Radiance Ch. 113

Paladin Wright let out a burst of a laugh, "Oh yeah I'm definitely gonna get along just fine here," she said.

"Honestly I'd be happy to bust these featherless fucks up just for besmirching the good name of our brothers and sisters of the Red Eagle clan!" Latisha said to nods from her Valkyrie companions including Jewel.

"Alright then operation Eagle Plucker it is," Raymond said making all of the Valkyries visibly wince at that one.

"I'm just honestly glad you used a P and L, not an F in that sentence," Cho said making some of the other chuckle.

The walk to Red Eagle's base of operations was about a day away and while it did concern Raymond somewhat about the extra day being used by the Enclave to strengthen their roots here, there really wasn't too much of a choice here.

They did need a way to not only impress the Minutemen enough to agree to sit down with such an unusual group none of which they really had reason to trust but also it would aid the region as a whole to remove such an obvious threat to its stability.

As they walked Zixxy explained to them what she'd seen in their minds, the place was an old railroad and warehouse storage centre which had once specialised in shipping freight that came in off the nearby docks all over the country, it made sense for a group with such intentions to occupy as not only did it have plenty of room to store their ill-gotten gains but would also be pretty decently defensible, it would also offer good access to the transit lines crisscrossing the region.

It was infact one of these very lines that the team were using to navigate directly to it, being careful as they went not to trip any kind of trap or sentries that the group may have set up along their route.

But eventually, they reached their terminus and moved into a position to scout it out.

"Damn that's rather a few of them down there," Jewel said looking down from the little pumping station set into the side of a hill that overlooked the railyard below them.

"I counted at least a hundred plus the dogs they got roaming around," Paladin Wright said lowering her binoculars.

"They also got the place surprisingly buttoned up for a bunch of radiers," Latisha said.

"The leadership of the group believe in protecting their assets and there is nothing they will not sacrifice to hold onto either their power or their wealth," Zixxy said suddenly as she came out of the trance she had been sat in for the last hour.

"Oh great Raider zealots that's all we need," Cho said sounding kinda bitter about it.

"What else did you learn from them?" Raymond asked turning to look at the small alien woman.

"That not only is this hub their main HQ it's where they produce most of the Jet that gets sold in the area to all the other groups in the region," Zixxy said with a smile that matched the little twinkle in her black eyes.

"Jet? As in the drug?" Raymond said and Zixxy nodded obviously seeing he'd clicked onto what she was saying here.

"Yup, these guys are the biggest suppliers of the stuff in all of Boston," she said and a smile began to creep onto Raymond's face.

"Well now isn't that something?' he said with a bit of glee in his voice.

"What are you thinking big green?" Spectre asked and he glanced at her and then around at the others.

"I think we've just been handed a one-two punch on a fucking silver platter, all we gotta do is get this right and not only do we remove a giant pain in everyone's ass but we fucking cripple a large chunk of the chems trade in the area which in turn will weaken the other raider crew's as the withdrawals kick in along with the desperation, this will lead to a lot of infighting among them as they try to get each other's Jet stocks," he said and then he noticed at his creeping grin began to spread to the others all around him.

"Why Raymond are you suggesting we start a Raider gang war?" Paladin Wright asked and he nodded.

"If we do this right we should be able to get all the other Raider groups to not only start fighting amongst themselves to steal each other's supplies of Jet but if the remaining Red Eagles believe that this was done by one of the other groups they'll go after them for vengeance, should turn into a giant cluster fuck pretty quickly, if there's one thing you can always count on its that an addict will do just about anything to get their next fucking fix," he said.

"So how do we do it, there's a lot more of them than us and by the looks of the hardware some of them are walking around with they got us pretty heavily outgunned?" Spectre asked.

"Outgunned yes, outsmarted no chance, you forget we know what they know and what they don't know is that we even exist," Raymond said glancing at Zixxy who nodded her understanding.

'I'll start looking for known weaknesses in their defences that we can exploit," she said and Raymond nodded.

"Good, ok our first target is gonna have to be that Jet production lab, if there's one thing I know about that shit it's that producing it is more dangerous than fucking crystal meth, the lab will be pretty heavily guarded but the shit inside it will be volatile as a group of withdrawing tweakers all locked in a room that someone just tossed a single dose into," Raymond said.

"Blowing the lab should make a pretty nice distraction and cause a lot of damage," Jewel said nodding her head approvingly.

"Exactly but as big of a boom as that should make I want to make it bigger," Raymond said and they all glanced at him curiously.

"What are ye thinking laddie?' Jack asked curiously.

"I'm thinking we take a leaf out of Seven's book and he has a real liking for locating and targeting the armoury of places like this, we blow that too and not only do we deny them a decent chunk of their heavier weapons and gear but all that ordinance going up is gonna do some major damage," he said.

"So in short we gotta not only get in silently but we gotta both locate and sabotage what are most definitely gonna be the two most heavily guarded places in there?" Cho said.

"Yup and I do believe we got just the people for an op like that," Raymond said glancing at both Runs and Riss who nodded at him.

"We's got this, me's and beautiful wife make some serious fireworks out of poison," Runs said.

"Think that will be enough?" Latisha asked and Raymond shook his head.

"While it will be pretty dramatic and showy for sure we're gonna need a bit of an extra edge to push this royally over the top and really yank their pants down so we can spank them hard," Raymond said.

"But enough about what you and your Claw girl get up to in the bedroom what about the raiders?" Cho said making a few of them snort some laughs as Lia growled at her.

"Their treasure horde," Raymond said and now they all looked confused.

'Their loot horde? What about it are you saying we rob them?" Paladin Wright asked in confusion and Raymond shook his head.

"No I'm saying we fucking burn it to the ground," he said and that's when realization began to dawn across their faces.

"Because there is nothing they will not do and sacrifice to protect their power and their wealth," Jewel said and Raymond pointed and nodded.

"Give that girl a cracker, if we send that lot up in smoke the chaos will overwhelm them with blind panic, first their drugs, then their weapons and finally their money, while the first two will be complete losses the leaders will panic hard when they realise their wealth is about to go up in smoke, they will throw everyone they have into trying to save it and while they do that we simply walk in and close the jaws of death around their fucking throats," Raymond said with finality to his voice.

"That's a fucking ballsy plan, to say the least, but I gotta say I like it, you're gonna use their fucking greed against them and weaponise it to make them sloppy and stupid," Paladin Wright said scratching her chin as she looked at him thoughtfully.

"It's ambitious laddie and a pretty big if there to say the least, how are we supposed to get to those targets without being noticed?" Jack asked.

"With some serious co-ordination and yeah I agree hitting multiple targets this size increases the risk of discovery greatly but we still have our little secret weapon up our sleeve," Raymond said glancing at Zixxy who appeared to have gone back into a trance again as she roamed the minds of those down in the railyard looking for weaknesses.

"Think she has enough power under her hood to be able to misdirect that many people all at once?" Paladin Wright asked and Raymond shook his head.

"Maybe not a crowd that big but she doesn't need to hit them all at once, just a select few at the right times, plus it doesn't need to be something as potent as what she did back at the town, this time subtly will be key in the beginning, something like a perceived noise causing a sentry to open a security door to investigate only to get silently ambushed by an invisible intruder who dispatches them silently," he said giving an example and he began to see nods breaking out among them.

"Yeah that could work, if she can get the right people to look the right way at the right time we'd be able to walk right past them," Spectre said and Raymond nodded.

"Exactly, they already got the infrastructure we'll need to get this done on-site, sometimes you don't need a man-portable shoulder-launched nuke when a barrel of ether and a plasma grenade rigged to a trip wire can do the same job just nicely," Raymond said.

"You're gonna get them to blow up their own shit!" Latisha said and Raymond grinned broadly.

"Now you're getting it, when that place goes up not one of our people is going to be inside it," he said.

"But what I'm still missing is how are we gonna convince them that it was another Raider gang that did it?" Spectre asked.

"Yeah, I was wondering about that too?" Latisha said.

"You guys ever hear that old adage that history is written by the winners? Well, it just so happens it's written by the survivors too and memories can be tricky things, especially in the heat of battle and chaos," Raymond said with a sly grin and a glance at Zixxy.

Dawning realization began to pass from one to the other in the eyes of the group, "You're gonna get Zixxy to make them believe that they are under attack by another Radier gang!" Lia exclaimed catching his train of thought.

"Not all of them, just the survivors, of which there will be very few, we pick out the most cowardly among them, the ones most likely to run when the shit hits the fan and we show them what we want them to see, that way we control the narrative that they will carry with them on to the other groups," he explained.

"That's genius, they'll run around telling all of their shit stain brothers and sisters that one of the other Raider families hit them and fucked all their shit up and then they'll be all out for blood!" Cho said and Raymond nodded.

"Exactly then they will go off hunting for the ones that 'hit' them and with a bit of luck wind up starting an all-out war between the gangs which will leave them more vulnerable for people like us and the Minutemen to simply mop up at our leisure," he said.

"You really do have quite a talent for this tactical planning malarky," Spectre said grinning at him.

Suddenly Zixxy woke back up and smiled at them all while blinking her big black eyes a few times as she focused on them, "I do believe I have our way in," she said.

"What do you have Zix?" Raymond asked.

"See the perimeter fence over the far side of the compound near the back of the warehouse?" she said pointing.

Yeah, what about it?' Jack asked.

"Well apparently there are two large warrens of molerats that live in that area and they have a habit of playing merry hell with the electric fencing and motion sensors that they tried to set up around the perimeter of the place, something tells me it wouldn't take much to stir those molerats up and drive them into the fence and the sensors, should drive the perimeter alarm crazy and get most of the out guards looking the wrong way, something like say an angry Claw for example," Zixxy said shooting a grin at Lia who just nodded her large horned head.

"I can piss off some molerats," she said flatly.

"That should cover Run and Riss breaking in though we will have to short out that fence, Lia think you can lob some of those molerats at the thing enough of them get stuck on it and the fuses should pop," Raymond said.

"Molerat pitch and toss sounds like it should be a national Claw sport of some kind," Cho said making Jack snort a laugh.

"I can handle that," Lia said.

"Alright that covers team one, let's get to work on planning out the rest, I want this flawless understand?" Raymond said and the rest of them sat and they began to discuss how to get the other two sab teams into place.