[center]Tales from Spaaaaace!![/center]
[center]With one arm tied behind my back[/center]
Rolling nuke op and excited to be starring in my own action movie. It's a small team, only four of us instead of the usual five. Today, we are the
Beastieboys! The leader, having given us our name immediately decides he wants nothing to do with the responsibility and asks if anyone wants his ID and lead the team. I promptly volunteer. We swap IDs, and I rub my greedy lil hands together, "Alright operatives, what's the plan?" I suggest that we can try our luck and go stealth, or probably lose but have more fun declaring war. We decide on stealth. One of the new guys suggests we all pile into a locker, and one guy undercover in assistant plainclothes drags it around, and we ambush the captain like this. I support the idea. "Ah, the old Sardine Surprise tactic. Classic." It's not. I made it up, but once given a name, all the other operatives love it.
First order of business, "Does everyone here know how to fly a jetpack and / or is this your first time as an operative. No shame in it, just let me know so I can help you." One guy volunteers he's never had a chance to use jetpacks, I fill him in. Seriously, it takes fifteen seconds to explain. I remember my first time, spacing myself accidentally. I've seen other operatives do it too. No reason for it if it can be prevented. One guy, Brandon Beastieboys, has already purchased an elite hardsuit and is pointing frantically at the shutter doors button. I tell him to be patient until everyone knows what they're doing. One operative comes back from the locker room with the Ion rifle, and accidentally shoots me. Rolling my eyes I reset my headset and start assigning tasks. Brandon, the over-eager beaver, will blow the armoury after we spring our surprise. Dustin, the newbie, will be the undercover agent pulling the locker. Marc and myself will be in the locker armed to the teeth. The guy with the ion rifle at this point accidentally fires again and manages to EMP the rest of the team.
>facepalm
After going over the basics once more, and doling out gear. I got Fungal Tuberculosis grenades at a massive discount, and inoculate the team. I go on a hunch and call out for a radio check. No one responds. I ask again out loud and Brandon quickly radios in. Marc and Dustin are still with dead headsets and we have to explain how to get them going again. Satisfied everyone knows their job, and how to work their equipment at a base level, I open the shutters and we all pile on. Everyone gears up. I grab the syndie bombs and a spare block of c4 for myself.
We drop Brandon off outside the armoury where he'll chill in space until either we're spotted or pull off the ambush on the captain. We bring the shuttle around to the other side the station and make our approach. Murphy's law comes out in full force and announces a meteor storm. I'm conflicted whether or not to simply retreat to the base and wait it out. But then I feel conflicted about if Brandon might get randomly struck. Maybe it's a false aler-- BOOM. Nope. Fuck it, let's just get going. Dustin takes hold of the loaded locker and steps out into the loading dock. I remind him to engage his suits helmet. Now he's outside into space. He's now out in vacuum. I insist he engages the suits helmet. At least he knows how to use the jetpack. He engages it... in combat mode. Not wishing for one of our members to be so hurt before even hitting station-side, I tell him urgently to engage the face-plate. After a short delay, I tell him to click on the helmet icon. It finally snaps shut and he's properly space-proof. I pray to RNGesus to get us through this round. Now, the plan WAS to find an assistant's uniform and a gas mask in maint, and proceed with the infiltration, but poor Dustin, injured as he was from space exposure, isn't quite fast enough to pull the locker in through the airlock before it gets sucked back out to spacewind. Two more attempts are thwarted. By the time he tries for a third, a lawyer and another bystander spot us by escape and our cover is blown. I kick open the locker door and rush out, calling to Brandon to blow the armoury. I start shooting the two unfortunates before they can scream for help, but it's too late and the gig is up.
Brandon radios back to blow his planted bomb. I tap the Red Button, but it failed to find an armed bomb. This is the last I hear from Brandon Beastieboys. I drop the FT grenade below metastation's corporate showcase, a nice busy intersection for maximum effect. Sadly largely thwarted due to the existing presence of a healing virus (with only a single infection per spessman allowed). I make a point to blow medbay with one of my syndie bombs to mitigate recovery and help us in the attrition side of the conflict. The shuttle gets called around this time and I make a note to track down a head of staff and get that shit recalled ASAP. I follow the disk's signature to the bridge, and from the sounds of it, the captain and the clown are having tea in his quarters. I plant the bomb and hope to get a quick kill on them both. At this point Marc and Dustin split off to hunt down the crew / Disk on their own and any semblance of a plan falls apart. Things look up when the HoS shows up! I need that ID! I hotswap my equipment, and to my much amusement, this particular HoS has no idea how a e-shield works and stuns himself. Perfect. I close in for the kill and a borg rushes by and sweeps the HoS away. Less perfect. Things get REALLY weird when an assistant catgirl attacks me with goddamn spellblade that I can only assume the miners found early. Caught completely off guard I immediately lose my left arm; grateful at least that it wasn't one of my legs, I quickly gun her down and take the sword for myself, to save on ammo. Injured, and with no way to reattach my own arm, I double back to medbay to stem the bleeding and at least get myself combat ready again when I'm rushed by security officers on either side. They at least have the wherewithal to draw batons instead of tasers. I get a lucky strike on the first one. Despite wearing a riot shield on his back, and wielding an extra one for maximum block, I manage to drop him on the first strike and finish him off in the relative safety of the crater that is the bridge while the other one circles around. There's a scuffle with a scientist and a nearby beepsky stuns one or both of them. I ignore them to their own stoogery and start to head to medbay. Outside of the reach of the vacuum, another officer with a baton is a little more prepared and does manage to land a hit and drops me. I wait a half second to see what he does. He doesn't attack again, instead too caught up in my dropped loot.
He grabs my sword and takes a moment to feel proud of himself. I pop adrenals
[youtube]aNC9ObAqeUI[/youtube]
Re-armed, I limp to medbay to deal with my bleeding stump. The HoS is just coming out as I approach, and we engage in a bit of yakkity sax, but I can only assume he wasn't fully healed as I'm able to gun him down quickly. I drag him to the far end of medbay and loot him for his ID. His guns are all empty, so I leave them behind. By now, I'm hearing the crew members shout boasts onto the syndicate radio and I can only assume I'm the last one standing. I pick my way through the ruined station, avoiding the crew when I can, being mindful about my remaining ammo. The cyborgs are repairing the holes in the station, and largely ignore me. The recall goes without a hitch, and I breathe a sigh of relief, now I have time to actually hunt down the disk. As luck would have it, the captain himself shows up. Armed with his space suit and a baton he charges me and we engage in risky melee combat. It's close quarters, and I need multiple hits to bring him down, whereas he needs one. I don't want to drop the sword for risk of losing my other arm. It's a tense moment of swings, but he drops and I immediately look to my pinpointer. Yup!
! At some point an atmos tech threw a metal foam grenade into the captain's office, so I make a small tunnel and hide inside there while I pick through the captain's belongings. Pockets? No. Backpack, yes. Internals box, check. With one arm, I pocket the entire box, rather than bother with further digging. Like any good operative, I then make a sprint for space.
The shuttle is in pretty rough shape. Most distressingly are the large number of holes leading into the interior. I cross my remaining fingers and hope the nuke wasn't stolen by any curious meta-game explorers. Luckily, everything is still there. I grab the nuke and prepare to arm.
: Radiation pulse detected: 20 RADs
Wat.
The nuke is leaking? Was it the meteors? I don't stop to worry about it. I'm hurt, and want to finish this quickly. In the back of my mind, I keep asking myself, "Why aren't nuclear operatives shielded against radiation?" I take the nuke to toxins for irony and tuck it in next to the hardsuit storage. Disk in. Code... check notes...
8..2..2
You can almost hear something...
MOTHERFUCKER. I pass out from radiation poisoning.
3..6
Toggle Anchor
You can almost hear something...
Toggle Safety
Time: ---
You can almost hear something...
At this point I'm in the red and limp away, and beeline it for the toxin medkit in the other room.
Ahelp: Is the nuke -supposed- to be leaking radiation like this?
I pop charcoal pills like they're candy. Waiting for the meds to kick in. A visitor pops in briefly, and I've the mouse hovering over the Cr-20. I'm so incredibly exposed. Helmet down, mask on the table, very obviously treating my own injuries with the medkit next to me. They piss off, and I feel well enough to finish the job.
Time: 20-
You can almost hear something...
Time: 200
Start timer.
The station goes delta, and I decide that after all that, one final bit of BM is needed. And instead of pissing off directly back out into space, I head deeper into the station to the bridge. I find the detective near where I looted the captain, and send him running with a few bursts of my gun. I've a clip and a half of ammo left.
I make a small Cuban Pete joke to the station and call it quits. Escaping the station through medbay maint. I run into a couple of assistants. They are unarmed, and I'm not stopping for valids. I send them running with another spray of bullets and escape out into space.
The shuttle cockpit itself is breached, and so I get in quickly that way.
All that radiation exposure had mutated me, and left me mute. I couldn't even radio in to my teammates if any still lived. I cut my losses and evacuate with the disk back to the base. Take the time to make use of the holes and explore the snowfield outside the base, and then head back inside to celebrate with some Cuban Pete Spiced Rum.
Perhaps the best part was how when the credits rolled, OOC exploded with praise and amazement how I managed everything literally single-handed. Jokes were made at the captain's expense how he was being weighed down by the extra arms.
I was heralded as the One-Armed Bandit.
[youtube]XFldSKSCTkk[/youtube]
SYNDICATE MAJOR VICTORY
