Paladin Dom Fyre scratched his moustache by rubbing his index finger across his top lip. He exhaled a thick cloud of smoke and dropped his cigar on the ground. Grinding his boot heel into the stub.
It was stupid to smoke he knew, both for his health and tactically. He knew the raiders were too stupid and too out of it to notice the smoke, but you never knew just who was watching.
His suit of T45D power armour hissed and whined as he walked, his wide shoulders swayed with each stride.
Glancing up as thunder rattled off, the perpetually grey sky flashed orange with the radiation-enhanced lighting.
The edges of the crumbling second story structure he moved across groaned, threatening once again to collapse. He positioned himself next to another power armoured soldier, the woman was using a scoped laser rifle to scan a distant settlement.
"T," Fyre greeted in a gravely voice as he replaced his helmet, "assessment."
"A dozen raiders around the gate, and another few – maybe five – further back. They've got organised sentries and patrols along all approaches to the freeway, except for an alleyway two buildings to the left." Her voice was scratchy as it emitted from her helmet speakers.
Knight Tara Reid had been a last-minute addition to the brotherhood's expedition east. One that Fyre was glad for. He'd never met a person who could cover so much ground so quickly, she was able to recon an area within a minute and have a full brief prepared for when he finally caught up to her.
Fyre held a monoscope, it's electronic insides whirred as he panned left to right. Finally stopping at the alley.
"Okay," he said, lowering the scope. "take Saint Michael and Alvarez to the alley. Then attack on my signal."
She shuffled back and he replaced her. He trusted her judgement, but he wanted to see it himself to be sure.
Head Paladin Owen Lyons was in charge of their push east, and had already orchestrated a brilliant purge of Pittsburgh for the loss of only one soldier. They'd never found the body and so he was classified M.I.A.
Lyons was leading the majority of their force east into the city. But following an encounter with a small settlement on the Maryland outskirts, Fyre and six Knights had been tasked with clearing this known raider camp.
The camp itself was spread out fairly well. The raiders had set up inside an old mill yard, the corroded together hulks of machinery acted as good cover from which sprawling shacks made of salvaged timber and steel were supported.
A ring of buildings around the perimeter seemed to be Fyres only offensive approach and he studied it carefully.
One eye recounting the raiders while his other kept checking Knight Reid's progress. He tallied twenty two dirty men, all in their mid-twenties arrayed along the walls, or lounging in the upper level windows.
They had a gate fashioned from ancient scaffolding, complete with a giant fence door strapped with decrepit old planks.
Their equipment was standard for raiders, dirty rags and pieces of brahmin leather tied together with string. Armed with rusty small-calibre rifles, a few scatterguns and on top of the gate a single 50. Cal machine gun.
T45D power armour was the first to be fielded in large numbers during the Sino-American war over 200 years ago. It could take a lot of damage, but 50. Cal could easily get through some of the soft points.
The force of the impacts could also crack the relatively delicate circuitry and hydraulics underneath the steel plates as well.
He clambered down, Reid would be in position soon and he wanted to be prepared himself in the event things went sideways. As they often did.
Three other power armoured soldiers stood in ready positions around the fairly open lower level. One of them, Knight Miller handed Fyre his AER 9 laser rifle. Bringing his own to bear once Fyre had checked the cell with a satisfactory nod.
"Okay," he began, earning the attention of the three troopers, "raider camp ahead, count twenty two hostiles with small arms and one heavy machine gun. Reid, Saint Micheal and Alverez are in position in the enemies dead spot. On the signal, they'll attack."
Fyre looked at his sole heavy weapons trooper, "Demarco hit the gate with the SPANKER. Usage of the second shot at your discretion."
"Sir," Demarco began assembly of the weapon.
The SPANKER – or M40 Surface-to-Surface Medium Assault Weapon was a piece of heavy ordinance. It had a 2-rocket feed assembly, with disposable 140mm tubes which could be reloaded fairly quickly despite its immense size. Generally too heavy for use by non power-armoured soldiers, it was easily handled when using a suit.
"Once the gate and the heavy weapon are down, we move through. Sweep and destroy."
Fyre pointed at Miller and the other soldier, Knight Young, and gestured for them to move together to ln the left flank.
He stood to the right of Demarco as he dropped to one knee and aimed the launcher at the gate.
They had basic short-distance communication equipment, Fyre pulsed his comn button in a pair of two fast beats. He got one in return and then nothing. Reid's good to go.
Fyre squared himself against the wall next to Demarco, "back blast clear."
A heartbeat later and the launcher boomed. Sending a huge dust cloud up as the rocket spiralled toward the gate.
It twisted as it neared the ground about ten meters short of the gate.
Fyre feared it would hit prematurely, but the rocket engine caught the ground and it shot up at a low angle, striking almost exactly into the bald leather clad man near the heavy machine gun.
The explosion was massive, shattering the afternoon quiet in a thunderous manner, the gate vanished and the surrounding two buildings shuddered. Those who weren't annihilated were shaken to their knees. Immediately the sound of laser-fire whined over by the left side of the raider camp.
Fyre pivoted around Demarco and sprinted across the dust bowl and through the ruined gates. Miller and young were just ahead of him, he could hear Demarco clanking heavily behind him.
"Contact! Contact!" Either Young or Miller called, spraying laser fire at the crazed shapes that whirled to mount a defence.
Inside the mill yard was littered with trash, old junk and spent ammo and chems. To the right was a large concrete structure, seemingly the central hub for not only the pre war mill but the raiders too.
A dozen shirtless angry men and a few scantily dressed and drug crazed women came flying out of the double doors into a series of wooden shacks.
Fyre shot at them, still moving he wasn't very accurate and didn't note any kills. Demarco smashed into an old rusty crane just after he did.
Fyre was trading shots with a pair of raiders armed with pitifully underpowered pistols, their bodies crumpled down after he got a few shots into each.
"Back blast Clear!" Fyre yelled above rattle of the firefight.
Demarco pulled the trigger of the M40 and the second and final rocket erupted into transit following another deafening boom.
After the sound of tearing fabric from the rocket motor, an explosion to dwarf the first struck dead centre just before the entrance to the concrete building.
The half-dozen shacks were blasted to splinters, afterward only dust and felled bodies remained.
Demarco dropped the weapon and began approaching the dust-covered area with AER in hand.
Fyre backed him up. Together they swept over the surviving members of the raider camp, shooting dead any left alive.
Fyre poked his head in the building, pulling it back instantly as a dozen bullets whizzed over his helmet.
He and Demarco were either side of the double doorway, they stood ready to breach. Fyre made a chopping hand gesture, directed into the building and together they rushed inside.
They were met with gunfire, the bullets pinging off their suits. Both men shot back. The overlapping pulsing and red strobe lights must have frenzied the drug addled defenders.
They halted shooting yet remained in view for some easy and quick kills. A pair on the right side hopped up armed with a handmade rifle and a Molotov cocktail, Fyre put a double-tap into both targets. The Molotov dropped and immolated both corpses.
A square window to a storage room on the right side burped with the muzzle flash of automatic gunfire.
Both Demarco and Fyre weaved to crouch, aim and fire back. Their red energy bolts flashed across and through the window frame. Silencing the shooter.
A few claps of fire and return fire from outside quickly fell silent. Fyre activated the squad channel.
"Status?"
There was a pause, "clear." It was Reid.
"Casualties?" He asked.
"Nada," Reid replied. "We've got some prisoners."
Fyres eyebrows rose to that. But it gave him an idea. Demarco gave him a thumbs up after checking the bodies on the main room and inside the storage unit.
Outside was carnage. The dust had settled and dozens of bodies were arrayed around in clusters of twos and threes.
A few power armoured forms stalked the perimeter, keeping their eyes on the exterior for any attention they may have attracted.
Two troops, whoose armour he recognised as belonging to Reid and Alverez, stood with weapons vaguely pointed at five men and two women. They all wore rags while they kneeled and begged for their lives.
"Boss," Reid greeted calmly, despite the adrenaline flowing through her.
Fyre replaced his rifles cell, thumbing the drained one into a pouch across his abdomen.
"What to do with you, huh?" He wondered idly.
"Please don't kill us!" One of the women begged.
Women, she could barely be sixteen. And looked to be pregnant. The other female was probably younger, maybe thirteen and also pregnant.
The men were all late twenties, had tattoos, scars and track marks. They were all pale, underweight and had dark circles under their eyes from substance abuse.
The brotherhood's standing orders and general doctrine had been crystal and unwavering in the past. But after the scourge of the Pitt, pre war Pittsburgh, Elder Lyons had changed.
The Pitt had been a grisly welcome to the Pennsylvania, Maryland And Virginia area. All of Pennsylvania existed as a maze of twisted, rusted industrial zones and crumbling interstate highways. Culminating in the Pitt.
Rape, torture squads, multiple kinds of mutants, drugs, gang violence, slavery. The Pitt was your one-stop shop for all of the worst attributes of post-war humankind.
The Brotherhood's operations in the area had been swift. They'd gunned down hundreds of mutants and raiders. Cleansing the area almost to the last 'man'.
They'd had orders to pull any non mutated children out and take them with them. There hadn't been many. Lyons reason was twofold; to help the innocent and to raise the Brotherhood's numbers.
Fyre wasn't too sure about the last part, how useful could two pregnant teenagers be? He supposed it wasn't his place to question his elder. And he did trust Lyons after all.
"Alverez," he said sharply, "get the girls into one of the shacks. Find them some clean water and food."
Alverez didn't move at first and he wondered if he would act insubordinate. Yet after a few seconds, he processed the order and hauled the two women off the ground roughly.
The raider men watched on somehow both dejectedly and angrily.
"Knight Reid take two men and get these five to work. Escort them around, police up the bodies and weapons. Bring them here into two piles."
"Sir," she said crisply.
He kept an eye on the men while Reid radioed Miller and Demarco. Once they had gathered, the three of them guided the five men to work.
Fyre moved to find Knight Young. Kim-Il's family was originally from a place called Korea, apparently it was in a far worse state than here and her parents had fled for the "great America's".
After they'd spent two years in transit, they finally washed up on the west coast. Kim IL was one of six girls, and she was equally gifted as a scribe and a soldier. Which made her the teams de facto medic.
"Young, there's two girls in a shack over by the entrance. See what sort of condition they're in."
She grunted without looking away from the distant city skyline, "if they're no good?"
Fyre considered the moral implications. Two young girls, probably still salvageable, their unborn children doubly so. Not really a moral issue, but an issue of a resources wasted. Lyons wanted fresh meat, and you didn't get any fresher than a newborn.
"Just get them ready to move in twenty."
"Sir," she said and left for the shack.
He gave a mental recount. He had two on the women, three on the cleanup effort, that just left himself and Saint Michael on perimeter detail.
Knight Michael Keane claimed to have heavy Irish origins. Which he clung to fanatically. He reckoned he was a devout Catholic, following the scriptures he kept on him at all times to the letter. If you believed in that kind of thing.
And so he'd been given the nickname Saint Michael. Personally Fyre felt Keane just wanted to do less work on Sunday.
Time passed uneventfully. He would have radioed in to their scribe liaison who was with the main contingent, but their radios couldn't pierce the thick concrete jungle that was ever thickening the further east they travelled.
It wasn't long before the five men had gathered all of their dead into a large pile. Some thirty eight males and nine females. Plus the seven who had surrendered.
Young and Alvarez were still with the two women at the camps entrance, while the rest of his soldiers were looking around or keeping watch on the perimeter.
Reid was locked on to him like a heat seeker. Waiting for the order he was about to give. She was a fantastic scout, with potential for promotion. But she could be a little too eager about extermination of the undesirables in Fyres opinion.
He gestured, "line them up."
Reid barked an order, causing Saint Michael and Miller to haul the five men to their feet. The three soldiers guiding them to a white blasted wall at the side of the main building.
They didn't beg or cower, all five glared hatefully and with defiance at the metal-clad troopers.
Saint Michael, Reid and Miller took aim and fired several shots into the five men. Their bodies shook an dropped.
Fyre had his helmet under his arm, his face not even twitching at the cold execution before him. He lit a fresh cigar and puffed gladly at the (in his opinion) exquisite tasting stogie.
"Should we move them as well boss?" Miller asked. Gesturing at the large pile of bodies.
"No," he said after exhaling. "Leave them where they fell. A message. Demarco?"
Demarco stood back from the pile, he'd spread some kind of flammable fluid they'd found. Probably used for drug production.
Fyre walked near the edge, taking one last big puff before resealing his helmet. His exhalation through the helmet filters made the smoke swirl in little circular patterns.
He used his protective gloves to squeeze off the glowing cherry on the end of the cigar, and dashed it at the pile.
They lit in a second. A bright instantly hot flame spread over them. Crackling as flesh and bone was burned black. He watched for a minute.
After picking through the few usable pieces of equipment, chems and ammo. He led his troops and the newly acquired pregnant women on a bearing to meet with the main force. From there they would all advance to D.C and hopefully find success in the old world capital.