Scenario and Conditions
Expansion: Quarantine 37
Scenario: The Medical Lab
| Crew Member | Role |
| Nightwind | Captain |
| Starburn | First Mate |
| Doc | Medic |
| Nitro | Gunner |
| Phantom | Striker |
| Lo-ball | Sentry |
| Gumball | Quartermaster |
| Headcase | Ravaged Trooper |
| Wolf | Commando |
| Sarge | Armoured Trooper |
Breaching the Door
In a surprising twist to no-one, the door to the Medical Lab was sealed tight. This was less of the problem that it could have been though. Gumball, our new Quartermaster, stepped up and sliced through the lockout in no time at all. That’s when we noticed the other problem. As Gumball was working, the motion sensors started to get readings. Readings that were not us. There is almost no scenario in which movement in an abandoned space station bodes well.
The good news was that the motion did not seem to be coming from inside the medical lab itself. From what we could see, nothing was alive in there. That left us two options, either another crew trying to access the lab, or a bunch of plague zombies milling around at another exit. Neither of those was appealing but the door was open so time to suck it up and get busy.
A First Look
We moved through the doorway and fanned out around the entrance. I went to the left, Starburn to the right. The first thing to note was that the entire place looked destroyed. There were a lot of smashed up things, not everything though. There were some data consoles and lock boxes that looked undamaged. Most of these were near the eight unopened, still active, medical pods in the centre of the lab. Slightly more disconcerting were the random sprays of blood around the place. Meh.
The pods were lined up in two rows of four, each of them emitting a faint blue glow. The station had power, and so did these med pods. What was in the med pods was anybody’s guess. Injured people, hiding lab techs, or plague victims. The good news was, they were sealed, so no danger to us. The rest of the lab looked much as you would expect it to. Consoles, work stations, science stuff. You know, beakers, test tubes, that kind of crap.
Looking around we decided to make for the consoles and lock boxes. We were here to find some sweet tech, so that seemed like a good place to start looking. With nobody else around, and the pods sealed, the medical lab was ours was for the taking. And that’s where it started to go a bit sideways.
The Stupid Arrives
The motion sensors weren’t wrong, and we found out what was activating them. A door in the other side of the medical lab opened up and another crew poured in. They looked strung out, amped up, and clearly ready for a fight. No idea how long they’d been wandering this station, but we were going to have to battle them for any loot that we wanted.
Watching this other crew charge in like reckless morons I couldn’t help but think, ‘Hope they don’t do anything stupid,’ and that’s when I saw it. One of them tripped, landed on a console, and hit his shoulder into some buttons. Cue the medical labs’ info speaker, “Alert: Medical Pod deactivation sequence in process. All medical pods disengaged. Please attend to the awakening patients.”
Have I ever mentioned just how much I fucking hate other people?
Time For Some Killing
Suddenly, we were in the thick of it. No idea how that other crew have survived this long with that level of fuckwittery amongst them, but here we are. Everybody heard the info speaker, which caused the other crew to look around. They saw us and before anyone could say anything like, “Let’s not do something stupid here,” they opened fire.
I, personally, want to extend my deepest thanks to their leader, Captain Stealth, for keeping everything quiet in a zombie-infested space station.
There was no choice now, we were into it. We spread out into our disciplined fire teams, I went left with Sarge, Phantom and Nitro while Starburn and the others went right. The layout of the medical lab was working in our favour. There were plenty of consoles and banks of machinery for us to take cover behind and return fire.
Unfortunately, this made it harder to hit the other crew as well. Them’s the breaks though. I kept the other crew pinned down while Starburn headed towards the Loot we had spotted as we entered the medical lab.
Where Did He Go?
I turned round to gather my squad and move forward only to discover that Phantom was gone. He told me this. He did. He told me when he signed on that he ghosted the battlefield. I thought it was bullshit, nobody is that good. Apparently, he is. I was trying to spot him, which I couldn’t, when all of a sudden he just… appeared. I would swear he materialised out of thin air beside an enemy crewman. That guy was equally surprised and was dead before he could get over the shock. His crewmates turned to fire on Phantom and he simply vanished. I’ve never seen anything like it.
On the other side of the medical lab Starburn was making decent progress towards the Loot when the first med pod opened up. The whole room held its breath for a moment, everybody swung to look at it. With a low, agonised moan of pain, a Hastian’s Plague zombie wrenched itself out of the pod. This suggested bad things for the rest of the pods.
You Snooze You Die
Starburn opened fire on it, and my squad took the opportunity to blast a couple of the opposing crew. Looked like some fresh Recruits went down, too slow to recover after seeing the zombie. This was great for us as it started to pin those idiots down. If we were going to get the loot, and get out of this medical lab, we had to keep them where they were.
More med pods started opening as the fight went on, the next two spat out zombies and it was clear to us what was in the remaining five. Doc blasted one of the zombies and Gumball took the opportunity to dash in and crack open the lock box in the middle of the room. A brave move given the situation, I guess she wanted to prove herself to the crew as early as possible. Either way, she got into it, grabbed some sort of blanket thing, then dove back under cover.
Doc, meanwhile, was filling a sack with any medical equipment he could lay his hands on. The full crew was providing covering fire for this. All the zombies were down and Nitro had opened up on full auto at the other crew, his rapid-fire plasma chain was keeping them ducked down. Phantom would randomly pop up beside someone and carve them up with his axes. It was crazy in there.
Time to Go
The remaining med pods started to open. Doc had a full bag of Trade Goods, Gumball had that blanket thing, the other crew were getting desperate and the zombies were popping out of med pods. We decided to beat a retreat. Wolf and Sarge fell back to the door and started laying down cover fire, the rest of us retreated under it and exited the medical lab. We sealed the door behind us; that other crew were on their own.
Not a bad start to this caper. Nobody was injured and we picked up some shiny new toys. A closer examination of the blanket revealed some interesting info. Gumball, not being an idiot, grabbed not only the blanket, but the data slate that was with it. She fired it up and discovered that it was a Grenade Blanket. Turns out you can use it smother grenades that come your way. Strictly a use once kind of deal, but should be handy at some point.
Since the area was clear, I sent Doc and Gumball on a quick run back to the ship to dump the Loot. It didn’t take them long, then it was time to move deeper into this station.
Stargrave is published by Osprey Games and was created by Joseph A. McCullough