Part 59: Canyon City: Power Core Tango

Can't wait for those 40K mods for XCOM2, though!

Post 59: Canyon City, Part 1: Here Comes The Boom



The repair facility stood defiant among the surrounding ruins. It was the most high-tech looking place Flashman had ever seen, even in comparison to the Brotherhood bunkers. Walls the color of bronze and copper stood all around the perimeter, their tops alive with gently humming force fields.

Somewhere in behind those walls, were the four power cores that the squad has to disable. This mission took them far into the robot territory and they had to avoid many a patrol. But Brotherhood of Steel was finally there.

Flashman once again elected to take point, investigating a side road.



Alarms started blaring inside his helmet as Flashman came under fire from multiple robots. Dropping prone, he started firing back with the machinegun.



A harsh zap cut through all the shooting and something small dented Flashman's right pauldron with great force. The shot left a trail of electric blue circles hanging in the air.

Bloody hell, what was that?



With Peta providing fire support with her EMP gun, Flashman started advancing, felling one robot after the other until no mechanical life stirred in the street.



Flashman picked up the grey plastic tube of a Neostead shotgun off one of the robots. Not that long ago, Stitch was using one just like it to shoot all sorts of scum. The Jackhammer had been a fitting replacement, though even that relentless machine had trouble taking down robots.



Flashman eventually got to the robot that had been firing the strange electric rounds. The only thing that he found was a small, bulbous pistol.



German steel...

Having read many a tome on weapons and arms, Flashman knew it to be a Gauss pistol. A pre-war technological marvel that used magnetism to fire smallest ammo at the most fearful velocities.

Pocketing the gun, Flashman called Ice.



Are there any other routes of advance from the street? I don't fancy running into many more Gauss-slinging robots.

There is a gate in the concrete wall here. It leads to an alley filled with trash.



You think we should go there?

No, I have a... funny feeling about it.

Ice was clearly uncomfortable with what amounted to a flowery expression in her tongue.

Funny feeling, eh? I've no love for those... Besides, the Pip-Boy is showing that one of the cores is nearby.

With that said, Flashman turned towards the door in the grey wall.



The building did not fit there, crumbling grey concrete and rusting beams an eyesore in comparison to the walls that screamed of the best pre-war tech. Flashman did not like it all, but he still checked the entrance.

A lumber yard?

Dry tree trunks were slowly wasting away in the dry heat of the desert still stacked into neat piles after all these years. It must have been an odd quirk of nature that had preserved the lumber.



An even stranger quirk of technology had a placed a power core in what must have been the foreman's office. Flashman stepped inside.

The generator was, essentially, a huge tesla globe on a metal pedestal. The lights were pretty, but Flashman couldn't help but feel that that kind of advanced technology held a sinister streak to it. Shaking away heretical thoughts, he noticed the sounds of metal stabbing on concrete coming from outside the office.

Scurry bots.



They didn't take that long to kill, especially since they were too dumb to use the stairs to get on the platform where Flashman was, and their stubby legs were obviously not made for jumping.

Peta helped pacify a few of them with her EMP rifle. Flashman believed that if you watched real close, you could see it fire blue clots of electricity.



Flashman took out one of the demolition packs he had brought for the mission. Putting the canvas bag down, he opened one of the flaps to uncover a simple arming mechanism.

I wonder, what would be a fitting arming frequency.

With a slight smile, he entered 666 and pressed a huge red button with a stenciled “ARM”



The blast knocked him off his feet. Getting up, Flashman couldn't decide whether he was happy that the armor held or disappointed that such a large amount of explosives did such piddling damage.

Well, at least it had taken the generator o...

The generator was repairing itself. Robotic arms shot out of the metal pedestal. With quick, inhumanly precise moves they were repairing the system. Soon, it hummed back online, as if nothing had happened.

Bloody fucking tin men.



Ice, would you fancy coming here and helping me with some exploding stuff?

It had been a long time since the team had had a dedicated explosives expert. They rarely needed to set up demolition charges, and most mine clearing efforts could be done via liberal application of tube-launched ordinance.



Leaving Ice to tinker (and hoping she wouldn't explode), Flashman continued securing the lumber yard.



Securing the yard involved pulverizing another scurrying little bot.



Flashman also found a tunnel entrance. Being of the adventurous/initiative sort, he radioed back to the squad, and jumped in.



The tunnel was just like any other that had been dug out after the war. Earthen walls, torches and campfires, wooden barriers, all sorts of trash and detritus likely brought from the factory – must have been someone's home at one point.

Before the robots came, anyways.




Meanwhile Pera, emboldened by her own suit of power armor, went on to check out a platform that went over the lumber yard wall and jutted out into the street.

She took three steps on the platform before the world exploded around her.



Three hoverbots had been patrolling the street. Now, they were belching rockets one after the other. One might wonder how all the ordinance, propulsion systems, control mechanisms and the kill switch fit in that tiny metal egg.

One might wonder about great many things while not under heavy RPG fire.



So while Peta was heavily engaged with the tiny robots, Flashman emerged out of the other end of the tunnel and straight into the yard of the repair facility. He didn't notice much else aside from a turret that was dutifully ignoring him.



Stepping outside the barbed wire that surrounded the tunnel entry, Flashman, stepped on a landmine, had to shake off a minor concussion, shot the passive turret, and even found a robot to perforate with point blank fire.

As far as combat engagements went, this one wasn't that bad.



Flashman continued down the line of robot entrenchments, taking another one by surprise. It seemed that only turrets remained.



However, while punching a turret dead (a grueling long process, even if these turrets were of a new breed), Flashman noticed a solitary robot milling around.

Together with Toni (who had sort of just wandered in through a door in the lumber yard wall), they turned it into a heap of scrap metal.



The robots were carrying a surprising amount of 7.62 ammo. It made some sense, as humans were definitely a lot more susceptible to the ammo type than robots.

Plus, it was a lot easier to manufacture than kraut space magic rods.



The turrets held a bounty of HE rounds. Again, an unexpected choice, but still more welcome than 7.62.

BMG ammo remained horridly rare, though.



With outer perimeter secure, Flashman tried the side door on the imposing building. It stood out, a plain metal rectangle inset in a futuristic wall of brass.

The doors didn't even creak as Flashman opened it. Inside was a room, surrounded by gleaming metal walls that looked even more advanced that those back in the Brotherhood bunkers. It was empty save for a stairwell leading downstairs.

Flashman followed it into the basement, eager to secure it before assaulting the facility proper.



The room was stark, metallic, advanced. Mysterious many-armed machines lined the walls. They hunched over slabs that look just like the ones in the medical center back in the bunker, but somehow cleaner, more ordered.

Maybe that was the repair part of the facility? The placement was questionable, but a man can barely guess at was goes on in the mind of a machine intelligence.



And there was another turret! Just like the ones outside, it had a limited arc that let Flashman approach and attack it with impunity.

Bloody hell, this manages to take all the fun out of a brawl.



With a turret thus dispatched, Flashman returned to the room on the ground floor. The doors leading to the rest of the building was locked, so he went outside. The only other obvious way in was through the huge main gates.



The gates whirred, hissed and screeched as their various parts slid into position. It opened up, revealing a foreboding entrance hall behind it. Flashman cautiously stepped in.

At least there weren't any more landmines.



Flashman was shocked to see another pacification bot. literally, too, as the robot attacked with electric currents. The armor provided some insulation, but that wasn't enough and the strain was starting to mount.

Peta was not far behind and she joined the fight, EMP rifle in hand. It was fighting electricity with electricity.



Eventually, the weight of fire made itself felt, and the pacification robot collapsed, with various parts either smashed by heavy machinegun fire or taken out of action via EMP. Both of the Brotherhood soldiers felt exhausted from the ordeal – the electric attack of the robot hit everyone in front of the machine.



Alright, let’s see what this baby has inside!

He reached into the shattered insides of the robot, sifting through scrap with deft looter's hands.



Small power cells.

I don't know what I expected, really.

Maybe the clean-up crew will find something useful.

Next Time: Post 60: Canyon City, Part 2

I think the power cores repairing themselves is bullshit. You're supposed to figure out that you need to take them all down at the same time. Hence the game throwing convenient det packs at you in case you didn't bring any. I don't know if placing a team member at each core and then switching through them while to give manual attack commands would work. I guess in PnP RPG this would be called "blatant railroading" because the real answer would be to blow up the fucking repair arms, too