevated them to an observation and maintenance deck built on top of the command center.

The lift opened, admitting a harsh, stinging wind that carried the stench of war. Cordite and viscera competed with one another to be the most offensive smell that assailed them, though all three were veterans and thus largely inured against the scents. The trio walked calmly to the outer railing closest to the battle in progress, taking a moment to survey the carnage unfolding a mere half mile away.

Without preamble, Griff raised the device and pulled the trigger, staggering back a little under the surprising recoil.

Hardin settled him with an armored fist, a small smile at Griff's loss of composure.

"I didn't expect that." Griff muttered.

"Look." Nolan directed, his finger pointing at an area just behind the main NCR force.

A sudden gale whipped sand in a torrent around Private Collins' legs and was forceful enough to nearly knock her over into her squad.

"Hey! Watch it!" Smith growled, as she staggered against his back, nearly making him lose his own balance in the suddenly precarious wind.

As suddenly as it blew in, the wind dissipating with a whine. Collins chanced a glance over her shoulder and nearly staggered again, this time from the severe shock of what her eyes were registering.

Looming over them, casting the entire platoon under its shadow, was the biggest damn scorpion she had ever seen.

"CRUSH THEM ALL IN THE NAME OF MOBIUS!"

The NCR finally broke when the courier's surprise was sprung on them, scores of robo-scorpions led by the towering war machine, X-42. It is not certain what was more unnerving for the rank and file NCR troopers, the deadly and powerful robot scorpions who fired fast and deadly bolts of blue laser energy or the maniacal cackling that issued from their speakers. Whichever it was, the result was that the bulk of the NCR forces routed, some right into the teeth of the advancing Brotherhood forces, others slipping away along the flanks, only to be herded by squadrons of vultures and the newly released Hellions.

Hundreds managed to return to their base camp, some not even stopping then, but continuing their headlong flight all the way back to Camp McCarran. The Brotherhood readily accepted the remaining soldiers surrender and swiftly disarmed and processed the four hundred men and women who remained. Final combat analysis collated by the adjutant reported that approximately 3820 NCR actors engaged in the battle, of which there were 1230 casualties. With the 440 captured, 1200 remain combat effective remained with 950 walking wounded. On the Brotherhood's side, a Banshee was shot down with the loss of its entire crew. 28 Knights and Paladins killed and a further 156 wounded to some degree.

Medics quickly got around one hundred of the Brotherhood men and women patched up enough to look over the captured enemy while gunships were recalled to stay on station in case the NCR rediscovered their courage. Scribes and Knights moved among the wounded, of both sides, and rendered medical treatment, a fact which surprised a very shaken Private Collins.

"Here, this is going to hurt, but I need to set the arm before I give you a stimpack."

Despite being told that they were the enemy, the scribe who was bracing his left leg in her armpit and had a firm hold of her right arm, smiled kindly at her and spoke softly, reassuringly.

A whimper escaped her lips at the pain which rippled from the arm as he pulled, a pain which crescendo-ed into white hot agony as she heard and felt the grinding as bones moved against one another. The pain eased and she released the breath she didn't realize she was holding. She felt a brief stab in her thigh and suddenly a wonderful euphoria swept through her. Med-X, she thought distantly, looking at the scribe with suddenly bleary vision.

"Say, you're pretty cute. How 'bout you buy a girl a drink after all this?"

He laughed at her, which made her frown… maybe he hadn't understood. She thought that it came out pretty distinct, but her neck was wet from the drool leaking from her mouth… so maybe not. She was suddenly mortified at what she must look like. Wait… why was she worried about her looks?

She passed out before he inserted the stimpack in her other thigh to start the healing process, then as an afterthought, checked her pockets for an ID. He found the dog tags on a chain around her neck.

'Hrmm… well hello, Patricia Collins. See you when you wake up." He patted her on the shoulder and stood up, gesturing to a quartet of pages who were one of the many triage teams making their way through the battlefield.

"Medical tent. Have a scribe re-check her arm… it was my first time setting a break and I want to make sure I did it right."

The pages saluted and bent to the task of lifting her onto the stretcher.

The leadership of the Brotherhood of Steel and Raynor's Raiders walked past the cell reserved for BG Moore. An entire wing of a restored bunker was given over to accommodating their new guests and the men and women in command wanted a quick tour to make sure that the holding areas were up to the task of containing the POWs. Cassandra stood in the center of her cell at parade rest and glared at them, heedless of the dried blood which crusted half her scalp and the left side of her neck.

"We have 440 of your people, General. I hope you understand that your surrender is assumed though irrelevant at this point. Those wounded are being given medical treatment. Under the terms of ancient compacts, we will treat your people humanely and will permit you to send a message to your superiors."

Her eyes blazed at them, though Nolan thought he saw a flicker at the mention of her troopers.

They continued along, most of the other prisoners not having the heart to look at their captors.

Once out of earshot, Nolan addressed the others, "The remainder of the brigade has broken camp and is heading back to Camp McCarran."

"Do you think we should harry them?" Hardin asked, though Nolan knew where the man's preferences were.

"I think we should shadow them, make sure that they don't have a change of heart and decide to come back. There are enough of them left to make a mess of things if they decide to try again."

Griff seemed distracted for a moment, as if listening for something the others could not detect.

He looked at them pensively, "I don't think that's likely, given what's on their plate."

"What do you mean?" Sara asked.

"Caesar's Legion has just received massive reinforcements, they are making preparations to cross the Colorado."

A/N: It's taken me a bit longer than I had wanted to get this update out, but here it is at long last. Next chapter will see the conclusion of the 'Dead Money' portion of the Courier's adventures as things heat up even further with the war between the Legion and the NCR about to combust. Since I am in school full-time and work full-time, I aim to have the next chapter up by Halloween. Thanks for reading.