}!{
Around midday, the jagged hills that lined the mountainous ridges surrounding the Hell Valley settlement were suddenly filled with tiny black specks. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of them.
These specks weren't part of the landscape, and Sterling knew it. Colonel Mercer tossed aside the butt of his last cigarette and hefted his large chain-axe unto his shoulder. The Rad-Eaters were back, and this particular assault had an air of desperation about it, almost as if the raiders knew that the settlement just had an upgrade in its defenses and that their soldiers just had a bolster in ranks. They chose to attack, tried to overwhelm them before they had a chance to dig in.
Unfortunately for them, the defenders already have.
Immediately after the alarm was sounded, the settlers hurried themselves to take shelter in their homes and barricade the doors and windows shut behind them. Everyone with a weapon, everyone who could fight, they all took their places at the wall. And the giant Black Bear, growling and hungry for blood, lay quietly in wait. Hulled-down, with its 105 and 12.7mm machineguns trained at the main gates.
"The walls won't hold." Mercer said to Sterling, pointing out the structural flaws in their defenses and how previous raids saw them topple back into the ground. "They never do."
"That's what the tank is for." Sterling replied as he checked his weapon. Junk, mud or stone, if they could keep the enemy from flanking them it would suffice. "You ready, colonel?"
The chain-axe roared as the armored giant squeezed its handle, and the colonel pulled down the visor on his helmet. "Hell yeah, I am."
He stomped over to the main gates to prepare to meet the Rad-Eaters head-on. Once the raiders were in range, the ghoul marines manning the turrets opened-fire. Though their aging weapons proved to be prone to misfires or jamming in the middle of a fight, they managed to hold the enemy at bay. But the raiders kept pushing, scrambling over their dead to get at the settlement walls- and right into the rooks' killzone.
Sterling's men picked their targets and fired, letting the Rad-Eaters walk right over the little stretch of death called 'mine-field' before picking off the disoriented and maimed survivors.
Like most battles, it started off a little too easy, then the raiders brought in their heavy-hitters. Four of their top dogs, or whatever they called that served as leaders for the Rad-Eaters, showed up. They wore power-armor, T-45 series just like the woman at the bridge, fortified with welded-on car parts or refrigerator doors. They carried unstable plasma weapons, all in danger of leaking toxic material from inadequately sealed containment pods. Feeder tubes snaked along the massive shafts of their barrels, pumping caustic material into the cannon primer. When they were ready, they took aim and blasted a hole through the main gate.
A large dump-truck, converted into some form of crude troop carrier, rolled into the enemy backline. It yielded a curious pack of feral ghouls, every one of them collared and leashed to Rad-Eater handler. Snarling and frothing, the ghouls strained against their restraints to sniff at the air. Clamped down on their heads were several pieces of rebar and welded steel, hindering their already ailing vision and ensuring that they could only see in one fixed direction. The handlers smeared their muzzles with fresh blood, driving the ghouls into a frenzy.
Once that was done, some of the Rad-Eaters grabbed a handful of grenades and frag mines from the sackcloth bags hanging in the back of the truck. They taped the explosives onto the ghouls, creating walking bombs that they could unleash upon their enemies. When they were ready, they directed the ghouls at the hole in the settlement's gates and released them into the battlefield.
When Mercer saw them, he shouted for his men to hose them down.
Autumn took her position at the wall, picked her targets, and blew the ghouls up by shooting the mines taped to their bodies before they could reach the wall. They ended up taking a few of the raiders with them when they bunched up trying to evade the rooks' defilading fire. Body parts and exploded debris filled the air, accompanied by the screams of dying men.
More trucks rolled up, more bomber-ghouls were sent to the wall, more blood soaked the irradiated soil of Hell Valley. The ghoul-marines took heavy casualties as exploding ordnance blasted them off the top of the wall, creating an opening for the raiders to exploit. One of the top dogs saw the danger behind the gate and ordered his men to stop. The reckless Rad-Eaters ignored their leader's warning and rushed the breach, only to find the expedition's M2 Black Bear waiting for them.
"Fire!" Hannigan shouted into the comms receiver, then directed the machinegun mounted onto his hatch-ring to unleash its deadly spray. Spent casings littered the top of the tank's hull as the weapon chattered out round after round. Dust and debris kicked up from the ground as the tank fired its main gun, and the raiders scattered from the resulting blast from the shell.
Autumn targeted the top dogs, shattering the horde's morale with every shot from her rifle when the bullets found their marks. She left them in the dust, each with a gaping hole in their heads. Power-armor was weakest at the back, even weaker at the top, where a thin 17mm layer of steel protected the wearer's face.
Some of the raiders chose to throw themselves into the breach instead of withdrawing, and they filled up the gap with their own dead as the Black Bear's guns mowed them down.
Minutes later, the battle was over. The surviving Rad-Eaters retreated back into the desert to lick their wounds, bearing the sting of another defeat at the hands of the Dominion. Corpses littered the cracked fields all over, and some were from the settlement. The medics carried the wounded off to a makeshift triage center, while the dead were gathered for a mass cremation.
"Haha!" Mercer guffawed, greatly impressed with how their fortunes have turned. "Fan-fucking-tastic work, Sterling! That fight sure takes me back, so nice to finally have competent fighters on our side!"
"Should we worry about them?" Sterling asked after checking with his men about their own casualties, "Will they be back?"
"I'd assume so." The colonel replied, "I'll get work started on closing the breach. But I haven't forgotten our little arrangement. Leckman here's gonna show you around the vault. Gotta warn you though, most of the place is heavily irradiated. Best check your suits for holes, you get contaminated you'll wind up dead in seconds. Or worse- you end up like us."
"Thanks, colonel."
Ranger Jack rolled noisily towards the hole in the wall and conducted a security sweep. The robot identified three Rad-Eater survivors among the bodies and alerted the perimeter guard. These survivors were dragged back to the middle of the settlement, where the colonel stood ready to mete out judgement. Mercer dealt with them the same way he always did, by brutally hacking them to pieces with his chain-axe. The ghoul-marines and the settlers howled and cheered at the sight of the raiders' demise, while the rooks looked on in grim satisfaction. In another age, in another life, such merciless cruelty would be decried as inhuman and unjust. But in this world of ash and ruin, the lines weren't blurred- they were redrawn.
"Alright boys, show's over." Leckman declared after the last Rad-Eater was butchered, "Follow me."
The Dominion prided itself on maintaining a modicum of civility when dealing with raiders and scavs, but every now and then a bloody spectacle could be indulged. The men, in particular, enjoyed it. Courtesy of years of Dominion propaganda, which armed them with the hate to carry out their grim task of clearing out the trash.
As the group crossed the narrow winding corridors of the settlement, the sergeant took the opportunity to ask the ghoul about the people he was with when they first saw each other. "I've been meaning to ask you, what's up with the caravan you've brought into the settlement? They weren't settlers, and they certainly didn't look like soldiers."
"Them? They're doctors." Leckman replied, "Scientists. Supposed to have come to study the effects of radiation on the human body, or something like that. They're here to find a way to turn us back... make us human again."
"Sounds mighty humanitarian of them."
"Ambitious, more like. And misguided. Give it a couple of years, you lose your optimism for things like these. There ain't no way anyone's gonna turn us back. We're stuck this way, and there's only one or two paths left for ghouls like us."
"Feral or non-feral."
Leckman nodded, "Exactly."
The group neared the vault entrance, which remained sealed long after the ghoul-marines left the shelter and built up the settlement. Geiger counters rattled frenetically the moment they stepped through the steel portal.
"The colonel mentioned the vault's flooded with radiation." Sterling inquired, "Anything you can tell me about that?"
"Oh, something to do with the experiments run by Vault-Tec back in the day. Our company was tasked with protecting this vault and ensure it remains operational long after the bombs fell. Didn't work out the way we planned. Stupid eggheads cut corners, killed half our boys with the rad-flood when the reactors breached containment and turned the rest into the handsome devils you see now."
Leckman paused to fish out a curious device from his back pocket. It was an electronic pad wrapped in a long cord of fraying wires, the screen and central processing unit of a pip-boy. He unwrapped the cord and stuck the other end into the console port of the vault door. Nothing happened at first, but Leckman got the door moving when he slammed his fist against the panel.
"Heh, that tickles." The ghoul muttered as he felt the tingling sensation of rads working their magic on his mutated body. He paused to warn the rooks about the things that remained behind when the Devil-Dogs left the vault- the reason why the door remained sealed to the day. "One more thing. Stay close to me, don't wander off. Some rooms here are sealed for a reason."
"What reason?"
Leckman shrugged, "Not all of our guys made it out in time when this place got irradiated. Radiation turned them feral, and we kept them locked up. Don't know if they stayed that way, though. Best be careful, yeah?"
"I mean this in the most respectful way possible, but why haven't you... euthanized them?"
"You and I think alike, but the colonel's got a soft spot for all the boys no matter how changed they are. You can't kill 'em, but you can't let 'em run wild either. Lots of vulnerable folks here depend on us for protection, so we just toss them in here."
A chorus of low growls and groans echoed from further down the hall of the main atrium, causing everyone to ready up for a fight. The noises kept getting louder and louder, soon they could hear the shuffle of bare feet and the stomping of boots heading their way.
"Shit." Leckman hissed, "I guess they broke out after all."
The feral ghouls appeared in the dim light of the corridor lamps, all looking worse than their non-feral brothers. Half-blind from cataracts and weak from starvation, the shambling half-dead broke into a sprint at the smell of warm, living flesh. It didn't take much to put the ferals out of their misery, just a few bursts from the rooks and the halls were quiet once again.
"Sorry." Sterling said, ejecting a spent clip for a fresh one. He forgot for a second that Leckman didn't care much for the ferals.
"Naw, don't be." The ghoul marine replied, "They were way past their dues. Be doing them a favor, believe me."
"Oh? Good then. Makes things simple."
The group slowly made their way down the atrium to the elevator, which led to the bottommost floor of the vault, avoiding the other floors where the other ferals were sure to wander. There, the rad counter jumped up a few notches, indicating the source of the rad flood. The lights were still working in the facility due to the active fusion generators. By the look of the degraded shielding, it was apparent that the leakage was coming from there.
"Who the hell needs six fusion generators to power up one place?" Sterling thought out loud.
"That one does." Leckman pointed to a large black device sitting in the middle of the facility.
The thing took up almost half the size of the room. It looked like the inside of a missile silo, but with energy-generating turbines fixed in an X in the center. Several metallic ingots floated in the middle of the core, which seemed to fluctuate between solid to shimmering particles, then to a swirling whirlpool of molten liquid. The bones of the research team were scattered all around the control consoles and observation decks. They were the first victims of the accident.
"What is that thing?" Sterling asked, intrigued by the sight.
"The eggheads called it a Matter Converter." The ghoul explained, "Said it was supposed to provide raw materials out of thin air."
"A Matter Converter? And it's been sitting down here all this time?" The sergeant approached the control center, where the lead scientist's corpse lay slumped over the panels. "Does it work?"
"You see how those metal bars keep changing over and over? Yeah, it works alright. Why?"
"Because I think we've just found a reason to stick around." Sterling turned to face Leckman, having found a resource that the Dominion would benefit from greatly. "Congratulations Leckman, your settlement's now officially under the protection of the Dominion."
Marko stomped through the large makeshift internment camp the Brotherhood created for the dozens of Dominion POW's they captured following their victory at Riverside. His blood-pressure was high, he was angry, and he had nothing to do. There was nothing worse than a man with pneumatic gauntlet and nothing to do, especially when he was still seeing red.
The victory felt hollow. Their enemies were still there.
In the time it took for him to heal from the wounds he suffered the first time he set foot at the walls of Riverside, Marko built up a strong hatred for the Dominion. And in the quiet hours, when there was no fighting, he dreamed of killing more of them. Now that he was alone with the prisoners, without a guard in sight to stop him, Marko went to work.
He started by locking the gate behind him, then grabbed the nearest rook he could find. It didn't take long for him to reduce the unhappy man's head into a bloody pulp. And before he could choose another victim, the prisoners jumped him- just the way he liked it.
The noise of the brawl caught the attention of a knight wandering the streets of the newly conquered citadel, and he was quick to send word of the ruckus. News traveled fast up the chain, and soon Knight-Commander McKenzie was at the pen gate, looking just about ready to let all hell loose on Marko.
Her former superior looked nothing like a respected soldier of the Brotherhood when they found him. He looked more at home in the fighting pits of some far-off raider gang, or a psycho-addled barbarian on the verge of cannibalizing the remains of a battlefield. Blood was everywhere. On his face, on his hands, and on his armor. A crazed bloodlustful look was in his eyes, and it took three knights in power-armor to restrain him.
"What the hell is going on here?!" Kenzie thundered.
"Found this one in the middle of the fight, KC." One of the knights reported, "Tried to drag him out, but he just wouldn't leave. Said he wanted to bash in a few more skulls, because they deserved it."
The Knight-Commander examined the bodies. There were a total of twelve dead in the holding pen, all of them killed by Marko in his rampage. At first, everyone thought Marko was the one who was attacked, but Kenzie was smart enough to figure it out. "What were you doing in there, Marko? You're not even supposed to be here."
When Marko opened his mouth, Kenzie shut him off. "Save it, don't even start. Knights, relieve him of his armor and all weapons, then lock him away."
"You protecting the minions now? They had it coming!"
Minions. Kenzie knew what the word meant. It was only a matter of time before someone thought up a way to further dehumanize the Dominion.
"No, I'm protecting the integrity and honor of the Brotherhood. Get him out of my sight."
Marko laughed maniacally as the knights disarmed him and put him in one of the cells in the internment center, where the Dominion once kept their prisoners when they used to run the place. Kenzie groaned internally at the mess he made, and looked over sorrowfully at the needless deaths the poor souls had to suffer because one of them finally snapped.
Truly, not even the Brotherhood of Steel was exempted from the madness of war.
"Ah, so you people do have principles after all."
Kenzie looked up to see Doc Roe, a Dominion medic, approach her from behind the wires of the pen. The Knight-Commander stood upright and declared, "Of course! You are our enemy, but we're not here to exterminate you people. We're here to guide you back to a proper path, one where you'll never abuse technology and bring about a second apocalypse. We can't teach you if you're dead."
"Whatever you say." Roe sneered, "But unfortunately for you, it won't even matter."
"Oh? Why is that?"
The medic shrugged, "It took you what, three airships and a fleet of vertibirds to take just one fortified town from us? You struggled against one company of the Dominion's regulars. Just out of curiosity, how do you think you'll handle twenty? And you lot haven't even faced the elite."
The distant boom of jet engines reached the ears of the Knight-Commander, and she glanced up to see twelve shapes throttling across the sky at a pace she'd never seen in her entire life. Doc Roe saw them too, and she laughed at the impeccable timing. This was the first time any of them had seen the Dominion's jets in action, and seeing them coming filled the hearts of the prisoners with hope and newfound defiance.
As soon as the jets were in range of their targets, they split up in twos, covering the three airships for one coordinated strike. They flew in fast, but reduced speed to prepare their EMP-javelins for deployment. The airships' defenses saw them coming and filled the skies with a hail of explosive ordnance, and tracer-fire. Laser streaks cut through the air, but thanks to 1st Squadron's advanced maneuvering tactics, they broke through the thick cloud of fire to deliver a precise strike at the Brotherhood's superweapons.
The Weiss twins got their javelins off first, and their aim was true. The airship crews could only watch in horror as the slow-moving missiles tore into the outer hull, bypassing the kinetic barriers completely and unleashing wave after wave of EMP blasts that fried every electronic device within its local area. The javelins also shut down their main engines, effectively crippling the airships and leaving them open to attack.
When they saw that they were vulnerable, the Warhounds circled around nimbly to cut through the airships with everything they had. Fusion-lances melted away Brotherhood armor and struck vital compartments, setting the Liberator aflame and sending it on a path straight for the ground.
It was like a great dragon being struck down from the heavens by a divine hand. The sight was more than the Brotherhood could bear. Up until then, they held their airships as the pinnacle of technology- their technology. They were told of its invincibility, a symbol of the might of the Brotherhood of Steel. And seeing it fall, it shattered their misguided delusions.
"You wanted a war, tinman." Roe said, bringing Kenzie's thoughts back to the present. "You got it."
}!{