Preparation game: the Observance fights Aleph over the secret of alien ruins

Preamble

Hello, I'm VeryFastPanda and this is the first post on this Infinity the Game blog, that I intend to use for battle reports and narrative writeups for the upcoming Hungry Walrus online campaign. 

This will be a battle report for a friendly game of Power Pack I had recently, just to start to get the hang of this blogging stuff, and to try and set a template for the future. It will be on the shorter side narrative wise, as it doesn't belong to the campaign itself, but I'll try and make it entertaining anyway :)

In this game I won the lieutenant roll and chose deployment, while my opponent elected to go first.

The House of the Sun in Rags

Reverend Mother Asunciòn, Custodier of the Observance of Saint Mary of the Knife and Commanding Officer of 404 Independent Platoon, sat back on the uncomfortable seat of her cabin, while 404's transport ship, Bears, started the undocking procedures from the massive Circular number three.

It would still be a long time before they reached New Hypatia, but she knew she wouldn't manage to sleep, even with the soft humming lullaby of the engines cradling her. It was always like this before a big mission. Or maybe, it was always like this, period. She never had been the most calm and tranquil person; concern, anxiety and fear always accompanied her, and only the light of faith managed to keep them at bay. 

Her idling mind went back to her first assignment as squad leader, a couple of years before the Durgama crysis, in the lush jungles of Paradiso. She had been reassigned from her post on the backlines to oversee an operation of the Observance: investigating a communication from an Aleph Operative that she had decrypted, about the importance for the AI of a site they called "the House of the Sun in Rags".

After a long trek through the jungle, the vegetation had finally opened into a clearing, where several prefabricated buildings and laboratories surrounded what looked like an archaeological site, with ancient, moss covered ruins and an engraved stone pavement. 

Scientific equipment and vehicles were scattered throughout, and everything looked perfectly functional, save for the fact that apparently in the whole compound there wasn't a single soul. 

A heavy silence, broken only by the buzzing of insects and the faraway calls of tropical birds, lingered among the modules, while the Nomads cautiously advanced from two opposite flanks in the southern quadrant.

Both the Observance and the Jurisdictional Command had put beside her some real veterans, undoubtedly to gauge her worth as a Lieutenant, and she distinctly remembered the feeling of Mother Wabara's piercing eyes following her while she gave out orders. Bran-do Castro, the other experienced operative that joined them with a small group of irregulars from the BJC, had luckily went scouting ahead almost immediately. It was in fact him that warned them of the presence of Aleph's forces, entrenched near the ruins themselves and guided by a fearsome aspect of the AI: a blasphemous Marut, that stood tall beside what looked like the wreckage of an alien ship. 

Fighting for the Devil's secrets

Aleph's Operatives were already on the move, and almost immediately two of the antennas of the scientific compound started turning in place, preparing to transmit data. The Posthuman that had activated them remained unseen beside the larger ruin, while mercenaries were sent forth to attack: a bounty hunter on a roaring motorcycle accelerated towards the line of trees where some of the nomad soldiers were hiding, coming face to face with the artificial body of Robin Hook, a rogue AI that had followed the Jurisdictional Command men, clearly interested in Aleph's discoveries. 

The following gunfight was cut short by the heavy rumbling of an HMG, as the Sin Eater that had positioned himself on the left flank sighted the merc from a rooftop. However, taking advantage of the distraction, a Helot from the Libertos ran in, staying the shadow of the rubble and taking close range shots at the android, that, badly damaged, retreated behind the large container that she was using as cover. A morlock and the Uberfallkommando, eager to get into the action, rushed to her aid under the cover of smoke: Chimera and Pupniks made short work of the Helot, and then sprang towards the hidden posthuman, despite shotgun pellets and bullets from a nearby automatic defensive turret raining on them. It became immediately clear that the bloody wounds wouldn't manage to stop the augmented body of the howling lunatic, that reached her target and hacked it to pieces with animalistic glee, while the morlock, finding a myrmidon entrenched in the rightmost ruin, blasted him with her chain rifle, falling however victim herself to the turret's small calibre bullets.

On the other side of the battlefield, Asunciòn's fireteam, formed by her, a young Cenobite and a Moira, occupied the large blue building of a mess hall, disabling two of the AI's defence remotes on the way with their heavy support weapon. Their presence remained hidden from the Marut thanks to the sensor-scrambling effects of the Custodier's hacking device, that sent to the sofiaticated optical arrays of the machine a cloud of nonsensical readings. The attack freed up the way for Bran to advance from his hiding spot far in the back field, behind the habitational unit: a Corporate Security guard had come close to discovering his position moments earlier, but he had managed to sneak by him unnoticed, reaching the nearby building where the second proxy of the posthuman was preparing to repair the damaged remotes. 

A yell of alarm came from the CSU, but it was a moment too late: shimmering out of camouflage with one fluid movement, Bran's blade pierced through the artificial being's neck, destroying his cube. Not even the return fire from the security guard or the swarm of attack nanites that engulfed him managed to slow his advance, as he rolled behind the corner of the building and destroyed one of the AI's NetRods with a shotgun blast.

The Marut, unfazed by the casualties, rebooted its optics, and began immediately to advance towards the mess hall, looking for an angle to attack the occupants from. It caught sight of the Cenobite and a second morlock and opened fire, the spray of high calibre bullets leaving the warband dead on the ground and the heavy infantry reeling with bloodied armour on her left thigh. The Moira, whose name was Sister Lucina, exposed herself to try and stop the TAG with her electromagnetic pulse weapon; before she could fire, however, the clumsy form of a Garuda had landed beside the building, and rushed inside to protect its master. Lucina fell under the remote's shots, and, while Asunciòn was struggling to overcome its quantronic defences, her wounded sister had charged it with a scream of pain and rage. The clash was short and brutal, and, despite the machine's sturdy construction, soon the panting Cenobite had reduced it to a heap of scraps, and held in her hand its data core.

Sensing the presence of an enemy infowarrior, the Marut started retreating towards the laboratory building, where it spotted the crouched form of Robin Hook. There, Aleph's hate for her brethren took solid and tangible shape, in the form of the torrent of fire that invested the already damaged synthetic body, tearing it to shreds. 

In the meantime, the Chimera, despite losing two of her Pupniks, had finished clearing the area of the ruins, mauling the turret, and covering all other lines of fire with a cloud of brightly coloured eclipse smoke; she then signalled for an unremarkable man with a security uniform to come forward: a Black Hand spy that had infiltrated one of the construction crews, and knew the codes for the communication systems. He had just left the cover of the trees, when, out of thin air, a silhouette materialized just behind those of the Uberfalkommando: a hidden Agema Marksman fired his missile launcher towards the advancing specialist, taking advantage of the brief moment of general surprise. The double agent ducked instinctively, and the explosive payload incinerated a container to his left; the sniper had no time to aim a second shot: with a growl and a leap, the Chimera was on him, and the spiked chains eviscerated the advanced l-host before he could draw his pistol. Still a bit shook, the CSU reached the antenna, entering a rerouting code to the Nomad network. The cackling Chimera went instead for the main control console, and, wagging her tail in delight, started the uploading process.

Asunciòn was still crouched behind a table in the mess hall, having tended to her sister's wounds as best she could, when she had an idea: she took control of a small Transductor Zond they had brought with them, and drove it forward, towards the laboratory; only when it appeared careening at full speed from behind the corner, the Marut understood what was about to happen. It tried as best it could to distance the dangerous repeater, but the Custodier was already at work on her hacking device, and an Oblivion program managed to force its way trough the Aspect's quantronic defences, disabling its network array.

Stumbling backwards, the great war machine trained its weapon on the remote, blasting it to pieces, and then turned towards the habitational module, where the Uberfallkommando was stealing the compound's precious research. A wave of flame engulfed the two bakunian creatures, and they both fell to the ground, smoking and whimpering. Still shaking its head in confusion, the TAG regained its stance, silently challenging all other enemies to come to him.

Far on its left, behind the cover of the ruins, the Black Hand agent crawled forward to see his former colleague, that was keeping an eye on where Bran had retreated. Seeing a familiar face, the real CSU hesitated for a fatal moment before squeezing the trigger, and a breaker rifle shot found him square in the chest, making him slump against the wall. The Triple Zero could then begin his advance, silently moving behind the Marut, and managing to reach the console unseen to complete the data transfer.

Their objective achieved, Nomad forces had silently and orderly retreated without suffering any more casualties, and, Asunciòn remembered with a slight smile, Mother Wabara had given her an approving pat on the shoulder with such force that she almost toppled to the ground.

A ping on her Comlog diverted her mind from the distant memories: they were approaching low orbit, and she would soon have to deal with O-12's border checks and security controls. She yawned and stretched. That would be the least of the problems she would have to face in the following weeks, she feared.  

Conclusion

Bakunin scores 2 points for controlling the console on rounds two and three, 1 point for the garuda data core (In Extremis Recovery), 1 point for Net Undermine performed by Bran, 3 points for ending the game with a free console and 2 points for having more activated antennas (the Custodier got a second one on the last turn), while Aleph forces didn't manage to score points, thus resulting in a 9-0 victory for Bakunin.

The game was much closer than the score suggests, as Power Pack can swing wildly in the last round. In the end, it came to the isolation on the Marut that made Aleph play their third turn in loss of lieutenant, and the ineffective warband attack on turn 1, that could have crippled my order pool. 

It was a really fun game, Chimera and Bran were definitely the MVPs, with some impressive armour rolls. I hope the report was a fun read, and thank you for sticking to the end!