}!{
"If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril." - Redacted Source
..::..
The truck groaned as Sgt. Sterling stepped on the brake, pulling to a stop over the hill.
"We're here." He said as he got off to survey the land in front of them.
The recon team could see the Lexxer base from that height, and see the layout of the whole region from where they stood. As far as their eyes could see, there stood the towering structures of ancient refineries and oil pump stations. For the longest time, the soldiers stood in silence as they beheld the remnants of the Old World. Transformed into monuments of utter depravity as they hung the corpses from the catwalks, nailed on the metal skeleton frame exposed from the winds of the desert.
There was a certain similarity to the shanty towns surrounding the ruined aircraft carrier and the Gypsy Mile. Crude dwellings built within the ruins, where piles of human refuse and debris just scattered across every corner and street, and gangers roamed about like packs of wild dogs. Lexxer guards, wearing distinct old coast-guard attire stitched up where the elements had worn through, watched from the guard towers with old machine-guns ready to tear at any foolish enough to start trouble.
The intel stated that the Lexxers preferred some semblance of order within their borders, though they were no strangers to violence. The most important detail among all others concerning the Lexxers was that they valued coin, and anyone who talked money could get anywhere.
Sterling fished out some of his Dominion credit coins, "Let's hope they still value gold around here."
"I can cover you guys from here." Spire declared, "There's no better spot to shoot from than where they can't see you."
"I like your thinking." The sergeant turned to address the team, "Listen up, Geist will set up here while we head on in. Our mission's strictly for reconnaisance only, that means no engaging with the locals unless absolutely necessary. Our priority is getting inside the Lexxer base, map out the area with our pip-boys and get out. Remember, whatever you see or hear on the way in and out- you will not let it provoke you. Clear?"
"Yes sir."
"Alright, sync up your channels. Geist, watch yourself out here."
"Don't worry, sir. I can handle myself." Spire replied confidently.
Sterling and the others descended the hill, leaving the sniper behind with the old truck. Spire took out his poncho and laid it out on the ground, then went prone. He set up the MF cells next to his rifle as he placed it gently on the cloth, and got comfy as he took out his binoculars.
The recon team crossed over from the first gate without a hitch. The Lexxers were used to seeing strangers wander into their territories, and welcomed them in, provided that they adhered to the few rules they've established.
"Only two rules here in Lexxer grounds." A guard explained to the newcomers, "One, don't fuck with us and we won't fuck with you. Two, what you do with what you can buy is your business. Pretty easy to remember, right?"
Sterling nodded, "Right."
"Good, you boys'll fit right in. Now, if you'd like to do business, I suggest you head over to the Lexington. It's just down the street and into the Blood Harbor. Just follow them flesh-totems, can't miss it."
"Flesh-totems?" Sterling asked.
At this, the Lexxer merely grinned. "You'll see."
Later, the sergeant found himself wishing he didn't have to.
Lashed up against wooden posts were several severely mutilated men and women. Crude metal spikes were driven deep into the sockets where their eyes used to be, and screws were bolted into their roughly shaved heads. Their mouths hung agape like thirsting horses, pried apart by metal gags that let their drool dribble freely to the ground. Their naked flesh was heavily scarred with cigarette burns, cuts and bites from the mongrels running around the alleys nearby.
Most of them were already dead, the unlucky few just moments away from joining them.
They were held in place by thick coarse ropes around their bellies, as their arms were hacked off at the shoulders. The stumps where their limbs used to be were sewed shut with crude stitches, and they had copper caps bolted into their flesh where the directional signs hung from little chains.
The Dominion soldiers were seeing it all clearly, but their minds just couldn't make sense of it.
Even Sterling, who'd seen enough horrors facing the raiders of the Texan Wasteland to know how ugly and cruel the New World was, even he was horrified by what he saw.
"This…this is hell on earth." Murdoc, the team's linguistics expert, remarked.
"What the fuck..." Relay, one of the assault-specialists, gasped.
"Still think we can't be provoked by this, sarge?" Sledge, the second assault-specialist, echoed the sentiment.
"Keep it together, boys." Sterling said to them quietly. "Now's not the time."
Murdoc looked at his pip-boy screen, "Yes sir. I'd advise that we move quickly, I don't wanna see any more than I have to."
"Exactly." The recon team hurried themselves along, heading up to the Blood Harbor to continue mapping out the area through the scanners on their pip-boys. Unfortunately, they found that the deeper they went, the worse the maddening scenes got.
Butchered human corpses hung from meat hooks beside slaughtered pigs and dogs, peddled by monsters in human skin. Some of the poor slaves were still alive when they were being sold piece by bloody piece. It was a marketplace of degenerates, madmen and barbarians.
The Blood Harbor had earned its name.
The screams of slavestock being hacked apart were hard to block out, and it felt like a hot brand being seared into their minds as they quickly made their way out of the market. By the time they reached the pier leading into the ramp ascending into the first deck of the ancient aircraft carrier, the recon team looked like they've just witnessed a hundred battles all at once.
They were alone and out of earshot for meters around. It wasn't the awful part about having to witness all of that which gnawed at their psyche, it was the part where they had to witness it all and not being able to do anything about it.
"Fuck. I feel sick." Murdoc muttered, before hurling the contents of his stomach.
Sledge looked like he was about to kill someone. Relay, on the other hand, had all the color drained from his face.
"Take a minute, just try and keep it together." Sterling offered what little encouragement he could at that time.
"Sarge, please tell me we're gonna put a stop to this madness soon." Sledge growled, gripping his rifle a little too hard.
"We will, soldier." Sterling promised. "But not now. We still have the recon mission to do. When we get back and prepare for the assault, rest assured, you will have all the freedom to do with these wasters as you see fit."
"Sarge, what's going on?" Spire's voice crackled through the intercom. He could see them just fine from where he sat on that hill, but was spared from the gory details when the recon team entered a blind side or two.
"Just getting the team properly motivated." The sergeant replied grimly. "Come on, boys. We're almost done here."
Finally, they got to the Lexington.
The Lexxer base of operations wasn't that all special. It was just another big market, with the exception of its higher quality merchandise. Even after being exposed to such carnage, such madness at the Blood Harbor, the sight of the Flesh Market of the Lexington still shook the Dominion soldiers down to the core. Monsters passing for me traded in with goods that were never meant to be traded.
More stalls, more tents, more slave kennels as far as the eye could see. Poor damned souls, broken apart and put back together by collar and chain.
"You getting this, Geist?" Sterling said.
"20/20. Can't really say that I wanna keep eyes on for too long."
"I hear you." The sergeant replied.
They arrived just in time for a local spectacle. Between two towering metal poles, a naked slave woman was suspended over fifteen feet off the deck. Her arms and legs were locked onto four lengths of rope on a set of pulleys that held her tightly in an X shape. She had her eyes blindfolded with a black rag and her mouth gagged with a leather bit.
"Five bullets, just five!" The announcer bellowed through a raspy, parched throat as he held out a snub-nosed .44 pistol. "It takes only four good and well placed shots, and you win this lovely slave to add to your harem! Courtesy of the generous Lady Green!"
Below her was a large safety net, designed to break her fall should any of the contenders manage to shoot the ropes and cut her free. It was a cruel game, designed to entertain the Lexxers' sadistic crowd of patrons. "Anyone? Fancy a test of one's accuracy?"
The crowd amassed around the spectacle, pushing the recon team inward with the crush of bodies pressing to gain a good spot in witnessing the fate of the slave woman. Sterling didn't want to be involved, he just wanted to get out of there, and so he struggled to weave his way out of the crowd. He stopped when Murdoc pointed out the details on the slave woman's person, which bore a stark similarity with Lt. Hope's description earlier that day.
Sterling looked up, saw the auburn hair flowing in the wind and the barbed wire tattoo encircling her right thigh.
"Sarge, it's her. That's Autumn." Murdoc said.
"Well, what are the odds?" Sterling breathed.
"I dunno, sir." Sledge observed, "You wanna try your luck? It'll be a waste of a viable breeder if you don't." The rest of the team at present gave the man a shared look of disapproval, to which he replied with a shrug. "What? We're all thinking it, I just said it!"
"I don't want to hear another word from you for the rest of the mission, we clear?" The sergeant said.
"Well, you gotta do something there, sarge. It would be...unethical, if we don't try to save this one."
"Fine." Sterling sighed, trusting in his training to get him through this. He jostled his way through the crowd and approached the announcer, "Let's have it."
"Finally! A contender!" The Lexxer exclaimed, handing over the gun. He motioned for some of his subordinates to add the final touches to their challenge, by drenching the woman in salty brine. Noticing Sterling's apparent surprise and befuddlement, the announcer explained quickly. "Well now, you didn't think it would be that easy, did you? Thanks to that sweet-smelling shower, you won't be the only one trying to get this fine piece of ass."
The pulleys hoisted her up higher, until she was almost thirty feet above the ground. Almost immediately, a flock of massive, mutated birds circled above the Lexington. Carrion birds, meat-eaters, often too cowardly to attack live prey outright but would be opportunistic around the helpless ones- namely Miss Autumn.
"Shit." Murdoc shrank back some distance away from prying ears, "Geist, we're probably gonna need your help here."
"Copy that, what needs doing?"
"I have an idea." The translator said, now that the woman's safety became the team's top priority at the moment. "Can you, somehow, sync up your shots with the sergeant's? Just to make these wasters think that he's a pretty damn good shot?"
Sterling let the little jest about his marksmanship skills brush aside, and he muttered in annoyance as he took careful aim with the old gun in his hands. "Couldn't hurt to try, he said..." He could try his luck, but it was way too risky. If he missed his shots, that woman was as good as dead.
"Hold on, compensating for variables."
The flock was circling closer, and the crowd cheered even louder.
"Hurry up, Geist."
"Stand by." A moment later, the sniper spoke again. "Alright, sarge. Sound off if you're going to fire. On your mark."
"Roger that." Sterling took aim, "Firing one."
Were the crowd to watch in silence, they would notice the delay between Sterling's shots and the sudden snap of the ropes. They would have known, then, that someone else was firing the shots.
One by one, the ropes came down, and soon the woman returned to the safety of solid ground. She bounced on top of the net a few times and squirmed, struggling to get out of the tangled mess of ropes and the rag that blinded her from the world around.
The congratulatory cheer of the crowd, mixed in with the disappointed boos of the more malevolent entities among them, met the sergeant's success in thunderous applause. Even the announcer was surprised at how well it turned out. Sterling motioned for his team to collect his prize and he said in a hushed tone to Spire. "Good shooting, kid."
"Shooting good's my job, sir."
Autumn wasn't a docile slave, she kept struggling as Sledge and Murdoc moved to help her. Relay took hold of her and whispered harshly, "Hey! Stop that! We're trying to get you out of here, you wanna ruin your chances of being reunited with your family?"
She was still tense, but she stopped to look up at the soldier. "W-What?"
"Your kid, that weird little waster with the silver dye on his hair." Relay said, having forgotten the name of her son. "Come on, let us help you."
Autumn was unsure, but their company was way better than the ones she had to endure in her stay here in the Lexington. The recon team brought her out into the ramp and away from the jeering crowd.
"First, we gotta get you covered up. I got nothing else to spare, so this'll have to do." Murdoc generously gave her his poncho, it was just enough to cover her body from the shoulders down to her thighs. "Okay, you ready to go home?"
"Yes."
"Mighty fine shooting you've done there, partner." The announcer said as he approached the group.
"Thanks." Sterling replied, "Now, if you'll excuse us, we're heading right out with our prize. I hope that's not a problem?"
"Oh, no problem at all." The announcer said as some of the Lexxer guards surrounded them. "It's just that I'm curious, as to how you managed to shoot off those ropes with dummy bullets."
Sterling wasn't impressed by the term he used, "You mean...blanks? I had a feeling the jump of the gun was a little off."
"What's the problem here?" A towering hulk of a man with dark yellow skin, all covered in junk armor, entered the little standoff.
"B-Baron Voss?" The Lexxers made way for the supermutant's arrival.
Sterling was quick to act, and he called the announcer out on his dishonesty. "Guy rigged the shooting game. Had to do something to win it."
"That so?" The monster rumbled, pushing the announcer aside as he loomed over the much smaller man. "I can admire a man's creativity and resourcefulness, when he wants something."
"Wasn't aware there were rules against cheating, within a rigged game." Sterling bravely stood his ground, sensing his men grasping their weapons, ready to lash out at the first sign of an impending attack. "Are we in trouble for that?"
"Your lives are not forfeit, if that's what you're wondering." Voss reached out and easily encapsulated the announcer's head in his large hand. With a frightened squeal, the Lexxer tried to break free. Voss only had to squeeze, and the man's head caved in like an eggshell. "All my patrons are given a fair chance. You've just used up yours."
The supermutant lapped up the blood and brains from his hand, then grinned. "Leave, while my humor yet allows it."
It was clear now that they wouldn't be able to come back, but Sterling was just fine with that. He hated being here, as much as his men. They, at the very least, got something done that day. And they would indeed come back.
But this time, with an army.
}!{