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"The Dominion. The Way Forward." - Dominion Propaganda poster
.::.
Sgt. Harry Reamer opened the tin box of cheap cigars from his duffle-bag and fished out his silver-plated flip-lighter. The tank commander of the Painbox surveyed the remains of the battlefield for survivors, then turned to oversee the repairs of the battered M2 Black Bear when he found to his satisfaction that there were none.
It was now February 1st 2104, roughly a year and a half since they'd retaken Riverside and pushed the Brotherhood of Steel past their borders, reclaiming lost territories and liberating distant settlements from their greedy hands. His men were hard at work replacing the front bogie and treads where a Shieldbearer's shot crippled the tank in mid-battle.
Carl Wagner was the driver, the only surviving member of the Painbox's original crew besides Reamer. Back when the outer hull wasn't reinforced with additional NERA reactive plating, a single anti-tank rocket was enough to blast gunner, loader and radio-operator to pieces in one go. Wagner still had pieces of shrapnel stuck in his back, which the auto-doc's couldn't quite get without having to dig in deeper. Unfortunately, the amount of money the Dominion pays its soldiers could only go so far, so Wagner opted to suffer the incessant pricking of the shrapnel whenever he sat or lay on his back. The battle-hardened veteran was a squat 5'3, but was as muscular as an American Bully dog. His dark red hair was long, the kind of long that defied Army regulations, and he had it tied in a little bun under his hat. Wagner was a quiet man, who longed to have his tour end soon so he could return home to his tribal bride and three children. Reamer could never ask for a better driver, and endeavored to make sure he would get to see the end of this long and shitty war.
Rudy Hershel was the loader, the one with the large socket wrench helping Gunther Webley, the gunner, with screwing on the replacement bogie and attaching the treads together so they could be on their way. Hershel and Webley could be mistaken for twins, with their matching blonde hair and green eye color, and uncannily similar cheekbone structure. They weren't twins, but they were definitely brothers- of a sort.
Word around the barracks was that Rudy and Gunther shared the same father, who knocked-up two different whores in the same night and same motel, then disappeared. The women, having no desire to raise two bastard children in the already overcrowded apartments of Carlon City, dumped the half-brothers on the doorstep of an Army recruitment center. The Dominion Army was literally their whole life. The half-brothers grew up, each picking a surname to their liking, then enlisted as soon as they came of age.
The latest addition to the crew was the radio operator, a scrawny young man named Michael Whiteman. There wasn't much to say about him. Born and raised in the slums of the Gypsy Mile, joined the Army for a quick rise from poverty, then landed a job working with the crew of the Painbox. Whiteman was a good kid. He took orders without complaining, and did his part well from his first day to the present. Sgt. Reamer at first thought that the kid was better suited for a less taxing, and far less dangerous, kind of job. But in the Army, the safest place for anyone was either behind the walls of a fort or inside a tank.
And there was no better tank than the Painbox.
"All done, boss!" Wagner hoisted himself up the tank and back through the hatch to slip into his seat. "Where to?"
Reamer chomped on his cigar and puffed a huge cloud of smoke, to which the Black Bear mimicked with a powerful roar of its engine. "Get us back to camp. Leave the rest to the vultures." Colorless smoke blew up a cloud from its rear, and the whole tank shook as it rolled out of the sand and back into the road.
All over the battlefield they left behind were the scattered corpses of burned out tanks and shot-up troop transports. All of them were the results of another Brotherhood ambush gone terribly wrong. That was the known tactic the Brotherhood's been reduced now. Defensive, elusive and opportunistic. They'd strike from afar, never engaging the Dominion directly until they were right on top of them. This was the problem when facing an enemy right in their own turf. The Brotherhood knew the land of the Permian Basin better than they ever could, and there was just too much ground to cover.
Two kinds of vultures arrived not long after the armored convoy left the scene. The corpse-eater birds, turned monstrously large from decades of radiation, swooped down from the skies to devour the half-burned dead strewn all over the dunes. And the second, scavengers and corpse-pickers, emerged from behind the hills and trees to take what they could from the battlefield before Dominion salvage crews came to clear the area.
A squad of rooks rode on top of the tank's hull, as the convoy's trucks were all blown to pieces in the last skirmish. Reamer didn't mind giving them a ride, since having some infantry support close on hand meant that their chances of having an uneventful trip back to base were higher.
Three A4-2 Warhounds carved up the sky as they patrolled what was now Dominion airspace. They've just about finished escorting a squadron of A3-1 Bloodhound dive-bombers, which gifted the Brotherhood a nice set of 1000lb tnt packages. If they were successful, another supply depot or ambush chokepoint had just gone up in flames.
Hershel popped his hatch and peeked out, readying his camera for a quick shot of the jets. The Elysion Herald Agency paid well for pictures taken from the frontlines, to be used to further their propaganda campaign. Everyone back home loved to hear progress, everyone loved to see their enemies crumble before the armored treads of the Dominion war machine. Information about the Brotherhood of Steel, gathered from captured prisoners of war, was released to the public, so that both soldier and civilian would know what it was exactly they were dealing with.
Like the Dominion, their founders survived the nuclear apocalypse and created something out of the ashes of the Old World. Like the Dominion, they harnessed the lost technologies of America and tamed the Wasteland, bringing some semblance of order to the chaos. But unlike the Dominion, they feared their own technology and placed so many restrictions on their own people that brought themselves to no other path than regression. There was nothing to embellish or exaggerate, the Brotherhood was every bit the radical and dangerous foe they had always thought to be.
Now that they knew exactly what was at stake, and the kind of world the Brotherhood envisioned, no one could be tempted to join their ranks. From the stalwart citizen to the struggling waster, everyone preferred the iron hand of the Dominion's government over the steel fist of the Brotherhood.
"Sarge, we've got an obstruction up ahead!" Wagner announced.
Reamer gut up on his cupola and peered through the camera. Further down the road, no more than fifty meters from their position, three Dominion trucks stood still in the middle of their path. They weren't on fire, but they looked like someone emptied several clips into them. The tank commander sensed the telltale signs of an ambush, so he turned to Whiteman. "Operator, send in the drone. The rest of you boys, get off my tank! Move!"
The rooks dismounted and prepared to move in once the EITS drone either gave the all-clear or identified any targets. Whiteman piloted the drone up and over the wreckage, finally coming upon the remains of their crew. A minute later, after conducting a perimeter sweep, the drone detected several IED's hastily planted along the path of the Painbox. And further across the plains, hidden behind a false rock and a cammie net, was a Shieldbearer mech. Its massive 88 gauss cannon was aimed right at them, and upon realizing this, the rookie alerted the driver to immediately start backing up.
"Shieldbearer, 10 o'clock!" He cried out suddenly.
A powerful crack reverberated across the plains, and the whole tank shuddered as the solid steel shell struck the Painbox under its treads, breaking the transmission and sending sparks flying all over Wagner's compartment.
"Shit!" He exclaimed, shielding his face with his gloved hands. Realizing that the tank was crippled, again, he let loose a stream of curses. "I just fixed the damn thing! Fucking tinmen and their fucking mechs!"
"Rooks, spread out!" Reamer barked into the radio, warning the soldiers to get clear of the tank in case the Shieldbearer shot its ammo compartment, which could very well turn them into a walking bomb. "Loader, load smoke!"
Hershel slid a shell marked with a silver cap into the breech and announced, "Up!"
Webley took careful aim, coordinating with the EITS drone to zone in on his target, then pressed the trigger. "On the way!"
The Painbox rocked back and sent the shell flying cross the plain, blanketing the mech's position with white phosphorous smoke. Whiteman hovered the drone over the cloud, periodically scanning for the mech's movements. At the same time, Reamer ordered the rooks to move in and flush out the Brotherhood infantry that may be backing up the mech. He paused to get a hold of the base camp's artillery to get some additional fire support.
Unfortunately, to his dismay, he found nothing but static on the radio. Something was jamming long-range transmissions, because he could've sworn that the radio was working just fine earlier that day. That, or the camp was under attack. "We've lost base camp. We're on our own."
"Orders, sarge." Webley said, itching to fire another round into the cloud.
"Hold fire." Reamer replied, "Operator, what've you got?"
Whiteman studied the readings on the screen, "No infantry support. Mech's all alone."
"What? That doesn't make any sense."
"Well, what the drone sees is what we get, sarge."
"They getting stupider or something?" Wagner asked. "No tinman ever goes alone, unless..."
Suddenly, Reamer noticed something move from the corner of his eye. He turned his head to the right and saw through the hatch periscope the telltale shimmering silhouette of a cloaked Brotherhood zealot. The man had crept up to the tank and was holding something too big for the stealth-boy to conceal completely. It was a rocket launcher. They were coming for the tank!
"Traverse right!" The tank commander screamed, "Zealots three o'clock! Hit 'em with the coaxial!"
Webley traversed the turret and prepared to fire the 12.7mm coaxial machinegun, but the zealots were faster. The one with the launcher fired a shot into the Painbox's exposed side, punching a hole through the armor and into the engine. The resulting explosion stunned the entire crew. It felt like being on the inside of a giant bell, with an even bigger clapper ringing it about. The other zealots scrambled over the hull and reached for the hatches, hellbent on dropping a couple of grenades inside to kill the crew.
Wagner ripped out his sidearm from its holster and fired wildly into the blinding light of the sun pouring through the open hatch above him. He didn't care if most of the shots missed, just as long as he hit something with even one of them. He got lucky after the third shot, putting one right in the eye of the cloaked zealot as he was just about to drop the live grenade.
Reamer didn't have it as easy, and had to wrestle with the zealot as he jumped out and grabbed him by the arms.
"Die minion!" The zealot growled as he tried to pry the tank commander's hand away from the grenade he was holding. He grunted in frustration when Reamer socked him in the throat.
"Fuck you, tinman!" Reamer said, shoving him right off the tank. The zealot landed on his back, crushing the stealth-boy kit and revealing himself to everyone.
Wagner climbed out of his hatch and emptied the rest of his clip into the zealot. The live grenade detonated in the dying man's hand not long after, and knocked the tank driver off the Painbox. Reamer could see the dancing flames of a fire in the engine compartment, and he banged at the tank's hull with his palm to alert the rest of his crew. It was already spreading into the ammo storage, and he wasn't about to risk the whole crew by sticking around and try putting it out.
"Bail out! Bail out!"
The crew scrambled to get out of what would have been a steel tomb and helped Wagner to his feet before making a break for the road. At first, the tank popped and fizzled like an overflowing kettle, then roared like an angry deathclaw as its ammo ignited. The turret flew right off the hull, sending a jet of fire arcing up into the sky. The ensuing explosion sent the crew flying into the dust, although leaving them relatively unharmed.
Reamer shook the ringing in his skull and glanced back at the Painbox. He felt bad about abandoning the tank and losing it to the Brotherhood, but at the same time felt relieved that he and his crew were still alive. At the very least, the tank got such a dignified end- literally in a ball of fire and out with a bang.
"That was close." Hershel remarked, "Nice one, sarge."
"Note to self..." Webley bemoaned, "Never leave your porn stash in a tank."
"You'd rather leave it at base for the others to skim through?" Wagner asked as he got to his feet, referring to the age-old tradition of soldiers pilfering nudie mags from one another.
"Better to be stolen than burned." Webley replied, "Mine were Pre-War edition. They're priceless."
"Oh."
"Yup."
"That's enough." Reamer declared, getting the soldiers back on track. He threw a glance at the rooks closing in on the mech, "It's a long way back to base. Get your weapons ready, we're helping get our boys back safe and sound. Then we'll see about getting ourselves a new ride. Move out."
Hector Ibram stared at the wall opposite of his bed in the dank, rundown apartment he'd used as a safe-house for the last three weeks. On the wall were the attached callsigns of every infiltrator that formed the majority of the Brotherhood's covert ops network. Karter, the initiates, even Brand. They've all gone silent since the Dominion cracked-down on them, arresting or killing anyone they could get their hands on. Most were dead or in hiding now, either way in no position to help him.
They'd lost Riverside, and Pivot Point followed not long after. The Dominion had pushed them so far back into the Permian Basin that it was only a matter of time before they would be knocking on the very doorstep of Landfall itself. They were closing in like a noose, the Brotherhood was now on the defensive, and truly there was nothing short of desperation in their efforts. Earlier that week, they'd just lost another airship in the ill-advised battle to retake Pivot Point. Just as they did with the three airships at Riverside, the Dominion Warhounds tore it right out of the sky.
Something had to be done. Something drastic, something so shocking that it would shake the Dominion to its core.
The 'crazy wall' pattern he'd created hung in the middle, a result of his attempts to pinpoint the High Marshal's location. Even the Dominion's supreme leader was a creature of habit, and it wasn't long before Ibram figured out where he'd be going next. Difficult, but not long. This plan was part of his most important, and perhaps his last, mission.
Elder Larsson contacted him a little over two hours ago, imparting the details and leaving the spy to carry out his orders however he saw fit. In his message, he stressed the importance of making it public, so that there was little to no chance that the Dominion could ever fake or cover it up.
The High Marshal was scheduled to deliver a speech in his weekly address, from the safety of his grand palace, the Obsidian Keep. This time, he would do it on the balcony of the East Wing, where it would seem that the whole world would see him from miles around. Getting through Elysion's tight security systems would be easy, but infiltrating the keep itself was no longer an option as Ibram would be doing this mission alone.
He had other means to get the job done. Car-bomb, a rocket-launcher, a drive-by, or perhaps the old-fashioned up-close and personal. Eventually, Ibram settled for the tried-and-true sniper shot. He would need a high vantage point, on level or perhaps higher than the High Marshal's balcony. That way, if he missed his chance, he had a sizeable window of opportunity to escape. A contingency, but nothing more. Ibram was determined to get it done right.
The spy got up and walked towards the bed, where the gun-case containing his weapon of choice sat, waiting to be assembled. Inside was an overcharged, long-barreled AER10 laser-rifle, with a fine-tuned beam focuser for added precision. Ibram had the time to get properly acquainted with the weapon, assembling and disassembling it with ease.
Still, as he practiced his marksmanship discretely in the following days, Ibram couldn't help but wonder how much the Texan Chapter had changed since it met the Dominion.
They broke their own rules regarding the use and development of existing or new technologies. Fearing the unknown, they created a force that could bend the Wasteland to their will. Airships, mechs, war machines that the founding chapter would've normally frowned upon. Now, they were breaking the core tenets that made them a symbol of order in this post-apocalyptic world, sacrificing honor, nobility and integrity for the sake of victory.
Ibram wondered, if by chance that killing the High Marshal didn't quite work the way they thought it should, would there be anything left? Would they keep fighting each other like the nations of the Old World until all was ash and ruin?
The thought was almost...heretical. The Brotherhood of Steel was the future of mankind. The Brotherhood of Steel would be victorious. He'd spoken those words so much that he believed it with all his heart. They all did. To victory, and only unto victory.
Ibram smiled as he peered through the scope of his laser-rifle, watching the carbon mist rise from the hole of the target dummy's head. He'd taped the face of Roman Stern across the sackcloth covering, and he imagined what the real High Marshal would look like with that same hole in his unhappy face.
He had enough of doubting his purpose, he especially had enough debating the morality of his mission. He wasn't killing the High Marshal because he wanted to. The Dominion wouldn't stop, and neither could they. He was killing him to put a quicker end to this war, nothing more and nothing less.
And if that wasn't enough, at least he would show the Dominion their own vulnerability once more.
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