Durgama Takeover

Across the city, the forces of the Foreign Company drew up. Seeking to avoid direct fighting with the superior NCA guns for now, the ForCo Bolt sniper hid around the corner of a building, supported by Senor Massacre, Valkyrie, and Laxmee of Aristeia! fame. Wild Bill and some mercenary Kaplans squared off against our Peacemaker, and Bakunin Uberfallcommando deployed to rush at the Black Friar as soon as the opportunity arose.

The battle started, as it must, with the Squalo rumbling forward. Taking the time to remove an enemy paparazzo from the field with a burst of machine gun fire, the TAG pilot stopped in surprise when he found himself looking at a Fugazi. Friend or foe? It was hard to tell. That is, until the enemy Fugazi used its flash pulse to disable the Squalo's targeting array, stunning the pilot.

No matter. There are other gunfighters in the NeoTerran army that can prove their worth. The Black Friar and two Fusiliers advanced on the other flank, making their way to a panoply in order to deny it to the enemy. Firing several volleys of accurate rocket fire at the strange biomechanical creatures called Pupniks, the Black Friar was shocked to see only one of them unconscious when all was said and done. She'd heard that they were agile, but never seen it.

On the other side of the field, our Peacemaker was having much more luck. Having opened a panoply and found heavily reinforced armor, the rifle carried by Wild Bill and the rocket launcher carried by the Kaplan nearby were suddenly much less threatening. Moving atop a rooftop while its auxbot flanked the team, WIld Bill was forced to duck behind a nearby car. With attention fully on the Kaplan, the mercenary was quickly knocked out by shotgun rounds.

Unfortunately, command was unwilling to pay any more attention to the Peacemaker's success. The Bolts in the center were ordered to secure the AC/2 to avoid enemy attacks. Having seen the enemy force composition, an attack by a swarm of Pupniks under cover of eclipse smoke was not out of the question. The Bolt sniper wore a multispectral visor, but even that is no proof against eclipse. So drop bears were laid to protect the approaches to the objective.

With command attention being spent on laying mines to protect our own objective, the mercenaries wasted no time in proving why they were being paid. Wild Bill crawled along the wheels of the nearby car and shot burst after burst of rifle fire at our Peacemaker. Although its armor was reinforced and withstood hits, it did not drop prone to protect itself. Better that mercenary attention be kept here, or so the thought went. Wild Bill proved this to be in error and fired a rifle shot directly into a sensitive spot on the Peacemaker, and it went offline.

One flank secured, the Aristos on the other side of the field began to move. Using her upgraded Nomad hacking device, Laxmee put up a zone of electromagnetic interference to prevent both our Bolt sniper and the Black Friar from seeing enemy movements clearly. Under cover of this zone, Senor Massacre fired breaker rifle rounds and killed the LHost of our Black Friar.

With this gun down, a cloud of eclipse smoke covered the area. This smoke was disrupted only by the movements of the surviving Pupniks as they rushed out of the smoke and tore down the Fusiliers that had been accompanying our Black Friar. This flank was lost. But the Aristos did not advance, and only two Pupniks remained here as a threat to our AC/2.

After the Pupniks pulled back within the walls of the nearby garden, command finally saw fit to take action. Our Squalo had reset its targeting system, and moved out to engage again. It was immediately shot by a sniper round from the enemy's Bolt and damaged, but pressed on and forced that Bolt behind cover, bleeding heavily. Continuing along, the enemy Fugazi was disabled, and the Squalo took the time to acquire major systems reinforcement from the panoply. Full immunity to special ammunition was a godsend. Damaged, but feeling much sturdier, the Squalo's remote pilot entered suppressive fire.

The veteran Bolts were assigned the mission of clearing the garden from Pupniks. Moving laterally along the battlefield, the Bolt hacker used his shotgun in hit mode and emptied his magazine firing at the Pupniks. Each of them managed to dodge closer, but each was left on the ground just before they reached the squad. The engineer and paramedic attached to the squad climbed ladders to safer locations nearby, and the Bolts settled in to destroy the enemy AC/2 at the next opportunity,

The Chimera that nominally leads the Pupniks, however, had not been dealt with. She ran forward towards our remotes in the back, completely immune to their flash pulses due to some strange cybernetic enhancement. She used her rifle to knock a Fugazi offline, and began a looping run to clear our drop bears. Despite hoping that she would fail to dodge their explosions, she managed to make it through unscathed. This left her behind our Squalo.

Although the Squalo was immune to the vile viral weapon she carried, she managed to clamber up the TAG and inflict further damage. The TAG was offline, and with it our command and control network,

Our squad of Bolts gathered again on ground level, aiming to sweep the field of the Aristos who posed the only remaining credible threat to our AC/2. Unfortunately, Senor Massacre was able to place eclipse smoke in our way. Unwilling to engage close combat specialists without line of fire, and with only the Bolts able to use their veterancy to act without command coordination effectively, it was decided merely to advance directly towards the objective. The enemy Bolt sniper had been patched up by Avicenna and was put down for good, before our machinist calmly placed demolition charges on the enemy AC/2 and blew it to smithereens.

With no fire support left, and not wishing to engage in a brawl with the Bolts and waste time, Senor Massacre and Valkyrie split off to rush for our AC/2. Massacre threw eclipse smoke to block line of fire for our Bolts, and Valkyrie raised her explosive axe as she ran at our console in a berserker rage. She landed one swing at full force and nearly destroyed our AC/2, but was stopped and stunned by the system's automated defense system before the second fell. With no more ability to complete what they'd been paid to do, the Foreign Company laid down arms and withdrew.

A PanOceanian victory, but costly.