The behemoth lumbered forward, shrugging off minigun fire with a meaty arm clad in thick metal. Armored super mutants trailed after it, brandishing their crude weapons, numbering several hundred and stretching across the horizon. Four platoons were sent to blunt their attacks, but despite the firepower the Brotherhood had prepared, there were still too many to deal with.
Alex carried Knight Kaori over her shoulders as she ran, like so many others, their retreat covered by one of the other squads. They alternated between retreating and providing covering fire in a bounding overwatch that allowed the platoon to retreat safely. The other platoons did the same, one working in tandem with Crispin’s platoon, the other two on the opposite side of the highway doing similarly.
The scouts on the center took the chance to target any mutants that showed signs of leadership, sniping them from afar to sow discord in their already discordant ranks. A small respite when the platoon was left without local leadership of its own. With Crispin and the other paladins often dueling with any armored mutants lucky enough to reach them, command over the retreat fell to the knight sergeants among them. They were experienced knights and knew what was to be expected, but none had seniority over the others.
With every wave that pursued them, the sergeants all called for more fire support directed towards their assigned areas. This forced the two paladins and their miniguns to divide their attention, diluting the firepower they could’ve delivered. Compounded by a need for a clear line of sight or else risk friendly fire, meant they weren’t as effective as they ought to have been.
A super mutant shrugged past his falling brothers and sprayed at a retreating initiate, sending him tumbling. He crawled, grasping at dead grass, trying to pull himself towards safety before slumping over. A knight beside him turned to fire his laser rifle at the super mutant, emptying a full energy cell into the mutie before it went down. He shouted, hoping that anyone would listen, “We need some damn cover!”
Someone called out to the knight sergeant who was forced to oversee the retreat. “If they focus their fire on one flank, those miniguns could force the muties to break and flee. Then they’d be free to do the same on the other side."
“Tell that to Crispin when he’s not busy. The others have the same authority that I do.” The sergeant called back as he fired on a stray mutant hound that had been let loose by itself.
Despite the chaos of the Brotherhood’s retreat, the small physical stature of the Brotherhood’s human soldiers combined with their advanced weaponry, compared to the super mutants, meant they could deliver more firepower on a shorter front. The super mutants tried to force their way past each other, crowding together as they ran forward, making themselves into easier targets. They stumbled over the dead and dying, slowing their pursuit, long enough for the Brotherhood to return to the overpass mostly intact.
Well into the day, Alex’s feet ached from carrying Kaori’s weight, but the overpass was perilously close. The promise of safety incited a panicked hope in her chest. However, the overpass was also under assault by a line of mutants that curved around its front. With mutants to the south and mutants to the north, Alex found she was trapped in a pocket. The platoon’s retreat stopped short of the overpass as their momentum died and sergeants called out to the paladins that were meant to be commanding them, but they were still too busy fighting to give out orders.
Iverson ran to the knight sergeant that had led the retreat. “We need to break through that line and hope for the best.”
The knight sergeant looked around at the chaos that engulfed them, but Alex ran to lend her voice to Iverson’s. “He’s right, there’s nothing else we can do.”
The sergeant swore and began calling out to any nearest sergeant, anybody that would listen. They gathered to his side, confused until he pointed at the line of super mutants that stood between them and the safety of the overpass.
He yelled “Follow me!” And they rallied their own squads to charge the line, firing their rifles.
The super mutants countercharged the disorganized advance with guns of their own, injuring the Brotherhood soldiers or killing them outright. They edged closer towards each other, but the sergeants forced the attack and their squads engaged in a melee with the mutants. Which they were unprepared for.
Big, green, and mean, the super mutants were natural brutes. When an initiate bayoneted a mutant in the guts, it grunted and returned the gesture with a meaty backhand blow that knocked several teeth from the initiate’s mouth. The mutant lumbered towards the initiate and raised a leg to crush his skull, but Alex shot a round at the gap in the mutant’s helmet.
Kaori’s weight on her back strained Alex past exhaustion and hindered her ability to aim. The round missed and bounced off the helmet, but the impact made the mutant sway with one leg still in the air. Alex shot another round at the mutant’s leg that toppled the mutant. Once he was on the ground, Alex dumped the rest of the magazine into the mutant’s face.
Alex helped the initiate off the ground as Iverson ran around them. He fired at the super mutants advancing towards them, calling out for help. Alex and the Initiate fired their own weapons, but there were too many. A wave of green muscle threatened to wash over them, but militiamen with their cowboy hats poured from the underpass hootin’ and hollerin’ while they fired their guns.
With their efforts combined, Alex found a gap opening in the mutant lines. Iverson tapped her shoulder and entered the gap, beckoning her forward. Mutants tried to surround him, but Alex and several others were close behind. Withering fire from two sides broke the mutants and sent them scattering.
One of the militia waved to Alex. “Get a move on! To the underpass with your wounded!” She said while she covered their retreat.
Relief made Alex’s legs shake as she trudged into the underpass. The other platoons were trailing behind, in their own time. A woman in a cowboy hat called to Alex, pointing to an empty spot on the floor between two knights, and she set her sergeant onto the floor.
“What happened?” The woman asked as she examined Knight Kaori.
“She was knocked unconscious. Blow to the head.” Alex said.
“There’s nothing I can do without some fury to wake her up. You, on the other hand. Take a seat for me.” The woman stood and pulled Alex towards a concrete barrier that lined the highway. “You’ve got dried blood on your forehead. Did you suffer your own head wounds?”
“What?” Alex rubbed at her forehead, flaking away red bits, and removed her helmet to touch her head. “I never got hit.”
“Lucky you, this must not be your blood. Probably your friend’s, since you carried her all the way here.”
Alex shrugged and the woman left to tend other patients. Iverson dragged along an initiate and seated him against the concrete barrier, before finding Alex and taking a seat by her side. “Crispin went up for more orders. We have some time to breathe.” He handed her a pouch of loose 5.56 rounds and gestured to the initiate. “Take these, he won’t be needing them.”
“Thanks.” She said, but as she took them, Iverson put a hand on hers and held it there.
“Are you alright? You’re not hit anywhere?”
Alex pulled away from his touch. “I’m fine.” She said, looking away from the doe-eyed stare he sent her way. It made her wonder why he treated her with such softness, as if she needed to be coddled. He was the one who changed, not her. “Just take the chance to rest.”
It wasn’t long until Crispin returned with more orders for his platoon. With their wounded remaining in the underpass, the platoon was to reinforce the eastern flank. Crispin positioned them on a small ridge ahead of the road that ran from east to west, leading to the top of the overpass.
The other platoons had nearly dropped to half-strength, but were reorganized into a single squad. A bit oversized, but able to fight, which is what mattered. Weary militiamen also remained. Dozens of dead and wounded, both Brotherhood soldiers and militiamen, were dragged away.
Crispin said they would be marked for distinction, but Alex was unsure if the prize was worth the cost. She could see the paladin commander overseeing the defense of the overpass, another Midwestern paladin from Chicago. If he fought and put their armor to use, they’d be too busy to command, but staying back meant one less suit of power armor.
A wave of super mutants lined up along the horizon and marched towards their position, shining bits of metal strapped to their bodies. Miniguns on the overpass churned through the mutants in the center, but the flanks had to fend for themselves. Knights and initiates were sprawled against the ridgeline, accompanied by militiamen, and a line of guns burst into action.
Their ridgeline had a shorter field of view than the platoon’s positions had been in the South and the mutants could charge out from behind cover. While they were forced to eat lead and lasers, unable to respond with effective gunfire of their own to suppress the Brotherhood, these super mutants were hardier and better armored than those along the highway.
They jumped over the ridgeline to brutalize anyone they could reach. Initiates were first to die, overeager to prove their valor, but the militia took the brunt of the casualties. The experienced knights and the wiser of the initiates leapt back to keep their distance from the mutants as they fired their rifles. Others along the line remained in place, firing on the mutants and entrusting their comrades with killing the mutants to their sides and rear.
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Militia came up from the center, arriving across the overpass from the west to evacuate the dead and wounded. Crispin had advanced ahead of the ridgeline to duel with mutants, having left command to one of his sergeants yet again. The sergeant commanded the militia to take up positions further east and were led away by a senior knight.
The behemoth approached in the distance, lumbering forward, but Alex doubted the militia would be enough to turn the tide. Miniguns focused the behemoth, but it meant more super mutants could reach the underpass. The sound of fighting echoed out and three paladins leapt from the overpass to join the fighting below, but there weren’t nearly enough of them.
A paladin ran up from the center to speak with Crispin, but was forced to speak with one of the knight sergeants instead. Yelling through the chaos, he said that the wounded in the underpass were being evacuated. To shorten and secure their lines, Crispin had to withdraw his flank back to the overpass and hold it at all costs.
The sergeant leapt to action, unable to rely on Crispin. The militia were the first to go, weakening the furthest extent of their flank. The knights and initiates were quick to follow once the super mutants closed in from their flanks, threatening to enfilade the length of their line. Alex could hear Crispin demanding why his task force was abandoning their positions, as well as the sorry sergeant forced to explain his orders while remaining exposed and alone on the ridgeline.
Once Crispin turned to flee, the knight sergeant ran ahead to command the platoon. They covered Crispin as he ran, hammered by brutish melee weapons from behind. Once he returned to the overpass, the situation seemed to stabilize. The super mutants were forced to cross a greater distance of open ground, until the miniguns along the center went silent.
“They’ve run out of ammo.” A knight said, the fear in his voice thick enough to choke the air.
Crispin raised a fist to the air, scratched and dented from engaging in a melee with super mutants. “Stand proud, this is our chance to distinguish ourselves!”
Paladins along the overpass dropped their miniguns to brandish their laser rifles and leapt to the ground below. They joined the fighting as more mutants concentrated towards the underpass, but Alex doubted they could stop them all. Brotherhood units further east abandoned their trenches and fled towards the ruins north of the highway, allowing the mutants to circle around the overpass.
Alex was unloading an energy cell, the entire line frantic with energy. An initiate murmured under his breath in a prayer to some god, new or old. It was unnerving and Alex took a moment to look back and find the overpass becoming surrounded. Brotherhood forces were clashing with the mutants, aided by militiamen, but mutants were forcing themselves forward.
A small car flew through the air and bounced across the overpass. There were no casualties, but Alex felt morale sink lower. The behemoth no longer had to defend its face from minigun fire, freeing both of its hands. Rifles were shot at the behemoth as it stooped low and picked up a motorbike, but their fire was ineffective.
The motorbike flew through the air, like a leaf spinning in the wind. When it hit the overpass, it burst apart. Alex ducked low and covered the back of her neck, feeling the air above her shake as shrapnel whistled by. Iverson gasped and Alex found him on a knee, clutching his thigh with blood pouring from between his fingers.
Alex leapt to his side to drag him away from the line, to make sure he didn’t get in anybody’s way. The wound on his leg was deep, but not so deep that it was life-threatening. Alex grit her teeth and removed her helmet, unwrapping the cloth she had tied around her head to tie it around Iverson’s leg. She was loathed to part with the scarf, her “hachimaki” gift from Michael, but it was better used to tend to Iverson’s wound.
A paladin leapt from the overpass, shouting “Ad Victoriam!” He forced his way towards the behemoth, pushing aside super mutants as he ran with fire support from paladins still on the overpass. He climbed a leg and shot his rifle into it, but the behemoth swung its legs and the paladin went flying over and past the overpass.
His actions were ineffective and did nothing to slow the behemoth’s advance. A wave of super mutants charged forward, with enough succeeding in reaching the Brotherhood’s lines to cause a panic among the militiamen and initiates. They abandoned the line to scramble away from the mutants, trying to clear them away with gunfire that risked friendly fire. Paladins left the overpass to engage with the mutants, to make sure their flank didn’t collapse entirely.
A car hit the overpass with a thundering crash and fissures formed throughout the road. Alex felt the ground shake beneath her feet and she ran for steadier ground, but sections of the overpass collapsed and the ground gave way.
When Alex next opened her eyes, she found herself partially buried. Several of her fingers were twisted, but she was relatively unharmed compared to the people around her. A knight’s upper body was crushed underneath a larger stack of rubble while a paladin was struggling to pull himself from underneath rubble as a super mutant whacked his helmet with a tire iron.
Alex pulled her fingers straight and retrieved a nearby laser rifle. A mutant hound charged her, but she pulled herself free from the rubble and bayonetted the beast. It whined as it tried to pull away, but Alex pushed forward and the blade plunged into its heart. It fell limp and Alex kicked it aside, but there were more.
Other mutant hounds charged into the underpass and Alex pulled herself off the ground to save as many of the wounded as she could. One of the mutants had its jaws around an initiate’s foot, trying to pull him away, but Alex plunged her bayonet into the back of its head. The initiate thanked her as a militiaman dragged him to safety.
Iverson called out to her from the overpass, looking down at her through the gap that had opened along its center. “Watch out for those muties!”
A super mutant warlord with a plumed helm declared “This is the Age of the Super Mutants!” He charged under the overpass with his warband of armored mutants, all firing their guns.
Brotherhood soldiers and militiamen, injured or healthy, remained steadfast as the returned fire, but the mutants had the temporary advantage. Their fully automatic pipeguns sprayed across the underpass, killing many. A paladin dropped to the underpass while Iverson and other knights supported them from above, but there were too many.
While the warlord engaged the paladin in a melee, the other mutants were free to bypass him. Alex placed herself between one of the mutants and a group of wounded initiates, too injured to escape. Her laser rifle struck the mutant's armor, but he raised a meaty arm to his face and trudged his way forward.
When her laser rifle clicked empty, she held it like a short spear and pointed the bayonet at the mutant. It wasn’t likely, but she had to plunge her bayonet into the mutant's face if she wanted to live. No hesitation, it was do or die.
The mutant realized he was free and clear to run wild, and roared as he charged forward. Alex roared her own defiance, ducking low to escape the mutant’s grasp, then leaping upwards with her bayonet. It grazed the mutant’s chin, but dragged across his cheek and into his eye. The tip of the blade caught on the mutant’s eyesocket to plunge deeper inside.
The mutant shrieked in pain and one hand grasped at his bleeding face, but the other grabbed Alex by the harness that fixed her chestplate in place. She tried to plunge her bayonet into the mutant’s neck, but the mutant shook her back and forth hard enough to make her jaw rattle.
An initiate crawled across the ground and stabbed a knife into the mutant’s foot and he went falling to the ground. Alex tried to bayonet the mutant then, but he grasped at the length of the barrel with his other hand. It was too slick with his blood, however, and Alex pushed her weight against the rifle. It slid through the mutant’s fingers and the bayonet plunged into his neck.
The mutant grasped at his neck with both hands, eyes wide with terror. Alex plunged her bayonet into the mutant's chest, again and again until she thought he was dead. Then a few more times after that. She turned to thank the initiate who rescued her, but found him gasping for breath.
Alex called for someone to help, but an armored mutant howled with fury. He pointed at her and cried out, “Our brother! That human killed our brother!” Other mutants called for her death, going so far as to turn their backs on their enemies to charge at her.
“Ah, shit!” Alex said, scrambling to reload her rifle.
A shadow fell over them, accompanied by the roar of engines. For a moment, the noise and chaos of battle faded away. Everybody stared up, through the gaps in the overpass, and Midwestern paladin clad in a dark red ATA fell through to land in the underpass. He pulled two long swords from his hip, connected to a backpack by tubes, and the blades burst into flames. His shoulder-cape billowed as the flames made his black chains glisten.
A knight, grizzled and scarred, yelled from the overpass. His voice was carried through the air, laden with aggression. “Star Paladin Rodriguez is with us!” Others joined the shouting as the super mutants looked at each other with confusion. Reinforcements had arrived.
A mutant tried to charge the Star Paladin, but a quick swipe opened the mutant’s chest and a bright flash engulfed the rest in flame. More paladins jumped from the vertibirds in the sky to join the fight, signaling a continuation of the fight. Gunfire resumed as the vertibirds moved ahead of their position to circle around the behemoth, spraying it with bursts of minigun fire that stopped the behemoth in its tracks.
The super mutant warlord kicked aside the paladin it was grappling with and charged the Star Paladin. His bumper sword sparked against the paladin’s twin shishkebabs as the two dueled. The mutant headbutted the paladin, laughing as the paladin stumbled back. The paladin returned a headbutt of his own, his laughter replacing the mutants as several teeth scattered to the floor.
A mutant hound ran forward to bite at the paladin’s ankle. Its teeth couldn’t pierce his armor, but it hindered his movement. The mutant warlord struck at the paladin's helmet with the handle of his bumper sword, but the paladin continued laughing as he tried to plunge his swords into the mutant's torso. The mutant blocked one sword with his own and used his free hand to catch the paladin’s other sword by its hilt.
Alex ran forward to bayonet the mutant hound, relieving the Star Paladin long enough for him to push forward and plunge his swords into the mutant warlord. His swords roared with fire and flames burst from within the mutant, escaping from his eyes and mouth. The Star Paladin pulled his swords free and let the mutant warlord’s smoking corpse fall away with a hollow thump. Before his body hit the floor, his mutant brothers began to flee. They cried out, promising vengeance, but all the fight had left them.
Rodriguez turned to face Alex, the yellow lenses of his helmet reflecting her face back at her. “Good knight. Come find me after this for a reward, maybe I’ll bring you to Portland when it’s time.” The paladin strolled to the edge of the underpass and paladins lined up beside him to form a line.
A squad of heavily armored knights rappelled down from a vertibird. One of the knights handed the Star Paladin a missile launcher, while another knight warned Alex to clear the area behind. He tugged at her sleeve and led her off to the side and called out, “Backblast area clear!”
The Star Paladin rested his missile launcher on his shoulder, its barrel pointed at the behemoth. Beside him, a knight aimed oversized binoculars at the behemoth and said something to the paladin. The back of the missile launcher flashed with light and propelled a missile towards the behemoth.
When the lumbering mutant moved to the side, so did the missile, and Alex realized the missile was homing in on its target somehow. The missile exploded against the behemoth’s face, opening a crater in its skull. The behemoth’s arms fell limp and it trudged forward, but toppled over and shook the earth as it came crashing down.
Cheers resounded from the highway, triumphant, and the mutants on the horizon fled the field, that tide of green washing away completely. Despite heavy losses to Brotherhood and militia forces, Portland was protected from the super mutants. “Ad Victoriam.” Alex said through cracked lips, proud to have been a part of its defense.