POV of Ronal curtis
"The Legion keeps advancing. We've inflicted heavy casualties on their lines, but they just keep coming… I've lost contact with the squads. We're being surrounded. Requesting authorization to fall back to more—"
Static. A second of silence, then background noise, scuffling, something falling near the mic.
"What the hell was that!? There's something out there!"
The gunfire started. Distant at first. Then closer. A burst cut across the channel. Screams, running. The signal stayed live.
"Death to the profligates!"
Then, only static.
I turned down the volume on the radio. I said nothing.
Another unit gone. This time because they never got the fallback order in time. An order that, according to the logs, had been transmitted—just not with enough urgency.
I gave it a few seconds. Changed frequency.
"This is Major Curtis. Captain Miller, you are authorized to fall back to the secondary line. I repeat: immediate withdrawal ordered. Do you copy, Captain?"
Silence.
I wasn't surprised. I already knew that position had been overrun a while ago. But protocol had to be followed. I had to sound official.
"Captain Miller, confirm receipt. Do you copy?"
Nothing.
I tried again.
"Captain Miller, this is your final call. Do you read me?"
I waited a moment longer. Not because I expected an answer, but to mark the time for the record.
I typed the status line into the console:
"Captain Miller's unit: out of contact. Status: presumed destroyed."
Another dead line. Another flank crumbling.
And I kept working.
I switched to the next channel.
"Major Curtis here. Lieutenant Vickers, report your line's status."
A tired voice responded.
"Holding, sir. But we need support. They're hitting us from the northwest. Wave after wave. Nothing we do stops them. We can't see them from here, and we're low on ammo. I don't think we can hold for another hour."
"I can't promise reinforcements, Lieutenant, but I'll issue a fallback order if it comes to it. Hold your position as long as possible."
"How long, sir?"
"As long as you can. The city's survival depends on your fierce resistance."
I cut the line before he could respond.
Letting everything fall apart would be easy. All it took was hesitation. A bad decision. A 30-second delay. A minute.
And it would all collapse, one platoon at a time.
I hesitated before sending the next orders. Kept my hand on the mic, but didn't speak. Closed my eyes for a few seconds, made sure the exhaustion showed. A couple of officers glanced at me, waiting for my next move. I wanted them to see me hesitate. Not too much. Just enough. Like someone trying to decide who to save first.
"Major Curtis?" one of the techs asked.
"Yeah… just a moment," I said, taking my time.
There was no rush. No one expected miracles. We all knew we were losing—worse than the Mojave. Everyone was sending orders late. The enemy was moving faster than our comms. And by the time our orders arrived, there was no one left to hear them.
I managed to get a few out in time. Just a few. Everyone else was doing the same. And we were all failing. The Legion was steamrolling us with everything it had.
We didn't know how many of them we'd killed. No way to tell. But we knew exactly how many we had lost. A brutal number. And it kept rising every hour.
The recruits were the first to die. Kids who hadn't even held a gun until a week ago. They were taught how to aim and pull a trigger—nothing more. Then thrown into the front lines. Most didn't even know how to reload without looking.
But the improvised defenses inside the city—those worked. In well-prepared positions, even a child could empty a magazine and drop a veteran legionary. Sometimes it happened. Not because of skill, but because of sheer volume. Fear. Desperation. And because the other side got too confident. Sometimes they dropped their guard. Just sometimes.
I leaned into the mic again. Slower this time.
"This is Major Curtis. Alpha-6, do you read? Confirm status of your position."
Nothing.
"Alpha-6, Curtis here. Are you still in contact with Bravo-2? Can you confirm any movement in your perimeter?"
Silence.
In the background, someone slammed a desk. Another officer murmured something about no response from the reserve tanks. It all sounded distant, like we were stuck in a heavy bubble, just waiting for the collapse.
I turned to the nearest operator.
"Mark Alpha-6 as out of contact. Status unknown… presumed neutralized."
The young man nodded, typing with trembling hands.
I just turned back to the mic and started on the next line.
I kept working for a couple more hours until, finally—after more than sixty hours—we were ordered to rest. They said we were making mistakes and would be rotated out for another group.
For now, I had stayed under the radar.
The investigation wasn't aimed at me directly. It was focused on the entire office. Someone—or several people—had been leaking high-level intel, and suspicion pointed inward, toward the Department of Counterintelligence. No surprise. The Frumentarii had infiltrated well. Maybe too well.
To stay alive, I had to give up two of my own. Frumentarii, like me—but under a different officer. One of those colonels who wasn't in the Legion's inner circle within the NCR, but who always acted a little too suspicious… because he was living a double life, with two families. He wasn't one of us, but once his subordinates' names showed up in the report, it didn't matter.
He went down with them by association.
I think they hanged him that same night. No trial. Just an internal review, three names crossed off a list, and silence in the hallway.
I stayed.
Kept sending delayed orders. Reporting losses I already knew were inevitable. Looked just as exhausted as everyone else. No one looked at me twice. No reason to.
I got up from my station and walked to the cot I'd been assigned. It was in the back of the improvised bunker beneath Shady Sands—a corner with no privacy, shared with radio techs, medics, and rotating officers. There was no way to transmit anything from there. They'd tied my hands.
But I didn't need to.The city was already sunk.
Supplies were gone. Ammunition was rationed like water in the desert. Bandages were old towels boiled in water. Medics worked without antibiotics or anesthetics. Rations weren't enough anymore, and some recruits went to sleep hungry after crawling through mud and shrapnel.
If my estimates were right, the Legion was two days away. Marching in from the north. Two legions leading the charge, with a third pushing up from the south.
And if someone in high command decided to make one last move, the only thing left to do would be to gut the southern defense and pull everything left to defend the capital. Considering the southern front had nearly collapsed after the Shi withdrew their troops… if any general made their final stand in Shady Sands—
It would mean just one thing: Gaius would have a clear path.
And by the time they realized their mistake, Shady Sands would already be burning.
I lay down without taking off my boots. Not because I didn't want to, but because it was better to look ready to move at any second. Another gesture. Another signal. That I was just as exhausted as everyone else. That there was still some hope left.
But I already knew the truth.
This was over. We were just waiting for someone else to admit it.
"Curtis… Curtis… Goddamn it, Curtis, wake up."
Colonel Cassandra Moore's voice snapped me out of it. I opened my eyes instantly. My throat was dry, my body stiff from the narrow cot. The low hum of the generators still filled the air in the bunker.
"What? I need a little sleep before my next shift…" I muttered, trying to check the clock as I sat up.
"A large fleet of Vertibirds is headed for the capital," Moore said.
"Shit… how much time do we have?" I asked, already jumping to my feet.
"We don't know. Word came in a few minutes ago. But we don't have the personnel to hold the southern side of the city. If the Legion really launches an air assault on Shady Sands, we're almost defenseless. We need to fill the airwaves, call in every unit we can, and start fortifying immediately," she said, already moving toward the comms room at a fast pace.
"Understood, Colonel… we should start prepping supplies too, in case the strike happens. How much fuel do we have left for the generators?" I asked, following her down the hall.
"We've got enough to last the month, so—" she began.
But she didn't finish.
The ground suddenly shook. Hard.
First a crack, then a deep boom. The metal ceiling trembled. A hanging light swung violently. We stopped in our tracks. The ground felt like it was breathing beneath our feet.
This wasn't like a normal bombing. It was longer, deeper. A tremor from everywhere at once. When we reached the communications room, we didn't find answers.
Only chaos.
Bureaucrats ran in all directions, papers in hand. Some shouted names. Others shoved equipment crates, tripped over cables, dragged chairs across the floor. A couple of soldiers were wrestling with a comms antenna. The air stank of dust and piss.
"What the hell happened?!" Moore yelled at a group of operators rushing from a side corridor.
"Colonel! A mass bombardment by Legion aircraft. Dozens of simultaneous strikes. Fires reported in at least six sectors. Buildings are collapsing—the military hospital's one of them," another major said, on the verge of breaking down.
Moore looked at me. She was about to say something—I could see it on her face, that tension she barely disguised behind command posture—when another voice cut through everything from down the hall, louder than the rest.
"The Legion is landing in the south! They've taken elevated positions in the buildings! Alert the generals!"
A soldier, drenched in sweat and dust, eyes wide with panic.
The hum turned to screaming. Officers stumbled toward the tactical room. Radio techs left their posts to switch channels. The chaos, which had been barely contained, finally exploded.
"We need to prioritize the southern defenses, fortify all access points to the city," I said firmly, turning to Moore before she could even issue the order.
She didn't respond immediately. Just gave a short nod. There was nothing to debate. We both knew: if the south fell, everything fell.
It was the perfect opportunity to escape.
Working in comms didn't allow me to transmit any intelligence. Every channel was monitored. Every transmission logged. No one in the Legion knew I was a Frumentarius. But that also meant if I ran into one of ours, they wouldn't recognize me.
My odds of dying at Legion hands were high. Very high.
Taking advantage of the panic, I slipped away through the corridors, unnoticed, heading for the front line. To everyone else, it probably looked heroic. "Major Curtis, going out to fight with the troops." Maybe it even bought them some time. Maybe Moore would remember me with respect.
But I knew I could've done more damage from the comms room. Sending bad orders, sabotaging reports, delaying reinforcements.
Even so, I helped a handful of soldiers and recruits organize a minimal defensive line—placing them in awful positions. But as the highest-ranking officer present, they obeyed. It was barely enough to slow down the tide of legionaries dropping in from the Vertibirds.
Only… it wasn't what I expected.
Within the first few minutes of the firefight, we lost dozens of men and women who were too exposed. Not because of clever tactics. Just overwhelming firepower. Controlled bursts, not random fire. Didn't matter if you were behind sandbags or inside a ruin—they hit you anyway. And when I finally understood why, my blood ran cold.
They were using miniguns. But wielding them like sniper rifles. Short, precise bursts. A rain of lead. And while their troops flooded the city, we were falling back street by street, unable to even surrender—every time I tried to raise my head, I barely escaped another deadly barrage.
When the Rangers and power-armored units arrived, I thought the line might hold. That maybe this was the moment to raise my hands, surrender, reveal myself as Frumentarii. A clean handover—if no one shot me in the back for being a traitor.
Only…
When the power-armored fights began, everything changed.
A monstrosity of muscle and steel appeared.
Then more. Over a dozen.
And they tore through everything in front of them. They ripped the heads off NCR heavy troopers. They used recruits as clubs. Fired with lethal accuracy at anything they saw. One of the few available tanks was completely useless—the shell bounced off the creature's armor, detonating in the air. Then the thing charged, bent the barrel with its hands, and butchered the crew like it was peeling fruit.
"…yeah. I think I'll head back to the bunker. No luck for me out here."