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In the Texas Wasteland, when snow meets sand, they make for an incredible pair for freak weather.
Swept by winds blowing at 29-35 mph, a great blizzard blanketed the Permian Basin in a heavy shroud of stinging sand and ice. While the storm raged across Landfall, it did little to halt the Dominion's advance. Determined to put an end to the chapter's resistance, High Marshal Stern ordered Admiral Locke to press on through the blinding haze of the storm. The weather would not permit the use of any aircraft, leaving the Jörmungandr as the only Dominion asset in the sky. The operation would be carried out along with five other Permian Basin, while largely consisting of long ranges of flat terrain, was not without its share of jagged and jutting mountains. Without the Jörmungandr, it would've been difficult for the Dominion to send its troops through. With its powerful main weapon, the flagship made short work of the natural-made obstacles and carved a path through the range for all the ground units to drive through.
Tanks, IFV's, troop-transport trucks- all poured into the smoking gash in the mountains and headed straight for the Brotherhood headquarters. Arriving just shy of two kilometers of Landfall, they stopped. Stretching from one end of the flatlands to the uncharted border of the Basin was an unbroken rusted landscape of shanty towns and junk villages. It was an unexpected sight. When the Dominion rolled in, the soldiers thought they'd only find a bastion carved into a rocky face. Or trenches dug into the earth, with hundreds of Brotherhood guns pointed outward and ready to make for a fiery last stand.
Instead, the sight that greeted them amidst the heavy snowfall of the blizzard were civilian dwellings. They knew there would be a battle in there somewhere, and that the Brotherhood knew they were coming. Still, the Dominion pressed forward. The tanks rolled in first, followed by the IFV's and mechanized infantry, while the Jörmungandr loomed above them. This stretch of land was the only thing separating Landfall from the Dominion's forces, so the only way forward was to go through it.
On the ground, a tank commander peered through his periscope camera at every possible angle, preparing his crew in the event of an ambush. The turret of the Black Bear traversed back and forth as the gunner scanned for potential targets. The streets of the Basin were empty, its people driven to seek shelter from the storm. The lights were all out in every house, but everyone could tell that a hundred eyes were watching them from the windows and between the woodboards. Nothing rose up to greet the armored columns rolling into town. And yet, not a one could entirely shake off the feeling that the howl of the blizzard winds would be the only noise made that day.
"This place got 'ambush' written all over it." He muttered, unknowingly broadcasting his remark on the company comm channel.
Someone barked back, "Spearhead, don't go spazzing out on our comms, over."
"We're all thinking it, I just said it." The tank commander retorted, "Infantry, fan out and sweep. I don't want any tinman getting the drop on us through this storm, over."
"Copy, Spearhead." The rooks acknowledged his command and started busting their way into the houses and shacks like they normally would with clearing out a raider camp, or the ruins of an Old World city. Those in power-armor went in first, followed by those without. Sweeping slowed the column down considerably, but it improved their odds of survival by uprooting the concealed enemy combatants hiding within the dwellings. As they soon found out, the rooks met resistance from the locals who have been turned by the Brotherhood. One moment, a rook could be staring down at a clutch of terrified wasters huddled together in a far corner. The next, a hidden Brotherhood zealot would start charging from the rear and taking down a whole squad in a ball of fire.
"Ad Victoriam!"
The loud screech of a crazed zealot pierced through the comms of the squad sergeant, followed by a deafening blast as the zealot detonated the bomb vest strapped to his body. The same thing happened on a dozen different sweeps, all over the Basin, all at the same time. In the small span of a minute, the company comm channel was flooded with the alarmed responses of a dozen infantry squads.
"Ah hell, they're blowing themselves up!"
"Fuck! Fuck! Get the fuck off'a me-"
Another explosion, a house was blasted into a million pieces, and the people inside with it. The only survivors, saved by their armor, lumbered out with the flames still dancing on them. They ignored the fire, because pretty soon the storm put them out.
A furious sergeant roared, "Kill 'em! Kill the sons-of-bitches!" And the Dominion started to push back.
The Brotherhood zealots were taking their zealous acts up a notch that day, suiting up in bomb vests to ensure that even in death they could take some of the rooks down with them. They didn't even care anymore if they were killing the dwellers of the Basin, just as long as they could hit the Dominion where it hurts. Unwilling to take the chance with sifting through the people of the Basin and winding up getting their soldiers killed, the Dominion commanders ordered their men to engage anyone and anything on sight.
In this battle, collateral damage was unavoidable.
Spearhead took a high-velocity armor-piercing round to the ammo rack, and the tank commander was blown to bits along with his crew. The column didn't stop, they kept moving forward, as they were trained that it was the best strategy to staying alive. The shots were coming from a Shieldbearer mech, carefully concealed inside one of the houses. It sat like a man cross-legged, with a giant 8.8 cm gauss cannon aimed at the street where the column was currently traveling through. The haze of the storm obscured its hiding spot perfectly, and since the cannon produced neither smoke nor discharge with every shot, it was nearly impossible to pinpoint its location.
Up above, the Jörmungandr met its own challenge. The Brotherhood airships, hidden by the storm, revealed themselves by firing on the Dominion flagship. The lone great steel serpent versus the three iron giants; Righteous, Glory and Pride. Six streaks of red laser-fire, each the size of a tank, hammered into the prow of the Jörmungandr, shaving off some of its ablative armor and leaving seared glowing marks in its path. The Dominion flagship didn't have kinetic barriers like the three Brotherhood airships, but it more than made up for it with a ridiculous amount of armor. This, naturally, made it slower than the three airships. But with a fusion-lance that could level whole mountains, and five times more powerful than anything the airships could field, it didn't matter.
All the Jörmungandr needed was to get a clear shot at one of them, and it'll all be over.
Once the airships made their shots, they disappeared into the storm to maneuver around the Jörmungandr to get a better angle. The flagship's crew tracked their movements as best as they could, calculating the flight path of the Glory airship first to draw up a targeting solution. Once plotted, the gunnery teams primed up the main cannon and took aim. The prow opened, and the giant fusion-lance lit up as a big ball of superheated particles formed in the center of the barrel.
Aboard the Glory, the Brotherhood captain ordered the lancers to begin evasive maneuvers. The Jörmungandr's shot missed them by two meters, and the captain gave the order to return fire. With the way the Brotherhood oriented their weapons, the airship's guns could only fire in a single direction- which meant that they had to turn the whole ship in order to line up their shots. The gauss cannons thundered, denting the Dominion flagship's armor at the port main engine. This maneuver magnified the Glory's silhouette, making it more vulnerable for the Jörmungandr's next hit.
This time, the Jörmungandr didn't miss.
The fusion-lance had the power to crack a mountain in half, it was more than enough to overwhelm the Glory's kinetic barriers and tore a hole through its hull. Steel bent, distended like an overripe fruit ready to burst, then glowed red hot in the span of a second. The lance cut the Brotherhood airship in two, giving it a fiery sendoff as it exploded into a million pieces. Men, machines and ship dropped out of the sky like sputtering embers from a dying pyre. A truly glorious sight for the Dominion. One of horror for the Brotherhood.
On the ground, Admiral Locke's voice crackled through the comm channel, warning his men of the danger posed by the destroyed airship. "All ground units be advised, we just knocked one of theirs out of the sky. Watch for falling debris."
A brief cheer erupted from the Dominion ground troops, and they watched the ships duke it out for a minute before resuming their advance to Landfall. Brotherhood ambush teams kept slogging their approach by going for the tanks, but couldn't hold their positions. If they made a move for the columns, they exposed themselves to the rooks' fire. The best they could do was buy Landfall time to prepare for the coming siege.
Some more good news for the Dominion was the fact that the blizzard was starting to calm down, enough to allow a Blackwatch team to infiltrate the enemy's trench lines and soften up their defenses in advance of the main assault.
Kidman adjusted the sights on his mag-rifle, then checked the magazine, as was his habit. He was nervous, he had a good reason to be. West and Fade weren't going to take point on this op. He was going to lead the attack on the Brotherhood defenses, he and the aesir operatives with him would be the first Dominion boots to step on Landfall. The vertibird will take them as far as the first trench, then circle back to the flagship once they were successfully deployed. And when they were on the ground, they were free to engage all targets.
They started out as early as 3 in the morning, now it was already 9 o'clock in the evening. The operation had lasted about eighteen hours. A slog-fest of an op, thanks to the Brotherhood's stubborn resolve.
"Hey, new guy." Kidman called to the heavy-weapons trooper sitting at the back of the transporter. "You're on point. Show the tinmen what that thing can do."
Operative Mons Earhart, the trooper assigned to carry the MAAW, sat up upon hearing his CO. Earhart wasn't wearing a hard-suit, opting to equip himself with power-armor to better handle the weapon. "With pleasure, sir."
There were only six of them in the squad, but they were Blackwatch- it was more than enough.
"LZ sighted, ETA thirty seconds!" The pilot announced. Through the thick shroud of the storm, they could see the burning debris scattered all over the trenches. Pieces of the airship the size of small buildings knocked over watchtowers and gun emplacements, they flattened bunkers and buried entire squads in mounds of dirt and snow. The Brotherhood was working to get their people out of the mess, too busy to notice the faint silhouette of the Dominion vertibird hovering dangerously close to the trench line.
"Heh, looks like they've got their hands full." Kidman observed. "Lucky us."
The pilot set the bird down and yelled, "Good luck, give 'em hell!"
By the time the Brotherhood saw the vertibird take off, Blackwatch was already clearing up the first trench. Earhart hefted the fusion-lance and fired at the nearest Shieldbearer before its pilot could bring its big gun to bear. The laser discharge penetrated its shield and kept going, tearing through steel and pilot on its way out. The mech fell backwards, then took a couple of knights with it when it blew up. Kidman and his team moved up, cutting down the entrenched initiates still reeling from the fallout of the destroyed airship.
A weapons crew operating an Equalizer tank-destroyer saw the team coming, and one of them got to a nearby radio. "Alert! Alert! Enemy contact! Location grid Alpha 13-"
Kidman peered down his sights and put a round through the man's head, then emptied his clip into the rest of the crew before they could retaliate. Out of the corner of his eye came a blaring red indicator on his suit's HUD, highlighting a knight carrying a plasma caster. The noise of the fight was enough to exceed the incessant roar of the raging snowstorm, and it caught the knight's attention. One of the aesirs powered up his jetpack and launched himself into the air, planting his feet onto the knight's shoulders upon descent and knocking him to the ground. The operative steadied himself, then stomped his foot against the downed knight's head thrice, crushing the poor man's head into pulp.
"Good kills." Earhart remarked.
A Brotherhood initiate, a young woman no older than sixteen, crawled slowly out of the trench. Her legs have been shot all to pieces, the twisted remains of torn muscle and shattered bone trailed after her in the snow. Her face was a mess of tears, dirt and blood. Seeing that she was in agony and unwilling to pursue any other alternatives, Kidman hovered over the initiate and put her out of her misery with a few rounds to the back. The squad commander pointed to the distant silhouettes of hunkered mechs, which could pose a threat to their tanks when they finally rolled in. "There, those mechs are our priority. Let's give our boys a helping hand."
Like everyone else, Blackwatch used the storm to its advantage. They'd silence a few guns, kill the crew and the defending squads, then disappear into the haze. They were like a scalpel, systematically cutting off vital arteries beneath the thick skin of the Brotherhood in preparation for the sledgehammer. Their enemies weren't used to fighting shadows, and this late into the war, it would be impossible for them to adapt.
The fear was almost palpable but, to the credit of the Brotherhood, they didn't back down. When the Dominion finally broke through their ambush chokepoints, they were met with fierce resistance. With the few Shieldbearers and Equalizers they had, the ones that Blackwatch failed to silence in time, the Brotherhood concentrated fire on the tanks.
Like a wounded huntsman, desperate to gun down a charging sleuth of bears, one of the Shieldbearer pilots took careful aim at the silhouette of an approaching Black Bear and fired.
The driver of the tank turned the beast at a critical moment, a seemingly insignificant change in the angle, but enough to cause the round to skid across the uppermost hull. It opened a trench in the armor of the turret, and it ripped the commander's hatch open like the top of a tin can. Miraculously, nobody inside was harmed. Before the Shieldbearer could get another round in, Earhart's lance broke through its shields and set the cockpit on fire.
The tank commander stood up shakily in what was left of his hatch and took a long drag from his cigar. Sgt. Harry Reamer cleared his throat and commended his driver for the timely swerve, "Holy hell, that was close! Damn good driving, Carl!"
"It'd be much appreciated if someone didn't take his time with his shots!" Carl Wagner said, "What the hell are you waiting for, Gunther?!"
A Brotherhood machinegun started hosing down the Black Bear. The chassis rocked, and the turret echoed with the ringing clang of every impact. A rocket sped out of the trenches and hit the frontal glacis of the tank. The explosion set all ears ringing, but the steel walls held, and the tank kept on going. More Black Bears from the surviving column arrived, following Reamer's lead into the breach. They provided cover for the rooks, who stormed the trenches once they cleared the shanty towns. Cannons lobbed HE shells into gun emplacements, further weakening the Brotherhood's grip on the trench lines. And soon, when the rooks closed the distance, the fight turned into a brawl.
Two waves crashing into one another, both with the force and determination of a giant tsunami. Soldiers fired point-blank into one another, forgoing range for melee once ammunition was spent. Bayonets, power-fists, ripper-saws, super-sledges and knives filled the gaps between the two factions. Those in power-armor grappled and shoved each other to the ground.
Then, the Dominion flame-troopers arrived. Screams of rage, pain and fear filled the air as flamers brought the brawl to a halt. Seeing that they were losing the battle, half the Brotherhood defenders got out of their trenches and beat a hasty retreat to Landfall. The other half just surrendered.
Suddenly, up above, a thunderous crash momentarily put the ground assault to a standstill. The Brotherhood airship Pride, having sustained heavy damage from the Jörmungandr's relentless onslaught, performed a tactical collision to give its sister-ship time to withdraw from the air battle. Surprisingly, the maneuver did more damage to the Dominion flagship than all their guns combined. The Jörmungandr reeled from the crash, its helmsmen steering it away to roll from impact to reduce its strain on the hull.
The Brotherhood airship, however, literally came apart from the force of the impact. Its hull buckled like the bristling hairs on a frightened cat's back, and fires sprung out of the gashes running from stem to stern. Then the core itself detonated, throttling the Jörmungandr and pushing it away, leaving a giant double mushroom cloud in its wake. Fortunately, the blast was high enough to leave the ground troops relatively unharmed. It didn't hold the same devastating force of a full fledged nuclear warhead, but the ensuing fallout would definitely pose a threat in the immediate area for some time.
Out of the three airships, only the Righteous remained, which successfully escaped the Basin.
The surviving Brotherhood defenders that fled into Landfall closed the great vault doors behind them, sealing the Texan Chapter within the mountain fortress.
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