The approach of the 7th Freedom Brigade had been anything but stealthy. The swiftness of the Martin Rangers' entry into Sunnyside's south had ensured that they'd seen the Commonwealth coming from miles away. Word had been relayed to the allied armies to the north, the approaching enemy possibly numbering as much as a thousand. The Martin Rangers, though proven and crafty, didn't stand a chance in an open fire fight against a force more than twice their number. The 7th Freedom Brigade's explosives capabilities made open conflict even more unwise; grenades and missiles would be devastating to the lightly armoured Martin Rangers. Unlike with raiders and tribals, the most common of the Martin Rangers' foes, the Commonwealth's veterans would also likely be able to handle such weapons properly—without inflicting casualties on their own side. That last thought had the dangerous effect of giving Anthony E. Martin, perched atop the high ground west of the highway, an idea.
When the 7th Freedom Brigade's columns marched down the highway, they found it empty of any resistance. Their commanders mused that if any Yakima forces had been in the highway's proximity, they must have fled, intimidated by the arrival of the Commonwealth's best. For those commanders that happened to be wielding explosive weapons, that errant thought would be the penultimate thing to go through their heads, seconded only by the marksmen of the Frontier Company's well aimed rifle rounds. As skulls exploded and missile launchers dropped to the ground, fire erupted from the Commonwealth's formations. The hundreds of men in Commonwealth uniforms, gathered into their tight-knight formations, looked west, layering the origin of the surprise assassinations of their explosives using comrades in a heavy rain of bullets. Just before their clips ran empty, many of them felt the sharp pain of chunks of lead embedding into their backs. East of the highway, opposite Frontier Company, was Contact Company, their machine guns now ablaze, emptying into the backsides of the Badlands veterans. Once their clips were spent, they shifted southward, focusing the remainder of their fire at the back of the Commonwealth formations. Frontier Company followed suit, belly to the ground behind their cover, inching south-east to the back of the 7th Freedom Brigade's lines. The Martin Rangers were thinning out the men in the back the worst, leaving the north side of the column mostly untouched, after the initial ambush.
A few of the dumber riflemen among the Badlands Commonwealth grabbed the explosives weapons gathered at their feet, snagging the launchers away from the corpses of their former owners. A few shots, grenades and missiles alike, fired at the Martin Rangers. Most exploded half way to their destination. Most of the rest exploded immediately, peppering the 7th Freedom Brigade's formations with smoke, dust and fire. The men that hadn't been holding the weapons were those that didn't know how to use them, and the men that would use them if they had the opportunity were those that were worst suited to do so. In the chaos, as explosions bellowed and fire came from west, east, and now south, the Brigade pushed north rapidly, rushing towards Sunnyside's airport to find fortification and resupply. The Frontier and Contact companies regrouped west of the Highway, on the snipers' high-ground. The wounded were tended to, and scouts were placed north and south, to both watch the direction of the 7th Freedom Brigade, and check if any more reinforcements were coming for the Commonwealth. Anthony E. Martin had never left his hill-top, but now spied down upon his own men rather than the enemy. It was a job well done, and he pretended not to notice when a few of his Rangers pilfered some niceties off of the Commonwealth's dead. It was a waiting game again: but this time, victory was all the more assured.
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