The sun vanished beneath the horizon, enveloping the land in an expanding orange nimbus that beckoned the first wafts of cool night air. The land in all directions faded into the pitch blackness. Temperature, in the absence of the trees or foliage needed to retain heat during the night, dropped quickly. Bonfires were lit in the interior of Fort Defiance, along with scattered watch lights and braziers along the earthen walls. Sentries patrolled in firelight, some visible to the world outside the walls, and others concealed in alcoves and within watchtowers. The Courier could smell them on the breeze. The scent of Legion soap, crushed ashes and animal fat mashed into paste and compressed into round balls of waxy cleaning material.
The metallic scent that spread from the surface of metal polished with spit and emery cloth. Cooked meat and bonfire ash, the soft cries of the slave girls servicing the Legionaries off-duty. Just as common, the deeper cries of men about the same business. You could say this about the Legion, he thought, they found pleasure wherever it could be found. Keeping his helmet off to maintain his senses command of his surroundings, he broke from the darkness and sprinted soundlessly to the edge of the trench surrounding the encampment. Two other indistinct shapes followed at his back, Follows-Chalk and Lantaya T'Rali, both armed and outfitted for the operation.
All three crossed the distance in the scant window that was offered to them by the passing patrols, sliding to a stop in the shadow of the fortress walls, where the walls themselves cut off the firelight from on high. Senses straining to their very limit, the Courier lay down on his side and shimmied his lower body down into the trench after a quick peak over the lip. His eyes could see better through the shadow than most, but it was his ears and his nose that truly made all apparent. Every slight vibration through the surface of the earth was a beacon illuminating the presence of each stake that lurked down in the darkness below.
He grinned as he angled his body and slide neatly between the sharp wooden points that stuck out like a hedgehogs quills, meant to skewer the unwary at even the slightest misstep. Thankfully, no-one had ever described him as unwary. At least none to his face. Or, more accurately, none had described him as unwary to his face more than once and lived to tell about it. His boots sunk into a gunky substance at the bottom of the trench and his nose caught the scent as soon as his feet had burst the crust of dust and dirt that had settled on it.
Six held up his gloved hand to stop Follows-Chalk or Lantaya from following him down into the ditch. Pitch. Concentrated pine tar, of the exact same kind that was used so very long ago to set Joshua Graham alight and birth the legend of the Burned Man they all knew today. Interesting. None of Joshua's tribal spies had reported this.
Follows-Chalk poked his head over the lip of the ditch and mimicked the call of a nightbird. Curiosity.
In reply, the Courier mimicked another bird cry, this one the sound that signified danger. A warning call. Chalk withdrew his head, as the Courier hopped up and grabbed his hand. Lantaya helped the younger human tribal drag the prodigious weight of the Courier from the depths, a faint biotic glow announcing that she did not do so unassisted. He put his mouth next to the spot on her head where the ear would be if she were a human and whispered his discovery, "Firetrap. Don't drop down."
Her blue eyes flashed in the darkness, intellect already hard at work, adapting and modifying plans on the fly. Two-hundred-years a huntress, she could indeed keep up with the best of them. "Use the rope," Lani stated in a firmly confident voice, "I can tie a rappelling line off to the walls summit."
Chalk heard the quiet exchange and had the rope off his shoulder in the blink of an eye, tying the end into an expertly formed draw-knot, that awaited only for it to be looped around a fastening point and pulled taut in order to provide the surest of anchoring points for an escalade. A faint footstep sent the Courier's senses a-tingling in the darkness, and he grabbed both of his companions by the shoulder and pulled them flat. They waited in the darkness, ears straining.
But only the Courier could feel the weak vibrations through the ground, and when Lani tried to rise to a knee to peek upwards at the walls peak, he put a firm hand on the back of her neck and pushed her face into the ground. They waited in silence until the faint crunching of Legion sandals on earth had both become apparent then faded once more into the background of the night. Then he made them wait some more, until the vibrations he felt had faded.
"Now," he muttered in a low rumble. Chalk passed Lantaya the rope, then unslung his bow so it hung loosely from his shoulder rather than across his back. The Courier checked the holster flap on his silenced .45 and the straps that held the tribal warclub and the machete gladius in place near the small of his back, and the sheath at his hip that held his bowie knife, Blood-Nap. As the other members of their little infiltration performed weapon checks, Lantaya tested the weight of the rope in her hands, gauging the force and direction of the required biotic fields. She glanced at the Courier, who gave her the nod, his fierce grin gleaming in the scant light.
With a flick of the arm, and a suburb command of her abilities that only other Matriarchs could replicate, she launched the rope upwards towards the summit. There, the cleverly constructed loop at the end slapped neatly around a protruding knob of the wattle exterior. It pulled taut with a hiss of rope grating against rope. The Matriarch gave it a few hefty, biotic-enhanced tugs to test that it would support the Couriers weight, by far the heaviest of them by a substantial margin. It held without complaint.
The Courier leaned forwards and listened to the rope with a cocked ear, finally nodding in assent, "Good 'nough."
Finally, he put on his helmet. The Elite Riot Helmet settled over his headwrap and his grey locks with a neat seal, and he activated the suits internal systems. Being the master of the Big Empty had its advantages. Such as some particularly useful additions to his armour and arsenal. "Hello, Courier," a soft electronic voice whispered in his ear, "Who can I hide you from today?"
"Legion," the Courier replied.
"Ohh, what a shame. I thought this might be a challenge."
"Savour the killin', Spirit. It's barely started yet,"the Courier said through grinning teeth as his senses picked up the vibration of another patrolling sentry. Now was the time. The killing time. The times he lived for and dreamed of in his waking and unwaking hours.
"Make me feel, Spirit."
"Say please,"the mischievous reply came as the first whispers of the Legionaries presence where being heard by Chalk and Lantaya. They had already dropped to the ground and were looking up at him with wide eyes, believing mistakenly that he hadn't felt the guards presence through his helmet.
"Please," he acquiesced in an amused rumble, appeasing the wishes of the Spirit of Cunning that the scientists at the Big Empty had chanced upon and bound to the suit. All honeyed words and barbed tongue. It knew what it liked, which was odd in a machine. And what it liked was the swift strike from the shadows, the brutality of the split second. Rather like himself.
"Injecting stimulants," the Stealth Suit Mark 2 OS whispered, as a blend of Psycho, Turbo, Slasher and Jet was injected through the sub-dermal GRX implant in his chest. His own personal blend, concentrated and matched to his tolerances and mutations. "Do it in the dark, and no-one ever has to know,"the artificial personality matrix purred, as his heart rate soared, and his muscles tensed with unnatural strength and ferocity.
"Wise words."
The Courier took two strides backwards under the watchful eyes of his companions, and with a ferial grunt that remained unheard by the night through his helmet, he took a running leap across the pit. His hands wrapped around the rope, his forward momentum bleeding off in a perfectly coordinated display of weight and strength handled with an unearthly finesse. His feet hit the wall at the exact moment gravity would have taken hold and sent his hefty frame plummeting down into the spikes and pitch below.
His legs were pumped like pistons as they sent him swarming up the rope like a homicidal primate mainlining suicidal quantities of methamphetamine, as his arms went hand over hand at such speed that he was at the top of the wall in less than two seconds. The confused expression of the Legionary as the dark, behemoth-like shape practically materialised over the edge of the wall was a passing glimmer for everyone involved, save the Courier himself.
The Jet and Turbo made the world around him move as if in slow motion, revealing every detail to his already superhuman senses with startling clarity, from the faint burn scars on this Legionaries face to the face of the second Legionary that followed on behind him.
Blood-Nap appeared as if by magic in his grasp, so quickly that even the Courier wasn't entirely sure how it had travelled the intervening distance between his now empty sheath and his hand. It vanished in short order, buried hilt deep through the Legionaries neck to protrude out the base of his skull, neatly bisecting the spinal cord and the brainstem. He wrenched it out and pushed the body to the side and off the parapet, where it slammed down into the stakes with the sound of a butchers-shop. His compatriot opened his mouth, lungs expanding and chest puffing out with air in preparation to sound the alarm. A neat hole appeared in the sentries forehead as a round whistled past the Courier's head on the right side. On the ridge surrounded by waiting tribesmen and Texas Revelators, Boone sniffed the smell of burnt primer and gunpowder, readjusting his prone form to keep his body perfectly in line with the length of his rifle. He sighted down on the next target through his night-vision optics built into his scope.
To the Courier's left, he felt the vibrations of footsteps, but ignored it just as he ignored the sound of Follows-Chalk's equally swift ascent to the battlements. Lantaya floated up behind him in a flare of biotics as he took off at a silent run, the stealth suit built into his Riot Armour muffling his movements in the darkness. He moved like the world largest wraith, almost gliding across the distance as his ears picked up the faint snapping sound of a supersonic rifle round as it put a hole through the patrolling sentry at the far end of the southern wall. Lantaya and Follows-Chalk tracked left towards the watchtower at the south-western corner, the Matriarch using her biotics to paralyse a Legionaries vocal cords and hold him immobile while Chalk walked up to him and slit his throat. The Courier savoured the sound of the gurgling blood as he snaked through the gloom towards the south-eastern corner, conscious of Boone followed his progress through his scope.
Another faint snap signalled the end of the sentry in the southern watchtower offset from the wall, freestanding to overlook the battlements. The body pitched backwards onto the wooden floor with a smack and bang of overturned pottery. Clay jars his ears told him, and from the muffled slopping told him they were probably filled with more pitch. A primitive incendiary grenade. Low-tech and volatile around open flames, but very effective. Not something you kept around the rank-and-file unless you planned on using it and using it soon. They had been prepared for an assault.
"Will you kill the next one slowly?" The Stealth Suit Spirit enquired, "Or quickly?"
Another Legion sentry died with an arrow through his throat, slumping over forwards over the card table as Lantaya and Chalk breached the south-western guard tower dozens of metres away. The Legion in that position had left there door to the parapet unlocked. "Sloppy," he heard Lantaya mutter in Thessian. Chalk held his council.
He reached the ramshackle wooden door to the south-eastern guard-tower and listened intently as he tapped the handle, revealing the internals of the lock through the sensation of the returning tremors. "Whose there?" A voice asked in Latin, sounding quite annoyed at the interruption. The Courier had his lockpicks out and working in professional swiftness, undoing all but the locking bolt he heard bolted into the other side of the thick wood.
"It's me," the Courier replied in the same language through his external microphone, and the same tone of blatant disrespect, in a voice pitched slightly higher than his natural tones to sound more like the average Legionary. Just obvious enough to motivate his victim into opening up to vent some anger on him, and loud enough to mask the sound of his lockpick scrapping the metal of the locks internals, "Open the damn door, you simpleton!"
A muffled curse and a serious of expletives regarding his mother followed as a loud stumping was heard. The locking bolt on the door was drawn back with a savage jerk, and the Courier beamed from ear to ear as he slipped his picks into a pouch and unholstered his .45 with the suppressor on the barrel. The safety came off as the Legionary on the other end of the door attempted to unlock a door that was already unlocked, jerking the key in the lock to see if it wasn't aligned properly with the pins. The two .45 ACP rounds ejected the Turnkey's brains across the floor, as they ripped through the door in a shower of splitters.
The Courier breached, sweeping the room with his pistol as the occupants turned to face him. Only one Legionary survived the manoeuvre long enough to catch a glimpse of him in the doorway, armoured body with flapping duster framed in blackness as he took long strides forwards into the room. The .45 popped four times, placing neat double-taps in the sweet spot right below the eyes but above the mouths of the first two Legion soldiers. The last of the three occupants only received one bullet in the cheek before the clip ran dry, but the Courier was already moving like greased lightning across the room.
A hand flashed out and crushed the man's windpipe against his spinal column so forcefully that the spine broke with an audible click of bone parting from bone, muffled by the meaty muscle that wrapped around the neck. The body dropped with a clatter as he cocked his head to the side, listening.
No sound but the usual carousing that could be heard in any military camp after sundown. Fires crackling as the night-watch warmed their hands and cooked their food, conversation in that special type of low voice used by people that didn't understand how to stop their voice from carrying. It sounded as if their presence had yet to be discovered, and that the southern wall was now cleared for them to begin planting the breaching charges that would open the way for the rest of the attacking force.
The whimpering of the slave girl that huddled in the corner of the guard house was all he heard that was relevant to the proceedings, staring at his bulk with abject terror. From her point of voice, it was as if a demon had burst through the door from the night, tearing through the soldiers like they were nothing more than chaff. Her dress was dishevelled and her hair all awry from the business he had clearly interrupted by killing the Legionaries.
He stalked towards her; his immense size was even more apparent in a confined space, and she shrank away as he approached. But she didn't scream, which was the important thing. "Are you going to kill her too?" the Cunning Spirit asked, curiously. The drugs that flowed through his veins urged him to do so, fuelling the voices of the spirits that drove him. But he kept them under control, convincing them to let him have his way. They gracefully allowed him to continue as he intended.
Hitting the ejection on his .45, he dropped the spent magazine into his palm and slotted a full replacement in with a harsh clack of metal sliding through metal. The slave girl shivered as the slide slammed forwards; arms wrapped around her knees as if it would protect her from the menace, she stared into the eyes of his helmet. He had the red lights behind his helmet lenses turned off, so instead of an unearthly crimson glow that gave him a distinctly terrifying presence, he simply looked like a phantom that had emerged from the shadows to strike down all that displeased it.
With his free hand he put a finger to his helmet gas filter, in the well-known and universal signal to keep your damn mouth shut or I'll paint the walls with your brains. She nodded in understanding. Taking that as the end of the matter he turned away, only for the slave girl to start gesticulating wildly at his retreating back. Turning back to her, she pointed to her mouth and made a pleading motion with her hands, asking to be allowed to say something. He cocked his head to the side, the only facial movement he could make that would be seen past the helmet. "Go on then," he said in Latin, the only language he knew for sure they would have in common. The Legion made a point of teaching all they interacted with on a regular basis.
"Burned Man?" She asked in heavily accented Latin, staring at him as the fear receded to be replaced with horror, and something akin to awe, "Are you Burned Man?"
"No, Courier Six," he replied, the pistol still held loosely at his side.
Her eyes went wide at the mention of the equally legendary name, but she rallied magnificently and stood up on shaky legs to continue her conversation. "Burned Man here? Burned Man must leave, you must leave. Trap. Trap set by Legion."
"We know," the Courier responded with a brief chuckle. This women was clearly not a Legion sympathiser, one of the odd slaves who enjoyed their lives under Legion rule and would turn on the unwary at a moment notice. Usually, such people had better Latin. And he heard no deception in her heartbeat. He limited the amount he told her regardless, "Firepits around the walls, bombs in the watchtowers. Guards hidden in watch positions."
"No!" She hissed vehemently, rushing forwards, and taking his arm in her dainty, bruised hand to guide him to the shutter. She cracked it open just enough for him to see the hospital across the expanse of Legion tents that squatted in the confused interplay of firelight and night-time darkness. "Trap! Trap in…."
She paused, frustrated by her lack of fluency in the language they conversed in. She clutched at her hair and hissed at herself; eyes screwed tightly shut as she attempted to recall the correct words in Latin to convey her meaning. Finally she cursed in an entirely unique language, hands tightening even more around her hair with the strength of her annoyance. The Courier however, recognised the dialect.
"Dancing Skulls?" He enquired in what he knew to be the language of the specific group of tribals. A tribe of men and women from further East, that he had rested with on his crossing of the continent so long ago. Despite the name, they were almost entirely pacifistic in nature, convinced that the spirits of the ancestors lived forever in their skulls. Motivated by this knowledge, they hung the skulls of their deceased from the branches of ceremonial tress and danced around them during special nights that they deemed sacred. He'd been present for one of the shows. He had found it entertaining, and a good custom. Not at all influenced by the fact that most of the women danced partially or entirely naked.
Her face lit up with joy, and she nodded emphatically, releasing her hair to let it bounce up and down along with her head. Her smile opened and spread like the breaking of the dawn. It had probably been years since she heard someone speak her native tongue, a regional mix of Spanish, English, and native languages. "Yes! Dancing Skulls! You know my tongue?"
"Yes. Not well. Legion have set trap? What trap, where?"
"Old medicine hut!" She proclaimed, using the tribal word for such a place, as almost no tribe understood the distinction between a hut where the shamans and medicine men lived, as compared to a derelict pre-war hospital. "Many Legion there. They killed slaves to make room in underground places and lie in wait for the one they call Burned Man! You must leave."
The shock of her words came and went in quick succession, as his mind quickly catalogued the revelation, her complete lack of deceit that his senses could see, and what this might mean for the assault. Then a horrible realisation struck him.
"Wanderer," he cursed in English, startling the slave girl with the unknown word. The Wanderer was in the damn hospital, looking for the slaves that would be held in the basement. He was walking into a trap. And the cyborg, while superhuman in his capabilities, could not stand up to a whole Centuria or more of Legionaries, lying in wait with weapons at hand. Deciding on a course of action quickly, he grabbed the girl by the hand and pulled her away from the door. "Cannot leave. Friend in medicine hut, looking for slaves! Must go forward. You, leave! Hide, somewhere safe. We come through southern wall. Big boom, understand? Big boom!"
Miming an explosion with his arms he mimicked the sound of an explosion. "I wish I had arms to play charades," the suit spirit complained in his ear.
She understood, nodding gravely. "Legion did not expect you, expected the Burned Man. Is Burned Man here also?"
"Yes," he confirmed, "Burned Man here. Many spirits of rage. We fight, kill all Legion. Crush skulls beneath feet."
The former Dancing Skull grimaced but nodded with profound certainty and agreement that this would be the right course of action. She brushed the tips of her fingers over the forehead of his helmet, touching the part of him closest to his spirit. "Be well, stay safe Courier Six," she requested before ducking out of the guard house through the same door he had used to enter, doubtless going to find someplace safe to hide herself, hands cupping the folds of her raggedy slave dress to keep the parts that had been torn by the Legionaries together.
The Courier left after her, pausing only to reach into his pouches on his combat webbing and extract several devices. Peeling off the waxy cloth covers that kept the adhesive from sticking to everything and anything it came into contact with, he stuck them to the walls around the door leading down to the campgrounds in the Fort's interior and activated them. They beeped to acknowledge this, IFF interrogators built into a sensor module pinging his Pip-Boy, ensuring that he wouldn't trip his own trap. He left a chalk marking on the wall to alert Follows-Chalk to the danger in case the other team came this way.
Out on the parapet he rushed silently towards the spot where they has ascended the wall, imitating a nightbird call at the loudest volume he could risk with Legion all about. Chalk and Lantaya exited the guardhouse cautiously, as the younger tribal signed a question using the hunting code of the Dead Horse and another birdcall. The Courier beckoned them over impatiently with one hand as he slide to a crouch near the rope. He kept his attention on the Legion below them and on what he could hear of the hospital, making sure that the fighting wasn't about to break out in earnest. Once the true killing started, lives that currently tottered on the knifes edge would slip and fall to the certain fate that lay below.
"Tis a trap, lads," the Courier informed them as they joined him at the walls edge, where he was clipping a small, metal carabiner on his combat belt to the rope and looping it about his waist in preparation to plant the charges on the wall. "Signal Boone, Chalk. Ol' Indian Hospital has an entire Centurias worth o' Legionaries lying in wait. Wanderer might be walkin' into a trap. We need to blow the wall now an' create distraction for him."
"Wait, wait," Lantaya interrupted as he took the first backwards steps off the edge of the wall and, leaning back to put all his weight on the rope, walked down the vertical surface at a perfect right angle. "Should we not cancel the attack? If you are correct there must be upwards of four-hundred men here. We cannot possible hope to match such a force with thirty soldiers."
Follows-Chalk was already making arcane gestures with his arms, relaying the message to Boone who would be relying on Joshua, one of the other Dead Horse tribals, or possibly White Bird to make sense of the Dead Horse hunting signals. The Courier chuckled at her concerns, already taking the carefully shaped charges from his pouches, and digging out large divots in the earth to expose the wattle lattice, the side of what amounted to a primitive hesco barrier. He fitted them calmly, methodically, his grin unseen behind the helmet's impervious exterior.
"Last few months have been too quiet for my likin'. 'Bout time we got a chance to knock some bloody heads together," he opined with a savage cackle through his external microphone. The drugs were making his heart sing with fierce delight at the prospect of a dustup tonight. "Keep yer fuckin' heads on a swivel. When the Bull plays its hand, it plays for keeps. Finished signallin' Chalk?"
He no longer heard Chalk's arms waving in through the air, the hiss and flap of his duster sleeves or the rough friction of the stab vest rubbing against the duster as he moved. "Courier," Chalk replied in a hushed voice, full of apprehension and fear, "Something is happening; Evil omens."
"Bit busy here, Chalk," the Courier grumbled as he hastily fitted the charges, hopping down a foot or two each time to plant them in the perfect configuration and alignment to blast open the ligneous concertainer, and send the dirt it contained spilling forth like a flood to form the ramp they needed.
Then he heard the screaming.
Other sounds died as the revellers in the camp ceased their ruckus, being closer to the disturbance they heard it about the same moment that the Courier, with his enhanced senses. He heard the clamour, and forcefully jammed the last of the charges in place as Lantaya gasped up above. "By the Goddess," she breathed out, clearly as fixated on whatever was occurring as Follows-Chalk. "Care to feckin' clue me in," he said as he once more ascended the wall, hand over hand with the strength of a man with numerous performance enhancing drugs currently coursing through his already impressive frame.
His head poked over the lip of the wall, and he found himself staring right between Chalk's legs at the spectacle before them. "Spirits above an' below," he breathed out as his grip on the rope slackened involuntarily, causing him to slip an inch before furiously correcting himself.
"Well," his suit's spirit added with a sunny disposition, "You don't see that every day."
The Old Hospital was glowing with an ethereal green light, bathing the Legion encampment in the light of a miniature sun, each window a portal into some phantasmal spirit realm that not even the Courier wished any part of. The screams of the Legionaries that happened to be trapped inside were all that needed to be heard to convince him of this truth. Some figures burst from the doors or hurled themselves out of windows that weren't shuttered closed in an effort to escape.
A few, lonely, crumpled corpses lay around the perimeter of the building, those poor souls who had already jumped and landed on the all-too unforgiving ground. Others screamed in response to the clawing agony in their bellies as their voices turned to gurgles of regurgitated blood and puss. Skin sloughed from the flesh and hair was pulled away in shaking hands as the bodies continued to burst from the building, crawling away as they decayed before the horrified eyes of their fellow Legionaries in the camp.
Some still seemed combat capable however, and more and more bodies were rushing from the Hospital as the glow seemed to brighten, as if the spirits were chasing them out of the cursed building.
The Courier tore his eyes from the spectacle, resolving to put this incident aside until anything could be done about it. At the moment, the most important thing was breaching the wall. Everything else could be dealt with in due course. He pulled himself up onto the wall, grasping Chalk's ankle and heaving himself up. "Close yer bloody mouths an' get a move on," he snarled. He freed the length of climbing rope from the wall and furled it back into a coiled circle, tying it off with a flourish. He clipped it to the carabiner on his belt. "Never know when a good rope might be comin' in handy," he muttered.
His two companions shook themselves into some form of sensibility and followed him as he made haste away from the charges. When they blew, they would blow big, and he wanted to be nowhere near them when they did. Dimly, he was aware of movement in his peripherals as they made for the guardhouse that both Lantaya and Chalk had cleared. His head tracked the illuminated figures that sprinted towards the gatehouse on the south-east corner and knowing instinctively what was about to occur, he stopped to watch the show.
"Courier?" Lantaya asked.
He made no reply, still watching as the four figures reached the gatehouse. The walls were constructed to funnel all those that came on and off the ramparts through the guardhouses for security. These soldiers were going to their pre-assigned stations in the event of an attack. No matter what occurred on the battlefield, discipline was key. The unexpected had to be treated in postures just the same as the expected, so that an army could march as one. This was as much a strength as it was a weakness to be exploited. But today, he thought with his mouth spread in a cunning grin, it was to be exploited.
He heard a Latin curse and a sharp beep of a triggered sensor, then the guardhouse erupted as his explosive wall-mines detonated with a resounding boom that shook the battlements and knocked dirt from the walls around them. Microfusion cells overcharged and then rigged with a loopback mechanism. They needed careful attention and handling to make, but they sure did satisfy the soul when he saw them go off. He never used energy weaponry, and he needed something to do with the Microfusion or Energy Cells he didn't use.
Shards of wood arched through the night-air, illuminated by the glowing hospital in an eerie green light that gave the resulting fireball of the traps blast a particularly ghostly appearance. Embers and burning debris drifted down into the trenches at the walls base, and with a fwoosh of consumed oxygen, the pitch ignited. It spread like Greek wildfire in the darkness, building in brightness until it rivalled the glow from the hospital and the land for miles around was almost as bright as day.
The stars vanished from the sky, and the smoke began to pour upwards like a swirling column. "We're all lit up. Is it Christmas?" The suit queried jokingly.
All eyes turned away from the hospital to gaze at this newest spectacle, and all eyes subsequently saw the three figures of Follows-Chalk, Lantaya T'Rali and Courier Six in the deluge of bright light, picked out against the sky. Legionaries called and shouted, Centurions in their heavy armour pointed and yelled in Latin. Weapons were snatched up as almost three-hundred men abandoned their observance of the Hospital and rushed to man the defences.
A repeating rifle cracked in the distance, and a bullet whizzed past Follows-Chalk like an angry hornet. He nocked an arrow and returned fire as a stream of Legionaries rushed the remaining guardhouse, the nearest place they could use to access the walls summit. The Courier cackled some more, then he reversed his previous course and started running towards the fiery conflagration that the South-eastern guardhouse had become, blazing like a beacon on one corner of the mighty earthworks. "Come on! Come on this way! Lani, do yer magic and keep these feckers off of us!"
They followed him at a sprint, Lantaya exercising her considerable biotic power to form a barrier around them as they ran, which whilst omni-directional and crude, did an admirable job of slowing or deflecting stray rounds from the Legion sharpshooters on the opposing battlements, and the thrown spears that flew towards them from below.
The Legion however, where no fools when it came to combat. A number of beefy, battle-scarred Legionaries had stacked up with their backs against the bulwarks and were acting as stepladders for their companions, grunting as boots came down on their thighs and shoulders. They swarmed up their companions and onto the walls, directly in the Couriers path.
Blades flashed in the night as they formed line with steel, waiting to receive their guest. They realised who it was they were facing now. The Couriers outline and description almost as legendary as the Burned Man, or the Monster of the East who he had personally killed. But they formed ranks, some with their machetes held at the ready, as the back rank presented their javelins. All Legion veterans with their pre-war football gear, padding supplemented with salvaged steel plates. "Stand, men of the Legion!" Their leader shouted in a resounding voice that echoed past the hordes that swarmed below, his face outlined in the firelight, and whatever unholy sacrament that had birthed the devilry occurring in the Hospital.
"Retribution!" He roared, and all about them the battlecry was echoed in three-hundred voices, shaking the battlements with as much force as the explosion that had rocked the earth from the walls. Men struck their weapons together to add to the tumult, and those that had senior Legionaries to lead them fell into lockstep, closing ranks with the heavy armoured Legionaries in front to absorb rounds in defence of their fellows.
"Retribution!" The cry burst forth once more, as they breached the door of the south-western guardhouse in a flow of boots, snapping the heavy locking bar that Follows-Chalk had laid across it like so much matchwood.
"Sneaking done. Fighting now," the suit commented, unheard by anyone save the Courier.
The Courier unslung his rifle, Randall Clark's carbine, chambered in 12.7mm pistol rounds. He pulled back the T-shaped cocking handle with gusto, relishing the feel of metal on metal, smoothed by the liberal application of gun oil. The Legion dropped to one knee, bracing leg stretched out behind them to minimise the amount of exposed leg he could aim at. It was a decent measure to take and spoke to the training and experience of the Red Okie, who had their tried and tested ways and means of combating modern firearms.
But when the Survivalists Rifle roared its welcome, the steel reinforced football gear was nothing more than window-dressing before the Jacked-Hollow Point +P rounds that he'd hand-loaded with infinite care, mixing the powder himself to rectify the issue of under-penetration that was incumbent in all sub-calibre ammunition. His bullets left the barrel of Clark's rifle with the muzzle velocity of a true rifle round and tossed Legionaries backwards as if they'd been struck by a cannon ball.
Round tore through their formation, sometimes taking two or three lives with every impact as the heavy 12.7mm rounds blew gapping holes through both ranks of men. Then the Courier barrelled into them, screaming in old Gaelic, about how he would flay them alive then pleasure himself with the skin. He butted the first man who tried to get in his way, crushing the skull of a second with his boot as he stormed into their broken ranks. His heavy rifle butt left a deep dent in a Legion helmet, bending the metal inwards until it hammered the contents down hard enough to fragment the spine.
He parried a thrust of a spear with a circular twirl of his own rifle barrel, then blew the man backwards with a centre mass shot. The next he shoulder checked off the wall and into the fire and pitch below, the stench of cooked meat heavy in the air, even through his helmets filters. He revelled in the carnage, laying about him as he screamed the battle cries of his people at the top of his resounding voice, matching the strength of his Spirits against the Legion's.
Behind him, Follows-Chalk and Lantaya worked as one to stay the flow of the Legion that dogged their heels. Lantaya formed barrier after barrier, blocking or deflecting flights of javelins between using her biotics to throw men bodily off the walls, or warping their limbs out from under them to be trampled by their compatriots. Despite her experience, she was shocked and appalled by the din, the noise, the overwhelming assault on her senses. The Legion battle cries and the Courier's own horrifying zeal for violence, that she had not fully appreciated until she had seen it for herself. She was the only one present who understood his language and could hear the disturbing threats that he levied against the men he fought, the occasional bursts of psychotic laughter he emitted through the rush of his drug induced rage.
More than anything, his efficiency and confidence in the face of such overwhelming odds left her speechless. She tossed an overpowered biotic push down the battlements that sent several Legionaries tumbling into their fellows and took a moment to watch him as he unloaded another salvo of shots into the Legionaries that were using their own bodies to provide a makeshift ladder up the wall's side, sending the whole stack of climbing Legion falling back down to earth.
A Legionary was attempting to sneak up behind him from where he had been forgotten in the mess of bodies that littered the parapet but was pitched forwards and past the Courier by a blast of red laser. ED-E swooped in from on high, playing the jingle that he used at the start of all violent encounters, blasting away with mechanical precision. Another Legionary disintegrated in a flash of laser fire and wafting ashes, to mix with the smoke that billowed upwards from the firetrap.
She turned back and warped a Legionaries' head in an explosion of gore and brain matter as he grappled with Follows-Chalk, who bludgeoned the corpse aside and put down another man with a shot from his .45. The tribal brought down his warclub on another head as they retreated over the bodies of the dead, the tip of the club specially shaped for this purpose. He kicked another Legionaries legs out from under him, dodged a second blow, and blew the man away as the slide on his .45 locked backwards.
He holstered the pistol, not having the time to reload it, and grasped the handle of the Storm Drum that hung from its sling at his chest. Racking the cocking hammer back on his belt, he swept the summit of the wall with an arc of chattering gunfire, .45 ACP throwing Legionaries back in a hail of high-velocity lead. Some did not die outright, as their armour absorbed some of the sub-calibre projectiles. Lantaya shielded him to the best of her abilities, finally unslinging her own assault carbine to conserve her biotic strength. "Goddess preserve me," she uttered, voice lost in the din.
She opened fire after pulling back the cocking handle on the Armalite derivative, burst firing in the way that had been taught to her many centuries past by her Huntress trainer. 5mm green-tipped. The Wanderer had described these rounds as light-armour piercing, and they certainly cut blistering trails of blood in puffs of liquid as they zipped through flesh and steel plate, hardly slowed by the obstacles in their path. The recoil was negligible, which was important for Lantaya's slighter frame. If she attempted to fire the Courier's higher calibre carbine without the aid of biotics, it would surely crack her shoulder bone with the recoil.
And still the Legion kept coming, flooding the wall's apex with bodies, the most organised formations now taking to the wall in ordered ranks. They marched in lockstep, beating weapons on armoured chest plates, and chanting in Latin as their boots crushed the dead beneath them. The Red Okie Centuria, composed of Veterans from the campaign up the I-40 interstate. Men filled to bursting with the rewards of violence, prideful and incapable of surrender. Convinced of their superiority, and when confronted with a match to their strength, utterly unrelenting. They chanted Retribution to the skies, and in the centre of their formation flew the red banner of the Legion, defended by a Centurion and a cadre of veteran legionaries.
Lantaya dropped an empty magazine with a flick of the eject button, inexpertly loading another container of the 5mm rifle cartridges into her rifle. She glanced backwards and was grimly concerned to discover that they were backed up against the burning guardhouse, the only avenue of escape cut off. To her right was the interior of Fort Defiance, swarming with Legionaries with the forbidding glow of the Hospital providing the ominous backdrop. Explosions scattered limbs and gouts of blood in expanding patterns as the Courier pulled pin after pin off of his custom grenades and tossed them down, in-between bouts of gunfire that blew away Legionaries attempting to scale the wall. It would be suicide to drop down there.
To the left was a solid wall of smoke and fire that licked up the side of the wall, the tongues of some primordial force of nature that devoured all it encountered. She winced as Follows-Chalk cracked the kneecap of a Legionary that charged him, springing forwards to shoulder-charge the man off the walls edge and into the fire, to be consumed in a rush of heat and a terrifying scream of anger denied it's object.
To their back, the blazing inferno of the guardhouse that only a madman would attempt to traverse. ED-E swooped down beside her and beeped determinedly as it took precision shots with its laser, burning holes in Legionaries that not even the heavily armoured Centurions could shrug off.
To their front, the solid mass of Legionaries marched forwards, utterly fearless in the face of the carnage, in the face of the Courier. The man they had christened the Monster of the West. Their legends made this man out to be invincible. They would prove it wrong. Just as they had intended to shatter the legend of the Burned Man underneath the hammer-blow of their charge. "Retribution!"
The Courier grounded his rifle butt and pulled out his detonator. "Lani! Barrier, now!"
She grabbed Follows-Chalk by the scruff of the neck and pulled him backwards with all the strength her biotics could muster within her. With shaking hands, she erected the barrier around them. A solid purple dome of biotics interlaced and interwoven into a solid, tangible fort of mass effect fields. Bullets pinged off the dome and thrown spears shattered against it as they all hunkered down and unclenched their teeth. The Courier flicked open the detonator and depressed the little red button, with a savage grin and a muttered, "Boom."
It felt as if a god had brought down his foot upon the wall with all the strength of a titan.
The world around them shook, the front ranks of the Legion plucked off their feet as the shockwave crumpled armour and pulped flesh like fruit in a blender. The neatly ordered ranks were swept from the walls like children's dolls.
Bones shattered to powder or transformed into shards of high-velocity shrapnel that lacerated bodies even as they were flung off the wall and into the swarming mass of black and red Legion below. Earth moved like water, flowing down as the wattle fencing was ripped open in a deluge that buried the crushed and mutilated bodies like debris on the ebb and flow of a river. It buried a stretch of the firepit under several tons of earth, extinguishing it underneath the weight.
The bank of smoke was knocked aside by the expanding wave of pressure, clearing the air as if by magic. The fires below died down, only to surge back once more as the air returned in a rush from where it had been pushed by the detonating explosive charges. Hundreds of ears rang and buzzed in the aftermath, the shocked silence of mortals who suddenly felt the truth of their own mortality forced upon them by the violence of a force they could not combat with arms and armour alone.
The cry of Retribution was muzzled, to be replaced by the cries of the wounded, and the dying. The earth underneath the merry band shifted unsteadily as the Courier pushed himself up from where the explosion has knocked him on his arse. ED-E was clutched in his chest, having been knocked from the sky and into his arms by the shockwave. "Chalk? Lani?! Ye all right there?"
"What did you say?!" Lani asked, shellshocked and dazed by the blast. She pushed the horribly mutilated corpse of a Legionary off of her, it having broken through her hastily constructed barrier, propelled by the force of the blast. She stared at the tangled mess of broken corpses that scattered the battlements, the broken shards of weaponry, and the faints screams that erupted through mouths full of shattered teeth. It all seemed unreal, like a dream that she were walking through in a half-remembered twilight. She wondered if she were currently within another of the Couriers memories, another of his visions. The astonishing ruin that surrounded her couldn't possibly be real, could it?
Chalk stood, shaking his head to clear the buzzing from his ears, reloading his .45 sidearm and his Storm Drum out of sheer habit. His balance was shot, his fingers fumbling the thirty round box magazines for the submachinegun as he slotted them into their rightful place in the receiver. Blood tricked from his burst eardrums, plastering his shiny black hair to his neck. The Courier reached into a pouch and tossed them a stimpack each. Chalk caught his, almost overbalancing, but nodding his thanks. Lantaya watched it as it arched towards her chest and bounced off, as if observing something that wasn't real, and did not apply to her.
ED-E ascended once more into the air, robotic scanners already taking in the lay of the land now that it had been so radically altered. He beeped in triumph, calling the Couriers attention to the breach they had made in the wall.
For through it, striding through the smoke and wreckage, a legend emerged from the devastation like an avenging angel taking to the battlefield. A small group followed him, grim faced men under a flagstaff that bore a sword on a wooden cross.
The nights bloody work had just begun, but The Burned Man, the Prophet of Zion, had come to bring it to an end.