We opted for a motorized fast-attack down the main road. Bashed open the gate with an APC, fanned out, then all us infantry guys dove out into the soup. As we expected they had barricades and hardpoints overlooking the road, and we were in a pretty hairy spot for a little bit. But we managed to get some surprise on them. Look at the cargo walker out in the middle of the road - you can't see the driver in this shot, but I think he must have busted something when he first saw us. And if you look close down near our vehicles, you'll see Gizmo's slave auctioneer up on his podium with a busty-looking piece of "merchandise." We had him surrounded before he could figure out how to get down. I didn't see him in the POW tents afterwards; maybe someone thought he might have a gun and capped him just in case. Or maybe Killian assigned some ex-slaves to guard his tent. I figure I won't bother to ask.
Madame Fiona the fortuneteller was slow to get out of Junktown when things first went sour. Said she was too small a fish to be concerned with politics. I was worried about her, though. In wartime, men become cannon fodder and women become loot. Escpecially attractive young women like Miss Fiona. And you can't just opt out by saying you're a pacifist. Goons like Gizmo don't care. We got a pic of her while the first assault was going on, and you can see she's trying to hook her trailer to that old VW van of hers, probably got wise and decided this was a good time to split. The blue van belongs to Gizmo's boys, and they've blocked her in. Gizmo had plans for her alright. I don't like to think about where she'd be if we hadn't won this one.
This shot is the far side of town from the road - looks pretty empty now that most of the goons are running toward the action. The guy on the car is Mad Matt, a wasteland mercenary we picked up when we were regrouping. He demanded outrageous amounts of gas for that supercharged monstrosity he drives, but when he agreed to be our man on the inside Killian gave him what he wanted. Gizmo let him in with no questions, apparently had no trouble seeing Matt as the kind of guy to become a Gizmo Stormtrooper. I didn't either, to be quite frank, and I'm just glad Killian had more gas than Gizmo. Ah, maybe I'm being too harsh. Can't judge a man on just a handshake and a couple of words.
It wasn't entirely lost on us that Gizmo would abandon his flanks once our main force appeared. Our flanking detachment waited 'till they heard shots and yells, then rammed the back barricade and came into town around the spot that the road ends. See the guys in the center of this shot? They're a bunch of hard-case urban warriors that come from a fortress in the ruins of Central L.A. If you've ever been down there - and survived - you know enough to respect them. They claim to be descended from a group of the Los Angeles Police Department that got trapped in City Hall when everything fell apart, and managed to hang on through sheer tenacity. Have you ever seen the warrior gangs that prowl South Central and East L.A.? Some of those guys file their teeth to points. No kidding. And if you're fierce or stupid enough to put up with a file in your dental work thirty-two times over, then getting shot - even in the face or the crotch or wherever - doesn't really slow you down, least not until you lose too much blood and just fall over. And the LAPD compound lives with those guys just outside the gate, 24/7. They even claim to do single combat against them with batons, as some sort of rite of passage. I've never seen it myself but - you wanna be the one to call 'em liars? I'm just glad they were with Killian.
Meanwhile, back at the gate, our first punch was a success. We smoked a half-track full of screaming rednecks without taking much return fire. The one loss to speak of was Kate the mechanic's jacked-up pickup truck. Apparently a grenade or something knocked it over and touched off the fuel line. Kate made it out OK, just a few scrapes and a stream of profanity. How does such a good-looking woman learn to talk like that?
All of a sudden, things started happening very fast. I saw the column of red smoke in the center of town, which was Matt's signal that he'd found a target. The sarge yelled and we all started hucking grenades into nearby buildings to distract the skanks from what was going on. I almost missed the chopping sound with all the explosions going off, but then I saw it coming. Low over the dunes, moving like a bat out of Hell. I honestly don't know where Killian managed to dig one of these up, but there it was - a Hind helicopter. Engine still working, racks fully loaded. I had never understood choppers before, figured being up high like that would just give everyone a clear shot at you, but the Hind came in so fast there wasn't time to bring a gun to bear. Maybe time to pee your pants if you were fast, but that was it.
Matt's orders had been to identify the leadership bunker so the Hind could take it out. Leadership was Gizmo, of course, and this horrid psycher skank he'd picked up by the name of Namblo the Clown. It happened too fast to get pictures, but apparently Namblo got Gizmo to split from his HQ as a diversion, then ran out the back himself. Matt was too canny for that, though, and sized up the situation before throwing his signal smoke. The Hind's camera got this pic just as the rocket pods went off, with Namblo and Gizmo both in the crosshairs. They're dead men, y'think? Darned if Namblo didn't just walk right away from it! Miss Fiona said some of the most powerful psychers can do that sort of thing, although it only lasts a split second and drains them something fierce. We could have dropped him with a rifle bullet after that, she said. Unfortunately, with all the smoke from the rockets there was nobody with a rifle that could get a bead on him. And afterwards when we stacked up the bodies, his wasn't there. We had to chase that bastard a long ways to bring him to justice. But that's another story.
