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As the noonday hour approached, and the creatures of the wilderness stirred to make their final movements before the evening chill took over, the low rumble of wheels churning up sand and dirt heralded the approach of an armored convoy.
Ten vehicles sped down the untraveled road of cracked asphalt piled with the rusted carcasses of abandoned cars. The lead vehicle, an armored Centaur Mk. IV-90, smashed aside the obstacles to clear a path for the rest of the convoy. Its Ramhorn bulldozer blade, together with the IFV's powerful fusion engine, flung the wrecks and debris with ease. Two EITS drones flew ahead of the formation to scan for potential points of interest, resources, obstacles, routes and possible threats. The other vehicles, all Mark III's, carried the expedition team and their assorted cargo.
There was no doubt that the convoy was Dominion, but it wasn't part of the Army. The Dominion needed a separate organization, one that specialized in safeguarding their expeditionary assets in the frontier. As the end of the war against the Brotherhood Texan Chapter opened new opportunities for expansion, and with the increasing number of discharged veterans threatening to outpace the Dominion's capacity to offer employment in the civilian sector, they created Aegis.
A few months after its formation, now with the same amount of resources and manpower the Dominion invested in the military, Aegis took over the Army's role of protecting expeditions throughout the country. The Wasteland never lacked for danger, and always the first to take the brunt of any assault were those in the frontier. Thus, what it would usually take to supply a garrison would go towards reinforcing new outposts. The expansion age's enemy was the desert, the radiation and what came with it. Not everything out there was going to be like the Brotherhood, sometimes it could be worse. To address these concerns, Aegis took great pains to adapt its equipment and strategies to better combat this enemy.
This particular venture was known as Expedition 113, the first of many more convoys to come. The journey to Northwest Texas was said to be long, arduous, and in the past considered a waste of time. But eventually, someone up in Elysion thought that times have changed. Good things cannot come from giving up, and the Dominion had a sacred duty to reclaim every bit of what was lost in the apocalypse. After all, there was only so much land in the world.
Expedition 113 was in the pioneering phase, where the convoy was meant to survey the land and mark everything of note on the geoscape map. If they happened to come across some difficulties along the way, like Wasteland critters and raiding bands, they were free to deal with them as they pleased. Afterwards comes the consolidation phase, in which Aegis fortifies every possible road from the homeland to the frontier. Outposts would be set up, trade routes secured, and communities to be absorbed into the growing nation- regardless of their willingness on the matter.
In the end, what was most important to the Dominion was that there was progress.
Aegis adopted the Tropentarn desert camo pattern to set it apart from the multi-cam pattern of the Rook division. It was far from the most ideal pattern for the lack of greenery in the Texas Wasteland, but its role was mostly to set a discernable difference. It was on their fatigues, their equipment, and on their vehicles. Their badges proudly displayed the horrifying visage of the mythical gorgon shield, said to have scared the enemies of the Greek god Zeus shitless whenever they stared into its eyes. It wouldn't scare anyone shitless in Northwest Texas, not yet anyhow.
Whatever the distinction, they were still Dominion. Anyone who saw them coming, and especially if they heard about the power they represented, they knew that it was only a matter of time before civilization itself followed. The Dominion was swallowing up everything in its path, like a great sinkhole in the face of the earth. Eventually, everyone and everything would fall behind its banner.
The convoy stopped as the road reached its end at the edge of a large and ancient trench. What caused it was a plane crash, one that started its descent miles away and carved up the earth when it finally met the ground till it came to rest at the road. It was a Xian H-9 heavy-bomber, a Chinese nuke-carrier. Once, it was the pride of the PLA's fleet, a harbinger of death among many others. Now, it was just another rusted wreck among many others. In the Old World, there were other weapons that defied the forces of nature, the ones at present but dim shadows of the storied past. This bomber, alongside the sneaky submarines that hid themselves in the coast, brought the great beast America to its knees.
The lead Centaur popped its gunner's hatch, and out came Kitty Reyncourt, the expedition's frontier judge.
Frontier judges were a new concept for the next age of expansion, which was fitting considering that they came about the time Aegis was in its first conception. Out in the frontier, the lands were as lawless as they came. Dominion soldiers, pioneers and citizens alike could do just about anything they wanted. To impose the rule of law, and guarantee that the newly absorbed communities could build a lasting relationship with their new country, the High Marshal decreed that the Dominion Supreme Court would send out its best to bring the frontiersfolk to heel.
Kitty was born to two English immigrants, Bettany Paul and Layra Reyncourt, neither of which survived long in the irradiated lands surrounding Austin. Driven away by the savage dwellers that predated the wasters who settled the ruins, Kitty and her sister Nancy traveled with other nomads, eventually joining other caravans heading West. Back then, the Dominion wasn't as big as it was, but its presence was slowly reaching that of 'well-known'. The Reyncourt sisters were processed into citizenship, on account of their being orphans and their age.
Nancy enrolled into school, so did Kitty. One sister discovered she was very good at putting people back together, the other found her calling by blowing them apart. Nancy became a doctor, Kitty joined the Army. Later, the latter went through the academy and got sworn in as a judge. She'd worked the streets of Carlon and the Mile for two years, both of which signified as every judge's rite to passage.
She was a seasoned enforcer of the law, which more than qualified her for the frontier.
It wasn't out of duty that she went along with the expedition, but out of youthful wanderlust and a chance to see the world beyond the borders of the Dominion. But that was only half the reason, it was mostly because her sister, stubborn little Nancy Reyncourt, wanted to go. Older sister's instinct, damnable as it was, told her to follow. No amount of arguing could keep her out of it, so the Reyncourt sisters were both on the road once again.
Kitty pulled on the edges of her wool beanie hat to hide the stray strands of dark blonde hair from the desert wind blowing from the East. The skin on her face had dried up from the heat, no matter how hard she tried to keep herself hydrated. Wearing a protective suit, like what most of her fellow pioneers wore, might have helped. They came with their own cooling systems, like the ones inside a hard-suit or power-armor. But those things were expensive, and hard to maintain. Kitty knew the cheaper tricks her life as a rook taught her, though sometimes the desert wins just the same.
The woman had a pretty face. Pretty, but there was no kindness in it. The hard years of her youth, the horrors she witnessed, and even harder years in the military have scraped away any softness in Kitty. It was all there, beneath the thin veneer she called her skin, the years of acrid bitterness and toil just about ready to burst. She had a look of mocking cruelty, an ice queen's frigid presence, but even in that there was a certain appeal.
Kitty wore a large faux leather jacket, with coolant tubes built into the lining similar to the protection suits the rooks wore on a hot day, to hide the multi-cam fatigues she wore beneath it. She was the only member of the expedition to retain the colors of the Dominion Army, though it would take a practiced eye to see the difference. And on her chest hung the badge, kept shiny through meticulous care- the symbol of blind Lady Justice.
Under all those sheets of cloth, synthetic fabric and industrial tubing, Kitty built her form to embody the Dominion's strict physical standards. The road to hammer the skinny wooden frame into iron was long and hard, but she was proud of what she'd done. It was necessary for her line of work, and the Wasteland was no place for the weak. Intricate tattoos of a great network of gears, cogs and spigots covered her back. Some ran along her shoulders, then down the back of her arms. These tattoos symbolized the great machine that was the Dominion, her country and her home. It was a machine that operated with a myriad of components, the people and its industry.
It was a machine that could conquer the world.
Her bright green eyes took in the vast, monotonous and grim silhouette of the northern mountains. She thought they looked the same as any one of them back home. As for the desert, beyond the wreck of the Xian she was starting to see the green of distant grass fields. Several hundred miles of empty, irradiated and bloodstained desert... and they finally found the edge of the storied Four Seasons.
Good and promising lands for the people of the Dominion, ripe for the taking.
"Judge, looks like something's wrong with our scout."
Kitty got back inside and slid down beside the eyebot technician. She was just about getting used to being the boss of the expedition. Normally, in the Dominion Army heirarchy, everyone respected only the set chain of command. Soldiers took commands from officers, and officers from higher officers up the chain. But the officers here in Aegis, they were told that a judge's authority superseded anyone else's. So everything that had to happen, they wouldn't go without her say-so.
The judge frowned at the sight. All they were seeing through the monitor was a blank, grainy feed from an eyebot staring with its face in the dirt. Moments later, the words 'Connection Lost' appeared in bright bold letters across the screen. The wind wasn't strong enough to blow it off course, and definitely not enough to keep it in the sand like that. Someone shot their drone.
"Looks like we got contact." Kitty sighed, "Notify the rest of the convoy, and get this bloody thing moving."
She was dying to get some action, they all were. Now, some fool just went up and shot some valuable Dominion property. Big mistake on their part, as far as the convoy was concerned. The Centaur whirred happily, and the expedition steered clear of the Xian wreck to continue along the untraveled road towards the last known location of the EITS drone.
Further along down the convoy, in one of the Centaur troop transports, Nancy Reyncourt had herself absorbed into her work. The moving and shaking of the vehicle didn't bother her much, for the woman had grown accustomed to working on the move. One minute, she'd be bent over her pip-boy, the next she'd be jotting down some formulas on the marked and scribbled notebook she kept in her coat-pocket.
Nancy had her head wrapped in a shawl, and she wore a field-surgeon's uniform beneath the body armor Aegis provided her. She'd tied her hair into a braid, and was never seen without her wide-rimmed glasses. She looked every bit like her sister Kitty, but her demeanor is what set her apart. Nancy was a kind woman, the sort of kind that shouldn't be out in the frontier. She had been so nice to everyone in the convoy that every man who should've been hitting on her was more compelled to guard her against the desert than pursue her affections.
She had become, in a way, more than an asset to the team and more like everyone's little sister. Nancy wasn't aloof to their advances, but she never once dealt harshly with them for it. She had no fear for anyone going too far, or stepping out of line. She always had her big sister to protect her.
Nancy stopped writing when the convoy pulled into a halt some time later. Excited, she started to move with the others towards the door. Some of the soldiers stopped her, "Sorry, Nance. You're gonna have to wait here while we secure the place, alright?"
"Oh." The doctor nodded, "Okay."
The convoy stopped at a good enough distance from what looked like the remains of an old stone church.
Mud brick walls surrounded the aged stone structure, all of it shot to pieces or blown apart by dynamite. The graveyard out back wasn't spared from the shots. Bodies, all torn up from gunfire, littered the once-hallowed ground. The fires were still smoldering, so whatever fight took place happened recently. The EITS drone was found lying a few meters from the main gate, with a large bullet hole through its chassis.
That alone meant that there was someone still inside the church.
Kitty got out of the Centaur, fearlessly striding towards the gate with her men in tow. Opening it, she was greeted with a most gruesome sight. On top of a large wagon, the body of a man was bound to the wheels with thick half-frayed ropes. His shirt had been torn and roughly pulled down to his ankles. His skin had been flayed from his chest and shoulders, also stretched out tight like his clothes. The poor man's final screams were left upon his contorted face, frozen in agonizing limbo.
The sight drew out a stream of muttered curses from the soldiers, and they quickly turned their attention to the church itself. The doors and windows have been broken into, and blood stained the soil from every entrance.
Guided by her intuition, Kitty figured whoever was left was probably one of the scared victims. A survivor, real nervous and trigger-happy. They hadn't come out yet, so she had to draw them out.
"Hello? Anyone there?" She hoped they'd make it easy on themselves. She wanted to kill people. Bad guys, not the other guys if she could help it. "You shot our drone, but we won't hold it against you if you show yourselves!"
Hearing no answer, she dropped the ultimatum. "We don't want to kill you, but if you don't come out right now we will burn you out!"
A full minute later, a shaky child's voice answered. "W-We're sorry we broke your robot... please don't hurt us."
Kitty's harshness softened, somewhat, but she firmly pressed for their compliance. "Come out, then. Nice and slow with your hands in the air."
Fourteen children, ranging from the ages of eight to thirteen, tentatively walked out of the church. The eldest, a thin and dirty boy clutching an old Henry rifle, led the group with his weapon lowered. The others had their hands up, but not him. Understandably, he felt responsible for his fellows. He was only trying to protect them.
"Drop the gun, lad." Kitty said, "We're not raiders."
The kid obeyed, and the pioneers brought them back to the convoy to get the children looked at. Kitty and some others searched the church, finding more corpses among the pews. Whoever attacked, they were just in the mood for killing.
"Tell me what happened here."
The kid's name was David, and he was among thirty other orphans living in the Santa Clara Mission and under the protection of Padre Rivera. The mission had been put up as a shelter, of sorts, for weary travelers and wasters looking for spiritual enlightenment. If there was anything that survived the apocalypse, it was man's capacity for belief. One of the Old World's many faiths, Catholicism, endured till the present day. And as such, its devotees welcomed the new age with open arms. But for Padre Rivera, his arms were as welcoming to the lost as the shooting irons they held for the scoundrels.
In a world of sheep, there were wolves. The old priest, as David told the expedition, taught his followers to defend the mission and all who dwelled within its walls as best as they could. They had repelled previous attacks from raiders and beasts, but this latest attack proved to be too much for their meager defenses.
"They came on horses, the Crowes. They killed the missionaries, took some of the other kids and all the sisters of the mission. They headed that way..." David pointed to the North, "...towards Salvación."
"And where is this Father Rivera?" Kitty asked, stepping back to let Nancy wash away the blood and soot from the kid's face.
"They shot him." David said, "But he got right back up after they left. Dug up something from the graveyard and went the same way."
"Hmph." The judge pursed her lips, thinking long about her options. On one hand, she and a few of the Centaurs could go after the bandits, show them a little Dominion justice and get the mission folk back. On the other hand, she could best play it safe and fortify the mission as a temporary camp for the expedition while they got a good bearing on the local area.
This place was new to them, uncharted and full of danger. If anything went wrong, there won't be any reinforcements from the homeland. Everything they had on hand was the only resources available, so Kitty decided to be smart about it.
"Get the others settled in. We make camp here."
Two miles out of Wintertown, a group of Crowe rustlers have pitched camp at the foot of an enormous canyon deformity known by its aptly put name 'Clubfoot Canyon'. They had just ridden out of the frontier, heavy of purse after plundering an old mission, and heavier of cargo as they were transporting two cagefuls of scrawny brats and promising young nuns. They were easy pickings, better than their hunts for raiders. Raiders, at least, put up a better fight. Missionaries, near-pacifistic soft missionaries, not so much.
The leader of the rustlers, Wayne Crowe Junior, had made short work of the poor fools. Up close, with just a stone wall to protect them from Crowe guns, they weren't that much of a challenge. Their padre, however, was another story. A crack-shot, he took down six of them from a distance of two hundred meters, while they were on the move and on horseback.
His men gunned him down, eventually, for his defiance. Their losses were worth the price, for they found that the mission had some interesting stuff to be sold in Salvación. The old church had holy objects overlaid with gold and silver, all from an age long past and begging to be turned in for the auction houses- or to be melted down to decorate the Dolarhydes' properties. The children would make for excellent disposable labor. The nuns, those poor helpless nuns, would be used to entertain the boys back in Wintertown for a time.
The rustlers were now drunk, bored and rather horny. Wayne thought on how it would be a great idea to pluck one of the sisters from the cages, tie her to a rock and let the boys have their way with her. They had the time, all the time in the world, to make her life a living hell so they'd have a piece of heaven for a few measly moments.
They would never get their chance.
Heavily inebriated, a bottle in one hand and unsteady in gait, every single one of the wicked Crowe rustlers paid little attention to their surroundings. They were too busy enjoying the fruits of their labors, the blood they spilled, and the suffering they were about to inflict upon the sisters of the mission. They never saw the distant silhouette, a speck in the horizon, grow to that of a lone rider coming with a vengeance.
He rode a horse marked with a large X shaped scar across his right side, and wore a tattered black duster over a three-piece suit that looked like it was begging for a clean-up. A bound mini Bible hung from his chest by a chain, and his neck was covered by a faded white clerical collar.
The camp was a circle of hastily pitched tents, with the two cage carts sitting a few meters away from it. A campfire burned, with a roasted bird turning on the spit. The rider was Padre Jonorario Ramirez, priest of the Santa Clara Mission. Despite his age, his eyes were still keen. He saw them opening the cage and dragging out one of the women. Others were preparing some lengths of rope to secure her to a nearby rock. He kept well in mind what they were planning to do, and so willed himself not to miss.
Wayne, wicked Wayne Crowe Junior, saw the glint of his weapon brandished through the hot desert air and the light of the campfire.
The padre's horse bowed his head, and the weapon cracked so loud that it echoed for miles around. Wayne stopped, reached inward to pat at the stiff spot in his chest, then gasped in horror when he felt his warm blood spill all over his hand. The bottle bounced twice as it hit the ground, followed by the man himself. The rider's gloved hands, each wrapped in shivering rosaries, carried twin bronze-colored Remington-Beals six-shooters.
Jonorario, that dual-wielding priest, pronounced judgement amidst a barely audible chant of prayers and quotes from Scripture. Men dropped like flies all over the campsite, for the bullets always found their marks. When his pistols ran out, the padre swiftly dismounted from his horse and pulled out the pump-action M870. He closed the distance when the rustlers scattered to get to cover, never slowing his pace as he did not fear their unsteady hands when they shot out blindly into the haze that their drunkenness brought them.
"In due time, their foot shall slip. Their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them..."
A few more barks from the shotgun, and the whole band of rustlers lay dead upon the earth. When the deed was done, Jonorario snapped to as though he had been under a trance. He glanced around at the carnage and saw the work of his hands- and he prayed. Upon hearing the quiet weeping of the woman lying at his feet, the priest set aside his weapons and bent down to help her up.
The sister lifted her bruised and tear-stained face to her savior and saw the hideous, flayed visage of a living corpse. But she had come to know this monstrous face, it belonged to the kindest man in all of Four Seasons. Padre Jonorario Ramirez was a ghoul, yet still a man of faith despite his grueling skin condition. The wicked men have been punished, now the danger had passed thanks to him and his guns.
"Thank you, Father." The sister stifled her sobs and brushed away the dust from her clothes.
Jonorario broke the locks on the wagons and embraced every one of the children inside. He assured them that the worst was over, and that he was going to take them back to the mission. With the help of the sisters, he hitched up a team of horses from the rustlers' stock and drove the caravan back South to the old church. As for the rustlers, he left their corpses to the buzzards.
Molly Wes woke up after some time in the passenger car of Little John's train. They'd finally arrived at the big city in the canyon.
Overall, the trip to Salvación was uneventful, safe even. The sandsharks hadn't bothered them, even though her lover boy was so concerned about their attacks after having faced them near every week when he went out on the tracks. As far as Molly was concerned, it was her lucky day and no Wasteland critter was going to ruin it for her.
"Good golly!" The young woman exclaimed as she peered through the slits of the armored window. "It's bigger than I thought!"
Salvación started off tiny, on the peak of the largest canyon in Four Seasons. Over time, the foundations have been laid out in the shape of a large staircase, steep in placement to the unfamiliar eye but as a wonder of architectural engineering, it worked out just fine. Houses and villas were stacked into the rocky mountain face, clinging to it like great vines or clutches of moss. They stretched downward, on and on until they finally reached the bottom of the winding ravine. That part was Lowtown Salvación, home to the bottom-feeders that toiled in the mines and begged for the scraps of the elite.
Little John was going to have to make a pass through there, park the rig right into the station where Jackson-hired crews would watch over his stuff. Then, he and Molly were going to take the elevator up to Hightown. He helped Molly with her bags and led her through the streets of Lowtown, though keeping one hand free so he could reach for his gun should the lowlifes think of mugging them. He didn't have to, everyone knew who he was in Salvación. The Railsplitter, Little John of the Jackson clan. One had to be just as tough, with a whole lot of firepower, to tussle with the Jacksons.
Although, from his experience, knowing who he was didn't stop most people from trying their luck. Mr. Simon Crowe, for example.
Molly was bursting with joy and excitement. John hadn't seen her this happy before, and the sight of her having the time of her young life was enough to bury all of his worries. He liked to see her smile, and he liked the idea of his girl working in the most prestigious town in all of Four Seasons.
They didn't have the time to go through the whole city, so they took the lift up, in a passenger car not unlike the ones he drove on his train. Several armed guards, all under the employ of the Dolarhydes, watched over the thing from every stop in the city. Every lift was controlled by the clan, and although they charged little to nothing for its use, people still had to get their permission to ride them. It was the quickest and most cost-effective mode of transportation up and down the canyon city. Almost everyone, who didn't like the idea of walking all the steps and long streets of Salvación, just about rode on them.
The couple braved the long haul upwards, enjoying the heights and especially the breathtaking sights of the city's nightlife. When they emerged into Hightown, the scenery exploded in bright colors. Enjoying a limitless supply of energy and all manner of excesses, Hightown shone with the same light of the Old World cities. People, dressed in a mix of Victorian-era clothing and modern-age silks, strutted elegantly like preening peacocks from one street to another. It was like staring into a moving painting, and John felt like the place was all too surreal for his taste. People were playing make-believe, in a way. Hightown Salvación was a place of distraction, to sever the mind from the truth that the harsh life of the wastes brought.
And this was the town almost everyone in Four Seasons was aspiring to get to.
"John, darling..." Molly cooed as they stepped close to the gates of the Dolarhyde estate. "You've been so kind to bring me all the way here from Summertown."
"It's been my pleasure, Molly." John said, setting down the bags to ring the bell.
"Come'ere." The woman stood on her tippy-toes and kissed her man. She broke away with a pleased grin on her face, "Promise me you'll come and drop by."
"I promise." He nodded, "I'll come by in three days, and I'll be standing right here waiting for you at the gate. Don't keep me waiting."
Molly turned her head to see the manservant answer the summons, and she let him come to fetch her things. "I won't, sugar. Be seeing you now!"
The gates swung open with a loud groan, then swiveled shut behind the woman. John told himself she was going to be alright working under the Dolarhydes, he kept saying so to himself as he made the trip back to the station alone. Yet, he couldn't shake the inexplicable feeling that there was more to that estate than he could ever realize. He didn't think she was in danger, there wasn't enough to go on to think that.
It was just a faint pang, an ill feeling deep in his gut that he silenced as soon as it came.
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