“Goood morning Capital Wasteland! Three Dog here, coming to you from Galaxy News Radio! On today’s agenda, dear listeners, we have more news on the low-lifes seeping ever closer into the Capital Wasteland. Not good, not good at all. Now, sources sa-zzzzkk…”
“What the fuck?”
The bored lookouts in Rivet’s City sat straight in the bridge tower’s lookout post. It was the first time the frequency to Galaxy News Radio was disrupted. One of them grunted with annoyance as he got out of his seat to re-tune the radio. Annoyance turned to concern as static filled the frequencies. Agatha’s music, Tenpenny station… The radio spat nothing but harsh white noise.
“It broke?” the other scout asked in a tone that doubted his own question.
“Ain’t sure, I mean there’s power, but-” The static cut off, replaced by a not-too foreign voice. The lookout was still running through the frequencies, but the announcement came through every channel unhindered.
“People of the Capital Wasteland. Be not afraid. I am Sev, of the Nexus Severalty. Some of you might be acquainted with me and my nation.”
“Oh shit.” The lookouts shared apprehensive looks. The voice didn’t just come from the radio, it was echoing into their little post from outside. Immediately the duo rushed to the window. Something made them gaze up to the skies, finding a speck amongst the clouds.
Sev’s voice came through the radio and thundered through the ruins of the Capital Wasteland from the heavens. “We have come to bring peace and restore this wasteland. To those who live in peace, who do not ease their lives by raiding or slaving, the Nexus offers you a healthier, easier life. And to the marauders, the raiders, the rapists, the slavers… The Nexus has no place for your kind. You will be removed. The Nexus Severalty has come to the Capital Wasteland…”
Once more, the sentries shared a look, their apprehension giving way to a rising terror as an seemed to swell behind the Nexus’ ruler’s words, along with the march of hundreds of boots and a sharp, shredding melody.
“...and we shall bring restoration and peace…through power.” An unintelligible order rang out, and a new kind of noise played, music far heavier, far more aggressive than anything anyone has ever heard before.
The speck in the sky flickered, and the lookouts barely kept up with the teardrops of bright energy hurling into the northern outskirts of the city and detonating in spectacular fireballs. They were then too busy running down to sound the alarm to notice things descending from the skies and shooting westwards.
*****
The Iron Fists controlling the ruins of Fairfax went on full alert the moment they heard the Nexus’ name on the radio. Everyone had heard what had happened to the Citadel, and some of the raiders have even visited the massive crater that replaced the Brotherhood of Steel’s once-impregnable fortress.
Everyone knew the stories; the Nexus fell from the skies to bring death. The gang was ready, though. Rooftops and upper levels were manned with rocket launchers and heavy rifles, underbosses bellowed out orders, the overboss’ elite crew hastily got their salvaged Enclave power armor up and running, and the radios smashed or shot to shut up the foreign, unforgiving tune that threatened morale.
The Iron Fists were ready for a fight, and ‘Rustless’ Bert swore that his boys would more than bloody the nose of the invaders that were sure to come. His paranoia was vindicated, the orders to stockpile and scavenge all the big guns would be finally put to good use. Now, everyone of the Iron Fists had either anti-armor rifles, heavy machine guns, or launchers trained to the skies, ready to fuck up anything that threatened the gang’s bloody way of life.
Nobody expected their death to come from below.
Too many eyes were wary of the skies, and the sentries on streets were too busy hugging the walls and keeping underneath ceilings to notice when things snuck up on them. By the time the first shouts of alarm were finally heard, and attention was brought back down to the ground, nearly half the ground team were bloody heaps of flesh.
“Fucking hell, they’re attacking from below!”
“- your eyes on the grounds you fucks! Eyes on the ground!”
“Tell them to secure the lower floors! Keep them from coming in!”
The big guns were relocated to watch the streets, and groups were sent back down to guard the building exits. The excitement of combat left many too agitated, and many eyes darted between the ground and the sky over and over again.
Nobody noticed the faint shimmer of displaced light, not until the doors and wooden walls on the ground floor were crashed into, and bestial, spine-chilling roars drowned the screams of the dying from below.
Some buildings were lucky enough to have sane survivors run up their heavily garrisoned rooftops to bring the word of the threat. Others found out the hard way as massive claws burst from the concrete below their feet, and hulking figures made their appearance. They were partially covered in flexible plates of metal, but the overall shapes were unmistakable.
“Deathclaws!”
Either way, the Iron Fists began to die very, very quickly as the living nightmares burst through the floor or climbed up the exterior walls. Desperate gunners unleashed machine gun fire into the one-sided slaughter, shredding their own comrades in an attempt to bring down the massive beasts. A few panicking raiders fired their rockets into melee. Iron Fists died by the dozens to friendly fire, but neither bullets nor explosives fell any of the monsters. It didn’t stop the desperate men from keeping up their shooting though, and the rooftops of Fairfax were filled with the cries of the dying and the desperate.
‘Rustless’ Bert emptied his decorated LMG into the deathclaws that just tore through his power-armored bodyguards, screaming with more fear than defiance. He was too busy shitting himself to notice faint blooms of blue-white energy that ate his bullets’ speed. He also didn’t have much time to appreciate the fact that the shields on the monsters didn’t stop their massive, metal-clad claws and horns from ripping through his power armor and into him.
In under thirty minutes, the buildings and rooftops of Fairfax became stained with the blood and splattered gore of the Iron Fists. The last, whimpering raiders were slowly hunted through the ruins by the younger members of the Nexus’ deathclaw pack.
The raider gang became fully extinct minutes later. Terrified and cowering men made for poor hunting practice.
*****
Shock was the weapon of the day as Edward and his platoon crashed through Fort Constantine’s worn structure like a bomb through a tin shack. The new slavers manning the fort were stunned at the explosion that tore a hole in their stronghold, and when the stealth fields shimmered away, they panicked at the menacing armored figures in their midst.
Only melee weapons were used, and even then the Nexus elite expertly broke the raiders but left them alive enough for processing. The boys and girls of 1st Company tore through the scum of the wasteland with a renewed vigor, eager to prove themselves once again as worthy of Sev’s generosity.
It’ll never be enough, Edward mulled as he broke a raider’s hips with a well placed kick. Sev had placed a lot of trust in the company, and despite their best, they still needed his help to pull them out of a disastrous defeat. It was a wakeup call for Edward and his friends, a painful reminder that at the end of it all, there were things in the wasteland that only Sev could handle for now. Despite the powerful gifts, 1st Company were still mere mortals, and Sev was still more than a god.
The notion of being limited, even if the limit was rather high, rankled. Edward liked to think he could, if not 1st Company as a whole, be fully relied upon to fully carry out the tasks a busy Sev required to pacify the wasteland. The ruler of the Nexus was busy enough trying to improve the welfare and protection of its people to waste time on tackling metanatural threats. But Sev’s time was still needed to combat some threats in the wasteland. 1st Company needed Sev’s help just as much as the rest of the Nexus did.
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Service in combat didn’t go as far as everyone thought in repaying all that Sev has given them. It sucked, but it was the reality that the troopers had to live with. It was hard getting over the broken delusion of invincibility, but at least 1st Company was still the elite of the Nexus. Sev valued each and every trooper, and their contributions, paltry as it was to Edward, still amounted to something.
And so Edward and his company fought on, just as hard if not harder than they ever did. Sev still relied on them, and Sev’s Own will not disappoint their ruler. He had promised to fill Blacksite Tleilax’s capacity, and 1st Company would deliver.
The young commander backhanded a raider in the chest, hard enough to break bone, but not enough to crush lungs or heart. The victim would survive long enough with punctured lungs for processing. A quick swing with his Tiberium blade severed another raider’s elbows and arced down to lop off a knee from his companion.
Around him Edward’s comrades worked with equal zeal, smashing or slicing their way through the fort with the speed and fury of a radstorm. The slavers were quickly and ruthlessly incapacitated, and their human goods liberated and healed up.
“All clear?”
“Fully cleaned the place, boss.”
“Good, keep moving. Let’s stick to the schedule.”
A small team was left to await processing as Edward and the rest moved on to the next target. Elsewhere, other platoons of 1st Company were conducting similar strikes on other camps and forts, and would move on north to carve out more territory for the Nexus.
*****
Sarah would need time getting used to Sev’s taste in music, if that’s what you call the heavy electric screeching and bass pounding. It played throughout the Kirov, including the observation deck which now served as a scenic command center.
“Report: Fairfax has been secured.” Eva’s voice chimed in every now and then to update on the progress of the final phase of Nexus expansion. The tamed deathclaws were definitely effective, though their lacked of range made them a less flexible option than the human companies which were now tearing through the outskirts of the Capital Wasteland.
“1st Company progress is eighty percent, however prisoner quotas have been reached.”
“Agent Deacon is reporting peaceful contact established with Rivet City. Awaiting formal negotiations.”
“Piper and Nat are reporting peaceful contact established with Little Lamplight. Dispatching aid team now.”
Everything seemed to be going as planned, which left the exclusionary zone that the Companies were slaughtering around. Sarah had thought that the deathclaws would be let loose inside, but admittedly the area was far too vast for just over a hundred of the beasts to slaughter.
Not for the first time, her curiosity tingled at what Sev had in mind.
They had to wait until every Company was done to find out, which took a good three hours of overseeing and commanding.
“Pull them back to a safe distance, say half a mile or so,” Sev ordered, and Sarah relayed it to the company commanders and deathclaw herders. “Get the journos up to the right spots, make sure they get their cameras rolling.”
1st Company was just done disembarking into the Kirov after their successful operation, just in time to head to the viewing ports and landing bays to watch the fireworks. Everyone followed Sev’s gaze as he looked out the deck. Sarah shared anticipating looks with Cait, both still had their bets on some new vehicle, another monstrosity like the Warlords perhaps.
“Eva? C and C. Red alert, generals, and Tiberiums dawn, sun and war. Expansions included.”
There were confused blinks at the random words Sev uttered, but apparently it was some sort of password as Eva acknowledged it.
“Authorization confirmed. Initiating firing sequence.”
“Target the exclusionary zone.” A heavy, momentous silence filled the deck as everyone listened to Sev’s orders and Eva’s replies. Even Cait and Curie were watching their man attentively, waiting for the surprise to be revealed.
“Aligning to coordinates. Calculating optimal strike pattern. Evacuating eyebots. Ready on your command, Sev.”
Under the attention of the command staff, Sev drew in a quiet breath and Sarah saw him put on his ‘dramatics’ pose before calmly uttering a single word.
“Exterminate.”
“Firing ion cannon.”
*****
The dumbstruck spectators of Rivet City gathered on the landing deck snapped their heads to the skies as beams of light pierced down from the heavens. Massive columns of blasted dust and dirt rose far to the west with each strike. The deafening shockwave followed nearly a minute later, blasting dust off the ruins of the Capital Wasteland and collapsing the more decrepit structures, while sending metal-creaking tremors throughout the entire aircraft carrier.
It was like the wrath of the gods fully unleashed, and throughout the full minute of the bombardment, no one could hear anything, not even their own terrified screams, beyond the booming explosions. When it finally, mercifully ended, those who still had their wits and hadn’t scurried away to safety saw a massive cloud of dust that would soon darken the skies of the Capital Wasteland for several days.
Scouts were sent out to confirm what the Nexus delegation had helpfully provided via video: an entire region of the wasteland turned into glassy craters, with no signs of the raiders or the ruins they had infested.
Rivet City hurriedly voted for survival and sent an offer of submitting to Nexus rule to the visiting delegation soon after. They were far from the only ones, and by the end of the day the Nexus had control of the Capital Wasteland and its surroundings.