In the end, you opt for setting out as a smash and grab. Nothing stopping you from coming back, but you'd like to avoid going completely quagmire with the natives.
Late October, 2017You sent in the crates of Kalashnikovs almost a week ago, and you've been waiting to get the all-clear from your scouts before sending in your assault force. Avoiding a second disastrous ambush was quite high on your list of priorities.
The gate opens for four seconds at 3:14 PM, just long enough to give the signal for you to move in. Five minutes later, three Hawkei vehicles and a force of nearly thirty men disappear through the gate.
4*
Your men make radio contact with your scouts and the translator leading the resistance. Initial news is encouraging. While nearly completely untrained with the new weapons, it turns out that thirty miners with old soviet assault weapons can still overwhelm a pair of guards. Apparently the miners had a rather touching spiritual moment with one of the dead guards, until your translator succeeded in moving the man's helmet.
The natives did NOT react well to finding out that the helmets were just helmets, and not actual eagle heads. You're probably going to have to ask your translator how the hell they knew how to do that later.
As the miners rioted en-masse, the warriors fell back to the city, and specifically back into the Ziggurat. They make a stand on the steps of the Ziggurat, which is when your troops manage to engage.
4*
Approximately a dozen guards held ground on the steps for a surprisingly long time. The armor developed by Dr. North is less effective than hoped. It protects vehicles well enough, but it's hit or miss with the infantry version. You lose too many people, but your superior weight of numbers and directed fire kills more of them. They're down to less than a half-dozen men in armor on the steps when a pair of gilded shapes whizz out from inside the ziggurat.
The warriors with full wings and guilded armor can definitely fly. And they have bombs.
7*
0*
The warriors fly directly towards the sun, forcing your men and the revolutionaries to fire at targets they can barely see.
The revolutionaries don't do well. Familiar dark objects drop down into their ranks, and the resulting explosions tear them apart. Ensuing panic fire generates dozens of additional casualties as the idiots hold their triggers down as they fall. It's an unmitigated disaster, and a stark example of why you don't give untrained people guns.
Your soldiers on the other hand, are prime examples of why good soldiers can do. The SG teams manning the top guns on the Hawkei vehicles somehow manage to shoot the grenades
out of the air in a hail of automatic weapons fire, and the rest of the soldiers who had the good sense to wear sunglasses take pot shots at the warriors while they're still on the wing.
After a protracted burst of assault fire, two shapes slam into the ground and disintegrate into fireballs.
The remaining warriors retreat into the Ziggurat, pursued by the (admittedly severely diminished) horde of revolutionaries. Your men stop to rescue their bound comrades and task one of drivers to get them back through the gate while the others hook up tow cables to the remaining vehicles before advancing into the Ziggurat itself.
4
The natives are busy playing cat and mouse with the remaining few warriors, but trace that your team is following takes them on a different path. The interior of the ziggurat seems intentionally designed to confuse, and it seems painfully plain and rough compared to what you'd expect of a God-King's home.
The time delay on the tactical link, combined with the twisting nature of the corridors, prevents you from issuing effective commands to your soldiers when they hit a sudden pocket of resistance. Thankfully, they pull through with minimal casualties, killing two more warriors defending a large, domed room well beneath the base of the ziggurat. It's bare stone, reinforced in places with thick columns. The source of the signature your scientists tracked is rather painfully clear. In the center of the room is a large construction of elegantly sculpted metal, deeply incised with curving lines. It's probably six or seven hundred pounds and bolted to the floor by. On one side there is an inset pane of crystal across which stream various symbols, below that is a series of triangular buttons that look strikingly like a keyboard.
Your tactical team leader naturally asks for a mission clarification.
A- Get a torch out of a Hawkei, cut this thing off the floor, and tow it back to the gate. Also, pick up some bodies on the way out.
B- Smash the bizarre Aztec computer, grab any parts that fall off, grab a couple corpses, and scram.
C- Well, your translator will probably want to take a look at this intact. Tell the team to grab some bodies and extract.
D- Fighting seems to be going well enough. Order your team leader to retask to help the revolution, we might be occupying after all...
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Topic: SpamGate: General Grigorian Longwynnfellych of the Australian SGC (Read 13719 times)