Asteroid Blues

Infinity

Battle at the Beach Skirmish at the Pit

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Haqqislam
havocfett
VS Tohaa
Jager Nadim

The last reported match from Battle by the Beach! This mission was Power Pack and was the 4th round in the two day event. The final was a Haqq v Haqq match, and so I'm not reporting it here.

This was an extremely close and aggressively brutal game but, again, going to be going for a relatively short summary with plenty of pictures.

Mukhtar downs a Sapper
MUTTS MUTTS MUTTS

Jaeger got deployment, I got first turn. We both dropped in a mess of impersonation markers and camo tokens, and he also got a Sapper sniper overlooking half the map, while I had four Ghazi preparing to sprint up some firelanes.

My turn opened, the Ghazi all miraculously survived sniper rounds to the face, some of them managing to drop smoke on the way. I debated running Djabel at something, but decided against it due to the plethora of defenses over absolutely everything. Instead I lost the Liberto discovering an Impersonation marker, then ran the Mukhtar around shooting down the Nikoul, an Impersonator, his Liberto, and harassed his remaining impersonator while losing a wound on the way. Despite several orders of full auto Red Fury fire, I could not kill his second Impersonator.

Finally, I got a Ghazi up one flank and chain-rifled a dude, then left the Ghazi there as an active threat.

On his turn he managed to kill the Ghazi in his backline, forced my Hafza to reveal (And promptly get shot dead), and tried to kill a Ghazi near the Mukhtar but lost his shot at my Mukhtar in the process. He brought up a Kauri to bait a reveal from Djabel, which worked and got the Kauri killed, then shot him in the back for the finisher. Finally, he Identity-checked my HVT with his Impersonator.

Pay attention to that classified, it's important later.

Djabel goes down.

Coming back to life was never exactly pleasant, but V had to give this to the Haqq resurrectionists, they managed wholly bearable. None of the existential terror, blind awareness, or birthing dysphoria of lesser surgeons here. VV simply...swam back into the world of the living in a new, wholly worthy body.

It was a female lhost, lightly modified. None of the inveterate twitchiness of their last body, instead it was smoother, calmer, and altogether more focused. They'd compare it to the lhost they broadcast with, albeit with the back-hacked mayacasting equipment replaced with a truly aggressive set of combat mods.

They held a hand in front of their eyes, inspecting their new fingers, the muscles that coiled as they clenched their new fist. Their last memory, the distant bark of an Ariadnan pistol, resurfaced for a moment before they dismissed it.

They had an audience, after all. Mukhtar was watching them, alongside a hulking Khawarij.

"Do you normally watch resurrections?" asked VV, "Or is there a special occasion?"

"There was an incident in Yu Jing territory," says Mukhtar, "While we battled in the battery. The reporter was involved, we want your opinion."

"Bad news, then," they ask, finally pulling themselves up and out of their pod.

"We're not sure," says Mukhtar, "Which is why Emir Mansuri wants you to look at it."

V paused, looked up at the Khawarij, and felt their jaw go slack as their Geist finally woke up and told them that they were face to face with Tarik Mansuri.

Turn two begins with a Grief operator in my back ranks.

Second turn! I bring some Mutts around and kill the Grief Operator, bring a Nasmat up to heal my Mukhtar while my Doctor claims an objective. Unfortunately my Classified is to heal an Unconscious trooper, so I don't score the objective.

Pay attention to that, it's important later.

I rampage some more with the Mukhtar, notably killing one member of the only Tohaa Triad on the board, and bring some Mutts up for area control and as a future threat. Unfortunately that doctor+ objective run ate a bunch of orders, so I don't manage to capitalize on it much.

On his turn the Tohaa try, and fail, to kill the Doc+ and heals up the Nikoul via Symbiobomb, giving them sniper overwatch once more.

Back to my turn, the Mutts get smoke down, my Mukhtar downs the Nikoul again. I bring in a Nahab KHD, who gets flash pulsed immediately, but that's fine. He's here to secure an HVT anyways. I coordinate an order to grab some objectives, my Farzan grabs the center while my Hawwa' gets killed by a mine running for a flank. One of my Mutts purposefully detonates the mine he has overlooking his console, and the Mukhtar runs forwards, shooting people and jumping on top of the Console.

His turn, a lot of people die or get flash pulsed killing the Nahab and failing to kill the Mukhtar. However, he has a TO Camo dude right by the center antenna, grabs it, and then manages to shoot the Mukhtar in the back due to my facing and decision not to fall into cover when shot earlier in the turn. This would cause the game to end in a tie but he got a Classified, giving him a 5-4

Going forwards I need to make sure to read my own classified objectives to make sure I'm actually completing them. In addition I shouldn't have gone for the Console/HVT combo as he'd have his entire turn to deal with the units. I sohuld've walked the Nahab on to grab the last Antenna in the center line, then Cybermasked him to guard it. It would've been far harder to dislodge and netted me 6 points anyways. I did get pretty lucky throughout the game, and it was an incredibly close match.

I've got some objectives and an end-run to cap my turn

Miles was a short man with a sharp face, piercing blue eyes and a shock of dyed red hair. V figured he looked more like a Maya personality than an investigative reporter, but most people wouldn't figure V's various lhosts for V, either, so they were loathe to judge too harshly.

"You asked Lieutenant Faris to investigate a cache, why?" asked V.

"I've been investigating deployments on the asteroid, I picked up a data transfer," said Miles, "It's what I'm here to look into. Faris agreed to back me, neither of us thought it would come to shooting."

"And you pushed to stick to the mission when the Tohaa showed up," said V.

"I didn't think they'd contest it! It wasn't their data-"

"Then why did they?"

"I don't know!" said Miles, "We got close, hailed, and suddenly everyone started shooting. We barely got out of there."

V leaned over the sterile table, passing a sheet of printouts over to Miles. They were long, dull things, sheet after sheet of dates and times and numbers that made no sense. "Nine of our men, and a mess of Tohaa, died over this," said V, "Diplomats are working overtime to smooth over the mess you made. We started shooting at our own allies over, as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing, over a call you were not authorized to make. And that was all we managed to pull from those antenna. So I hope you can make something useful out of this otherwise I am going to start seriously considering handing you over to the Tohaa and hoping that it smooths everything over."

Miles barely paid attention to the threat. He grabbed the papers, flipping through them at speed, trying to make sense of the context-less data. A minute passed, V glaring daggers the entire way. And then, finally, "I know this one."

"Come again?" said V.

Miles turned the sheet around, pointing to a single line-entry, dated to three months ago. "This date, it's the day Reginald Walder was cleared on his charges. He was ambushed, and disappeared, before he could leave Earth. The timestamp matches to the hour," said Miles. He pulls his finger down the line, stopping on a solitary six. "Six of his O-12 issued bodyguards were killed in the firefight."

"That is a....wild conclusion to make from a single, half-formed datapoint," replies V, clearly unimpressed.

"It's the best you have," says Miles. V raises an eyebrow, and Miles scrambles to rephrase. "There'll be more. Just give me some time, I'll show you. Other dates, other incidents. Maybe some clues as to the rest of the code."

"It's not me you have to impress," said V, "The Khawarij are taking a personal interest in the incident. So, for your sake, I hope you have something more solid to show them when they decide to interview you."

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