It had been three weeks, and the plan had just failed, badly, the syringer had failed to perform it's duty and the reality of both sides had dawned on the other. Realizing their advantage in numbers, the BoS had taken the fort, and things looked bad. They had lost Harrison when he flew back to the base in Chicago for reinforcements, and it would be a time before he returned. Luckily, there was something that the BoS had never seen, a secret army if you will, the TCCR had taken residence in the fort, and moved their operation underground when the Brotherhood was moving in, and they were able to communicate via radio with the Enclave. The plan was now to make a coordinated attack from above and below, trapping the five Brotherhood people between them and securing the fort.

Andrew was originally second in command to William, but with William gone, he would have to take over. Anyone who knew Andrew would have known that he was horrible at leadership. He was good as a soldier, and good at leading in fairly stressful situations with a small force, but anything larger than five men would pose a problem for him to command. This is where Jack Austin came in, he was fairly good at leading large groups, a hundred or more men, between the two of them, they would strike, and take Fort Phantom Hill as the first fort of the TCCR. The Brotherhood could not be more clueless about the TCCR, but they had plans of their own, not to mention the fifty-some troops that Owyn Lyons had sent. What the truth of the matter was, however, that neither the Enclave, Brotherhood, or TCCR could anticipate what was happening, or would happen and was already headed their way.

The West-coast Enclave were marching, they had been for what certainly felt like, and probably was, weeks. There had been some troubles with the maps, and they had no clue where they were headed (C-4, maps, and a large force of enemy soldiers charging into your camp is not a recipe for knowing where you are going.) They were actually headed far south of Illinois, Texas, to be exact. Hannibal was not very alert at that moment, but he had noticed his pip-boy indicating that they were headed south. He really wouldn't have cared, but he couldn't figure out why there were two map markers there, and one of them said Abilene.

Abilene, Texas was harder to identify in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, the sign was gone for one thing. Hannibal and the team took shelter for the night in a building at prewar Abilene Christian University. Hannibal made sure to pick up a bible before he left, those were rare in the wasteland after all. They headed towards Fort Phantom Hill to investigate for further tech and information. The men had a steady march for four hours, then stopped to rest, and were they surprised to find two men in power armor with the Enclave flag hiding out. Hannibal cautiously approached the two, "Hello, how do you two do? My superior wants to talk to you."

Andrew and Thomas were in their hideout at the radio station when someone wearing Enclave power armor, flag logo and all, walked up to them and spoke. "Hello, how to you two do? My superior wants to talk to you." "Who are you?" Andrew asked, a perfectly reasonable question, the man went on to tell them that he was John Smith of the Enclave, and they went with him. When they got there, they saw forty to forty-five men wearing enclave power armor. After this, they went to speak to the leader, who asked them if they were in Chicago, they said that they were in Texas, not Chicago and asked for their help dealing with the BoS. A few days later, the team was ready to strike, until they saw the thirty Brotherhood soldiers marching into Phantom Hill.

A ten minute fast march had the men at Phantom Hill's gates, the shouts were exchanged as per usual, and the siege began. The TCCR without it's government structure would have been nothing more than a raider gang, a simple west Texas tribe for Caesar to seize, perhaps destroy, but when the call went out for Caesar's Legion to move all forces to Hoover Dam, they refused to follow. The TCCR was not a raider gang, and it was not a tribe, it had a clear three house government structure and a constitution based of the prewar government. Caesar's Legion attacked them brutally of course, but they took the 'fight' stand, preferring to all die fighting then to be slaves to the Legion, surrender was not an option, torturous deaths would await them if they failed, when the Enclave came, their victory was established and they were a nation, now, they would help the Enclave and keep out the Brotherhood, who had already taken a negative stance on the TCCR.

Sarah Lyons was less than impressed by the fact that there were only thirty soldiers arriving, but she hoped that the package was there. A few hours after the main force arrived, Sarah asked the leader if the package had arrived, the answer was 'yes,' and they went on with their work. The package she was waiting for was the highly dangerous and experimental 'reality blanket,' it sounds like some cheap plot twist from a story, but this incredible thing was a reality. (Yes, I'm really doing this, but is this really too much of a leap considering the work on simulations performed by prewar America in the Operation: Anchorage DLC?) The Brotherhood had moved this in as a backup plan for if the Enclave attacked and won, the blanket would take the user's worst nightmare and simulate it, if the user somehow managed to get through the simulation, they would instantly become stronger, faster, have better senses, have increased endurance, become more charismatic, get smarter, become more agile, and even get more lucky. The downside of this was that failing the simulation would kill the user in a violent and painful way, and it was not known if this had been resolved by the time of the atomic war.

"Excuse me, y'all in the fort, please make my job easier and just surrender." a voice came booming out of nowhere, "I'm Jack Austin of the Army of the Texan Constitutional Confederated Republic, and if all y'all don't surrender, we're going to have to attack."

Another voice added more to the previous comment; "Thank you Mr. Austin, I'll take over from here, I am Colonel Thomas Jackson of the Enclave, surrender the fort, and no one will perish, we will give you all the time you need."

Gerald didn't waste any time replying, and his angry response could be heard from quite a ways away. "No! This fort will not surrender to the likes of you! This fort will ring freedom for miles around, laughing at the faces of murderous ghosts like yourselves, you think you're so great, see what happens when someone resists!" He paused for a breath before continuing, "I have single handedly saved the wasteland from you dozens of times, I have killed more of your goons than I knew how to count, you killed my father, you murdered wastelanders just going about their own business, you've even killed off entire families, and now you dare to come back as if you have a moral high ground!?" He paused his rant for a few more seconds, "you have also tried to kill everyone in the world including me with your 'modified FEV!' You have been the menace of the wasteland since long before I was born, and had planned to go on committing acts of violence and terrorism wherever you went before I destroyed you! Now you come back and claim to take a moral high ground, lying as usual, I do not consider anyone or anything connected to the Enclave human, here is my pledge! I will not stop until I have destroyed everyone and everything you care about,! Then any survivors, of which I doubt there will be any, will know and see exactly what I saw! The Abyss! I will never stop, I will never surrender, you hear me? Never! Ad Victoriam!" He finished his rant and started gearing up for the battle, this was not going to be pretty, a voice on the other end stopped him.

"I take by your hateful and sick rant that you are not going to surrender, yes, the Enclave has done horrible things for which there is no atonement, and yes we did have a bad leadership! For the record, I was not behind that, and I was also not a high enough rank at that time to do anything about it, but to condemn so many people for the actions of their leadership is simply not fair, and you have done horrible things too! No one doing horrible things is acceptable, not you, not the Enclave, not those Caesar's oh-whatever-they're-called, but if you want to play the blame game, we can play it!" Jackson took a few breaths before continuing, "you say we've murdered people, entire families even, you have not even mentioned the Carter's, they were a family of innocent scientists, harmless as an ant, but that didn't stop you, you hacked the wife to pieces with your officer's sword, then bludgeoned the husband to death with a lead pipe, you didn't even let the kids get out alive! You grinned as you mowed them down with your minigun, you couldn't get enough of it, so you tortured the oldest kid to death. You accuse us? you never thought of the many souls you killed, to say nothing of the wastelanders that you killed, you even hurt your best friend Amata! You tortured her own dad in front of her till he gave you his password, then shot him in the head and heart without missing a beat, she even came running to us for help! Mister 'good fight' never mentions that in his radio broadcasts about how great you are, and evil we are! You have done all the things you accuse us of and more!" He took a glance around, then continued, "you make it a point of pride that you know Latin? Well learn this, your motto is 'Ad Victoriam,' or 'to victory,' I believe something else: Semper Fidelis!"

At this, the attack was ordered, and Gerald didn't waste any time jumping off the fort's walls to attack the Enclave, and it took twenty men just to hold him back, Sarah and the others just shot at them from the walls. The battle heated up when the over one hundred ATCCR men leaped out at the Brotherhood from below, the details of the battle were gruesome, and the battle raged on and on. Andrew led a charge at the gates, he lost three men to his left and one to his right, not to mention the injuries he sustained, but they got the gate eventually. Sarah Lyons was knocked out cold in the assault by a clean shot from the syringer made by Hannibal, and while there was another skirmish at the gate, day one went to the Brotherhood, who took back the gate and forced the Enclave back. Gerald wanted to follow them, this bad move that would have easily resulted in his death was only prevented by having half of the remaining Brotherhood soldiers actively holding him back.

The next day, the battle began again, this time, a well-placed shot from the syringer knocked Gerald out, and the battle went well from there. Most of the surviving Brotherhood, (twenty soldiers) were packed into the Brotherhood vertibird and brought back to the capital wasteland. the losses were staggering, over sixty men in the Enclave and TCCR. Andrew was heavily injured, and had to be flown back to the main Enclave base, Thomas was hit by a bullet that grazed one of his fingers, but he was fine.

I will split this chapter up into two smaller chapters that I can release from here I will go further into detail in that chapter.