Adam, Slim, and Tex rolled into Pelican Springs on their new motorbikes, saddlebags filled to bursting with looted energy weapons. The corpses of the garrison littered the snowy ground, bearing the distinct wounds of the Rangers' obsidian swords. They found Ranger Rhondie, Doc Klover, and Hana the Khan inside the old ranger cabin, nursing severe injuries. After applying first aid, they loaded the wounded onto the back of their kettenkrad and made haste for Lake.
Tex flew above the settlement on Earhart and was immediately fired upon by bored Scabs looking to poach some bison meat, causing the cowboy to shout for the foresters to quit shooting at him. Flabbergasted by the spectacle of a talking buffalo, the Scabs were so enraptured they didn't notice the technical approaching their walls until it was within spitting distance. A general panic was averted when Slim called out and explained they weren't the Eighties - they' just killed them and taken their shit. The Scabs were awestruck when Tex landed Earhart in the centre of the village and called out for Foy, demanding the tribal foreman witness his sick ride. The Bearkiller exited his cabin and was immediately confronted by the assembled Posse, who browbeat him in front of everyone with stories of their exploits, sending him retreating out of the settlement on an impromptu logging expedition.
After selling some energy weapons and hyping up a party they were intending on throwing in a few days time, the Posse hitched a ride on the Scab's timber barge down to West Thumb; the Khans had dredged up the E.C. Waters ferry out of Yellowstone Lake and refurbished it for hauling firewood.
The Khanate's southern checkpoint at West Thumb was an imposing sight, the outpost was dotted with watchtowers, mortar nests, and fortified dugouts with overlapping fields of fire. Beyond the geyser fields was a sea of cream-coloured tents; the home of the Followers of the Apocalypse. The Posse was greeted at the dock by Reggie, the outpost's commander. The gnarled root of a Khan was the senior-most of the Old Guard left in Yellowstone after Boris' death - the Pioneers saw several familiar faces from the dead man's garrison. Reggie was decidedly more lax about the park's threats than Fia, dismissing the nearby Prism as harmless, which rankled the Posse given their village had nearly been wiped out by its servitors.
After meeting Reggie, the Posse dropped off Hana who promised to meet them back here in a few days once she'd gathered (read: embezzled) the requisite funds to repay them. The Pioneers then did a steady trade exchanging their looted scatter lasers for ammunition, chems, and even a plasma grenade. Afterwards, Tex hopped on Earhart to do some loops around the camp, ostensibly to entertain the Khans, but really to reconnoiter their fortifications. The rest of the Pioneers set off to finally talk to the Followers. They were met by Don, the leader of their operations in Yellowstone. The grizzled humanitarian worker didn't impress the Posse, similarly discarding the threat of Prism and squirming under their accusations of aiding yet another expansionist empire. He gave a milk-toast excuse for helping the Khans, but it was clear he and his people were more afraid of the regime turning on them if they tried to desert. At least he provided free medical care for the Pioneers and Rhondie, patching up their broken limbs.
A wiry beanstalk of a man entered the tent and gave a vague excuse for Don to excuse himself, much to his relief. With the expedition leader gone, the man hurriedly introduced himself as Dr. Kravitz and excitedly asked if the Posse too understood the threat of the Prism. They answered in the affirmative and set to plotting. Kravitz was terrified by the gestalt overwhelming the entire wasteland, and feared it had already infiltrated West Thumb's garrison. As if on cue, Tex Infante came rushing in to inform the Posse he'd spotted Reggie and several other Old Khans conversing with Strontium Dogs at the western perimeter. Kravitz's face went white, and he quickly laid out his plan. They'd need a sample of the Prism's biomass from its deep pools, with which the doctor could synthesise a targeted virus with some old New Plague samples he had on hand, enough to wipe out the entire hive mind in one fell swoop. Tex volunteered to scoop a sample using a bucket dangled from Earhart on a long chain.
But that wasn't all - the Prism was cavorting with a group of mutated cultists near Madison, which happened to also be the location the Posse had planned to source enough fissile material to electrify their new bikes (Offramp had been right about the benefits of an electric motor, no fuel and no noise). Their leader, the super mutant Mom, was a lunatic scientist from California that had been crucial in the dunking, indoctrination, and physical rehabilitation of captured wastelanders back in the 2100s. She was serving the Prism in exchange for it curing her infertility, no doubt to serve a reborn Unity. Even if that wasn't enough to convince the Posse to whack her, the second they moved against the Prism it would undoubtedly send Mom and a kill team of cultists after them. The Pioneers agreed to assassinate her.
Leaving the injured Rhondie behind to guard Kravitz against retaliatory assassination attempts by the Prism's servants, the Posse set off for Madison. The need for electric motors soon came into focus as the Pioneers blundered straight into a White Leg ambush - the tribals having heard their engines miles off. Thankfully the armoured technical rendered the hail of bullets and lasers mostly ineffectual, but the report of a heavy game rifle scared the Posse enough to strafe the timberline with their new gatling laser. Once again, Old World industry won out over New World tenacity, and the ambushers immediately fell silent. The Posse looted their attackers charred remains and continued on their way.
Madison Junction was a Pre-War trailer park, a graveyard of abandoned camper vans, RVs, and trucks. The Unity cultists had cleverly fortified a natural island in a meander of the Madison River, using their immense strength to drag ruined vehicles into a simple but effective wall. The Posse spotted a number of human cultists spearfishing outside of the walls, and a small garrison of mutants inside, armed only with bags of rocks and sledgehammers. Delighted with their technological edge, the Pioneers sent Tex up into the sky armed with their plasma grenade. Earhart dropped into a bombing run, thundering down from the heavens in a direct course with the cultists' compound. The mutants cried out and released a barrage of breezeblocks and spears, lightly wounded the bison and rider but not halting their attack. At the lowest point of the buffalo's dive, Infante dropped the grenade into their camp and banked up hard.
With a scream of horror, a gargantuan super mutant dressed in a Brahmin's worth of leather and clutching a Vertibird propellor blade for a weapon threw herself on the neon-green explosive, desperate to shield her children from the Posse's attack. Her gooified remains only added to the resulting shrapnel, annihilating all but one of the mutants. Terrified by the sudden explosion, the human cultists tried to drag a fishing boat into the river to escape. Though mortally wounded, the surviving mutant aided them, shielding their puny forms with his immense body and shoved off the boat into the fast-flowing waters where it rapidly disappeared. Tex landed Earhart behind the crippled mutant and stalked towards him. The Unity cultist begged for mercy through his half-melted face, but the flinty-eyed cowboy wasn't about to leave behind a superpowered mutant with a grudge. His six-shooter roared and the giant fell.
Shaking the feeling of just committing a great evil from their minds, the Posse busied themselves salvaging the Pre-War trailer park for ample supplies to retrofit their motorbikes. They were halfway through replacing the combustion engine with an electric counterpart when a swarm of Strontium Dogs arrived at the burnt-out remains of the Unity compound, no doubt carrying a message from the Prism. With their gatling laser currently out of commission, and having previously used all of Slim's flamethrower fuel to gas up the bikes, the Pioneers didn't feel confident engaging the diseased rodents and let them flee the area unmolested.
Now riding fusion-powered vehicles, the Posse set course for the Grand Prismatic Spring. The gestalt was hard to miss, a vast array of geothermal pools, geysers, and volcanic rock formations teeming with rainbow-coloured microbial life. But it wasn't all single-celled organisms about, multi-coloured men and women longed in the heated pools, seemingly unharmed by the boiling water. One of the Stoners exited and donned a heavy parka, introducing itself as The First Of Many and warning the Posse to stay away from the Prism lest they wished to join it in blessed one-ness. The Pioneers thanked the bizarre cultist for its warning and retreated to a safe distance before equipping Tex with a comical amount of PPE and sending him flying towards the deep pools.
The vast expanse of the Prism law below him, deep blues and oranges looking as if the eye of a god was staring up at him. Tex supposed that one was. He put Earhart into a steady descent, lining up the dangling bucket carefully to scoop up the bacterial scum and-
Rider and beast was engulfed in a roar of boiling vapour. The bison barely remained airborne, and Tex was only spared instant death by his ample PPE gear. Horribly injured and lacking a viable sample, the pair unsteadily descended back to earth where Doc Klover hurriedly applied ample Stimpaks and Med-X to alleviate the pair's severe burn wounds. Realising the Prism would quickly rally an force to stop their shenanigans, they dosed up Infante on Jet and sent him swooping back towards the geothermal pools, even as the nearby fields of volcanic glass erupted with movement.
The First Of Many once again approached the Posse. It called out to Slim, somehow naming his wife and children by name, appealing to his better nature. There was no need to harm the Prism! He could bring his family here and they would not only be healed, but rendered immortal. Kept together in perfect one-ness even after the Sun died in the sky and darkness swallowed the world. Terrified by the psychic rifling through his mind, the gambler tried and failed to convince the cultist that they meant no harm. The Stoner issued a dire final threat for the Posse to leave before retreating back towards the pool. The Pioneers refused to heed its warning, and desperately waited for Tex to return. Thankfully, the amphetamine-fortified cowboy had succeeded the second time, scooping up a sample of the Prism and avoiding the resulting blast of superheated death in return. Unfortunately, the Stoner had not made an idle threat.
It looked as if the entire geyser had stood and strode towards them. A seething mass of protoplasmic matter rolled across the landscape, releasing a huge plume of steam and psychic pain to the horrified Pioneers, who desperately hurried to mount their bikes and make a getaway. The Thermophile was terrifyingly fast, keeping pace with the thieves' vehicles and spraying them with superheated water as it inexorably approached. But the thing, like the Stoners, could not survive outside of the geothermal pools for long. As the chase continued, the deadly cooling of the chilly spring air took its toll. Eventually it was forced to give up pursuit and flee back to the Prism. Breathing a sigh of relief, the Posse rendezvoused with Tex, patched up their injuries, and hurried back to West Thumb.
The checkpoint was in disarray when the Posse arrived, finding all but two members of the garrison had deserted their posts with all of the steam crawlers and most of the heavy weapons, including the mortar emplacement. The remaining Khans, both New Bloods, explained that Reggie had rallied the Old Guard with promises of cures for their aging, drug-addled bodies and led them towards the Prism. The Posse cursed; clearly the hive mind wasn't out of the fight yet. But that wasn't the first of their concerns - with the garrison having so obviously abandoned their posts, it wouldn't be long before the nearby White Legs made their move against the checkpoint's skeleton crew. Sure enough, the sounds of war horns echoed at the southern perimeter and the Pioneers hurriedly assembled a defence. The Followers were armed with their energy weapons and whatever Reggie's deserters hadn't looted. The two Khans manned the remaining LMG nest and the Posse piled dirt around their technical to make another gun emplacement.
Thick smoke soon clouded the horizon, a heady mixture of colours thanks to the wide array of signal grenades the White Legs had salvaged; blues, reds, whites, yellows, and pinks all mixing together. Horns bellowed out as the tribals approached and both gun emplacements opened up, hitting only empty air. Slim changed tactics, getting on the bullhorn and shouting threats to the attackers. They'd slain the Eighties, broken them and their bikes and tossed their ruined corpses in the river. They'd killed their own people twice over, butchering them to a man. Did they think they stood a chance?
A voice replied to from the smoke, acknowledging the Pioneer's accomplishments. She had an offer in return - send forth their mightiest warrior for a sacred blood duel. The loser would vacate the field. Slim looked to Adam, but Ironhand was already striding out into the smoke-clogged battleground. The gambler grimaced and clutched his the gatling laser's trigger; having no intention of letting the White Legs champion walk out of here alive regardless of who won.
The raider war chief strode out to meet Adam. He asked her name and she answered Opens-The-Skull, grinning as she hefted an Old World super sledge. The two met in a clash of metal, Adam staggering backwards as Opens-The-Skull flicked her immense weapon across his arm, nearly shattering the bone even on a slight impact. But the overconfident White Leg misplayed her hand, surging forwards to strike the brave again and losing the advantage of her longer weapon. Adam stepped inside her reach and sent an earth-shattering haymaker into the bridge of her nose - the pneumatic piston on his power fist punching out and turning the warlord's head into a cloud of red mist. He caught the ochre-smeared super sledge before it struck the asphalt, intent on keeping it as a trophy of his deed.
Nuclear Forrest
The demoralised White Legs moved to flee the field of battle, no doubt to starve to death in the wilderness over the coming winter. But Adam called out to them - he had slain their best fighter in honourable combat, surely he was a worthy warchief? He would lead them to a land of milk and honey and blood, where they would need not fear disease or famine and their children could grow strong and their elders grow old. The raiders hesitated, until a new voice spoke out. An elderly tribal, likely the oldest remaining member of their decimated tribe, leaning against the shoulder of a bedraggled man in a white coat - the Follower Norm, falsely assumed by the Khans to have been killed by the White Legs he sought to help. Peels-The-Skin begged his brothers and sisters to listen to the outsider. Their life was wretched and unsustainable, but they could survive and once again become powerful by adopting a new way of life.
Gradually, one-by-one, the raiders laid down their weapons and surrendered to the Posse. Excited by the prospect of two dozen heavily armed auxiliaries, the Pioneers organised for the Followers to render much needed humanitarian care to the White Legs. They found ample sign of parasites, common diseases, malnutrition, and vitamin deficiencies. The tribals were shocked by their hospitality, but were quickly brought back to focus by their new warchief's declaration. Adam said that, in order to prove themselves worthy of his service, he would require a test of their martial prowess. A great evil bubbled to the west, a nightmarish horror that threatened the entire wasteland. They would march to war against it.
The newly christened Green Thumbs accepted Adam's offer, reequipping their freshly maintained weapons and feasting upon the food the Followers laid out for them. The two Khans, similarly eager to obliterate the Prism, agreed to help in the coming fight. After Doc Klover and Kravitz spent a Mentat-fueled night brewing a deadly poison for the Prism, the forces arrayed were thus:
- Ranger Rhondie, leading ten Green Thumb Painmakers.
- Tex Infante, leading ten Green Thumb Stormdrummers and two New Khans.
- Doc Klover, leading two dozen Followers as rear-echelon support.
- Adam and Slim, mounted on their technical.
The Posse's advance scouts spotted the Old Khans guarding the Prism's deep pools. The recent converts had hotboxed themselves inside their steam crawlers, granting them greater mobility than normal Stoners. A metal fishing boat moved erratically across the same geothermal pool that Tex had skimmed his sample from a day before. An anti-aircraft gun bristled from its deck, and no doubt a Thermophile was hiding below the superheated waters, tugging the vessel along.
The battle was opened by a deep strike by Ranger Rhondie and her Painmakers. The Ranger was armed with a freshly refurbished ripper provided by the Green Thumbs and repaired by the Followers. Its tungsten carbide teeth screeched through the metal of the steam crawlers' tracks, disabling both vehicles. The few Stoners that tried to oppose them were cut down by the Painmakers as the strike team retreated back into the wilderness.
Simultaneously, Tex and his Stormdrummers opened up on the AA boat, filling the darkening skies with tracer fire and laser beams. The mutated cultists were tough, but not tough enough. They fell into the boiling waters and Infante disabled the gun with a well-placed shot into its receiver. The cultists answered with a barrage of mortar fire from a concealed nest among the volcanic rocks. Whistling shells sent Tex and his men scattered, several were flung back and crippled by the explosions, but thanks to the hasty efforts of Doc and his Followers no one was killed.
Adam dismounted the technical and met up with Rhondie's strike team, leading them on a second attack to silence the mortar. The Ranger and her Painmakers bought the warchief time, bogging down the Stoner infantry in melee as he surged forward into the geyser field. A pair of rifle-toting Old Khans guarded the emplacement, but Adam broke their skulls with his power fist and dropped down into the mortar pit. Another pair of cultists were manning the mortar, and one let loose an ineffectual burst of gunfire into Ironhand's imposing form. The second stupidly unleashed a gout of fire from his mouth, igniting the nearby ammunition depot.
For the second time in a week, a massive explosion sounded out across Yellowstone Park, throwing chunks of vaporised meat and soil high into the air. The Green Thumbs and Rhondie watched in awe as Adam Ironhands, bloody, battered, but stubbornly still alive, stumbled out of the crater - white teeth grinning beneath thick layers of blood and soot. He allowed his forces to drag him back to friendly lines, unable to hear anything but the pounding of his heart and the whining of his ruptured eardrums.
With the enemy forces in disarray, Tex mounted up on Earhart for one final sortie above the Prism. Clad in a HAZMAT suit, he solemnly left his cowboy hat with the injured Adam, stating such a pure thing wasn't suited for the fucked up world he found himself in. Soaring the skies of Yellowstone Park, the cowboy clutched a container of Old World power in gloved hands. Staying safely above geyser range, Tex stared down into the hateful eye of a god and, as the capsule of tailored retrovirus tumbled down through the air towards it, liked to think he saw it blink.
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