Lance 27 was at full strength, complete with a standard dozen paladins under Michael’s command. The lone scribe added to their number made their formation awkward, as Choy did not possess power armor of her own, but she could be kept away from the fighting. It was the inexperience of the new paladins that concerned Michael the most.
As Dominic had said, a few hardliners in the Brotherhood frowned upon the bribery, or rather the exchanging of gifts, that was commonplace in the Brotherhood. Abel was one such man and Michael had already caught his attention with a perfectly ordinary round of looting after a successful mission. It’s why Michael selected his new paladins specifically for their inexperience.
The paladins who had been trained by their sergeants, in line squads informally dedicated to training the new recruits in the basics of power armor combat, were expensive to procure. To secure their transfer to his squad, Michael would need to bribe their sergeants with valuable commodities or else they might waste weeks of his time thinking about their decisions. Unable to quicken this process through the usual way, it was only natural that Michael would bypass these dealings by taking on the new recruits their sergeants were willing to give for free.
When Michael met with a few eager officers, they had wanted to show him the paladins they’ve trained up, the way Quartermaster Boston might show off his new weapon mods at the commissary. Alcohol was Michael’s preferred currency, and they all knew he had lots of it, but Michael had to do things strictly by the rules.
“You do know you don’t have to train up the new recruits yourself. We have this system in place for a reason.” A sergeant had said.
“It’s my first time picking out recruits. I want to do things strictly by the rules.”
“By the rules?” The sergeant said, her confusion apparent on her face.
She had been the only sergeant to approach Michael, confessing that she was interested in the alcohol he had recently acquired. She wanted to share a bottle of wine with her husband for their upcoming anniversary, so she was sorely disappointed that she wouldn’t get that bottle from Michael. He had worried that she would sabotage his recruiting efforts for that reason alone.
”I just want to be careful. Some people frown upon gift-giving between the sergeants.” Michael told her.
The woman’s confusion gave way for some other emotion. Apprehension, perhaps, because she wasn’t quite satisfied with his answer. But what mattered was that she was a professional in the end, as were the other sergeants. Whatever they thought of his excuses, they chose to let him have his new paladins.
With the new paladins transferred to Michael’s command, he divided them between the experienced paladins in his squad. Tobias, Miles, Beck, and Andoh were each tasked with leading teams of three. While they haven’t distinguished themselves in the field to become senior paladins, they still had seniority of the new recruits.
With no team of his own to lead, Michael could focus on leading the squad as a whole while also keeping an eye on Choy. It was a non-standard arrangement, but the squad’s formation was at Michael’s discretion. The division of squads into equal units was purely a matter of preference for the sergeants who wanted to fight as well as to lead.
Lance 27’s next mission was a simple patrol, which Michael selected to give the new paladins time practice moving in their armor. The squad had barely marched past the front gate when one of the new paladins tripped and fell onto the ground. Knights laughed from their stations on the wall and Beck called out to them, “Fuck off!”
The paladin was a member of her team, part of her responsibility, and she helped him to his feet. The paladin forced out mutters of thanks, clearly embarrassed, and inspected his laser rifle for damage having dropped it during his fall. It was intact and without a scratch. He was lucky in that regard, because he could have crushed the rifle beneath his armor. The destruction of such a piece of equipment was a flogging offense, which Michael would have to carry out.
Tobias wandered over to Michael and removed his helmet to speak. “I think we should maintain a slow pace. Some of these guys aren’t used to marching in formation yet.”
“No. They’ll have to learn fast.” Michael said and turned to his squad. “Keep up, we have a long day of patrolling ahead of us. If anyone slows us down, I will have you all march around the walls of the camp. Understood?”
The new recruits might be unfamiliar with their power armor, but they were still paladins of the Brotherhood. They needed to prove that they belonged to the Order of Paladins, the foremost combat arm of the Brotherhood of Steel, and marching in their armor was the bare minimum. Michael himself had been forced to keep up with Roccaforte and his squad or be left behind during their patrols of Chicago.
The paladins called out their acknowledgement in unison, the way new knights did when ordered to clean out latrines. “Sir, yes sir.”
As expected, the squad was slowed down by the experience of the new paladins. Michael would have them march around camp before they went to bed tonight, both as punishment for hindering their missions and as more practice so they would not do so again.
Beck’s team slowed and forced the rest of the squad to stop for them. She was addressing her paladins. “Your feet are walking too close together. It’s why moving feels so awkward. Try moving your feet diagonally.” Beck displayed an exaggerated version of the way paladins moved in their armor, loping side to side as she walked forward.
“Paladins, pay attention. That was good advice.” Michael said. “Watch and listen to your team leaders. You can learn from their experience.”
The squad continued their patrol up the Pacific Highway, near to where the Brotherhood’s advance had been stopped. High Command instructed them to patrol further north, because raiders had suffered too many casualties to challenge the Brotherhood. Blair was confident and wanted to take the initiative to expand the Brotherhood’s hold over the fringes of their territory. It meant more salvage to sort through for their scavenging parties or settlements that could be brought under their control and taxed for protection.
“Excuse me, Paladin Michael?” One of the new paladins called out. “Why are your laser rifles hooked up to your armor like that? The manual taught us to attach our rifles barrel-up.”
He pointed to Michael’s laser rifle, which was hooked onto the side of his chestplate. Michael remembered the old training manual new paladins were forced to read on a terminal upon their ascension. They were an amalgamation of old texts the scribes had collected over the centuries and compiled to provide the Brotherhood’s paladins with theoretical knowledge on their new armor.
Michael grabbed the handle of his laser rifle with his right hand and let it rest there. The barrel drifted up, but low enough that it was still pointed to the ground. ”This is what we call a patrol carry position. Can anyone explain why?”
Andoh was the first to speak. “It’s so we can respond to threats faster when we’re on patrol.” He copied Michael’s movements with his own rifle. “This way, we don’t have to flip our rifles before grabbing hold of it.”
“It’s also safer for everyone around.” Tobias added. “If the rifle is accidentally discharged, then the shot goes into the ground and not the air. It’s more important with ballistic weapons though, because bullets can come back down.”
Michael nodded, pleased with the answers. “Alright, team leaders. Show the new guys how to hook up their rifles.”
As the squad organized themselves, Michael took a stroll towards one of the nearby buildings. It was a gas station whose pumps were torn from the ground for scraps, as well as much of the building itself. A stack of bricks lay beside the wall, collected for reuse. Though, whoever had done the collecting was long gone. The bricks were crumbling, having been abandoned where they were left.
The wind whistled and Michael stared at the silent ruins. A skeleton was resting against the wall inside the gas station, old and dusty like the ruins around it. Walking around in his power armor, he could almost forget that the ruined world around him had been alive once. As if he were just a tourist, but he was stuck in this wasteland.
There was a faint buzzing that resounded nearby and Michael returned to his squad. “I hear bloatflies, it’s time for target practice. I want to see how well all of you can aim.”
The squad approached the stench of death emanating from inside what first seemed to be a warehouse. Tall shelves of metal housed dusty boxes or long stacks of rotted wood, cans of paint, as well as broken pottery. Seeing the faded stickers along the shelves, printed with numbers and barcodes, Michael realized the warehouse was a home improvement store.
In a section overgrown with vegetation and partially exposed to the outside, where plants and pots had once been sold, Michael found three radstags hanging from hooks. Their throats were cut and blood collected into buckets beneath them. There was good meat on the carcasses and would last weeks for the typical scavver group, but it was left for a swarm of bloatflies instead. Wings buzzed as the overgrown insects suckled on the putrid flesh and Miles gagged.
“I hate bloatflies.” He said, doubling over and putting his hands on his knees to hold himself up.
“This looks like a scavenger hideout. Those carcasses can’t be older than a week.” Tobias said as he wandered away to inspect the remains of a campfire, as well as the few pots and pans that were left laying around.
“Where did the people go?” Andoh wondered.
”Did another group of paladins push them out?” Tobias asked, an edge to his voice as if Michael had been the one to do so.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Michael was curious too. He briefly wondered if the location was hit by another paladin squad on a mission for Torland, but he disregarded the thought.
“Unlikely. Our scavengers haven’t been here. Look at all this stuff.” There were items lying around that the Brotherhood’s scavengers would never leave behind, the radstag carcasses most prominent among them.
There were also no traces of battle, the location had been abandoned without a struggle. If paladins had been in the area, Michael doubted they would have left the place intact. Personally, he would have kicked a hole through a wall. Doorways were dangerous to walk blindly into, because there might be a line of wastelanders in prepared fortified positions waiting to light up anyone with small arms fire. A paladin in power armor could usually disregard this threat, but it was always an unnecessary risk.
Beck pointed to a couple of bunkbeds, stripped bare of personal items. “There was fighting in the area. Whoever lived here might’ve just abandoned this place.”
“In any case, it’s ours now.” Michael said. “Choy, report this location to HQ. The scavengers will want to bring this material back home. Bloatflies too.”
“Why the bloatflies?” A paladin asked.
“To preserve their meat for winter. In case we need it.”
Miles shook his head and spoke with a shaky voice, nauseous from the thought. “I wouldn’t call that meat.”
Michael disregarded the sentiment and addressed his squad. “Paladins, shooting practice.”
He singled out the new paladins and ordered them into a line, with their team leaders watching from the sidelines. They raised their rifles and Micheal gave his signal for them to open fire. Laser beams fired out in a flurry, but with neither precision or accuracy. One paladin expended an entire energy cell, reloading his rifle after hitting none of his targets.
Andoh put a hand over his face and shook his head as he muttered quietly. “Was I this bad when I started out too?”
“Yes.” Tobias whispered back. “Just give them some time.”
Bloatflies, angered by the disturbance, buzzed their way towards the paladins en masse. Dozens of bloatflies bobbed up and down, moved side to side, and the paladins struggled to hit them. If they did, it was because there were so many of them.
Maintaining their own distance away, the bloatflies exchanged fire with the paladins, shooting projectiles from their rears. A moist brown glob hit a paladin's visor and they cried out in surprise and disgust. Others raised a hand to protect their visors, but became covered in goo. They were safe inside their power armor, however, and Michael allowed them to continue as they were.
As the bloatflies dwindled in number, the paladins who weren’t being hit were able to focus their attention. They wiped their visors as clean as they could and carefully aimed their shots, firing where they expected the bloatflies to go. They adjusted to the movement patterns of their targets, but it took several long minutes until the bloatflies were dealt with.
If they struggled this much with hitting close range targets, how much more against humanoids in the distance? Not all of their small arms could pierce their armor, but the raiders of Seattle proved they had access to weapons that could do so. Michael needed to drill them harshly before he could rely on them in the field.
When the last bloatfly fell to the floor, a silence took hold over the squad as the new paladins awaited judgment. Tobias and the other team leaders whispered among themselves.
Michael was the first to speak. “I assume your aim is better outside of your armor, but you’ll have plenty of chances to learn how to aim inside of it.” He said, but understood why these paladins had been the ones given over to him. Their aim was below average for a new recruit, as well as their agility in their armor.
“It’s the bulk. All this metal makes it hard to aim down our sights.” A paladin said, making his excuses for his bad aim.
“It’s fine to understand why you have trouble aiming, but those excuses won’t matter when we have to fight the raiders. They’ve got things that can pierce through your armor if you don’t kill them quick enough.”
Michael ordered his squad to follow him to where Abel’s platoon had first encountered the raider army that was sent to oppose the Brotherhood’s advance. It was a detour from the path they were assigned to patrol, but he needed his squad to understand the enemy they would have to fight. Oliver was the only man who might’ve understood what they faced, but he had since returned to Andrews.
Corpses stripped bare surrounded the Pacific Highway. Not as many as Michael had left behind at McSorely, but enough to shock the new paladins. They had likely come from small towns with a few hundred people at the most, so they weren’t strangers to large groups. However, they could not have been accustomed to the mass death surrounding them. Not yet.
Once they arrived at the house that Gravy Squad had taken shelter in, a man gasped at the corpses piled around the entrances. “Those bodies were good for makeshift sandbags. They inhibit the movement of the enemy while providing useful cover for knights.” Michael looked pointedly at Choy, who grimaced at the sight. “Or scribes.”
“I am never getting near something like that.” Choy said.
“You get used to the smell, but hope that you’ll never have to.”
“Why are we here?” A paladin asked, his voice wary. “Isn’t this where Sentinel Abel fought with the raiders? I heard a lot of paladins died here.”
Michael posted his paladins to every opening of the house, pointing their rifles out as if they were defending the position. “Do you see all those bodies out there?”
Without the snow obscuring his vision, over a hundred corpses were visible now. They were scattered in all directions and Michael would have struggled to imagine how many active raiders there might’ve been, if he had not seen the mass of them gathered at McSorely River.
“There’s so many of them dead. It’s a wonder how they ever managed to kill any of our paladins.” Someone said.
“Those are just the raiders that died. There were more. Some even had power armor of their own.”
“Raiders in power armor? How can that be possible?”
“Someone in Gravy Squad said that too, but their most dangerous weapons were probably their grenade rifles. It allowed them to pierce through our armor, which is where most of our casualties came from.”
Michael took the opportunity to bring his squad to the church that had been situated on the Brotherhood’s left flank during the fighting. He had thought the building was intact, but there was a gaping hole where an entire side of the church had collapsed. Several corpses were sticking out from underneath the rubble and Michael knew the damage had been from the encounter. It was probably caused by constant fire from the raider’s grenade rifles and Michael considered himself lucky to have avoided much of this desperate fighting.
“When High Command wants to send another task force to take the airport, I want to be there. So all of you should know what you might have to deal with.”
One of the new paladins cleared her throat, voice wavering with nervousness. “Excuse me, sir, but a few of us have only been paladins for barely a month. We don’t have the experience to fight in our power armor yet.”
“That’s why we’re on patrol. It’s not about how long you’ve been paladins, but how often and how well you deal with dangers in the wasteland. Once you can manage to walk in your power armor without falling, we’ll be taking on regular missions. When the fighting picks up again, we ought to go on a few Search and Destroy missions.”
A pack of mongrels wandered nearby, sniffing at the corpses. One sunk its teeth into an arm exposed underneath rubble and pulled it free. Another mongrel tried to take the severed limb and the two animals fought for control over the morsel, pulling at it with their jaws. One set of teeth sunken into the forearm and the other in the wrist. The flesh of the forearm tore away from one of the mongrel’s teeth and the other tried to flee with its prize. Michael shot the mongrel before it could run too far away.
The rest of the pack barked in his direction and charged Lance 27. The mongrels leapt over the rubble and scrambled into the church, their paws kicking up dust. They surrounded the paladins and tried to bite at their ankles, the radiation that twisted their bodies having twisted their minds as well. Ordinarily, a healthy mutt might’ve fled away from a paladin in full power armor, but these mongrels were exceptionally aggressive.
A paladin gasped in panic as he struggled to see the mongrels crowding his feet, despite his power armor protecting him from their jaws. Michael kept his rifle in a low ready position, leaving the paladin to deal with the mongrels. He turned to find Choy watching the scene from behind a side door, having been smart enough to run out of the church before she could catch mongrel’s attention.
“Don’t panic. You’re in power armor.” Michael called out to his squad. “If you can’t see the mongrels beneath you, find them beneath one of your squadmates and hope they do the same for you.”
“Let me get those for you.” Miles said and fired at the paladin's feet with his laser rifle and a few stray shots hit the metal on his heels. The rest hit the mongrels, whose soft flesh sizzled deliciously under laser fire. Other paladins did the same and the last of the mongrels died with a high-pitched yelp.
Michael’s designated team leaders should’ve known how to deal with the situation without his instruction, and the squad as a whole could’ve been quicker about killing the mongrels, but they did well enough. Moments like these were the best time for paladins to gain experience, where they were under stress and under the illusion of danger, but never actually at risk.
“Choy, radio to camp so scavengers can collect this meat.” Choy seated herself on a pew as she worked her radio.
Miles wandered up to Michael and asked, “Do you really expect anyone to eat dogmeat?”
“Scavengers were called for bloatflies weren’t they?” Beck said. “I’d argue dogmeat is better.”
“But that was at the warehouse. There was other stuff there that was actually useful.”
“Yeah, but they’ll still take the meat from the bloatflies.”
It dawned on Michael that these Portland recruits had never suffered through a Chicago winter. However bad their Northwestern winters were, it wasn’t unusual for several feet of snow to fall on the Brotherhood’s corner of the Midwest, that frozen hell.
Michael remembered one unusually long winter. Crops couldn’t be grown and the Enclave had raided Brotherhood food stores, burning everything they couldn’t take. Everyone starved, from the highest elders to the lowest initiates. Anybody would’ve been glad for the smallest morsel of flesh to sustain them. Mongrels, bloatflies, rats. People stopped being picky eaters once hunger set in. There had even been those that resorted to cannibalism, but nobody would ever acknowledge that bit of dark truth.
“Just hope we won’t have to.” Michael said simply.
Choy called out to Michael. “Sir, Blair wants to speak with you.”
“That’s Head Paladin Blair, Scribe Choy.” Michael corrected, caught off-guard by the request. He took a knee beside Choy and removed his helmet so she could place the delicate handset against his ear. “This is Paladin Michael speaking.”
“Hail, paladin.” Blair said, voice gruff. “I hear you’ve called for scavengers to butcher bloatflies and dogs. They complain, but they better hope they don’t find out why they should be glad for it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Anyway, one of our convoys has been hit. They were returning from Browns Point after carrying out one of Abel’s goodwill missions, as if he wasn’t responsible for enough casualties already.” There was a brief pause, but Michael remained silent. If Blair wanted to rant about Abel, that was his privilege, but Michael was several notches below both men on the hierarchy. He’d say nothing to offend them, even if that meant saying nothing at all. “Take your squad and head south to find these raiders.”
“What’s our objective?”
“Search and destroy, if possible. Andrews is also being sent with a mixed taskforce of paladins and knights. Flores reported dozens of those white-clad raiders, those so-called Wardens. If your squad can’t handle them alone, link up with Andrews’ task force and support them.”