Granite's company was pushing towards the vertibirds, blasting away unwary NCR soldiers with their power armor and shooting with everything they had. At the start of the battle for Navarro, they were cut off from all Enclave forces and had to fight alone.
When the commanders received the order to retreat to the airfield, to the vertibirds, the company was defending one of the armories filled with equipment, weapons, armor and ammunition.
— Command orders to retreat to the vertibirds! Take everything you can from the armory and destroy the rest - we're going to break through! — Granite ordered the heavily armed soldiers and support fighters over the communication system built into his power armor. The soldiers immediately responded with loud "Yes sir!" Covering each other, several soldiers at a time ran into the armory building and took the equipment they could carry.
The soldiers in the PA, without exception, took gatling lasers, miniguns, rocket launchers and automatic grenade launchers along with ammunition. In the end, they all loaded up like brahmins. At the end, they left explosive gifts that would set off a small fireworks display immediately after the company retreated to a safe distance.
— Power Armor soldiers, form a square! We will break through together, we are not leaving anyone behind! — Granite orders. The soldiers in the PA formed a large square, in the center of which were lightly armed support fighters. Immediately after that, they went for a breakthrough, trying not to destroy the enemy, but to break out of the encirclement. Somewhere behind, a deafening explosion destroyed the arsenal, and the soldiers of Granite Company barely managed to escape, unlike the NCR forces besieging it. Even after losing, the Enclave leaves loudly slamming the door goodbye.
The Navarro base was large, due to the fact that it was an outpost connecting the Tower and the Mainland. Therefore, Perimeter Company had to run quite a long way to get to the airfield and... see how the last helicopter takes off from the landing pad and flies to the east.
— Hey! Hey! You forgot about us! - one of the support soldiers screams at the top of his lungs, but, apparently, the helicopters were already quite far away.
— These bastards forgot about us... fucking goats! — the second one responded.
— Bitches! Fucking assholes! — female soldier screamed.
— Commander, what are the orders? — one of the soldiers in the Power Armor responded.
— Well, if they forgot about us, then it means that we break through on our own! Until the entire NCR army and these boy scouts from the brotherhood arrive here, we must run away from the outpost, no matter where!
— Sir, is this a good idea? Should we find a helicopter, or... — one of the soldiers protests.
— Or! Do you want to die ingloriously?! Or be captured by these assholes so they can line you up against the wall and shoot you?! — Granite screams. — It's fucking obvious that our guys got ALL the "birds" in the air! And what they could have left, they blew up, so the enemy wouldn't get it! So grab your balls and get ready to run until we drop dead, until we get the fuck away from the outpost!
— Too late, sir! Those bastards are already here! — Dozens and dozens of NCR soldiers, as well as several BoS knights and paladins, appeared from the rear, where Rota was running from. — These assholes will chase us until we get tired, so we need to drop this fucking tail and get ready to fight! — the square created earlier fell apart, the soldiers took cover on the runway and prepared for battle.
— Open fire! — Granite ordered, and the company began to exchange fire with the advancing enemy. After several killed infantrymen, the NCR soldiers took cover and began to snap back at Granite's men, suppressing them with fire and approaching the Enclave positions with short dashes from cover to cover. Here, a red line was drawn along the metal boxes behind which the Enclave light infantrymen were hiding, heating the metal red-hot. The knights and paladins of the Brotherhood entered the battle.
— Aim for the members of the Brotherhood of Steel! — Granite ordered and opened fire on one of the paladins, along with him, four more people were shooting at the heavy infantry of the Brotherhood of Steel. Light infantry armed with rocket launchers, heavy sniper rifles and rapid-fire plasma rifles joined Granite, laying down a barrage.
— Grenade! — one of the light infantry shouted, throwing a spherical grenade with a green flickering screen towards the paladins and knights. A blue flash, and two of the six power suits froze in place, disabled by the EMP. A barrage of plasma and laser fire immediately fell on these losers, tearing them to pieces.
Here one of the three remaining knights fired an automatic grenade launcher at the enclave positions in a high trajectory. The shells fell quite closely and tore apart several soldiers. The shrapnel cut up a couple more people, and also hit the soldiers in the PA, but did not harm their operators. A missile flew at the knight in response, causing a micro-nuclear explosion that staggered the remaining two Brotherhood warriors and knocked down the NCR infantry. The stunned knights were quickly shot by the Enclave's heavy weapons, leaving the NCR soldiers alone against Granite's company.
Then the battlefield between the Californians and Granite's men was covered in gray smoke — The NCR put up a smoke screen
— Activate thermals! Now! — Granite ordered, turning on the thermal spectrum mode on his helmet visor.
— Sir, the Californians are retreating! — the infantry soldier shouted.
— Report! Who do we have left?! — the roll call began. In the end, all the soldiers in the Powered Armor, 10 in number, remained alive, but the support soldiers were unlucky. Three out of 15 people died, two more were in critical condition. Having taken some of the equipment of the dead, mined the bodies and picked up the seriously wounded, Granite's squad of twenty-three remaining people began their retreat from Navarro.
A few hours later.
7 hours had passed since the retreat (escape) from Navarro, night was slowly falling on the world. Having made sure that no one was pursuing them, they made a halt.
The entire small Enclave detachment settled down near the fire. They had already pitched the tents, managed to make a fire, and were now warming up their dry rations. Everyone had a logical question in their minds - "what to do?".
— I can't believe they all abandoned us! - said the same female support soldier, holding her hands to her sweat-soaked head.
— Yeah, those bastards just took off while we were trying to break through to them as fast as we could, fucking bastards! — another soldier, also from support, was crumpling the black cap of the enclave in his hands.
— There are no vertibirds, Navarro is teeming with NCR and Brotherhood, ours have fled in an unknown direction... damn! What should we do?! — the third one panicked, judging by his appearance - a newcomer who had recently arrived at the base.
Granite silently looked at them all. At their faces. Watched their emotions. Some were freaking out, some were raking their hair or crumpling their regular caps. Some were just staring into space. And some had anger and fury in their eyes. They wanted blood, they wanted revenge on the Californians and the Boy Scouts from the Brotherhood, who had taken everything from them.
Granite himself was also at a crossroads and felt exactly the same as his people. Revenge was not an option, there would never be reinforcements, and a squad of 20 people, even if 10 of them were seasoned veterans in the Power Armor, would not do much. Surrender? You can immediately go and shoot with the whole squad. No one will understand this, not even Granite himself.
But then... he was visited by a very crazy, but the only idea at the moment.
— Tear off the stripes and remove the Enclave symbols from the armor. — Granite ordered.
— Sir?! - everyone looked at the commander in bewilderment.
— The Enclave abandoned us, no one will come to our aid, and we are on our own. We will survive until the first skirmish, then they will set the dogs on us and get us all one way or another. And they will not negotiate with the Enclave. We will become mercenaries.
— Mercenaries, sir? Why should we become these lousy soldiers of fortune?
— As I said, we have no other choice. After we erase all the Enclave signs from our equipment, we will go to Arcata.
— To Eureka, sir? But... hmh, sounds logical, sir. At the moment, this is the only large and legal mercenary hub in all of California, Nevada and Oregon. — one of the soldiers in the Power Armor agrees. After this, the Enclave's insignia and patches were erased, torn off, or painted over, after which they had dinner, treated the wounded, slept, and the next day, having dismantled the camp, they headed north to the city of Arcata.