Duke Nukem
Hail to the king baby
Was the enclave ever interested in the X277 viper railcannon prototype from that fallout 3 museum
Fallout The Eagle And The Bear [Fallout AU]
- Thread starter Navarro
- Start date
Navarro
Well-known member
I'd say it was used (at the least as a stopgap) for the Lafayette and Lejeune tanks, and the Dornan IFV.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
Has the Enclave went and used FEV to create new sorts of attack pets or livestock?
Mass produced Gatorclaws for leather and meat
Mass produced Gatorclaws for leather and meat
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
What about lifespan?
They’re different but I think Robodogs can live for much longer than a standard dogs lifetime, maybe add those as cybernetic extras?
Say, have those former institute science guys decided to experiment with the tech that made Kellog again?
The fact that even they know that Father was dying of brain cancer of all things would probably in addition to Enclave desires, make them research enhancements of a somewhat more ethical kind, you know? Not doing dumb experiments with creating supermutants and releasing them to the wasteland
Terms of Reintegration at Corpus Christi
Navarro
Well-known member
Wait and see (in the eventuality that that happens), but here are the specific terms given at the peace conference mentioned in the story:
==*==
TERMS OF REINTEGRATION
GIVEN AT THE CORPUS CHRISTI PEACE CONFERENCE 08/13/2329
1. Full acknowledgement by the “New California Republic” (hereafter referred to as NCR) of full US sovereignty and territorial ownership over the areas held under its control
2. Dissolution of the NCR as a regional government and recreation as a State government for South California; provisional State and Commonwealth governments to be created for other areas currently controlled by the NCR. All "NCR government" personnel and military officers are to make an oath acknowledging the legitimacy of the Federal government, affirming their US citizenship, and swearing loyalty to whosoever holds the office of President of the United States. Failure to make the oath is to be treated as grounds for the office to be deemed vacant and filled as if the individual was deceased.
3. Reparations are to be made for damages to Federal facilities caused as a result of the Californian Rebellion - $100,000,000,000 for Control Station ENCLAVE, $25,000,000,000 for Camp Navarro
4. All NCR laws deemed non-compliant with the US Constitution are to be null and void, as is the “NCR Constitution”
5. All private or government-owned NCR institutions which continue to spread slanderous conspiracy theories about Control Station ENCLAVE and the late Pres. Richardson are henceforth to be denied local or Federal government funding
6. The “NCR Army” is to be dissolved and State militias set up. Units which had an egregious role in rebellion against the Federal Government are to be completely dissolved.
7. The “NCR Navy” is to be dissolved and assets transferred to the US Navy.
8. NCR military air assets are to be transferred to the US Air Force.
9. All colloquial names used for pre-existing municipalities following the nuclear war of 2077 are no longer to receive official sanction.
10. Any NCR officials still remaining involved in persecution of US government and military personnel (including relatives of such) are to face trial for treason
11. All laws, actions and executive orders made by the NCR government to levy rebellion against the United States are to be null and void
12. All property of the US government and of various corporations held by the NCR is to be transferred back to its former owners
13. US Dollars are to be the sole legal tender.
14. All NCR corporate entities which supported the rebellion against the Federal Government are to be fined various amounts depending on their level of complicity
15. All NCR government assets are to be transferred to the new State and Commonwealth governments created, and to the US Federal Government
16. The NCR “State governments” are to be dissolved and pre-war counties restored; the “State government” assets are to be transferred to be these county governments.
==*==
You can see why they never considered agreeing to them.
Last edited:
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
@Navarro
It also looks like the Enclave is gonna go around outright saying that they know that NCR citizens barely like their Brahmin Barons and other economic overlords with these laws
I mean, it’s been compared before that the Enclave is the 50s to the NCR’s Industrial Era, the latter having more tolerance for and a sort of abuse-the-workers culture because they’re cheaper
Whilst the Enclave is both highly developed and it looks like they really really prefer negotiation(which they win)when it comes to their workers
It also looks like the Enclave is gonna go around outright saying that they know that NCR citizens barely like their Brahmin Barons and other economic overlords with these laws
I mean, it’s been compared before that the Enclave is the 50s to the NCR’s Industrial Era, the latter having more tolerance for and a sort of abuse-the-workers culture because they’re cheaper
Whilst the Enclave is both highly developed and it looks like they really really prefer negotiation(which they win)when it comes to their workers
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
I’d think that just as the NCR sends spies over to Enclave territory, the Enclave sends their own to the NCR and even they can tell how abusive their bosses can be
Like with that farmer who got turned into a soldier in the first few chapters, who mentioned how one of his fellow workers got the crap beaten out of him for looking at his boss’ daughter
Must be more like that occurring, could be used against the Enclave and the NCR citizens might see karma inflicting them or something
Just something I thought about it
Floridaman
Well-known member
The effect of improving relations would be more of a happy accident, the point is to punish businesses which actively helped the NCR. The question is how far the Enclave will take it. for instance the caravan companies that merely moved supplies for money, might be a touch too far and could hinder reconstruction.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
Chapter Nine: Victory Through Betrayal
Navarro
Well-known member
A month later than I intended due to some stupid mistakes I made. Next chapter will have the after-effects and a wider view on the war, followed by the Chicago campaign - which will have a lot more focus on the NCR.
==*==
Chapter Nine
October 27 2331, 12:00 CST
Dallas, Lone Star Republic
The streets of Dallas were hot at this time of day, even in late October. But to Walker, ensconced within his climate-controlled suit of T-72 power armour, there was no noticeable difference. Not that it mattered anyway, as the intersection they were holding faced assault by NCR troops from two separate angles. Targeting optics guided his shots as he levelled fire from behind a field-defence force-screen at a mixed force of NCR power-armour and light infantry – and worse, unicycles.
The nickname was comedic, but it hid a grim reality. The robots, named for the way they moved, were of an old RobCo internal security design that the US military pre-nuclear hadn’t managed to get a hold of, and even with their childish flourishes – their TV-screen faces carrying cartoon pictures of helmeted soldiers – they were tough, merciless, and terrifying. Able to take a heavy load of fire before being brought down, equipped with gatling lasers and rocket-launchers, just one was terrifying. And they had brought up three to push – two from straight ahead and a third from the left flank. Their shots weren’t breaching the force-screen, but it was starting to flicker dangerously.
One of the enemy heavy-weapons men – hidden in the mass of power-armoured soldiers pressing in from the front - opened up with a grenade machinegun, firing plasma ammunition. He didn’t last long before his weapon jammed, but the impact was devastating enough. Otto and Feldman both died where they stood, annihilated by the coruscating energy blasts.
Damn, Walker , just like that. Brennan, on the other side of the street, was caught up in ordering about his own fireteam to hold their own defensive position. There was nobody to take command.
Unless …
Walker quickly adjusted his helmet radio into TacNet, giving his orders to the fireteam under him.
There was no time to waste, and he quickly fell back into the tactical drills he’d learned in boot, the voice of his instructor seeming to speak in unison with him.
“All of you! Fall back 20 metres, move behind physical cover! Tyler! Open up with that Enola on the bastards!”
Even with his orders, the squad might still find itself in the blast radius. If the enemy managed to overpower the force-screen before the shell detonated, they’d be cooked along with their enemies – and at any rate, micro-nuclear shells were still expensive. Marines got more than the Army did.
The heavy weapons man obeyed as the rest of the fireteam moved to find positions behind trashed cars and chunks of debris from damaged buildings, firing as they did so. The forcescreen flickered ominously. Walker gestured to Tyler to speed up – it was now or never.
Tyler opened up, firing a micro-nuclear round from his heavy weapon. The shell detonated in the midst of the enemy formation, tearing it up. They responded too late to take the necessary evasive maneuvers – and at any rate the enemy robots had no sense of self-preservation.
In seconds, what had once been an enemy onslaught was a field of dead and dying soldiers, charred by grievous burns that pierced right down to the bone. The force-screen shattered like glass, its generators burnt out by the sheer forces unleashed so close to it. But it prevented the full force of the impact from hitting the US squad. They’d made it.
He moved to the company channel.
“Company Command, this is Zulu November Delta – enemy attack neutralised, squad leader and one of our team leaders have been killed. Requesting reinforcements.”
“Reinforcements will arrive soon – we’ve cleared out the enemy strongpoint and are moving on your position.”
Walker took a sigh of relief.
This battle was far from over, but they had held out long enough.
October 27 2331, CST 20:00
60 Miles West of Houston, Lone Star Republic
Lieutenant Mark Helton, commander of the M80 Constantine superheavy tank Eagle Talon, looked around the dizzying tactical displays of the immediate area. The enemy were making a major push on his position - he estimated 5,000 men. All the remnants of their armoured forces, along with a sizeable number of power-armoured troops, were being used to try and carve off and encircle the US Army’s primary armoured spearhead. With Liberty Prime and Steelbreaker out of the battle, they’d be able to – if he failed, they’d certainly come close to achieving such a blow.
And if they succeeded in that, the battle – still in the balance – would turn definitively against America.
He ordered his gunners to fire at will, and they opened up. The M82B fusion cannon on its dome-shaped main turret – 155mm in diameter as opposed to the Custer MBT version’s 105mm – released a lance of solar fury, reducing an NCR APC full of power-armoured soldiers to slag. The hull-mounted twin-linked plasma gatlings opened up with a flurry of blue-white bolts, laying down a torrent of suppressive fire on those approaching the tank head on. The pintle-mounted twin-linked heavy gatling laser opened up as well, as did the hull-mounted rail-cannon, airburst rounds raining hypervelocity shrapnel on enemy heads. The sponson weapons – light gatling lasers – unleashed themselves as well, the triple-linked plasma flamers still too far out of range to be useful. Active defense laser-turrets took out anti-tank missiles that got too near.
And under this weight of firepower, still the enemy struck back. Gatling lasers opened to penetrate reactive tiles, followed by missiles and shells with conventional armour-piercing payloads. The weapons started to take their toll, and Helton was unsure if they could hold. Custers were starting to go down in uneasy numbers.
And then … the enemy started turning just as suddenly as they had attacked. What miracle was taking place?
--*--
Sergeant Donald Taylor was not one of the NCR’s powered armoured soldiers, and was thankful for it. Unlike many, his unit had been deployed to guard the southern flank of NCR Second Army, and they had missed out on the dramatic events of the evening. But now the excitement found them. The fields before their trenches and piled sandbags were filled with enemy vehicles, rushing forward. There seemed to be three classes of Enclave tank, unlike the mere two encountered earlier, and through his binoculars he could see they were using the device of an eagle perching on a globe and anchor in red and gold, instead of the plain white star surrounded with a circle that the Enclave’s other troops used.
These must be elites, he thought, the troops they use to keep the others in line. Surely that means they’re desperate?
What worried him more was the direction they were moving in from. If these positions fell, the whole Second Army could be outflanked and encircled. The morale impact alone would be immense, and the troops that remained would not be enough to hold southern Texas. The enemy tanks in the vanguard of the assault – the ones with angled turrets, and another lighter model with rounded ones – opened up.
If Taylor hadn’t been wearing the polarised glasses that were part of his uniform, he’d have been blinded several times other. Brilliant flashes gave way to blue-green explosions larger than any conventional round could produce.
Mother of God, he thought, they’re using mini-nukes as tank ammo. It was certain death if the vehicles were soundly hit – no time for crew to escape from the blast radius if the shells cooked off – but the first volley had a sufficient effect that this was no real risk.
Vertibirds high above, their position secure as the NCR’s fighter squadrons had been bloodied too heavily to contest the air, swooped down mercilessly on Taylor’s position and others like it across the line of battle. Missiles, grenades and rapid-fire volleys of plasma shot out from them with brutal efficiency, and power-armoured soldiers jumped out, firing their weapons as soon as they hit the ground. Mortar and AA positions were overrun near-simultaneously, and the soldiers swiftly turned towards the primary defence line even as their compatriots approached, ensconced in infantry-fighting-vehicles.
As he saw the enemy approach, the eyes of his armour glowing with a crimson gleam, Taylor threw down his laser rifle and raised his hands above his head.
He knew about the Enclave’s atrocities – about their lack of respect for all human decency, their plan to genocide the entire planet 90 years ago, the torturous experiments and slave labour he would surely be subjected to as one of their prisoners of war. But in that moment, he didn’t care. The shock of so rapid and overwhelming an attack overcame his rational mind and brought him into a state of submission.
The rest of his squad followed his example, and across the southern section of the battlefield similar scenes repeated themselves over and over.
--*--
Captain Lionel Barrett, USMC, looked at the PoW. Mid-twenties, but seemed to be terrified like a little kid. He reminded himself of the nonsensical propaganda the NCR subjected their citizens to, to try and turn their campaign of secession and terror into a noble crusade against tyranny. He’s probably expecting me to kill and eat him, he mused. Poor fool.
Across the point of contact skirmishes were taking place as stragglers and die-hards kept on fighting, but this portion of the battle was already decided. Now it was the time to swing east and hit the enemy flank. A full encirclement would be ideal, but Command would settle for an enemy driven into retreat.
--*--
General Braxton, commander of NCR Second Army, spat on the ground, cursing his fate from within his command vehicle. The southern flank had been turned by a surprise attack by an Enclave force waiting by the coast – a fresh unit of enemy troops, Corps strength by the reports. I was so close to crippling their armoured offensive, he mused … but it was just too late to be effective. His own tanks had lost so many facing up against enemy units he was better off using his remaining armoured troops as infantry. His direct subordinates, Lieutenant Generals Ingram and Rayburn, had both fallen in battle. And worse … he faced a full encirclement if he didn’t act fast.
He wouldn’t give up so many to face the horrors the Enclave surely had prepared for them.
He said the words.
“All units, full retreat to designated fallback points.”
--*--
The collapse of Second Army’s southern flank under the assault of 32,000 fresh US Marine troops decided the battle. Desperate, the NCR troops fell back under the order of their commander lest they be encircled and destroyed. As they dragged themselves towards the NCR positions at Austin, the USMC and Air Force continued harrying and attacking them while the US Army troops continued securing the field and rounding up groups of stragglers. Ultimately, 50,000 NCR soldiers fell or were captured – 30,000 on the field of battle, 20,000 in the retreat. The Americans lost 20,000 men – mostly in the Army elements that had seen action. By 21:30, it was undeniably an American victory. And this in itself would have repercussions on events far to the north …
==*==
October 27 2331, CST 22:00
Fort Worth, Lone Star Republic
General Swanson looked at the report. 30 minutes ago, NCR forces had been sent packing just to the west of Houston. Their southern army was in no state to fight. Bitterly he thought back to how this situation had begun, how he had taken part in the military takeover. For his part, the reason had been simple – he hadn’t wanted to see his homeland of Texas subsumed into a larger entity, forced to pick a side in wars she had no part in. He had helped plan the coup – ensured that pro-American troops were absent from Carrera’s inaugural parade. The NCR had also helped with the planning, with supplying arms and funding, but had he known what would come of it he would have sent Benbow packing.
And then the NCR had offered to help with the mutiny. He’d begged Garner not to make that mistake, but the fool hadn’t listened. And so they’d started pressuring him to carry out an offensive war against the Americans, and their requests, their advice, had increasingly taken a demanding tone. And now with a third of their force in Texas gutted, it was increasingly clear that they weren’t even able to guarantee Texas safety against invasion and occupation.
General Edward Swanson of the LSR Army had not spent the past few days sitting in Fort Worth out of physical cowardice. He had not done it to see which way the wind was blowing. It had been a moral cowardice that had driven him, a desire to delay taking action – picking a side, that was – indefinitely. And yet the old Texas – the Texas that maintained itself in armed neutrality, that courted both sides of the great North American divide but never committed itself to neither – was irretrievable. It had died with President Carrera.
“So be it,” he muttered to himself, and gave the first order of the battle to the units under his command - 40,000 fresh troops, all in all.
“All batteries, fire for effect on the pre-designated co-ordinates, under combat plan Grizzly Mountain. Let’s kick these interloping bastards out.”
--*--
We’re betrayed, Lancer-Sentinel Wilcox thought futilely as the mighty Osceola listed helplessly towards the ground. Around him, all was confusion as the bridge crew struggled to carry out a safe landing. The surprise attack had been devastating in its suddenness, silencing the NCR’s remaining guns in Camp Endurance and striking the airship multiple times. The armour, designed to withstand lasers and missiles, was no match for heavy artillery fire, and the gasbags had been damaged in the storm of flying shrapnel. The compartment system had slowed the collapse, but the great airship’s own weight had worked against it, and she was no longer capable of flying.
We can do it, he mused. Land safe-
There was another round of explosions as the Osceola was struck again by artillery fire – this time from the Enclave’s guns. The gasbags began to leak too fast. A safe landing was now impossible. The Osceola began to fall faster, at first seeming to move in slow motion then plummeting like a stone.
Wilcox never knew when it hit what had previously been the central terminal building of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport complex, for at that moment the ship’s central fusion reactor breached containment. The fury of a sun, now uncontained, exploded outwards in a miniature supernova. The shells and rockets in the ammunition racks cooked off from the sudden surge of heat. Fire filled the bridge of the Osceola, bursting out of the viewports with a great rushing wind. Scant seconds later, the complex’s own fusion plant, which had been directly hit, went up along with the Osceola’s secondary reactor, at the bow of the vessel. Combined, the blasts were equivalent to five-hundred tons of TNT.
A deafening roar blasted across the landscape like the bellowing of some primeval monster. The brightness of the flash momentarily turned day to night. The earth rang like a bell. A great pillar of fire and smoke rose from the point of impact, then fell back on itself into the roaring inferno that was now greedily devouring the terminal building.
In that awful moment, of panic and terror at the loss of their commander, at the betrayal of their allies, every NCR and Brotherhood soldier in the city of Dallas knew that they could not hold any longer.
--*--
Colonel Francis Slade did not believe in providence, but as his B-120 Dragon II aircraft approached the main target he could not help but feel he’d hit an incredible stroke of luck, mingled with disappointment. It’d already been taken out by artillery. A scorched, twisted mass of metal, glass and concrete was all that remained of the enemy stronghold – and that left him free to hit the secondary targets. From 45,000 feet in the air – 15,000 short of the Dragon II’s operational ceiling – he unleashed a volley of laser-guided precision bombs on the remnants of the enemy located there. The targets had been designated and triangulated days ago by US Secret Service troops located in the region.
The other planes of the squadron were ranging in other locations – hitting enemy air defences in preparations for the push on Austin and Corpus Christi.
Idly, he thought about hitting the Texan rebels, but apparently they’d decided secession wasn’t a good career choice and had actively turned against the NCR forces in the region. Good for em, he mused bitterly.
The remaining AA lasers went up easily, as did several barracks still housing NCR troops. Plasma explosions lit up the night with colours of emerald and blue-white. Moving like a thief in the night, the stealth bomber was invisible to radars, hard even for optical tracking systems to make out. They never saw him coming and several hours later, they never saw him leaving.
--*--
At dawn the following day, the NCR had retreated from Dallas, driven back along the line of I-35. 40,000 soldiers had been killed or captured by American forces during the battle and the rout that followed the collapse of their morale – that so many had escaped had been due to the courage of the Brotherhood’s soldiers, who’d stayed behind fighting to the last as a rear guard to secure their retreat. Harassment from the air would kill another 5,000 before they reached the safety of Brotherhood positions in Oklahoma.
==*==
Chapter Nine
October 27 2331, 12:00 CST
Dallas, Lone Star Republic
The streets of Dallas were hot at this time of day, even in late October. But to Walker, ensconced within his climate-controlled suit of T-72 power armour, there was no noticeable difference. Not that it mattered anyway, as the intersection they were holding faced assault by NCR troops from two separate angles. Targeting optics guided his shots as he levelled fire from behind a field-defence force-screen at a mixed force of NCR power-armour and light infantry – and worse, unicycles.
The nickname was comedic, but it hid a grim reality. The robots, named for the way they moved, were of an old RobCo internal security design that the US military pre-nuclear hadn’t managed to get a hold of, and even with their childish flourishes – their TV-screen faces carrying cartoon pictures of helmeted soldiers – they were tough, merciless, and terrifying. Able to take a heavy load of fire before being brought down, equipped with gatling lasers and rocket-launchers, just one was terrifying. And they had brought up three to push – two from straight ahead and a third from the left flank. Their shots weren’t breaching the force-screen, but it was starting to flicker dangerously.
One of the enemy heavy-weapons men – hidden in the mass of power-armoured soldiers pressing in from the front - opened up with a grenade machinegun, firing plasma ammunition. He didn’t last long before his weapon jammed, but the impact was devastating enough. Otto and Feldman both died where they stood, annihilated by the coruscating energy blasts.
Damn, Walker , just like that. Brennan, on the other side of the street, was caught up in ordering about his own fireteam to hold their own defensive position. There was nobody to take command.
Unless …
Walker quickly adjusted his helmet radio into TacNet, giving his orders to the fireteam under him.
There was no time to waste, and he quickly fell back into the tactical drills he’d learned in boot, the voice of his instructor seeming to speak in unison with him.
“All of you! Fall back 20 metres, move behind physical cover! Tyler! Open up with that Enola on the bastards!”
Even with his orders, the squad might still find itself in the blast radius. If the enemy managed to overpower the force-screen before the shell detonated, they’d be cooked along with their enemies – and at any rate, micro-nuclear shells were still expensive. Marines got more than the Army did.
The heavy weapons man obeyed as the rest of the fireteam moved to find positions behind trashed cars and chunks of debris from damaged buildings, firing as they did so. The forcescreen flickered ominously. Walker gestured to Tyler to speed up – it was now or never.
Tyler opened up, firing a micro-nuclear round from his heavy weapon. The shell detonated in the midst of the enemy formation, tearing it up. They responded too late to take the necessary evasive maneuvers – and at any rate the enemy robots had no sense of self-preservation.
In seconds, what had once been an enemy onslaught was a field of dead and dying soldiers, charred by grievous burns that pierced right down to the bone. The force-screen shattered like glass, its generators burnt out by the sheer forces unleashed so close to it. But it prevented the full force of the impact from hitting the US squad. They’d made it.
He moved to the company channel.
“Company Command, this is Zulu November Delta – enemy attack neutralised, squad leader and one of our team leaders have been killed. Requesting reinforcements.”
“Reinforcements will arrive soon – we’ve cleared out the enemy strongpoint and are moving on your position.”
Walker took a sigh of relief.
This battle was far from over, but they had held out long enough.
October 27 2331, CST 20:00
60 Miles West of Houston, Lone Star Republic
Lieutenant Mark Helton, commander of the M80 Constantine superheavy tank Eagle Talon, looked around the dizzying tactical displays of the immediate area. The enemy were making a major push on his position - he estimated 5,000 men. All the remnants of their armoured forces, along with a sizeable number of power-armoured troops, were being used to try and carve off and encircle the US Army’s primary armoured spearhead. With Liberty Prime and Steelbreaker out of the battle, they’d be able to – if he failed, they’d certainly come close to achieving such a blow.
And if they succeeded in that, the battle – still in the balance – would turn definitively against America.
He ordered his gunners to fire at will, and they opened up. The M82B fusion cannon on its dome-shaped main turret – 155mm in diameter as opposed to the Custer MBT version’s 105mm – released a lance of solar fury, reducing an NCR APC full of power-armoured soldiers to slag. The hull-mounted twin-linked plasma gatlings opened up with a flurry of blue-white bolts, laying down a torrent of suppressive fire on those approaching the tank head on. The pintle-mounted twin-linked heavy gatling laser opened up as well, as did the hull-mounted rail-cannon, airburst rounds raining hypervelocity shrapnel on enemy heads. The sponson weapons – light gatling lasers – unleashed themselves as well, the triple-linked plasma flamers still too far out of range to be useful. Active defense laser-turrets took out anti-tank missiles that got too near.
And under this weight of firepower, still the enemy struck back. Gatling lasers opened to penetrate reactive tiles, followed by missiles and shells with conventional armour-piercing payloads. The weapons started to take their toll, and Helton was unsure if they could hold. Custers were starting to go down in uneasy numbers.
And then … the enemy started turning just as suddenly as they had attacked. What miracle was taking place?
--*--
Sergeant Donald Taylor was not one of the NCR’s powered armoured soldiers, and was thankful for it. Unlike many, his unit had been deployed to guard the southern flank of NCR Second Army, and they had missed out on the dramatic events of the evening. But now the excitement found them. The fields before their trenches and piled sandbags were filled with enemy vehicles, rushing forward. There seemed to be three classes of Enclave tank, unlike the mere two encountered earlier, and through his binoculars he could see they were using the device of an eagle perching on a globe and anchor in red and gold, instead of the plain white star surrounded with a circle that the Enclave’s other troops used.
These must be elites, he thought, the troops they use to keep the others in line. Surely that means they’re desperate?
What worried him more was the direction they were moving in from. If these positions fell, the whole Second Army could be outflanked and encircled. The morale impact alone would be immense, and the troops that remained would not be enough to hold southern Texas. The enemy tanks in the vanguard of the assault – the ones with angled turrets, and another lighter model with rounded ones – opened up.
If Taylor hadn’t been wearing the polarised glasses that were part of his uniform, he’d have been blinded several times other. Brilliant flashes gave way to blue-green explosions larger than any conventional round could produce.
Mother of God, he thought, they’re using mini-nukes as tank ammo. It was certain death if the vehicles were soundly hit – no time for crew to escape from the blast radius if the shells cooked off – but the first volley had a sufficient effect that this was no real risk.
Vertibirds high above, their position secure as the NCR’s fighter squadrons had been bloodied too heavily to contest the air, swooped down mercilessly on Taylor’s position and others like it across the line of battle. Missiles, grenades and rapid-fire volleys of plasma shot out from them with brutal efficiency, and power-armoured soldiers jumped out, firing their weapons as soon as they hit the ground. Mortar and AA positions were overrun near-simultaneously, and the soldiers swiftly turned towards the primary defence line even as their compatriots approached, ensconced in infantry-fighting-vehicles.
As he saw the enemy approach, the eyes of his armour glowing with a crimson gleam, Taylor threw down his laser rifle and raised his hands above his head.
He knew about the Enclave’s atrocities – about their lack of respect for all human decency, their plan to genocide the entire planet 90 years ago, the torturous experiments and slave labour he would surely be subjected to as one of their prisoners of war. But in that moment, he didn’t care. The shock of so rapid and overwhelming an attack overcame his rational mind and brought him into a state of submission.
The rest of his squad followed his example, and across the southern section of the battlefield similar scenes repeated themselves over and over.
--*--
Captain Lionel Barrett, USMC, looked at the PoW. Mid-twenties, but seemed to be terrified like a little kid. He reminded himself of the nonsensical propaganda the NCR subjected their citizens to, to try and turn their campaign of secession and terror into a noble crusade against tyranny. He’s probably expecting me to kill and eat him, he mused. Poor fool.
Across the point of contact skirmishes were taking place as stragglers and die-hards kept on fighting, but this portion of the battle was already decided. Now it was the time to swing east and hit the enemy flank. A full encirclement would be ideal, but Command would settle for an enemy driven into retreat.
--*--
General Braxton, commander of NCR Second Army, spat on the ground, cursing his fate from within his command vehicle. The southern flank had been turned by a surprise attack by an Enclave force waiting by the coast – a fresh unit of enemy troops, Corps strength by the reports. I was so close to crippling their armoured offensive, he mused … but it was just too late to be effective. His own tanks had lost so many facing up against enemy units he was better off using his remaining armoured troops as infantry. His direct subordinates, Lieutenant Generals Ingram and Rayburn, had both fallen in battle. And worse … he faced a full encirclement if he didn’t act fast.
He wouldn’t give up so many to face the horrors the Enclave surely had prepared for them.
He said the words.
“All units, full retreat to designated fallback points.”
--*--
The collapse of Second Army’s southern flank under the assault of 32,000 fresh US Marine troops decided the battle. Desperate, the NCR troops fell back under the order of their commander lest they be encircled and destroyed. As they dragged themselves towards the NCR positions at Austin, the USMC and Air Force continued harrying and attacking them while the US Army troops continued securing the field and rounding up groups of stragglers. Ultimately, 50,000 NCR soldiers fell or were captured – 30,000 on the field of battle, 20,000 in the retreat. The Americans lost 20,000 men – mostly in the Army elements that had seen action. By 21:30, it was undeniably an American victory. And this in itself would have repercussions on events far to the north …
==*==
October 27 2331, CST 22:00
Fort Worth, Lone Star Republic
General Swanson looked at the report. 30 minutes ago, NCR forces had been sent packing just to the west of Houston. Their southern army was in no state to fight. Bitterly he thought back to how this situation had begun, how he had taken part in the military takeover. For his part, the reason had been simple – he hadn’t wanted to see his homeland of Texas subsumed into a larger entity, forced to pick a side in wars she had no part in. He had helped plan the coup – ensured that pro-American troops were absent from Carrera’s inaugural parade. The NCR had also helped with the planning, with supplying arms and funding, but had he known what would come of it he would have sent Benbow packing.
And then the NCR had offered to help with the mutiny. He’d begged Garner not to make that mistake, but the fool hadn’t listened. And so they’d started pressuring him to carry out an offensive war against the Americans, and their requests, their advice, had increasingly taken a demanding tone. And now with a third of their force in Texas gutted, it was increasingly clear that they weren’t even able to guarantee Texas safety against invasion and occupation.
General Edward Swanson of the LSR Army had not spent the past few days sitting in Fort Worth out of physical cowardice. He had not done it to see which way the wind was blowing. It had been a moral cowardice that had driven him, a desire to delay taking action – picking a side, that was – indefinitely. And yet the old Texas – the Texas that maintained itself in armed neutrality, that courted both sides of the great North American divide but never committed itself to neither – was irretrievable. It had died with President Carrera.
“So be it,” he muttered to himself, and gave the first order of the battle to the units under his command - 40,000 fresh troops, all in all.
“All batteries, fire for effect on the pre-designated co-ordinates, under combat plan Grizzly Mountain. Let’s kick these interloping bastards out.”
--*--
We’re betrayed, Lancer-Sentinel Wilcox thought futilely as the mighty Osceola listed helplessly towards the ground. Around him, all was confusion as the bridge crew struggled to carry out a safe landing. The surprise attack had been devastating in its suddenness, silencing the NCR’s remaining guns in Camp Endurance and striking the airship multiple times. The armour, designed to withstand lasers and missiles, was no match for heavy artillery fire, and the gasbags had been damaged in the storm of flying shrapnel. The compartment system had slowed the collapse, but the great airship’s own weight had worked against it, and she was no longer capable of flying.
We can do it, he mused. Land safe-
There was another round of explosions as the Osceola was struck again by artillery fire – this time from the Enclave’s guns. The gasbags began to leak too fast. A safe landing was now impossible. The Osceola began to fall faster, at first seeming to move in slow motion then plummeting like a stone.
Wilcox never knew when it hit what had previously been the central terminal building of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport complex, for at that moment the ship’s central fusion reactor breached containment. The fury of a sun, now uncontained, exploded outwards in a miniature supernova. The shells and rockets in the ammunition racks cooked off from the sudden surge of heat. Fire filled the bridge of the Osceola, bursting out of the viewports with a great rushing wind. Scant seconds later, the complex’s own fusion plant, which had been directly hit, went up along with the Osceola’s secondary reactor, at the bow of the vessel. Combined, the blasts were equivalent to five-hundred tons of TNT.
A deafening roar blasted across the landscape like the bellowing of some primeval monster. The brightness of the flash momentarily turned day to night. The earth rang like a bell. A great pillar of fire and smoke rose from the point of impact, then fell back on itself into the roaring inferno that was now greedily devouring the terminal building.
In that awful moment, of panic and terror at the loss of their commander, at the betrayal of their allies, every NCR and Brotherhood soldier in the city of Dallas knew that they could not hold any longer.
--*--
Colonel Francis Slade did not believe in providence, but as his B-120 Dragon II aircraft approached the main target he could not help but feel he’d hit an incredible stroke of luck, mingled with disappointment. It’d already been taken out by artillery. A scorched, twisted mass of metal, glass and concrete was all that remained of the enemy stronghold – and that left him free to hit the secondary targets. From 45,000 feet in the air – 15,000 short of the Dragon II’s operational ceiling – he unleashed a volley of laser-guided precision bombs on the remnants of the enemy located there. The targets had been designated and triangulated days ago by US Secret Service troops located in the region.
The other planes of the squadron were ranging in other locations – hitting enemy air defences in preparations for the push on Austin and Corpus Christi.
Idly, he thought about hitting the Texan rebels, but apparently they’d decided secession wasn’t a good career choice and had actively turned against the NCR forces in the region. Good for em, he mused bitterly.
The remaining AA lasers went up easily, as did several barracks still housing NCR troops. Plasma explosions lit up the night with colours of emerald and blue-white. Moving like a thief in the night, the stealth bomber was invisible to radars, hard even for optical tracking systems to make out. They never saw him coming and several hours later, they never saw him leaving.
--*--
At dawn the following day, the NCR had retreated from Dallas, driven back along the line of I-35. 40,000 soldiers had been killed or captured by American forces during the battle and the rout that followed the collapse of their morale – that so many had escaped had been due to the courage of the Brotherhood’s soldiers, who’d stayed behind fighting to the last as a rear guard to secure their retreat. Harassment from the air would kill another 5,000 before they reached the safety of Brotherhood positions in Oklahoma.
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SuperHeavy
Well-known member
I doubt they kept much of the heavy equipment and armor assets with that pullback which is going to be problem down the road. If the NCR northern thrust turns into a meat grinder the striking power of the NCR is pretty wrecked. Bad news for the Brotherhood that are going to take the brunt of the counter-attack.
Duke Nukem
Hail to the king baby
What was the tank that was firing mini nukes, was it a new one?
TyrantTriumphant
Well-known member
I doubt the NCR is going to be happy with Texas after this. I wonder how they're going to explain this to their populace.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
Those Texans don’t know what is good for them, which is why we should take over for them!!!!
Anyway, nice chapter, I hope to see that NCR Soldier’s reaction to being treated surprisingly well
Say, have new Robot models been made? Like different templates? Ones that aren’t just mix matching robot parts
SuperHeavy
Well-known member
Apparently from previous posts the NCR is thinking of Texas and the Brotherhood less like valued allies and more like ablative armor. Of course that might prove problematic if that ablation fails to bleed the US attacks white before they reach the NCR heartlands and they are left high and dry.