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The Sentinel tank roared again, blowing apart another cluster of mutants. The battlefield was still a storm, but the line was no longer bending. It was steel now, forged by fire, unyielding.
The battle for the ruins of the C.I.T. was no longer just a clash of men and monsters—it was a storm swallowing everything in its path.
Outside, the yard was a boiling cauldron of gunfire and screams, but inside, Robert, MacCready, the Commandos, and the soldiers plunged deeper, their boots crunching over shattered glass and bones, their shadows stretching long in the firelight. The ten Power Armor men led at the front, their metal giants thundering through debris with brutal efficiency.
Every time a mutant tried to block their way, it ended the same. A minigun spun to life, the thunder drowning out even the roar of beasts, or a massive power fist smashed ribs to paste. Sparks flew as chainblades cut through the crude armor of mutants, sending blood and viscera streaking across the walls.
Robert stayed close to them, eyes sharp, his Commandos weaving between the armored titans. He wasn't just shooting—he was commanding, his words like arrows cutting through the fog of war.
"Left corridor! Clear it!" he barked, and immediately two Commandos pivoted, their rifles spitting precise bursts into a nest of mutants that had been waiting in ambush.
MacCready, by contrast, fought like a man dancing on a razor's edge. His grin hadn't left, though his eyes told the truth—focused, cold, alive in the heat of battle. His rifle cracked, his shots clean, each one finding a throat, an eye, a heart. He moved between cover like he was born in it, tossing grenades with a flick of the wrist, barking insults at mutants as he cut them down.
"You're supposed to be the next step of evolution?!" he yelled at one massive brute as it charged. His bullet caught it through the eye, the thing collapsing in a wet heap. "Looks more like the next step to the meat grinder!"
The soldiers behind them pressed on, fear and courage mingling in every step. Some shouted battle cries to drown out the terror, others kept their lips pressed tight, their hands steady even as their hearts thundered. Blood splattered their armor, smoke filled their lungs, but still they moved—because to stop here was to die.
The corridors twisted like veins through a rotten corpse. Fires burned in oil drums, mutant graffiti scrawled across the walls in crude symbols—skulls, claws, crude words written in blood. The deeper they went, the worse it stank: rot, gunpowder, the metallic tang of spilled guts.
One hallway narrowed, and the hounds came.
A pack of mutant beasts, their eyes glowing with madness, hurled themselves at the front line. Their jaws snapped with bone-crushing force, saliva and blood flying as they leapt for throats.
"Hold!" Robert shouted.
The Power Armor men didn't flinch. Their weapons lit up the darkness—chainsaws revved, blades rose and fell, miniguns spun with hellfire. One hound was cut clean in half, another blasted into paste by a missile pod. Still more came, howling, tearing at armor, dragging soldiers to the ground.
A young private screamed as a hound sank its teeth into his arm, tearing flesh. His squadmate didn't hesitate—he pressed his rifle against the beast's skull and fired, spraying the corridor in gore. He hauled the bleeding man to his feet, shouting over the chaos: "Keep moving, damn it! You're not dying here!"
MacCready vaulted a collapsed beam, landing hard on a knee. He shot one hound mid-leap, then stabbed another through the throat with his combat knife when his magazine ran dry. He spat blood and dust, reloaded, and kept firing.
Finally, the last hound fell twitching, its throat opened wide by a power fist. The hall stank of burnt fur and blood, the floor slick with it. The soldiers sucked in ragged breaths, adrenaline burning like fire through their veins.
"Anyone dead?" Robert barked.
"Three wounded, none gone," a sergeant answered, his voice steady despite the blood dripping down his cheek.
"Patch them. Keep moving." Robert's tone was iron, no space for grief, no space for pause. The mission was all that mattered.
MacCready spat on the floor, flicking gore from his knife. "This son of a bitch we're hunting better be worth it," he muttered. "Never seen a pack this organized, not even close. Someone's pulling their strings."
"That's why we're here," Robert said, his voice quiet but sharp. "This isn't just another rabble. Whoever's leading them has a brain—and if we don't cut it out, this war gets worse."
The soldiers felt the weight of his words, but they didn't falter. They pressed on.
Meanwhile, outside, the battlefield was a furnace.
Sico's rifle was hot in his hands, his shoulder bruised from recoil, but his movements never slowed. He was everywhere at once—shouting orders, firing, dragging a wounded man to safety, then back into the fray.
The mutants surged again, a massive brute with rebar armor leading the charge, its roar shaking the air. Behind it, more poured over the rubble like a living tide.
"Second platoon, focus fire!" Sico roared.
The brute staggered as rounds slammed into it, but it kept coming. The ground shook with its steps.
"Sentinel! Bring it down!"
The tank swiveled, its main gun booming. The shell hit the brute dead center, exploding in a fountain of blood and metal. The shockwave knocked smaller mutants off their feet, their screams torn away by the blast.
The soldiers cheered, but Sico didn't let it linger. "Keep the pressure! Don't let them regroup!"
He turned, scanning the battlefield. His eyes narrowed on a rooftop where a mutant sniper had set up with a makeshift rifle, its barrel glinting in the firelight. Sico raised his weapon, exhaled, and fired. The round punched through the sniper's skull, sending it toppling into the street below.
A soldier beside him flinched, then grinned, adrenaline lighting up his face. "Nice shot, Commander!"
Sico didn't smile. He only reloaded, his voice sharp. "Save it for after. This fight isn't won yet."
The soldiers tightened their grips on their rifles. His presence was more than leadership—it was a shield, a fire burning that refused to be put out.
Inside the ruins, Robert and MacCready pushed deeper.
The halls opened into what had once been a grand auditorium, now twisted into a mutant den. Fires burned in the corners, bones stacked like trophies. And at the far end, in a crude throne of rusted metal and corpses, sat their quarry.
The leader.
He was massive, taller than any brute they'd seen, his muscles corded like steel cables. But it wasn't his size that froze the soldiers—it was his eyes. Yellow, sharp, cunning. Intelligence burned there, something rare and dangerous. He wasn't roaring, wasn't charging. He was waiting, watching.
Beside him, mutants howled, pounding weapons against the ground. The sound shook the walls, a drumbeat of war.
Robert's jaw tightened. He raised his rifle, his voice calm but edged with steel. "There he is."
MacCready licked his lips, a grin cutting his face even as sweat ran down it. "Finally. Let's go say hello."
The Power Armor men stepped forward, their heavy feet pounding like war drums. The Commandos tightened formation, rifles rising. Fifty soldiers fanned out, weapons trained, hearts hammering.
The mutant leader leaned forward on his throne, his voice a low growl that rumbled through the chamber.
"You think you stop us. You think… we are animals. But we are more. I am more."
His words chilled the air.
Robert didn't flinch. He lifted his rifle and spoke one word.
"Fire."
The chamber erupted in thunder.
The auditorium became a crucible of violence.
The instant Robert's order snapped through the chamber—"Fire."—the soldiers obeyed. Muzzle flashes lit the dark like strobe lightning, deafening thunder rolling as lead tore into the mutants clustered near their leader. The throne itself rattled with the impact of dozens of rounds. Flesh ripped, bone shattered, screams erupted.
But the leader did not fall.
He rose.
Slowly, impossibly, like a mountain standing tall after an earthquake. Bullets chewed his chest, tore his flesh, but he stood unbroken, roaring with a sound that cracked the very air. His massive arm swung up, pointing toward the soldiers.
"BROTHERS!" the leader bellowed, his voice rolling like a war horn. "RISE! CRUSH THEM!"
The walls answered.
From shadowed corridors and broken balconies, more Super Mutants poured in. The sound of their boots and snarls filled the auditorium, echoing like an avalanche. A tide of green muscle, twisted armor, and jagged weapons surged toward the humans. At least fifty of them, maybe more, boiling into the chamber like a flood.
Robert cursed under his breath. "Here they come!"
"Yeah, I noticed!" MacCready barked back, firing a burst at the nearest brute and ducking as a jagged axe slammed into the ground where he'd stood a second earlier.
The battle fractured instantly into two fronts.
The Power Armor squad lumbered forward as the first wall of mutants crashed into them. Metal met flesh with bone-shattering force. A chainsaw blade screamed as it ripped through a mutant's torso, spraying blood across the floor. A power fist came down like a sledgehammer, caving in a skull. Miniguns spat fire, tearing swathes through the horde, but still they came, throwing themselves with suicidal fury at the armored giants.
Behind them, the fifty soldiers formed firing lines, rifles blazing in controlled bursts. Their discipline was the only thing keeping the mutants from overwhelming the Power Armor men. Mutant bodies fell in heaps, but for every one that dropped, two more appeared from the shadows, roaring with madness.
"Hold the line!" a sergeant shouted, his voice cracking as he rammed a fresh magazine into his rifle. "Don't let them break through!"
The room shook with chaos, the air thick with smoke and blood.
Meanwhile, Robert and MacCready had only one target: the leader.
The beast had stepped down from his throne, striding into the storm of bullets with terrifying purpose. His skin was torn, blood ran down his chest in rivulets, but his eyes burned with cunning fire. A massive, jagged blade—fashioned from rusted steel and rebar—hung in his hand, and every swing carved the air like a guillotine.
"On him!" Robert barked to his Commandos, his rifle snapping another burst toward the leader's face. "Take him down, now!"
The Commandos answered with fire and steel. Their rifles cracked in unison, grenades arced through the air, exploding in showers of flame and shrapnel. The leader staggered once, twice, but he kept coming, his roars rattling the air.
MacCready slid into cover behind a broken beam, teeth bared in a grin that was more snarl than smile. "This guy just doesn't get the hint, huh?" He leaned out, squeezed off three shots. One slammed into the leader's shoulder, spinning him slightly.
The monster turned his head, locking eyes with MacCready.
Then he charged.
The ground trembled as the leader thundered forward, his massive blade raised. Soldiers screamed as he plowed through the line, batting men aside like dolls, his weapon cleaving a Commando in two.
"MacCready, MOVE!" Robert roared.
MacCready dove as the blade came down, sparks exploding as it cleaved through the beam instead of his skull. He rolled, came up on one knee, and fired point-blank into the leader's ribs. The rounds punched deep, blood spraying.
The mutant snarled but didn't falter. He backhanded MacCready with such force the man was hurled across the floor, his helmet cracking against stone.
"Mac!" Robert shouted, fury ripping his throat raw.
The Commandos surged to cover him, their rifles blazing, their bodies interposed between MacCready and the leader. One went down instantly, his torso crushed by a stomp. Another was hurled into the wall so hard the crack of his spine echoed above the gunfire.
Robert snapped his sights up, his jaw clenched. "You want a fight, you bastard? You've got one."
He fired. Controlled, precise bursts—his bullets hammering into the leader's face and chest. The mutant roared, stumbling back a step, blood pouring from his jaw. But instead of collapsing, he laughed. A deep, guttural sound that chilled every man in the room.
"You are weak," the leader growled, his words thick with blood but sharp with malice. "Humans always weak. You think numbers make you strong. But I… am destiny."
Robert's lip curled. "Then destiny bleeds."
The rest of the chamber was chaos given flesh.
The Power Armor men were locked in brutal melee, their suits dented, scratched, caked in gore. A massive brute leapt onto one's back, tearing at armor plates, until the soldier slammed himself backward into a wall, crushing the mutant into paste. Another suit lost an arm to a jagged blade, sparks showering, but its minigun still roared, cutting down four mutants in a spray of red.
The soldiers behind them fought like men possessed. A corporal screamed as he emptied a magazine into a charging mutant, only to be dragged down in a tide of claws. His comrades answered with bayonets and rifle butts, beating the beast off him before it tore him apart.
"Medic!" someone bellowed, dragging the corporal back.
A grenade went off in the ranks, the shockwave throwing men like rag dolls. Ears rang, bodies groaned, but still they fired, hands shaking, teeth gritted. This was no longer discipline—it was survival, raw and brutal.
At the center of it all, Robert faced the leader.
He moved with purpose, every bullet aimed, every order sharp. His Commandos fought around him like wolves, but one by one they were being cut down. The leader's sheer strength was terrifying—every swing of his blade broke men, every roar shattered courage.
MacCready staggered back to his feet, blood dripping from his scalp, vision swimming. But he still grinned, spitting red onto the floor.
"You hit like a Brahmin, ugly," he muttered, raising his rifle again. "Now let's see how you take lead."
He and Robert caught each other's eyes across the chaos—just for a second, enough. A silent agreement.
They weren't going to let this thing live.
Robert shouted, his voice like thunder. "All fire on the leader! Bring him down!"
The soldiers answered. Commandos, riflemen, even the Power Armor men who could turn their barrels—all of them unleashed hell on the mutant leader. Bullets chewed him, rockets slammed into him, grenades erupted around him.
He staggered, roared, swung his blade—but his strength began to falter. His body was torn, his blood painted the throne room floor. Still, he fought, dragging men down with him, roaring defiance even as his body failed.
At last, Robert charged.
He raised his rifle, emptied his last magazine into the leader's chest, then drew his combat knife. With a roar, he leapt, driving the blade into the mutant's throat.
The leader's roar became a choking gurgle. He swung once, wildly, but Robert twisted the blade deeper, his face a mask of fury and resolve.
"Not destiny," Robert hissed into his ear. "Just another corpse."
The leader fell.
The chamber shook as his massive body crashed into the ground, blood pooling like a lake around him.
For a heartbeat, the battle froze.
The mutants saw their leader fall. They howled, enraged—but there was no more order, no more discipline. Their charge faltered, became desperate, chaotic.
And the humans seized it.
"Push them back!" MacCready screamed, his voice hoarse but blazing. "Kill every last one of them!"
The Power Armor men surged forward, the soldiers redoubled their fire, and the mutants broke. Some fought to the death, others fled into the shadows, their roars fading into the ruins.
At last, silence fell.
The floor was littered with bodies, blood, and smoke. The soldiers stood panting, weapons smoking, eyes wide with shock and exhaustion.
Robert wiped the blood from his knife, staring down at the leader's corpse. His chest heaved, but his eyes burned with grim satisfaction.
MacCready limped up beside him, spitting again. "Well," he rasped, voice raw. "That… sucked."
Robert didn't answer. He just looked at him, then finally gave a short nod. "But it's done."
The silence after the mutant leader fell wasn't silence at all—it was the kind of hollow stillness that comes when the world is so drenched in blood and smoke that every ear goes numb. The guns stopped. The screams dulled. The echoes of violence still hung like ghosts in the rafters, but the chamber itself seemed to shudder into uneasy quiet.
Robert stood there for a moment longer, knife still clenched in his fist, eyes locked on the massive corpse at his feet. His breath came in jagged pulls, every inhale tasting of ash, cordite, and copper. The great mutant's blood spread outward in a dark pool, soaking into broken stone, creeping toward the boots of men who had barely survived the slaughter.
MacCready staggered closer, dragging one leg, his face smeared with soot and blood. His grin had faded now into something more raw, more human—relief carved out by exhaustion. He clapped Robert on the shoulder, wincing at the contact.
"Guess destiny bleeds after all," MacCready rasped.
Robert finally let go of the knife, ripping it from the monster's throat. He wiped the blade against the mutant's hide, then sheathed it. His voice was low, roughened by the smoke but steady. "Destiny always bleeds. It just takes a lot of work to make sure of it."
Behind them, the surviving Commandos regrouped, what few were left of them. Once a sharp, disciplined unit, now they looked like men dragged through hell. Helmets dented, armor split, blood streaked across their fatigues—not all of it their own. A quick glance told Robert the cost: more than half gone. The rest limped, clutched wounds, or simply leaned against the walls, staring blankly at the floor.
"Commandos, sound off," Robert barked, his voice carrying even in his exhaustion.
The roll call began, ragged but present. One by one, names answered, and in between those names, silence spoke louder—the silence of men who would never answer again.
Robert's jaw clenched at each absence, but he didn't let his voice waver. "We'll honor them later. For now—fall in."
The soldiers, too, began to gather. The fifty who had stormed in were reduced to maybe thirty, some standing only because a comrade had slung their arm over a shoulder and refused to let them drop. The medics moved among them, their hands red, their packs running dry of bandages and stim. They spoke in hurried tones, their voices tight as they tried to keep men breathing.
A clanking step drew Robert's attention. The Power Armor squad approached, their hulking frames streaked with gore and scarred with dents. One suit dragged a sparking limb behind it, hydraulics whining in protest. Another's visor was cracked, blood visible inside. They formed a loose semi-circle, their leader stepping forward.
"Sir," the armored voice rasped through the vox, distorted but clear. "Losses: three down. Two disabled. Remaining five operational, but low on ammo and heat capacity redlining. We need resupply before we're combat-ready again."
Robert nodded grimly. "You did your job. You held the line. That's why the rest of us are still standing."
The Power Armor men gave a synchronized nod, the gesture almost ceremonial despite the carnage dripping from their frames.
MacCready wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, muttering, "Hell of a butcher's bill." His voice was quieter now, more human, the sharp edge of adrenaline fading into the dull ache of survival. He glanced at the bodies—their own, the mutants', all tangled together in grotesque piles. "Hope it was worth it."
Robert's eyes narrowed. "It was. That thing wasn't just a brute—it was a general. You saw how organized they were. Without him, they're just animals again."
MacCready huffed a laugh that wasn't really a laugh. "Animals still bite, you know."
Before Robert could answer, a deep rumble shook the chamber. Not the roar of a mutant this time—artillery. The world outside was still aflame.
"Outside," Robert said. His voice was steel again, giving no room for hesitation. "We regroup with Sico."
The soldiers moved out slowly, limping, dragging the wounded, their boots crunching over broken bone and shell casings. The Power Armor men flanked them, heavy footfalls echoing through the ruined hallways. Every corner felt dangerous, every shadow alive, but without the leader to rally them, the mutants that had once filled the corridors were gone—either dead, fled, or too scared to show themselves.
They emerged into the yard, and the world struck them like a hammer.
The night outside was fire. Flames licked the ruins of the C.I.T., casting jagged shadows across the battlefield. Smoke curled into the sky, turning the stars into ghosts behind a black veil. The air stank of charred flesh, gunpowder, and death.
And in the center of it all, Sico stood like a pillar.
His armor was scorched, his rifle blackened from overuse, his face streaked with sweat and grime, but his eyes burned alive with command. He barked orders as calmly as if he were reading a map in daylight. Around him, the second platoon pressed the attack with ferocity, pushing the remaining mutants back step by bloody step.
The brutes were breaking. Without their leader inside, the tide had shifted. Their roars were panicked now, their charges uncoordinated. Some still fought with savage fury, but more were fleeing, howling as they disappeared into the maze of ruined streets.
A tank belched fire, its shell tearing through a cluster of retreating mutants, leaving only scraps behind. Heavy machine guns raked across the battlefield, mowing down the stragglers. The soldiers roared with victory, their battle cries shaking the night as the last wave faltered.
"Push them! Don't let them regroup!" Sico thundered, raising his rifle and firing into the retreating horde. His round took a mutant through the back of the skull, sending it sprawling in the dirt.
The soldiers surged. Their line advanced, steady but ruthless. Every step forward was claimed with blood, every shot another nail in the coffin of the mutant assault.
Finally, the last of them broke, vanishing into the night. The battlefield fell into a heavy quiet, broken only by the groans of the wounded and the crackle of flames.
A cheer rose from the men—weak at first, but growing, spreading until it shook the yard. They had held. They had survived.
Robert led his battered force out into the open, and Sico turned at the sight of him. For the first time all night, the commander's hard mask cracked, just slightly. Relief flickered across his face, tempered by grim calculation.
"You made it," Sico said, voice low but carrying.
Robert nodded once, his tone level. "The leader's dead. He won't be organizing them again."
Sico's eyes narrowed, scanning the men behind Robert—the limping, the wounded, the dead carried on stretchers. His jaw tightened. "Costly."
Robert didn't flinch. "Worth it."
MacCready stumbled forward, still wearing that stubborn grin. "If you call nearly getting turned into fertilizer worth it, then sure." He spat blood into the dirt, then added, "But yeah. We got the bastard."
The soldiers gathered around, their shoulders slumping as the weight of survival finally began to sink in. The medics rushed to set up a triage, shouting for stretchers and supplies. The Power Armor men powered down their suits, some collapsing to sit heavily on the wreckage, their breath hissing as if the steel shells themselves had been keeping them alive.
Sico took it all in—the broken but living, the ruins still smoldering, the night air thick with death. His voice, when he spoke again, was softer, but still iron.
"This was their stand," he said. "Their attempt to take the heart of the ruins. And we broke them. Tonight, we showed them we're not prey—we're the wall."
The men listened, some with weary nods, others with hollow stares. But all of them heard.
The men had barely begun to breathe when Sico raised his hand, silencing the yard with the smallest gesture. His armor was pitted, scorched, and streaked with dried blood—some his own, most not—but he still carried himself like a pillar holding up the world. His gaze swept across the ruined courtyard, across the men who stood and the men who didn't, across the stretchers lined up with bodies beneath blood-soaked tarps.
"Corporal Hayes," Sico called, his voice gravel but firm.
A young soldier, his face ash-gray beneath streaks of sweat, snapped to attention despite the tremor in his knees. "Sir!"
"Count our dead," Sico said. The words were blunt, heavy, the kind that carried a gravity no man wanted to hear but every commander had to speak.
Hayes hesitated for half a heartbeat—his eyes flicking toward the tarps, toward the pools of blood, toward the faces he had known hours ago that would never answer him again—but he nodded. "Y-yes, sir."
"Do it properly," Sico added, softer but no less sharp. "Names. Ranks. Every man who fell here gets counted. Every man gets remembered."
"Yes, sir." Hayes moved, his boots dragging at first but finding rhythm as he crossed toward the bodies, two other soldiers following him wordlessly.
The yard fell quiet again, though not the peaceful kind. It was the silence of men listening to the scrape of boots and the rustle of tarp edges, the quiet sobs of someone kneeling over a friend's still form, the ragged cough of the wounded, the hiss of medics burning through their last stimpaks.
MacCready leaned against a broken wall, his rifle hanging by its strap. His grin was gone entirely now, replaced by a hollow stare. He lit a cigarette with shaky hands, the tip glowing in the firelight as he exhaled a long, ragged plume of smoke. "Counting corpses. My favorite part of a good night out." His voice dripped sarcasm, but the bitterness beneath it was sharp as glass.
Robert didn't answer. He stood stiff, silent, watching Hayes and his detail work through the bodies. His face was carved from stone, but his hands tightened into fists at his sides. He had given the order to fire. He had led them into the den. Every name Hayes would read out weighed on him, even if he didn't show it.
Sico turned his head toward a nearby sergeant. "Get me comms."
The sergeant jogged off, returning with a battered field radio mounted to a tripod. Its casing was dented, its antenna bent, but it still crackled with static. Sico crouched beside it, adjusting the frequency dials with a practiced hand.
"Preston, this is Sico," he said, his tone clipped, all business. "Come in, over."
The line hissed for a moment, then a familiar voice answered. Preston.
"Sico, this is Preston. Report. What's your status?"
Sico exhaled through his nose, as if even answering that required discipline. "Status: costly victory. C.I.T. Ruins secured. Mutant leader neutralized. Enemy forces routed. Casualties high." He glanced back at Hayes, who was kneeling over another tarp, scribbling into a notebook with trembling hands. "Counting losses now."
The radio was silent for a long beat, then Preston's voice came through, heavy with both relief and dread. "Understood. Goddamn… I don't know whether to be proud or sick to my stomach. What's your next move?"
Sico straightened, his eyes sweeping the courtyard, the broken buildings that loomed like shattered teeth, the smoldering battlefield that was now theirs.
"We move forward," Sico said. "This place is no longer a ruin. It's a fortress. Tell logistics: pack the convoys. Forward base is moving here. Soldiers, supplies, armor. Everything. I want the C.I.T. Ruins turned into a stronghold before the week is out."
There was a pause on the line. "That's… ambitious, Sico. You're sure it's secure enough to move in?"
Robert stepped closer, his voice steady but sharp. "We made it secure enough. And if we don't dig in here, the mutants will. We can't afford to waste this ground."
MacCready blew smoke into the night, muttering, "Yeah, tell him about the big ugly bastard who almost turned me into a smear on the floor. They'll be back if we don't lock this place down."
Sico keyed the radio again. "You heard them. This isn't just about ground—it's about momentum. We take the ruins, we keep the pressure. No more ceding ground to the enemy. Send the word: C.I.T. is ours."
"Copy that, Commander," Preston said, his voice steadier now, a spark of determination bleeding through. "I'll start the convoys. First trucks will move at dawn. You hold until then?"
"We'll hold," Sico said simply.
The radio clicked off.
Robert stepped closer to him, lowering his voice. "You know what you're asking for. Men are exhausted. Supplies are bleeding out. We're holding this with grit and fumes."
Sico looked at him, eyes hard but not blind. "I know. But if we don't plant our flag here, then all this blood—your Commandos, my platoon—it was just another skirmish in a wasteland of skirmishes. We need a statement. We need a bastion."
Robert didn't argue. He only gave a short nod, the kind of nod a soldier gives when he knows the truth hurts but has no better option.
Behind them, Hayes' voice carried through the yard. "Sixty seven dead, sir. Fifty wounded. Eleven critical." His voice cracked on the last number, but he forced it steady. He held up the notebook, his knuckles white against the paper. "Names logged. All of them."
Sico took the notebook from him with care, like it was made of glass. He flipped it open, scanning the list. Each name was a weight. Each one a life spent in the fire. He closed it slowly, his jaw tightening.
"Thank you, Corporal," Sico said. His voice was quieter now, but it still carried across the courtyard. "You've done your duty. They'll all be honored."
Hayes saluted, his hand shaking, then stepped back into the line of weary survivors.
Sico looked at Robert, then at MacCready, then at the men—their faces hollow, their eyes sunken, their shoulders heavy. And he spoke, not with thunder this time, but with the low fire of conviction.
"We will not waste them. Every man who fell here tonight gave us this ground. And we will hold it. We will build on it. And we will make damn sure the enemy remembers this place as the beginning of their end."
A murmur went through the soldiers. Not cheers, not roars—just a ripple of tired but resolute voices. They were too weary to shout, too broken to celebrate. But they heard him. They believed enough to keep moving.
Robert finally let out a long breath, his shoulders easing by the smallest fraction. "Then we'd better start preparing. Dawn isn't far."
MacCready flicked his cigarette into the dirt, grinding it out with his boot. "Yeah. Let's roll out the welcome mat. Something tells me the neighbors won't be too friendly."
The men set to work. Some dragged scrap and debris into makeshift barricades. Others cleared the courtyard of corpses, muttering names under their breath as they worked. Medics stabilized the worst of the wounded, their hands red and trembling but relentless. Engineers began marking walls, pointing at defensible positions, already thinking of how to turn ruins into redoubts.
________________________________________________
• Name: Sico
• Stats :
S: 8,44
P: 7,44
E: 8,44
C: 8,44
I: 9,44
A: 7,45
L: 7
• Skills: advance Mechanic, Science, and Shooting skills, intermediate Medical, Hand to Hand Combat, Lockpicking, Hacking, Persuasion, and Drawing Skills
• Inventory: 53.280 caps, 10mm Pistol, 1500 10mm rounds, 22 mole rats meat, 17 mole rats teeth, 1 fragmentation grenade, 6 stimpak, 1 rad x, 6 fusion core, computer blueprint, modern TV blueprint, camera recorder blueprint, 1 set of combat armor, Automatic Assault Rifle, 1.500 5.56mm rounds, power armor T51 blueprint, Electric Motorcycle blueprint, T-45 power armor, Minigun, 1.000 5mm rounds, Cryolator, 200 cryo cell, Machine Gun Turret Mk1 blueprint, electric car blueprint, Kellogg gun, Righteous Authority, Ashmaker, Furious Power Fist, Full set combat armor blueprint, M240 7.62mm machine guns blueprint, Automatic Assault Rifle blueprint, and Humvee blueprint.
• Active Quest:-