In the darkness was where men went to die.
The darkness of the DC Metro, illuminated only by the burning corpses of those unlucky enough to have been caught by a gout of burning petroleum from a flamers muzzle, a stray radioactive barrel, or a patch of glowing mushrooms that carpeted the water-slick surface of the aged and degrading concrete underground. There was only one way in and out of the DC interior, and that was through the darkness that all wastelanders feared to tread. The growl of feral ghouls drifted up from the manhole covers at every city street corner. Super Mutants prowled the darkness as chains holding up their grisly stores of human flesh and gore clinked gently from the soft breeze closer the entrances to their underground domain. Raiders huddled around candles that flickered and sputtered, their weak flames holding back the scourge of the underground. All was bleak and grey, where any colour at all could be made out within the appalling, all-consuming Dark within which everything eventually withered and died.
And down there in the Darkness, the gunfire echoed. Screams drifted through the tunnels like the voices of ghosts from ages long past, dying away into screeches that made it seem as if the derailed railcars still ran on their rusted tracks, sending shivers down the metal to herald their passage. Small motes of dust detached themselves from the ceiling as explosions from some place far above or below, it being difficult to tell so far underground, rocked the foundations of the Metro.
Metal clinked against concrete as a column of raiders slowly worked their way down the rusted tracks, the crudely sheered rebar rods wrapped in pitch and oil-soaked rags holding the darkness at bay, giving them just enough light to see in the gloom. Their gaunt and granite hard faces concealed behind fabric masks upon which they daubed oil or ash to create hideous facsimiles of faces, human or otherwise, to terrify their victims. On their backs they carried the tools of their trades, wicked bladed weapons, or slung rifles. Long gone were the days when Capital Wasteland raiders gangs wore little more than spikes, rusted metal plates and apocalyptic bondage gear, armed themselves with little more than pool ques and harsh words. As the prey evolved and matured, so too do the predators.
Makeshift clothing stitched together from any fabric that could be found into ugly but profoundly serviceable rags, overlayed with far more robust salvaged armour. Metal plates spot-welded and hammered into the proper size and dimensions, hardened leather with metal studs, and even some combat armour stripped from the corpses of dead Talon Company mercs. Talon Company: once a force respected and feared by all who lived in the ruins of Americas decimated capital, now scarcely more than a raider gang itself whose gear could be looted from any number of old battlefields or raider stockpiles.
The leader of the raiders, a bulky man known to his subordinates as Hunch, leaned on his long-barrelled R91 and scrutinized the surrounding blackness. He was a smart man as Raiders went. This he credited to the fact that he seldom partook in Chems or alcohol. They rotted the brain he maintained to his companions, and in a quickly developing world where their desired victims were becoming vastly more numerous and heavily-armed, a raider couldn't afford to sacrifice his mind. Not if he wanted to live to see the morning light glowing through the grating of a Metro Station entrance. Not if they wanted to have food enough to feed themselves more than once a week. A functioning brain was the best thing to have if you were to be a marginally successful raider. Especially in this town.
The DC interior was becoming bandit country for the self-proclaimed bandits. Even now the distant gunfire and screams could be heard echoing towards them through the Darkness.
"Spike," he murmured softly through his oil-impregnated face covering, a large bolt of bed-sheeting he'd cut from a motheaten pre-war mattress and sewn into a functional balaclava. Spike came sliding up behind him in the darkness, his hand playing with the deadly array of sharpened shivs and knives that had given the slender men his name.
"Hear that?"
Spike cocked his ear to the left, listening past the occasional shuffling that carried up from behind them as their companions took up positions on either edge of the tunnel, weapons cradled at ease or pointed backwards of forwards down the tunnel. Rear-guard and fore-guards ever vigilant for the barest hint of trouble.
"Ghouls?" Spike croaked. He had taken a combat knife to the throat some years previously, that had nicked the side of his voice box. Combined with a crippling addiction to Jet that he'd kicked once his throat could no longer accommodate the inhalers, and he sounded something like a ghoul himself.
"Ferals," Hunch confirmed. He could hear them in the next passageway. This subway line converged with another track a hundred feet ahead or less, running side-by-side for a span before the dividing wall sprang up once more between them. He had trodden this line frequently back in the days before he and his gang had needed to shift routes to avoid the patrols. Years ago, when Heavy-Kim had been the boss, and Hunch was just a young man who barely knew how to work the bolt on his shitty hunting rifle. Heavy-Kim had died, killed by the Wanderer, and stripped down for brass and ammo.
That made Hunch one of the last who remembered that if you took this Metro Tunnel down to this upcoming intersection, hopped the low divider, then walked back up the way you came on the opposite track, you would come to a maintenance hatch that opened out into a crawlspace above the Exit from Eastern Market. Where Anacostia Station let out into Seward Square. Where the Raiders of DC currently struggled against the greatest threat to their lives they had yet experienced. Not even the Lone Wanderer, that one-man wrecking crew who'd chewed through raider gangs like a chainsaw through plywood, had threatened the Raider gangs enough to induce them to band together for survival.
But here they all were. Imminent and unavoidable death had a way of forging strange alliances.
"They're riled up by the gunfire, Hunch. No walking up on them like this. They're close to swarming as it is," Spike ground out through his horse throat. His fingers flipped and twirled his shiv in a nervous tick that signalled just what he thought of this whole deal.
"We gotta push through them then," Hunch stated with a certainty he didn't feel. The plan was to draw those fucking mercs into a stand-up fight at Seward Square, then he and his gang were meant to ambush them from behind using the secret maintenance hatchway. If they could break the line here, the hope was that they could buy enough time to reorganise. Enough time to do…. something.
They were caught between a rock and a hard place. That much was certain. You knew it was bad when the plan wasn't about finding a way out, but just buying enough time that maybe, just maybe, you'd survive to see tomorrow. That you wouldn't be lost to the Dark. But once the first shot was fired, they'd need to be quick. Gunfire echoed in these tunnels and carried long distances as it amplified and reverberated off of walls and tracks. An ambush wasn't an ambush if they heard you coming.
Spike nodded grimly, then growled over his shoulder to the front of the column in a voice like sandpaper. "First twenty men. Set up a firing line. Ghouls up ahead."
The front third of the column fanned out in a rumbled of steel-shod boots, battle-scarred men who at one point in their lives had been feared by every two-bit Waster from the ruins of DC proper, to the foothills around Raven Rock. But when civilisation came knocking, and the inexorable march of progress crunched the first body beneath its combat-booted feet, they realised what it meant to live in a world where the law finally had enough guns and warm bodies to take the anarchists and break them over its knee. After two-hundred years of utter mayhem and chaos, playtime was over. It was fight-or-die. God only knew how widespread the fighting was. Word was, the entire Metro was becoming a battleground.
"Forward," Hunch ordered, and the slow march began.
Feral ghouls rose upwards from where they hunched or stood vacantly staring out into the darkness through milky white eyes, cracked and blackened teeth rising out from behind their rotting lips. The firelight from the torches cast an ominous glow over their spindly figures as the Dark retreated, leaving the Ghouls visible to the naked eye and the feted stench and faint haze that betrayed the presence of two Reavers in the press of moving corpses.
The Raider line advanced, then knelt. Ten by ten, two men thick. The front line knelt while the back line aimed over their heads. That was the way when fighting ghouls. Accuracy by volume of fire. You never bunched up like this when fighting mercs.
Then they opened up.
The hail of 5.56mm rifle rounds, stubby 9mm pistol bullets, 12- and 20-gauge buckshot and solid shells shredded the feral ghouls into a twisted heap of jumbled limbs and punctured torsos. Heads came apart in showers of decayed brain matter, and both Reavers staggered under the onslaught. One took a single, shuddering step forwards, hand held outwards in front of its howling face like a man forging his way through a storm, bullets pinging off the remains of the pre-war combat armour it had worn for the last two-hundred years. Then its knee disintegrated, and it toppled forwards.
"Stop firing!" Hunch roared over the din.
The line of muzzle flashes faded, leaving behind their phantoms that blotched his field of vision like a bad Psycho trip. His ears rang, and he banged the side of his head. His balaclava had mufflers stitched into the fabric around his ears, but nothing could block out the sound of tunnel gunfire.
"Forward!"
And forward they went, the front rank slinging their firearms and drawing steel to conserve ammunition and reduce the noise. One thunderous exchange of gunfire, hopefully lost in the tumult of the gunfire several levels below. They stepped over the ghouls that lay tangled in sweet repose, finally put to rest. The blades rose and fell as the Raiders grunted and cursed. Spike was among them, showing the newbies how to really get stuck in with a blade. How to keep your edge aligned. No good to go chopping away like Butcher Pete in a melee. You had to aim with a blade, just the same as you aimed with a rifle. Precision was important.
Hunch fidgeted, then issued the order. "Finish up boys! We're on the move!"
The firing line obeyed the order, finishing the two remaining ghouls that still twitched and flailed in the heap of carnage they had created, then fell back over the corpses in a rush of booted feet to re-join the column. They pushed on, leaving the stinking pile behind as quickly as they could. The quicker the better, Hunch thought privately, though he made sure not to betray any hint of his nerves to the surrounding Raiders. Once upon a time, this would have been because he feared the pack would tear him to shreds the second they scented weakness in him.
But nowadays? After all they had shared, the long hours spent contemplating their own mortality in the darkness that they all knew would be the shroud that wrapped their corpses when death finally came. Now he wanted to die with dignity, and he wanted them to do the same. Lead by example.
They reached the divider and swarmed over it like a tide of insects, dropping down onto the new tracks in twos and threes. He and Spike went over at the same time, the wiry man pausing at the summit to grab his hand and help him up. They paused here, ushering the herd of Raiders man and women alike down the passage. They no longer needed to lead the way now. At the end of this tunnel there remained only one path. The hatchway.
Hunch cradled his rifle and knelt, eying the tunnel up as his men trouped past. Spike knelt behind him, checking his magazine and safety for what probably was the thousandth time. This was it, Hunch thought. The final stretch. The sounds of gunfire and the detonations of explosives were becoming louder to the ear.
He heard Spike cough behind him, a wet, hacking sound that reminded him of the old days when Spike had yet to kick the Jet habit. That had been a long series of nights. Standing over Spike in the darkness of the Metro, keeping the rest from driving the thin mans own shiv into his eyeball to make off like bandits with all his gear. He'd fought for Spike's life while the man went through the withdrawal. They'd been inseparable ever since. "Throat giving you trouble?"
The reply was wetter than normal, a bubbling, gurgling sound that alarmed him. Hunch glanced over his shoulder to catch Spike's reply, only to freeze in horror. Spike had his hands glued to his throat, blood gushing from the newly opened smile that had finished the job that combat knife had started so long ago. The heat haze that faded into substantial form beside him flicked blood from the edge of its trench knife, the sleek suppressor on the end of the chunky 10mm N99 aimed straight at his skull.
"Yeah," Sticky Hand Jack replied, the gas masks filter adding a curiously metallic edge to his voice as he stood above Spikes convulsing body in his combat rig and brown leather jacket, "It is."
Hunch caught the double tap directly in his face, throwing his head back as blood soaked through the daubed animal face of his balaclava. He died instantly, but the string of impacts on his sternum as the Lettersman's suppressed firearm chewed through his chestplate made doubly sure. His body slumped as Los Carlos faded into view from the shadows, supressed submachinegun tracking the fall of the body before switching targets to the backs of the Raiders who had already passed them in the dark. From all around the Raider column, suppressed gunfire erupted.
The leading line of the Raider formation shrank back as a red spotlight activated from ahead and bathed them in a demonic glow. They fired on instinct; the well-developed part of their brains tasked with survival instinct correctly identifying the threat before the rest of their mind had caught up. Bullets pinged off of a hardened metal carapace, deflecting in showers of sparks and bullet fragments. And when a resounding voice boomed out from behind the wall of red light, the Raiders realised just what the darkness had set against them, to ensure they never saw the light of day.
"Hostile detected. Commencing neutralization."
They barely had time to scream before the gatling laser opened up on full auto, cutting a swath through the leading ranks as the rest dived for cover, only to find that none existed. The quick witted among them pulled pins on grenades, the only man portable munitions they had that might do some damage to the Sentry Bot they had suddenly stumbled across, trends rumbling ominously as it advanced with arm-mounted gatling laser and rocket launcher tracking them, even though the solid darkness of the tunnel.
They were the next to fall as figures materialised, stepping from crags and corners behind the Sentry Bot's bulky form like ghosts stepping through from the realms of the dead. Laser and rifle fire filled the tunnel with sudden fury. A Raider was blown backwards by a laser shot that liquified a molten hole through his metal chestplate, sending the grenade tumbling from his grasp to roll amidst his fellows. It detonated in a rush of shrapnel and century old dust that roiled like a cyclone, swallowing up Raider and mercenary alike.
A Raider cursed and depressed the trigger on his weapon. The pilot light at its front flared into life, and a streaking gout of licking flames issued forth from the flamers mouth, engulfing several Raiders and one of their attackers in a fiery conflagration. He swept the flames to the side, baking the concrete into an oven as he emptied his tanks down the tunnel towards the Sentry Bot. The attackers shrank back behind their robotic weapons-system, using the Sentry for cover as screams died into gurgles, flesh melting and blood boiling. The tunnel filled with the smell of scorched plastic, barbecued flesh, and the foul stench of burnt hair. The attackers response to the death of one of their own was immediate and decisive.
From further into the gloom, Wilks, the squad sniper exhaled a breath through his own gas-mask filter and squeezed the trigger. A .308 round turned the flame-troopers head into a dugout canoe, barely a second before the Sentry Bot blew him completely apart with a rocket from its arm-mount launcher. Raiders sheltered in hollows as the tanks detonated in a flood of burning fluid. One detached himself from the rapidly diminishing ranks of his fellow and hurled himself backwards towards the spot where Hunch and Spike had met their untimely end, only to run straight into Sticky Jack coming in the other direction. A trench knife's knuckleduster cracked the raiders jaw, separating upper from lower, before Sticky grabbed a thick handful of hair and drove the blade over and over again into every gap and grove he could find in the makeshift armour, bowling the Raider over until he was seated astride him, his victim jerking as the knife descended once more in the final stroke that pierced the brain.
The Lettersman and Carlos came up behind him in mobile firing stances, feet wide apart and knees bent, leaning into their weapon stocks as they weaved interlocking fields of fire in controlled bursts of expended ammunition. Spent brass clattered on the concrete in a shower of metal that glittered like gold in the light from the burst flamer. They kept clear of the middle of the tunnel, keeping lines-of-fire clear so their stray shots wouldn't hit their companions on the other end of the tunnel. And to ensure the Sentry Bot wouldn't shred them with an errant burst of laser fire. It had an inbuilt IFF that could tell the difference between friend or foe, of course. But you lived longer in the Dark if you relied less on the fancy gear that you were issued and more on your own intuition.
Caught between two perfectly timed assaults from ahead and behind in a long tunnel with no cover to worth the name, Raiders died one after another before a fist clad in a range glove banged on the Sentry Bots metallic dome. "Cease fire!"
The gatling laser cycled down with a dull whine of declining power draw. The Sentry Bot's red eyepieces scanned the butchery it had wrought upon the Raider column, panning its weapons left and right. Its sensors picked up targets that yet lived amidst the mess of corpses. But its orders had been issued. What few targets still struggled weakly as flickering firelight sent long shadows twisting and turning across their moaning forms, were to be left to the organics. It's crude synthetic personality matrix cycled through a list of preprogramed responses and settled on one that seemed appropriate.
"Have a nice day," it rumbled in a deadpan, metallic growl.
"Move up!"
The attackers emerged from the darkness, advancing by twos on either side of the tunnel from both ends of the ambush zone, pumping rounds into anything that moved. Their aim was surgically precise, even in the half-darkness of the tunnel. Unfailingly so, as their eyes could see just as well in the dark of the tunnel as in blazing daylight. In seconds the advance met in the middle, stepping carefully around puddles of blazing flamer fuel. The fire reflected itself in the lenses of their gas-masks as they exchanged hand signals as they pulled back to consolidate back into squads.
Sticky took a knee and reloaded his N99 with a fresh magazine, tucking the half-depleted mag into his chest rig which peaked out from inside his brown leather jacket, strapped across his combat-plated chest. His breath huffed through the gas masks filter as he holstered the pistol on his hip and wiped the worst of the blood from his blade before sheathing it. He plucked the R91 Infiltrator from where it hung on the sling, giving the silencer an experimental twist to ensure it was tight to the threading.
Letters and Carlos came up and knelt down next to him in the gloom, performing gear checks and reloading their weapons in a clatter of retracting bolts, magazine on receiver, or faint clicks as safeties were engaged. Despite the crackling fire, the screams, and the reverberations of gunfire in the distance, they could all hear each other perfectly well. Over the top of the gas-mask straps, they wore handmade earphones that both muffled the sound of combat in the close confines of the tunnels and connected to thickly shielded coaxial cable that snaked over their shoulders and disappeared into bulky boxes affixed to their backs to the side of their rucksacks. Crude ham radio transmitters. Send and receive only.
No fancy stuff, unlike the bulky radio assembly that Carlos carried on his back. He was squad radioman and could shoot a transmission for miles across rough terrain to the nearest transmitter, or down the chain to another radioman with a similar radio assembly. Today however, this was an impossibility. Underground, encased underneath at least a dozen metres of reinforced concrete, earth and rock, radio signals couldn't penetrate. If not for the Bosses arrangements, his radio would serve no more purpose than a particularly unwieldy paperweight.
A ludicrously oversized paperweight. He had a small bundle for personal gear, but the weight of his bulky radio setup meant that Letters had to carry the majority of his gear for him. They were practically joined at the hip for this reason, being partners to the end. Suited both of them just fine. Being able to feel the presence of another of their own so close by held steady their nerves in the Dark of the Metro.
"Lost one," Carlos commented to the rest as they huddled around. They all nodded. They had felt the sympathetic twinge in the back of their minds as one of their own was engulfed in fire. Something deeper than empathy. Something unnatural, that had been a part of their lives for so long it had become the new natural. They also knew exactly who it had been without having to sound off. The squad Mechanic, a tall black man named Flywheel. Another brother lost to the Dark. Carlos's tone was colourless, but they all felt his pain as if it was their own. Letters placed a hand on his leather-jacketed shoulder and squeezed.
They had all known Flywheel. They had all liked him. The entire squad had gone through Basic Training together in the Sim-Chairs before they had ventured out to the Proving Grounds at Old Olney to earn their Patches. It was the final test of their efficacy as individuals, and jointly as a team; to bring down and kill one of the hulking Deathclaws that stalked the ruins. Then to skin it, declaw its massive hands and bring the resulting materials back as proof of their success. It was hard not to like a man who'd had your back through thick and thin, out hunting an abomination of some pre-war laboratory that could tear you to bloody shreds in seconds. Even if you didn't like the guy, you are damn sure to respect him. And in return, they had loved Flywheel like a brother.
A whisper in the backs of their subconscious announced the approach of Sarge, who ghosted from the darkness with his sawed-off pump action held in his hands and his AER9 Laser Rifle slung on his shoulder. Latchkey Kenny and Silver followed on behind him, providing rear guard. Wilks disengaged his stealth field further on behind them, padding along like a prowling cat beside the trundling Sentry Bot whose heavy wheels crushed a corpses charred fingers to dust as it passed. Wilks' matte black DKS-501 with its heavy-duty aftermarket suppressor cut through the thickening smoke the burning bodies emanated they passed, leaving a sliver of eddying currents behind it as it displaced the air with its passage.
"Alert! Non-combatants are advised to leave the area. Security sweep in progress. Lethal force may be used without warning."
"Status?" Sarge enquired of them as he joined them in their huddle, sliding shells from their tiny sleeves mounted on the side of his pump-action and slotting them into the breach one after another. He didn't pump the action yet, however, keeping his hand well-clear of the foregrip spotwelded onto the pump. The pistol-gripped 12-guage didn't have a traditional safety, so he exercised what he liked to call an 'Israeli' safety. Sarge hadn't known why his old colleagues in Talon Company had called it that. Not until he'd met Letters, who told him that Israel had been a country back before the Great War. Curiously, he gave less of a damn now that he did know than he had when he hadn't.
"Flywheel KIA, Sarge," Letters told Gunny what he already knew through the microphone jacked into his gas-mask.
"Combat ineffectives?"
"Negative," Letters replied. Also something Sarge already knew. The habits of a lifetime were hard to break. Sarge had been Talon Company for a decade or more before joining them during the Company's great decline in the wake of Commander Jobsco's death. SOP was beaten into him like a railway spike with a sledgehammer. It would die when he did, and nobody counted on that being anytime soon.
"Wilks," Sarge barked into the comm, "Bag Flywheel's Claw, his ammo, his Patch, and anything else you can hump if it isn't too badly burnt. Then roll him and his gear over into the fire. Make sure nobody can salvage his radio."
Wilks paused for a brief moment, eying Flywheel's body in a respectful silence for a brief moment, then nodded to them from his spot near the Bot, "Wilco."
He knelt down and set to work while Sarge turned to Carlos. "Jack in and tell us what the score is, Los."
They huddled around Los Carlos in the darkness as the Sentry Bot trundled down the tracks at a sedate pass, picking up the slack on perimeter security for the close-knit gaggle of mercs as they crowded around their radioman. Carlos retrieved a cloth wrapped bundle from the side pocket of Letters' backpack and untied the knot that secured it. It unfurled like a flag, to display the pockets within, each holding their own individual tool tightly within its confines. He selected a particular gauge of Phillips head and set to work removing a panel from a long metallic pipe inset into the tunnel wall.
The screws were rusted tight, but with great effort he managed to remove three, and loosen the last enough that the panel lifted clear and swung away from the port on its last anchoring bolt. Inside was a thickly sheathed bundle of cables, that he proceeded to slice open, very carefully with a plastic-handled scalpel. He shrugged off his radio backpack and deposited it before the opening, then carefully clipped several crocodile clips onto the now exposed copper cabling within.
Carlos paused for a long moment with one hand held against his left earphone as it squawked to him, then thumbed a switch on his backpack. Instantly, his relay opened up and their headsets popped as the channel came live. The radioman held up a thumb to the Sarge. Good to go.
"M.A. .T, this is Sergeant Doyle. Authentication code, Tango Sierra Five Zero One. Raider counter-push has been neutralised. We took one KIA, Flywheel Tango Sierra Five Zero Eight, and are ready for re-tasking. Give us a status report. How copy, over?"
The reply was instant, the ancient AI housed at Presidential Metro Station acknowledging the Authentication Code and his vocal patterns. If anyone without a code and unauthorized by the powers that be, had by some miracle managed to obtain one of their Radio Assemblies and attempted this, they would have received nothing but static in reply. For the Sarge, a crackling electronically synthesised voice hummed through their earphones in bursts of static and oddly timed pauses that droned out at a sluglike pace. "Brotherhood of Steel advanced expeditionary force has engaged Super Mutants at Dupont Circle Station advancing towards Metro Central, Teneleytown Station from blocking position at Chevy Chase North, and Raiders on Pennsylvania Avenue South connected to Mall Metro."
Sarge motioned for Letters, who already had the map unfurled before them. Their eyes had no trouble reading the markings on the paper in the darkness of the Metro underground. Sarge traced the lines as they were called out, getting a complete picture of the developing situation while they still had contact with M.A. .T. They heard him muttering under his breath as his mind grappled with the question of where their squad could be employed for best effect.
"Star Paladin Cross reports her intention to set up secondary blocking position at Pennsylvania Avenue East and advance through the sewer tunnels to reinforce Reilly's Rangers at Seward Square North. Mall Security and Underworlders maintaining blocking positions at Mall Northeast and Northwest. Charon and Fawkes reports intention to initiate counter-push through Museum Station northbound towards Metro Central. Jericho and Clover report Metro Junction secure and maintaining security around Vernon Square Station. Tunnel Snakes under Mister DeLoria pushing through heavy resistance at Seward Square to relieve Reilly's Rangers and push through to Pennsylvania Avenue. End Transmission."
With a crackle, M.A. .T electronic voice cut out, leaving only the background buzzing of the open line that awaited their reply for update and acknowledgement. The details sprinted through their minds like gold-medal Olympians at the starting shot. They ran through the list that forming in their brains, mentally ticking off tunnels and connecting tracks. The Lettersman, the smartest among them, was the first to tender his opinion.
"Penn. Ave to Seward North is covered at only one end. So is the Capital Building Line to Seward Northwest," he jabbed his finger at both locations on the map, before drawing his finger significantly upwards to tap the map above Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest. "Brotherhood is only blocking Penn. Ave through to Georgetown. Nobody is advancing through that line yet. If we join the push through Seward, push through to Seward Square North to Penn. Ave then cross Penn. Ave to Northwest Station, we can relieve a whole bunch of Brotherhood blocking forces to push on Vernon through Freedom Street. Then we can push on Georgetown."
They felt his confidence in his statement and reasoning, but all of them knew that the coming months would be gruelling. Advancing through the Metro tunnel systems, engaged in heavy close combat, struggling for every inch of ground. They had already lost Flywheel. If that was any indication of things to come, not all of them would be making it out of this alive. On a brighter note, the Brotherhood had agreed to provide Vertibird airdrops of ammunition and supplies once the surface sectors were swept and secured, and the Tunnel Snakes and Reilly's had Vertibirds of their own ready to airlift out casualties to the safety of the landing deck at Rivet City. That meant chow-hall and restocked mag-carriers once Seward Square was taken. The thought of hot chow made their bellies rumble. He felt the unanimous agreement through the back of his mind, and he nodded in resolution, triggering a chain reaction of nods as the rest of the squad joined him in his decision.
"M.A. .T, let Butch's radio operator know we're headed in his direction. ETA, ten mikes. Out."
"Logging out. Have a good day."
He signalled to Carlos who cut the transmission, removing the crocodile clips, and neatly bundling and tying off the cables for later use. Sarge turned around to face Wilks who had finished rolling Flywheels body over into the sparking puddle of flamer fuel. The sniper held out Flywheel's Patch and Fang, the two identifying marks of one of their number. The Claw was the very tip of the Deathclaws most synonymous appendage, carved and marked with their full name, blood type and next-of-kin. Flywheel didn't have a next-of-kin marked on his. In their squad, no-one save Bryan Wilks or 'Lettersman' Strayer had any family to inform should the worst occur.
Wrapped around the precious talisman, came the most important item of all. Flywheel's Patch, which Wilks had cut from the back of his jacket with infinite care. To be Patched was the highest honour one of their number could receive. It marked them out as the best of the best among the Capital Wasteland's mercenary bands. The Killers of Deathclaws, who had trodden the road to Old Olney and returned to tell the tale. Nobody compared. Not Reilly's Rangers, not the Talon Company, Leatherskins, Regulators, or Underworlders. They could even give the Brotherhood of Steel a run for its money. There existed no finer Light Infantry in DC than them. It was a matter of pride.
With an air of sombre ceremony, Sarge extracted the Claw from within the folds of the Patch and tucked it into his jackets inside pocket for safe keeping. Then they stared at the Patch in remembrance of their fallen, their night-seeing eyes piercing through the darkness to pay respect to their symbol.
A curled green snake with bared fangs, set against a black background.
Capital Wasteland Chapter, Tunnel Snakes.
Then Sarge folded it up and tucked it in after the Claw.
"Fangs out, Snakes. We're heading topside, and we're bringing the Dark with us."
One after another, stealth systems engaged, and they faded from view to be lost in the Darkness around them.
The Darkness of the Metro, where everything withered and died.
And where, if you stayed too long, the Darkness would seep in and make itself a part of you.
Because no-one every really escapes the Darkness. You just lived long enough to become a part of it.