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It had been weeks since Little John last saw Molly, that night when she entered the gates to paradise town.
Far too long for a man like him to wait and not go crazy with worry. He tried everything in his power to find answers, even going as far as to threaten the tenuous peace between the clans by going after the Dolarhydes. With every attempt, he came back empty-handed and his disposition worsened with every passing day. But despite his obsession, John remained firmly bound to his duty to his family. He drove the jet-train, brought supplies and passengers through the trackless deserts and the four towns. In moments where he was idle, particularly on late nights, he drank heavily and allowed the murderous thoughts to cloud his mind.
He heard rumors, same as anyone in Four Seasons, of the things the aristocracy in Salvación did to people. Rumors about the disappearances, the feasts that came after- the bones that kept piling up in the silt mass graves beneath the dead rivers of the canyon city. Any fool could put two and two together, figure out the evil things that lurked beneath the gold. All of it made his blood boil. Nevertheless, he held on to the hope that somehow Molly was still alive.
The way a man loves, it's the kind that clings even if there's nothing to cling to.
One day, as John was driving the rig on a particularly hot day, Snowball had had enough of his foul mood and tried to get him to play. It was a cute gesture from the dog, he hated to see his master so lost in that dark haze. While John was busy with the controls, Snowball shuffled across the floor to stick his nose into an old roughspun sack wedged between some toolboxes. When he drew back, he brought an old and heavily-scarred baseball firmly clutched between his teeth. The dog walked over to John and whined to get his attention.
John looked down and peered through the thick glass of his protective goggles. Seeing Snowball so eager to play at that moment lifted his spirits for a brief fleeting moment. He patted the dog on the head, "Sorry boy. Just not in the mood right now. You go on ahead without me."
Frustrated, Snowball emitted a snort and dropped the ball. That day, John was transporting something that Crowes were paying handsomely to be delivered to Salvación, and a little extra for some help getting it into the Dolarhyde manor. This one was just an object in a box, and required all due discretion. He took the job, thinking it was going to be the perfect opportunity to get inside the clan home. Throughout the trip, John was turning the plan over and over in his head, leaving little room for anything else.
Poor Snowball would have to wait his turn.
"Lil' John!" A voice struggled to be heard above the powerful whine of the turbines. Not long after, a Jackson hireling came knocking at the armored door. "Open up! We've got something shadowin' us, port side!"
John hit a switch to set the engine on auto, then quickly followed the man out across the walkways to have a look. As soon as he stepped out the door, the winds blew down so hard on him that he had to grasp the railings to keep himself from falling off. The rig was going at around 55 km/h, and even at that speed somehow the wasteland managed to spit up something that could keep up with the train. It was like looking out at sea on a sailing ship, except that in place of water there was only miles and miles of dirt and sand. Several dust clouds were trailing in after the rig, brought up by massive tunneling creatures swiftly worming their way through the earth.
"Sandsharks!" The hireling yelled when they both saw the first scaly spires pop out of the ground.
"I know!" John barked back, "Tell the boys to get their weapons ready, we're 'bout to get boarded!"
Drawn from the deepest recesses of the wilderness by the unnatural vibrations in the ground made by the jet-train's repulsors, the sandsharks finally showed up in the largest attack ever witnessed in Four Seasons. They swam through the earth with eel-like grace, closing in swiftly till they were only five meters away from the caboose. The crew manned the large .50 cals mounted on the rear gun tower and fired at the pursuing monsters, while John pushed the engine as fast as it could go without blowing up on them.
It was the only way any of them got through the attacks alive, and so far it seemed to be working just fine.
"John! Dead ahead!" Someone cried out in the midst of the battle. "There's something coming!"
There was a thunderous roar as something massive exploded out of the ground ahead of the rig. A geyser of sand, rock and torn grass shot up into the sky, John's eyes widened with a mixture of fear and surprise. The thing that tore its way through the earth was ten times the size of any sandshark he'd seen, almost forty feet long from head to tail. Its body was covered in armored jutting scales, and a bone overgrowth stretched across its head made it look like a hammerhead. When it opened its mouth, John saw two maws, one snugly fitted inside the other, each lined with powerful iron-crunching teeth.
It was a Sandshark Queen.
"All hands, brace!" John screamed into the microphone fixed into the operator's cockpit, then pulled on a few levers to swerve out of the Queen's way.
The dragon would not relent, and she dove down after the rig. Her powerful jaws missed the locomotive by a meter, but the rest of her body knocked the jet-train off-course as she burrowed into the earth. Men screamed as they were thrown overboard, and John struggled to keep the rig from overturning completely. The rig smashed against a sand hill and launched up into the air, before coming to rest against an uncut canyon rock sitting in the middle of a muddy basin.
Seeing their quarry finally brought down, the sandshark herd popped out of the ground and approached the helpless jet-train.
The hireling that first warned Little John of the impending battle survived long enough to crawl up to his knees and throw a fleeting glance at the horde of monsters coming his way. The young man, already bloodied from the crash, unholstered his six-shooter and put up a desperate fight. Two sandsharks shrugged off the rounds he let fly, and they didn't even stop to eat him. They simply ran up to the guy, bit off his shooting hand and snapped his neck with a brutal twist of the jaws. Afterwards, they joined the rest of the herd to swarm the wrecked rig. Pretty soon, there was nothing left of John's crew.
The man himself came to a few minutes later, pinned by several layers of broken steel and sand. He hurt all over, and the temptation to stay put grew stronger the more he tried to move. Cursing and huffing, John heaved and pulled himself out of the locomotive which had fallen over to its side against the rocks. The man whipped out his shotgun as soon as he got half his body out the door. The hot sun beat down on his head, blinding him momentarily to the horrifying scene surrounding the rig. The crash opened up a trench in the earth, all the way across the mud of the basin. And through that trench, the first dozen sandsharks were sprinting at full throttle at him. They were yipping like a pack of coyotes, mouths hanging open to let their long tongues dangle like rotten fruit.
John felt his heart stop when he heard Snowball barking and saw that soot-covered mutt rush right out of the wreck.
"Snowball, no!" He roared, struggling hard against the pain of his battered limbs. His arms were screaming at him in rebellion as he tried to push the rest of his body up and out of the train. "Goddammit, boy! Git back here!"
Snowball knew better than to disobey his master, but his instinct to protect John was far stronger. When the dog saw the first sandshark get close, he tackled the monster to the ground and sank his teeth into its neck. He uttered a yelp of pain when another sandshark nipped at his hindquarters. Before Snowball knew what was happening, two other sandsharks joined in the fight and started after him.
Two cracks from John's shotgun blew them both to pieces, but one was still kicking. Frantically, John sat himself up against the train and opened the breech. With hands shaking from the pain, he pulled out the spent shells and fished for new ones, all the while glancing up and down at himself and his best friend.
Suddenly, Snowball emitted a frightful howl and John watched in horror as another sandshark, this one a little bigger than the others, bit down on his right hind leg and ripped it right out of his body. Sinew and flesh stretched until they snapped, bones splintered, and the sandshark swallowed the limb in one gulp. Its massive forepaw pressed down heavily against the dog, and when it bent down to finish the job, two slugs reduced the monster's head into paste. It fell to the side with a loud thud.
"Snow!" John screamed, shotgun barrels still smoking from the spent rounds. "Snow!"
Snowball whimpered piteously in reply. He crawled slowly back to his master on the paws he had left, leaving a thin trail of blood in his wake. Exhausted and in agony, the dog collapsed into John's arms.
"Stupid. You stupid sumbitch..." John wheezed through the tears of anger and frustration. His hands worked quickly to tear a piece from his sleeve to tie up the trickling stump that was left of his dog's leg. "Why? Why did you have to go on and do that?"
Snowball's tongue shot out to lick his master's arm, and he trembled as the rag tightened around his wound. His whimpers turned to whines. There were other scratches all over his furry body, but none of them were as bad as the big one.
The ground quaked beneath the footfalls of the Sandshark Queen, who finally reached the edge of the basin. She growled at the herd, forcing them to back off from the remaining pair of survivors. Furious, John pulled out his gun from its holster. The .44 revolver won't do much against this particular monster, but the man figured that he won't go down without a fight. That was the unwritten law for men in Texas, and John would abide by it.
"C'mere, c'mere you ugly bitch!" He taunted.
The Queen took another step, but stopped when several tiny explosions ripped into the exposed side of her belly. John couldn't see it, but someone was shooting a mighty big gun at the dragon just shy of a hundred meters away from the crash site. Enraged, the Queen swiveled her massive head in the direction of the volley of shots and staggered back when a tank shell hit her square in the face.
A six-wheeled armored car rolled up on the other side of the basin, opposite of the sandshark herd. It had a long box-shaped hull with slightly sloped vertical sides and rear. A large ramhorn shaped bulldozer blade was fixed to the front, and a whining 90mm gun turret to the top hull. The face of a bristling gorgon, along with a silver bird-of-prey surrounded by a blazing laurel, was painted on either side. When the car stopped, the main gun took a moment to load then fired another shot.
The top half of the Queen's body erupted in a shower of fire, blood and gore. The massive sandshark crumbled to the ground in a heap. Frightened, both at the sudden turn of events and the death of their tyrannical matron, most of the herd dove into the ground and tunneled its way out of the battlefield. The rest were just stragglers, too big or too stupid to run.
John herd voices, men relaying orders to secure the area. Several figures dressed in high-tech power-armor stomped out of the back of the armored car, they were led by a woman dressed in military fatigues with a thick faux leather jacket to cover the upper half of her body. The orders were coming from her.
The way she stood, the sun was almost directly behind her. John squinted to get a good look at her face.
At first glance, he thought he was looking at Molly Wes. The similarities were uncanny, she had blonde hair so dark it was almost brown and bright green eyes that seemed to drink in the world around her with a childlike innocence. The suit tucked tightly around her, accentuating her womanly curves despite its tailor's apparent desire for uniformity. But this woman wasn't a soft filly like Molly. What the desert wind and heat didn't beat down, the untold hardships of the Texas Wasteland certainly burned away. There was an air of cruelty in her voice, scarred by a lifetime of oaths, curses and wine. Her beautiful face was twisted into a rough, hateful snarl. Whether it was that implacable accent she was speaking in or the rank she held, John didn't know. But when she spoke, she demanded respect and would abide no nonsense.
Seeing her then, John was in awe of this foreign woman.
Slowly, he got up with Snowball firmly pressed against his chest. The woman saw him stumble out of the wreck and into the muddy soil surrounding the basin. She called for someone to help him out.
"Please, help my dog!" John held Snowball up when two soldiers approached him, "I'm okay, help my dog!"
Kitty stared at the corpse of the Sandshark Queen as her Centaur dragged it across the desert with a set of hooks and nets. She'd seen deathclaws, she'd seen mirelurks, but never a sandshark and especially not of that size. The creature was so vicious, it was hard to imagine that it was descended from one of the meekest lizards born to the desert. "Bloody hell, she's as big as me old flat back in Carlon."
"Yeah, I imagine the eggheads will be havin' a field day with this one." Nobby agreed. "Makes me wonder what other monstrosities are hidin' out in the wastes."
After salvaging what they could from the train wreck, including the rig's fusion-powered engines and repulsors, the little convoy of scouts returned to the outpost with their bounty. Little John went with them, hoping to get Snowball to a proper doctor. He didn't care that he needed help himself, after having sustained multiple rib fractures and gashes in his legs in the fight against the sandsharks. In a world that seemed to be too eager to take away his loved ones, John could care less about himself if he could see to it that the dog lives to see another day.
When they reached the outer perimeter of the outpost, John put aside his worries for a moment to watch the edge of Dominion civilization taking root at the edge of his own civilization. What once was a lone camp surrounded by barbed-wire fences and steel walls had quickly become a sprawling base of operations. With the roads secured, the supply routes followed and the Army started allocating resources to reinforce their foothold on Four Seasons.
Soldiers in power-armor were patrolling the outer and inner perimeters, every one of them brandishing a weapon that seemed more at home with a tank than in the hands of men. Supply birds were hovering in and out of the landing zones, carrying supply boxes and crates by the dozen. Motor pools walled off with chain-link fences were filled end to end with combat and support vehicles, ranging from swift APC's and IFV's to the more powerful beasts of steel and composite.
The end of the Dominion-Brotherhood war spawned a new kind of tank, one designed to perform just as adequately in combat as the lumbering M2 Black Bear as well as adopting the speed of the Centaur IFV. Its chassis was smaller, built to hold a total crew of three. The armor was only as thick as an armored personnel carrier at a modicum 10mm, but the primary protection lay with its personal kinetic barrier core, capable of absorbing most projectile attacks. Its main weapon was a low-velocity 100mm rifled gun that fired ATGM's, and mounted at the coaxial was a dual feed 30mm autocannon.
The new tank was designated as the M3 Lion Cub, and would serve as the primary combat unit the expedition would field in Four Seasons.
Little John was escorted into the field hospital set up in the middle of the outpost, Snowball was carried there as well. Both survivors were treated under guard, for they were still regarded as potential breaches in security. The corpses of the sandsharks were dragged into the labs built for the Dominion scientists, who would take up the whole week to analyze.
As John lay back into the surgical table, he turned his head to the one opposite of his. The dog was weak from blood-loss, but he was still feisty. When the doctor removed the goggles from his head, he started barking furiously. And he tried to bite the nurse trying to stick a needle into his hindquarters.
"Snowball, no!" John roared at him angrily, startling the medical team and the dog with his strained voice. "Be a good boy and let them work."
This time, Snowball listened to his master, and his furry snout fell slump against the edge of the table. He trembled a bit as the nurses tended to his wounds, but he didn't fight back. Satisfied, John relaxed his weary head on the table for his own tending. A kind-faced woman, wearing a white doctor's coat over her camo fatigues, loomed over him. She had the same features as the meaner lady leading the scouts earlier, and John wondered if somehow they were related.
"Hello there, I'm Dr. Nancy Reyncourt." The doctor greeted him warmly, "Now, let's get a good look at you."
"You're a doctor?" He asked, genuinely surprised by her claim. In Four Seasons, women were exempted from menial labors and certain practices deemed more suitable for men. There were, of course, exceptions to this rule but not enough to be considered a common sight. Nothing made sense with these people, which was probably why it was so hard for him to believe they existed in the first place.
Nancy chuckled, "Of course! Why wouldn't I be?"
"Where I come from, doctoring's no job for a woman."
"I can't imagine why. Is it the blood? Are they too squeamish to go elbow-deep in guts, or pinch a leaking artery or two?"
John grunted as she pressed against one of the many gashes in his leg and squeezed to apply pressure on the wound. Suddenly, she wasn't so kind. "Ow! Sorry, I didn't mean nothin' by it, ma'am."
"Uh-huh, that's right." Nancy sat back to let the auto-doc scan the wounded man for deep injuries, and they both found the fractures that ran along his ribcage. The doctor immediately administered some painkillers and a stimulant pack to close the wounds. "Give me a few hours, and you'll be right as rain."
She was true to her word. Dominion medicine was better than anything that all the doctors in Four Seasons could come up with, and soon Little John was allowed to walk with the aid of a crutch. However, the Dominion wasn't finished with the man yet. As soon as he was able to stand, the soldiers watching over him immediately dragged him off for questioning. John protested and struggled all he wished, but the numbness in his legs and the dull throb in his head kept him in firm Dominion hands. They carried him to the main camp, where the interrogation room awaited.
Along the way, John saw the engineers going through their salvage from the wreck of the rig. Among the crates, weapons and other miscellaneous items was the package he was tasked to deliver to the canyon city. When they opened it, they discovered that the package contained two intact pairs of sandshark eggs. Right then, John realized exactly why the Sandshark Queen was so hellbent on pursuing the jet-train. He wasn't sad about her being killed, but he understood her motivations.
The Dominion soldiers weren't too rough with him when they got him to interrogation. They searched him for weapons and other contraband items, then John was placed on a chair inside a spacious transparent box. His crutch was removed, and they forced him to wait for a couple of minutes before beginning the procedure. Kitty Reyncourt, accompanied by two other officers, entered the facility and stood in front of the box for John to see. Like her, the officers were all roughened up by the desert and looked like they were ready to throw hands should the wastelander refuse to cooperate.
"What is your name?" Kitty began.
John cleared his throat, "I'm John Marcus Jackson. Friends call me 'Little John'. And you, little lady?"
Kitty's eyes narrowed, and her voice hardened. "I am Judge Reyncourt. You will address me as 'ma'am' or 'Your Honor', do I make myself clear?"
John smirked, deciding to humor the judge. Something told him it was best to get on the good side of the Dominion, starting with this ball-buster of a woman. "Clear, ma'am."
"Good. I will make this brief. I will ask you a number of questions, and you will answer them as honestly as possible. Cooperate, then you and your dog will be cared for. Fail to do so, and we'll dump you into the desert." John's brow arched. But just as he was about to think on keeping his lips sealed, Kitty added something for him to chew on. "Naked and without weapons."
"Whoa, you're not one to mince words, huh?"
"No, I'm not."
John nodded, sitting back casually with one leg over the other. "Alrighty then. Hit me."
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