Asteroid Blues

[This report is a bit of a prototype, since I forgot my camera home and my army's not even properly basecoated. Future ones will be, I hope, more "colourful"...]

The situation got dicey when Lt. Max Delgado realized that they were against the Nipponese instead of just Submondo legbreakers. He had been ordered to retrieve an Inigo Division agent that had infiltrated the Ikari-controlled Main Strip in order to verify a bit of intel purchased from an informant. The story went that the mercenaries were selling contraband biomaterial for the highest bidder, allegedly corpses of Shasvastii infiltrators or organs or body parts, useful in illegal weapons research. The PanOceanian contigent was aboard Novyy Bankok officially to help locate the Combined Army forward base, and obviously a lead about the Shasvastii was crucial. Also, the informant in question asked for top dollar, so it obviously wasn't a common street scam. The intel operative had marked the containers for retrieval, and signalled the green light for the operation, when the buyers had appeared to collect their goods.

"Move!" Max shouted, "advance and take cover! Free fire!" His tactical screen was lighting up with red icons as fast as the intel department could paint them, at least over a dozen. They were outnumbered, and caught red-handed in hostile territory. In situations like this, the ORC Regiment's doctrine was to gun for the objective with full throttle, then retreat with same speed. The Nipponese didn't obviously expect a heavily-armed raid into the warehouse district, so they were a bit sluggish to react, but the only way to maintain the advantage was to press on and keep them on the back foot. Shots began to ring out from his troops immediately as he spoke the order, and the opponents staggered forwards in the hail of lead. Just like the japs, Max thought, their only direction out of battle is through the enemy... His audio sensors picked up the massive clap of Henry Thiauld's Feuerbach, and the following "Yeah, gotcha!" as he hit a opposing Heavy. Max looked back just in time to see the other ORC hurry into cover, as the opponent refused to go down despite a huge hole in the armour, and returned fire furiously. "Hell, guess he just pissed off! Need a bigger gun," Henry complained. "Stay down, crawl ahead if you have to!" Max urged his team. "Keep your barrels hot, keep 'em ducking!"

"Left flank going!" one of the Kamaus shouted out. Not expecting this hard a resistance, Max had kept his force spread thin, and the left side was not prepared for a full force assault. "Damnit, fall back, keep it together!" Max cursed. "Left flank gone," a calm voice reported, belonging to the Hospitaller attached to the team as a medical consultant. Max took a quick breather, and tried to think a way out of this. He was snapped out of his thoughts by a quick burst of gunfire nearby. "Delgado!" Patsy Garnett shouted from cover nearby. "We can still deal! I'll take their attention, you find a way to flank them!" The Tohaa mercenary who had supplied the intel about the containers was taking cover near Patsy, and showed the universal thumbs-up in support. "LT, we can hold the centre, but you've got to be fast," the Hospitaller spoke in a rapid burst, his voice punctuated by gunfire and curses to his opponents. "Alright!" Max shouted back and started to run.

Patsy rounded the corner screaming and firing blindly, aiming where the intel showed the rough whereabouts of the opposing rearguard. Her SMG burst caught three heavies in the open, advancing to her position, and mowed the first two down with AP bullets. The third one let out a fierce cry to match her yell, and charged with his sword high. She fired a burst in desperation, but the samurai was too pumped in adrenaline to notice and sliced the sword through her stomach armour. She went down, expecting the final blow to fall, but instead the swordfighter landed on top of her after a burst of gunfire. "Sorry, took me a while!" Max waved from the top of a nearby building. "Are you good, mate?" he asked Patsy. She did a quick check of her diagnostics. "Nah, sorry," she managed. "Deep cut. Suit's meds are stopping the bleeding, but I won't hop around in a while yet." "Alright, check out with the paleface", Max responded, meaning the Tohaa who had managed to extract one of the packages they came here for. "I'll have a little souvenir to go," he said, hopped down from the building, and pulled out his knife. He flipped one of the dead Nipponese over, and pried open his armour to retrieve the Cube. "Maybe this'll be worth something for the Intel," he mused, jogging after Patsy and the Tohaa.

[My first game for the Blues. Not sure what I expected, but I found myself on the back foot right from the get-go despite getting the first turn. I got it going somewhat with my heavies, but only sheer good luck with some ARO's in the last turn prevented me from losing badly. A 2-2 tie isn't that bad, considering.]