Joshua Graham came over the rise of the breach like an avenging angel, a Light Shining in the Darkness blazing vengeance into the ranks of Legionaries still off balance from the blast. He strode rather than ran, his rattlesnake boots sinking into the now loose-packed earth. He raised his Storm Drum, this one fitted with the fifty round drum magazines that most tribals eschewed for their habit of rattling and giving away their positions. But there was no such reluctance in him. His was the wrath of Abraham when he rode out to fight the evils that threatened Lott, not the slow cunning of Jacob who tricked and fooled in the name of his Lord, or of himself.
The first ranks of the Legion, scattered and broken by the shockwave were cut down in a hail of gunfire before they could rally, or even before they realised who was now amongst them. When they did realise, they backed away in the face of the Burned Man, a terrible spirit of revenge that turned their battlecry of Retribution back around upon itself. They were no longer the ones that wielded the supreme moral right to vengeance. This dubious honour passed to Graham, who laid it about him with the edge of the proverbial shovel. If the Legion insisted upon spreading misery and heartbreak wherever they trod, he would shovel the vilest of curses back upon them tenfold.
Behind him came the Revelators of Saint Michael, and the formidable form of Zachariah Moore, hefting his Rolling Block Rifle and taking aim at a Centurion that charged to meet them. The Legionaries head vanished as the long rifle boomed, sending a .50-70 Gov round through the thick armour plating of the helmet like it wasn't even there. The Centurion crashed backwards into his fellows, soaking them in the arterial spray.
The Revelators screamed the name of their Saint at the top of their lungs as they charged underneath the icon they held aloft, backlit against the flaming trench behind them, "Saint Michael! Saint Michael!"
The flag bearer in their midst, a grim-faced man with muscles like oak, hefted the pole upon which a wooden cross was mounted, bearing the outline of a sword in place of the image of the Saviour. The symbol of the Texas Revelators, who worshipped Saint Michael as the Warrior of God. The fire behind them seemed to make the sword glow with an effervescent halo of light.
Spears flew as some Legion skirmishers retaliated, but those that struck were deflected by the heavy combat armour the Revelators wore or dodged entirely by the wily tribals that came up behind them. Leading the charge next to Zachariah and Graham, Raul blew hole after hole in charging Legionaries with his Medicine Stick, throwing back bodies with the seasoned experience of a ghoul who had been fighting for his life long before these men were even a glimmer in their father's eyes.
Craig Boone cycled through targets like the cool-headed marksman he was, putting 5.56mm rounds in exposed kneecaps, through eyeholes in Centurion helmets, and through the gaps in Legionary armour with unerring precision as he walked calmly through the thick of the battle. He relied on the cyberdogs that loped at his heels as well as the Kevlar and ceramic plate carrier in his First Recon Survivalist Armour to protect him as he took careful, deliberate aim with each round, making every shot count.
Behind the charging main force, several tribals including Shaman White Bird carried a squat object wrapped in tarpaulin up the precipitous breach, feet slipping in the earth as they strained with all their might to move the heavy load. The Courier tucked an empty 12.7mm magazine into a chest pouch and slammed another home. "All o' ye cover Graham! Lani, break out some o' them fancy tricks. Show me somethin'!"
Follows-Chalk and ED-E swooped into the fight, the tribal sprinting to the edge of the breached wall and firing down from the wall at the tightly packed Legionaries further into the Fort, who even now where reforming in the face of their worst nightmares made manifest. He fired in bursts, spent casing twirling down into the void below, clinking around the churning mass of bodies. ED-E trilled his battle-jingle and swooped out over the breach itself, blasting holes left and right with his underslung laser.
"Show you something?" Lantaya queried, balance restored now that the stimpack had repaired her shaken sense of balance, stared at the forming lines of Legionaries below them and blinked in realisation. There was something she could show him. She had hardly ever used it when she was still a Huntress, large-scale engagements being so uncommon in Asari warfare, but this was a situation to which the move was ideally suited.
"…. Do you still have those grenades, Six?"
The Courier cackled once more in a haze of drug induced fury, busy popping heads like it were going out of style but gave her a hasty thumbs up to show he was ready.
Within herself, Lantaya called forth the power that dwelt within her, flooding her nervous system with electrical current and coxing the nodes of Element Zero to full activity. A purple aura of latent biotic energy formed around her as she built more and more of it up, shaping it and moulding it with her mind and her hands in concert with one another. Her eyes glowed with the restrained energy like glittering amethysts inset into her eye sockets. Then she released her creation like she were pitching a baseball, straight at the front ranks of the Legion.
The ball of biotic energy with a distinctly black core raced down from the wall and struck a Legionary in the chest like a charging Deathclaw. Instantly, he and everyone around him were plucked off their feet like the end of a yo-yo being pulled back by an invisible string.
Graham paused for a moment, shrugged, and started neatly executing the swirling mass of floating Legionaries with accurate single shots to the head. Boone switched his aim to those unaffected by the Singularity, spent brass plinking into the dirt next to Raul, who was reloading his repeating rifle with a nod of surprised approval at the witchcraft in front of him.
"Don't want to make her angry," he muttered in bewilderment, "Brujería."
The Revelators stopped in their tracks, and not choosing to go anywhere near the Singularity, or towards the glowing hospital for that matter, set up a firing line on top of the breach. They poured a withering deluge of gunfire down into the Legion, calling out to Saint Michael as they did so.
On the wall, the Courier laughed like a maniac as he pulled the pin on a grenade and tossed it to Lantaya. She, utilising her biotics now for a more meticulous form of attack, launched the explosive projectile right into the heart of the Singularity. It detonated in showers of floating gore, creating a vortex of dismembered body parts and lacerated flesh that circled like the water in a draining plughole.
Another grenade followed, then another, then another, further liquifying the Legionaries being pulled by the score into the artificial gravity well. Pulping them into an unidentifiable mess.
Lantaya's hands started shaking, and in her gut the sickening feeling of observing a massacre began to well up. The feeling of witnessing a disgusting act in all its horrifying reality. She fumbled the next grenade and cried out in alarm, only for the Courier to kick it out towards the Legion forces before it could detonate, or she could use her biotics to push it away. She backed away and slumped down to the ground, nerves jangling like a pair of spurs. Bile welled up in her throat, and she vomited a stream of well-digested food up onto the ground to mix with the blood that she now noticed was sloshing off the edges of the wall or soaking into the earth beneath them.
Bodies, or just pieces of bodies were all around them, mutilated from the blast that had breached the wall, dead eyes staring up at her in the greenish glow of the hospital, and the red of the burning pitch below the edge of the wall. Screams and war cries echoed up from the battle over the breach. She hadn't hesitated. Lantaya had looked at that swirling mass of mutilated flesh and knew that not only had she been the one to create it, but she also hadn't hesitated for a moment to do it.
Nothing that she had ever seen in her life had been that graphically obscene.
She tore her eyes away from the empty, unseeing gaze of the Legionaries that lay dead and dying all around her, and watched the Courier take aim at Legionary after Legionary through the sights of his rifle, ending life after life, adding body after body to the events of a night that had already caused more death than she had ever seen at one time. She now knew with dreadful certainty how a race could contrive to almost wipe itself out through warfare and strife.
Just watching him was enough to imagine a spectral figure, hovering over his shoulder, whispering words of encouragement into the human's ears as he delighted in the slaughter. The faces of the Legionaries below, faces twisted in the same dreadful rictus of savage delight.
The Huntress in her wrestled feverishly to gain back control, grappling with the sane part of her psyche that was rightfully horrified by the carnage they were inflicting. They were now more than thirty humans, robots, dogs, and Asari going up against ten times that number, and she could not afford the luxury of a mental break now. Taking deep, slow, and steadying breaths, Lantaya put her hand on the ground, squelching the bloody mud that was adhering to everything it touched, and pushed herself to her feet. A shard of bone sliced open a shallow cut on her palm, but she didn't dignify the small cut with the courtesy of her attention.
With blood-soaked and trembling hands she checked her assault carbine, ensuring that it was fit for use then advanced to take up a firing position next to Follows-Chalk, and began shooting at the Legion below.
Joshua pistol-whipped a Legionary who took a wild swipe at him with his machete, lifting the man off his feet and spinning into a carelessly held machete blade behind him. He blew two more Legionaries away in quick succession before ejecting a magazine and slotting another into the grip in the blink of an eye, continuing to fire.
Another Legionary ducked under the round meant for him and tried to wrestle the Burned Man down by the sling of his Storm Drum, which was empty, the 50 round drum long since expended to keep the Legion from retaking the breach.
Lantaya's Singularity faded away, its departure largely unnoticed by anyone save the Legionaries who were close enough to it to be washed off their feet by the sudden downpour of severed limbs, pulped flesh, and viscous blood.
Joshua bludgeoned the Legionary down with the butt of his pistol, and the knuckles of his fist, driving the protective steel plate housed within the football padding so deeply into the man's liver that he snapped the floating ribs and made the man cough up blood. He threw the Legionary backwards and brought his bloodied, bandaged fist around in a haymaker that threw two Legionaries off their feet like blades of cut grass.
Rex tore out a spear-wielding Legionaries throat, he and Roxie working in tandem to pull targets to the ground and then go for the vulnerable parts of their body. Mauled Legionaries lay in crumpled heads were the two cyberdogs had relieved them of their throats, balls, guts, and tendons, taking them apart with the savage ferocity of an animal coupled the cruel attention that only humans could bring to bear. Among the ranks of the tribals, Hangdogs let their baying spirit hounds off their leashes to join the fray, the spirits of their ancestors that had been cowed so long ago by Legate Lanius now howling for reprisal.
White Bird and his companions had arrived and were setting up the relic of New Canaan concealed underneath the tarp. Zachariah called out to Graham to fall back, the Prophet of Zion having pushed far forwards to keep a buffer zone between them and the Legion. They couldn't allow the Legion to get close and engage the main body of their more vulnerable troops in the type of vicious melee that the Legion preferred. It was vital that they keep the Legion back, and pepper them with gunfire, bleeding them out in a drawn-out exchange.
But he could not back away now. The Legion were swarming him, the Centurions finally bringing their forces back into some form of recognisable order. Ranks formed in the verdant twilight, and the spreading firelight as the pitch fires climbed up the wall, using the strewn bodies of the fallen and their clothing as fuel.
The stench of burnt hair and flesh mixed with the smell of guts laid open, the sewer-like scent of dying men whose bowels voided themselves as they screamed for release from their torment, only to gain that release as more bodies fell on top of them, and they suffocated under dead flesh, their noses and mouths filling with spilt blood.
Reformed ranks of Legionaries took up the cry of, "Retribution!"
Red and black clad warriors marched forwards, the steel-clad Legion Centurions and Veterans at the fore, reinforced football gear turning aside the lower calibre .45 ACP pistol rounds the tribals favoured. The heavy bullets staggered them, but with less powder in the round to propel the bullet at the speeds of rifle rounds, they clanged and deflected off the front ranks that wadded through the hail with savage glee on their faces.
"For the glory of the Legion!" A tall, broad Centurion carrying a super-sledge bellowed to be heard by his men over the almost constant roar of gunfire from the breach. They responded with cries of approval, stalwart in the face of all the devastating violence that had been done to them that day. "Ave! True to Caesar!"
Though their numbers were severely reduced, the roar of almost a hundred and fifty voices joined with his to yell the refrain, "True to Caesar!"
The banner of the Legion had not risen over all of Arizona by happenstance. These men had taken it with fire and sword, and they had vowed to die to a man before relinquishing control of their hard-won conquest.
Legion sharpshooters ran across the opposing battlements, laying in a raking, accurate fire into the exposed Revelators who formed line to retain the breach as a foothold. Zachariah buckled as a .357 Magnum round found a gap in his plating, between his shoulder and chest plates. The standard bearer was plucked back in a spray of shattered skull and brain matter, the falling staff caught just in time to prevent it from falling. A Hangdog fell backwards impaled by a spear, narrowly missing White Bird who was busy pulling open a US military-issue ammunition container to extract the heavy belt of rounds within.
Follows-Chalk saw this, and as ED-E swooped into to join him, he ran back several feet and took a running leap across the gaping chasm beneath him, sailing straight over the heads of the Revelators to roll to a crouch on the opposite wall. Lantaya baulked as he ran past her, watching his flapping duster stream out behind him in the smoke-clogged air, outlined by the raging inferno of the firepit below. He cracked the skull of the nearest rifleman with his war club, held the body upright to receive the answering volley of shots from his companions, then charged.
Chalk was among them like an animal, dodging shots as he twisted around them, sometimes causing the sharpshooters to hit their own comrades with the speed of his passing. He flipped a man off his feet with a scything blow from the club, dodged to the side to cut off line-of fire for the majority of the rest, and exchanged a savage series of blows with the nearest Legionary. Lantaya saw that behind the obliging smile and oblivious pretty-boy exterior, the tribal was just as practised in combat as his fellows. The Legionary fell back with a cry, his exposed kneecap broken by Chalks underhanded low kick that he managed to land while his opponent was distracted by the swinging of his club.
Follows-Chalk executed him with a quick drawing of his pistol, then took off at a run and was quickly lost to Lantaya's sight as he engaged the rest, ED-E covering him with the occasional blast of laser fire.
While the sharpshooters were being handled, the situation down below was getting increasingly dire. The Legion, now properly formed into ranks several men deep, Centurions and Veterans shielding their less heavy armoured troops with their own bodies, while Prime Legionaries and Recruits were hassled into ranks by the shouting Decanus that acted as the Legion equivalent to an NCR Non-Commissioned Officer. They had discovered a Legion banner in the mess of trampled tents to replace the one that had been swallowed in the fiery creation of the breach, and now marched beneath it as skirmishers surrounded Graham and did their best to drag him down. To keep him from retreating away from the advancing Legion ranks.
And for their bravery he struck them down, one after another, abandoning his Storm Drum for a machete. He decapitated men with scything blows, tore out throats with sweeping horizontal cuts, severed limbs and blinded Legionaries in sprays of blood that soaked his bandages, turning the brilliant white a vivid crimson. A Decanus attempted to duel with him, twirling and flourishing his machete gladius in a move that had probably disarmed many a man not as familiar with a blade as a gun. Joshua closed the distance and smashed the man's face as flat as a pancake with his bandaged fist that gripped his .45, hammering the man backwards with the force of the blow.
He blocked another blade with a clash of metal on metal, deflecting this away in a shower of sparks. "True to Caesar! Retribution!"
A .45 round silenced the men who had the nerve to bellow the Legion battlecry in his face, and the machete took off another's lower leg at the knee. Joshua quietly thanked the dear departed Caesar for not making his rank-and-file Legionaries wear pants. But he was being sorely pressed now, the Legionaries crowding in to attack him four or five at a time. He angled his body to take the worst of the blows on his SLCPD vest and dodged or parried the rest in a clanger of hammering steel.
Then a Legionary that he was exchanging blows with was skewered by a thrown spear, and suddenly three other figures stood at his side. One was a Dead Horse wielding the traditional warclub of his people with a deftness that set him apart from his fellows, crushing skulls and batting aside the slimmer and lighter Legion blades with a speed and ferocity that stymied the closest Legionaries. The other two were tall, black-skinned men with dreadlocks. Twisted Hairs, men who had forsaken the Legion after the death of Lanius and the devastating defeat at Hoover Dam. They had joined with Joshua Graham to rid the I-40 of the Legion horde, and this day they were making good on their promise.
Dreadlocks twirled through the air as their spears whistled, punching holes in any and all exposed flesh, knocking aside blows meant for Graham, holding the mass of Legion at bay as the Dead Horse tribesman pulled his War Chief back. Graham for his own part was happy to acquiesce, his pistol reloaded and back in his hand once more to spit death at all who came within his line of sight. It seemed for a moment as though they would fight their way clear.
But the Dead Horse tribesman was abruptly hammered to the ground like a tent-peg into the earth, his broken arm flapping limply at his side. His scream was silenced as the super-sledge pulverised the man's head and most of his shoulder blades in a single blow. A Centurion strode forwards, pushing the corpse out of his path with a contemptuous nudge of his sledgehammers heavy head. His larger frame towering over the comparatively smaller frame of Joshua Graham, exuding unspoken menace with every step that he took towards the Burned Man. He twirled his super sledge, muscles bulging beneath his heavy armour plating and plumed helmet. Shots pinged off of steel or zipped past him by narrow margins to strike his cadre.
Raising his vambrace-covered arm, a .44 Magnum round from Raul's Medicine Stick scoured a deep trail through the armour before skittering off, spent lead warped by the force of the impact. Two 5.56mm rounds from Boone flattened themselves against the thick chestplate with hefty bangs, before the Legionary got to close to Joshua for a shot to be risked.
The Centurion roared his battlecry and charged. Joshua dodged backwards to avoid the first swing, emptied the last two rounds in of A Light Shining in the Darkness directly into the Centurions exposed face, only for his quick-witted opponent to turn his head to the side and receive the two rounds on the side of his helmet. The tempered steel rung with the impacts like a bell but did not disorient the Centurion enough to prevent the next swing that missed Graham by a hairs breadth. "Perish to me! Retribution!"
Legionaries in the lighter armour of Centuria skirmishers climbed up the mountains of bodies to support their commander, shouldering their way past the dead and dying as bullets struck them down one after one. The Legion sharpshooters on the walls had fallen silent, too occupied with ED-E and Follows-Chalk to cover their fellow Legionaries with their .357 repeating rifles.
Spears flew from the back ranks of the rapidly approaching wall of Legion troops instead, showering the stacked bodies and sticking like porcupine quills in the veritable carpet of flesh that was developing at the base of the breach. One Twisted Hair tribal spun like a top, plucking a thrown spear from the air with a free hand and pitching it back at the skirmisher who threw it, driving the sharp point deep into the Legionaries chest.
The Burned Man twisted and turned in synchronicity with the Legion Centurion, a complex dance of faints and combinations that at times did not seem to hold any correlation with the moves of their adversary. Both accomplished fighters in their own right, veterans of many campaigns and a long history of bloodshed behind them both, they operated with the benefit of that experience. The Legionary swept his weapon in an upwards stroke, removing his hand from the haft in order to throw a vicious elbow to his right side. He had been collared many a time by fleet-footed opponents in the I-40 campaigns and did so expecting Joshua to dodge to the side and run straight into the blow in an attempt to close distance.
While it failed to catch Joshua, who had dodged to the left rather than the right, it blocked a wild stab from the second Twisted Hair, whose spear glanced off the heavy steel vambrace. Bullets and spears cut the air all around them, neither side willing to risk hitting their own in the close-packed melee, instead focusing on each other.
Craig Boone and the Courier were the only sharpshooters skilled enough to risk taking pot-shots at the Centurion, but the Courier was occupied gunning down the Legionaries who swarmed the breach, while Craig's attempts so far had been stymied by the Centurions heavy armour.
Joshua finally managed to close distance, getting within the arc of the Legionaries super sledge by kicking, not the Legionary himself, but the corpse he stood upon. The Legionary swayed precariously, taking a step back to steady himself only to find that the ground underfoot was uneven due to the breaching of the wall, and the corpses of his dead comrades. The Burned Man rushed him, ducking under the hammer head. With forward momentum and the upwards drive of his legs, all two-hundred pounds of the Centurion's weighty frame was picked bodily up off his feet and slammed to the ground. The super sledge rolled away and was lost among the bodies, the Centurion wisely deciding to abandon the weapon than attempt to retain it in a position where it would prove disadvantageous.
The two men struggled for dominance, Joshua raining blows down up the Centurion with clenched fists and gritted teeth, hitting without regard to armour or restraint. His knuckles crackled against the steel, and his little finger on the left hand snapped when he delivered a blow to the kidneys that grazed the side of a protective insert. He kept hitting, his little finger poking out until he hit in just the wrong way, and it was mashed backwards like a snapping twig. The blows continued regardless.
Finally, the Centurion managed to get his legs between himself and his attacker, kicking Joshua away. The ranks of Legionaries were getting terribly close now, pulling themselves up the hill of corpses, Centurions and Veterans standing tall to block bullets while the hordes of Primes and Recruits crawled or surged after them. The Red Okie Centurion charged Graham roaring Retribution to tell his people that he was still fighting, to show them that even against the Burned Man the Red Okie would triumph, as they always had, and as they always would.
A bullet from Boone's Gobi Campaign rifle deflected off the side of his helmet, the heavier and more robust .308 round leaving a deep gouge in the metal. It was an impressive shot. Against a target running at speed from side-to-side, as gunfire and screams broke the air all around him, the shot was nothing short of a miracle even for a man as preternaturally skilful as Boone. He had finally realised that against such a hard target he needed the heavier round with the increased muzzle velocity and had switched the All-American out for the Gobi rifle. And while it had not landed cleanly or penetrated, it gave Joshua the opening he needed.
As the Centurion staggered sideways still carried towards Graham by his forward momentum, Joshua dropped and slid directly into his armoured right shin. His legs encircled it, one rattlesnake boot pressing into the Centurions outside hip, the other into his stomach. His arms twirled around the foot, twisting with all the strength he could muster.
Steel plating would protect against the impact of a bullet. It would protect against a blow from a club. It would protect against the sharp edge of a blade. It could even protect against shrapnel. But unless it were braced properly, armour could not defend against the slow torsion of a leglock. The Centurion screamed in agony as the upper and lower legbones were twisted slowly and deliberately apart, shunting aside the kneecap as they displaced within the confines of his flesh.
"Centurion," Joshua yelled above the din of battle, "When you descend into the black pits of perdition, kindly give Edward Sallow my regards!"
The Centurion opened his mouth in a snarl to re-join with curses and execrations of his own, only for his face to blossom in a shower of grey matter as Boone's .308 round split his skull like a melon. He pitched backwards as Joshua released the leglock and scrambled back. He called backwards towards the two Twisted Hairs, who still held the Legion skirmishers at bay even as the front rank of the Legion counterblow engulfed the forwardmost skirmish-line.
They dodged and ran with sure feet up the slope, sidestepping thrown spears with a nimbleness that seemed more like luck than skill. The Courier, eyeing the approaching Legion, judged the distances involved with a considering eye from his spot high up on the battlements. He shook his head. Too close. He ripped off his helmet and filled his lungs to their upmost limit with air, his chest expanding like a blacksmiths bellows.
"Joshua!"
His shout cut across the sounds of battle like a foghorn, drawing Graham's eyes skywards to see him, picked out against the smoke and firelight on the walls parapet. "Stop an' drop, lad! Browning is 'bout to say hello!"
He needed no other prompting. Reversing his direction with a skidding turn, Joshua sprinted backwards and with a dramatic leap he tackled his two Twisted Hair companions to the ground in a tangle of splayed limbs and muffled tribal curses. He held them there, burrowing down as far as the thickly carpeted bodies would allow.
Above them, White Bird pulled back the tarp that concealed the Relic of New Canaan like a magician unveiling his newest assistant. The squat, tripod mounted M2 Browning Machinegun was firmly braced at the top of the breach, held in place by the climbing rope the Courier had tossed down to them from the battlements, attached to ground pegs driven deep into the earth. White Bird pulled back the charging handle with a satisfying metallic clacking, readying the weapon to fire. Revelators and tribals dived to the side, hastily clearing away from the blackened muzzle.
"Speak loud, Spirit of Browning," the tribal shaman intoned. His hands grasping the two handles and depressing the weapon until it was pointed squarely at the Legion front line. "Speak loud of pain and Sorrows! Speak in defence of your tribe!"
And the spirit of John Moses Browning spoke in tongues of licking fire, the Relic of New Canaan spitting high-velocity death in a voice like thunder. The spirit of the historic Mormon gunsmith, whose works were carried by all New Canaanites, unleashed his fury upon those that would threaten his people. Holes appeared in the marching ranks as men were torn apart in the maelstrom, heads vanished in sprays of arterial blood, metals shrieked as rounds tore through them like a cosmic knife through butter. Centurions that had strode confidently through the hail of small calibre weapons fire were flung backwards, .50 BMG bullets striking them mid-flight, carrying them a metre or more backwards like a paper kite on an autumn breeze.
The trails of death carried through rank after rank, wreaking havoc with their passing. The cries of Retribution were drowned in the blood that flowed in rivers back down the slope. Swathes of Legionaries evaporated into a sickening charnel house of meat and bone, while others survived only by dropping low and hiding behind their fellows. These were not always the lucky ones. The bodies now dropped in thick heaps, burying some survivors under layers two or three bodies deep, crushed by the weight just as they had crushed others underfoot during their advance.
Lantaya picked off screaming men with her rifle one after another, putting them out of their misery as tears started welling up and spilling down her blue cheeks. The Legionaries were not retreating, even in the face of this sudden and overbearing slaughter. It was akin to watching someone stick their own arm in a meatgrinder and voluntarily turn the handle themselves, grimly observing as their own flesh and blood poured from the outtake pipe. She realised then that they could not run if they wanted to. The Hospital was still glowing with malevolent green light. The walls were surrounded in burning pitch, and the gates were barred closed, across several hundred metres of open ground.
And in their hearts burnt the pride of a Nation. They had come here to set a trap for the Burned Man, to fight the ghost that plagued them, steel against steel, man against myth. If they had not been prepared to die, the Red Okie would never have come. And so they fought on, stacking up behind the bodies and throwing spears at the thundering gun emplacement that traced lines of death across their broken ranks.
It was a slow death, long, drawn-out. The Legionaries fought for every last breath of air, stubborn, even to the last. Follows-Chalk put a .357 magnum round through the heart of a comparatively inexperienced Prime Legionary who attempted to run, despite the rage of his Decanus. Boone picked off the same Decanus with a well-placed shot from his dwindling reserves of ammunition, along with many other survivors that exposed themselves by even an inch, ED-E relaying Legion positions amidst the bodies to him from on-high.
Raul stood tall with both revolvers in hand, worked his triggers like a virtuoso. He emptied all twelve rounds in a continuous chain of shots. His last bullet missed its intended target, a Decanus who use the machineguns narrow field of fire to engage a Hangdog tribal in close quarters. Raul holstered one revolver with his customary twirl and extracted a speedloader already pre-loaded with six .44 Magnum hellcats. Before the empty casings had finished clattering on the ground he had their replacements slotted in and the cylinder flipped closed. He fanned the hammer twice from the hip, blowing the Decanus backwards in a spray of blood.
The Revelators readied themselves for the work that would inevitably follow. Browning's voice trailed into silence, the barrel smoking in the night air. Every ear within a hundred metres rang with its absence. A thick heap of spent .50 calibre brass casings lay next to it, and White Bird leaned back with a sigh. "You see?" He asked the screams that echoed around the confines of Fort Defiance, now audible without the thunder of the heavy gun to drown them out. He did not expect an answer, or rather, the screams themselves were answer enough.
The Revelators charged forwards and down into the carnage below, tribals following the banner of the Cross and Sword in a rush of vengeful savagery. White Bird sat still, dropping his head low, hands on the earth below them as if he were praying to God in the midst of tragedy. "Forgive us, Father in the Cave," he whispered, hardly hearing his own words over the ringing in his ears.
The screams of pain and suffering started to be silenced, one by one, as the Hangdogs let their hounds loose to root through the bodies for survivors. They were dragged out of the piles, from the hollows in which they waited, still fighting with any weapon that came readily to hand. As the main assaulting force advanced into the killing field, the Courier dropped down from the summit into the breach, sliding down the rent in the wall to the blood-soaked ground below. He made for the spot where they had lost sight of Graham. "Joshua! Joshua?"
There was no distinguishable reply over the sounds of the dead and the dying, the wrathful shouting that accompanied the occasional bursts of gunfire. One by one, or in small groups, survivors were being brought down and executed. Some, some very few who had not yet been with the Red Okie long enough to be so fanatically loyal to their banner, begged for mercy. Some even received it. Amidst the devastation the Courier was joined by Raul and Boone, who kept their weapons at the ready in case a Legionary burst from the piled corpses. Follows-Chalk stood upon the wall, clearly casting about with the same intent as them.
"Joshua!" He called out.
Dodging a tribal who ran past to join in on the hunt along with his fellows, the Courier trekked through the bodies to the spot where Joshua and the Centurion had fought. His foot found the first hint of the conflict, tapping the haft of the discarded super sledge the Red Okie Centurion had dropped during the grappling. Boone set up a perimeter while Raul cast about with intelligent eyes. "Mister Graham?" he called out.
The Couriers keen senses could pick out nothing specific in the overwhelming mess of conflicting signals. It was impossible to smell anything other than burnt gunpowder and flesh, human waste or the copperish odder of spilt blood in the air. Impossible to hear an individual heart beating over the screams of agony, and the continuing sounds of combat. Lantaya sprinted up behind them as ED-E swooped down low over the sea of corpses to conduct a close-range scan with his inbuilt sensors. ED-E warbled dejectedly at the Courier, who continued to search, pulling suspect bodies aside. It should have been simple to find Joshua's normally pristine white-clad form in this ocean of red and black, but when he had last been seen his clothes had been soaked with the blood of Legionaries.
"Boss! Look at the Hospital. That glow is dying down."
Together they glanced upwards at the Old Indian Hospital, whose ephemeral green light was beginning to grow noticeably duller. Windows became deep pits of blackness against the flickering firelight outside as whatever demonic force that had produced it died away. It suddenly became apparent to them the number of bodies that had piled out of the windows and doors, only to collapse in the courtyard outside, wracked with pain. His nose picked up the faint smell of ozone and radiation burns even through the miasma of the battle, which meant that up close the stench must be overwhelming. The Courier cursed under his breath, then pulled Raul aside. "It'll be a radiation leak o' some kind. Go up there and pull those Revelators back, an' the bloody tribals too. Don't let them near that buildin'. Keep a watch on it!"
"I'm on it, boss. What about you?"
"I'm gonna look for Joshua," the Courier replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "Ain't leavin' 'til I find him."
"We even sure he's still alive, Boss?" The ghoul asked tentatively. Boone snorted derisively. Raul took his meaning: If NCR First Recon had failed to put the Burned Man down with their long rifles, then there was no way in hell that crispy bastard would die in this shithole of a Fort. Especially not at the hands of Legionaries. "I'll fuckin' find him, don't you worry 'bout that. Just keep those tribals and Old God Worshippers from meltin' their faces off. I'll be over soon," the Courier reassured his friend, waving him off as he turned back to his search.
"Alright then. Don't be too long boss, I don't fancy turning feral."
Raul sprinted away at the speed of a much younger man, one hand on his bouncing holstered .44 Magnum and the other on his hat as he hurried to make sure that their allies wouldn't do themselves harm. He was a ghoul, so radiation wasn't as much of a concern for him as it was for a human. It was fortunate for them that the old Vaquero had chosen to come with them, rather than stay behind at the Lucky 38.
The Courier cast around, then bit his lip and whistled long and loud. Rex and Roxie perked up their heads from several dozen metres away, tilting their cybernetic-filled heads to one side as the tribal hounds they accompanied pulled a screaming Legionary out from under a pile of bodies by the ends of his torn hamstrings. The two cyberdogs loped towards him with long, easy bounds, slowing to a brisk trot when they had close the distance. "Rex, I need ya to find Joshua, boy. Can ye do that for me?"
Rex whined and shook him coat of fur in protest. His master shrugged, "So fuckin' what? Cry me a river lad, we all got problems. Tell ye what, plenty o' meat about at the moment. I'll cut us some steaks to eat later."
The two dogs perked up and exchanged looks. Rex woofed excitedly and danced about from side to side, dropping down into a playful posture as his tail wagged high in the air. The Courier frowned, then grabbed the hound by the scruff and wagged his finger in front of his dogs face. "Don't be pushin' yer luck, Rex. Two each is as high as I go. I'm not yer personal chef."
They held each other's gaze for a moment, then clearly thinking better of it, Rex thumped the ground contritely with his tail and idly licked some of the blood off the Courier' sleeve with his voluminous tongue. "I should be thinkin' so. Watch yerself."
He let Rex go and the two cyberdogs put their noses to the ground, searching for the start of Joshua's trail. Boone raised the All-American to his shoulder and squeezed off two shots that felled a Prime Legionary who had managed to wrestle away from for the tender mercies of the Dead Horse tribals. Both centre mass, straight through the gaps in the Legionaries steel chestplates. The body slumped mid-stride, tumbling off to the side down a steep incline of bodies, followed by the Dead Horse tribals, hooting, and hallooing like a pack of baboons on the hunt. What they did to the body remained unknown to any save themselves, but when they came back into sight over the inclines edge, they were sheeted in blood and laughing like schoolboys. Lantaya watched, hands still shaking slightly as her emotion warred within her.
This situation was by far the most troubling exhibition she had ever witnessed. If humans could do something like this to themselves, could she really justify unleashing them on the galaxy at large? How long would it take them to turn everything they touched into just such a massacre. She watched as the Courier cast around, nostrils expanding and contracting as he tried to pick up a scent, his dogs casting about his heels with noses to the ground. He would not be the only one looking for a lost friend in the mass of corpses this day.
A cry prompted her to look back up the slope to were several Revelators had stripped the combat armour vest from Zachariah and were frantically attempting to stabilise him. Blood flowed across the expanse of hairy chest, and a dour man knelt next to the working medic, holding a small cross in his hand and daubing clear water from a ceremonial flask onto what was left of the former standard bearer's forehead. The once so formable man lay with eyes unseeing as his Last Rights were administered, not a metre away from a man who might well join him before the day was out. A stimpack hissed as it was administered.
Lantaya was drawn from her thoughts by a commotion as the cyberdogs and the Courier both picked up a scent at the same time, following on behind it as if they were being led on by the tips of their noses attached to an invisible fishing line. The dogs barked, the Courier yelled at those present to follow him, and they did so, working hard to keep up with the Courier long stride and the cyberdogs scurrying run. They fell behind quickly, despite only travelling a dozen metres or so. It was almost impossible to compare on rough terrain next to a superhuman cannibal whose uncannily sure footing seemed to make him glide over the carpet of bodies as if he were running on smooth asphalt. Not to mention the cyberdogs, whose four legs made them naturally stable on most ground. ED-E circled above it all with an excited warbling, letting Follows-Chalk on the wall know that they had the trail.
Once they caught up, the Courier was digging through a deep pile of bodies that had dropped or skidded to a halt as the first hail of .50 BMG rounds had struck the Legion ranks. The dogs barked raucously or grabbed onto the bodies by a limb each and tugged them out of the way. Boone slung his rifle and helped; his bulky, musclebound frame well-suited for the task. Lantaya considered helping but noticing that the humans were all occupied, and with her biotics currently exhausted from the fighting, stood to the side with her assault carbine and provided perimeter security.
A muffled shouting could be made out underneath the layers of flesh, which grew louder with each body removed. Finally, the last corpse was pushed aside, and Joshua's bandaged face squinted up into the press of faces as Roxie excitedly licked his bandaged face. The two Twisted Hairs and he were packed like sardines into the hollow they had been buried in. One immediately flailed for the edge of the hole assisted by Boone, coughing, and spitting up a stream of blood and vomit onto the ground. He had been closest to the bottom, head jammed tight into the ground and partially submerged in the pooling blood that had begun seeping down through the bodies. Most of what he vomited up was not his own. Boone's expression hardly changed, though internally he pegged the man as a likely casualty. He had seen as much after Bitter Springs. Serious blood inhalation could cause pneumonia. This man could be walking dead, and he wouldn't know it until days later.
The Courier however, stood over the hole and laughed boisterously at the bedraggled men within. "Joshua! For shame, I find ye here laying down with a bunch o' men, drinkin' blood like a bunch o' regular Gomorrahans! All while we're out here fightin' for our lives against the Legion," he put his fists on his hips in mock annoyance, "What have ye got to say for yerself? What were ye makin' that poor black lad drink? For shame!"
Joshua propped himself up in the bloody pit and regarded his oddest friend with narrowed eyes as the second Twisted Hair was dragged out from beside him through the combined efforts of two cyberdogs and two men, hands slipping on the blood-slick skin. "Look to the beam in your own eyes before you pass comment on my splinter, Courier. You who stewards the City of Sin," Joshua spoke as he wiped blood from his eyes and fingered his crimson bandaging. "The rumours say you lie with a thousand men in an afternoon."
The Courier hooted with laughter at the returned jibe and reached into the pit to drag Joshua up from the depths, patting him on the back with a force that would have knocked some men off their feet, but barely budged Joshua in the slightest. "Ye live a charmed life, Graham! Yer God must work overtime to keep ye alive, ya crazy bastard."
"Yes," Joshua agreed with a nod to the two tribals that lay gasping on the ground not too far away, "Though the acts of mortal men should not be discounted, either. Thank you all for aiding me."
"Will have to tie this day into my hair," the most conscious of the two tribals nodded humbly in reply, one hand squeezing his companions shoulder as he continued to hack up blood, "Say I was saved by a Burned Man, and a Monster from the West. This was a hard day, a day to remember."
"Yer welcome, Twisted Hair. Only ever met one o' your tribe an' he seemed to think he was the last o' yer tribe alive. Be a shame to lose another."
Both Twisted Hair's perked up at the mention of another of their people, eyes peering out from underneath dark brows. Before they could enquire further, Joshua patted the Courier's shoulder and pointed, "Look."
They turned and watched as a Legion Centurion stumbled from the Hospital, helmet held in his trembling hand. His face was that of a ghoul, ravaged with radiation burns and peeling skin from bloody flesh. Teeth dropped from his mouth; hair fell in clumps from his skull. The Centurion stumbled under the weight of his armour and went down to one knee in front of Raul. The ghoul had the dying man at gunpoint with a drawn revolver but seemed content to keep his distance as the Legionary vomited on the ground, helmet tumbling away before the awkwardly protruding plume brought it to a halt.
A figure materialised from the darkness within the Hospital, weapon at the ready. The Wanderer waited until the base of the Legionaries head was in view, then executed the survivor with his Perforator. A single bullet, separating the brain from its steam with the precision of a neurosurgeons scalpel. Raul regarded the Lone Wanderer for a moment, then twirled his revolver and holstered it without a word.
The Courier turned back to Joshua and clapped him on the shoulder, "Got to run. You'll be alright?"
His voice held a real note of affection for the bandaged War Chief, one that Lantaya felt striking coming from a man like the Courier. She supposed she shouldn't be so surprised. The Courier, despite his oddities and peculiar practises, seemed to engender quite an astonishing degree of friendship among his fellows. She watched as he sprinted away through the thickly piled bodies and considered another possibility. Perhaps the reason why she had seen so many of his friends, and so few of his enemies, was because his friends were the only ones still alive.
"Raul! Wanderer! Did ya find what caused that leak?"
Raul shook his head at the approaching Courier and gestured towards the hospital with a grim expression on his haggard face. "No, ask your metal friend. He just came out. And boss?"
The ghouls grimace deepened considerably in the flickering firelight that still illuminated the Fort from where the fires still licked up the side of the walls. It was spreading now, and the Revelators were moving the casualties away from the wall in case it spread too far towards them, mouths wrapped in handkerchiefs and bandanas against the smoke. The ghoul glanced from the Hospital to the Wanderer, who knelt beside his rifle switching out an empty mag. "Wouldn't go in there," Raul cautioned, "It's bad. Even by our standards. Haven't seen anything like that glow since the day the bombs dropped."
The Courier blinked, eyeing the Hospital cautiously as he checked his Pip-Boy's Geiger counter. It was ticking faintly, getting louder the closer he walked to the door. His boots crunched to a halt next to the Wanderer, who had stood up and was regarding the massacre that had occurred in the courtyard with dispassionate, coal-black eyes. "The Hospital is cleared of all Legion activity," he addressed the Courier, "I have performed a clean sweep from the basement upwards to the roof. This one Centurion was the only survivor. No prisoners were present. Intelligence regarding the presence of slaves I have concluded to have been heavily suspect."
"How many dead inside?" The Courier queried, taking a peek through the doorway into the gloom within. He grimaced involuntarily at the corpses within and looked back at the Wanderer. Raul was not exaggerating. It was bad. Even by the standards of their frequently gruesome experiences. His blood sang involuntarily as the radiation lent him a burst of strength and vitality, closing some of his smaller cuts and scrapes.
"Forty-eight in the basement. They appeared to be billeted down in the lower level to remain out of sight. Twenty-three on the ground floor, and another thirty-nine on the upper-floor and the roof. Not including those that chose to throw themselves off the building when I began my sweep of the building."
The Courier stood and gazed at the Wanderer, reading the meaning in-between the lines. The Wanderer said that the Legion had begun evacuating the building in response to his attack. From outside, it had been clear to him that they had started evacuating as soon as the radiation had started pouring through the building in waves of silent death. Over a hundred lives snuffed out in less than half an hour, writhing in agony as the radiation rotted them from the outside in and the inside out. "An' if I asked ye what caused that radiation spike, what would you say?" The Courier probed.
The Lone Wanderer met his eyes, steel grey against coal black. "Operational security has to be maintained," the Wanderer stated, flatly, barely human in his tone and facial expression, "Direct all queries to the Alpha when field operations are complete."
The Wanderer chambered a round with a metallic rasp of the charging handle then walked away. Following him, the eyes of Raul and the Courier observed his back as the stealth field kicked in with a dull crackle, obscuring his retreating form from view.
Raul ambled up behind the Courier, nudging the corpse of the Centurion with the tip of his dusty boot. The ghoul stared at the necrotic skin that still clung and hung off of the dead man's skull like old wallpaper, thinking on how similar a sight it to what it was he saw whenever he looked in the mirror. "Strange world we live in, Boss. Sure we can trust that one?"
The Courier shrugged, for once not at all sure of his answer. All around them, Fort Defiance burned, or echoed with the cries of the dying. The night was still young, and even with the fighting done for now, they had much work to do.