09:35 CST, December 25 2331
Outskirts of O'Hare AFB
"They're on the run, boys! Chase 'em all down!" Captain Jack Harriman pointed firmly with his hand, urging the men onward as they followed the NCR's powered soldiers into the Enclave trenches. Laser-blasts filled the air, red and blue in equal measure, NCR and Enclave men going down one by one. They had broken through all the mine-fields and force-screens to finally hit the enemy's prime defence line - and they were doing good. Gatling laser and mortar positions were being suppressed as along six hundred feet trench the Enclave's powered forces gave way to NCR PA troops supported by regular forces.
The week of degrading the enemy defence lines and probing for weak points had paid off wonderfully. The Enclave were falling back to the Des Plaines strongpoint in large numbers, evidently planning some damn-fool last stand like they had at Navarro.
Harriman cheered internally - the bunkers at Des Plaines and Park Ridge were hard pressed. The push at this vulnerable point - where those two strongpoints connected with the main trenchline - would lead to their encirclement and destruction. Then, O'Hare would be wide open to the NCR's forces, and the battle would be won.
He led the men under him onwards, the first to clamber onto the other side of the trench. At this critical moment, other groups of NCR soldiers, backed by tanks and power-armoured men, did likewise.. Then the artillery fired. The shells rained down ... but didn't explode. Duds, he thought, poor quality control in the slave-factories. Then he heard a horrid hissing noise from one that had landed near him and realised-
"Gas!" he shouted, reaching in panic for the mask that hung on his belt. His legs felt numb - his vision blurred. He fell, unable to move anything below his waist. Drool poured from his mouth, foamed. He reached out as his arm collapsed to the ground, a prayer on his lips but unable even to move his tongue. His limbs spasmed and jerked uncontrollably. He couldn't breathe. His last thoughts on Earth rang through his mind as darkness took him.
Damn the Encla-
--*--
Around the Des Plaines and Park Ridge strongpoints, thousands of other NCR soldiers collapsed and died. Some even managed to put on masks before they succumbed - sadly for them, the Chemical Corps' nerve gas was a contact poison and inches of exposed neck were enough. US Army powered units, secure inside their totally enclosed suits, launched ferocious counter-offensives in the aftermath, taking several thousand additional enemies captive.
The medical casualties were another matter. Several thousand more had to be evacuated at great speed from the field and sent to hastily set up medical and decontamination facilities. A number would die in the next two days from phosgene exposure, others would suffer neurological symptoms of various degrees. But the worst were the Lewisite victims. Their lungs burned and blisters developed all over the exposed areas of their skin, mingled with agonising itching and stinging pains. After some hours, once the thesis that a novel form of FEV was behind the general symptoms exhibited by the gas victims (proven by the complete failure of experimental anti-retrovirals) had been discarded, general antidotes in storage were used, with some degree of success.
Over 15,000 men had died, been captured, or been debilitated for the duration of the battle as a result of the artillery bombardment. But greater than that was the panic that overwhelmed the army.
--*--
Sgt. Jim Fields took each breath as if it may be his last, his heart racing as he panted ferociously. He certainly wasn't at his best now with the mask on - though word was even now heading down the lines of people getting hit by the gas even with a mask on. What was the point? Apparently the rangers and PA men in fully-enclosed suits had made it out, though without general infantry support they hadn't had enough numbers to hold the breach against the counter-attack.
The invisible death the Enclave had loosed scared him more than the deathclaws or the artillery bombardments. A man could fight those things, but this poison that even ignored gas masks ... it was almost too much.
He looked at Cassie, and told her he would make sure they both made it out of here. He wasn't sure himself though.
--*--
Sergeant Royez fought to contain his panic, almost expecting the symptoms to start on him any moment. To be sure, he was in armour - but it was damaged, almost breached. And there was all sorts of talk about the first signs of exposure. Some said the gas smelled like moldy hay, others that it was odourless. Some said it stung the skin and eyes, others that it caused lethal paralysis.
Forward movement had frozen on all fronts - the northern zone was especially bad, but the other areas of the battlefield were also broken. NCR forces were literally unable to keep up this pressure on the Enclave forces. And worse, the unarmoured troops were starting to panic uncontrollably. The tactical networks were full of rumours and wild speculations, unauthorised orders to retreat, panicked claims of overwhelming enemy force.
It seemed the whole army had gone wild with hysteria.
--*--
General Lance Robertson's last few hours had been spent in a frantic rush of giving orders and recieving reports. Ten to twenty thousand of his men had been taken out, and the morale effects were overwhelming. In the initial stages whole regiments of NCR troopers had given way to mere companies or even platoons of counter-attacking Enclave forces, but the positions had stabilised since then. The NCR troops - not without his indefatigable efforts - had re-organised and blunted the enemy counter-attacks, though the Brotherhood had been essential holding the gaps while his own men went back into good order. He was no longer in danger of a full-blown rout as he had been those long hours.
His order regarding birds seemed to have paid off over the past week of battle - enemy artillery fire was less accurate, and their damned laser-dome had suffered some degradation. Not enough to establish air or artillery superiority, but enough to-
He recieved two reports late on Christmas day that changed his mind. First, large numbers of enemy forces - about 100,000 - were located already in western Michigan according to his recon teams' estimation - the main force was at South Bend. There was another concentration at Grand Rapids of some 50,000 at least.
Second, about ten to twenty thousand Enclave troops had deployed by air to block his reinforcements while he was managing the after-effects of the gas attack. The southern force at Lasalle and the northern one at Rochelle had both encountered these forces. Damn, he thought, they'll be delayed several days at least. He had no more reserves to commit against O'Hare - Ortez's men were paralyzed far to the south by lack of supplies.
It had been a mistake commiting so many of them, but after Rockford he had known that he could not expect a quick knock-out. If he had deployed them from the start in an offensive push he knew he wouldn't have overcompensated.
In such a situation, he had no breathing room to let the men rest. A second attack would be launched on the 26th, in hopes of taking it and getting his supplies and reinforcements before the Enclave's own military forces swooped in.
--*--
General Julius Chase watched the setting sun from his above-ground office with a sad look. The enemy attack on the northeastern defences had been barely held off with the use of almost all the chemical arsenal he'd been entrusted with. He was running low on regular artillery shells too - not as much as more basic supplies, but still, his position looked precarious.
General Autumn had done well sending his airborne troops ahead - enemy reinforcements had been delayed, but they'd still arive. Not only that, he'd pushed his men to the breaking point, driving them forward at the speed of 30 miles a day across Ohio and Michigan for a full week. It remained to be seen in what shape they'd be in by the time they arrived, but they had to be worth something - else O'Hare would be taken.
Still, he was under the resolute impulse not to surrender.
If the rebels have to win here, he thought to himself. I'll make sure they take no satisfaction from victory.
==*==
10:00 CST, December 26 2331
East of St. Louis
USMC Captain Lionel Barrett looked at the surrendering Brotherhood men with a grimace concealed between his suit of T-90 armour. Over the past two days, Blackwell had been able to swing his forces round north from the city, back over the river over the bridge the Brotherhood forces had built for the maintenance of their own supplies. Thus suddenly outnumbered and hit from the back, the Brotherhood men had finally been broken. St. Louis was free.
The Brotherhood troops too, seemed of poorer quality than those of theirs the US military had faced in the past - they'd surrendered after realising victory was impossible. They must be starting to slip, Barrett mused. Bastards always fought to the last before.
He could already hear on the local TacNet that a large convoy - both of military vehicles and civilian truckers who'd been eager to assist the Armed Forces with the logistical effort - was coming down I-64, having been held up at Mt. Vernon, IL during the siege. It came along with two divisions of National Guard, one from each Kentucky and Tennessee. It represented all that the two States could spare, an especially generous provision of troops given the occupation of Indianapolis so close nearby.
They would also be sorely needed - the Army and Marines to the south and west were facing an NCR force of 100,000 and a Brotherhood force of about the same size. Both were divided and understrength - it would be too easy for the NCR to take them out piecemeal.
Not if General Blackwell has anything to say about it, Barrett mused. Three days of intense fighting, and it looked like they were headed into another battle straight afterward. Well, he was a Marine. He'd show the rebel bitches what real Devil-Dogs could do.
--*--
In his office, General Blackwell hung up his conversation with the head of the DPI. No news updates were to be given regarding the victory east of the city on Federal or privately-owned TV and radio stations, as he had made it plain. It was a simple matter of military deception. Friedman had to be made to believe that the fighting at St. Louis was still going on for Blackwell's attack to have the greatest effect. His men were worn down by a month of constant fighting, had few tanks, and even with fresh supplies would be at their limit fighting in Missouri after spending a month under siege. He needed to win quickly, with overwhelming surprise, or the NCR would break him regardless of from which direction he attacked them.
The deception itself would not be so hard. His 2IC was already having the Brotherhood prisoners make the appropriate radio chatter and give updates on the 'tactical situation', and there was enough helmet-cam footage of the fighting that the news channels could use old material for a few days without anyone noticing.
Not to mention that St. Louis could not be simply abandoned, so that meant a decent proportion of his troops had to stay home.
He was going into this fight with thirty-two thousand US Army and USMC troops and fifty thousand National Guard. He hoped it was enough to tip the balance.
--*--
Eighty miles away, General Friedman looked over the operational situation, his eyes poring over the map. The Enclave forces were travelling separately to St. Louis - while they were divided he had a perfect opportunity to defeat them in detail, then hit St. Louis. If they could unite, it would be harder to beat them, but not impossible.
The area was perfect for large-scale maneuver warfare - past the Ozarks, I-44 cut through an idyllic landscape of woods and rolling hills. But he would not only have to face the Enclave attack directly, but to prevent the Enclave armies from uniting he had to send a decent portion of his force into the wooded hills to the south-east of the Missouri plain.
In addition to the Brotherhood forces moving in from Oklahoma, he'd received word of five thousand power-armoured troops each from Jefferson City and Springfield, and two Maxson-class fortress airships, the Jeremy Maxson and the John Maxson, from Kansas City.
If the Enclave won here, not only would the thrust into the Great Lakes region be threatened, but the Oklahoma and Missouri regions would also be put in jeopardy.
==*==
10:00 CST, December 27 2331
Central Missouri
Sergeant George M. Walker was above all, nervous. His baptism of fire at Dallas had been one thing - it was quite another leading men into real battle. But he kept his face stern and showed no fear. It would not do to lead a bad impression.
"Okay, boys and girls," he said. "We know each other, and you know that I'll do my level best today to keep you all alive. You follow me, follow my orders, and we'll get out of this together."
The squad - from Ray to Rita to Tyler to Young - collectively nodded.
"Alright," he finished. "Helmets on!"
They collectively put on the helmets set on racks above them - it was not a done thing for US military to wear power-helmets outside of battle, given the concealment of face and voice they provided. The Control Station had been lost to such sloppiness 90 years ago, and it would not be repeated.
It was after some hours of bated anticipation that the M-125 they were in came to a stop, just outside the small village of St. James. The first impression Walker got as he looked over the town was how primitive it was - the buildings were not all electrified, and there were almost no motor vehicles on the streets.
But there were similarities too - on the road to the north was a church of the kind found in any American small town, an incongruous sight among the Brotherhood's equivalent of civic buildings - grim concrete-and-steel blocks with small, utilitarian windows, flat roofs, and almost no decorations.
Still, no time to gawk at architecture. The APC did a 90-degree turn, becoming a barricade in of itself against enemy fire, as Walker and his men loosed plasma fire from behind it against enemy troops shooting out of houses ahead of them - seemed to be a mix of Brotherhood and NCR. He ordered Brennan's fireteam to clear the buildings to the left and advance though their - meanwhile, he would lead the main group against the enemy forces marshalling at the end of the street.
"Marching fire!" he ordered, and they followed suit. The power-armoured troops pushed down the street at a fast walking pace, barely looking to aim, following the targeting recticles that showed on their HUD systems. Michaels kept up suppressive fire with his gatling laser and Tyler took out enemy mortar positions with his Enola. They paused only to reload as the APC rang out with its own gatling laser, adding to the suppressive fire on the enemy. A gauss round rang out, but luckily only dented Walker's armour as it ricocheted off his shoulder-pad.
The APC's 30mm gun rang out three times in rapid succession, taking out the enemy sniper and demolishing the church steeple he'd used as his nest. Finally, they were 50 metres from the enemy defences - a wall of sandbags with a crew-served gatling laser and two enemy rifle squads behind, making desperate preparations to fall back.
Walker didn't give them that chance.
The team charged the enemy squad, opening up with rapid fire at close range as they whirred bayonets and fired grenades through house windows being used as firing points in support of the enemy position. It was over in seconds, Brennan's men breaking out from the attached houses behind the enemy squad and overrunning them as the last dregs tried to flee.
Down the leftward intersection, other teams were making similar maneuvers as they rooted out enemy strong-points one-by-one. But from the town centre's buildings came relentless streams of laser and plasma fire, and before long the US troops were themselves scattering to take cover.
Plasma and high-explosive shells rained on the Brotherhood administration buildings from pieces far behind the lines, reducing them in moments to concrete husks. Thick black smoke roared up from the collapsing buildings to fill the grey sky.
"You did well, kid," Walker heard on the radio in tones more familiar than he'd expected from the officer in charge of this skirmish. It was the warm voice of Capt. Elliott R. Washington, his uncle on his mother's side, and whenever he heard it in this context it never failed to be a surprise.
"I know," Walker replied. "But this still feels too easy."
The squad quickly teamed back up and prepared to cross I-44 - the event that would end this skirmish and open up for the real battle to come.
But there were more than had been anticipated - a full enemy battallion massing for an immediate counter-attack. There was no time to let them set up for it.
As Elliott maneuvred two squads of the company's first platoon for a frontal assault, Walker led his own squad at a diagonal angle to the eastern end of a tree-covered knoll, moving from cover to cover to avoid mortar fire. Rita and Ray made an expeditionary push over the hill, but moved back some seconds later after surmounting it as a stream of plasma bolts barely missed them.
"Damncalis've got 've got a plasma caster coverin' that flank," Ray breathlessly explained. They made a quick inventory of what they had - each man had at least a clip remaining, save for Walker himself whose sole MFC was dry. No grenades were left, and Tyler had no remaining micro-nuclear shells on him.
Walker called up the APC, but learned its front wheels had been busted by enemy fire during the earlier assault. And trekking more than half a klick to stock up on ammo and then heading back was not an option. The enemy's toughest men were positioned to push back any frontal assault Elliott tried, and the other two platoons were engaged in clearing up the enemy forces in the far east and west of the town respectively.
Walker knew he needed to act fast before the enemy were done prepping for their counter-attack. What would Feldman have done?, he mused, thinking on how short a time his sergeant had had to express the lessons of command.
Well, any action was better than none.
He gritted his teeth and rounded the end of the knoll, before going into a full on sprint across I-44. It was a hundred metres; but he was young, and reasonably athletic, and in a suit of highly-advanced military equipment.
It was three critical seconds before the plasma caster finished swinging round to target him, and then he started zig-zagging - even so, more than one plasma bolt hit his armour, and warning messages appeared in rapid succession on his HUD as his torso and arm segments flashed yellow. Like the Devil himself was after him, he sprinted right into the wall of sandbags, throwing them aside as he knocked one of the NCR soldiers manning it to the ground hard enough to crack the man's skull.
He stabbed another in the chest with his bayonet, the titanium-carbide teeth whirring as they cleaved through armour, bone, flesh. The man fell dead, the left side of his chest cavity practically annihilated. Plasma fire rang out from the other men's guns onto the other NCR soldiers near him as they ran over the hill to support his charge, moving in with rapid speed. The NCR men fell back.
The whole thing had been a quarter of a minute, but to Walker it had been fifteen eternities. He mag-locked his rifle to his hip and picked up the plasma caster - easier to do that than go rooting around in the blood and corpses for the NCR men's MFCs.
There was an enemy PA squad 200 metres away at 9 o'clock, loping towards his position - Walker knelt down and opened fire with the bulky machine, the prongs at its front spinning as it fired. The group scattered as his own squad gathered on him - Walker took three of them down with the P94's automatic fire before the rifle overheated; crackled, gave out smoke, and ceased to function. He dropped the broken gun.
He took a number of enemy MFC's and loaded them into his gun, along with the others. Walker panted deeply. He looked behind him and saw an M-125 moving up, and PA troops disembarking from a disabled one whose driver compartment had been pierced by a missile. He looked to his right and saw the coast was clear, or so it seemed. He looked to his left and saw a vicious close-range firefight on the overpass between US Army troopers and NCR powered soldiers.
He sent his men due left, ordering Brennan and his team to go ahead and watch his soldiers' right flank as they advanced.
The enemy who'd been watching the interstate fled north, seeming to be using a large wooden building on the centre of the green as a staging point. Walker thought he could see NCR troops setting up mortars behind it. He requested a fire mission over the tactical comms, and scant seconds later three incendiary shells hit the structure.
The building flashed into fire, men throwing themselves out of the windows and doors, rolling around in the snow in a futile effort to extinguish the napalm that was devouring them.
They hit the enemy forces at the north end of the bridge from the side, tilting the fight unquestionably in favour of Elliott's men. The NCR powered soldiers threw down their guns and raised their hands, going out of armour under the supervision of the US soldiers.
To the north-east, armoured and mechanised units had struck at the enemy from yet another angle and overwhelmed them - with this, the town of St. James had definitely been captured by the US military.
"That was a hard fight," Walker said to Elliott when it was over, talking through helmet voice. That was more natural than comms, and at any rate there were more important matters being talked about over radio. "When we're through, they'll probably give me a Silver Star."
"If we get through," Elliott commented. "We won here handily, but this was just a skirmish. I've got a feeling there are some long days just ahead."
==*==
12:30 PST, December 27 2331
NCR Presidential Palace, Shady Sands
The conference room was brightly lit, and President Kimball poured out the wine. He could feel victory in the air. In mere days, the decisive blow of the war would be struck and the collapse of the Enclave assured. But still ...
"The situation in the Midwest is not as good as we anticipated," Secretary Moore said. "The siege of St. Louis has been temporarily broken and Ortez's men are stuck at Indianapolis. Enemy partisans continue to harry our supply lines, and Robertson's attempt to take O'Hare is not going as expected."
"Still," Dr. Irving commented. "That doesn't change the fact that the Enclave military is brittle. If we can take O'Hare, we'll deal them a crushing blow, gain a critical facility for aerial resupply, and move a hundred thousand additional troops within forty-eight hours, along with three hundred thousand over the next week. It'll be over then."
"The Enclave broadcasts on the day Operation Kodiak began threatened 'tactical use of nuclear weapons' should we try and cross the Appalachians. That may be a complicating-"
"A transparent bluff. They may have one or two pre-War warheads that haven't broken down yet, at most. It won't affect the strategic picture, which looks to be against them."
"And if we can't take O'Hare?"
"We can still fight a long war if need be. Mr. Bishop, you were-"
"Yes," the Secretary of State commented. "The next offensive, if one is needed, will be far more than just us and the Brotherhood. We expect Gran Colombia with its nineteen million to join the conflict on our side once the Enclave's 'Carribean Fleet' is defeated in early 2332, followed by the Mexican Empire and its population of thirteen million in late 2333 or early 2334, depending on how long the negotiations take. Combined, that's more than a million more troops. And then we have our allies in East Asia, due to arrive in-"
"About that," Kimball commented, rubbing his salt-and-pepper mullet. "I don't trust the Chinese, much as we have a common enemy."
"The Chinese fundamentally want what we want, Mr. President," Bishop replied. "That is, the destruction of the Enclave. Even if their expeditionary force were to try and raise Hell against us, the NCR Army will outnumber them by far - especially with certain OSI projects factored in."
"If the worst comes to the worst," Moore added. "There are other ways in reserve to deny the Enclave their midwestern industry, and if we hold the borders for as long as possible and bleed them white on the Cassandra Line, all we need to do to win is not lose there for long enough. If we can just keep them out-"
"This isn't about keeping the Enclave out," Vice President Cole interjected. "It's about ending their threat forever, wiping them off the continent, avenging Arroyo and Vault 13. If the price of that was the NCR being brought to ruin, I would pay that if I had to. Just so long as we survived and they didn't."
"There's another factor," Moore commented. "The European troops. If our submarine arm can't prevent them from crossing over-"
"Our ally in Europe will be ready to go in two years' time," Bishop commented. "We've been funneling weapons to for years - via Colombia and Spain - and it's positioned so as to disrupt the situation for both England and Germany."
Just then, Dr. Weathers walked in.
"What do you have to report?" Kimball asked.
"The new organisation you instructed me to assist in creating," Weathers commented. "Has been fully instantiated and placed under command of the Attorney General, this being appropriate as the Enclave constitutes a criminal organisation under NCR law. Units are already in the area to begin carrying out the practical elements of local de-Enclavisation and in broader terms the beginning of the Bishop-Weathers Plan."
"I thought the President had said we would wait until the Enclave was beaten?" Moore asked.
"There's been a change of plans," Kimball replied. "Cole convinced me on the 24th that we need to see this done sooner than later, in response to the intense partisan activity. We estimate five to ten percent of the liberated population is resisting us actively and up to two-thirds are passively assisting them. Moore has stated though, that in response to Enclave threats we cannot allow their soldiers taken captive to be harmed until we have liberated our own, and so PoWs will not be prosecuted for now."
Cole had a knowing look on his face. Truth be told, most of the Cabinet did not know much about the new organisation or what its exact purpose was intended for - even Bishop and Weathers, in the General Plan, had not dwelt on what the 'destruction of the Enclave' meant in practice. As the sheer size of that problem had been discovered ...
"If that's the scale of Enclave support," Moore commented. "I would suggest a general amnesty - at least for lower-ranking members."
Moore kept his deeper thoughts to himself. He was a military man, and observant when it came to practical matters. There must be something he couldn't see, something that connected the high level of resistance with Lance's visit to Rockford and Ortez's radio silence after a mental breakdown he had apparently suffered. But the Weathers-Cole bloc (and those who otherwise aligned with them) on the cabinet were not practical men - they were idealists from the NCR North, an area where more and more fervent opposition to the Enclave, as the NCR central government's efforts to contain them bore increasingly little fruit, had practically become a religion.
Cole grew agitated.
"An amnesty! You'd have let Richardson and Curling-"
"Calm!" Bishop said, rubbing his combover and adjusting his square glasses. "When we're doing 'de-Enclavisation', we've no other choice but to let some of the bastards get away, or give them a slap on the wrist. We did the same to Caesar's footsoldiers and they haven't launched a comeback from the Mogollon, have they? I know the Enclave hurt Arroyo badly - but we can accept a victory as near total as possible without needing to hunt every last sucker down."
Finally, Weathers spoke up again.
"Regarding the gas attack against our men at O'Hare - I assure you that it will be repaid in due time. The deployment of Crimson Rain will have to be delayed as the team works on a stronger version with a greater than 90% effectiveness against power armour - but it will be used once we have sufficient supplies of the upgraded formula."
That done, the meeting was quickly adjourned, Cole still fuming.
==*==
13:00 CST, December 27 2331
Rural Illinois
Major Ralph Lighthouser looked at the trees as he led his convoy of combat engineers along the road through the dark woods. The partisan trouble had caused great disruption to NCR supplies, especially the blowing of the bridge. That was what he had been ordered by General Robertson to rectify, and he would see it done before O'Hare fell.
To his surprise another convoy went out of the mist, and men in black Ranger armour walked out. Their unit patches though, showed them to be no Rangers - at least not of any units that Lighthouser knew of. They held their weapons, to be sure, in a less professional way.
The leader walked out - a man in an NCR Army officer's uniform dyed black, with the markings of a Colonel and spectacles over his eyes. He looked more a bureaucrat than any kind of military leader. Was this some new kind of ambush?
"Who are you?" Lighthouser called out. "Name and unit number?"
"Colonel-Commander Carl Belmont," the other man said. "Of the NCR Department of Justice Security Service For De-Enclavisation ."
"I've never heard of such an organisation."
"Its establishment was finalised mere days ago," Belmont replied. "Our mandate is the complete de-Enclavisation of eastern North America. Your unit, among others, will assist in the construction of classification camps within occupied territory to hold Enclave military and civilian personnel for classification and following measures as deemed appropriate."
"I've got orders from General Robertson to rebuild the bridge destroyed by an Enclave airstrike. You're nowhere near my chain of command to countermand him like that. And building prison camps - that's the sort of thing the Enclave did to my ancestors in Redding. You won't have me copying them."
"My authority comes straight from the President and Attorney General, and you know the civilian government has authority over the military. If you won't obey me as a representative of it, you'll certainly obey them."
It was said so forcefully that Lighthouser forgot his misgivings and agreed to work under the man.
--*--
Peoria was in a state of worry . The NCR Army unit placed nearby to maintain General Ortez's supply line to Indianapolis had hitherto not troubled the townspeople much, instead focusing on the highway that ran through the town, but on the 26th they had suddenly attacked the municipality.
The entire police department, the mayor, the pastors of the local churches (UAC, Catholic, and some other Protestant denominations), the town council and clerks, and some prominent local businessmen had been held in the town jail - simultaneously, all the criminals held there had been released. Units had gone round ordering all local businesses closed and seizing their stores - they had gone round to the schools and publicly burned all the textbooks, and held the teachers prisoner. Gun confiscations had taken place, including all the inventory of local weapons stores, and anybody who protested against the sudden changes was also imprisoned.
A strict curfew had been ordered, and some teens had been taken prisoner already for violating it. Furthermore, they had gone round and demolished local statues of prominent individuals, including some that dated back to the Pre-War period. The town library had also been ransacked, and a great number of books ranging from history books to popular novels taken out and burned in front of it. Some had taken to defiantly singing the national anthem and other patriotic songs, but that had only seen them imprisoned. New propaganda posters had come up, on various themes glorifying the NCR and denigrating the USA. One, quite notably, showed Lady Liberty as a skull-faced figure taking off the mask of a woman and another showed a giant bizarre conglomeration of aspects dancing on a crowd of people in chains. Those who took them down were imprisoned, and one had been shot at.
Though the town was defiant of these changes, the people knew that the NCR Army men were quite well-armed, well-disciplined, and willing to be brutal. They gloated quite frequently about how they would be remembered as liberators once 'the Enclave' was defeated. And so, nobody rose up.
Late that day, an overwhelming force of National Guard pincered the garrison of some 500, overwhelming and capturing then. General Ortez, ensconced in Indianapolis' most high-grade hotel, learned of the situation immediately and so, with his supply lines cut, made the only decision he rationally could.
He ordered his men to begin a full retreat back to Brotherhood territory.
