Biggest more or less direct civilian murder count comes from our two out of comission supersoldiers. It appears that bigger damage potential equals to shorter life time.
Patch up my recon bodies. Continue recovering mental stamina.
Do you even have first aid equipment with you? No you don't. Next to best thing you can do is to remove their combat armor and cut their clothes into makeshift bandages. These bodies have incredible recovery ability, you have to admit. Despite of not having any regenerative augmentations and having major gashes and lots of meat torn out, blood is already coagulating in their wounds. You apply bandages slowly and carefully reducing their bleeding next to nothing. Of course they won't be any use for you in this fight, but they actually may survive to the end. Perhaps even live and recover over years, if you are extracted soon enough.
You have recovered enough to think, but you still can't do any math involving more than two digits, multiplication or division. Can't pull any teleporting stunts either without relapsing, but it's better than nothing.
...Yeah, I'm just waiting for the others to finish killing each other. I'm just hoping that one of them doesn't kill me by accident.
As long as you don't go wandering on the roads you'll be hidden enough. Actually... Say farewell for your sanity, very possibly permanently. You are now officially experiencing things human mind is not meant to sense.
Go loot the corpses. Just any grenades, mines, useful trinkets. Would take a blowgun but no mouth to use it with.
Then mosey on to the minaret. Send a drone first to scout of course.
Send a drone over to see what's making all those thunders. Might as well know who my opponents are.
Here and frantically trying to catch up with what ATHATH was doing ready for action!
Do those things NAV suggested if the turn comes before I can get myself situated. Will edit this if there's still time and there are other things I might want to stuff in.
The group of three in the alley has flashbangs and smoke grenades, you loot six of each. They also have placeable mini cameras. Each got ten of those, but you are not seeing any receivers. From the group of four, or five really, you loot pair of mines, one controller with display showing a scene of rooftops somewhere. Touching the controller proves that the video source is still operational. There's second identical controller, but it's dark so you leave it behind. Then there's knives, silenced pistols, sniper rifles and such little stuff you don't need.
The minaret appears to be empty so you can climb up safely up and set up a camp there.
In meanwhile one of your drones flies to west. The area immediately to west appears to be an open asylum for mentally unstable people. You can even now hear their inane shouting and see their dancing, fights and outright freaky behaviour. The area of insanity extends to west a good distance. The drone makes it to quite close to site of most recent combat zone, almost at the northern smoky and fiery pillar, which appears to come from remains of fallen helicopter. From north of that there's slowly settling dust cloud on rooftop of one building, larger cloud of still expanding cloud of same dust on road in northwest of the drone, little distance to west from that is one block of very much destroyed buildings. It's all reduced to pile of rubble and partially hidden under pillowing concrete cloud. Otherwise it seems quiet.
Actually, as you scan higher buildings in the distance, you spot someone on rooftop of four story building a bit over half kilometer to northwest of you. A person equipped with odd weaponry and items you do not recognize. The person is looking down to southwest in direction of the possible most recent combat zone, eyeing through its weapon's scope. Sniping snipers should be fun.
Also, on road and rooftops west very near you you see figures moving in and out of buildings. Scaled, horned and clawed humans or humanoids, wearing clothes typical to locals but pierced from inside with number of spikes. They have bloody mouths and angry demeanour seeing how they assault insane civilians with impunity. They also appear to be eating parts of the people they kill.
have a grenade drone go move torwards the lion bots and fire a smoke grenade on their location to signal where they are then all drones move torwards me.
Fall back to the drop crate and repair legs and and reload functioning drones with what can be scavenged from the broken drones.
I think I can cut metal with the monoatomic katanas builders in my arms
Work to repair damaged done to chest (especialy the generator) and then arms
Work to scavenge a particle cannon off of the destroyed paricle cannon drone and try to make it into a laser if I cannot find any hydrogen for it...
Remain in stealth only attacking if a super soldier gets close, at which point fire all I have including a chaff grenade and 1 pike missile before bugging out as fast as I can south west.
With any luck all the noise we both have created will draw the others and the smoke grenade will guide them where I want them.
Prepared to spend up to 3 turns doing this, 1 to repair legs, 1 for chest, 1 for arm. Other stuff may take longer but should be fine
Also stock on how much weaponry I have left?
Lion bots have disappeared somewhere, probably baiting you following them some more into another trap. Not wasting any time you recall all drones into tight formation above you and navigate back to the drop crate. Before you can see it, before your drones can see it, your magnetoperception flares off. Rapidly vibrating magnetig fields fill the air, varying in intensity and frequence. You slow down and approach your container from west.
Right next to your container stands a group of men. Three people in standardish desert combat armor wielding standard assault rifles, the very kind you too used to wield and wear when you were still a mere human. Typical Company mercenary equipment. Only non-typical equipment on them is axes on their belts. Fourth person is different. He's wearing an armored exoskeleton with a bunch of heavy looking stuff on his back. Only weapons he's carrying are affixed on his shoulders, a light machine gun and grenade launcher. Both are moving slightly as he eyes inside your container. Some very juryrigged stuff is held in front of his eyes. He's suprisingly lightly armed, and purpose of that vibrating magnetic field (he's the center of it) is a mystery.
Also, couple of civilians are coming out from houses south of him. Giggling, laughing, singing, eating flesh from their own fingers and screaming profanities (probably). He's not bothered by those people at slightest, clearly accustomed to such behaviour. What he does react for is the sound of your crotch gun unfolding into full size.
Weaponry:
Anti-materiel rifle, most likely .50 cal. Ammo left... dunno. The clip it came with?
Assault rifle, one clip.
M240 machine gun, one magazine.
Mortar, 12 explosive rounds, 3 biohazard rounds.
Grenades: 7 smoke, 3 concussion, 3 chaff, 3 pike mini-missiles.
2 SMG drones, out of ammo.
2 Grenade drones, out of ammo
2 Grenade drones, one concussion grenade on each.
2 Particle cannon drones, enough hydrogen for two shots each.
+ the stuff in your drop container.
Head on the southwest road.
You travel along the road completely unhindered and surrounded by silence. Only sounds of car engine somewhere in distance breaks the silence. Halfway to the fire in southwest you find a crater on the road. Caused by an explosion, judging by shrapnel damage to the surrounding buildings. In west from it you can see more combat damage, collapsed buildings and rubble on road.
You keep going to southwest. The road soon turns bit more to west and buildings make way for a more open area. There you can see source of the fire: a transport helicopter crashed into only building in middle of the area. Near it is a cargo container, identical to the one you were transported in, except this has taken some damage and apparently dropped from some height. One of the doors is missing some rectangular pieces, clearly cut out. Inside you see number of damaged boxes. Some are containing obviously broken quadcopters and three very big weapons, likewise somewhat damaged. Those guns are very fancy and obviously very heavy.
Now, the only reason you are not going in and looting the place already is because it's trapped. You can see traces of carefully hidden explosive near entrance, clearly rigged to explode if someone were to enter in. It is also clear as day that the entire container is a death trap, intented to explode with enough force to kill anything within twenty meters from it. Those weapons must be very good if someone is willing to go this far just to protect them.
Wait, what was that noise? Something in west made a noise! Despite of the insane people coming out of houses in south singing you definitely heard something different and unusual.
We lost two. Probably cooling failure.
Need to get immediate needs in order and continue.
Check that our guns still work. Check if we can salvage E and F's bows.
Check if they're actually down.
Stream nearby - maybe clear up the primary radiators so it's not a problem later?
Have to press on afterwards. The guy retreated - what little advantage he thinks we have, we need to push to leverage.
Tactical huddle time!
We would probably want to keep attacking. We had to have done some damage if the soldier pulled back and didn't continue the bombardment like last time. Or he's conserving resources. Either way we can't exactly just up and leave. The rest of the battlefield is full of unknown quantities - like the guys with the corrosive weapons, or whatever made that huge blast before, or whoever made the lizard-mutants out of civilians. We have to attack somebody, and it might as well be the dangerous guy who we have some idea of what to expect from.
With that in mind, if we do keep attacking him rather than trying to attack the tetris-people, for instance, how about this plan of action:
- David and Henry sort out their cooling issues (or don't), and lay in wait on nearby rooftops with one task - waiting for the chance to take down the cannon-drones. They are vulnerable without their armor, but they still have the bows to snipe with.
- Gunther and Alex go on a snipe hunt. They need to find the soldier and have him announce his position. Alex is the least combat-capable now, and will have to act as bait, just running in the open. Gunther will use his mostly intact sensors to search for the soldier and his spotter drones. Take the drones down as soon they're spotted, and never stop moving because the cannons will still be in play.
- Ben and Carl shadow Gunther, but remain hidden so that when the soldier reveals himself, they can spring a surprise attack. Shoot anything they can as they run at him full speed, then take him down in melee. Pounce, tackle, rip and tear, stab and slice, anything they need to do to stop him from continuing the attack.
The plan has the team spread out so that, hopefully, although more casualties are nigh inevitable, there will at least be some semblance of a strike group left to take on other soldiers.
This is another good plan also next mission we are going to bring along someone who's job is to carry replacement parts and repair tools
That's the plan then. Henry and David go try water breathing techniques, something you would never do if still in flesh. Water in the canal is not terrible clean, but might as well try it. Henry tries it first. Lacking reflexes is great, but it still feels unnatural to let water into one's lungs. It... may work? Some water vapor shizzles out immediately and temperature of radiators drops right away. You let rest of the water flow out and short circuit the throat speaker in the process. Gotta replace that later. David follows your example and makes exactly same mistake. No vocal speaking for you two. Not that you need it anyway.
While you are breathing water you actually find one of your SAM bows here in the canal. Its control box is gone completely, myomers are shredded and the superalloy itself has bent out of shape a bit. Completely useless, and doesn't speak well of Erik's and Felix's fate. You two pick a rooftop near the canal and the garden, ready to jump down if anything goes wrong, and keep watch.
Gunther and Alex then backtrace the way Gunther's squad cut through buildings, into your TOC cloud and sprint to south over the road as fast as you can and stick to the walls on other side. Depending range of opposing force's detection equipment, next to walls is best area to avoid detection. From there they sprint to west towards the road Henry's squad fearless scouted in and escaped from tail between legs. In meanwhile Ben and Carl follow them on northern side of the road, probably not the best idea, but they make it into concrete dust cloud without incident.
Alex spots some traces on the southward gravel road they didn't see there before; a steady line of circular scrape marks two meters apart each other. Something round clearly stroke the ground recently and kicked pebbles and sand north. Perhaps, just perhaps you damaged it's legs? Because no self respecting scientist makes one legged jumper for battlefield use. You can easily imagine many ways why that would be bad idea, most importantly considerable balance issues it causes. The enemy has mobility issues. Good to know. That makes tracking it easier as long as it stays on softer ground, which is probably given how little there's asphalt roads around.
Traces lead south into your now slowly falling TOC cloud you deployed when you detected it first time. Alex almost misses it, but it seems enemy turned east here in the intersection, went inside a first building with a door, came out and continued to east along the road. It's straight road 200 meters before ending to another north south road. Here traces turn to south and seems to continue going to end of this road, which only takes another 100 meters, or so it seems from your watching point. So far no signs of the enemy itself or its flying weapons. As far as you can tell, it didn't slow down for a moment.
Ben and Carl in their concrete cloud discover something opposing supersoldier left behind; a massive three meter long weapon, easily over 70 kg in weight. The very large scientist potion of your mind wants to take it apart on this instant and learn the secrets, but the rapidly quieting soldier part says that now isn't the time. It's correct, as usual, but it doesn't stop you from taking a look while Alex and Gunther are tracing the enemy ahead. It appears that your arrow went through some very important parts. It's insides are hollow, and probably used to be a vacuum. Inside are series of magnetic accelerators, spacing following logaritmic curve, meaning the "wrong end" of the gun has far more than the safe end. So it's magnetic accelerator? On the back end you find a pressure container for some gas. You also find what appears to be laser combined with a spark gap. An electro laser? With magnetic accelerator? Linear accelerator? Gas? Is... is this a compact particle rifle? Then what's the electrolaser for?
At this point Ben and Carl completely forget what you were supposed to be doing, this is far too interesting! I mean there's no powersource, but those are clearly where you can plug power cables in. And what's this thing? You have no idea what it is. Result of something entirely new science! But judging how it's linked with electrolaser and particle accelerator obviously means something important. Oh yes, those circuits are clearly used for timing. Then, if you look it this way...
((Can I get links to those? And a more in-depth description of what monstrosity I've become.))
IIRC Dustan Hache supersoldier is nanomachine grey goo with magic powers. You can control gravity, teleport etc.
Let's not forget his magic antiprojectile shield either.
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Topic: Roll to create a supersoldier! Bloody air resistance (Read 139100 times)