Well now, that was a bit of an interesting milk run. By which I mean all holy hell broke loose and we only got out of there by the skin of our teeth.
Touch down
It was going fine, we made it to Pergalon and touched down a couple of kilos from the abandoned town where the data was stuck. I checked out Sarge’s Combat Armour and it was in good shape, no need for any maintenance on it. We grabbed our gear and worked out the plan. Starburn put out a call on the net to see if he could do deals with anyone in the area but no dice, nothing but crickets. Didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone out there though.
So, we headed North to the abandoned town and were all in pretty good spirits. I’d divided the crew up into two fireteams. Half with Starburn, the rest with me. I split Flames and Jammer up. Wanted a good Runner with each squad in case we came across something useful. They could haul it back to The Stone Shark once we grabbed it. Sarge came with me, I figured it would be nice to have the extra firepower nearby. I sent Wolf to cover Starburn, not quite the soldier Sarge is but a Commando is not someone to take lightly. Sticking with the firepower, Nitro with his rapid fire plasma chain came with me. I took Red as well. Since I brought him on as a Recruit I figured I should try and teach him a thing or two. If he paid some attention to myself and Sarge he’d no doubt learn something useful. I sent Doc with Starburn, I figured that since they had less firepower, they might need the medic a bit more. Tech Light went with Starburn as well.
When we arrived at the abandoned town we were greeted by 30 or so bombed out shells of buildings. Single story, most with no roof on them. Typical layouts but there was one large building near the centre. The intel provided with the job suggested the data we were after was in that building. It also provided us with one other piece of information. Before the town was abandoned or bombed or whatever drove the folk out of here, the data vault was guarded by a Sentrabot. It was estimated at a 10 percent chance of still being active and protecting the data.
Now, given the sort of luck that I generally seem to have in this galaxy, I figured a 10% chance of an active Sentrabot meant that there would be at least one fully active Sentrabot running around. Turns out I was right, the Sentrabot was fully active but we didn’t know that quite yet.
Looking at the layout of the town I sent Starburn and his squad to the left and after activating my Energy Shield I went right. We came into the town on the South side keeping on the lookout for the ‘unlikely to be active’ Sentrabot. We had some initial good luck with our progress. Smooth sailing as we moved through the buildings.
This is when we had our first piece of really good fortune. Stepping into one of the buildings there was a weapons crate just sitting there. Locked, naturally, but that’s not a problem on older pieces of kit like this. It was a familiar crate design from my days in the war. I bypassed the lock and there it was, one of the most beautiful carbines you can get. A Hawk Sight. Spectacular weapons, provided it was working. Now I know we were there for the contract data but you don’t pass up a gun like that when you find one.
I had no idea if that gun was operational, how long it had been there, anything about it. Rule #1 is you don’t trust a weapon you don’t know. I immediately handed it to Jammer and told him to high tail it back to The Stone Shark and store this in the weapons locker. That boy took off like a rocket. That was his berth earned early on.
Contact
Right after that, it all went to shit. I was moving my squad to the next building when that fucking Sentrabot rounded the corner. We walked right through its line of sight.
If you don’t know what a Sentrabot does, let me explain why they’re so annoying. First of all, they have an obscene rate of fire. It’s ridiculous. The designer was clearly thinking to himself, “You know what would be awesome, if this fired so fast it could obliterate a mountain in, like, 2 seconds. Yeah!” Guy was clearly an asshole. That’s not the worst part about Sentrabots though. The worst part is the friend or foe targeting designation. If you are not designated a friend, you are defaulted to foe. It’s that simple. They were so busy designing it to fire fast they didn’t seem to spend much time on what it should fire at. This one, like pretty much every other Sentrabot I’ve come across, has a response time on par with its rate of fire. Outcome, Sentrabots all but instantly fire at anything that crosses their line of site. There are a couple of system flaws though. It only triggers on full-body lateral movement, if you’re standing still, it won’t shoot you, it also has a short range, not much further than a pistol.
So now you can see the problem we had as we strolled between buildings with Sentrabot standing there. Boom, boom, boom. All of us took hits, nobody went down, and only Red was injured. Nothing serious. Armour saved us but now we were pinned down.
And then a bad day started to get worse. Sentrabot started shooting in the opposite direction to us. That only makes sense if something else was out there. I had a sinking feeling it wasn’t going to be a random creature, and I was right. Rounding the corner was a gang of Pirate Troopers. It seems this data had attracted the interest of someone in the Pirate Fleets. Rule #1 of being an independent crew is don’t piss off the Pirates. We weren’t left with much of a choice here though. They had seen us, they knew where we were, and we needed the credits from the job. Only one thing for it. We opened fire on the Pirates.
Sarge had the best position to shoot at the Pirates so I tossed him a sight clip for his Fusion Lance carbine so we could have better Co-ordinated Fire. This worked well and we started dropping some Pirate scum. Of course, they started to shoot back.
While all of this is going on, Starburn is moving his squad through the west side of the town towards the data vault. Unfortunately, as he did so, the Pirate Troopers arrived on the scene and he was instantly pinned down. Tech Light took a bunch of hits and went down under the weight of fire. He was out of it and all we could do was hope that Doc could patch him up if we got out of this alive.
Tech Light going down left Starburn down a man, and the Chisler too. Not a great start to this but definitely recoverable. Everybody knew the score going in, folks would die, that’s part of being an independent crew.
With Starburn pinned down, unable to move, half the Pirate scum moved towards my position and started lobbing grenades like they were Starday gifts. This is where we caught our first break. With the firefight, nobody was moving, so the Sentrabot just started going on its merry way. Told you they were stupid. It trundled off out of our line of sight, so we were able to pull back to a building away from the Pirate Troopers.
Fall Back
We didn’t all come though. Red. Red stayed. Damn, but I did not see this coming when I signed that boy on. We couldn’t all pull out because we needed to cover ourselves. There was just about solid cover for one person. Before I knew it Red was shoving us towards the building, screaming about covering us, and blasting away with his pistol. The kind of hero move that, while useful, is really fucking stupid and gets you killed. With no time to argue though we had to break for cover. I watched from the building while Red just started annihilating Pirates. I really don’t know who hurt that boy in the past, and I don’t want to know either. He laid down an awesome weight of fire with that pistol though.
With Red covering us, we charged through the building to the West side. This brought us out behind Starburn’s squad. Had to pause for a beat though. While everyone else was under fire from the Pirates, we damn near ran out in front of the sodding Sentrabot. It had rolled off down the street we were about to dive into. I decided it was time to step up and do some goddamn captaining. I ordered my squad into the street. Of course we came under immediate fire but nobody got hit. We shot back at the Sentrabot but it’s armour was too tough. I’d like to think it was upgraded but we just sucked at shooting it.
Right about then I saw Flames heading back towards the ship. Well out of range of everything but he looked to be carrying something fun. Turns out that before he went down Tech Light had ripped open a weapons crate. Looked pretty solid so they handed it Flames to high-tail back to the ship. More loot makes for a happy Captain so I’ll never argue that call.
Of course, Starburn’s guys couldn’t hold back an entire squad of Pirate Troopers on their own. They had to start falling back. Red broke from his cover and joined them in the retreat. This was not good, we weren’t that far from the building and the data vault but we just couldn’t get to it. We’d blasted a bunch of the Pirates, giving much better than we got, but they were reinforcing. I saw their captain go down, but she was still moving.
Retreat
We started retreating from the battle zone. It was the only choice, we’d have to regroup and try a different approach. Notably, the Pirate scum were doing the same thing. Nobody was getting the data loot that day. The mission was still on, just not right now.
Red appeared out of the dust that had been kicked up. A little bit battered, and carrying a very unhealthy Tech Light over one shoulder. With everyone accounted for we pulled back further and made for the cover of The Stone Shark. We needed to reload, rearm, and rethink our approach.
It wasn’t a total failure though. We made it out with a Hawk Sight in fully working condition. If you’ve never seen one, which is likely, a Hawk Sight is a compact advanced carbine with an inertia stabiliser, mag impellers, and an electronically enhanced scope. Basically, it fires a heavier slug (so more damage), with greater accuracy (you hit more), from a smaller weapon (you can carry more). She’s a thing of beauty.
Now, while these aren’t really my bag, we also picked up a Caesium Sprayer. Chances are you’ve never encountered one of these either, not the working end anyway. Nasty piece of kit. Basically, it’s a flamethrower on ‘roids. It’s got two tanks on the back, one of heated water, the other of caesium fragments. Pull the trigger and both blast out the nozzle. They mix in front of you and boom, instant firestorm that does way more damage than a normal flamethrower. I have a suspicion we’ll be keeping that. Starburn seems worryingly happy to have it on board.
Some more good news though is that Doc started earning his berth in a big way. He revived Tech Light and with only minor surgery too. The rest of us variously needed nano skin patches and bone melds. Nothing serious or debilitating thankfully.
So not an overly successful first outing for the crew, but not a total wipe out either. We didn’t get the data vault, but we did get some sweet gear. The crew got some experience working together, and we got a good look at the objective. Just have to try it again.
Stargrave is published by Osprey Games and was created by Jospeh A. McCullough