Spore Batch 09--"Hangtown Heroes"
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At the conclusion of the previous report, I began receiving a third spore batch feed. With the revelation that the team is encountering people adorned with Project assets, I thought it might be possible that there could be other Project personnel out there, releasing their own data spores. If I understand the principles behind the spores’ operating parameters, these “orphan” spores may pick up homing guidance from active “child” spores such as those emitted by Sergeant Harris and Corporal Riley. If the data spores do not have an active node to travel back to, they may seek out an alternative node if they pick up the trail left by other spores. This would allow Project staff in the field to continue feeding their mission data, even if their Bolthole was taken off-line.
I do not know for certain if this is the case; the data I am receiving from the third feed is still quite patchy and incomplete. It is akin to picking up disjointed bits of not-quite-static while trying to home a radio dial onto a weak and distant signal. From what little I have been able to pick out of this feed, the images are from the location of Hangtown—where the rest of the team was—but I am uncertain as to the timeframe. These spores from the third feed may be relaying data from hours or days prior to that which I have pulled from the primary two feeds. If the spores are picking up homing data this way, they may have been floating around for a while, and may represent old data; ghost visions, as it were.
Hopefully, the clarity of the third feed will improve soon so I can put this mystery to rest.
Day 16—Base Report
On the home front, here in the Bolthole, I have successfully revived Dr Mishra and Miss Renault. Learning from my previous foray into this area, I made sure to stay by their side until they awoke so they would not be inclined to skulk around the bunker and cause mischief. I needn’t have worried; their stasis shock was more pronounced than Jock or Riley’s, and upon waking, they were in no condition to gad about. I was able to brief them as to the current mission status, and the events leading up to their resuscitation. Since they were willing to do nothing more than listen, I was able to bring them up to speed with a minimum of questions. The two are resting for now, recovering their strength. Undoubtedly, the TMP rejuvenation serum within each of them has some work to do, what with atrophied muscles and all. Fortunately, I have already reached an agreement with Seven-Fingered Bob, and he has begun making deliveries of food and water to the Bolthole so I can feed these two. I have not told him that we are waking up other team members, so I can imagine that he finds my request… rather odd. With Dr Mishra’s approval—when he is able to grant it--I will begin the process to revive other members of the team, but the damage to the other cryo tubes is more extensive. Even with more cannibalized parts, it will likely take much longer to ensure they are awakened safely.
Day 16—Field Report
Esper talents are intriguing, to say the least. Surely there is a science behind it all, but the mechanism by which they function is currently beyond me. I am certain that a more thorough investigation of these abilities could have occupied the hands and minds of plenty of scientists for many years, if it were not for the fact that these abilities began appearing just before the end of the world. At any rate, it is difficult to tell the “rules” by which these talents function, sometimes. Apparently, this mystery holds true even if you are the one that wields them. Case in point, Sergeant Harris. He has a fantastic ability to heal wounds, as evidenced by several people who are currently alive that likely would not be without his intervention. But he cannot or will not perform this ability repeatedly until the subject is fully healed in the cases that they have been severely injured, instead choosing to wait a full day before trying again. Why is this? I cannot say. How does it work? I am at an even greater loss. Of one thing I am certain: after healing a subject, both he and they fall into a deep, coma-like state for approximately two hours. On this day, Jock set to healing Freya again due to the severity of injuries she suffered from the pit trap the previous day. After two hours, Freya awoke, but when Jock awoke, he was barely able to move, as though much of his strength had been sapped. He told the others that he would be fine in the fullness of time, but that he had a “crisis of conscience” that he had to work out before he would be of any use to the team. He implored them to carry on without him, and that with any luck and “the grace of God,” he would be ready again to patch them up when the fighting was over. Freya left Fang at his side to keep an eye on him while the rest of the team ventured out to Hangtown to explore their options and implement the best plan that presented itself.
Their ultimate target was the college football stadium in the middle of the University of Lynchburg campus. [On a side note, UL (back when it was Lynchburg College) was the first American academic institution to train nuclear technicians in the operation of the world’s first civilian nuclear-powered vessel, the NS Savannah. It was commissioned under the auspices of a program put forth by President Eisenhower called “Atoms for Peace.” Pff. Seeing the current state of the world, I feel I can safely say that the program fell short of the mark.] The team ventured forth, halting when they came across a large band of Raiders who met them, of all places, in an old cemetery. Fittingly, the black clouds from the Cinder loomed heavily overhead, casting a pall over this early-morning confrontation.
The raiders sent one of their men out to deliver an ultimatum that was largely ignored; while he was shouting at them, members of the team used this time to get into positions. The bandit demands went something along the lines of “get out or die.” Riley gave them an answer in the form of a bullet from his rifle square in the brainpan of the spokesman. The fight was on. The raiders advanced, taking cover among weathered tombstones and cracked mausolea. When the team drew closer, the raiders covered their advance with primitive but effective smoke grenades. Riley picked at targets of opportunity with his scavenged rifle while Freya skirted around the edge of the battlefield. MARS and Sir Segway charged up the middle and into the heart of the Raider mob.
Rifle fire glanced off MARS’ chassis until he was set upon by what was likely none other than “Whiplash,” the reported leader of this raider band. While MARS’ frame may have been expertly designed by his creators to weather conventional arms on the battlefield, it seems they may not have accounted for crazies armed with primitive weapons and brute strength. Whiplash, armed with some kind of wicked Morningstar and a junk shield, laid into MARS with the lash and followed up with a shield bash. This knocked his gyros out of whack something fierce, and the war machine crumpled as his systems tried to stabilize. Sir Segway screamed past and skewered Whiplash, knocking him out of the fight on the second pass.
With Whiplash out of the picture, it seemed reasonable that the rest of the fight would go much easier, and would be a simple matter of mopping up the demoralized raider mob. However, this idea went by the wayside when the sky was split by a flaming bar of light that torched by within inches of Sir Segway, burning a scar into the pavement behind him. The laser beam came from the steeple of a church near the stadium. The remaining bandits prevented Sir Segway from taking immediate cover. MARS came back online in time to see Sir Segway get skewered by the powerful laser beam. Fortunately, the old man’s armor provided some protection and he was not simply turned into a pile of bacon-scented ash. Riley continued to snipe at the raiders and thinned out their numbers. One of the raiders, thinking themselves clever, tried to flank on Riley’s position, only to encounter Freya flanking on his, and was clotheslined and stabbed in the heart for his trouble. She scooped up one of his smoke bombs and lobbed it out to provide herself with some cover against the distant laser. MARS also deployed smoke bombs, but Sir Segway’s rapid movement across the battlefield left him out of cover long enough to fall victim to a second shot from the energy cannon. He did manage to pull Whiplash behind cover so they could loot his unconscious body. By this time, the mob was taken care of. Riley abandoned his sniper nest in a tree, and moved to the center of the cemetery where the rest of the group had gathered to take shelter from the laser. For some unknown reason, Riley ventured out of cover several times to drag raiders to safety, and he received a grazing wound from the laser and, later, a severe tongue-lashing from Freya for his efforts. Seeing as she has confessed that her family was murdered by Raiders, I can understand her lack of mercy toward their ilk.
Freya had sent Kuro away from the battle at the outset to recon the stadium and see if he could find Rishaa, the treasure hunter they were here to rescue. Based on what she saw through her eagle’s eyes, she informed the rest of the team that back at the stadium, the raiders had several trebuchets lobbing barrels in their direction. Taking advantage of all the cover they could, the team sprinted away from the cemetery and reached some nearby buildings. The slow-firing laser was unable to tag any of them as they advanced. Before they were clear of the battlefield, however, one of the barrels reached them and detonated overhead, raining down a mist of caustic poison that burned both flesh and metal. Fortunately, the concentration of the chemical weapon was not high, and they did not remain in the affected area for long. They were able to approach the church a few blocks away with no further interference. The heavy weapon in the bell tower would have to be dealt with before they attempted any kind of rescue at the stadium; it had a clear field of fire all the way there, and once they left the safety of the buildings across the street from the church, the weapon could easily cut them down.
The team prepared to dash across the open and make entry into the church. A smoke bomb was tossed near the front door to provide cover. MARS ran through the smoke and the heavy wooden doors, which also stopped him about as effectively as the smoke did. Inside, he found more smoke, as the occupants of the church had clearly deployed their own. Sir Segway found the ADA ramp and rolled in on his contraption, only to find that this smoke deployed by the raiders seemed to completely suck the air from his chest! Above was the floor of the bell tower, and MARS began drilling through it with his disintegrator, tagging the raider above. This prompted the fellow to jump down onto the floor of the nave, and confront the team.
This Raider was like nothing I or the team had seen before. He appeared to be clad in the underlayer of a HAAM suit, and was wielding a cupola-mounted 105kW solid-state laser cannon, likely peeled from the chassis of a TMP Commando scout vehicle. The laser’s power feeds were plugged into ports on the HAAM suit, which indicated that its fusion reactor was still operational. The raider swung the massive weapon around and opened fire.
Fortunately for the team, he focused his attention on what must have seemed the most threatening, that being the 400-kilogram spider robot just a few meters away. One shot seared into MARS, but a quick shift of his leg servos reflected the beam off and into the ceiling, starting a fire there. Another shot was likewise deflected. MARS opened fire, but the high-tech armor—even stripped down as it was—provided some protection against his energy beam. It did not provide so much protection from lances and rifles, however, as Sir Segway and Riley were able to serve him some serious injury. The raider slumped over, propped up by the barrel of his cannon, and in one final act of defiance, punched a series of buttons on the chest plate of the HAAM suit, triggering the fusion reactor to go critical.
Freya had climbed up the outside of the church and into the bell tower, and threw a beam over for people to escape without going through the gas cloud at the entrance. Only Riley took advantage of this route, as he seemed to guess at what was going on with the raider’s armor. He screamed for the others to run, but his warning fell on deaf ears. Sir Segway wasted valuable seconds hacking at the raider with his sword, possibly in hopes of being able to stop whatever was coming if he killed the man. MARS, on the other hand, was finally face-to-face with the weapon that had caused so much damage not only to him, but to Riley and Sir Segway. Some recursive loop of vengeance protocol must have kicked in, and MARS stood stock still, drilling the laser with his disintegrator until the cannon’s barrel melted and the glowing-hot raider slumped to the floor, setting the old wooden planks alight. Sir Segway had finally taken Riley’s advice and rode out of the church at full speed, catching air as he cleared the stone steps of the front door. A few seconds later and he was behind cover with everyone else, and they looked back at the church, but there was no sign of MARS, until the fusion reactor went critical, and they were briefly able to see his silhouette before he, and the church around him were consumed in nuclear fire.
Everyone was forced to avert their eyes from the blinding light, and flaming bits of chapel and hallowed ground rained down around them for some moments. When at last they were able to look back, all they saw was a smoldering crater. Then, when their ears stopped ringing, they could hear the whine of strained servos and grinding metal, and MARS clawed his way out of the pit, his armor shredded and scoured silvery clean by the force of the blast. Wounded as he may have been, his mission had been successful.
