Part 5: Hoover Dam

March, 2282. The Mojave wasteland stood on its toes as the inevitable dawned closer and closer. Just over two years ago, the unstoppable force met the immovable object. Now it was time for a second round, a second attempt to take Hoover Dam. But this time, things would be different: this time there would be no holding back. The battle would be more than just the clash between East and West, for there would be a spanner thrown into the works. For some this would be the beginning of a new era. For the rest, it would be the beginning of the end.

"The Second Battle of Hoover Dam was probably cemented into the mind of every Legionary from the moment they were first pushed back over the Colorado. For us, it was the moment we realised we couldn't finish them off. You have to remember that the Legion took pride in the belief that they were the strongest, so to take retribution for what it must have seemed like the mother of all insults was a matter of principle. It was bound to happen. The only question was when."

-Dennis Crocker

Former NCR Ambassador to New Vegas

For High Command that was a question they did not intend to find out. During his time as General of the Mojave region, Lee Oliver has earned himself the title of 'General Wait-And-See', a not so subtle jab at his seemingly indecisive nature. Many average troopers believed that if left to his own devices, Lee Oliver would have ensured NCR defeat, but in reality, he and his advisors were planning to go on the offensive.

"There was a deadline of sorts, one that I suspect even High Command didn't quite know for sure. But the thought was that as soon as the Mojave region was 'pacified', or as close to that definition as you could get, we would take the fight to the Legion. For a time, the hope was for the Courier to do that for us and in a way he did. He managed to remove several of Caesar's potential allies in the region and did so peacefully, I might add. But by the time we considered ourselves ready, the situation had obviously changed. Despite this, Oliver and Moore still pushed for the offensive because they believed that for the moment, the Courier wouldn't dare to suddenly attack us and that as long as the factions of the Mojave were following him, they would not be fighting for the Legion."

-Dennis Crocker

Up until this point, the NCR was almost entirely on the defensive; any attempts at an major offensive on the east side of the river would have required resources and manpower unlike any that have ever been gathered. Around this time, Legion activity, mostly due to the Courier's influence, had been completely restricted to these narrow regions; the previously captured outposts, namely Nelson and Cottonwood Cove, had all but been obliterated and were, nominally at least, back in NCR hands. However two major sites still remained on the east side of the river: despite the carnage the Courier and his followers inflicted during Caesar's assassination, Fortification Hill remained a Legion stronghold; the NCR had neither the capacity nor the intention of holding it against inevitable Legion counter attack. The second site, directly East of Hoover Dam itself, was the camp of Legate Lanius, now supreme commander of Legion forces in the Mojave. Some nicknamed this location 'Hell's Gate'.

"There were various plans drawn up, many of them conflicting, of how we should approach this. Now it is very understandable that given the enormity of the situation that some of these plans would inevitably have been the result of blue sky thinking regardless of what we could actually achieve. But what worried me was that this seemed to be the case for nearly all of the plans given out. One particular draft had the idea of carpet bombing the Fort with vertibirds, thereby creating a diversion while we assault Hell's Gate. Now that would have been an excellent idea except even if we gathered up every single vertibird across the entire NCR in one place, we still wouldn't have had anywhere near the number required to make something like this convincing. And even then we didn't have enough fuel for sustained bombing because if we did, we would've called in the mechanised division instead. And that was one of the less insane plans I saw that particular day."

-Ranger Grant

"No matter how you looked at it, we were the more vulnerable side. Apart from Forlorn Hope, which was for the most part the front line, we had very few camps anywhere near the river. We had Ranger Camps, that much was true, but they were really observation posts than anything else. If the Legion wanted to, they could've easily crossed the river through Cottonwood Cove and counterattacked on the western side of the river. And this was something they did take advantage of in the end."

-Corporal Lens

While Lee Oliver and his staff struggled to put together a comprehensible plan of attack, Lanius had already finalised his own. As one of Caesar's most feared generals, he knew the man's doctrine more than anyone but he also knew Caesar's weaknesses. Having thoroughly studied the attack patterns of the Malpais Legate during the First Battle of Hoover Dam, he quickly recognised that a conventional strike force using standard formations would be far too costly. After all, taking the dam would be pointless if they could not hold it. While some members of the Legion would have considered it dishonourable or cowardly, Lanius was not above using deception and diversions. He had long ago pointed out the dam's vulnerability to a flanking manoeuvre: while the path on top of the great wall is not unlike the narrow corridor of Thermopylae, where superior numbers meant nothing, such advantage could potentially be turned into a death trap for the defenders if the Legion could attack it from two directions simultaneously. Manipulation of where the NCR military is focused would be key.

"The problem with Lee Oliver was that he reacted to problems with an almost reflexive manner. So if the Legion attacked a certain point of the frontline, it doesn't have to be the dam, he would immediately concentrate as much of his forces as possible on that particular point, regardless whether or not this would leave his flank exposed. Now his supporters would have said this was the best way of quickly stopping an invasion; by beating it back before it gains momentum. But this kind of thinking only works if the opposition is a concentrated but small force. That was not what we were facing."

-General Hsu

In his final draft, Lanius proposed the attack of multiple key targets immediately west of the Colorado River, both to cause confusion to the enemy as well as pining down potential reinforcements. These targets were Camp Forlorn Hope, Camp Golf and the civilian town of Novac. Nearby Ranger Camps would also be targeted but only to keep them occupied. All of these targets were made to compensate for the detailed distractions outlined in Caesar's original plan, nearly all of which were now sabotaged by the Courier. There would be no artillery support from the Boomers to counteract those already present on the dam. There would be no terrorist bombing within the Strip to keep the Securitrons and NCR military police busy. But worst of all, there would be no additional support from factions such as the Great Khans. Lanius knew that if this strike does not succeed, it would end the Legion's campaign in the Mojave for good.

"You know they always say if you come to Vegas, you better be prepared to gamble whether you wanted to or not. I think both the NCR and the Legion did some of that just by trying to take this place, either by force or diplomacy. But for good old Lanius, this battle was the biggest gamble of them all."

-Swank

On the 12th of March, at approximately 3 am, Lanius placed his bet. The first positions west of the river to come under fire were Ranger Stations Alpha and Echo. Their assailants were elite assassins disguised as escaped slaves, having already been placed undercover almost a week earlier. Previous experiences at Ranger Station Charlie have shown that these small outposts were far from impenetrable, and the distance between each station meant that reinforcements would be unlikely. Though warnings from both stations were successfully transmitted during the ensuing battle to High Command, the next set of attacks gave them little time to react. Less than an hour after station Echo went silent, the recently reoccupied Nelson came under attack. With a horrific shortage of supplies and men, it seemed as if the already battered settlement would fall for a second time. Forlorn Hope too became pinned down by the 3rd, 6th, 10th, 11th and 18th Maniples, a total of 600 men under command of Gaius Magnus, a legendary Centurion of the Legion having been transferred from the recently conquered region of Dry Wells. They outnumbered NCR forces stationed at Forlorn Hope 3:1.

"You see the genius of Lanius' plan, or rather Caesar's plan, was that regardless how Oliver would react, the Legion would still come out on top. On the one hand High Command could have diverted troops to reinforce the front lines, but virtually all the available outposts were pinned down. The only place he could've sent troops from would have been Hoover Dam, but that would clearly be falling into the diversion trap. But on the other hand, if Oliver refused to fall for this trick and kept the Dam secured, then should any part of this frontline fall, even if it was simply one of the Ranger Stations, then the Legion would immediately be able to flank our entire position. It really was a win-win scenario for them."

-Ranger Grant

Even the troops stationed at McCarran had their hands tied. As part of the Legion strategy, various radio frequencies were pre-emptively hijacked in order to broadcast Legion propaganda at a moment's notice. Formally under the command of Vulpes Inculta, the Frumentarii, Caesar's elite infiltrators, made deliberate news broadcasts to every corner of the Mojave in a bid to lower enemy morale and trigger any form of anti-NCR uprising.

"I personally had been requesting a transfer to Hoover Dam for a few weeks before hand. I have to say such a thought would not have even crossed my mind a year ago because of the problems we've had with the Fiends. Of course, the Courier put an end to all of that, so you can imagine my surprise when Dhatri, the Major, burst into my office and told me the Fiends were attacking the camp."

-Colonel Hsu

With virtually no organised plan or cohesive leadership, the Fiend's insurgency was short lived. Of those who were not killed or captured, none would ever have the strength to ever again form a group of any credible threat. But it still cost the NCR vital time and manpower, which was all that Lanius wanted.

"Lanius, I believe, studied the failings of his predecessor quite thoroughly. He was not above using deception and petty tricks, far from it. In fact if none of us knew any better, I would have assumed that the one leading the attack was someone else altogether; perhaps someone from the Frumentarii."

-Dennis Crocker

Faced with an inevitable full assault on the Dam itself, Lee Oliver's advisors urged him to do exactly the opposite of what he had in mind: absolutely nothing. If the Dam could not withstand the oncoming assault, then whether or not forward camps such as Forlorn hope can repel the attacks would become irrelevant. For now, they would be on their own.

"It was a hard decision, make no mistake. Echo, we suspected, would be completely destroyed within an hour. We assumed that Cottonwood Cove was already retaken due to the sheer size of the attacking force coming at Nelson and Forlorn Hope; there was no way they could've gotten ashore anywhere else. And we knew that sending reinforcements from McCarran would take far longer time than they actually had plus even at this late stage we still had to be weary of the locals. But at the end of the day, one had to look at the larger picture, and in a way we were placing a bet at a very high stakes game: we knew that Lanius could not possibly have enough men to reasonably expect to take all of these positions simultaneously. Moore was certain that the main attack would still be focused on Hoover Dam and that all of these skirmishes elsewhere were simply distractions. So it really became a test of attrition: which would last longer, our troops defending these key outposts, or Lanius' patience."

-Ranger Grant

"You often get people asking where you were on the day so and so happened. Well I can safely say that most of us were sleeping, or rather trying to sleep when the first shots were fired. I was personally doing a night shift patrol when all hell broke loose; nobody knew what was going on. Those of us on patrol were issued radios, which were still considered a valuable piece of equipment at the time, but in a real emergency like that they were next to useless. Everyone was panicking, you didn't know where the hostiles were in relation to you, who was issuing the orders or even what the orders were. It was absolute chaos and eventually I just turned the damn thing off. It was more of a distraction than a tool at that stage."

-Former Private Dozer

"Around 20 minutes into the attack, some of the turbines stopped. Now I was stationed there for a couple months by that time and the noise those generators made were pretty damn loud but most of us got used to it. We only noticed it when it stopped. And sure enough a couple of minutes later, my squad got called in and we were sent to see what just happened. Now those turbines were pretty deep into the facility; only the grease monkeys ever went down there and those guys were all pissing themselves in the rec room by that point. And sure enough, within seconds of us entering that room, the Legionaries poured out of the damn thing. They were literally crawling through goddamn pipes just to get inside. At that point I remember thinking: these guys are like radroaches, you can do whatever you want and they will find a way in every bloody time."

-Former Lt Logan

A mere hour into the assault and the Legion has gained a foothold on both the East end of the Dam and the lower levels of its interior. Nobody knew how the turbines were compromised but the possibility of Legion infiltration possibly even months ahead of the attack was not out of the question. Though Lanius's original plan of attacking the dam from both the East and the West had stalled, his overall goal of squeezing NCR forces into a pincer simply changed into a slightly different dimension. With the lower levels cut off, Lee Oliver faced growing inevitability that he would have to make a tactical retreat.

"We had the high ground, thank God for that, so I and every other sniper had a pretty decent view of the entire battlefield. And boy it was a mess. Now you could usually tell how well the battle is going by looking at how much corpses wearing crimson there are relative to the number corpses in tanned khaki. But let me tell you, everything was crimson that day. I didn't know if it was the blood or the endless flow of Legion soldiers but those guys were coming quicker than we could put them down."

-Sterling

Former 1st NCR Recon Sniper

"I would say most of the killing probably came from the small substations because they only had a single connection to the rest of the dam, which was a small bridge. That was the exit as well so when that extent of the dam got overrun, it was game over for any poor bastards who got trapped there. I remember seeing some of the guys who literally had to fight hand to hand against men armed with machetes and thermic lances and they got absolutely shredded. And you know… when you see a man getting his limbs cut off one by one and left to bleed out, you have to ask yourself: is anything worth all of this?"

-Major Sanders

"A lot of troopers, when they see the black armour, think that the battle is won. They think whoever is behind that mask must be the hand of God or something. But the reality is: Veteran Rangers are people… we're not unstoppable and we're certainly not indestructible. If you cut us, we would bleed. And if you push us past our limit, we would break. It really is as simple as that. And when that happens, the only thing that black armour is good for is to act as a tight fitting casket. I saw good men and women getting thrown into hell that day and it occurred to me that not all of them charged ahead so recklessly because they were fearless. Rather some, I'm certain, were waiting for the sweet embrace of death."

-Carl Dixon

Former Veteran Ranger

"The explosions from topside were just pretty much constant by this stage, I remember wondering if I'll ever be able to hear anything else again. But right at that moment, there was a very brief pause of less than a minute. I was taking cover in the visitor's centre at the time and I noticed that everyone was peering out of the windows. I tried to get up and see what was happening but by the time I got to my feet, the firing resumed. But on top of that was this distinct noise of a stampede. And suddenly everyone was cheering; they were absolutely exuberant. Obviously I didn't know what the hell was going on, so I asked the nearest trooper I could see. He just replied: 'The Calvary is here'."

-Private Lucy Connor

Rushing over the hills from Boulder City was a militia of less than 200 men and women. They came from all backgrounds, representing very different groups and ideologies with only one thing in common: they wore the '21 of Spades'. And here, on this blood soaked monument of the old world, they brought forth a message for the entire Mojave.

The Reckoning has begun…