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Welcome to Anthracite City

By Psion

All Rights Reserved

White Mountain Prison...

Bullets flew as gunshots echoed through the old prison complex. The concrete walls resonated with ballistic noise as combatants cried out in pain or shouted orders and warnings. For not the first time, Adam White wondered how his life could have turned out like this. Brandishing a pump-action shotgun, a ratty quilted parka worn over a bulletproof vest swiped from an abandoned police station, the spindly brown-haired human scurried across the prison yard, keeping pace with the rest of the militia squad and keeping his head down behind cover when he could. Cover was good, Mr. Chest High Wall was your friend when you could find him, a good cinderblock wall soaked up bullets better then almost any body armor the green-eyed man knew of, and was there ever plenty of fire that needed to be soaked up...

Two of the prison's current owners rounded the corner of a freestanding building in the yard. Adam's shotgun barked twice and both targets fell over. The human's mind didn't even bother registering before moving on. All he saw was the flash of feline fur and the bright red of the Fiends before he mowed them down and turned back to searching for more targets. And were there plenty of targets... figures the first big stronghold they attacked in weeks would have a shit ton of disposable henchmen. Adam put these thoughts of his mind, the instant he spent more then a second thinking about things was the instant these shits got a bead on him. Spot, shoot, pump. Spot, shoot, pump. The only allowed breaks in his rhythm were to pop more shells into the magazine or dive for cover. Panting as he hauled his gear, a small collection of hand tools, spare widgets, and extra ammo from cover to cover, the techie briefly wiped the sweat from his brow. There was easily half a foot of snow in the yard as militia clashed with the chemically augmented Fiends, yet he was sweltering in his clothes. Guess the heat of battle was more then figurative...

Assault rifles barked as the human rebels pushed on, desperate to liberate their peers from the feline anthros' grasp. Just had to push a little harder and they could rescue the survivors of that little camp in the old high school. Little by little, they began to gain ground. For the most part the Fiends responded with firearms typical of their street gang heritage, machine pistols and small caliber handguns that barely matched the killing power of the militia's military-grade firearms... and then one of the gang lieutenants swaggered in with a light machinegun that his drug-enhanced muscles were more then capable of holding as he fired from the hip. Fortunately his aim was about as poor as one would expect, sending out a spray of bullets that managed to do little more then scatter the squad of ratty-dressed freedom fighters behind pallets of carefully packaged drugs the defenders were stockpiling in the old prison yard. No surprise that the Fiends attacking them suddenly became a lot more careful with their aim, none of the cats were eager to damage their buzz juice.

Huddling behind a prefab guard shack, Adam pressed a hand to his earpiece and kept a hand on his shotgun. "Hey Liz, you got a shot at Rambo?" He called over the radio.

Elsewhere a short, pixie-like blond woman cradled a designated sharpshooter's rifle as she hid on the prison wall. "Yeah Adam, I got him. Just give me a sec to line him up and-" The resulting bang of her gun said all that needed to be said. Up ahead of her partner in crimes of a metaphorical nature, the heavy gunner's weapon fell silent as he took a bullet to the head and crumbled in a dead heap. Now it was the Fiends turn to panic as Elizabeth Summers followed up her opening shot with several more well-placed bullets sent into opportune targets.

"Fuck, why couldn't the rest of the war gone like this?" The tall techie replied as the militia advanced, smiling despite himself. "A week to crush all major military opposition in the world, a month to set up their weather control machines, and the rest spent redecorating like they owned the place. And yet here we are, a bunch of non-military hooligans stomping one of their forts like it's... ah hell." Adam swore as he heard the high-pitched roar of a jetpack overhead.

"You just had to go and tempt fate didn't you?" Elizabeth groaned as she abandoned her perch for another vantage point. They both knew who was showing up. Even if there was only one of them, one was enough to take down the rebel squad if they weren't careful...

"Oi! G'day mates!" A voice sinisterly called from overhead. No amount of voice modulation could ever mask an accent that thick...

"Oi! Look everyone, a walking stereotype!" Adam audibly shot back as he immediately started running out of cover and trying to get a better vantage point.

War Hound's face was unreadable behind his helmet. Flying above the prison yard in a jetpack-assisted suit of power armor, cradling an assault rifle as his suit bristled with an obscene number of shoulder and forearm-mounted rocket-propelled grenades, the golden Labrador retriever in jet black armor was pretty much the very image of death incarnate. Adam liked to think that the super-mercenary was silent because he was trying to figure out how the human insulted him but odds were the canine merely ignored his quip. He was surprisingly good at that, the Aussie was. Then again, one probably did not become the leader of the Demon Dogs PMC if they weren't good at shutting out distractions and going straight for the kill with overwhelming firepower. Much like what War Hound was trying to do now by separating the human squad with a barrage of well-placed micro missiles. At least one guy that Adam could see was thrown like a rag doll by the blast, whether dead or barely alive the guerilla combat engineer couldn't tell, and both Elizabeth and himself were cut off as the rest of the squad pushed onward into the relative safety of the concrete prison itself. There was hardly any question of whom the flying canine wanted to fight; he wouldn't be much of a military man if he didn't take down the most obliviously dangerous targets first.

For a brief moment that felt like an eternity, there was no exchange of fire. Both combatants stared at one another, face to helmeted face. At least one of them was frantically thinking of what to do now that the deck had been completely stacked in the opposite direction. In military jargon, the Fiends were essentially light infantry; fast but equipped with relatively weak weapons and a complete lack of heavy armor, either personal or mechanical. And the rebels packed accordingly, no sense hauling rocket launchers or explosives if they weren't going to be used. Obviously that created a bit of a problem now...

"Liz, do you have any armor-piercing bullets?" He yelled, shouting to be heard over the gunfire lapping at his heels as he ran for cover. Above him the canine laughed, trading explosives for a high-powered assault rifle. At least he stopped using those damn missiles he loved so much. Only thing that could make this day any worse was if the armored warrior decided to break out his psychokinetic powers...

"Four and I don't think they has the penetration to get through his armor. What do you have?" Elizabeth called over their radio, the sound of her chambering a fresh round into the barrel audible in the background

"I got my revolver and that's about it. Any ideas?" He replied, the .357 might have been heavy enough to punch through War Hound's armor but with only three shots left in the chamber, he wasn't particularly inclined to experiment.

"Yeah... distract him long enough for me to get a shot and maybe I'll break something important in his jetpack or visor." She suggested, a good plan except for the six to twenty things that could go wrong with it.

"That's your idea?" He shouted; his question punctuated by a bolt of cryokinetic energy impacting with drug pallet he hid behind.

"You got a better one?" She shouted back.

"Nope." He growled and fired a shotgun shell at War Hound. Completely useless, but it stalled the canine long enough for him to vault over the wall and hide behind another pallet. On reflex the human pressed his hand against the ammo pouch that held his shells and felt the remaining bulge of ammunition. There were enough... not a lot but enough to get him through this battle and maybe one or two firefights afterwards if he was careful. Assuming of course what he was about to do didn't backfire horribly....

"Hey douchebag! I've seen traffic cones with better accuracy then you've got!" White shouted at his aerial opponent, middle finger fully extended, as he ran the opposite way of where Elizabeth was camped out. Come on, turn and face me, turn and face me you narcissistic cape-wearing piece of shit. The human silently screamed as War Hound turned slowly, oh so slowly from his perspective, to take a shot at him. In his ear, the petite blond woman encouraged Adam onward.

"That's it, just a little more and... boom, headshot!" She squealed as her shot echoed across the cluttered prison yard.

It wasn't exactly a shot to the head but for their purposes it did well enough. Sparks flew as the tungsten bullet impacted and got lodged in a small box fitted between the two jet turbines keeping the battlesuit mercenary aloft. His flight pattern became erratic and his attacks ceased as the canine fought to keep control of his movements. Suddenly, something important went up in a shower of sparks and War Hound shot off like a missile. It was like watching Wiley Coyote take off on a rocket motorcycle, the armored canine flew higher and higher in the air until he was little more then a speck in the sky. And then his jetpack audibly stalled... and then War Hound plummeted to the ground like a ton of bricks somewhere in the forest outside of the prison.

For a moment neither Adam nor Elizabeth spoke, the insanity of the last several minutes needing time to fully sink in. Then the short riflewoman decided to break the ice. "Okay, you got to admit that was cool."

"Lizzie, if someone ever decides to chronicle our exploits after the apocalypse, I hope they figure out exactly when we turned into the two bozos from 'Gone with the Blastwave.'" Adam replied as he looked around, checking for any lingering enemies as he felt his battered body and counted the bruises. Four rounds, all small caliber, all stopped by the armor on his body. Hurt like hell where the bullets connected with his chest, the vest was also pretty much scrap now, but certainly better then the alternative.

As the sounds of battle died down in the yard and the rest of the rebels finished sweeping the interior of the prison, a doctor and his assistant carefully made their way into the complex. Unarmed and unarmored except for the armbands that denoted their status as physicians, the two of them wisely stayed put until the fighting stopped as the list of enemies that respected medic's neutrality varied from day to day. As he appeared to be uninjured, they passed by Adam without so much as a hello before tending to what was left of the injured.

A group of imprisoned refugees cautiously crept out of the prison with the rest of the militia squad flanking them; a weathered collection of last-generation American and Russian assault rifles pointed in every direction as frantic rebels scanned their surroundings for the defeated mercenary. Elizabeth climbed down from her perch on the prison wall and rejoined her partner as they looked at the group being loaded onto an armored school bus bound for the settlement of Black Lung; a cynically-named community safely hidden at the bottom of an old coal mine. The botanist from the local land-grant college, the crass surgeon that was trapped in the old VA hospital, there was only one person that seemed to be missing and judging by the look on the squad leader's face, the gadgeteering duo knew who was going to go find him...

"So Lucas wasn't with the others?" Adam asked. Lucas was a smuggler of sorts the two of them had become friends with. Hispanic American, born in Anthracite City's lower income districts, had just started writing the story of how he clawed his way out of the inner city when the world unraveled. Had an interest in computers and a collection of skills from a brief career as a gang thug, putting him in the unique position to procure and sometimes outright steal necessary supplies of food and medicine for the resistance. Hence his description as "smuggler." A dangerous but necessary job, if something went wrong it wouldn't be the first time they had to go bail him out of trouble. Last either of them heard; Lucas was trying to get his hands on a penicillin culture so people could start producing antibiotics again, something no one in the area had access to since the town of Apothecary was bulldozed by Columbia's Children. So if there was any shipment that would make the bad guys want to shut him down, it was that one.

"The others say Lucas never made it to the meeting place before the ambush. Odds are he's still in Anthracite City. I need someone to go in and find him." The militia leader was a paramilitary geek in his early-thirties with delusions of being actual military. Both hunters noticed he didn't even ask if they were capable of another run so soon after this one.

"Are we going to get a chance to resupply first?" Adam asked. A bit blunt but the city proper was essentially enemy territory. If the two of them went straight there now there was no question they'd end up in a firefight they wouldn't be able to win.

"Our 'guests' at Black Lung requested that they'd see you two after this mission." The leader replied, snorting in contempt as he thought of them. "I told them you don't have time to-"

"And I'm going to tell you we will spare a moment to talk to them while we're haggling for some more ammo because one, you only hired us for this one job. And two, if you really are stupid enough to send just the two of us into another potential firefight right after wrapping up this one, tell me now so I can collect our fee from your next of kin." Adam rebutted, hand lazily pointing his twelve-gauge in the general direction of his client.

The leader spat at the techie's feet but relented. "Fucking mercenaries, no loyalty to country or species."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. If patriotism is supposed to be synonymous for suicidal stupidity, no wonder we lost the war." Adam shot back with a bitter snarl, heading towards the bus with the others.

Once they were aboard and on their way back to Black Lung, Liz turned towards her cohort. "You know he's going to try and short-change us for the prison raid now."

"Yeah, you're right. But technically he was going to try and short-change us anyway by hiring us for another job without paying for the first one yet. You know he's been prissy with anyone who backed the Hospitallers and their friends moving in and helping us."

Elizabeth opened her mouth to say something but decided that there was nothing to say. The rest of the trip past by in silence, the skyline of Anthracite City visible for a brief moment while the bus ascended the mountains towards the old coal mines. Even at this distance, much of the city appeared to be in ruins. Factory complexes and residential blocks had been violently reduced to rubble yet the signs of reconstruction were just as obvious. In the heart of the city center, three towering skyscrapers that looked like something out of a sci-fi novel rose up from the restored foundations of downtown Anthracite City. Rising up towards the heavens like a trio of steel-gray monoliths, connected to one another by an elaborate lattice of sky bridges and lit by a halo of holograms consisting of alien characters and unsophisticated pictography, the monoliths were as awe-inspiring as they were intimidating.

It was a sight that left the tech-savvy gunmen conflicted. Engineering students before the war, the Three Towers of Anthracite City were a thing of technological beauty. Yet knowing who built them and what sort of crimes against humanity went on inside each of them... Tomorrow was a new day, another chance to strike back at the creatures that oppressed humanity. Time to see what the Hospitaller super-doctors wanted...