The Posse awoke inside their lodgings on the shore of Yellowstone Lake. While the Scabs were busy loading a timber barge for delivery to West Thumb, they arrayed their equipment and plotted their activities for the day. The gang knew the Eighties, a raider gang holed up at Pelican Springs only a few miles to the east, were searching for mercenaries to help run the Khan blockade keeping them from exchanging slaves for precious fuel from the Roughneck microstate up north. Their plan: pretend to work for the raiders, lead them into a killbox, claim the 1,000 caps reward posted by the Great Khans.
It didn't take long before the Posse spotted their first green signs. The raiders had posted a handful of scouts in hunting blinds around the trail. Slim shouted a greeting and one of the raiders peddled off towards Pelican Springs, while the rest hunkered down behind cover and called out a response - unwilling to reveal themselves to the heavily armed Pioneers, carrying only crude blunderbusses themselves. Once they'd made their introductions, the Eighties identified the Posse as being friendly from their prior dealings and - after waiting for their messenger to return - gave them permission to enter their camp.
Their raid camp was built around an old ranger cabin, consisting of a few timber dugouts and leather tents. The cabin was clearly being used as a prison for the gang's slaves; the windows were boarded up and a pair of goons was posted at the door. The Posse were met by Offramp, the warband's chief mechanic and second-in-command. He patiently explained their warboss Milepost was off scouting to the north and wouldn't be back for a few hours, pausing briefly to warn off a pair of raiders from abusing their captives - the Roughnecks wouldn't pay a dime for damaged goods.
The grim techpriest made it clear he didn't support Milepost's plan to sell meat for gas. Not that he had any moral compunctions, but gas was a finite resource. He wanted to convert the bikes to fusion power, they'd produce much less noise and be far easier to refuel on the road. Just imagine it; a dozen warbikes riding at a full tilt, with only the quiet whirring of electric motors to herald their arrival. Slim tried to spin the mechanic a story of him being an emissary from the PX, and offered the raiders ample energy cells if they'd wipe Lake off the map. Offramp laughed the offer off; his people weren't dumb enough to throw themselves at a fortified position. The Eighties were bandits, not warriors. They'd seen what happened to the Legion; charging a fortified position with only light infantry. No thanks.
As the gambler and mechanic argued, Doc Klover and Adam made excuses to talk to the slaves. The Eighties let them inspect the merchandise for health issues, and proceeded to immediately lose interest in the resulting stream of technobabble. The captives were foreigners (the Roughnecks wouldn't buy Yellowstone locals out of a justifiable fear of multi-generational blood feuds), with two being fellow Crow Indians, captured by slavers near the Canadian border. The Posse told the men they were on their side. When the braves asked what the escape plan was, they told them they'd know it when it happened.Overhearing their conspiratorial whispers, another captive ushered the pair over. She bore the tattoos of a Great Khan, but lacked the drug-addled enthusiasm. She hurriedly introduced herself as Hana, a tax collector from Wyoming taken hostage by the Eighties. She had an offer - 4,000 caps in Khan scrip if they could get her out here alive. The raiders were convinced the Khanate would pay a healthy ransom for her, but that went against Kurultai policy. Her days were numbered, and she wanted out.
The Posse excitedly discussed this development. Hana's offer changed things; she was offering enough money to purchase the remaining antibiotics outright. They told her she had a deal.
As the Pioneers plotted, the roar of engines heralded the arrival of the raider warboss. The dreadlocked road warrior confronted the trespassers in his camp, but was mollified by Offramp vouching for them as a band of opportunistic mercenaries. Milepost said he had a job for them - find a path through the backcountry of Yellowstone to Tower Junction, where the Roughnecks had their fortified petrostate. There they'd trade their captives for all the gas, medicine, and explosives they could carry.
The Posse pretended to agree to the deal, fully intending on leading the bikers into an ambush. But first they'd need allies, and an appropriate killbox. And the best lies contained a healthy dose of the truth anyhow. So the Pioneers set off north all the same.
It was a long walk to Tower Junction; the furthest stretch the gang had travelled since arriving in the park. But Tex had picked up some tricks from Freehand before the White Legs struck her down, and managed to lead the Posse safely through the dense wilderness. The first wildlife they came across was another herd of Tanaka, to which the Texan's eyes lit up. He was sick of walking, of sore feet, of blisters, and especially of getting mogged by stupid elephant-riding tribals. Despite the protestations of his fellows, the cowboy fashioned a lasso from some gun slings and guitar strings and approached one of the less ornery beasts. He chose a placid cow that was grazing far away from the unwelcome advances of her male herdmates; slinging the makeshift rope around her thick neck. The bison briefly panicked, but was soothed by Tex's low tones long enough for him to mount her and loop the lasso into an impromptu bridle. With the horrified cries of his teammates echoing in his ears, the cowboy whooped and spurred the Tanaka into flight.
Tex barely clung onto the beast as it rose higher into the sky. 10', then 20', then 100', then 200'. The wind screamed into his face, turning it into a mess of tears and snot. But he held on tight, and gradually acclimatised to controlling his new mount. He quickly realised he lacked any fine control over her movements, nor did she have the biological urge to strafe ground targets like her male counterparts. That suited him just fine - the Tanaka effectively served as a reconnaissance plane. Nestled between her massive wings and thick fur, he was nearly invisible from the ground. All he needed was a proper saddle, eye protection, some magnification, and ideally a pouch full of hand grenades.
The Pioneers eventually spotted Tex's mount plummet below a ridgeline, and panickedly hurried to recover his corpse. They found the cowboy grinning, face blushing red and hair an utter mess, feeding his newest companion a fistful of grass. He proudly introduced Earhart to the Posse, named after a legendary Pre-War air woman. Duly impressed by Infante's antics, the gang continued on their way.
The next encounter was a duo of park rangers scouting through the treeline. The knights waved the Pioneers over for a drink, and the gang took the opportunity to explain they were cashing in the last favour the order owed them, and it was for a worthy cause: wiping out a raider gang and rescuing their slaves. The rangers agreed to help them fight the Eighties, recommending they ambush them at a crossing of Yellowstone River, where it intersected with Agate Creek. They'd dedicate a sizeable strikeforce to the attack, a full complement of elite rangers led by Rhondie herself, the leader of the Buffalo Knights. The Posse agreed to meet them at a rendezvous point in a day's time.
After nearly seven straight hours of marching, the Pioneers found their first evidence of their destination - a faint pillar of sulphurous smoke rising over the horizon. Tex breathed it in, the acrid scent of oil refineries reminding him of home. Before they spotted Tower Junction proper, the gang came across a party of HAZMAT-clad men torching firebreaks through the forest with a handmade flamethrower. Unwilling to risk startling them, they snuck past and kept moving forward.
The Roughnecks had cut, burned, and uprooted all vegetation around their settlement, leaving a clear line of fire for the improvised trebuchets that dotted their wall of welded car bodies, undoubtedly loaded with all manner of explosives, chemical weapons, and incendiaries. A charred Tanaka skull on a metal pole marked the closest strangers were allowed to the perimeter of Tower Junction, and an unseen sentry (probably peering at them through a murder hole in the wall) called out with a bullhorn demanding they stop. Slim passed the Posse off as honest traders, purposefully leaving out their connection to the Eighties; given they intended to betray and murder the bikers later. A short man with a thin beard and nasty wet cough exited the main gate and approached, introducing himself as Roustabout Ron, the "wasteland ambassador" for the micropetrostate.
The Pioneers quizzed Ron as to what was going on with the Roughneck's institution of forced labour and slavery. He rejected his people being slavers - forcing people to work the oil fields and not letting them leave wasn't unique to wastelanders, they do the same to their own children. The Posse eventually figured out the entire community was held together by an interconnected web of Stockholm Syndrome. Slim coined it as "anarcho-totalitarianism"; there was no need for a secret police or Great Leader, if every family was constantly self-policing themselves and neighbours for signs of betrayal to the greater communal good. Speaking of slavery, Ron was interested in buying Doc - the Roughnecks suffered from all manner of congenital and environmental illnesses and were in dire need of medical talent. The Pioneers rejected selling one of their own, but agreed to do some trading and give a second opinion.
The Posse set about buying a carbon disulphide grenade for Tex and a flamethrower for Slim; thankfully the Roughnecks were responsible arsonists, pressurising their weapons with nitrogen and making liberal use of PPE. Meanwhile, Klover met with the Roughneck's sawbones, Doc Jimson. She explained the microstate had ample sulfa antibiotics she'd be happy to trade, in exchange for a means to manufacture more advanced medicine. You can't cure lung cancer with penicillin.
Armed with fresh weaponry and with a serviceable path charted, the Posse said their farewells and set off back to Pelican Springs.
The trail they'd blazed had watchers: a dozen blue-bellied Strontium Dogs observing from concealed burrows. No doubt gathering intelligence for the Prism. The Pioneers considered bypassing the psychic prairie dogs, but decided otherwise. They were tired of running from these fucking things and eager for revenge for what they'd done to Refuge, no matter how minute. So Slim snuck up close and burnt them all with his flamethrower, gouts of burning napalm reducing the rodents to charred bones. Those that fled into their burrows didn't fair better; the conflagration sucked out all the oxygen and suffocated them all.
With the burning corpses of the Strontium Dogs behind them, the gang arrived at their rendezvous with the Rangers. The order hadn't skimped out, delivering a full complement of nine rangers split evenly between archers and swordsmen, led by their old friend Ranger Rhondie. The Posse discussed their plan with their allies. Things weren't as simple as wiping out the Eighties anymore, they also needed Hana alive. The raiders wouldn't take her to the Roughnecks for sale, and the Khan was rightly concerned she'd be abused and killed by the bored garrison the moment their leaders left to guard the slave convoy.
The Posse decided on sending Doc Klover and Rhondie to ensure Hana's survival. She wasn't happy about saving the life of a Khan, but she owed the Pioneers for clearing out the Museum. The rest of the Rangers would wait on the eastern bank, hiding among the trees as the raiders passed. The Pioneers, posing as loyal pathfinders, would take point across the river before turning around and betraying the Eighties, laying into them as they crossed the water. Hopefully an ambush from both sides would be enough to win the day. To further swing the odds in their favour, the Posse rigged the bank with hidden dugouts and landmines, preventing the Eighties from pushing across the river to escape the ambush.
A day's walk later, the Posse met with the Eighties and explained their route to Milepost. He wasn't happy about having to ford the river, but nonetheless agreed with the plan. The Pioneers made excuses to leave Doc Klover behind, helped by Hana convincingly faking symptoms of the plague. The raiders called up a disturbing number of warriors for their slave run, a good dozen light infantry on pushbikes and seven elite Eighties on motorbikes, armed with energy weapons and cavalry lances. Worst of all was the pride of their motorpool, an armoured technical equipped with a gatling laser - driven by Milepost and Offramp.
The journey to the ford was uneventful, save for the Eighties gleefully butchering whatever wildlife was unfortunate enough to stumble across the war party. Upon arrival to the ambush site there was no sign of the Rangers, which the Posse took to be a good thing. Sure enough, Milepost commanded the Pioneers to go first and clear the opposite bank, then directed his junior raiders to drive the slaves across.
To the Posse's displeasure, he kept his elite mechanised forces in reserve, right in the middle of the hidden Rangers. But there was nothing to be done. The Pioneers forded the river and readied themselves for the firefight, prepared to leap into their concealed fighting positions and launch the ambush.
But just then, movement - A small patrol of Khans had breached the woodline, and both sides briefly ogled one another. Slim panicked, opening his mouth to make some excuse to the soldiers, to explain why they were helping the Eighties guard a convoy of slaves, to prevent-
The Khans opened fire, roaring into handled radios for immediate steam crawler support. Tex threw his gas grenade and scattered the soldiers, sending one into a deadly coughing fit. Slim swore and unleashed his flamethrower, incinerating several Khans and driving the rest into cover. Hearing the gunfire and assuming the Posse had launched their ambush, the Rangers opened their attack prematurely. A volley of obsidian arrows downed a pair of Bluesigns, but then the gatling laser opened up and the rangers began to die in droves. The forest filled with smoke and the screams of the dying, lasers incinerating trees and concealed archers alike.
Realising their allies were being slaughtered, Adam forced his way through the panicking Greensigns and slaves, moving towards the assembled Bluesigns. Meanwhile, before Slim could consider betraying the Rangers and siding with the Eighties, Tex opened fire with his SMG - peppering the technical with bullets but failing to disable it. A trio of Ranger swordsmen broke cover and converged on the bike, desperately trying to silence the awful roar of the gatling laser. But they only managed to deal a fleshwound to Offramp, before the technical ripped around in a donut, sending the tribals flying and promptly disintegrating them with a flurry of red lasers.
Milepost shrieked orders and the Bluesigns wheeled about, blasting at the Rangers as they doggedly piled on more arrows from the forest. Slim capitalised on the Greensigns' confusion to send half of them into a frontal charge toward the remaining Khans, mutually annihilating both sides in a bloody melee.
Tex continued firing with his tommy gun until it clicked empty, strafing the remaining Green Signs with bullets and sending them fleeing down the river. Then he pulled his pistol and waded into the melee, striking out at the remaining raiders. With him and Adam fighting side-by-side the morale of the Eighties was finally broken. Those who fled were summarily butchered by the enraged Rangers or beaten to death by their own slaves, eager for revenge against their captors. Milepost still lived beneath his upturned bike, cursing and swearing at the Posse for their betrayal until Slim sawed his head off for proof of their deed.
When all was said and done, over thirty men lay dead and dying. The forest burned. The waters of Yellowstone River would be stained red for weeks to come.
After tending to their wounds and looting the fallen, the Posse managed to salvage the technical and a kettenkrad tracked motorcycle. Getting on the shortwave to Doc Klover and Rhondie, they found the pair had rescued Hana, albeit barely. The ranger was missing a hand and Doc nursed a broken arm. After ensuring the surviving Rangers would make it back to Fort Yellowstone with the rescued slaves, the Pioneers mounted up on their new vehicles and set off for Pelican Springs.
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