Part 62: Buena Vista, Part 1: Mission = Bullshit

And here's my early X-mas gift for all of you guys and girls!

Post 62: Buena Vista, Part 1: This Mission is Bullshit



Time to bail those idiots out!



The power plant was dug into the side of a mountain – a strange decission, but it limited the routes robots could use to retreat or reinforce.



Mandy darted from a pile of rocks to a tree trunk, scouting as she was ordered to.

She found tribal burial lands just next to the wall of the reactor.

Getting some strange vibes here, boss.

Do you feel the urge to write poetry, kid?

…

...yes.



One grave was still open. Mandy's guess was that the diggers had been either ambushed or spooked by the robots. Either way, she didn't want to look inside the hole.



Unfortunately, she wasn't alone among the graves. The frozen ground vibrated and cracked. But those we robots instead of the restless dead and Mandy made a hasty retreat back to the squad.

CONTACT!



EMP rounds were so much different from the HE rockets. Instead of a fireball that would kick up dust and rocks, the EMP burst cracked silently and sent blue arcs of lightning forking towards metal surfaces.

Scurry bots exploded all the same.



EMP made the tiny robots spasm and spin before overloading and exploding.



Flashman reloaded and went into the graveyard to clear out any stragglers.



Some got close enough that Flashman had to use the power fists. He punched throught their bodies with relative ease.

Uh, boss, we need you back here!



In all the excitement over the robots that were chasing Mandy, the squad had forgotten to check a nearby entry in the wall.

Flashman only needed to appear at the gates to send one RPG hurling towards a robot ambusher.



Peta intervened once again and the robot, already all bent and beat from the explosion, was sliced and diced by the invisible rays of the Gatling laser.



It didn't take long for them to find and neutralize a second robot who was lying in ambush, minigun at the ready.



The first one turned out to had been a sniper, albeit one with a ludicrously large stack of ammo on him. Flashman was surprised the machine could walk at all. It would have made some sense if the machine had been a solitary assassin, striding the wasteland to harass the forces of biological life; now, it made no sense.



Meanwhile, on the left flank, Mandy discovered a single robot waiting in a trench at the edge of the deployment area. It was a strange position: a trench in the middle of a small field surrounded by low walls from all sides. There was no cover and anyone approaching the fencing would spot the trench immediately.

As far as trenches go, this one was placed in the worst possibly position.



En route to check out the robot that Mandy had found, Peta inspected an urn in the cementary. It was surrounded by a raised stone structure, so it must have been an important urn. Maybe it was an offering at the grave of some local tribal nobility?

The urn held a bottle of Nuka Cola Cherry and some .50 cal rounds. Odd.

Fucking primitives...



It was Flashman who lead the charge on the trench. He started by softening the opposition with an RPG round. Snow and dirt flew everywhere as the warhead impacted on the edge of the slit.



Scared by the explosion, the robot ducked down, disappearing from view.

Flashman jumped down into the trench, successfully landing on the torso of the machine, crushing it dead with the weight of a fully grown nd well fed man covered in layers of synthetic muscles, ceramics, steel alloys, and hoisting enough amunition and guns for a support platton.



The robot had been carrying a flame thrower. It was a mystery why it thought it could ambush anyone with the weapon.



Trouble ahead, everyone.

There was a suspicious position on the other side of the tiny brook, and it commanded the only other breach in the fence. The squad moved into a position to assault it. .



Their suspicions proved to be right. It was a guard post packed with robots.



After a long and fierce shootout, which melted quite a few rocks and snowdrifts, the robots were defeated, though many of the Brotherhood's soldiers now required Stitch's attentions.



Curiously, the sniper bot in the eliminated post had almost no ammo. Something must have been going wrong with the robot supply chain.

Clearly whatever profane intelligence wrote their spirit did not much care for war.



Just behind the post the squad found a flimsy fence and a gate. It lead to an another narrow area dominated by a ruin that laid close to the power plant wall.

The ruin looked mightily suspicious. Stitch checked the Jackhammer feed – the shells were all EMP yellow – and took position near a dillapidated wall.



With Flashman and Peta flanking, the robots in the ruin were dealt with. They managed to sling few grenades, but to no great effect.



Look out!

Scurry Bots dug themselves out of the frozen ground, the low forms shaking off dirt and snow before lunging into combat. With Flashman in power armor, Peta felt more confident that he'd survive a few stray laser shots, and thus she fired on the robots.

That was mostly unnecessary as Flashman, in his trademark recklessness, launched a rocket point blank and hit a scurry bot straight in it's small face, obliterating it immediately.

Critical hit for 188 points!



With the scurry bots down, the troops could finally check the ambush trench. The robot there was armed with plasma grenades and nothing else. Flashman thought that this had a throughtly World War I feel, but he couldn't really share this idea with others; Flashman was sure that he was the only one within a hundred mile radius aware of any war precing the great one.



Trench ahead

And so it was. Robots seemed to be more than happy to build static defenses. And why would they not? They were asuming a defensive posture around important logistical nodes while the Brotherhood had trouble mustering weapons heavier than machineguns. From Calculators' perspective, trenches were better than good.



Besides, scurry bots were cheap and plentiful, and acted as proactive minefields.

Gettin' mighty tired o' dis shit, boss!



Two robots were waiting in the trench. With Peta providing covering fire – she had enough ammo to suppress the horizon – Stitch maneuvered agressively in his Power Armor and was on top of the robot behore it could react. The EMP rounds had less of a kick that buck or solid shot, but the feel of the Jackhammer cycling rounds still felt satisfying in Stitch's hand.

I'n'I melted his stuff fa good.

The EMPs had an interesting effect on the robots. While they did explode occassionaly, most of the time they'd twitch, go rigid and then simply fall down.



The ambush dealt with, Stitch jumped into the trench to operate a console that the robots had been guarding.


The console lowered few of the shields that had closed the way deeper into the reactor facility.

Mandy, quick as ever, noticed one of the flying bots in a nearby enclosure, and imemdiately opened fire.



Her accurate fire quickly took out the important systems on the drone and it exploded.



Flashman was about to move out to scout ahead when Mandy got back to the squad.

Boss, I have a bad feeling about this.

Especially about the area that's still shielded – that's the only barrier that the console didn't drop.

So what do you have in mind, luv?

Full force, I guess. If it's a trap, whatever is in there can bottleneck us here without any trouble. But if we rush in in force, we might stand a chance.

Flashman didn't like being lectured on tactics, but something that Mandy said made sense in the Psycho-drenched brain of his.

All right. Everyone, rush in, fan out and keep your on the shield fence.



Grunting and the sounds of snow crushing mixed together as the squad prepared to take positions in the field. Each soldier sought cover while also keeping their eyes on the enclosure.

Nothing.

Then, suddenly, scurry bots started popping up, digging themselves out of the ground. However, their were caught in the cross fire. “Their hiding holes become their graves” thought Mandy and decided to use that line ina poem some day.

Flashman was about to announce “all clear” when the shields dropped.



The behemoth was a huge metal bug. Six stout legs kept the oversized body aloft, and the autocannons set in the mouth of the squadre head were spraying rounds everywhere.

One saving grace was that something got broken inside the robot as the squad poured everything they got at it, and the machine could barely aimed its attacks, when it wasn't slumping to the ground.



Dizzy or not, the robot was still a leviathan of the pre war science and just kept taking damage without any visible effect.



The machine swiwelled its head and sent a burst at Flashman, nicking his shoulder. Seeing an opportunity while the robot was distracted, Stitched ran to flank it and unloaded into the side of the behemoth. He kept the trigger down until the drum was empty and it was all over in 2 seconds.



The behemoth finally fell down, never to rise again – or at least the squad hoped so. Who knows, maybe it was equiped with similar technology as the power cores.

But neither robotic arms not tiny metalic bugs burst out of the carcass. The behemoth was truly dead.



Peta was the first on the carcass, tearing away hull panels and ripping put wires with her power armored hands.

She didn't found much beside ammo, acid and a stimp pack.

I don't know what I expected

But why would a devilish machine like that carry such ill fitting ammo?



Flashman was ready to leave and continue the sweep of the base entrance when he saw a gruesome sight.

A corpse in shattered power armor, twisted and burned, and then cut in half by the closing gate.

I found out vanguard.

Damn fools...

Next time: Buean Vista, Part 2: Now With More Robots

So we've officialy gone further than younger, fatter me did! I quit on this mission because I was running out of ammo and my Paladin Mike relied a great deal on his Small Arms skills, and he was running out of 5.56mm.

That's a great bait and switch that Tactics pulls, making small arms mostly useless in late game while giving no incentive to start weith heavy or energy.

I don't remember if I had had to fight the Behemoth back then, but I remember it being here. Fucker packs quite a punch, which a successful hit depleting half the health bar on a Power Armored soldier. I got lucky on the last attempt when we basically stunlocked it to death beauce it takes time to whittle its health down. What a douche!