A figure in black armor stood atop a pile of rubble. Covered from the neck down in bulky armor that seemed to drink any light that came near it, only the figure's head told of the weathered man underneath. Grim eyes beheld what was left of his home.
"Colonel, the men are ready to move out again," said the man's oldest friend.
"I guess it's time then, Sergeant Major," Colonel Ford said as he turned to look at CSM Waltman. "Time to go home."
- 13 years prior -
It was chaos, plain and simple. Five hours ago it had been just another day in the rapidly recovering city that had been Las Vegas. It was still hot as hell, but what do you expect from summer time in a desert?
Aside from its tourist appeal, Las Vegas was still important on a more strategic level. The city functioned as a transportation hub courtesy of its airport, rail yards, and access to freeways. It had multiple military assets in the area to draw on to defend itself, and it also provided power to much of the southwestern US. So Califorians had complained but regardless, the city had been on a steady road to recovery five hours ago. And now most of it was little more than smoking ruins.
When the call had gone out that the city was under imminent threat of attack by an unknown enemy every person had bum rushed McCarran International Airport and the other transport hubs throughout the city. They were out of time, the enemy was at the gates.
"Sergeant, what do we do?" Specialist Ford asked.
Sergeant Miles gave him a flat look. "We hold the line, that's what. Behind us are twenty thousand civvies with a ride out of here. You bet your ass they are going to catch their flights. We've got air support on our side and those fancy Valkyries will be lending a hand."
"Do you really think it'll work Sergeant? The Valkyries I mean. Hell, most of those females have never held a weapon before, how are we supposed to trust them to win this?" Specialist Walls asked from the turret of his HMMWV.
"You don't, but every little bit helps. And if they can carry around an artillery piece to use as a weapon who the fuck are we to judge." Hefting his M4 the sergeant stayed in the slim cover of his sandbags. "Now look alive, we've got incoming."
The horizon was black with contacts. The signaliers from the 422nd did their best to maintain communications, the Cav blazed away with weapons of every caliber, and the Air Force landed air strike after air strike. But everything fell apart when the Types took the field. Comms broke down, entire platoons would disappear for no apparent reason only to reappear in a shower of gore. The line in the sand drawn by the Nevada natives was crossed and the line folded.
-----
The first month after the defeat at McCarran had been the hardest. The Valkyries had mostly managed to pull out along with a few civilians when the line collapsed, but by and large the remains of Las Vegas were on their own. Three Valkyries had stayed behind: Katelyn Gibson, Emily Berkowitz, and Amy Chow. In that first month, they turned into war machines.
We used whatever we could find to upgrade their cores. Wrecks of stealth fighters, rifles, car batteries, solar panels, and even an entire Bradley were used to see if we could get some results. Within two moths of shoving an F-22 in Gibson's core she could fly night missions through Ant infested territory without them even noticing. Berkowitz had turned a nail gun, a car battery, and a magnet into a railgun that could fire a round at Mach four. Lastly, Chow had been instrumental in converting one of the old fallout shelters into something livable for the five hundred some odd survivors.
It wasn't perfect, but it was a start.
