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Knight-Commander Marko paced back and forth in front of the BoS soldiers assembled at the yard of a building that used to be a Dominion garrison. Fifty initiates, ranging from scrawny teenagers to old men well into their fifties, were ready to serve under his command. All of them freshly recruited from the locals of the Permian Basin.
He scrutinized every initiate, as if trying to make sense of the Elder's orders. "You've gotta be fucking kidding me."
Wasters or primitives, though severely lacking in technological enlightenment, were no strangers to violence. The Texas Wasteland was a cruel and unforgiving land, much like any place in the New World. As far as the next local was concerned, there were no softies among them, only hardy folks who knew their way around a gun. That fact was the only reason why Elder Larsson bothered to let any of them join at all.
The Brotherhood needed bodies to throw into the meat-grinder of war. And since the primitives wanted a taste of the technologies the Brotherhood possessed, they would be given a chance to attain it by fighting their battles. If any of them died in the line of duty, it was one less waster to worry about. If they survived, they would be worthy of the Brotherhood.
"What a damned disgrace..." Marko scowled, grabbing an initiate by the front of his uniform. The man kept his eyes front at least, he didn't even flinch when the Knight-Commander was practically breathing into his face. "What's your name, primitive?"
The man's blue eyes turned and stared into Marko's own. He didn't make a sound, and this angered the knight. "I asked you a question, initiate!"
"Um...sir?" The initiate, a thin and gaunt man of Middle-Eastern descent with a hint of Asian blood mixed in, standing next to the blue-eyed man offered an explanation, "Blue-Eyes over here's a mute. Got his tongue cut out by slavers when we were kids."
"Blue-Eyes? What kind of a name is 'Blue-Eyes'?"
"That's what everyone back in the neighborhood calls him. Don't you worry though, he can take orders no problem... same as anyone."
"Hmph. I suppose that trait does count for something." Marko released the initiate, then turned to bark at the rest of the recruits. "Listen up! The Elder has deemed you fit to join the fight against the enemies of the Brotherhood. But make no mistake, that does not make you one of us! Volunteering for the initiates is one thing, but you've got a long way to prove that you belong here."
Knight Nance Mckenzie, seeing the initiates waver at the Knight-Commander's harsh words, offered them hope. "As recruits, your only job is to follow orders. Do this, and we will keep you alive. Serve with distinction, and you will be found worthy of the Brotherhood."
"That is if you survive the first hundred days." Marko added spitefully. "Initiates, fall out!"
It had been three days since the Brotherhood took the Dominion outpost, which served as the Mid-Texan theatre's primary strategic point from which Operation Upheaval could consolidate its means of attacking the rest of the Dominion homeland. Nicknamed Pivot Point due to its function as a Dominion frontier trade and distribution center, the outpost opened a number of routes inland that Marko aimed to exploit to their fullest extent. The element of surprise wouldn't be on their side forever. As far as they could tell, they've cut forward supply lines in that area and it was only logical to assume that the Dominion would assemble a force to retake the outpost and push the Brotherhood back into the Basin.
They couldn't afford to sit and wait for the enemy to come for the outpost. The Brotherhood's winning strategy lay in its swift and highly mobile army. While the bulk of Landfall's scribes worked on solidifying their defenses under the protection of the airships, the knights together with the initiates would have to move forward and take as much territory to deny the Dominion ground and precious technologies that the Brotherhood could benefit from.
Everywhere they went, if it was Dominion-owned, the promise of reaping a high bounty of artifacts was astonishingly high. One could only imagine what the Brotherhood could do with all those technologies if they defeated the Dominion. It was a big 'if', but it was one that Marko and so many Brotherhood zealots worked hard to turn into an absolute certainty.
That day, the Brotherhood of Steel would put the initiates to the test.
In less than 33 kilometers from Pivot Point was a Dominion town called Riverside. Formerly known as Dripping Springs before the Great War, Riverside had been spared from the bombs that decimated the Texan landscape. Situated in between two rivers that formed after tremors caused by nuclear detonations, the surviving community fortified the town following the rise of wandering raiding bands in the Texas Wasteland and managed to build a detoxification plant over the twin rivers, creating an endless source of clean water. Twenty years later, the town submitted to the Dominion peacefully and were granted their protection.
Under the Dominion, Riverside's defenses were upgraded extensively, as its resources and unique strategic location proved invaluable. Its walls of welded junk were replaced with reinforced steel and concrete. A military base, as opposed to a single garrison, capable of holding two whole rook companies with their own armoured attachment was constructed right next to the detox plant. A ferry system connecting Riverside to four Dominion-held towns down the rivers ensured a steady supply line of troops and goods ready to be transported at a moment's notice.
Riverside was no outpost, but a citadel capable of repelling an attack and lasting a siege for months.
To take it, the Brotherhood needed as much manpower as they could get. Contrary to Marko's initial statement, the role of the initiates in the coming battle would make all the difference in the operation's momentum. They were slightly better than cannon-fodder, for lack of a better term, although their role remained very much the same.
A single knight would command a squad of ten initiates, who would be equipped with an assortment of recovered weapons such as Dominion Reckoner assault-rifles, restored waster submachine guns and rocket-launchers. In terms of personal protection, the initiates would be given body armor looted from dead rooks. Whatever the Brotherhood recovered from the battlefield, whatever could be spared, would be given to them.
To people like Blue-Eyes, it felt like being handed leftovers. To people like his friend Arnem, the recruit who helped him out with Marko at the assembly area, it was loot a hundred times better than what they used to scavenge around the Basin.
Blue-Eyes grunted at Arnem, and gestured to him using a form of sign-language they both made up and used since they were kids. He told him that he'd already begun to think it wasn't such a good idea to sign up for the Brotherhood, and that he'd hate having to take orders from a hard-ass like Marko.
"I'm telling you, man." Arnem replied, "Joining the Brotherhood's a lot better than having to join a scav-gang. It's our ticket to the better life, but you gotta start somewhere. You'll see, we just gotta stick together and we'll survive."
The two friends geared up and fell in line with the rest of their squad under Knight Mckenzie. They boarded the trucks waiting for them at the outpost gates. Once they were ready to move out, the convoy rolled into the main road and started off for Riverside. Their first objective was to clear out the areas outside Riverside in order to set up a staging ground for the main assault on the town. Their convoy would be assisted by four vertibirds to support them from above. Once it was safe for reinforcements to roll in, the Benevolence airship would move in to provide even greater support for the remainder of the mission.
On the way out, the initiates took a moment to look at the defenses being set up along the outer perimeter. Dominion field-guns that weren't destroyed in the attack on Pivot Point were captured and repurposed for the Brotherhood's own benefit. The breaches in the walls were quickly sealed, and the assault vehicles recovered from the motor pool were given over to the scribes for study. It would take some time before they could join in on the fun, and until then the initiates would have to trust in the strength of their vertibirds and the valiant knights leading them.
As the convoy headed in deeper into Dominion territory, through the long and dusty roads that cut across the face of the Texan desert, the eerie quiet that filled the long hours of the journey started to get to the young men bound for war. It was an inexplicable feeling of doom, like a premonition of impending disaster that turned the stomach and stood their hairs on end.
Blue-Eyes started to fidget in his seat, and he signaled to Arnem about his discomfort. He had a bad feeling about their ride towards Riverside.
"Yeah, I know what you mean." Arnem replied, squinting as the hot desert sun shone down through the open-topped transporter carrying them off across the Wasteland. He too had that feeling, although he dismissed it as pre-battle nerves. The knights all talked about it, said it was normal and that he had nothing to worry about.
Soon there was a howl in the distance, an animalistic noise that wasn't too sudden but gradually grew louder. Knight Mckenzie stood up, power-armor and all, to scan the horizon. The weight of her armor tilted the truck a bit to her side, but the initiates had bigger concerns.
Something was coming for them and it was coming fast.
"What the hell is that?" The knight muttered.
Four specks in the sky grew into growling A3-1 Bloodhounds. The strike fighters dove in on the convoy and opened fire, strafing the trucks with 20mm anti-personnel rounds that easily punched through the thin metal sheets protecting the troops and turned whole squads into red paste once the rounds detonated inside. The truck in front of the one Blue-Eyes and Arnem were riding in went up in flames, and the only survivor was the knight commanding the squad riding it, who was saved by his power-armor.
It was Knight-Commander Marko, and he was angry as a wounded deathclaw.
"They got us zeroed!" He bellowed while flinging his free hand, "Clear the trucks! Spread it out! Spread it out!"
The remaining squads immediately followed his commands, just in time to get clear from the planes' next strafing run. They dove for the side of the road, huddling together in ditches and behind rocks to escape the enemy's fire. Those that were caught in the strafing runs were quickly cut into pieces. Men and boys screamed in agony as they lay in the dirt, all torn apart and mangled from the shots. For the first time, the Brotherhood felt the sting of being on the receiving end of a battle, if their situation could even be called one.
"We're getting slaughtered down here!" Mckenzie cried out to the vertibirds hovering above them as she knelt in a ditch beside Blue-Eyes and Arnem, "Lancers! Do something, anything!"
The pilots made no attempt to answer her pleas, they were too busy trying to avoid getting shot down, but to no avail. When the Bloodhounds finished turning the last truck in the convoy into a burning wreck, they turned their wrath on the vertibirds.
Arnem covered his ears as the powerful .50 caliber guns of the bird directly on top of their position rained hell on the approaching flight of Bloodhounds. He flinched as the waterfall of hot casings stung his exposed hands and neck. The powerful smell of cordite filled his nostrils, which was a preferable alternative to the stench of burning flesh. Blue-Eyes pulled him out of the rain of smoking copper and into the underbrush to hide from the planes. Knight Mckenzie stayed to direct the rest of the squad out of harm's way.
The vertibirds didn't fare better against the Dominion's fighters, and all four were lost before the battle was done. Whether the Bloodhounds thought their targets were finished, or simply ran out of ammunition, Marko had no idea. The planes broke off soon after and flew back home.
The Knight-Commander cursed up a storm as he surveyed the battlefield. The convoy was destroyed, their escort was destroyed. Out of four squads, only one survived. It wouldn't be enough to take a single Dominion position, their mission failed even before it started.
"Someone radio Pivot Point." Marko growled, "Inform them of our situation."
"This isn't over, KC." Kenzie said.
"Course it fucking isn't." He replied, "They just gave me a reason to push harder."
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