Game Night Tales from around the gaming table

 

Continuing from the last episode of Task Force Mercury - Draka's Journal.

 

 

 

Migou -- I was really beginning to hate them!  First they shot down the ship I was in and then they forced me under a destroyed deuce-and-a-half -- right into a bed of Migou fungus!  Luckily my tempest survival filters kept the spores out.

 

And the day had started out so well.

 

But now I was missing one of my team.  Dan had been in the other half of the ship when we lost contact with him.  Then the Dragonfly had over flown us so quickly, that I had only a fleeting glance of Jack as we both dove for the same cover.  He dove into the back, but I hadn't the option as I was on the side.  Even though I could hear him moving above me, we couldn't communicate, at least not without bringing fire down on us -- the Migou were good at targeting things like comms traffic, especially with a Dragonfly directly over our heads.

 

Then, to add insult to injury, the damn thing sprayed the area with Swarmers -- well at least the Migou version of them -- and at least a dozen were moving on or around our cover.  Now it didn't matter about comms traffic -- they could see and hear us now.  Using our encrypted stealth-grade mastoid-comms, I got Jack's perspective on the situation which was a warning to get the hell out -- it was not a second too soon either, the deuce was sliced in half, so I guess I should call it a quarter-and-a-half now.

 

Jack, who was hooked up to Mercury's Battlenet, kept up a dialogue of where they were headed and where they wanted us.  For some reason I had a bad feeling about being attached to the Battlenet today, so I was offline at the moment.

 

Blue Squad was doing its very best to take out the Dragonfly and managed enough cover fire that we both made it to the rally point.  We even managed to stop and haul a wounded Captain Ackerman with us -- after slapping on a Knitter kit to stabilise him.

 

Being forced to keep my weaker human form the entire time really made me appreciate being a Nightmare Tager.

 

From a distance the Ashcroft facility had looked odd.  At first, I thought it was some form of battle damage, but now that we had run through the area and gotten right up to it, I could see that the Migou had covered it in something that was slowly eating or maybe transforming it.

 

Blue Squad finally took the damn Dragonfly out of action; they didn't actually destroy it, which meant that we'd have very little time in the building before the Migou sent reinforcements.

 

Colonel Tabanov spilt the remaining Task Force into two -- one to explore the building and one to hole up and give us cover against and warning of the Migou's return.  We were still missing a few from the other half of the ship, including Dan, but we just couldn't wait for them, we just didn't have that kind of time.

 

And wouldn't you know it, no sooner had I thought it, then Dan came around the corner looking no worse for wear.

 

Inside, was an odd mix of normal office evacuation chaos and Migou destruction.  The weird thing was, there were no bodies -- plenty of blood and gore, but no bodies.

 

We had to take the stairs to get to the Core -- and wasn't I happy I'd been using a stair climber to exercise with for the last few months -- I made it to the top without so much as breaking a sweat.  Up here, there was a distinct stench of death.  It was something that got everyone's nerves on edge -- the Migou were here, we just didn't know where.

 

As we moved into the office space around the Core I saw, out of the corner of my eye, two of them stalking towards us.  I shouted a warning and took 2 shots at the leader, amazingly hitting the thing twice through the temple -- dropping it to the ground.  Then the soldiers took over -- mowing the other 4 Migou down -- and silence reigned.

 

The Core was locked away in a hardened room -- we would have needed 10 times the explosives we were carrying to even dent it.  It was up to Dan to hack the doors and sure enough he earned his pay for the week.

 

As the doors opened, we were treated to a vision straight out of hell...  it was the most horrific thing I had ever seen, but instead of paralysing me as it did almost everyone else, it enraged me.  I watched as Dan and Jack dropped, one fell to the ground in a gibbering mess and the other ran off to hide from the horror of it.  I really don't remember the next few moments, but I got my teammate and I out of the way as the dismembered and reassembled upper body of a woman started blasting away with a Migou lightening rifle at us.  I turned to take care of it, just as the two other active members of the team started firing at the corpse.  I didn't even hesitate as I leapt through their hail of bullets with a large combat knife in hand to hack the weapon arm off of it.

 

That's when she came, with the ding of the elevator everyone turned and she stepped out -- dozens of grenades strapped to her -- crying and begging for us to save her life.  It was a Blank, I don't know how or why I knew that but I did, and I could see the detonator triggers in its hands.  It would wait to catch as many of us as it could.

 

Time stretched into an eternity as I hesitated to make my move -- as a human I'd never make it, as a Tager I might be able to save everyone.  But if I showed myself as a Tager, I'd have to kill everyone here -- our cover had to be maintained.  Then a flash of crazy insight came to me.  Everyone conscious was looking at the Blank and I was in the Core room behind them all.  I'd take the chance and hope for the best.

 

I exploded into my Tager form as I dropped the lightning rifle and hurtled myself over everyone at the Blank, body blocking it back inside the elevator as I dove over cubicle walls and then ran lightning fast on all fours back towards the Core room.  The doors dinged shut just as the Blank exploded.  In the ensuing commotion, I slid back into the Core, changed back to human and picked up the rifle. Then in my shrillest fearing-for-his-corporate-ass voice I exclaimed, "What the Fuck was that!!!"

 

The Colonel turned and started to give me an odd look -- one that was going to make me have to kill him.  That's when the Migou came back for round two, this time firing off a barrage with their microwave rifles.  His look changed into a disgusted, "stupid civvies," look as he started shouting orders at his men to form ranks.  A lucky shot hit us both -- the wall took the brunt of it for me, but it still hurt like hell!  Then my luck ran completely out, as I took yet another hit.  Still cooking, I crawled into the corner of the Core room away from sight and flipped back into Tager form, it was the only way I might heal fast enough to get back into the fight.

 

Nightmares are one of the toughest Tager forms out there, and within moments I was feeling a ton better, so I switched back to human.

 

Hoping that the AI was still viable, I questioned it about the artefact -- it was!  I could feel my luck returning. After it gave me that info, I decided to try to complete our secret mission for the Society.  I asked the AI to dump the Core into my PEEK that Dan had prepared for this very thing.  It worked, but even I could tell by the noises coming out of the PEEK that something wasn't right -- whatever, Dan would be able to fix it.

 

The fight outside wasn't going well; I could hear the Colonel commanding an orderly retreat back through the stairwell.  His mission wasn't going well at all so far.

 

And then the Battlenet died, I was pretty sure it was because of what I'd just done with the AI.

 

Luckily the troops and my team were already disappearing into the stairwell, with the Colonel holding his ground and keeping the Migou off their backs as they retreated.  Only problem was, he was too exposed.  I was still hurting from the microwaving, and he needed help, the kind of help a Nightmare could give him.  2 birds with 1 Tager!

 

Still hiding in the now dead Core room, I flipped for a third time into Tager and used my shoulder pods whenever the Colonel ducked for cover -- aiding his retreat.  Finally he dove into the stairwell and I could come out in full against the damn Migou.  After a brief exchange of blows, the last Migou retreated and I made my way down the stairs after everyone else.

 

By the time I got to the bottom I was whole again, too whole.  I switched back to human, rammed my head against the wall to bloody it up.  Then I slammed into the exit door, screaming about being left behind as I fired the lightning gun up the stairs and fell backwards into the weapon sights of everyone left in Mercury.

 

There wasn't much time left to us here, we could already see the Migou ships flying this way, there was enough time for the wounded to be stabilised and everyone to reload.  Dan even managed to lock off our 3 PEEKs and restore the Battlenet, recovering the needed data to find the artefact.

 

With that information, the command staff, including my team, started to form a quick plan to get us the hell out of here and hopefully nearer the artefact.  We would take the underground rail system from here to Toha Heavy Industries.  The download from the Core showed that they were still intact.  We retreated into the building and down to the subway.  There were still 3 cars left in the station and we needed at least 2 for all of us.  Jack came up with a great idea -- to send the first car ahead of us at full speed to clear any obstacles.  Meanwhile, we linked the last 2 together so that they could be piloted by one person and travelled just far enough behind the first that we could stop if anything went wrong.

 

Well wrong it went, but in a right kind of way.  The leading car exploded.  Jack slammed on the brakes as we slowly approached the wreckage.  A suit of Migou power armour was just standing up -- dinged up, but not seriously damaged.  As the soldiers and I started firing our heaviest weapons at it, Jack put us in full reverse.  Once we were far enough away he stopped and we all got out.  Then he and I placed demolition charges on the first car’s nose with contact triggers and fired it back down the tunnel.  Luckily that was enough to destroy it.

 

We spent the next 15 minutes stripping the last car so that everyone could fit on it and we could fit it through the damaged tunnel.  It worked -- damn but I'm proud of my people.

 

We made it to Toha, but it was flooding.  Once again we depended on Dan to override the security pressure doors and get us to safety -- ok, at least safe from drowning.