The sound of the Vertibird rotors slicing through the evening air echoed across the city of Washington below, as they skimmed just over the tops of the highest buildings. They flew in close formation, the pilots of the three craft keeping them so in order to disguise their number from the casual listener, dropping down between the crumbling monoliths, all that remained of the great pre-war skyscrapers. Doing so muffled the sound of the rotors from their distant target, the sound reverberating off the intervening surfaces of the buildings and making it impossible for distant listeners to determine their exact location.
But to those directly below the Vertibirds, observing them as they passed overhead, what they were was as clear as the purest crystal. Their thundering rotors were the signal that some unfortunate fool had poked a hornets nest and was about to receive their first, final, and ultimate rebuke. The kind that was done less for the satisfaction of punishing the guilty, and more to set the example for those that would survive the intervention.
Sarge stood tall in the centre of the Vertibirds carrying compartment, his combat-gloved hand wrapped in the straps hanging from the ceiling for just such a use. His knees flexed and bent with the movement of the aircraft, keeping his body level and his form steady. He felt Butch marshalling himself, preparing for the moment when everything would be made clear. They hadn't spent long in the air. It was a short distance by Vertibird to the Statesman Hotel. They would be on station soon.
"You all know your business," Sergeant Doyle bellowed over the reverberations within the metal confines of their conveyance, registering his orders for the coming engagement through their connection as well as through verbal instructions. To tell them directly was more detailed. To make them feel as he felt was more personal. Though, it was never not personal when you were about to kill or be killed at each other's side. "We're landing Latchkey, Rookie, and Wilks on the rooftop of Lady of Mercy Hospital at LZ Bravo. From there you will link up with other Snakes and supply fire support and radio uplink."
Latchkey and Wilks both nodded grimly as they performed rushed checks, albeit superfluous in light of their constant maintenance, upon their weapons. Rook fiddled with the dials on her radio, interfacing the feeds to act as a dedicated relay for the traffic of both her squad and the others in the accompanying Vertibirds. Once they hit the ground, it would be her job to coordinate between their cell and the cells in the other two Vertibirds. Communication was key.
"Courier," Sarge addressed the tall tribal who was hunched into the cramped seat with the sweaty Latchkey on one side and the comparatively diminutive Lantaya crushed into his bulky form on the other. He had the Eyebot of his in his lap, stroking the sleek metal around its antenna with one hand as he smoked another datura rollup down to the stub, in complete disregard of any and all of the other men and women in the confined space. Some however, already had already slipped on their gas masks in preparation for the bloody business to come.
"You and your contingent are being volunteered for temporary duties. Bobby has your weapons waiting for you at Bravo. Your marksman is going with ours to provide support. No, you don't get to object," he cut in before the Courier could register the contention that they were not a part of the Snakes, and therefore not subject to their authority, "You wanted to kill shit, right big man? Well now you get to go nuts, tough guy. You and your team are conscripted for the duration of this operation, under the Assembly edict that states all residents or visitors to D.C. are obligated to assist in its defence in the event of the City, should they be directed to do so by duly appointed officials," the dark Sergeant rattled off like a drill Sergeant on a training field, "You're going in with the rest of the muscle to help clear the building. Kill until their ain't nothing left then secure the entrance and exits. Some with you, preacher! Letters, Rook! Get these men wired up with headsets and mics. On the double."
Rook did so, opening the particular storage compartment that was present on every Tunnel Snake Vertibird. It contained neat stacks of their customised slave radio transmitters, designed to bounce a transmission to the nearest relay operator, like herself, to be shared between those other entities in the network. A circuitous routing that had many intrinsic drawbacks, but one principle advantage. If a slave radio transmitter wasn't accepted into the relay network by a radio operator, it could not receive or transmit. It meant they did not have to worry about individual radio transmitters falling into the hands of the enemy. Operational security was absolute unless someone managed to get physical access to a radio backpack like hers.
And neither any of her fellow operators nor she would ever let themselves be taken alive. When lanes of communication were of paramount importance, security was of equal if not greater significance. She handed them over one at a time to the outsiders, muttering quick series of instructions in their use. Most of the complicated work would be done by her, so they could indeed be short and sweet.
"We have men onsite clearing the AO," Butch intoned from his spot on the bench opposite, still deep within his own mind, "We move when they say go. Radiation in the area is the real deal. You all have Radaway on you and you've all downed a Rad-X. Use it if you need it."
Sarge felt the emotion building in the Bosses mind, swirling, and mixing into something they had all felt many times before. It would be coming soon. His own body was singing like a late-night Blues singer, about how fate and his woman had both done him wrong. About how he was an honest man, doing an honest day's work for a pittance less than he deserved. About all the wrong he'd done as a young, foolish man, and how it really wasn't his fault, momma.
He had no idea why approaching violence brought him in mind of the Blues. But it always did since the day he first heard it. He hummed a few bars which Latchkey and Wilks both picked up on, sharing his liking for the particular genre of music.
The Courier grinned as he released ED-E from his grasp and let the Eyebot float up towards the ceiling of their craft with a string of beeps, wisps of smoke curling from his mouth like the breath of a fire-spewing monster from the depths of some infernal realm. He kept his tongue from wagging at their sudden need for his murderous talents, as Sergeant Doyle turned to regard those that remained.
"Rest of you here are coming with us. We'll be pushing down from the Hotel roof while the other cells take the building. Our priority is the tunnel at ground level, all other contact is to be advanced upon and pushed past or through. We do not get bogged down. You stop for any reason other than an injured comrade and I'll be having words with all of you when the shooting stops. We make for the elevator shaft as primary route, or we rappel down the side of the building if that isn't practicable. Clear?"
There were a smattering of nods in reply, and more transfers of feelings that none but the Snakes themselves were aware of. Some murmured assent over the radio. But it was hardly needful. Merely a formality. As the Sarge knew, and had pointed out from the beginning, these men and women knew their business and knew it well. And knew each other, to an extent that most outside their ranks could never appreciate.
Letters, seated next to Rook and handing the previously so unequipped Mojave newcomers their needed headsets, glanced to her as she received an incoming transmission, holding her finger to the side of her helmet to signal to all that she was not to be spoken to. "Incoming for us from the ground team onsite. Tango Sierra Fifteen Zero Niner. They have an update from the AO."
Sarge tapped his own helmet and motioned for her to transfer the signal. She did so, and he keyed his microphone. "This is Tango Sierra Five Zero Eight. Send your traffic. How's the evacuation going?"
"Finished already, Sergeant," the voice came from the other end of the line. The message had only been put out less than quarter of an hour ago. For them to have deployed and cleared out the civilians in so short a time was impressive. The reason why became immediately apparent at the man's next words.
"But we weren't the ones who did it. An unidentified individual in the AO cleared out most of the locals on the downlow before we arrived. Guy wants to speak with you."
Sarge blinked in confusion, brow furrowing as the sound of the headset being passed over came over the transmission. "The field of battle has been prepared for your coming," a deep, resonant voice issued itself into their ears, "Bring your fury to bear. It will strike none but those whose lives you seek to claim. There numbers stand at six and thirty, heavily armed. Not a one does not carry a long-armed weapon."
"Sure, nice to hear yer voice Uly," the Courier commented into his discrete headset as he adjusted it over his massive head for a more comfortable fit. He would only just be able to use his Riot Helmet while he wore it, which was a blessing considering what was to come.
His skull was reinforced, so the helmet wasn't essential for protection. What made him require the helmet were the gas and radiation filters it sported. He didn't sound at all surprised at the sudden appearance of his colleague, nor that said colleague had managed to stay one step ahead of them throughout the course of the investigation.
"How the hell did you get here before us?" Letters, not as used to Ulysses as the Courier, asked incredulously with his finger against the side of his helmet, thinking of the distance between Statesman Hotel and Pennsylvania Avenue. How in the name of all that dwelt in the Darkness did he manage to find out where to go, get there before them, and clear out the locals in the time it took them to realise what was going on and arrive onsite?
"Cause he's Uly, lad. A man don't spent his life treadin' the lonely road without havin' a quick step an' careful eyes," the Courier stated.
"Are we to be let loose upon the raiders?" Ulysses asked through the radio, ignoring the enquiry with the customary close-lipped professionalism of Caesar's Legions' renowned exploring officers, "We are outsiders to this place, but if your order is to kill, we shall oblige."
"Yer man DeLoria has conscripted us for an evenin's fun an' games, Uly," the Courier answered with a wide grin, absently tapping the barrel of the Survivalist's Rifle, "Guessin' ye know the score, since yer here before us an' all. Make some bloody havoc for us 'fore we get there. An' put yer gas mask on. They're plannin' to fire in the good shtuff 'fore we move in."
"Then let the poison taint the air and mask our steps, like the Cloud of the Sierra Madre, or the winds of the Divide," Ulysses spoke through the vaguely indistinct connection, his naturally resonant voice taking on an almost ethereal and ominous note, "My footsteps shall meet with your own on the highest peak of this place, lead you onwards to the depths you seek. Today, King of Snakes, your message is Death and I am your Courier."
With this ominous proclamation the connection abruptly cut out, leaving behind the crackling of a severed line. Sticky Hand Jack nodded with a casually impressed look upon his face, while Latchkey just shrugged from beneath his gas mask, "Man's got some good one-liners. Bit melodramatic, but I can respect that. Not a patch on Joking Joe, though."
"Active operation in progress," Sarge remined Latchkey as he performed yet another superfluous check on his gear. Butch's meditations were beginning to seep into him through their link, making his blood boil and his muscles tense involuntarily. "Maintain radio discipline."
"Dropping down and coming in hot on LZ Bravo," the pilot yelled from the front of the bird, flicking a number of switches, and slowly bringing his craft into a shallow dive. The rest of the scrambled squadron followed on his tail, rotors beating the air in a cacophony of rhythmic thumps. "Thirty seconds out!"
At this, Butch grimaced as he brought the wash of emotion he had been cultivating at the back of his mind to the forefront, letting it bleed out, unrestrained across their connection. Letters tensed as the feeling washed over him, instinctively shying away from the foreign force. But he marshalled his self-control, and immersed himself into the deluge, taking it into himself as if these emotions were his own. As if they belonged.
He let them fill him from within, take him over. In a sense, he allowed Butch to show him how to feel. And what a sensation it was.
First, he felt the rage. The anger at being so endangered, at having his city and home threatened by an outsider. It bathed his mind with its fiery glow, triggering responses in his brain that rebounded outwards to his adrenal gland, releasing a shot of the natural performance enhancer into his bloodstream.
Just enough rage to make him eager to kill, but not enough to make him take leave of his senses.
Just enough joy at the prospect of a fight to release a wash of dopamine to dull any pain, yet not enough to feel euphoric.
Just enough self-loathing to make him self-sacrificing, but not enough to make him suicidal.
And enough of the Bosses endless reservoir of resolve to be fearless, to stare into the Darkness with unblinking eyes.
Butch always knew the right story to tell himself to provoke such feelings. He knew how to self-motivate. He knew just which buttons to press to get himself fired up. He just had to think back to his memories of Chance, and touch upon the right ones. And that skill, coupled with the ability to share his emotions with his fellow Snakes had made all the difference a more than one occasion.
They looked between one another, feeling the sensation grow as it rebounded through their connections, amplifying the effect like an echo-chamber. It was comparable to being high on Psycho, without the need for the drug itself. Sarge's teeth were peeled back in a feral grin, a partially deranged cast glowing in the back of his eyes that matched the identical gleam in the eyes of his subordinates.
"You boys remember the bad old days?" Sarge ground out, barely restraining the force of the emotion that bubbled up behind his voice. They felt the memories flooding back, provoked by the emotion, by Sarge's voice, thick with rage and hate. Nobody who hadn't been there with them could appreciate the weight behind those words.
The cavernous emptiness that remained after one of their number met their end in the Dark beneath the Metro, their emotions and life lost to them forever.
The pain and the fear as the days upon days of brutal fighting took its toll.
The dwindling hope for the future, as the likelihood of survival became grimmer and more distant.
The first look into the mirror when they finally made it back aboveground and saw their own faces staring back at them.
Faces they no longer recognised, graven in stone, covered in unshaven hair, careworn wrinkles behind which the sunken eyes now lacked the essential spark of happiness or hope.
Replaced by a spark of Darkness, an understanding that cost all who obtained it. You didn't want to know what they knew. They could only bear its weight by sharing it between them, shoulders almost buckling regardless of their unity. Letters felt the phantom pain of his old burns flare up once more but ignored them in favour of the emotion that boiled out from Butch, a balm to his own unruly instincts.
Only Wasteland Veterans like Sarge had the proper frame of reference for the Darkness, what they had done during the Metro Campaigns, and what had been done to them. People like he had been the stolid stoic backbone that kept the minds of their fellows from shattering under the stress and uncertainty. They had both dealt with worse.
Sarge, requiring no confirmation of their recollection of the past events, concluded his encouragement with a statement of malicious intent. "Think these assholes know what real Darkness is? Well, let's show them some real fucking Darkness. Fangs out, ladies and gentlemen!"
"I'm feelin' the presence o' some angry Spirits. Now's the killin' time," the Courier cackled as the Snakes readied their weapons, the three of them who would be offloading first standing up and moving to the front of the Vertibirds compartment. "Don't give 'em too much, lads. They have graspin' hands and large appetites. Lend 'em yer soul an' ye might not get it back again," the tribal intoned. At any other time they might have found his babble unsettling. Now, it was fuel to feed their shared madness. Because you had to be mad to fight effectively. Just crazy enough to take the job, but sane enough to do it right.
Latchkey Kenny was the first to take his place in line, with his heavy mortar tube and a satchel of extra 60mm rounds secured over one shoulder. He adjusted his gas mask and fingered the front of his confederate cap stuffed into his empty gas mask pouch for reassurance, his eyes slightly wild behind the hardened plastic. He bounced on the balls of his toes, keeping his breathing regular past the thumping of his heart against his ribs.
Rook, with her radio apparatus hanging from her backpack straps stood in his shadow. She was tapping out short bursts of morse code that the Snake Radio Operators used to send private messages between one another without clogging up the line with technical jargon. Her eyes weren't as wild as the others, as she did not have the same manner of connection between her mind and the rest. Perfectly calm and in control of herself.
Wilks stood behind her, with his long sniper's implement hanging from his chest and stretching out a guiding hand to keep Boone out of the path of his fellows, whose intention to move he could feel as a palpable and clearly defined surge of purpose.
Boone glanced back to see the Courier teeth sink into the side of his own hand, drawing a thick stream of blood that he let stream down his hand to covers his fingertips. He draw them across his face, smearing the blood across his exposed face in a long diagonal stripe that crossed from forehead to the stubble already beginning to grow on his jaw.
His eyes gleamed like lit matches in the gloomy interior; lips twisted to reveal his savage grin composed of brilliant white teeth stained with his own blood. Craig turned his attention away from the sight, knowing with absolute certainty that his friend was going to enjoy the slaughter to come. Wilks followed his gaze and watched the Riot Helmet descend over the bloody mark, held by a hand that was already healing over, the Courier's grinning visage hidden from sight under the protective headgear. ED-E floated above his head, bobbing from side to side as if this was all great fun. The flighty robot had his laser deployed, internal power supply humming with energy.
Then they felt the Vertibird reverberate as the landing gear touched down on the rooftop, and the emergency light, encaged within the wire mess near the exit hatch, blazed a dazzling amber.
"Gas masks on!"
At Sergeant Doyle's command the assembled Tunnel Snakes donned their protective headgear, pulling it out from belt-pouches just under and to the side of their chest-rigs. Those of the outsiders among the assaulting force fitted the specially-made gas masks over the headsets, hiding both Lani's blue skinned head and Joshua's bandages from view. Craig Boone had his own, which he strapped in place as he took tentative breathes that came out as a string of resounding metallic hisses that blended in with the rest like a kind of odd, industrial chorus.
Scarcely had the last mask been slid into place than the door-light flickered to a vibrant green.
"Roof Teams, disembark!"
The loading door decoupled and swung outwards as the pilot jammed the release, and the chosen group of four rushed from the Vertibird at speed, sets of combat boots hitting the rooftop in turn as they offloaded. Gunfire met Latchkey's ears as his feet hit the concrete rooftop, as well as a flood of emotion from the supporting elements that poured off the other two Vertibirds. The links snatched at each other like grasping vines, connecting all of them together as they spread out across the roof. Latchkey, intent upon his job, nevertheless took a moment or two to share the heady concoction of Butch's emotion out across the link, were it spread like a forest fire among the other Snakes.
The flood of men coming off the two other Vertibirds stood up straighter and drove themselves forward with slightly more vigour as the adrenaline started filling their veins like an industrial water pump. The mortar teams congregated on him like moths to a flame, while he felt, if not saw the sharpshooters do the same as they followed after Wilks. Anyone touched by Butch DeLoria was like a beacon to their senses, spreading the fire from heart-to-heart within as they passed, accepted without question as the higher authority. Touched as they were by the man himself.
The other Snakes had performed a similar exercise in order to hype themselves up on the flight there, but nothing could compare to the fire that Butch offered, flooding their minds, and sending their senses, hormone and adrenal responses into overdrive.
Ulysses and the Tunnel Snakes who had arrived onsite before them had obviously started the festivities without them. Contact seemed sporadic at best for them moment, though that was swiftly changing, the gunfire echoing out in occasional staccato bursts.
Rounds smacked into concrete or whizzed overhead, and some lucky shooter from Statesman landed a shot on Latchkeys breastbone, where the round flattened itself against the Deathclaw leather jacket, the homemade round failing to make its way past the tough organic leather to the discrete ceramic plate carrier sandwiched between ballistic fibre backing.
The Tunnel Snake jacket had the same armour rating as a full set of combat armour chest-plating whilst benefiting from being half the weight, and he also wore a ballistic vest with a plate carrier underneath. Most rounds couldn't penetrate past the jacket itself. Even 5.56x45mm rounds straight from the forges of the Pitt couldn't mark his flesh with anything other than a nasty bruise when matched against his protective garb. He brushed off the impact like it was nothing more than an enraged gnat.
"Rook, tell Six-Ohh-Nine to get his mortars up and firing next to mine," he ordered into the radio, making use of his status as one of Butch's team to take charge of the proceedings, "Airburst over the Statesman and cover the area, don't hit the Vertibirds as they move in. I'll drop my rounds over the front and rear entrances!"
When all three Vertibirds had unloaded their support elements onto Lady of Mercy's rooftop, they rose upwards like birds of prey, two circling around to land their troops on the Statesman Hotel roof and the third and last banking hard around to the front of the building.
They eclipsed the evening sun to those watching from the rooftops, flying in majestic style and evenly spaced formation to prevent mid-air collisions, the pilots handling their birds with skill born of many hours in salvaged Simulation Chairs.
Small arms fire beat a rhythm on the external plating, muzzle flashes giving away the locations of the shooters. "Patching you through to Six-Ohh-Nine," Rook stated to Latchkey before abruptly shifting to a warning tone, "Heads down, Vertibird is doing a firing run!"
There was a sudden rippling echo as the pilot of this last of the three Vertibirds discharged his dual-underslung miniguns, shredding a vast sting of already dilapidated window panes with a hail of steel-jacketed .308 that stitched the building in long diagonal lines.
Broken masonry and shattered glass rained down as ground troops opened up from the ruined buildings facing the Hotel, accurately targeting the muzzle flashes of returning fire to keep the Vertibird covered as their fellow Snakes took to the fast ropes and slide down the long length onto the clear tarmacadam across the street from the front entrance. They set up a perimeter as their cloaking systems engaged, making use of whatever cover they could find to set up and join with their fellows in returning the raider's fire.
Wilks looked over his shoulder from where a long row of sharpshooters were setting up on the building's many vantage points, some of the quickest off the mark already taking pot-shots at indistinct targets flitting between partially exposed windows. He saw Latchkey shouting instructions at a mortar team getting their weapon system situated next to his, making use of the connection Rook had set up for him to make himself heard past the gas mask and the sounds of combat.
Soon, there was a coughing discharge of the short-barrelled mortar as it sent a 60mm round arching skywards towards the front of the building. Latchkey was scribbling in his little notebook, his short pencil scratching the surface in untidy lines as he calculated angles and elevation, relative height and windspeed. "Set elevation to this and use the five second fuses!" Latchkey bellowed through his mask, leaning in to make absolutely certain the mortarman next to him knew what he wanted by shoving the scribbled calculations into his hands.
Somewhere in the throng he could hear Rook's voice raised above the rest as she bellowed orders in a voice louder and more self-assured than her obliging nature and diminutive stature would have suggested. "Eighteen-Ohh-Eight: sharpshooters and mortars crews in position, Vertibirds say thirty seconds until deployment of the Sentry Bots. Wait until hard assets are deployed then advance on the main entrance under cover of the gas clouds!"
"You Boone!?" A harsh voice cracked above the rest. Wilks focused his gaze on a thickset man with a short-sleeved variant of the Tunnel Snake jacket hefting a duffle-bag towards Boone, rifle grasped in the other. His tree-trunk arms were covered in tattoos and misspelled curse words, and his eyes looked positively drunken with feral rage. One of Bobby the Tit's support staff, Wilks seemed to recall. Which was confirmed by the sight of the two heavy Anti-Material Rifle barrels that extended from one end of the duffle, entirely too long to fit inside the bag.
Bryan turned entirely away from the railing, leaving the rest of the sharpshooters to their turkey shoot as Craig Boone accepted the duffle without a word, dropping it on the ground before him before ripping the zipper open. Thus, the NCR First Recon man missed the brutal grin of envious delight shot in the direction of the two long-barrelled .50 Cal rifles, before the man took off towards the line of sharpshooters, eager to get his shots in before the swift assault was over.
Boone crouched down and retrieved the Courier's Anti-Material Rifle. Un-slotting rounds from his chest-rig, he began loading the big gun with deliberate intent, using the rounds that he carried for the Courier in his capacity as his sometimes-spotter. "Wilks," he thundered as he bore the weapon over one shoulder bulging with muscle and slung his All-American and the Gobi Rifle on his back, "Got a spare .50 Cal over here if you can lift it. Can you spot for me?!"
Wilks squatted and lifted Ulysses' heavy rifle for himself. "I'll borrow your binocs," he said by way of his answer, shouldering aside Patched Snakes as they made for a convenient firing position overlooking the side of the Statesman Hotel. He would readily admit that Boone was the better shot of the two of them after their long and fruitful conversation, and now that the restrictions upon the man were lifted, he was the best choice for precision counter-sniper fire. Wilks would take the chance to watch a master at work.
"Big guns, coming through! Get out the fucking way with that popgun! You couldn't hit a Behemoth if it stood still for you," Bryan cried out as he pulled a sharpshooter out of his way and gestured for Boone to lie down in his place. He pulled the binoculars from Boone's front pocket as asked, setting up next to him as he began scanning for targets. "Let's see your magic for real, Boone! Straight ahead, moving left to right on the second story from the top! See him?"
"Roger that," Boone acknowledged, before squeezing the trigger, sending a .50 BMG round through the wall, and throwing the running target off his feet in a geyser of pulverised rock dust and pulped flesh. Wilks whistled in appreciation. Shot through the wall, too.
"That's a hit," Bryan called out as he adjusted his voice through the binoculars scopes, "Next target, three floors down, behind those sandbags!"
Boone smirked beneath the hem of his red beret, adjusted his heavy rifle, and fired.
More mortar rounds flew up to join the first salvo, raining down to detonate below or above them in vast clouds of noxious riot gas. The two Vertibirds hovering over the rooftop of the Statesman cleared the air of gas around them, the rotor wings beating it away from the Tunnel Snakes that came swarming down onto the rooftop from the fast ropes.
They received nothing more than sporadic gunfire in answer to their intrusion, which they returned with a response so withering that two offending men were shredded as if falling under the blade of a buzzsaw. One man ducked sideways the returning fire, so forcefully that his flying form dislodged a section of the side wall and he plummeted off the side of the rooftop to the ground below with a scream, culminating in a dull wet splat that formed a pattern rather like a burst tato. The last three fled in panic as the Tunnel Snakes fanned out across the roof, their cloaking systems kicking in to disguise their movements in hazy outlines, supressed firearms sending covering fire downrange in a flurry of muffled pops and the dull ratchet of cycling brass.
Letters was the first onto the roof after the Courier and Joshua Graham, who had dispensed with the fast rope in favour of leaping down onto a nearby column of weathered marble before sliding off and hanging down the side for a brief moment, dropping down to the roof with the Eyebot in pursuit. "Rook," Sarge relayed from behind him, "Make sure the other teams know we got friendlies in the AO who ain't Patched. I don't want misidentified targets getting filled full of lead."
"Affirm, Sarge. Already done," Rook's voice crackled over the radio. Letters fell into formation with Butch, Sarge and Jericho, the four of them arrayed in a solid wedge of heavily armoured heat hazes that advanced with indistinct weapons at the ready. He watched as the Courier, ED-E and the Burned Man disappeared through the throng of heat hazes, visible despite the crowded roof by dint of the fact that they were the only ones not invisible to the naked eye.
They were taking the stairs down with the bulk of the other Cell's operators. Behind him he felt the presence of Sticky Hand Jack and Silver bringing up and maintaining rear security. Sticky was bursting with high spirits, to the extend that it brought a vicarious grin to his face.
"DeLoria," the Courier's voice came across the radio link, heavy with undisguised glee at the prospect of a fight and voice raised over the sound of gunfire and the crump of detonating 60mm gas shells, "Tell yer lads to let me an' Graham take point. We'll go in first an' break any resistance, then yer lads can roll in after an' clean up the survivors. If there are any survivors, once we're done with them," He chuckled, almost as an afterthought.
A gas shell airburst overhead, shrouding them with a sudden fog. It became apparent that one of the nearby raider bodies, dressed in casual city attire with makeshift armour strapped hurriedly on over it, was only playing at being dead. The bleeding man retched and coughed as the gas invaded his airways, only to be immediately silenced by Jericho's Xuanlong Rifle discharging into his skull. The body gave one ultimate jerk before slumping. Jericho kept on going, uncaring of the violence or the danger.
Butch didn't argue the point, he just keyed his mic and addressed Rook as he strode forward with Jericho right next to him and Sarge and Letters flanking them on either side. "We get the blue chick then, Courier. Send her our way. We might need that purple magic shit she does if the primary doesn't work out. Rook, relay that on to Bobby. Courier and the Preacher take point on clearing the Hotel. Make sure everyone knows what they look like."
"Affirm, Boss."
"Just Butch," the man himself replied darkly, unseen behind his cloaking system as his group reached the elevator and hit the open button. It immediately did as asked, the door cracking open to reveal someone awaiting them inside. They all had their weapons up and pointed before they recognised the hulking form and the swaying dreadlocks. Ulysses tapped his borrowed 10mm submachinegun against his leg, leaning lackadaisically against Old Glory as the blood ran down its wooden staff from where he had clearly bludgeoned someone to death with it not too long previous. A tuft of hairy scalp was still caught on the golden birds outstretched wings, adhered to it as effectively as with Industrial Wonderglue.
"The power to the lower levels and the tunnel beneath has been cut," the former Frumentarii informed their indistinct outlines without preamble, already stepping aside to make room for them in the elevator, "I have cleared the path to the underground of this place. They are mired in the darkness. Your eyes give you the advantage in such places. Make use of them as you will."
"Fucking great," Jericho muttered, having no such advantage of genetically engineered perception or night-sight. He glanced at Butch as they piled in beside Ulysses, cramming themselves into the corners of the elevator to make use of whatever concealing angles or sparce cover the interior of the elevator. Ulysses operated the controls, but Butch held a hand out to stop the elevator door from closing. Lantaya rushed into the elevator behind them, turning slightly sideways as if she had expected the doors to already be halfway closed at the moment she squeezed in past them. She had a borrowed 10mm submachinegun in her hands and a mag-carrier strapped across her combat breastplate.
"Did someone order a biotic?" She queried in surprising good humour despite the chaos surrounding them, the reverberations of gunfire that echoed from all direction, and the rhythmic thumping of the rotor blades. Another 60mm shell detonated somewhere in the vicinity of the front entrance, the low-grade explosion's dying reverberations masked by the sudden scream of another Vertibird gun-run. "Vertibird's waving off after this last gun run," Rook informed them, "Can't risk hitting the ground teams as they clear the building."
"Acknowledge that Rook," Sarge returned on the radio.
"We're going to be pushing forward hard," Butch replied to Lantaya from behind his gas mask, weapon held low but poised to spring to the ready at a moment's notice, "Those barriers you make could come in handy. Try to keep us from catching any lead, we'll do the shooting."
The elevator door slide closed and the metal box started lowering itself downwards through the shaft, heading for the ground floor. "Sentry Bots are on station and deployed at the main entrance," Rook informed them over the radio, the sound of gatling lasers and the characteristic tinny voices of the trundling Sentry Bots just audible in the background.
An explosion shook the building, sending reverberations through the walls of the tall elevator shaft. This must have jostled some cabling, because the next thing they knew the speakers mounted on the inside of the elevator blared with a crackly but relaxing wave of jazz music. Sarge glanced up at the speaker, before tapping his foot in time to the wild and unpredictable rhythm. A feat in of itself, as it didn't seem to have any set pattern.
Lantaya glanced at him, frowning at the sudden lax attitude in the midst of immediate danger. "How can you follow that rhythm. It keeps changing."
"Miles Davis," Sarge clarified in answer to her look, tapping the rhythm on the side of his laser rifle with the finger laid across the trigger guard. "He doesn't play what's there. He plays what's not there."
Then another detonation rattled the walls of the elevator, and the music was lost once more in a scream of feedback.
"I got left," Sticky Hand Jack reminded them all of his presence, the best of them at hiding himself when the occasion called for it, "Brace yourselves. It's going to be rough down here."
"Would Holy Toledo shirk from the challenge?" Ulysses asked in a companionable, albeit tinny tone through his respirator, as he leaned Old Glory up against his shoulder and swapped the curved magazine in his weapon with a fully-loaded replacement, the sound of metal-on-metal mixing with their own breathing through the filters.
"Nah, Rasta," Sticky laughed as if sharing a private joke with his newest friend, "Holy Toledo would not."
"Then neither shall we."
Silver and Letters grinned beneath their cloaks, amused by the incongruity of the situation. Who knew a tribal would find Sticky's badly thought-out fiction to be so compelling?
As they felt the elevator decelerate the weapons came to the ready, stocks moulding into their shoulders to take the recoil. With a jaunty ding, the elevator doors slide open to allow the cacophony of the battle bellow entrance. Lantaya brought the barrier up in time to catch a wave of shrapnel as a Sentry Bot's missile screamed in through the destroyed front entrance and blew a makeshift firing position at the front desk of the Hotel into matchwood.
It was chaos at the ground floor, angry and indiscriminate in the harm it bestowed. She watched as a wave of gatling laser fire scythed down a group of Raiders aligned behind sparse cover, all dressed in normal apparel rather than the getup she had heard described on many occasions. The lasers left smoking rents in their metal body-armour that would have smelt of ozone and chargrilled flesh through the all-pervading smell of burnt gunpowder if she could have smelt anything at all past the gasmask. As it was, her mind supplied the phantom smell of it own accord, as the humans around her pilled out of the elevator and hit the defenders from behind.
"This is our path," Ulysses bellowed as he oriented himself to the left, spraying down a Raider one-handed with his submachinegun as Old Glory's metal staff cap clinked against the stone with each step. Lantaya raised a series of translucent barriers at regular intervals, that they used as cover for the advance. Most of what was caught was flying shrapnel and wood splinters as the façade of the Hotel was decimated by the pair of advancing Sentry Bots trundling up to the Hotel with lines of heat hazes arrayed behind them.
"Done with the fourth floor," the Courier's voice spoke in their ears, laced in with screams as whoever he was dealing with on his end of the line met a less than pleasant end. "Rook, ask yer lads to move up behind Joshua an' me. I feel survivors on the floor above. Back-end o' the building. ED-E will double back an' lead yer men to them."
"Affirm, diverting elements of Cell Twenty your way."
Lantaya dropped to one knee behind a barrier as bullets sent a string of fluorescent impacts across its surface in perfect line with her head. Then a figure emerged through the fog of gas with a rag wrapped around his face, leapt the barrier in a suicidal charge that seemed designed to get him away from the advancing Bots, to kick her squarely in face with a leather boot. On reflex, she sent a burst of biotics into the figure that spun him around to crash into the barrier in a burst of purple light as the biotics kept him from crashing straight through it.
She was about to warp his face apart when a burst of loud, unsuppressed gunfire from the hazy figure bringing up her rear plucked the raider off his feet to crash against the barrier once more. This time, the raider did not get back up. Jericho disengaged his cloak to make himself a more obvious and inviting target, placing himself between enemy fire and her to give the biotic time to right herself in peace.
A bullet found his plate-carrier through his leather overalls, but he barely jerked as the familiar sensation of a mitigated bullet impact sent a shiver through his body. He blew the approaching figure hidden in the gas back with a burst from the Xuanlong rifle, sending the sprinting figure sliding on his back across the blood slick floor of the lobby. Another man was hit by a sustained burst as Letters laid down a withering barrage of fire upon noticing their predicament, taking up some of the slack so they could organise themselves in relative safety.
Then Lantaya was back on her feet, forming a protective cloak around the two of them as they moved sideways towards the stairway down.
Said stairway was clearly a post-war addition. A crude hatchway built into the earth surrounded by stacked tiles that had been pulled up from the floor, cutting a hollow through the foundations of the building and leading downwards into a dark abyss. The hazy figures of Butch's Tunnel Snakes set up perimeter around the hatchway as one of their number pulled the pin on a flashbang and tossed the grenade down the stairs and into the darkness.
It was impossible for Lantaya to tell which hazy figure was who past the cloaking, but to the Snakes arrayed around her it was as clear which of them was which as it ever was. They could feel it, as if each of them were just another part of a larger whole.
Letters and Silver stacked up behind Sticky Hand Jack as he shielded his face from his thrown flashbang. The Lettersman could feel that it was Butch and Sarge standing tall in the face of the Raiders still left at the front of the Hotel and laying down the majority of the covering fire with their laser rifles. The defending raiders were being massacred by the concentrated fire funnelled in by the main assault and the small group of Snakes behind them. Some attempted to find a spot that would shield them from both directions but were cut down by ballistic or laser fire in the process of manoeuvring.
He could see more than a few staggering figures who had been overwhelmed by the gas and now couldn't make out their surroundings past the snot and tears smeared across their faces. One of these unfortunate figures, a fair distance across the lobby, took a double tap to his face through the hands that rubbed at his eyes, and fell back spread-eagled to the floor. Letters caught Jericho's cackle of satisfaction at the impressive shot through the tumult and the intervening layers of gas mask.
Behind them the flashbang detonated with a loud bang that sounded all the louder as it resonated in the close confines of the Tunnel. "Switch sides!" Butch shouted through his gasmask, "Pointmen first, Sticky and Silver on rear. Letters, get some of those reinforcements headed up-top to support the Courier."
With that the Boss and Sarge turned away from the remains of the battle at the front of the Hotel, leaving the forgone conclusion to bring itself to completion.
Almost no combat capable targets remained in the lobby, and all the while the assaulting force was getting closer and closer, advancing by pairs behind the Sentry Bots. Their group formed a wedge and hit the stairs, with Butch and Sarge in front, Jericho and Lantaya following close behind.
The first Sentry Bot crushed over the debris in the doorway of the Statesman as the rest of their group began filtering down the stairs behind the first four, its dark grey exterior plating pockmarked with faint scrapes where bullets had bounced off. With all the Tunnel Snakes moving up behind it, cloaked by their stealth systems, it was the most obvious target and thus had drawn the worst of the fire. It was also the most heavily armoured target, which meant it had wadded through all of it without any great difficulty.
"Warning," it rumbled mechanically through the fog of gas as the Tunnel Snakes coming up behind it stacked up against the walls and began filtering cautiously along the side walls, covering each side of the open lobby and the raised floor above. "Use of lethal force has been authorized! Do not interfere with security operations!"
Its counterpart joined it as the pair moved onwards into the lobby, cold robotic software crunching the remains of that it had annihilated without mercy beneath it as it began scanning for new targets. "Sentry Bot," Letters commanded the nearest one as he decloaked so the robot could see him pointing his finger in the direction of the elevator, "Command: Divert to elevator and begin sweep of upper floors. Acknowledge command?"
"Command acknowledged, Tango Sierra Five-Zero-Two. Diverting to elevators for security sweep of upper floors. Have a nice day!"
"Rook," Letters got on the horn with the radio operator and relayed Butch's order, "Get some of the Snakes coming in front to divert upstairs. The rest secure a permitter around the building and keep anyone from coming in or out! Hey, Bobby!"
This last he shouted towards Bobby the Tits as the Tunnel Snake's lumbering form made itself known at the front of the Hotel's ruined front door, heavy boots crunching on the shattered glass, wood splinters and smashed stone. He was wearing the upper-torso from a T-45b as makeshift combat armour. It left his thickly muscled arms bare to show off his collection of Tunnel Snake tattoos and thickly carpeted hair, slick with sweat. His gas mask concealed his expression, but the fat man's body language and jovial emotional state was clear to all around him.
"How's business, Lettersman?" his gruff, phlegm-filled voice called out as he ambled through the devastation, waving the hand that wasn't already occupied with the carrying handle of his gigantic minigun that hung at his side, occasionally nudging the side of his ample belly, "These mooks came to the wrong fucking city!"
A raider who had been staggering at the side of the wall brushed up against the big man and reflexively threw a clumsy shove that sent the raider himself stumbling back more than it budged Bobby the Tits' massive form.
Bobby glanced at the raider in what seemed to be sincere puzzlement at the sudden and ineffectual physical attack on his person, then casually rammed the muzzle of the minigun into the man's crotch. The raider cried out, folded over like a lawn-chair and clutching at his privates with both hands, which left his face ready to receive Bobby's ponderous haymaker that threw him to the floor in a clatter of metal on stone.
Tunnel Snakes began pouring through the front doors in greater numbers, the vast majority of these ones not cloaked or wearing a Patched jacket. The common rank-and-file was here, it seemed. Most likely the Unpatched Snakes who ran local neighbourhood security. In all likelihood, they would be performing the clean-up sweep once the Patched Snakes had finished their business upstairs, as well as securing and holding the building once the heavy-hitting Patched Snakes left the AO for resupply or the next assignment.
"Boss says set up a perimeter here," Letters bellowed across the thunder of boots and the ongoing gunfire from the floors above them, "I've sent one of your Bots up to sweep the upper floors. Send some men with it, will you?"
Bobby lumbered on with his minigun on one shoulder and a parting two-finger salute, pausing only to curb stomp his victims head in a move that jiggled the flesh of pot-belly that hung down underneath the bottom of the T-45b chestplate, his agreement coming in loud and clear across their mental connection. Message received, will do. "Cancel my last Rook, just spoke directly with Bobby. He's handling it!"
Letters turned away and recloak with a hiss and an electric snap, falling in behind Sticky and Silver who were the last to take the stars down. He sidled backwards down the dark stairs rather than walking front first, keeping half an eye on their rear for unexpected contact. At his side, he felt the reassuring presence of Silver and Sticky doing the same.
Down into the Darkness below they went, striding headlong into the face of danger to plug a hole that had placed all of D.C. in danger, just as they had done many times before. Their eyes cut through the gloom that Ulysses had arranged for them, thoroughly within their element. As he followed the lingering trail of heady emotion that his fellows left behind them, Letters grinned in the Dark. What else was new?