With the Communications Array active we picked up some interesting chatter on the Signal. The bounty available on Dogorin the Soulshark had been tweaked up a little bit. Of greater interest was that he had been spotted on Pergalon. Obviously, we were set to leave; however, this was far too good an opportunity to pass up. Despite having the data to sell and the contract to complete, a little side run couldn’t hurt us too much.
If you’ve never heard of him Dogorin, the Soulshark is an elusive bastard and highly feared by everyone that comes across him. The living ones anyway. He hides himself in plain sight by wearing standard common clothing, nothing special. Most of his crimes involve raiding for ancient artefacts. Usually by killing the current owner, occasionally by getting them, eh, let’s say ‘direct from the source’. As a psychic, he does have some powers at his disposal which he quite happily uses on anyone he comes across.
After a bit of work from Starburn on the comms array, we managed to pinpoint Dogorin to a huge cavern out on an archipelago. It would seem that his ship has become badly damaged and he’s stuck out here until he can repair it. We know how that feels and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
The bounty on his head is 250 creds. If we can scoop that up then we’ll be set for quite a while. We haven’t seen or heard from the pirates recently so perhaps they’ve forgotten about us. Either way we’re going for that payday. We know Dogorin doesn’t have a huge crew with him, so this is a decent chance to scoop him up and perhaps make a bit of a name for ourselves. As far as we know he has some sentries with him and a couple of heavy hitters guarding the ship. Nothing we can’t handle though.
After Action
Well, that turned out to be one of the toughest fights we’ve faced yet. Certainly ranks in my Top 20 ever.
The cavern that Dogorin was holed up in seemed to have been used by some sort of cult or something a long time ago. Abandoned and broken down it had some weird ass stuff going on in there. I swear I saw a pillar of skulls at one point.
Dogorin’s crew turned out to be a few Sentries and an obvious Recruit guarding the middle, a Grenadier and a recruit off to one side, and a couple of Snipers and a Trooper towards the back of the cave.
Our entry was pretty much dictated by the cave entrance. Happily our initial scouting indicated that there was only a single entrance.
Now, because nothing ever seems to go smoothly for us, there was, of course, a bit of a complication to this bounty hunt. There were some giant ass Herd Beasts just wandering around in there. Not doing anything, just dandering about and munching on the plant life. Totally docile but pretty damn big and hard to see past.
Speaking of sight, this was a cave after all, we couldn’t see very far because of the darkness. That makes it easier to sneak up on folk, but the opposite is also true. This was going to turn into a short range fight where things get up close and personal. It’s just never simple is it?
The entrance to the cave was to the south-west side. We snuck in and spread out into our two standard squads. Nitro, Shell Shock, Sarge and Jammer with me while Flames, Wolf, Tech Light and Doc went with Starburn. As noted, visibility was for garbage, we could see about half-way into the cave interior. Standard cave stuff, though cavern would be a better description given its size. Pools of water with the sound of dripping, a damp mossy smell to the whole place. The occasional lowing of some herd beast moving around. Crucially though, we could also hear, and feel, the thrum of some power generators. This was definitely the right place.
There wasn’t much for it except to move forward as cautiously as we could until we were able to draw some sort of bead on Dogorin’s henchmen. The first place we saw them was in the centre of the cave, hanging out by some stone carving that looked like an entrance to the Underplane. We moved into cover just past the cave entrance, some low broken down walls, and lined up to take shots at the enemy.
As soon as we were in position I had the crew open fire. Dogorin’s gang responded quickly, they moved into cover and began to advance on our position. They returned fire, naturally, but our aim was much better. We started dropping them like flies. A quick glance at our motion detector though showed me that the rest of the gang had heard the commotion and were coming up in support of their lookouts. We still couldn’t get a bead on The Soulshark though.
Starburn flanked his squad out to the west and I took mine to the north-east. It wast time to get up close and do this the old fashioned way. With the support coming in, and the reduced range, it would make it harder for the rest of Dogorin’s gang to draw a clear shot on us. Unless, of course, they wanted to just shoot their own guys, which I wouldn’t past them to be fair.
The initial gang that we encountered were mostly taken by surprise and went down with minimal fuss. They got a couple of shots off, mostly at Sarge but his combat armour kept him safe. With them out of the way we pushed into the cave. We headed towards the centre structure, turns out, so did the rest of Dogorin’s gang.
As we reached the middle we started coming under fire from the rest of his crew. Not him though, he was still cowering somewhere to the back of the cave. Pussy. The range closed amazingly fast and we quickly found ourselves mixed up in close quarters with a random assortment of bad guys. Snipers, Troopers, even a Grenadier.
Turns out that closing the range was to our favour. You don’t want to let Snipers start taking shots at you. I took on the Trooper myself, he looked quite confident. You should have seen his face when my Concealed Firearm shot out of my sleeve and I blasted him in his stupid face. He dropped like a stone. Ah, good times.
Out to the west side, the others were having similar luck though at greater range. A Grenadier drew attention to himself by, of all things, trying to blow up Sarge. Frag grenade exploded right on top of him. The stupid son of a bitch looked pleased with himself until the smoke cleared and Sarge just stood up as if nothing had happened. Before anything else could happen though Starburn fried the Grenadier and two of his friends. That Caesium Sprayer is beyond lethal when it gets going.
At this point, we had numerous injuries, either from grenades, bullets, or hand weapons. Nobody was hurt bad enough to need Doc though. It was nothing we couldn’t just walk off. As the dust cleared we realised that Dogorin’s entire gang was down. The only thing moving was us, the Herd Beasts, and The Soulshark.
Speaking of the Herd Beasts, Nitro did manage to get trampled by one. It didn’t hurt him but it was hilarious. He will never hear the end of that.
Anyway we’d finally spotted Dogorin at the back of the cave, skulking along the wall. Before I could do anything about this, Flames and Jammer ran forward. They quickly outpaced the rest of us and, having seen which way Dogorin was heading, took cover to ambush him.
We moved up in support of them but were far too slow. With the darkness around us, and all the rocks, we couldn’t quite get a shot at Dogorin. Shell Shock tried a grenade but it was a dud. That happens from time to time. Not her fault, just a manufacturing defect. Whatcha gonna do?
Anyway, Jammer decided not wait for the full ambush, seeing us moving up, he ran into pistol range and took a shot at The Soulshark. I’ll admit, I didn’t realise he was that good a shot. He put one right through Dogorin’s black heart. The guy dropped from a single shot. Just like that, the hunt was over, the bounty was ours. Unbelievable.
I took a look around at my crew. Battered, bruised, but triumphant, and with no major casualties. A tough day’s work, but a good one for us nonetheless.
With the cavern cleared out we checked over the area to see if Dogorin or his gang had any usable salvage. We found a nano surgery kit, much to Doc’s delight, and a swift suit. Swift suits have grav impellers built into them which allow the wearer to move faster. That was absolutely going to come in handy.
Back at The Stone Shark I transmitted the vid feed evidence of Dogorin’s demise, along with the confirming genetic markers, to the Keepers. They sent back the creds and we were good to go.
In case you’ve never heard of them, the Keepers are the ones that maintain The Bounties. Fancy titles for simple things. The Bounties is just a list of who needs taken out, and the Keepers are the ones that update it. Fuck knows why they have to complicate it but there you go.
We’ve had to make some crew changes after this bounty hunt. Flames and Jammer, they decided it was time to move on. Fair play to them, sorry to see them go, but it’s their choice. I sent them off with a hearty recommendation, they’ll be good assets to any crew that takes them. Jammer can probably get a pay rise too, after all, he did take out The Soulshark. Told you they’d have their own battle stories soon enough.
That did leave us in a bit of quandary though, we were suddenly down two crewmen. I put a call out across the Net to see if there was anyone interested in signing onto The Void Dragons. Turns out we were starting to get a decent reputation around these parts. After sifting through a lot of trash, we took on Switch and Lo-ball.
Switch is a Chisler, a locksmith looking for a better life among the stars. He’ll be good at getting us any salvage that we come across. Lo-ball is a robot, initially built for Sentry work, he’ll be a great addition and keep a close eye on us when we’re working. His auto-sensors should pick up any infiltrators quickly.
Only one thing left to do before we blast off from Pergalon. Sell some of the stuff we’d acquired. The cargo hold was getting kind of full with junk we couldn’t use. On the upside, we’d heard of a guy who would trade for it. Hopefully this goes better than the last time we tried that.
Stargrave is published by Osprey Games and was created by Jospeh A. McCullough