"Sir!"
Colonel Moore jogged into the office of General Oliver, who was, as usual, surrounded by his armored goons. Distant gunfire and the thumping of explosions could be heard.
"They've breached the dam! Hundreds of them!"
"I knew they would get inside. There are defensive checkpoints in each room. Let them batter themselves against us," said the General, with an unnerving calmness.
"General, they've found a way through the turbine rooms on the lower levels! Did you prepare defensive lines there?"
Oliver briefly gave a terse look.
"Fuck! You didn't tell me there was a way there from the outside! You've been here for months, Colonel!"
"They probably blasted it open from further down!" She looked back out the doorway, as if expecting enemies to burst in. "What do you want us to do?"
"Send two reserve companies down to the turbine rooms immediately! Tell them to move quickly!"
The radio produced a burst of static, before quieting and revealing panicked voices and sporadic gunfire.
"This is Major Leonard, at Power Plant 2. They're coming out of the basement! They outnumber us at least 3 to 1. Please send reinforcements immediately. I repeat, there are too many of them. We can't hold them." The voices were drowned out by the gunfire and explosions.
"I can't believe this," he said, holding his head.
"We're going to need to push them back out! The further they get, the harder it will be!" shouted the Colonel.
"I know that! Fuck!" He stood up, and picked up his .44 revolver. "We're going to do this ourselves. Rangers!"
Four black-armored men who stood around the General silently listened.
"We're going down there right now. Move out!" He turned to Moore. "You too, Cass. It's now or never."
Colonel Moore nodded, and followed him and his bodyguard out of the office, through the rusty metal tunnels of the dam, toward the sounds of death.
Lucius's plan to take the Dam divided the Legion into a larger wave consisting of 6 recently recruited, green cohorts, each with a core of unproven officers, and a smaller wave of 4 veteran cohorts, with most of its soldiers and officers experienced from the fighting in the east. The second wave still waited on and around Fortification Hill.
Ideally, a large amount of the first wave would die, but would weaken the NCR defenses and exhaust their ammunition. Once they were stuck in, and the NCR forces occupied, the veteran wave would advance and finish them off. The survivors of the first wave would be promoted. If something unexpected happened and drove off or destroyed the first wave, the entire army wouldn't be routed in mass confusion and panic, as it was those years ago.
A lot of planning had gone into this. Lucius even accounted for the fact that the NCR had expected an early-morning attack, and had most of its Dam garrison awake at 4:00 am, and were probably tiring.
All the while, two other cohorts attacked Forlorn Hope and Golf, and two more moved further to penetrate behind NCR lines.
He and several high-ranking Frumentarii observed the battle from the Hill, through binoculars. A trickle of scouts was moving to and from the Dam to give specific reports.
"It looks as though the first wave is prevailing," he said to Vulpes Inculta. "We may have won the day already."
"We should stay here a little while longer, just in case," said the other man.
"I don't see any of our units retreating. I think we may have overestimated our foes. I'll wait a few more minutes at the very most."
"We want the fresh recruits to gain their battle honors."
"If we don't send the veterans in soon, they won't receive any, and they'll be disgruntled."
Lucius went back to his tent, to where four other Praetorian guards were, and poured himself a glass of cold honeyed water. It was unseasonably warm out, even for the Mojave region. He offered some of the water to the guards-something he generally wouldn't do. They politely declined.
He heard the blasts of the Legion's two howitzers firing on the dam, attempting to destroy the First Recon snipers that had likely taken residents on the high towers overlooking the Dam.
Then he heard a different noise. It sounded like the screeching of metal.
"What is that?" he asked to the Praetorians. They were silent, as usual.
"Where is it coming from?" he asked more loudly.
"I think it's coming from outside," said one of them.
He wished that they were useful for something other than fighting. As he took another drought of honeyed water, the screeching sound continued. He hadn't heard a noise like that since that profligate Courier visited a few weeks ago to destroy whatever lay under Fortification Hill. The screeching sound was followed by a series of long, slow thumping noises.
Maybe the Courier hadn't detonated all of his explosives, and some of them were still going off?
He began to hear shouting and gunfire from closer, within the camp. What the hell was going on? He stood up immediately, motioning for the Praetorians to follow him, and ran out of the tent.
He saw Legionaries running off to the right. He hurried to follow them around the command tent. Off in the distance, a huge plume of smoke had risen up into the air, over where the power station was. Blinding needles of light and fiery projectiles shot in every direction, burning holes and blasting craters into the dirt.
Lucius and the Praetorians ducked down. As maniples of Legionaries ran ahead of them, many small groups began fleeing back in terror, some of them missing limbs, and many of them on fire. Lucius looked around and spotted Vulpes Inculta squatting a short distance away. He ran toward him.
"What in the name of Mars is this?" he shouted over the noise.
"I have no idea. We haven't spotted any Rangers in or near the camp in weeks. They must have sappers."
"It was the fucking Courier. I know it! That piece of shit had something to do with this. He was working with the NCR all along!"
"They appear to be very heavily armed!" shouted the Frumentarii leader. "We've never seen even their heavy shock troops use laser weapons like these! Do you want me to move the veteran cohorts back here to fight them?"
"Yes! Yes! Do so immediately, or we risk being trapped between the Dam and the camp!"
Vulpes ran off to deliver the orders to the rest of the Legion. Lucius cursed silently to himself. He knew that something would go wrong. Worse, HE was going to suffer for it instead of Caesar's brainless Monster of the East.
As he steadied his breath, he looked back down in the direction of the power station. About fifty Legionaries and Praetorians were entangled with something amidst the smoke and dust. He heard the sounds of the Praetorian's shotgun-fists and the clatter of assorted Legion firearms, but the sounds of screaming prevailed, even over the louder and less familiar weaponry of the enemy. In about 12 seconds, the Legion troops were dead or silent.
Through the dust and the fading sunlight, Lucius saw a large number of bright lights moving smoothly through the camp, in a wide, sweeping motion, toward him and his Praetorian bodyguards. As they got closer, he got a better view of them. They were bulkier than even Oliver's heavy infantry, their huge squared shoulders about twice as wide as a man. They were also taller, and their arms were much longer, hanging nearly to the ground. Where their hands should have been, huge claws were, and instead of legs, they rolled along on a single, large, rubber wheel. They had no heads, and in their torsos, there were bright flickering images.
He and his bodyguards ducked back behind a low hill as the machines drew closer. Off in the distance, on the other side of the camp, Lucius heard the rumble of nearly two thousand Legion soldiers and Centurions, battle-hardened troops from many hard-fought campaigns, moving in to meet the threat.