[u][b]Highway 3 Bridge[/b][/u]

Thank you Knight," Robert replied, and returned the soldiers handshake, "Glad to meet you. I can't say I know where we're going, so I'll leave it to uhh..the Knight-Captain here," He gestured towards the Assaultron, "To keep leading the way. I'll be glad to get across the river and leave this wretched town quickly."

"I've got to get back", Murphy replied, "Harkness will take care of you from here." The Assaultron's head swiveled to look at Harkness, he then added, "I need to create a distraction so Haddad can break contact....they've set fire to the barracks to try to smoke her out."

"I'll see to it", Harness replied, "Ad Victoriam, Brother!"

"Ad Victoriam". Murphy turned and jogged away, back towards the fighting. After a moment, he winked out of sight as the stealth field turned back on. Harkness issued orders through his suit radio for Delta squad to fall back across the bridge then he looked at Kyle. "Let's get you guys to the evac point. From the look on your face, Brother, you've got a lot of questions....and knowing Murph he probably didn't answer very many. Kyle immediately began asking question...Harkness listened patiently to the first as they walked back across the bridge. 

"Our mission", Harkness asked, "It's a deep raid...the real fighting is down at Indianapolis. Fort Wayne is the main base for the Cult in the Indiana Wasteland, we're here to degrade their ability to reinforce Indy..to that end we're destroying all of the bridges across the Wabash but one. That will keep them fixed here until we've secured Indianapolis and can turn our full attention to Fort Wayne. The advance on Pittsburgh cannot truly begin until Ft Wayne has been Scourged."

Kyle then asked the next question. 

"The Cult?", Harkness asked, "Sick fucks. They are based in Pittsburgh, though apparently they came from out East originally. They are basically what you get when you cross Raiders with a religious cult. Slaving, murder, cannibalism...you name it, they do it for fun. Not only to anyone they come across, but even to each other if they are deemed weak. What's worse is that they're growing both in power and numbers. They are a threat to civilization...any civilization..and the Lord Paladin has decreed that Pittsburgh be Scourged, and all followers of the Cult be put to the sword. Thankfully, folks out West are starting to see things our way. When you get back to base, they'll tell you a lot more than you will want to know about them. 

Then came the next question, and it was the one Harkness knew he'd get eventually. 

"Hmmm", Harkness said thoughtfully as he stepped over the corpse of a Raider...as they approached the center of the bridge more and more bodies, all Raiders, were strewn about....considering what he should say. "That's a good question....i'll answer what I can."

"Murphy is who he says he is", Harkness said. "He's a man, not a AI...not exactly, anyway...I guess the closest term I can think of is a cyborg. His situation is not unlike that of the Lord-Paladin himself...he was installed into the Calculator so that he could guide and control it." Harkness noticed Kyle was looking at him blankly.

"The Calculator? Surely you've heard of it?". He shook his head as Kyle indicated he had not. "I shouldn't be surprised...the Western Elders probably suppressed the reports Barnaky sent them about our War with the Calculator, if they even bothered to read them. If they didn't tell Lyons before he came East, they were small-minded fools indeed." He drew a deep breath and continued. "The Calculator was, and is, a Pre-War AI built to oversee Vault 0, which was designed by Vault-Tec and the US Government to oversee what they called the "Societal Preservation Program". Vault 0 was intended to house the pre-war intellectual elite in cryogenic suspension to ride out the war. Once conditions stabilized, The Calculator would wake them up, and together with the robot Army the Calculator commanded, would go out and rebuild America. Well, it worked about as well as you'd expect. Most everyone in the tubes died or suffered irreversible brain damage...due to shoddy manufacturing and failure to implement the designed backups...and without human oversight, or maybe just company, the Calculator went mad and decided it's mission was to wipe out humanity. Our ancestors fell right into the middle of it when we crashed outside Chicago....before you knew it we were fighting for our very lives. Eventually, we won...a Elite Squad broke into Vault 0 and disabled the factory making the robots and fought it's way to the Calculator itself. But then we were faced with a awful choice. Either destroy the Calculator, and lose it's store house of Pre-War scientific and technological data, not to mention the robots, forever, or install one of our own into the Calculator to take the place of of the human minds that had been intended to control it. Barnaky, the Lord-Paladin, chose to have his own brain installed into the Calculator. Together, they have ruled over our lands ever since. It hasn't been easy, and a lot of sacrifices have been made, but we're restored order and the Rule of Law to most of the Mid-West. We will not allow the Cult to undo everything we've achieved here."  

[color=9e0b0f]
[u][b](OOC) *Edit begins here*[/b][/u][/color]

[u][b]
Markle High School[/b][/u]

In a third floor classroom, now a dormitory for Raiders, stiff and cooling in their bunks, their blood soaking the mattresses beneath them, a shimmering, indistinct figure leaned a gauss rifle against the wall and pried a board off one of the windows and looked outside. From the streets and parking lot, a storm of weapons fire and tracers lashed into the second floor, which the flames had already reached. A target spotted, the gauss rifle winked out of sight as it was picked up.

"[i]Like shooting fish in a barrel[/i]", Haddad thought to herself with grim satisfaction as she took aim at the head of a Raider across the street, firing over the wreck of a Corvega blindly at the spot she had claimed her last victim from. These Raiders had no clue about how to deal with an opponent that knew what they were doing....she had killed twenty of them before they finally adapted the tactic of setting the building alight to burn her out. A sound tactic...at least against an opponent worried about burning to death...but merely an inconvenience for her. Her assignment was to keep the Raiders fixated on here here, and kill as many of them as possible while doing it. Survival of her avatar was merely optional. Even if they succeeded in disabling her avatar, she would be safe back in Kansas and all they would have is the opportunity to vent thier impotent rage against a broken robot. Haddad squeezed the trigger of her Gauss Rifle, and a bright flash lit up the room for an instant as the 2mm tungsten dart leapt from zero to Mach 7 in .001 seconds. The dart connected squarely with the side of the target's head, causing it to literally explode as the dart passed though and then into the right shoulder of the Raider to his left, erupting from just under his left armpit, then biting deep into the earth next to him. A third Raider to the left of the targets was showered in gore but unharmed as her companions, literally dead on thier feet, slumped to the ground just before the loud crack of the projectile reached them. 

"Third floor!! Third Floor!", the Raider howled in fear and hatred as she turned and began to fire at the window the flash came from, spraying bullets from her rusty old R91 across the room indiscriminately, more Raiders joining in as they saw where the tracers were going. But it was too late, Haddad had already begin to move the moment after she took her shot, and the fusillade swept through a empty room, as she ducked down the smoky hallway towards the next firing point. 

[i][b]Outside [/b][/i]

"You fucking asshole!", screamed Slade, beside himself with rage, as he stepped around the truck he had been taking cover behind and dumped another mag from his Chinese assault rifle into the third floor room the latest shot had come from, "When we catch you, we're gonna shove a pole up you ass and I'm gonna watch while the crows eat your eyes while you beg to be allowed to die!"

Slade didn't understand it, they had fired the building...after losing six soldiers in a futile attempt to storm it...but that Brotherhood bastard wasn't even trying to escape, just picking off soldiers one at a time with that cannon of his. With the building burning merrily, another assault was out of the question, all he could do is keep whoever it was penned up until either the fire did them in or they finally tried to make a run for it, and accept the steadily mounting losses. One thing was for sure, he wasn't about to let him escape after this...it was personal now.   

Ducking behind the wreck to reload, a familiar shrill voice came from a cross street as a scrawny woman bearing a long staff emerged onto the street that ran in front of the barracks in the old High School. The flames from the burning building twisted her shadow in odd, and disturbing ways. 

"[i]The Missionary[/i]", Slade thought sourly, "[i]what. the. fuck.[/i]"

"I shall not fear, nor falter, for i know the place of us!", she said, stopping in the midlle of the street, facing him, waving her staff, "We are vermin, insects! Unworthy of his mere glare!" 

"You.", Slade said angrily, "What the fuck do you want now, old woman?". He then added, get behind cover, or that Brotherhood shithead will take you out too."

"Beware, for he without enlightenment may fear his own demise, yet they who have seen, they who have witnessed know, that it does not matter..." Her words stopped, as she took in the madness unfolding around her.  A laughter escaped her lips, as she threw away her stick, and spread out her hands, pointing on some of the fleeing raiders. "FOR WHAT FEAR DOES HE KNOW, WHO HAS NOT WITNESS THE MONOLITH IN ALL ITS GLORY! WHO HAS NOT SEEN WHAT PATHETIC BASE HAS HIS MERE EXSISTANCE..." 

Slade opened his mouth to make a retort, but as his eyes made contact with hers, suddenly he could not think of what to say. After several seconds, which seemed like a eternity to him, his eyes widened with horror, as the final piece of the puzzle fell into place and he finally understood what was happening. Then rage...and purpose....filled him as he found his words once again. 

"THE BRIDGE!", Slade bellowed, "This is just a diversion...they're going to blow the bridge!" He began to bellow out orders, grabbing a lieutenant and his set to keep the Brotherhood fanatic penned up while ordering the rest of his men to follow in the wake of the missionary, who was already striding towards the bridge.

Inside

"Are you seeing this, Command?", Haddad asked on the command net as she watched with astonishment as the ragged figure basically took charge of the Raider force with nary a peep of protest from their leader. "I've got a shot, should I take it?"

"Negative, Miriyam", Barnaky's voice came across the net, "Your Primary mission's accomplished. Let them go. Murphy, help Miryam deal with the stay-behinds then the two of you support Whitman and Price while they take a healthy piss in our friend's Sugar Bombs. Harkness, wait until they're on the bridge before you drop it." And then he added, "Son, if you can take that Cult freak alive, please do so."