Mars, Bringer of War
PFC Rachel Dumont's grandmother was old enough to remember the administration of President Aradesh. She was born the year Shady Sands ratified the NCR constitution, and when she was six years old the President visited her small California town to congratulate them on their induction into the first nation of the wasteland. He delivered a speech in her small town's dusty square. Chelsea Kebler remembered him as being larger than life, a man made of stone who was impossibly dignified.
"He had sad eyes," she later told her granddaughter, "Like he could see the whole wasteland, see all the suffering. He knew all of us, he did."
Although he only spoke for a scant fifteen minutes, Chelsea lived in that moment for a lifetime.
"He wore a crisp clean suit, which was very rare in those days. It meant he was rich, rich in water. It was very expensive back in those days, not all over everywhere in everyone's house like it is now. Back then everyone had to get by on what they could hold, nobody trusted nobody."
"To make money, my mother would let travelers sleep in our house. You see, our house had three separate rooms, and in the room that wasn't a bedroom there was this old couch. It was rock hard then, and it hasn't got any better with age," Chelsea explained to her granddaughter in the living room of her three-bedroom house on the selfsame couch, now covered with a plastic slip, "But the town got visitors so rarely there weren't nowhere for them to stay, so she'd let them sleep overnight on the couch for one bottle cap, and for another bottle cap she let 'em eat whatever mush she fed us in the morning. My father worked for the Water Merchants on one of their caravans, which was how we afforded such a big house, but the town weren't big enough itself to get a visit from the 'vaners. Whenever the water caravans visited Fuckville, the closest town to us what was big enough to get a visit from 'em, he'd come back with two big 'ole carboys of water slung over his shoulder, and one more he'd drag behind himself in a little red wagon with a bad wheel."
Carl Kebler had been a big man, as wide as his house's front door. He had a wild beard and wore a greasy blue repairman jumpsuit with the name Harvey stitched on the back. An unsightly tumor was growing above his right eye, like a horn, but his kids loved him and he fucked his wife like a mad animal.
"Bill Moyer of the Moyers next door worked for the Water Merchants on the same caravan, and he said he couldn't carry as much water home, but my father told my mother that it was really because he spent all his wages on drink and whores in the Hub. Nadine Moyer used to prostitute herself to visitors for five caps, but wouldn't let them stay at her house since it would made my mother angry, plus she only had the one room and six kids with different colored hair besides. Don't smirk, one of them became your grandfather."
"Anyway, because father was away for long periods of time, mother would rent out this sofa to strangers who passed through town for a little extra money. One night, a man wearing a vault jumpsuit for Vault 12," really Vault 15, but Chelsea always remembered it as Vault 12 because of prejudice, "Vault 12 stayed at the house, and when we woke in the morning, he and my sister Emry were gone. We aren't sure if he kidnapped her, or if they run away together, but she was only ten at the time. He could've lured her away with a nuka cola. Anyway, after that, we couldn't afford to stop renting the room, but we all slept in mother's bed if there was a stranger on the couch, and she slept with a knife."
Carl Kebler was a good man, and he worked hard, but it still wasn't enough to completely support his family of six. The afternoon he walked home to find a family of five, his wife told him Emry was carried away by a wanamingo. Even if he forbade her from renting the couch, the family couldn't afford not to. That same night, Nadine Moyer gave her husband Bill the clap, or perhaps it was the other way around.
"It was a hard life. When President Aradesh came and visited our town, it was the most people come to visit us at one time ever. He had soldiers, and aids, and even his daughter came with him. There was no way they were all going to fit in our living room. He brought water. That was part of the deal back in those days, if you joined the NCR, they'd give you a ton of water. But I never thought the president would deliver it himself. But he did. And he even gave a speech, too," at the memory Rachel's grandmother started to cry a little, "He said, he said, 'We stand at a precipice. This small California town is on the very edge of the world, teetering between prosperity and ruination, between civilization and barbarism. That is what makes it, and you, most important to the future. In all of you, I see the power to change the future; in all of you I see the resilience of the past. We stand on a precipice today, the fulcrum on which the world teeters. We all have choices to make, some more difficult than others, but everyone's choices are important, more important than the choices made by our ancestors. For we stand at the edge of an abyss, a vast darkness that threatens to consume the world when the last light of civilization is snuffed out. And here, we carry that light with us- against the darkness. We carry the light together, and together we make a new nation, the New California Republic. A Republic, which means we work together, side-by-side against the dangers of the wasteland, together against the end of civility, decency, and humanity. The choices we make today, and for the rest of our lives, will decide the future. The stakes have never been higher, and our challenges greater than they've been in thousands of years. But together, together in a new nation, we can work towards a new future, a better future. History is not made by self-interested individuals standing alone, but by groups of people coming together, and working with each other. This small community has been a model of cooperation for generations, and I'm proud to be here today thanks to each of you coming together and deciding to join the NCR, the first nation of a new world. I am here to tell all of you that you are not alone. We stand on a precipice, yes, but we stand together. That is what it means to be a Californian, to be part of the New California Republic.'"
There was more to the speech that Rachel's grandmother forgot, and some of the words she mixed up or turned around, but that was the gist of it. President Aradesh spoke somberly, elegantly, and clearly. He spoke somberly, elegantly, and clearly in the last four boondock towns he gave the speech to, and in the next ten boondock towns he'd visit before he died. The speech was boilerplate, but much like Chelsea, the other new citizens of the NCR found a lot of inspiration in it.
"When I heard that speech, I knew this was something special. Things changed in town, too. Armed patrols would check on us from time to time and make sure everything was alright. A doctor from the Followers would come and visit once a week and treat everyone who was sick. Everything got better. Even the water tasted better," Chelsea broke out in a wide smile, "When I was sixteen I signed up for the army; me and your grandfather. After everything the Bear had done for us, we felt like we needed to give something back," she dabbed at her damp eyes with a handkerchief, "I've always been proud of my service."
Unfortunately, Chelsea didn't live to see her granddaughter follow in her footsteps. She died when Rachel was nine years old, after a short battle with cancer. All while she underwent treatment she stressed that it was because of the NCR that she had made it to the ripe old age of eighty. Her mother died at forty-one, and her father when he was thirty-nine.
Even though she couldn't be there in person, Rachel was positive her beloved grandmother Chelsea watched her enlist and was proud, wherever she was. Rachel signed up at fifteen, and at sixteen cut her formal education short for basic training. She was too late for the NCR-Brotherhood war, but California needed more men and women out east, along the Long 15 and the Divide and in their newly-acquired Mojave territories.
Boot camp brought out the best and the worst in Rachel. She'd been preparing for a military career her entire life, and it showed in her discipline, her loyalty, and her tenacity. At the shooting range, she got a ribbon of merit for accuracy. On long marches she never got tired. When the drill sergeant got tired of her cocky attitude, he ordered her to scrub the barracks with her toothbrush, and she did it with a smile on her face.
"That girl's going to be a general someday," the drill sergeant mused to his commander the day after she cleaned the barracks.
"I know," replied the commander, "I just hope I'm retired by then."
It took absolutely no time at all for Rachel to earn a bad reputation. At Akeisha Moon High School she was fairly popular with her classmates, and participated in extracurricular activities, mostly the Patriot Club and Spirit Club. When she left school for boot camp the fervent patriotism that won her numerous Spirit Club Pie Bakes soured into a holier-than-thou attitude that won her no respect from her peers. She always talked down to them, or berated them, and snitched when she caught them engaging in illicit activities like smoking tobacco or sneaking off base. Although they couldn't openly say it, even her superiors were sick of her attitude, and tired of her brown-nosing. She had the tendency to follow them to the Officer's Club where they'd slip away from her, then lurk outside in the shadows waiting to pounce as soon as they left. When she wasn't belittling her comrades or sucking up to her superiors she talked like she was trying to top President Aradesh's famous "Precipice" speech. Everything was the most important and grandest event in the history of humanity, and it all led back to the greatness and rightness of the NCR. The other recruits used to joke about the "moral imperative" of the bowel movements she made with "righteous vicissitude." If they didn't loathe her, they were scared of her. Her nationalism turned bloodthirsty on the battlefield, and in exercises and drills she was aggressive and never pulled punches. She also often assumed a rank that wasn't given to her by the commander, and if the other recruits didn't do what she said she resorted to violence to enforce her authority-less commands. If she hadn't gotten in trouble for her bullying she would've been selected for the rangers, but as it was she was in trouble often. The final straw that almost saw her washed out was when a new recruit (she was forced to join a different battalion after her old one left her behind in detention) unwittingly questioned her loyalty to the Republic. She was given a court martial, he was sent to the hospital.
With that mark against her she was stuck in the infantry, but she didn't care since she wanted to be infantry like her maternal grandparents, anyway. In her opinion the rangers were too showy, and the real heroes were the front-line soldiers. When she was given assignment at the Hoover Dam, on the very edge of civilization, she was ecstatic. It was only at the Dam did she finally realize that out of her grandmother's forty-year career in the military, Chelsea only had a handful of exciting or interesting war stories.
Every day at the Dam Rachel woke at four in the morning, showered, ate in the cafeteria, and took second watch on top of the east tower for six hours. Every day, four in the morning, shower, cafeteria, east tower (the one still standing). Wake up, shower, breakfast, tower. Wake up, shower, breakfast, tower. Wake, shower, breakfast, tower. She was as popular among the men and women stationed with her as she was with the men and women who trained with her. She still had a bad habit of assuming her own authority, and only barely avoided getting in trouble when she talked down to one of the Rangers protecting the Dam. At the mess hall everyone avoided her, and the tower only needed one lookout, so the detail was boring and isolating, and it went on for months. After three months with only two letters from her brother and three from her mother to keep her company, she requested a transfer. At the Dam she was on the edge of the world, Aradesh's precipice, but all the action seemed to be west. She hoped if she could transfer to the Divide, or Helios One, or even Vegas, she might be able to temper her solitude with a little state-sanctioned killing of the NCR's enemies, but her request was denied by Colonel Anders himself, who told her personally that he needed as many soldiers as he could get at the Dam, and then complimented her on her discipline and record. It was the nicest anyone had been to her since she started basic and later in private she broke down in tears.
At six months into wake, shower, breakfast, tower, she was promoted to private first class and given two days leave, which she opted not to take until Colonel Anders invited her to join him on a trip to the New Vegas strip. All she really wanted to do was go home, but it would take too long for her to travel back to California, and Rachel being Rachel, she couldn't refuse her superior.
Compared to the Dam, the strip was a breath of fresh air. Everyone was nice. Everyone smiled. Most importantly, Rachel didn't try to be a perfect soldier, and thus for two days she didn't alienate or piss anyone off. Anders disappeared as soon as they left the monorail station, but it didn't matter, because as far as she could tell everyone in Vegas was her friend. Even the bouncers at the casinos smiled at her. When she arrived at the Tops in her common clothes, one of the Chairmen took her aside with a sweet smile and led her into a fabulous room with more than a hundred ritzy dresses and let her take two of her choice, on the house. He waited outside the dressing room as she tried them on one-by-one, and told her how pretty she looked in each of them with a big white smile. He said his name was Swank. He was five or six years older than her. After watching her model two dozen lovely dresses he offered to escort her while she visited the strip, and she accepted. That night he was her first, and last. When she tearfully boarded the monorail, they promised to write each other.
The atmosphere was different when she returned to the Dam. A party of savages and raiders that was making trouble east of the Colorado was growing and so were tensions. Everyone was on a tight wire, and the electric buzz of the Dam seemed to get worse and worse. It was hard to believe any energy was making it to Vegas, as it all seemed to be running through every NCR soldier. PFC Dumont no longer felt isolated or bored, but now she wished she did. Now she was too scared to be a pain in the ass, but everyone else was too scared to notice. Soldiers started hoarding supplies, and carrying around extra ammo clips for their rifles like they were good luck charms. Something big was coming, and everyone could feel it.
One day, it came. On the day that the Legion army under the command of Legate Graham struck against the NCR forces stationed at Hoover Dam, PFC Rachel was standing guard in the east tower, daydreaming about her tryst with the Chairman named Swank. At the sound of gunshots, though, she immediately snapped to attention.
"This is Tower 3 I hear shots fired on the east bank, repeat, shots fired on east bank, over," she barked into the radio. A confirmation came from the command module, a dirty tin shack built between Tower 2 and Tower 3, and then nothing, while the sound of rifle fire increased. Through binoculars she could see some of the action, but it didn't make it to the Dam for another forty minutes. The sight of that many men swarming over the hill forced her heart up into her throat. The radio squawked what she already knew. They were here. It was war.
Captain Godfrey gave the order to evacuate the Dam of all civilian personnel while Rachel sniped with mixed success from her position on the Tower. There were hundreds of enemy combatants, thousands. More of them poured over the hill, more than she thought possible. Every time she thought they were done another centuriae would crest the hill, led by big men in metal armor with ridiculous hats. After fifteen minutes they'd overwhelmed the guard and were on the Dam. Rachel retreated into the tower, then took the elevator down.
Inside the Dam was chaos. All the drills and all the training they'd done amounted to nothing when the Legion attacked. The Dam's commanding officer, Colonel Anders, was nowhere to be found, and none of the captains (who, thanks to insufficient staff, were overseeing two to three times as many soldiers as they were supposed to anyway) could agree on the right course of action. Captain Godfrey told her to head to the turbines while Captain Rosenthal told her to get back up the tower. Sargent Tran was supposed to be in charge of evacuating the engineers, but no-one could find him. He was already dead, hacked to pieces by Legionaries. Godfrey was supposed to be Rachel's commanding officer, so she headed to the turbines, only to find two dozen engineers who had no idea what was going on. A few soldiers milled about but were just as confused as the engineers.
"Who is your commanding officer?" she leaned over the metal guardrails and shouted at them.
"What's going on up there?" was the only response she got, from a private who didn't have his rifle on him.
"There's an attack. From across the river," the privates and engineers were startled, most looked scared, too, "Who is your commanding officer?" she asked more insistently.
"Godfrey! He told us to come down here!" shouted back a different private. Rachel sighed.
"Me, too," she groaned, "Look, you all stay down here, I'll see what he wants us to do," and with that she rushed back up the stairs to the offices. Captain Godfrey was nowhere to be found, though, and no one she talked to knew where he went. None of them looked ready for combat. Shots echoed through the cramped corridors. The Legionaries had entered the Dam.
Rachel did what she always did, which was take charge.
"Clear everything out of the meeting hall, storage, the rec room, whatever. Throw it all in the hallway and make barriers, one every couple of feet, so we can fall back," she yelled at the gathered soldiers. A few started following her orders. In the control room there were still a few engineers and she asked one of them to volunteer to stay behind while she ordered the others to the turbines.
"Get a torch," she ordered the volunteer, "Seal this door from the inside," she grabbed the quartermaster (her superior) and thrust him into the command room, "You stay here with him. If, God forbid, they make it through that door-"
"Shoot 'em," the quartermaster finished for her and she nodded her head. Most of the soldiers were still idle, unsure what to do and wary of the Private First Class yelling at them to the tune of approaching gunfire.
"Are you pieces of shit just going to lie down and die?!" she roared at them. It wasn't a speech for the history books, but it was enough to get the soldiers moving. They jumped to attention and started cluttering the Dam's narrow hallway with chairs and tables and nuclear waste barrels. Rachel chased the engineers down to power plant 02, where she ordered the privates there to escort them up to the visitor's center and all the way to Boulder City.
"What do we do when we get there?" asked a young man with a squashed nose.
"Find someone else to tell you what to do," Rachel said and then left before they could ask any more questions. On the stairs back to the offices she could hear gunshots echo, louder and louder as she climbed. At the top of the stairs, a wild-eyed private greeted her.
"Rangers showed up and the phone's ringing," he said cryptically. Rachel pushed past him to Colonel Anders' office, where the rotary phone on his desk was in fact ringing. As far as she knew, it was connected to only one other phone.
"This is Chief Ranger Hanlon, who am I talking to?" he said when she picked up.
"This is PFC Rachel Dumont, sir," she answered, "And before you ask, I'm in charge here so you might as well talk to me."
Chief Hanlon chuckled warmly, "Well, I suppose you'll do, then."
"What are your orders, sir?"
"Well, since Anders is nowhere to be found, and I don't have to listen to Oliver, the Dam is being evacuated," Hanlon was sitting in his office at Camp Golf, surrounded by a whole platoon of soldiers desperately trying to coordinate with the ranger camps, Camp Hopeville, Camp Searchlight, and Mojave Outpost. In the flurry of activity, he was a calm center. He'd even cracked open a beer when he got word of the attack, "Cover the retreat, but when you see an opportunity to get out of there, get out of there. Let 'em chase you all the way to Boulder City, and when you get there we'll have more words."
"But sir, what about the Dam?" Rachel was speechless for a moment. This was her first big battle, something that would define her career, and she was supposed to turn tail and run in the opposite direction? The thought of it drove her to insubordination. Hanlon laughed it off.
"Don't you worry about the Dam, alright? It was there long before you and it'll be there long after. Right now, you and all your fellow soldiers are more important than a building, no matter how big."
"Sir, yes, sir. But if it's alright with you, I think I'll be the last one out," she glumly conceded.
"Well alright, then. But if the whole invasion force is right on your heels I want you to run straight through Boulder City, alright? No stopping for a beer," he sadly ordered, although he couldn't help but feel proud of the brave young woman on the other end of the line. Despite his cool and collected exterior, he was more nervous than not about his plan to sacrifice Boulder City to save Hoover Dam, and more aware of the sacrifices it would mean than he let on. Yet, this young woman gave him hope, and confidence that the NCR still had strong, brave citizens who weren't afraid to do the right thing, no matter what the cost. Or at least, citizens who were willing to clean up the messes left by the people in charge. At that moment he could've killed Anders with his bare hands.
When she hung up the phone, Rachel felt better than she'd felt in a long time, even better than her long night with Swank. A superior she admired trusted her authority, and gave her a plan to carry out. She was so wrapped up in her good feeling that she hardly noticed how loud the shots echoing in the corridor were. The Legion had made it out of the office kitchen and were advancing slowly down the hallway, tearing apart the NCR's makeshift barriers one at a time.
"Ranger Chief Hanlon gave us orders to retreat," she told the assembled press of soldiers, "When they're almost to you, I want you to fall back and keep going. Don't look back, hoof it all the way to Boulder City, is that clear?"
"What if we want to stay?" Private First Class Kowalski asked, then added, "Uh, ma'am?"
"I don't outrank you Kowalski. If you want to fight to the last man, I can't stop you," Rachel couldn't help but smile, "And I'll be joining you if you do."
And so they held the line. At the end of the hall the enemy swarmed, but the barricades held them up, and any that charged dropped dead at the insistence of two or three bullets. Another barrier would fall, and under the cover of gunfire a few more soldiers would retreat, although plenty stayed. In the cramped hallway the sound of rifle retorts was deafening, and pretty soon none of the defenders could hear at all. If any of them had survived, it probably would've caused permanent ear damage. As it was, the silence had a calming effect. Without sound, all they did was point, and shoot. Point, and shoot. They used simple gestures to communicate with each other, but other than asking for ammo or telling the others they were reloading, there wasn't anything to say. It was a shooting gallery.
The press just kept crawling forward, an inexorable wall of red and rust and blood and men, men, men. They fell two, three at a time, two to three bullets a man. Some men didn't even die, three bullets in them, but fell to the ground, and only died after being trampled under the heels of their fellow legionaries. It was a human meat grinder, and it did not stop advancing. It was Hell. On the opposite side stood Rachel, Kowalski, Leppert, Kronmueller, Davies, and even a few Rangers like CPL Autumn Jameson and CPL Richard Falk.
The average man died on the second shot, so that came out to ten men a clip. Each of the soldiers in the Dam carried three clips standard, plus the two or three they'd been clutching to their breasts and muttering prayers to for the last month. Whenever another soldier retreated, which happened less and less as the fight wore on, they'd leave behind a clip for those still fighting. Occasionally, a centurion decked out in metal armor would make it to the front of the line with a gun and kill somebody, or a decanus would throw a spear like the one that tore out Nell Embry's throat, and the soldier closest to the fallen would inherit all their remaining ammo. Even still, they started to run low.
In the silence Rachel's head was filled with beautiful music, and about halfway through the battle she recognized it. When she was a child her grandmother Chelsea had a record player in her house, a rare luxury that Rachel would listen to every time she visited. Her favorite record was The Planets, by Holst, and during the battle she replayed the first song from the suite over and over in her head. She couldn't remember what it was called, but it felt appropriate.
As the Legion advanced and the defenders gave more and more ground, Rachel was on the front lines, with a clear view of the enemy. Some looked cruel and determined, others looked frightened and unprepared. It occurred to her that most of them were the same age as her, sixteen and seventeen-year-old boys decked out in crude leather armor, equipped with scavenged machetes. We're just children, she thought, children killing children killing children. The fight wore on and there was no end to the enemy. After she gunned down a young boy being pushed forward by his peers she had a thought. They must be covering the entire Dam, she realized, these men must've been a mile away when the battle started, and they've been marching up to the meat grinder this whole time. They probably didn't even know what they were in for. She was right. The men they were cutting down had no means of escape, as they were being pushed onward by a line of Legionaries thousands long, marching resolutely into Hell.
Unfortunately, the Legion had more men than the Hoover Dam had bullets. They were running low when they fell back around a corner and into another group of soldiers retreating in the opposite direction. They were trapped, not that any of them had enough energy left to care. The entire Dam was taken, save their little last stand in the offices. Swarming with little red ants, Rachel observed, stripping the last bit of meat from a great white bone. The Legion occupied every corner of the Dam, pressed together in such great numbers there was standing room only. There was no way out. The fight was over soon after that. The ratio of Legion men to rifles skewed too far to Legion men and a few of the younger ones were able to close the gap while the more senior soldiers provided cover.
Rachel killed a few who got close with her grandfather's knife but fell after she was shot three times through the chest. By that point, though, the Legion was already on the retreat after a couple thousand of them had been blown up in Boulder City. PFC Rachel Dumont's body was recovered. She was given a posthumous Medal of Honor and promotion to officer, and buried in the veteran's cemetery outside Shady Sands, next to her grandparents CPT Norman and CPL Chelsea Moyer.