Short chapter here. Like a genius, I left my notebook at home so the much larger subsequent chapter will have to wait until whenever it is that I get home to get wrapped up and published. As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated.
"Alpha team, move! We've got you covered!" Sarah Lyons yelled over the sound of Paladin Glade's mini-gun roaring to life. Paladin Kodiak didn't hesitate before rushing forward with his team to a pile of rubble 15 meters in front of them and sliding behind it for cover.
"Set!" Kodiak yelled as his team took up positions and began putting fire on the targets appearing in the blown out building at the end of the alley they were moving down.
"Colvin, stay here and give us some precision fire! The rest of you, on me!" Sarah shouted before jumping out of cover and bounding forward, taking up positions behind a thoroughly burned out car another 5 meters ahead and to the right of Kodiak's position. "Glade, get us some suppression from here! The rest of you, we're flanking Maryland!" Her team nodded in assent as Glade's mini-gun sprung to life yet again, spraying the target building with controlled bursts of firepower. Everything had gone well so far. The Lyons' Pride was moving like a well-oiled machine, using a minimum of verbal communication to direct the action and trusting their teammates to do their jobs. Being at full strength helped as well, with an even balance of specialists in each team allowing them to support each other equally. Sarah looked to Kodiak's position and gave him the hand signal to let him know that her team would be moving through an alley to flank the target building from the right side-flanking Maryland, as they called it. He nodded before returning to the task at hand, assigning sectors of fire to his men as Knight Dusk took the head off a target that had just appeared on the top of a neighboring building. Sarah turned back to her own team and signaled them to follow her before rushing down an alley to the right of their position. It eventually ended in a T-intersection and, moving in a loosely spaced file, they turned left and began to approach the target building. They made no contact on their way and reached the last building before the target quickly. Sarah looked back at her team as they moved into position, not needing a command from her to know what to do. Two newer members, Knight Tomlinson and Knight Roberts, prepped hand grenades and threw them around the corner into the target building. They detonated 5 seconds later and without a pause Sarah and her team rushed forward, fire from their teammates outside ceasing as they entered the building and began sweeping it. Sentinel Lyons was the first through the door, as she always was. A target popped out of cover to engage them and Sarah fired a well-placed laser charge into its face a second later. She heard the rest of the team sweeping in behind her, beginning to move up and clear the second floor. The sounds of fire rang out and she began to move up to support her team if need be. It wasn't needed, it turned out, and the team advanced to the roof without incident. Star Paladin Gunny was waiting for them as they fanned out and took up positions in security on the rooftop. Sarah walked over to him, removing her helmet as she did.
"Well done, Sentinel. I think that was the most impressive I've seen your team look," he said. "Let's call them in and then run through the After-Action Review, ok?"
"Sounds good, Paladin," she replied, turning to walk back to the edge of the roof and yelling down to her team that had remained on the ground. "Everyone, on the roof for the AAR!" she bellowed down, seeing the team come out of their positions and begin taking off helmets as they meandered their way up to the building, bumping fists and generally bullshitting with each other as they did. Her own team had already removed their helmets and formed up in a horseshoe on the center of the roof around Star Paladin Gunny; so Sarah walked back to join them and await the rest of the team. Kodiak led them onto the roof a moment later and, taking up their own positions in the horseshoe formed around Gunny, awaited their debriefing.
"Well done, all of you," Gunny began. In the time since the end of the war he had been promoted and made responsible for the combat training of the entire Brotherhood, to include field training exercises for the Lyons' Pride. They had just actually run a fairly standard movement to contact and assault exercise, but the precision of it was a major improvement over their previous times. "I liked the coordinated movements and use of cover. Very smart. Sarah, excellent way to set up support by fire with your heavy weapons while you moved in on the building. Kodiak, your use of hand and arms signals was great. The rest of Bravo Team, way to not hesitate and move when Alpha had you covered. Now, does anyone have anything to improve on for next time?" Glade volunteered first.
"My bursts got sloppy there towards the end," he began. "Next time I'll focus more on 7 second bursts instead of trying to just lay waste to it." Gunny smiled at that.
"That's understandable, Glade. Having that much firepower in your hands will make anyone want to lay waste to things. Anyone else?" Silence prevailed. Not seeing any hands, Gunny went forward. "I have one, then. Dusk, you do not need to take the head off of every damn target you see. You're allowed to aim for center mass. That rifle of yours has enough kick to make an Overlord think twice if you catch him square in the chest." Gunny's training style with the Pride was much different than how he trained initiates. There was no need to yell or scream at experienced, combat veteran members of the Brotherhood. They were professionals; they knew what they had to do. Out of the entire group, only three hadn't been with the Pride during the war years, and even then, two of them had still been Brotherhood. The only member without true combat experience, outside of small firefights with pissed off locals, was Roberts. McPherson and Tomlinson had both been line Knights during the war years, and were skilled warriors by the time they had come to the Pride; having made the cross-country trek as children from California. McPherson is skilled in a lot more than just fighting, Sarah thought as her gaze drifted over to him. He noticed her staring at him and met her eyes with his own, the deep brown of them belying the hardness the man could summon when he needed it. Gunny looked back to Sarah, drawing her out of her mindless fantasizing about a man who was, technically, her subordinate.
"Anything to add, Sentinel?" he asked.
"Nothing, Gunny. Lyons' Pride, move on out. We've got a bit of a hike back to the Citadel." The Pride moved off as Sarah brought up the rear, Gunny giving her a pat on the shoulder as she walked passed. This was peacetime in the Brotherhood. She hadn't realized that, after years of struggling to pacify the Capital Wasteland, the peace itself would be so boring. The Brotherhood had been able to expand during the peace, and the quality of new initiates was much higher than during those desperate years. The Chapter was, in fact, approaching full strength, and recruitment was being curtailed. People that wished to help defend the Wasteland were being sent to talk to Reilly, the woman who ran the largest mercenary company in the Wasteland. They had become a de facto sort of militia, helping secure the northern D.C. ruins while the Brotherhood patrolled the south and west and, as always, maintained Project Purity. It was late afternoon, and the heat of the day was near unbearable, even with her power armor's air-conditioning unit running at full bore. The team was casually talking amongst themselves as they headed back west towards the Citadel. Sarah couldn't help but be struck at what a far cry from the war years it was, when everyone would be totally focused on not walking into a super-mutant ambush. Sarah sometimes wondered if the fact that she in some ways missed the fighting made her a bad person; if she had to be somehow twisted to miss something that had taken so many lives. She thought sometimes about asking Colvin's take on it, as he was the team's most spiritual member and offered good insight on the human psyche, if one could tolerate his proselytizing. Not tonight, though. Tonight, Sarah thought, I want to have my own AAR with McPherson. Rank did have its privileges, after all. Not that he ever objected. She spent most of the march back to the Citadel imagining what she would do to him that night, only snapping back to the present as they crossed through the gates into the Citadel courtyard. Aside from a platoon of initiates standing in formation, waiting to be dismissed for the day, it was quiet. The Pride made its way back to their personal lounge, the Den, before they began removing their power armor and putting weapons into wall lockers.
"Hey, Sentinel," Sarah heard Tomlinson call out from the other side of the room. "Group of us are going to go tie one on in Rivet City tomorrow night. You down?" Sarah laughed. Technically, regulations prohibited her from drinking with her subordinates. At the same time, those regulations, at least in theory, also prohibited her from sleeping with McPherson. Sometimes rules are meant to be broken, she thought.
"I might be down, yeah. Let me see how I feel tomorrow evening," she replied as most of the team filed out, heading to get food from the mess hall. She was left alone with McPherson.
"And how are you feeling tonight, Sentinel?" he said, his voice deep and resonant. He was a big man, the biggest on the team behind Kodiak. Maybe bigger in some other ways, she thought to herself, smiling as she did. He noticed the smile but opted not to comment on it.
"I guess we'll have to see how the night ends before I answer that, Paladin McPherson," she replied, resting her hand on his chest and staring up at him as she did. He smiled back at her.
"I am at your command, Sentinel," he replied, resting his hand on her hip before running it down the side of her leg. The rest of the team had just left for chow. We have time, she thought, grabbing him by the shirt and leading him to her private quarters at the back of the Den.