The Diplomat

The post below is by Ketill. He wrote up a bit of his side of the recent drama, and both of us thought is was important to again give some perspective on what happens away from New Haven. It's a condensed account of his recent trip to the west. 

On that note:

As most of you have probably heard or read by now, The Dragoons were not in fact going up north but have actually been out west for a bit.  We were contacted by the leaders of the Union a couple of weeks ago and were asked to do a very important mission.  Why us? Because we haven’t actually pledged any allegiance to anybody, we can go places that the Union people can’t.  In the short time since the emergence of the UAS, we have been in and out of their territory so many times that some of the people there know us by name.  But I’m getting off topic here.

When we were told by Will and the rest of the leaders what the mission was, we almost turned it down.  I mean, we are all about unifying the country and all but why would we want to put a bullseye on our group for the UAS to shoot at?  Then I had a wonderful idea.  Since we were to be ferrying the diplomat out to the west, why not go old school and turn the politics back on to the UAS?  Why not use their own logic against them?  The Dragoons (remember, we’re all ex-military) knew enough of diplomatic situations that in no time we were able to locate all the necessary equipment needed for a smooth operation.  Namely, a couple of black limos.

We had, a while back, come across what must’ve been a limo service in a past life.  When we first came across the place, it was part of a larger compound of survivors trying to eke out a living in an urban environment.  The hard part of it was that there was almost no ground to plant in.  When we returned the other week, there was no sign of the survivors and quite a few undead walking around.  My heart broke when I saw the sight of little kid zombies.  I thought that I had seen it all, but when you see something like that it’s just too much.  The Dragoons and I cleared out all of the undead and gave them all a proper burial.  The compound had, at one point, been a temporary home for us all and two of my members had actually joined from this very place.  Comforting them was hard at best.

We retrieved the limos, all black with tinted windows, fueled them up, and drove back to New Haven.  With them there, my mechanics got with their mechanics and proceeded to armor them as close to diplomatic specs as possible.  We also had some little white flags made for the fronts of the cars and as a specially added feature, one of the limos became a ground version of a gun ship, all hidden below the surface of course.  With our new vehicles and the old ones painted up (not sure where the paint came from), we headed out with our precious cargo to the west coast.

Before The Fall, I had visited friends out on the coast quite a few times.  I remember them smell of the salty air and the warmth of the sun as I lay on the beach.  It was a time when there was not a lot of strife and worry in the world.  Now, however, I envied my old self for being so carefree.  I was now on a very important mission, one that could change how the new world looked and felt.  Because of this, I was on constant guard.  It’s a good thing, too.

Two days into the trip brought us smack dab in the middle of the UAS northern expansion.  We expected the normal patrol from them, but what we got that day was much more.  It seemed that word of our caravan got to their leaders in record time.  By the time we stopped our vehicles, there were a dozen guns drawn on us and the road ahead blocked.  My first thought was to fight our way out, but I pushed that thought down due to the “diplomatic” cause we were on.  I did not want to start something that would endanger my cargo, even if I knew I would win.  So I did the next best thing, I played the role of diplomat.  Not one of my strong suits, but I did a fairly decent job at it.  I met with the leader of the opposing group and put my best “I hate you and all you stand for but don’t want to see useless bloodshed” face on.  After about an hour of talking, we agreed that it was in his best interest to not test our forces and in our best interest to head west as quickly as possible.  I think that the sight of heavily armed and armored vehicles kinda scared him a bit.

The rest of the trip out west was uneventful, with the exception of the massive battle that Josh has told you about.  When we had reached our initial destination, we were told of a large contingent of UAS “troops” heading this way and were asked to lend a hand.  Thanks to our military knowledge and that of the locals, we were able to devise a strategy to halt the oncoming attack.  Of course, after the battle we realized that we needed to grow just as the communities do.

Before the battle my group had consisted of seventy-five men and women that were all at one point militarily trained to one extent or another.  Now we have less than fifty.  It’s not that we weren’t prepared, just that we had a few unlucky times.  We lost about fifteen of our group in the initial attack to automatic fire from the front of the convoy.  They had two or three fifty caliber machine guns that all lit up the two lead trucks in our attack, destroying both and killing everyone inside.  There was just no getting out of the way of that.  The next five Dragoons to go down had the unfortunate luck to get hit by one of our own RPGs that somehow missed its mark in the convoy.  As for the others that we lost, they fell to small arms fire during the remainder of the battle and will be remembered as long as I live.  They were the ones guarding our new friends from the west, the ones that didn’t know a lot about fighting anyway.  My people gave their lives so that others could live.  They will be honored as best as we can.

We’re posted up in one of the lead communities here on the west coast as added protection against anything that might threaten the goings on that are happening as I write.  I can’t go into too much detail about what it is because I haven’t really been told them.  I know that there’s something going on that involves the cargo we were hauling, but beyond that I’ve got no freaking clue.  I was contacted the other day by a guy claiming he’s with a large group of soldiers and that they’re heading our way.  I’m hoping that they want to join with my group and not fight for some god forsaken reason.  At this point, The Dragoons need all the help they can get.

I hope to be back in my “home” area by the end of next week.  I’ve got some areas around there that need to be checked on.  Very hush hush stuff right now, but if everything works out for the better, the Dragoons will be able to fend off any size force.