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"Even the finest sword rusts under saltwater." - Redacted Source
.::.
"Big Bird Three, you're drifting from formation, descend to eight thousand."
"Copy Big Bird One." Tracy Oakes, pilot of the A5-2 Corvid jet bomber, pushed down on the controls for a gentle descent to the aforementioned altitude. She padded her feet on the pedals to keep the jet steady and reduced her speed. Her drone co-pilot, which she nicknamed 'Moe', ran a routine diagnostics test as part of its mid-mission protocols.
No problems popped up so far. The A5-2 was the best to come out of the last batch of test aircraft, and was an immediate favorite among the pilots of the Dominion Air Force. It was fast, even for its size, although maneuverability was called to question once it was loaded up with its payload. One added feature was the new laser anti-missile system, a reliable replacement to the flare countermeasures of the last decade.
The squadron of six bombers were on mission to engage an unknown hostile force reported to have attacked a reconnaissance ground team along the borders of the Cajun Wasteland. Pinned down in a narrow gully, the survivors requested a drop from air support so that they could break free and hightail it back to the nearest outpost. Just another routine mission, according to the squadron leader. They'll get on target, drop the smart-bombs, then strafe whatever's left before heading back to base. Tracy had to wonder, though, about what could possibly give the recon team a run for its money. Most would chalk it up to human error, some officer's incompetence. But ever since the Dominion met the Brotherhood of Steel, there was always the consideration of a faction somewhere in the outer territories that may be on par with their military's capabilities.
"BB Three to One, should I get on comms?" She asked the squadron leader once they've broken through another cloud stretch.
"Affirmative. Give 'em the good news."
"Moe, patch me in to the recon team channel." Tracy said to the drone, "Let them know help's on its way."
A minute later, the pilot's ears were assaulted by the strained voices of rook soldiers under heavy fire from the unknown hostile elements. "Rocketeer! Hit the dirt-" A loud screech, followed by a hard thump from a resulting explosion scrambled the rest of the rook's sentence. The channel shifted to someone else's receiver and a new voice frantically huffed into the radio, "-down! Say again, 2-3 is down!"
"This is 2-4! Getting our asses kicked down here, Nest Alpha! Where the hell are you?"
Nest Alpha. That was meant for them. Tracy gave answer in kind, "Roger, 2-4, Big Bird on approach. ETA two minutes."
"Begin descent." The squadron leader announced, repeating target coordinates for adjustments. The six bombers swooped down and armed their payload, heading deep for a precise run on target. "Drop on my mark. Mark!"
Each of the A5-2's dropped two 3000lb bombs, with an assault fuse delay of three seconds. This gave them enough time to hit the ground and cause maximum damage to the enemy ground units. Moe gave Tracy a kill cam feed of the drop, showing a holographic capture of the explosion. The hills were grounded down to dust and the surrounding forests lit up with flashfire, everything else had been blown to pieces. Tracy remarked, "On target. Good kills."
"Nest Alpha! Direct hit, enemy de-stroyed!" Recon team 2-4 announced excitedly.
"Copy, 2-4. Keep your heads down, coming in for a double-tap." They circled around for another run, strafing the ground with their 30mm cannons. Everything was going alright, until Moe started chirping in a pattern unknown to Tracy. She ignored him for a bit as she squeezed the trigger, sending a burst from her jet that churned up the earth into a dust cloud. Finally, she snapped when her co-pilot wouldn't shut up. "What? What is it?"
Moe pointed out the radar on her helmet's HUD, and sure enough, there was something moving towards the squadron. Supersonic, and on intercept trajectory. It registered nothing when the IFF pinged, marking itself as an enemy on radar. Tracy's eyes widened. Nothing, not since the nukes fell, had anything mastered the skies as the Dominion Air Force. The closest anyone had gotten was the airships that the Brotherhood used in the last war. So this... this was something new.
"Heads up, looks like we've got a bogey."
There was an incredulous pause on the squadron leader's part, "Say again, BB Three?"
"Bogey, BB One." Tracy repeated, "Should be pinging on your radar right about now."
The aircraft came in with the speed of a falling star. Much much faster than the A5-2 Corvids, and with the elegance of the storied jet fighters of Old America too. It was black, with forward-swept wings and an aft strake control surface, making it look like some kind of alien bird-of-prey. There were no weapons on its external surface, but Tracy knew that it wasn't on intercept trajectory if it wasn't packing some serious heat. All six of the A5-2's disengaged from the ground units to fend off the attacker. It was going to be a dogfight for the most part. Each Corvid packed two short-ranged air-to-air missiles in case they ran into a wasteland faction capable of putting up a fight in the skies.
"Nest Alpha, prepare to engage." The squadron leader announced. "BB Two, BB Three, break right-"
A pair of bright green lances cut through the sky, striking the lead A5-2 with ruthless precision. It split the bomber in two right down the middle, resulting in a miniaturized nuclear explosion that sent the whole squadron breaking off in different directions. The enemy jet hadn't even gotten within range of their targeting computers, and it still took down Big Bird One. Tracy called out to Moe, requesting a visual on the squadron leader if he managed to punch out. The drone replayed the feed on her screen, showing nothing but a cloud of fire and falling debris.
"Big Bird One's down!" Tracy declared, "Five, Six, get on his tail! Two and Four, on me! Let's take this sonofabitch down!"
The maneuver proved costly. The enemy jet's laser weapons were mounted on flexible ball turrets, capable of shooting in patterns not limited to a single direction. It made a pass, firing sideways like a gangster drive-by shooter and cutting off the wings on Big Bird Five and Six. The pilots were able to eject, but that left Tracy and her wingman to deal with the threat alone.
And yet, as strangely as it turned out, the black jet didn't stick around to finish off the rest. It took off, outpacing the A5-2's as if they were standing still. It disappeared into the distance from which it came, right before their SRAAM's got a lock-on.
"Damn it! Break off pursuit." Tracy said after seeing the futility of chasing after the enemy. That jet could run circles around them with ease if it wanted to, she had no intention of getting more of them on the fight. One was enough, and she couldn't avenge her friends if she was dead. "Moe, get me comms on base. We've got one KIA, two MIA. Nest Alpha heading back."
The black jet flew far away, in the regions beyond the Cajun Wasteland, where the airspace fell under Enclave rule. It reached the nearest airbase, which was located on the crest of a mountain range obscured by a swirling impenetrable shroud of dark clouds.
Upon command, the clouds receded to reveal the drone swarms responsible for the anomalous weather pattern. These robots, called Nimbus drones, were created for the sole purpose of blanketing Enclave forward bases in artificial clouds made from hardlight projections akin to holograms, to deter waster explorers and conceal operations. They scattered, opening the path for the returning jet fighter. The aircraft slowed upon descent, aiming for the external runway being drawn out for it from the mouth of the airbase built into the mountain. Once inside, the gates closed in behind it and the Nimbus drones resumed their task of blanketing the local area in that heavy black shroud.
Enclave personnel marched out to greet the pilot, forming a motley group of scientists, engineers and officers. The pilot, Lt. Carmine Jones, climbed out of the X-30 Huntsman with a proud grin on his face. Like many pilots for the Program for Experimental Warfare, he was a volunteer. His body was encased in a suit designed to monitor his vitals and activity during missions, and unbeknown to the pilot, was capable of terminating its user should they fall into enemy hands. He saluted his superiors and shook hands with some of them. Among the officers stood a robot proxy with a flat screen for a head. It displayed the face of the current president of the Enclave, Thaddeus Howard, as it extended its mechanical hand forward.
Carmine swallowed nervously as he stood before his commander-in-chief, the visit being an unexpected surprise.
Howard was known for using proxies or vid-communications when speaking to anyone. According to the official account on the president's bizarre preferences, Howard was adamant in his desire to remain 'pure' from the contamination of the outside world. Nobody had ever seen him in person. It was rumored that after the nuclear holocaust, Howard's presidential bunker had been his only environment, surrounded by advanced technologies that were his only means of interacting with the outside world as well as capable of expanding his influence to the remnants of Old America. How long he was in power, no one but the chiefs-of-staff knew and no one dared ask. The president's stern face betrayed little emotion. His voice was a grim sandpaper's scratch to one's ears, a military officer's voice rather than a politician's. The weight of his bearing, even through a proxy, commanded respect.
"Three targets destroyed and not a scratch on our girl, eh? Well done, son!"
"Thank you, sir!" Carmine replied, standing at attention.
A photographer took a snapshot of the exchange for the archives while Howard's proxy paced around the aircraft to admire its constitution. "There's no better war fought than one against a power to rival our own. You've served your country well by making the first strike memorable on both sides. How would you like to command your own squadron?"
Carmine's eyes widened, "It would be an honor, Mr. President sir."
"You, see to it." The proxy pointed to one of the officers, "I want the X-series fully operational. I expect more good results in the following days."
The engineer teams responsible for the Huntsman jet looked up at their superiors with abject horror. They felt that the jet was not ready for mass production, having shown a remarkable amount of defects that barely passed the experimental phase. Nevertheless, the president had already made his wishes known. Delaying the order would only mean the program's termination, and months of work wasted. Any defects would have to be corrected on the fly. As the proxy in the hangar conversed with the program directors, another proxy was busying itself with affairs concerning another matter.
Beneath the airbase was a bustling underground city, one of many that housed thousands of Enclave citizens. The word they used to call it was less of a name and more of a designation. Undercity 23, much like the way Vault-Tec simplified their shelters into numbers on a roster. It was a domed city carved into solid stone and fashioned from sturdy concrete, propped up by support beams of space-age alloys and other classified materials. It was like Elysion, to a certain degree. Whereas its Dominion counterpart had been built on the surface, the undercity had only the earth to embrace its dome. On paper, the total number of undercities amounted to thirty. The truth was that there were more, but most were reserved purely for military use and as a failsafe in the event of another catastrophe as the nuclear holocaust.
Undercity 23 was President Howard's favorite, a partial recreation of Detroit, his supposed home-city. Back during the Great War, Detroit quickly was the industrial heart of the Commonwealth. Every citizen, factory and piece of it had been devoted to the war machine. At present, the undercity was almost a replica of the Old World metropolis, aglow with neon signs and bustling with activity. Like Old America, the Enclave was a statist government who recognized no god save for itself. The worker, the mother, the soldier were their saints and even these were cynical constructs used to make their indoctrinated populace feel as though their sacrifices were for a good cause.
Once again, they were gearing up for war. Previous engagements served as mere skirmishes, preparations for the eventual cleansing of the Texas Wasteland. The other proxy was delivering a speech to the citizens, rousing their fighting spirit with tales of a new enemy. If there was one thing Howard was good at, it was his oratory skills. The robot was no hindrance to him, but to say that it didn't struggle to contain the thunder coming from the president's lips- that would be a lie. "For years we have watched their naïve attempts at creating order from chaos, their meaningless turf wars, their petty squabbles. Our science, our expertise, all aligned for one purpose- the surgical culling of the weak, the mutant, the rebel!"
"There is but one nation under heaven worthy to take control of the Wasteland!" The robot raised its mechanical fist, "Tear down this false icon! Raze its cities to the ground! Remind them who we are..." Howard's proxy backed up and stretched out its arms as if to embrace the unified screams of a thousand frenzied Enclave citizens. On cue, the new and improved robot army developed by Atlas Division took to the streets and paraded before the jubilant throng. From the lumbering Castle war bot to the ubiquitous Revenant, all cut an imposing figure as they marched alongside their officers. The men that commanded these machines, the very best the Enclave Army had to offer, wore heavy armor with the distinct gestalt inhuman aspects that separated the soldiers from the rest of the Enclave. If it weren't for the uniforms or fatigues, it was difficult to distinguish the artificial from the organic.
The citizens of Undercity 23 chanted, "U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!"
And Howard, ever the orator, blasted through the speakers with a triumphant cry. "Defenders of the American dream, NOW IS OUR TIME!"
Sam Ray stared intently at the pile of blocks sitting in the middle of the table before him.
Several wires connected his suit to various observation machines outside the testing area, while a team of scientists looked on from behind the safety of three-inch thick security glass. The test he was undertaking was to determine the extent of his telekinetic potential, and so far the results put him at a very low category. He could barely cause one block to topple over, let alone lift it to settle atop another. Still, the research team wouldn't let him stop. The young man strained to get the task done, using what little training he had to further explore his budding psychic potential.
In another room, Jury Heinz was put through a more rigorous type of exercise. Having displayed several anomalous traits previously unknown to the science of psionics, his tests involved a more hands-on approach. One of those anomalous traits was pyrokinesis. Jury was placed inside a water tank with nothing on but a bodysuit, a harness with all the necessary gadgets to monitor his vitals, and a breathing apparatus. Jury was afraid of water, Dr. Copenhagen knew this and wanted to explore the subject's handling of a high-stress environment. After suffering in that cold tank for an hour, the soldier not only vaporized the water, he melted the glass of both the tank and the observation safety-glass windows. It proved the theory that the higher the strain on a psyker, the more powerful the psionic output.
The third subject, Mileena Echavez, proved to be the most promising addition to Psy Ops yet. While she didn't manifest Sam's telekinesis, or Jury's pyrokinesis, her trait treaded on more dangerous ground. It happened during a random test involving a rat in a wooden box, where the goal of the test was to unlock a complex stainless steel lock without the use of a key. Mileena didn't move the lock or the box.
Instead, she took control of the rat and set its teeth to work on the wood. In about half an hour, the rat was free of the box and Mileena slumped in her seat with a long line of red running out of her nose.
Copenhagen later decided to limit the exercises so that the program wouldn't end up scrapping operations in the wake of another rogue psyker. All of this, done in a single day, was just the first few steps on the long road to mankind's psychic awakening. And the program director had to make sure each step was done with care.
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