The Mothball Incident Narrative - Interplanetario Games

Operation Muddy Window - After Action Review Transcript

Pvt. Mariam Akebe, Wildcat Regiment, Infowar and communications specialist

## CLASSIFIED INTEL - MOTHBALL INCIDENT - LEVEL 4 CLEARENCE REQUIRED ##

Why, to the best of your knowledge, was the 404 Independent Platoon assigned to this operation?

Well, sir, the Bring Guns to Bear was nearby, still in the Human Edge to monitor how the situation would cool down in the Twins after that whole Edgelord thing, you know? The rest of my team is still there on Huey, I think. I’m glad they weren’t caught up in this mess.

So, a part of the platoon is still on the twins?

Most of it, in fact, minus what Mother Asuncion keeps on Bakunin. We were just a small scouting squad on the ship - like, twenty people? Maybe twenty five? Lieutenant Okiro believes…

** she clears her throat, long pause **

I mean. Lieutenant Okiro believed this Mothball thing on the LGSRC to be quite minor, and many eyes were already pointed on it anyway. Orders are orders, however, and Nomad Command wanted us to establish an observation point - a sort of base camp, not too close by, to keep an eye on the operations discreetly.

We are aware. How did things pan out?

All was going fine at the start - we had identified a suitable location: one of those old spaceships that in time become small orbital hideouts, for those who want to keep a low profile. This one was a PanOceanian V1G0 Interplanetary Transport with some hab modules glued to it with spit and hope, and it looked very abandoned, stuck in a G-well full of rocks and random debris just a few thousand clicks from the Research Center. The LT sent us to survey the wreckage, while he and the rest of the squad tried to get closer to the research compound to gather some info. Problem is, the damned wreck wasn’t actually abandoned at all - the whole thing was crawling with Yujingese troops, Santa Muerte knows what the hell they’re hiding in that scrapyard…

** she trails off, unintelligible. Vague gesturing. She shakes her head **

That’s just our rotten luck, right? We get dropped off, coast looks clear, we even get blasted Mc Murrough on the payroll for the PR photoshoot and the Cosmica guys send a Gecko to help install the new hab, we sit down for a beer while we wait for the BGTB to come back, and suddenly all hell breaks loose - we were lucky to have Morales on lookout or I wouldn’t be here talking to you.

You are referring to First Class Sergeant Felipe Morales of the Intruder Assault Commandos, correct?

Yeah, the guy bailed us out big time when the Gecko got bricked - we had to turn tail and leave, and we lost almost all hardware, but luckily Madaki - one of the Moran Masai - got hold of the long range comms beacon, and we could alert the Bring Guns to Bear.

[1]

However, they too were having their fair share of problems, I’m told.

How so?

I don’t know the details, but they said something about an haqquislamite border patrol; they got some info on the… what was it, forty-two-hours blackout? Anyway, they had to pull back with a few injured, and our comms got jammed into oblivion as soon as we started broadcasting.

[3]

Of course we still had Imperial hounds on our heels, so we had to fight to keep the beacon active while we tried to override the jamming signal - Gecko got bricked again, but it bought us enough time to establish a rendezvous location and the big furry…

** she suddenly stops and turns around nervously **

Ok, he’s not here - as I was saying, the big furry with the talking sword cleared us a path forward out of the hab modules and into the ship proper; we were supposed to meet with the Lieutenant in the old cargo bay and exfil the hell out of there, as soon as Kid stopped having his breakdance contest with the Shaolin monk on the roof - you’d think a Bandit would just shoot the guy, right? Well, he didn’t, and they kept swashbuckling away for like ten minutes - I hope he got his number before leaving, so they can go out for dinner sometimes.

[2]

Keep to the facts - was the exfiltration successful?

** long pause, she avoids eye contact. She resumes with a much lower tone of voice **

No. No it fucking wasn’t.

** she sighs **

There was an ambush in the hangar bay. We didn’t arrive in time - a bulkhead got blasted, we think it was a missile from an Hac Tao, or maybe it was just the old ship falling apart by itself… then that section of the hull decompressed. The yujingese got their people to safety before we were even close. The whole rescue team got trapped in the hangar, under heavy crossfire.

When we eventually managed to reach them, we didn’t find any survivors.

[4]

** silence **

Then what?

…What?

** she gets up from her chair, raises her voice **

What do you think? Of course we called for a fat panoceanian priest and celebrated a funeral procession for the splattered stains of entrails that twenty minutes earlier were our goddamned commanding officer and our bunkmates, and then we cried our fucking eyes out!

Calm down, private Akebe. We understand your loss, but another outburst like this against your superiors won’t be tolerated.

** she sits back down **

…yeah, sorry sir. We got their cubes, of course. Did you know that we don’t have a field medic in our team? I can still feel my hands sticky with blood.

** mostly unintelligible mumbling; “so much blood”, “seeps through the suit” are discernible. She collects herself **

Well, in the meantime someone was able to contact the BGTB; they had barely managed to pull off an emergency takeoff as soon as things went south, but landing gear was busted. Our only option was to use one of the yujingese docking tunnels back inside the habs.

How did you manage to make your way through the heavily defended section you just had to flee?

Blind. Dumb. Luck. Turns out they had stopped chasing us because another ship had approached the wreckage - a ship from the Combined Army. I don’t know why they were there, they looked like they were inspecting the area, maybe looking for something? They were spearheaded by Achilles himself, so it could be something about that “Next Wave” thing. Of course, the Yujingese couldn’t tell him they had ten Nomad stowaways running around on board, so we kept a low profile, disabled their comms. I never saw Lily so focused - she broke through their firewalls again and again, making sure Achilles never got to move close to us. We had a brief firefight with some of those spidery remotes, but we were already well on our way to the exit when the ruse was discovered - I hope that abomination of a recreation took his anger out on the Yujingese.

[5]

Anyway, we reached the docking tunnel controls, and had to fight through the few forces stationed there to blow up the main security node before their reinforcements could reach us. Madaki had to sacrifice himself to do it and get the airlock doors open in time, and we barely managed to haul the memory bank with all the data we and Okiro had collected back onto the Bring Guns to Bear in one piece. The yujingese were desperately trying to destroy it to the last moment, almost throwing themselves at us - there must be something here they really don’t want the rest of the Human Sphere to know.

[6]

Is there anything else you deem relevant for this review?

No sir, we just turned around and left that place as fast as we could. No ship appeared to follow us.

** she stands up **

Am I free to go now?

You are.

** she turns around to leave, then stops **

One last thing sir. The people we have lost were heroes, each and every last one of them. I hope you higher ups will keep that in mind when you are haggling on resurrections with Praxis.

This narrative briefly sums up the games I had in the Interplanetario. Of course there would be a lot to tell about each of them, but for the sake of brevity (turns out six games is a lot of stuff!) I opted for this shorter form. I imagined the two list I took to the event as the two separate groups of soldiers, Mariam being part of the first, while Edward of the second (we will gloss over the presence of two McMurroughs and two Jazz...)