East of Grayling, a group of mercenaries in the employ of Paramount made a temporary camp in the ruins of On-the-Bay. For four days and three nights, they camped there, clearing the area of ants, yao guai, and other dangers. This was a routine run that the group had done many times in the past, without any concern for the town's missing residents or other local elements. Their job wasn't to worry about the people, just to keep the local monsters at bay.
On the fourth night, the camp was attacked, something rising out of the bay and dragging them off into the silent, tenebrous water. Before the last of the men was killed, an emergency transmitter was activated, sending a message off into the wastes, ending at a radio tower north of Tawas. These towers were few and far in-between, serving as public radio and little else, and required the operators to make a manual delivery of the message to the nearest tower. As a result, it took nearly two weeks for the message to reach Tower 32 in Sterling, over one hundred miles away.
The message was decoded, logged into Paramount Control Archive Tower 2 in Detroit, and forwarded onto General Mercado. The general bounced it back to Control with a note. A dispatch operator archived the response, and sent a message out to Portage for delivery to Sigma when they returned from their mission in Green Bay. HARD Protocol had been enacted: Hazard Response Division Sigma was ordered to Thunder Bay.
Sigma, upon return to Portage, received the message with aplomb and accepted. Sigma's run along the shore of Lake Michigan took them almost one thousand miles to complete, from Portage to Ellison Bay. They were uniquely suited to deal with water monsters, and the transmitted report indicated that a new type of creature had taken up residence.
Sigma Leader, personal designation Bradley, read the information he was presented with, and adjusted the modus operandi for the mission. It was unheard of for a new water hazard to arise in middle Michigan, or for unknown creatures to appear anywhere above the Portage barrier line. Paramount's standing army of mercenary exterminators kept the landmass northwest of Detroit clear.
"Amphibious operation," he told Sigma, after beginning the trek northeast.
"Christ Almighty," Angus said. This was his usual response to all orders.
Mayer chuckled, and the sound echoed through the Paramount issue T-51b power helmet he wore. "You coward."
Angus grabbed the tall man's helmet with thickly gloved fingers and pulled him down to his height. "Say that to my face, you gangly bastard!" he growled.
Wade, Sigma's official rookie, watched the men scuffle. "We'll have to go through Camp Custer," he told Bradley. He tapped the chestplate of his power armor. "Colonel Bakke should have the amphibious equipment we need."
Bradley nodded at the young man and activated the prompt on his Pip-Boy, built directly into the power armor. Specialized equipment in the goldenrod-colored EK3 display allowed for an interactive prompt to be projected above the screen of the Pip-Boy. Wade knew this system inside and out, and had put together many of the displays himself, before joining Sigma. Bradley connected to a tower operator at Camp Custer, speaking through the screen. A crackling, garbled answer came back. It wasn't perfect, but it made long-range communication much easier than the earlier EK1 display.
Angus pushed Mayer away from him, drew his Gauss rifle from across his back, and aimed it to the north. "12-ball," he said, crouching.
Sigma was immediately on high alert, Bradley and Wade pulling their laser pistols and Mayer his gatling laser to meet the threat. Bradley's prompt crackled, and he shut it off with a quick flick of his wrist. A silent moment passed as Angus tracked the movement across the dirt, through the twisting trees and scrub in the distance. Wade felt more comfortable being stuck with the shorter range of the pistol when Bradley was also using one.
Angus tracked the target for another half of a minute before lowering his rifle. "Wade can have this one," he joked. Wade rolled his eyes. This meant the target was friendly, made no threat, or was otherwise easily dealt with.
Bradley kept his weapon aimed to the 12-ball position, due north. "There should not be anything on this side of the barriers, except us." He took a step forward.
Angus brought the rifle back up and sighted in the target again. "Corner pocket," he reported. "Paramount markings..." he swore. "It's the Fish."
Captain Herring, wheezing and rattling, caught up to Sigma and had to be allowed two minutes to get his wind back. Some people, thought Wade, were not made to wear power armor. Long-standing jokes about his name aside, Herring was just like a fish when he ran. He often forgot to latch his helmet properly, which would fly off into the wasteland to be retrieved at a later time, and when arrived, he would gulp and gasp like a fish out of water.
"Bradley!" he said, saluting the three-fingered chest salute of Paramount forces.
Bradley did not like Captain Herring. "Talk fast, Herring," he said.
"Barrier's down between the pylons here," he said, swallowing air. "Something big knocked one down."
"So call it in."
"Can't!" Herring gulped. "Prompts are all static."
Bradley turned his own on, saw that it was working, and looked up at Herring. "Call it in from this location," he said. "I'm going to report this, Herring. Sigma is not Portage's personal rescue team, no matter how often we pass through." He lowered his pistol and ordered Sigma to move on.
Once they were away from the Fish, Bradley turned to the team. "Angus," he said.
"Sir," Angus replied.
"You know the codes. Don't single out Wade because he's the rookie. When a target is friendly, Sigma doesn't lower weapons. Why?"
Angus sighed, lowered his head like a turtle into his power armor, and said, "Dead ball, sir."
Mayer laughed, echoing. "Getting too old, Angus? You forgetting stuff?"
Wade watched the short man skirmish with the taller Mayer. Angus won, just like every time. The two men were best friends, and Wade wasn't sure how it worked, but they complimented one another in combat.
"What is dead ball, Wade?" Bradley asked him, pulling him roughly out of the thought.
"All opposition, even friendly, bounces off, sir!" he called. Bradley nodded.
Sigma approached Camp Custer, the power distribution center for the resonance barriers that isolated middle to lower Michigan and Detroit from the rest of the wastes. The barrier only covered the lower part of Michigan, according to Bradley, but the lakes were a good enough deterrent to keep most trouble out of the middle.
Power turbines at Camp Custer, generating electricity to keep the resonance barriers powered, ran on nuclear-fueled steam. Each pylon in the chain was connected to the main conveyance in Camp Custer, providing constant, stable power, though on occasion a pylon would be taken down by an adventurous yao guai or accidental munitions discharge. Wade recalled that Detroit had portable pylons, but the ones separating Michigan from the world were anchored and required a dedicated power source.
He followed Angus, as directed by Bradley. Bradley would report to Colonel Bakke and orders would come down via radio signal and Pip-Boy prompts to the quartermaster, who would distribute equipment to the men. Mayer would receive food rations and other supplies, elsewhere.
Angus lead him through the "labs". Every Paramount facility had a "lab" to destroy unwanted waste. The underground bunkers had been fitted with incinerators, placed directly on a straight route to the weapons and armor supplies. An intruder attempting to get into any camp's armaments would be dealt with, swiftly. Angus told Wade that they were called "labs" because they tended to explode, when improperly maintained, much like the labs that stupid locals used to make drugs.
Wade jumped at the odd popping noises that the incinerators made, and Angus laughed at him. He didn't like walking through the "labs", mostly because the air made his nose bleed and the pollutants released by burning waste made his chest hurt. He checked the latch on his helmet, and made sure it was on properly.
Bradley met back up with the three men at the flag in the middle of the camp, a red and blue banner emblazoned with crossed swords. Wade stared up at the flag waving in the wind, placed directly below the Paramount flag of golden yellow and white across the width, with a theta symbol in the middle,
"Paramount has kept this part of Michigan safe for over fifty years," Bradley said. "We are the sum total of that experience. What are we?"
"Paramount Force Sigma!" the three men sounded.
Bradley nodded, somberly. "Let's break for play, Sigma."