Alright, so, we had an unfinished job to do, and we needed the credits. It was time to assemble The Void Dragons and get back to work. Doc had patched everyone up, we had some great new weapons to upgrade our firepower, and we’d scared off the pirate troopers. This should be a cake walk. Just like last time.
Since the squad separations had worked pretty well for the first run I decided to keep them as is. The only real difference was in our gear. Sarge’s combat armour was still in a good condition so no maintenance needed for that. Exercising captain’s prerogative I took the Hawk Sight. Starburn swapped out his carbine for the Caesium Sprayer. Not a great surprise since I swear he’s going to start sleeping with that thing. He’s pretty attached to it given we only just found it. Regardless, with gear upgrades the squads went out like this. Myself, Sarge, Nitro, Jammer and Red in one squad with Starburn, Tech Light, Doc, Wolf and Flames in the other.
With that all taken care of it was time to head out. Given how disastrously the first attempt at this went, we decided to approach the town from the west side. We knew where the data vault would be, and we’d seen the layout from above when we tried a Southerly approach. Everything went well, at first. We were able to get deep into the town moving through the buildings until the large one with the objective came into view. As we rounded a corner we came under fire.
At first I thought it was those fucking Pirate Troopers again, but I was wrong. It was another independent crew. I didn’t recognise any of them, and to be honest, I couldn’t care who they were. They were there to sneak the score out from under us. Also, they shot first. Happily my crew were smart enough to stay in cover so nobody took any damage from this surprise attack. We did start to return fire though.
Again, Starburn had his crew shifted to the left, and I had mine to the right. There was plenty of cover so hard to get a clear shot at the enemy, but they seemed to have a grenade launcher. Also, their captain could straight up Camouflage. I literally watched the little twerp phase out of sight. I know that trick though and if we could get close enough we’d be able to spot him. So there we are, under fire, but under cover and still able to advance. Since we could, we did.
While the crew laid down a decent weight of fire, I powered up my Energy Shield and passed Sarge the scope to Co-ordinate Fire again. With the combined weight of our fire we started to lay down a bit of hurt on these goons. Unfortunately, we weren’t making much headway. I radioed out to Starburn to keep the other crew pinned down while my squad made a break for the data vault.
Starburn was fine holding down the enemy crew but he did notice that the amount of fire coming his way diminished. As he became able to move he sent Tech Light into a building where he’d spotted some gear that we might be able to grab. Turns out he was right. Tech Light cracked the thing open and tossed it to Flames who took off for the ship. That put us a man down but at least we’d get some new toys out of this if nothing else.
My squad successfully flanked to the right and were approaching the objective. The grenades were still falling all around us but since they couldn’t see us they mostly just landed nearby. A couple of frag grenades were close enough to cause some injuries but nothing we couldn’t just shrug off for now.
What happened next was a bit of a surprise. Not just to us, but also the other crew guessing by what happened in their ranks. First of all, the Sentrabot appeared. Now, we were totally expecting that to happen. After all, we already knew about it and we hadn’t destroyed it from last time. What we weren’t expecting, was that the Pirates were going to turn up. I figured we had about a 50/50 chance of them still being around. They took a beating last time but the problem with the Pirates is that there’s just so damn many of them. Put one down and about 50 pop up to replace it.
The surprise though, was not their appearance, it was that they briefly hacked our comms. I was looking right at them when their Captain pointed towards me and I heard, over my own bloody comms, “Time to die, Nightwind! You and all your useless Void Dragons.” I suppose I should be flattered that they’d taken the time to figure out who we were, but I was mostly just concerned. Rule #1 – Don’t attract the attention of the Pirate Fleets. Whoops!
The Pirates and Sentrabot arrived to the east of our position, that meant we were immediately flanked by both of them. An independent crew to our north and Pirates to our east. Where was the data you ask? That’s right, north east. Right between the two opposing forces. Le Sigh. On the upside, Starburn had at least half the Independents tied up. While it would seem the Pirates knew about the Void Dragons, they didn’t know which of us were the Void Dragons, or they didn’t care. Upshot was the Pirates opened fire on both crews. Luckily for us they split their force to engage everybody. The only thing they didn’t shoot at was the Sentrabot.
Speaking of the Sentrabot it was following it’s very basic programming. It trundled off down a side street and out of sight. Didn’t have to worry about that for a while. What I did have to worry about was facing off against two unknown forces. We had to get a move on.
I grabbed Red and the two of us made a break for the mission objective. We made it into cover in the building with the data vault. I broke out my Deck and made short work of the security system in place. Red laid down covering fire while I downloaded the data. Meanwhile, Sarge and Nitro were laying down a ridiculous volume of fire that was holding both crews at bay. Nitro’s Rapid-Fire let him do some serious damage, while Sarge’s Combat Armour meant he could take some hits without any worries.
With all the covering fire I was able to grab the data quickly and Red and I broke cover to sprint back to the crew. Red went first and I followed him. We sprinted round the corner of the building and back to the cover of our crew. Since Red went first I saw it happen. His head turned as if he were going to look at me, but the spray of blood from the side of it let me know he wasn’t. His body tumbled sideways, like a marionette with its strings cut. He crumpled in a heap, lifeless eyes staring out into nothing. Not the first time I’ve seen that happen, probably won’t be the last. No chance to do anything for him either. I made it back to cover and took a beat. It was time to get out of here.
Starburn had begun working his way across to us, that Caesium Sprayer of his was holding the Independent Crew to the North at bay, but the Pirates were pushing hard. Bullets, plasma, caesium, grenades, it was all flying through the air. Kill of the Day goes to Doc though. He only carries a pistol, but his chosen pistol is a Nitrogen Lance. Basically, it pulls Nitrogen out of the air and fires it in a focused liquid beam into the target freezing it solid. Moments after, a standard bullet is fired into the target. I’ve seen a lot in this galaxy, but until then, I’d never seen anyones head shatter before. It was kind of cool. Haha.
Foolishly, I let myself be momentarily distracted by Doc’s epic kill, so much so that I let a Pirate Trooper draw a bead on my. Next thing I know, I’m lying on the ground staring at the sky. Doc’s yelling at me to lie still while he breaks out the med-kit. I’m badly wounded here, I can barely move, but Doc manages to do something with the med-kit. At I least stop pouring blood everywhere, and I can get up, but I’m not going to be moving very fast. I hate to admit it but I’m out of this fight for now.
Red’s down, I’m wounded, everyone is taking hits at this point. Everyone is closing on our position. Sarge and Wolf are holding the enemy at bay, but only just. We start falling back to the ship. It’s a full retreat, almost a rout but not quite. Nobody actually turns to run, we fall back in decent order. That’s probably the only thing that saved us. As the dust and smoke swirled around us we faded back into the buildings and headed for The Stone Shark.
Back at the ship we took stock. We had the Data Loot we were going for, the gear we found was an upgrade for Nitro’s Plasma Chain that should add to the damage it causes. Happy days. Doc took almost everyone into the Med-bay to patch us up. He did a good job and everyone made a full recovery. No lasting injuries at all. That man’s a wizard with the doctoring.
We weren’t able to get to Red to recover his body. He stays where he lays, just one more soul extinguished in the Ravaged Galaxy.
Stargrave is published by Osprey Games and was created by Jospeh A. McCullough