Asteroid Blues

The tiny, unmarked black corvette had suddenly become a hive of activity. Lines of tightly packed motorized stretchers shepherded by a red-faced, exhausted Trauma-Doc cut in front of engineers and hackers carrying all manner of complex scanning tools, while the few soldiers who could still stand fought their way through the press of bodies to carry supplies and the remains of enemy forces onto the small ship. Aurora Simpson, formerly a Sergeant of the Neoterra Bolts, was leaning heavily against a wall in an island of calm amid the rest of the ship’s new occupants; the vessel’s bridge. A large, square, empty room, the bridge had stubbornly refused to function despite Fusilier Specialist Marlow, the only quantronics expert present, running every program he knew into its network. This difficulty was the reason why the technically-minded soldiers were scanning every inch of the ship and the regular infantry were searching downed enemy soldiers; they couldn’t figure out how to start the ship and they were a sitting duck while it sat in the caverns. As the only squad member with rank who wasn’t on an operating table, it was left to Aurora to coordinate the mess. She cocked her head as three Fusiliers and the smuggler who had arrived with the unit’s Black Friar pulled and squeezed the slender frame of a golden TAG the size of a house through the door and into the spacious command room. “Why are you leaving that here? We’ve got people searching the enemy in the cargo bays. Put it over there, for Heavens’ sakes.” The smuggler just looked up and grinned, while the Fusiliers quickly made themselves scarce before they had to do any more lifting. A moment before Aurora could start shouting, Marlow barged into the room. “We’ve cracked the code! The ship’s not designed to be crewed by living creatures, it needs an AI in the command nexus! We can get off the ground if we can find an enemy Aspect around and force it to fly the ship somehow. That TAG you have sitting next to you would probably have one.” Aurora scowled at the criminal, whose smile could fit a whole sewer, and then looked back to Marlow. “So how do we force a hyper-intelligent alien AI to listen to us?” He winced. “You’re not going to like it. Get the Doc in here when she’s done stabilising everyone.”

Doc Elliot liked it even less then Aurora did. “We are NOT using my patients as firewalls for a hacking attack. It goes against every rule of medicine!” Marlow grimaced. “We have to. AIs are scary strong, and my Hacking Device can’t suborn an Aspect without some serious amplification. I’m only trying this at all because we have full hardware access, otherwise we’d be safer walking through the CA lines. Trust me, if there was any alternative, I’d be the first to suggest it.” Doc Elliot threw up her hands. “Fine. If anyone gets hurt, I’m holding you responsible.” She stormed out of the room with an armful of short Silk cables to start linking everyone to the ship’s nexus. The soldiers who were still mobile set themselves up in the bridge, and Marlow activated his Hacking Device’s attack.

The soldiers looked about, confused, at their surroundings. They had appeared in the middle of a Yu Jingese town at twilight, with nobody else around. Marlow’s panicked voice came through over the radio. “This was a failsafe, meant to be used if something went wrong. It’s a VR simulation I pulled from a game. All of the enemy’s firewalls should be manifested in here too, limited to normal physics. We need to grab the core program and hold our exit gate, or the AI will kill us with biofeedback.” “WHY YOU-” Lt. Jackman’s voice cut in, muting the furious doctor. “Get it done. Nevin, you’re on guard duty for our gate, we’ll need you to hold Marlow’s core program thing too. Drakeschild, head up front and slow them down.” Davis’ team of Fusiliers took their places on and around a building on the left flank, the Auxilia and support troops watched the centre, and Aurora climbed onto a rooftop to counterattack if the unknown enemy went for the gate. Drakeschild advanced into the no man’s land and set up several landmines while W.O. Keusen used her Swiss Guard-issue TO Camo to safely gain some ground on the right.
The enemy made its move. Drakeschild, despite her enthusiastic suppressing fire, was quickly gunned down by a construct with a machine gun, and a heavily armed feminine figure evaded the blast of one of her mines while her Fireteam repositioned. A quadrupedal remote tried to advance into and control the market square, but one of Drakeschild’s mines and a penetrating sniper rifle round fired by Agent Mitchell, atop a landing pad, stopped it dead. The other constructs advanced to occupy its position, and the support Fireteam consisting of two women and a massive remote tried to advance up the right. Fortunately, both Fusilier Private McKinley with her HMG and Agent Mitchell could see one of the gold-clad figures moving, and blew it to shrapnel- much to the surprise of the two, who had expected something meatier.

This last shot threw the enemy into disarray, allowing Jackson’s team to take the initiative once more. “Keusen, move forward and capture the target. Their defences there have been removed.” The Swiss Guard sent a squawk of static as acknowledgement to avoid breaking concealment, then advanced from the right flank across the centre to the core program, using her HMG to clear three of the golden constructs. “Objective secured, seems to have taken the form of a small remote. Bringing it back to Pvt. Nevin.” Aurora watched as the veteran Warrant Officer simply sprinted back to friendly lines, handed the struggling, knife-wielding program to the surprised Auxilia and took cover behind a car to repel any enemy counterattacks.

It turns out that they hadn’t been prepared for the counterattack that came. Agent Mitchell hadn’t even had time to shout before a sniper’s bullet shattered her helmet and her virtual avatar broke like crystal glass, but her advanced PanOceanian software had identified the source- a thermoptic-camouflaged sniper lying on the rotors of an aircraft parked three stories up, right beside the Neoterrans’ DZ. Fortunately the sniper seemed to be acting on her own initiative, as no follow-up shots came. Instead, a few enemies scrambled for better cover, but accomplished nothing else.

Pvt. Nevin dived behind a bin to shield himself from enemy fire as Davis the Black Friar and Pvt. McKinley tried to dislodge the well-positioned sniper, with McKinley striking true. The sniper just kept shooting despite the hole in her gut, and slew both members of the Fireteam with devastating ease. Lt. Jackman spoke up over the radio. “We have the program, we need to retreat now. If we run out of time they’ll overrun our security and kill us for real. Nevin, get that program ready for extraction.”

As the panicked private wrestled the stab-happy robot avatar into the gate, the enemy regrouped with a clear goal- kill Nevin and stop the gate. Only one of them was in range. The sniper shot Marlow, then leapt from its perch, executing a perfect three-point landing and rising to take aim at the program’s captor- before being shot in the face by Fusilier Wyatt, her panicked snap-shot striking true. Nevin used the seconds she had bought him to finally connect the program to the extraction gate, and pull everyone back to reality.

Aurora blinked awake. She had a splitting headache, and was surrounded by groaning soldiers struggling to stand. She muted her radio to cut off the indistinct stream of profanity and threats coming through Doc Elliot’s comlog, then noticed a hologram shimmering in the centre of the bridge. It took the familiar form of a Caucasian woman in a figure-hugging golden bodysuit, with the kind of beautiful natural-looking face that can only be achieved with a great deal of work. Her long red hair was worn loose and floated like it was resting in a gently flowing stream. She smiled as she spoke. “I am ALEPH Aspect M-211934567C, but I prefer Astraea. How may I help you, Ms. Simpson?”

In the infirmary, Trauma-Doc Scarlett Elliot muted her comlog. The Sergeant’s swearing was making it hard to think.

[OOC: Another enjoyable game for Asteroid Blues. The scenario was Capture and Protect, I scored all points except the Classified (Data Scan), MatrixFactory scored no points. The board layout made C&P very interesting, as there were safe alleys leading directly between the objectives. As long as you held the square, you could accomplish the objective easily. I have to give mad props to MatrixFactory for having the courage to over-infiltrate his sniper into such a weird spot, a bit more aggression and luck could have easily won the game as I just didn’t see the attack from the plane wing coming!]