You may, or may not, recall that we’ve been trying to get off this damn rock for what feels like years. It’s not actually been that long but we really needed to move on. Conveniently for us, something came up. While we were picking up some additional supplies, Wolf overheard some disgruntled yokels babbling about the old ruined factory. A bit of investigation led us to discover that there is indeed an abandoned industrial site on one of Pergalon’s outer moons, Verticulas.
Turns out that the site had been abandoned several decades ago. It wasn’t a slow thing either. One day everyone had jobs, the next they didn’t. The bastard money men just shut it all down. The good news for us is that they did just walk away. They left everything behind. Everything. There has to be some good stuff in there that we can either grab and use, or grab and sell. Either way, there’s a pay-day sitting there and we’d have to fly past it to get out of the system anyway. I’ve told the guys to gear up, we are so heading for that factory.
Now in fairness, there may be one or two minor details I neglected to mention to the crew. The plan is to let them know when we land. The first thing is that this factory is being reclaimed by the jungle so we may end up with some Random Encounters in this Overgrown Factory. Now it seems that a lot of folk have tried this before, and only a few have come back. Part of the reason seems to be that one of the factory’s original guardians is still floating around. A Warbot. Kind of hoping it’s rusted to oblivion by now but we all know what my bloody luck is like. Ah well, I’m sure it’ll be fine.
Holy shit! That was not fine! The whole thing went sideways almost immediately. I’m going to have Switch check the ship for bugs or transmission hacks. That psycho Joe Pineapples and his crew turned up. AGAIN! Not just that, but a bunch of Pirates appeared too. Way too much of a coincidence for us not to be bugged in some way. If Switch can’t find anything I’ll have to get hold of a ComTech and see if they can work out what’s going on. Oh yeah, did I mention the Warbot was fully functional? No? Well it fucking was!
Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
To start with, the factory was a broken down complete piece of crap. Trees were growing out of the buildings and it wouldn’t be long before the jungle totally reclaimed it. Not too much of a problem, it just meant that we had more cover, which turned out to be a good thing. We entered the factory complex and immediately came under fire from that Cyborg head case, Joe Pineapples. Somehow, they knew about this place as well. Regardless, we were ready for a fight so opened up on the other crew and got into the meat of it.
While Pineapples had arrived opposite us, there were a couple of Pirates floating around to our left, and the Warbot turned up on our right flank. This technically meant we were all but surrounded but since the Warbot and the Pirates were equal opportunities between us and the other crew, it kind of evened out the odds.
We were able to take the Pirates out fairly quickly. Luckily it seemed that they were just a couple of local wannabes that were trying to get some gear. Dispatched them easily enough and turned back to the real fight. The Warbot on the other hand was so far out to our right that we didn’t have to worry about it just yet.
Our preliminary scan of the place indicated that there should be a bunch of stuff we could salvage. We just had to get to it. That was going to be the main problem. Well, the secondary problem, obviously not just dying was the main issue.
Since we knew roughly where we wanted to go we split left and right. We were hoping that would allow us to draw the fire away and split the enemy crew’s attention. It sort of worked. They split up and moved to intercept both squads.
About this time, smoke started raining down from the sky. They clearly had a grenadier on staff and to be honest, that worked out well for us. Smoke, works both ways. We couldn’t see them, but they couldn’t see us. I took this as a good sign, a crew that wants to hide isn’t up for a major fight. Of course, smoke doesn’t last forever. By the time it dissipated we had decent cover but both crews had moved up hard towards the loot.
The bullets started flying and men started dying. Nitro obliterated someone with his plasma chain. I saw Starburn torch some pirates with the caesium sprayer, as well as light up some enemy crew. I took out at least one of them as well. At one point Joe Pineapples leapt up onto a wall and skylined himself beautifully. He took a full face hit from Wolf and fell back. Still alive curse his cyborg parts.
It didn’t all go our way though. We took just as many hits as we gave. Grenades, bullets, shotguns, crazy powers were all flying around that factory. The Warbot rolled in to the fight and started blasting everything. The other crew beat us to the loot we were going for but we were able to grab some other stuff we knew was lying around.
Doc spent the entire time running around like a fucking yo-yo trying to patch up the wounded. Sadly, he wasn’t able to get to Tech Light in time. There was a piece of loot exposed between a couple of the buildings. Tech Light had run out to get it just as an enemy Hacker had rounded the corner. Pistol shot through the chest. Tech Light dropped like a stone. Doc went to see if he could do anything but there was no chance. Tech Light was gone.
A sad day for us. Tech Light had been with the crew from the start. 7 runs with barely a scratch and just like that, he gets his breathing privileges removed.
Taking stock of the situation afterwards, we cycled everyone through the med-bay and Doc got us all patched back up. Other than Tech Light there were no serious injuries. We managed to grab some information out of a terminal that we could sell, and an upgrade kit for a hand weapon. Not sure what we’ll attach it to yet but it will cause increased damage.
When we were trading the info the broker we went to had a dog that he was obviously mistreating. The crew took a shine to it and, eh, let’s say ‘dissuaded’ the broker from his current activities towards the dog. He ‘agreed’ to sell it to us for 5cr. I gave him 10 to keep the peace in case we need him in the future, you never know in this deity forsaken galaxy. So, we now have dog called Hunter on the crew, seems like he’ll make a good guard dog. Pretty sure he’ll cause no end of problems for other crews. A glorious mess awaits!
Right then, let’s get off this rock and back to a decent life, a Scavenger’s life.
Stargrave is published by Osprey Games and was created by Joseph A. McCullough