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After three days of preparation, Blackwatch finally received its first assignment.
West's team was tasked with gathering intel on one of the enemy's airships, which was providing air support for an outpost captured by the Brotherhood.
As they've found out in the first weeks of the war, the airships were protected by some kind of advanced form of energy-shielding. Conventional weapons proved ineffective, and the Dominion Air Force was getting nervous about risking any more pilots after several squadrons were shot out of the sky trying to bring them down.
The mission required that they insert covertly behind enemy lines, neutralize high-profile targets such as scribes or knights, and extract the intel from their corpses. The means to acquire this information was made possible through Dr. Holiday's latest invention, a memory-extractor tool that West and all the other base personnel have taken to call a 'skull-jack'.
The skull-jack was a wrist-mounted device with two sharp needle-like prongs. The tool's function was simple; a physical interface designed to access any subject's hippocampus through directed blunt-force. Similar to the CSID imprinting process, the skull-jack's self-guiding fine-point needle could effectively extract a person's memories. The process was guaranteed to be painful, if not deadly, for the affected subject. But then, the entire purpose of the extractor was never to leave its victim intact.
Aside from the skull-jack, Blackwatch operatives were supplied with the most advanced weapons and equipment that the Dominion could provide.
Every operative was outfitted with a smaller version of power-armor called a 'hardsuit'. Although it didn't afford the user the benefit of carrying heavy weapons as the larger variants did, hardsuits retained the defensive benefits as well as having their own personal jetpacks. These jetpacks, while not intended for extended flights, allowed their users to leap over the battlefield with ease for as long as there was fuel to burn. Like their predecessors, hardsuits had built-in target-finders to aid their users in combat.
In terms of armaments, each operative's weapon was replaced with a magnetically-accelerated upgrade. Walking the fine line between ballistic and energy-weapons, mag-rifles were capable of firing projectiles at an extremely high velocity, a substantial improvement in power relative to conventional assault rifles. Unlike gauss weapons, mag-rifles did not require microfusion cells as they possess their own microfusion breeders to power their kinetic-accelerators.
Some changes were made to Blackwatch Off. Fade's equipment to suit her specialty. Her hardsuit had a built-in grappling hook on the left gauntlet, and a stealth-boy for concealment during operations. Her mag-rifle's barrel was extended for increased range, and its capacitors were doubled for increased penetration which worked hand-in-hand with how long she squeezed the trigger. The longer she held the shot before release, the more powerful the punch.
"This is fucking awesome." West smiled proudly as he finished getting suited up. Like the rest of the team, he was eager to test out their new toys on their enemies.
Fade rolled her shoulders a few times to ease into the hardsuit's snug grip over her body. It felt like a second skin, or a metal jumpsuit, to her. The sniper's only gripe was the particular design of the armor, as though the tech-guys meticulously shaped it to accentuate her curves. When she quietly complained about it in the outfitting area, West only shrugged.
"It was made for you, so it's gotta fit you." She caught an amused smirk on his face before he slipped on his helmet, "And damn if it don't fit you good."
Fade rolled her eyes and followed him out to the base hangar, where their vertibird was waiting. Stern's hybrid clone was standing on the landing pad to see them out. Blackwatch was his little pet project, so it was only natural for him to oversee every little detail. West's team consisted of a four-man squad. He would be taking point, Fade would be on overwatch, Hayes as support and Riker would be responsible for extracting the intel. Stern would be waiting anxiously for results, and the team could only hope that they would not disappoint.
"Good luck out there." Stern said, straining to let himself be heard above the noise of the vertibird's engines.
The aesir saluted him before climbing aboard. Once the pilot was cleared for takeoff, he flew them out of Dominion lands and into the Texan Wasteland. It would take three hours, by their estimation, before the team could reach the area of operations. Along the way, there was a great bounty of sights to take in, so the trip proved to be quite eventful.
The vertibird flew high enough to remain unnoticed, which afforded the team an obstructed view of the land for miles around. And the first thing they saw were the great caravan trains full of fleeing refugees. These weren't wasters, they were Dominion citizens forced out of their homes in the frontier when the Brotherhood of Steel attacked. The civilian population, thanks to Dominion propaganda, were limited to trace amounts of information as to the state of things in the frontlines. But should the refugee camps grow beyond their control, it wouldn't take long before people realize just how serious the war had become.
Government-sanctioned media could only hold national morale up for so long.
"We're gonna win this war." West muttered.
"I'm sure the other guys think the same way." Fade replied, referring to the Brotherhood.
"Fuck the other guys." Hayes said with a shake of the head. "We built all this, made this hellhole into something livable for the past twenty years. Who the fuck do they think they are to tear it all down?"
"I think that's the whole point of our mission." West declared, "I don't think they even know who we are. In that regard, I think it's high time we introduce ourselves."
After one hour had passed, the team found themselves flying over a skirmish being fought between two rook squads and feral ghouls. Their convoy had apparently run straight into a horde passing through the less secure highways connecting the Dominion mainland and the frontier. The lead vehicle lost control and dove right into a ditch, along with its crew. The rooks escorting the supply convoy leapt into action and moved to neutralize the ghouls before they overwhelmed the stranded crew.
So far, it seemed as though the ghouls were giving them a run for their money.
"Pilot, make a pass and give our boys some breathing room!" West ordered.
"Sir, that would divert us from our primary objective." The pilot protested.
"The objective's not going anywhere, and neither will this convoy if we don't help 'em out!" West said firmly, "I only need you to strafe the ghouls, not stick around for the accolades. You got me?"
Sighing in resignation, the pilot acknowledged. "Yes sir. Hang on."
The vertibird veered off course to bring its powerful main weapon to bear. The 20mm gatling cannon spun with a loud whir before spitting a hail of burning lead that cut the horde's numbers in half. The atrophied and severely mutated bodies of the ghouls came apart easily as the shells passed through them, filling the roads with glowing gore and radioactive blood. The pilot's skillful maneuvering kept their forces safe from the strafing run while managing to make a dent in the swarming ghouls.
Some of the rooks waved at the vertibird as it took off to resume its flight towards the team's primary objective. The convoy got its momentum back and continued on their way, crushing the rest of the ghouls beneath the wheels.
"Hooah, get some!" Riker laughed.
"See that?" West said to the pilot, "A little bit of help goes a long way, especially for morale."
"Noted, sir."
Two more hours passed, and the flight to the AO reached its end. The pilot set the vertibird down on the edge of a narrow gully, finding a stable patch of dirt before letting the Blackwatch operatives disembark. From there, the team would have to proceed on foot to remain unseen until they reached their objective. The massive Brotherhood airship hovered above the outpost, which was about half a kilometer away from the vertibird landing zone. Every thirty seconds, its powerful super-laser cannons fired into the distance at an unknown target.
The bright glare of the cannons firing could be traced for miles around, and it was especially made easy to detect with the swiftly approaching darkness. It was as if the Brotherhood wasn't even trying to hide the outpost.
"Move out." West said, "We've got a lot of ground to cover."
Maintaining radio-silence, the aesir stealthily advanced from the gully to the outpost's outer perimeter. The outpost itself was a shanty town reinforced with steel barriers and automated defenses. Some of them were captured Dominion turrets, repurposed to suit their needs. The Brotherhood had long established its reputation as a scavenging waster faction, incapable of effectively developing its own materials as they relied heavily on recovering from their foes or from the relics of the Old World.
As expected, their sentries were equipped with aging T-45 or T-51 power-armor variants. Dominion analysts, upon examining recovered artifacts from the field, have found that most of the auxiliary systems were either broken beyond repair or steadily reaching that state. It was truly a wonder they were able to hold out for as long as they had, but then again, history had proven that an army didn't need to be sophisticated or well equipped to keep fighting in a war.
Fade set up her perch to provide overwatch protection over her squad, and West took point as he and the other three crept closer and closer to the enemy outpost. As they got to the edge of the perimeter, the giant airship made a steady climb as it prepared to deploy elsewhere. There were two sentries on the twin ramshackle guard-towers overlooking the main gate. A patrol of three knights in power-armor was sweeping the perimeter. They were backed by two turrets deployed right in front of the main gate. After the patrol disappeared around the corner of the rusted scrap wall, West signaled for the squad to halt and beckoned for Riker to come forward.
The specialist held up his pip-boy and prepared to remotely hack the turrets. As he did so, however, a distant rumble of an unknown number of approaching vehicles stopped the aesirs from proceeding with their work. Swiftly, the Blackwatch operatives retreated into the shadows while Fade ascertained the unexpected third party involved that night.
"Fade, what do you see?" West asked, breaking radio-silence.
"Hostile convoy heading directly for the outpost. Scavs. I count fifteen lightly-armored vehicles."
First the refugees, now raiders. It would seem as though the moment the Dominion's iron grip on its territories was removed, the Texan Wasteland's opportunistic previous occupants were quick to jump back to lay claim to whatever pieces of no-man's land they could get. It was all now one giant clusterfuck, thanks to the Brotherhood of Steel.
But for that night's operation, the scavs could prove useful. They may be stupid enough to rush a Brotherhood-held outpost, going up against men in power-armor and a giant hovering airship in ramshackle junkers and rusty shivs, but they would provide all the distraction Blackwatch would need.
"Let them draw the Brotherhood's fire." West ordered his men, "We'll hit 'em when they're busy licking their wounds."
"For the Brotherhood!" They heard one of the knights yell at the top of his lungs. As soon as the raider warband got in range of their guns, the Brotherhood opened fire. Red streaks of laser-fire filled the night next to the occasional shower of poorly lit tracers. Rockets and grenades screamed across the desert, blasting man-sized holes into the junk walls. The knights showed their exceptional marksmanship by hitting their targets and rarely missing, proving that they were indeed cut above the rest of the waster factions the Dominion has faced.
As the battle went on, Fade noted the number of opportunities she could take out an exposed Brotherhood knight without being spotted. "Commander, permission to take a potshot at the enemy sentries?"
"Not yet." West replied.
Their window presented itself when the last of the warband swerved about to beat a hasty retreat into the hills. Right at the moment when the Brotherhood defenses were at their weakest, Blackwatch struck.
"Pick your targets, let's show these fuckers our teeth."
Fade fired first, hitting one of the sentries through the back of his head when he turned around to check on the turrets. The magnetically accelerated round penetrated the armored plating of his helmet and bounced around until it was literally a metal bucket full of meat. The armored husk of the knight tumbled out of the tower and landed on the ground, falling some ten to fifteen meters. Fade didn't give the rest any time to react, and before the outpost knew what was happening, she'd already made two more kills.
Riker disabled the turrets by using an encryption master-key in his pip-boy designed specifically for all Dominion sentry turrets, which the Brotherhood were using to their benefit at the outpost. Unfortunately for them, automated defenses were not entirely as reliable as people. The aesirs proceeded inside, cutting down the bewildered knights in their way.
Once inside, the cramped and clustered environment of the shanty town proved to be an obstacle in itself. There were plenty of places for the Brotherhood combatants garrisoned inside the outpost to hunker down in. Rooting them out one after the other was a challenge, but it was nothing that the Blackwatch operatives couldn't handle. As they shot their way further in, the amount of knights started to dwindle. Soon, all the opposition that West and his team met were the ill-equipped aspirants or initiates.
"This is a good piece of gear." Hayes remarked, tapping the plastron of his hardsuit. Several glancing shots scratched the camo paint, but none have penetrated through. Their reflexes were enhanced enough to dodge bullets, but it was the armor that did most of the work.
"Yup." West agreed, "Riker, find some of the warmer bodies and see if you can get our intel. We'll cover you."
The skull-jack worked best on a live subject, but according to Dr. Holiday it was possible to extract a subject's memories post-mortem provided that it was extracted within the next five minutes. Neutralizing a Brotherhood outpost without killing anyone was next to impossible, so Riker had to work with what they've got.
The specialist sighed as he went from body to body, finding to his disappointment that some of them didn't have much of a head left. The team did a little too well on their marksmanship, "Next time guys, please don't aim for the head."
As Riker flipped the corpses over to jam the device into the base of their skulls and check for viable intel, West noticed movement from the corner of his eye. He turned in time to see a wounded a very angry Brotherhood scribe in power-armor coming at him with a raised power-fist. The woman screeched furiously as she barreled into West, knocking his mag-rifle to the ground as she delivered a solid and greatly amplified punch to the chest.
With a loud 'oof' the Blackwatch commander was thrown off balance and flew right into a nearby shack, shattering it into a pile of mangled steel and splintered wood. Hayes let out a spray from his weapon, which broke the lower pistons holding the weight of the scribe's upper body to prevent it from crushing her knees from the tremendous load of the power-armor, and sent her crashing down on all fours.
"Any time now, Riker." The medic said, pointing his mag-rifle at the crippled scribe's head.
"Oh, right!" The specialist exclaimed, grabbing the woman by the hair to tilt her head to the side before jamming the sharp prongs of the skull-jack into her brain.
The scribe cried out in agony, then fell silent as the extractor did its work. The color left her eyes, turning them deathly pale. She started to froth from the mouth and convulse violently. Riker held her firmly as the skull-jack processed all her memories into raw data, a process that took all of fifteen minutes. He knew it wouldn't be pretty, nor would it be quick. They, for all intents and purposes, weren't downloading something from a computer but copying a person's entire life.
"What the hell's taking so long?" West grunted as he dusted himself off.
"Hold on. I think I've just about milked this bitch dry." Riker replied, brutally ripping out the skull-jack and letting the scribe fall slack against the dirt floor. The HUD on the device indicated that its data stores were full. Whatever they would need know about the airships' weaknesses, it was somewhere inside that sea of memories.
Sifting through those memories wasn't going to be their problem. The only thing the Blackwatch operatives were concerned about was exfiltrating safely out of hostile territory and back in the Dominion mainland.
"Alright, we're Oscar Mike." West announced, indicating that they were supposed to head out and back the way they came. By the time the Brotherhood found out about their little operation in the boondocks, they'd be prepping for the next assignment.
After spending her days locked up in the dark room, wearing nothing but her underwear and cuffed to the bed, Karter was finally put through the long process of being transferred out of the Dominion black site.
The guards came in and unlocked her restraints, then handed her an orange jumpsuit to change in. Although she resisted at first, the scribe eventually donned the suit and let the guards put a new set of restraints tying her hands and arms to her waist, as well as her feet. As they moved her through the halls, she had to shuffle as the chains kept her ankles together.
She was brought to a security checkpoint along with the other captured Brotherhood spies. Here, they were held securely while a doctor prepared a syringe-gun. He loaded something into the chamber, something that looked like a small pill, and approached Karter. The woman gasped as she felt the pill embed itself into the muscles of her neck. A cold and uncomfortable lump now sat in the junction between her collarbone and throat.
"What did you do?" She demanded.
"A little incentive to keep you docile." The doctor explained, a wry smile on his face. "That was a tracking node and a miniature explosive. You will have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide now. I'd advise against trying to handle the node, it's quite powerful enough to take your head off."
Some of the initiates whimpered quietly in fear, and the guards chuckled at their despair.
"You will be transferred to Carlon Main Penitentiary, your new home." There was a catwalk platform above the checkpoint running along the entire corridor, where some of the black site guards were patrolling. Stern's hybrid counterpart was leaning casually against the railing as he glowered at the assembled prisoners below. "Understand this. Your people have initiated an unprovoked attack on Dominion soil, behaving as little more than terrorists. We hang terrorists."
Karter swallowed the lump forming in her throat at the thought of a noose pulling taut around it.
"But as it so happens, I've decided to make the best out of this situation. You lot aren't raiders, you've got skills. Skills that we need. You simply lack vision and are misguided by your cult's ideologies. In Carlon Main, we will cure you of these delusions. You will serve the nation you so brazenly and foolishly attacked until the end of your days."
"You'll never win!" Karter declared, "The Brotherhood of Steel will prevail!"
"No, its days are numbered." Stern turned to leave, "But don't worry, I'll make sure you see its end with your own eyes."
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