Getting caught up after far too long away from this. The following is a lightly-edited – and long – transcript of a scene played out on our Discord server after the last session.
Recap of previous play not blogged:
After lunch, Octavia and Erick check out the local school. It’s small but functional. Cowboy, Miko, Betsy, and Cat retrun to the team’s encampment to start working on Lazarus. While there, they receive a visit from Sergeant Francisco Lopez (no relation to Cowboy), who runs the maintenance/support section for Bravo Troop. He expresses very strong interest in taking Lazarus off the team’s hands for the right price. Bravo Troop has two light tanks, seven other light combat vehicles, and a collection of HMMWVs/equivalents, but no recovery vehicle. So any time anything breaks down, another combat vehicle has to be the one to tow it home.
Shortly after that, Betsy overheard one of the radios in Comms receiving a transmission. Bell had left it on while he went into town for downtime. The conversation was in Russian – one party clearly in a firefight, the other party not. With no one present who spoke Russian, Erick and Betsy grabbed the team’s tape recorder and got most of it for later analysis. Cat did recognize the candence and repetition of one part of the transmission as a call for artillery support – indicating someone out there speaks Russian and has access to artillery. Comms’ direction-finding gear pointed south-southwest as the source of the transmission. Cowboy’s supposition, based on that, was that the Soviet 129th Motor Rifle Division is getting into it with the Army of Silesia.
Picking up the in-character thread:
The team (Betsy, Cat, Cowboy, Erick, Ellis, Pettimore, and NPC Hernandez) heads down to Bravo Troop’s encampment for their dinner engagement with Captain Warren. Along the way, the group passes the town’s medical clinic – closed for the evening, but with the glow of an electric light visible through the windows. Hearing no generator, Betsy infers battery power.
Bravo Troop’s encampment is in a former lumber yard. There’s a sign on the gate making it obvious who the new tenants are:
B Troop
1st Squadron
116th Armored Cavalry Regiment
Idaho National Guard
Two gate guards are on duty – uniformed, armed, geared up, alert. One of them escorts the team to the building that used to be the lumberyard office, now the HQ building and CO’s residence. The front half is still in use as a cramped office. First Sergeant John Wheeler (previously encountered) is at one of the desks. He stands, closes the notebook he’s writing, in, greets the PCs, and escorts them into the back.
The back room (at least, the one the PCs are permitted to see) looks to be used primarily as the unit’s ops center. Another desk is wedged into a corner. Two tables of slightly different heights have been jammed together and covered with mismatched tablecloths, and the chairs are equally mismatched and crammed into the space – but there is seating for everyone.
Captain Molly Warren (previously encountered) is sitting at the table, in conversation with a mid-thirties man with a mustache, thinning hair, and a perpetually exhausted expression. His rank tab says first lieutenant; his branch tab says Quartermaster Corps. Warren introduces him as Peter Dern, her executive officer.
A couple of locals bring in dinner: venison medallions, garlic mashed potatoes, a salad with local field greens and sliced preserved beets. They’re clearly regular staff; their interactions with Warren and the others are familiar and respectful but not subservient.
Once introductions are out of the way, conversation over dinner is small talk with a slight edge. Cowboy, Betsy, and Erick are all 5th Infantry Division survivors, and Cat and Herrnandez are being represented as such (which is technically true – Task Force Cobalt was traveling with 5th ID). Warren, Dern, and Wheeler are all interested in their experiences and their reports of what happened at Kalisz and afterward.
Ellis and Erick are the first to pick up on this, but everyone gradually becomes aware that they’re asking a lot of questions to which they already know the answers. This is an evaluation to see if the team’s stories match up with the 5th ID survivors that Bravo Troop has already met and absorbed.
After the dishes are cleared away, the staff brings in dessert – fruit tarts. Dern looks at Warren. “Is it time to open up the strategic reserve, Boss?”
Warren doesn’t quite smile, but nods. “Seems appropriate.”
Dern stands, crosses the room, and opens a cabinet to reveal a small stash of liquor bottles. “Not sure how this wound up on the Polish black market, but we took it off some marauders north of here about a month ago. They had a pretty good collection they hadn’t drunk their way through yet. We donated most of it to the pub, but we kept some of the good stuff for negotiations.” He reveals an unopened bottle of Laphroaig and proceeds to crack it open and pour for everyone (except Wheeler, who seems content without, and any PCs who decline).
Warren leans back with her glass and looks at Cowboy. “And I think now it’s time we had that conversation about Task Force Cobalt.”
Cowboy winces. “My apologies for that, ma’am.”
“Be careful about that. There are a lot of people out there who wish us harm. From what I know about Cobalt’s assignment, they’d put a bullet in the back of your head and drop your body in a ditch for that information.”
Warren puts at least some of her cards on the table and unpacks her own unit’s last set of orders. Originally, Bravo Troop was attached to 5th Infantry Division to give it an armored cavalry component. 5th ID’s own cavalry element, 4-12 Cavalry, had converted from armored to horse cavalry the previous year, and someone at EUCOM thought 5th ID needed some extra support.
That assignment changed in June, about a month before 5th ID got into the shit. A helicopter from European Command HQ in Stuttgart flew out to intercept the division (those PCs who were with the division at the time remember this, and the rumors it generated). Its passengers were two Defense Intelligence Agency officers who handed Captain Warren new orders. She was to take her command south to the vicinity of Czestochowa and make contact with another DIA officer operating out of the Free City of Krakow.
That officer would have further instructions. Warren wasn’t briefed on exactly what she was going to be doing, but she was told her unit’s objective had strategic-level political value – potentially tilting the allegiance of a lot of uncommitted Poles, and even some hostile ones, in favor of the West.
Bravo Troop also got some of the same briefing that Cat, Hernandez, and the rest of TF Cobalt got. They were issued extra radiological and chemical sensors and defense gear and were told to use them if needed. They also were instructed to monitor all personnel for hallucinations, psychological symptoms, or anomalous behavior.
Bravo Troop broke off from the 5th ID and headed south as ordered. They had no contact with anything beyond village militias until the second week of July, as they were nearing the area where they were supposed to make their rendezvous. That’s the point at which they ran into unexpected Soviet forces – just as 5th ID was experiencing the same thing.
Both DIA officers died in one of the first firefights. With the mission blown, Warren decided to make a run for friendly lines. She first reversed course, but running north led to more Soviet resistance. Trying to go west toward southern Germany was blocked by the 129th MRD. She was down to 50% of her initial troop strength when she decided to head for Dobrodzien.
(Back in 1997, when Operation Advent Crown first pushed NATO forces into Poland, the 116th ACR had come through this area. Warren, Wheeler, and some of the unit’s veterans had become acquainted with Dobrodzien at that time, so they knew its residents had some pro-western sympathies. They made it to town in the first week of August, and have been here ever since. In conjunction with Dobrodzien’s ORMO, they’ve been establishing local security, primarily by hunting down bands of marauders from the former Soviet 9th Tank Division.)
(Ellis, Erick, and Pettimore all pick up on the fact that Warren is holding back some details of her unit’s orders, and there’s some additional evasiveness around her mission’s DIA connection.)
Now Warren brings the conversation around to Task Force Cobalt. She’s aware of the unit’s assignment to raid a site within Lodz when the 5th ID got close to that city. She knows that it was an extremely high-priority operation, given the collection of talent that was assembled for it. She also knows about some of the special instructions it received regarding radiological and… cognitive… hazards.
So she’s rather curious as to how Cowboy, who’s a low-ranking enlisted field artillerist with no apparent special operations connections, is casually dropping references to TF Cobalt. And why the rest of the PCs also seem read in on this. (At this point, she is not yet aware that Cat and Hernandez were on TF Cobalt.)
Ellis listens carefully, checking the things said against the things he either already knows or has deduced and considers the new information, mapping places and timelines.
“Thank you, Captain. I appreciate your candor on what’s obviously a sensitive subject. Discussing sensitve operations in the clear, even among apparent allies, is dicey. So thanks again for rolling with the unorthodox approach to the topic.”
Ellis pulls out a small slightly tattered notebook and a worn pencil and thumbs through it before asking, “a couple of questions, if I may… The DIA officers, what names were they going by? Or their cryptonyms if they never gave a proper name.” He looks up expectantly, both for to receive her response and to gauge her reaction to the direct question about the officers.
“The senior one was Major Jefferson Conroy. His aide was Captain John Bradshaw.” Warren frowns slightly. “Conroy sounded like he’d been in the business a long time. Bradshaw obviously had an armor background. He didn’t sound like he had as much intelligence experience. Good head for operations, though.” The compliment comes out grudgingly.
“They didn’t give me the name of their colleague in Krakow. They kept pretty tight control of any details on what we were supposed to do once we got down this far south.”
Ellis nods and draws a few lines through items on the notebook, flips ahead, and writes a few things down. “That’s good to know. Can you tell me a bit about how the failed contact protocol shook out? Once you realized the other DIA officers were KIA, that is.”
“Oof.” Warren shakes her head. “The… second big fight we got into when we tried to circle west around Czestochowa?” She looks to Dern for confirmation; he nods. “It was an ambush in what was left of a built-up area, a couple hours after we broke contact with the first guys we ran into. Infantry with RPGs in the rubble under tarps, a T-62 and a couple of BMPs inside the shells of houses. Conroy was in our CP vehicle trying to raise the contact on the best radio we had. It took a hit in the initial volley, blew up. Unrecoverable. Bradshaw had taken over Third Platoon; we lost the platoon leader and platoon sergeant in the first fight. His HMMWV got lit up. He was hit, bled out after the medics got to him. We searched the body but anything he had must have been in his kit, and that burned with the vehicle.
“After that, we made a couple of attempts to raise anyone we could,, but there was,” she pauses, “a lot of interference. We didn’t have the crypto or authentication to reach the guy in Krakow, Conroy had that loaded into the radios in the 577, and we never got a response broadcasting in the clear.”
Dern looks momentarily unsettled as Warren describes the radio difficulties.
Ellis nods. “That sounds pretty intense and it sounds like you’re lucky to have made it out at all. No crypto in your other radios, but it sounds like you at least had contingency frequencies. Though, wouldn’t much matter if no one is listening, or no one is trusting enough to respond. It does make me wonder about this officer in Krakow.”
He ponders for a moment. “So, to recap – ‘hot intel’ came from the Krakow officer (let’s call him X) by way of Conroy. Conroy flew in with Bradshaw and gave Bravo new marching orders, directing it from 5th ID support to this new operation taking place south of Czestochowa where you were to contact X. Word was that X’s intel had incredible strategic-level political value. You all got extra gear and briefings to watch for cognitive and behavioral issues amongst one another. Smooth sailing on your trek until you got ambushed in July, both DIA operatives dead along with their classified leaving you with no way to authenticate with X with established comms protocol.”
Ellis shifts his focus to Dern. “Lieutenant, I get the feeling like you might’ve been on or near the radios in the aftermath of that fight – regarding the interference, was there anything unusual about it, other than perhaps more than was expected?”
Dern’s uneasy expression intensifies. “Um. Lots of overlapping transmissions. I guess the Soviets had our frequency and were trying to jam us by just keying up and yelling.” It’s obvious to everyone that that’s a flimsy fabrication.
Ellis looks a little skeptical but gestures for him to continue, implying details would be appreciated. “What else?”
“Heavy static. And then all the breakers popped. Like, every radio more or less simultaneously. I guess it was some fucky atmospherics from residual radiation.”
(He’s still being evasive, and no one with points in Tech – especially Cowboy – believes atmospheric effects short of a lightning strike could do what he’s describing.)
Ellis nods sympathetically. “Never minding the actual static for a moment – did you hear anything intelligible or identifiable?” Ellis gives him his most serious expression “And Lieutenant – this is not idle conversation. This is important so, think very hard and try to recall.”
Captain Warren breaks in. “Mister Ellis. It might help if we knew exactly what you were looking for besides random Russian radio chatter.” (To those with decent Empathy/Persuasion, it’s evident she’s trying to take the heat off of Dern, and maybe trying to divert attention from… something.)
First Sergeant Wheeler is watching this play out. He’s outwardly impassive but his hands are twitching in the manner of a smoker who hasn’t been able to light up in a couple of years and needs a stress relief nicotine hit.
Erick deploys his calmest, even-toned voice to assuage the tensions. “We all lost something in this. Believe me, we empathize. This isn’t an inquisition.”
Dern looks at Erick. “Chaplain’s aide. Right. ‘Inquisition,’ huh?” He chuckles darkly, then glances at Warren. “Captain, I think they’d maybe better hear this from Jenkins.”
Warren frowns but doesn’t object. She shoots a look at Wheeler, who nods, stands, and leaves the room. A couple of minutes pass in uncomfortable silence before Wheeler returns, trailed by Spec/4 Maribel Jenkins (one of the four who came by the team’s encampment the first night). Wheeler points her to his seat and leans against the wall.
Jenkins looks… not quite nervous, but unnerved. She glances at most of the PCs but won’t make eye contact with Ellis.
“Specialist Jenkins’ Russian is better than mine,” Dern not-quite-explains.
That seems to be what Jenkins needed to start talking. “Yeah. So. That night when we lost, um. The DIA guys, Major Conroy and Captain Bradshaw. After that, we started hearing a lot of Russian chatter. On the frequencies we were using, not the ones we knew they’d been on. We could barely talk to each other. Getting ahold of anyone who wasn’t already listening was not really happening.
“When I started listening in, it sounded like a battalion-sized action. They were talking like they were in contact with NATO forces, and they had some tight time pressure. They were referencing landmarks that we knew were in the area, in Czestochowa. But we were the only NATO unit in the area, and we weren’t hearing or seeing any indication of anything they were talking about. No other fights that night, once we broke contact. We would’ve heard gunfire, seen tracers or skyglow, something.
“So these Russians, they’re yelling at each other, their CO is yelling at them to move faster, push harder, they’ve got limited time to get to wherever they need to be. They’re referencing American and West German forces breaking contact with them, pulling back to the west.”
Warren, Dern, and Wheeler all, in their respective ways, look unsettled. Like they know this story and they really don’t want to hear it told again.
Jenkins keeps going. “And then what happened to the radios. Was. Um. Basically an EMP event from a nuke. I saw that twice. When that was still a thing.”
Dern nods once. “My Russian is pretty spotty, but I can confirm all of that.”
Wheeler finally speaks up. “So the captain and I came through here in ’97. And then we came back through here later that same year, when the Soviets got serious about their counteroffensive. Lieutenant Dern and Miz Jenkins weren’t with us then. Corps command decided that if friendly forces weren’t going to hold onto Czestochowa, they’d destroy the industrial centers with a couple of ADMs. There was a special munitions-capable engineer unit along with us then.” His eyes flick to Betsy. “So they set the timers and got out, with a bunch of Russians on their tails. The screening force covering them was a West German panzergrenadier company… and us.”
Cowboy leans forward. “…So, if I am understanding you correctly…you’re saying it was like…an echo? The Russians you heard were chattering about that battle?” She tries hard not to look side eye at Ellis, wracking her brain to figure out how all of these radio echos could be happening, because of the similar events the team has already encountered. She’s definitely not going to mention the radio broadcast that Cat and Betsy picked up from earlier in the night…but it also reminds her of what Cat heard back at the air traffic control tower in Radomsko.
“An echo or a recording, yeah.” Dern seizes on the offered explanation like it’s what he’s been telling himself.
Ellis smiles sympathetically and nods, jotting a few more notes. He’s heard ghostly transmissions as well while on watch. “It might give you a small measure of comfort to hear that this isn’t the first time I’ve heard a story similar to this – an echo or recording-like effect over the radio. I had a physicist colleague I was working with briefly, about two years ago explain that the amount of disruption to the Earth’s electromagnetic field courtesy of all the nukes, could create these kinds of EM anomalies. Tachyons blasts or something. But…” Ellis shrugs “I couldn’t say. Not really my field.” He glances back down to his notes, flipping back to early in the book while surreptitiously gauging the reactions of those present.
“Uh. I think I read something about that in Omni once,” Dern says after a short, awkward silence.
Ellis turns to Jenkins. “Thanks, Specialist. I’m actually glad you joined us. I had a few questions I thought your particular skillset may be able to help provide some additional perspective. Did either the DIA major or captain leave you with anything prior to the unfortunate engagement where they lost their lives?”
“Not really.”Jenkins’ eyes cut sideways to her first sergeant. “I mean, they hadn’t been with us long. They didn’t have much time for junior enlisted.” She manages to say that without more than a trace of E-4 Mafia superiority.
“I’ll admit I’m not the most well-versed in the Army’s organizational structure, especially as the war… evolved… but I am a little surprised you didn’t have at least some facetime with either of them, unless your intel shop is a little deeper than I’m to understand.” Ellis smiles faintly. “Captain, at the time the DIA officers linked up with your unit, did you have a dedicated intelligence officer? I realize that the specialist here is, as she said, junior enlisted, but I didn’t know if you had any other intel troops on-hand that may have had some words/exchange. It may be nothing, but the gaps I’m feeling around the DIA and their contact feels…” Ellis waves noncommittally and trails off.
“Even prewar, we didn’t have a dedicated intelligence officer at the troop level,” Warren replies. “If we needed that, we would have gotten it from the squadron level. Jenkins was attached to us last year when we were doing some deep raiding and might need to talk to prisoners, and we sort of forgot to give her back.” She smiles faintly.
Erick matches that thin smile with one of his own, and sighs a bit, spreading his palms out from their normal clasped position on the table in front of him. “I am, as Lt. Dern so aptly points out, just a chaplain’s aide, and not myself privy to the goings on that so many of our more… clandestine unit members.” His smile goes from distinctly disarming to grumpily earnest. “However, we all have seen and heard some, for lack of a more scientific term, ‘weird shit.’ Whether for concerns of opsec or perhaps even just being deliberately coy, we’re dangerously close to just treading this into the mud. I would sincerely like to think that we are all of the same side here, if not the same page.”
He pauses and tries to meet as many gazes as he can, scanning those gathered around the table. “So, for the love of what may or may not still be holy… can we just speak plainly, here and now? What is to be said may never leave this room, but unless there is some honesty and clarity to be had… by everyone… then we are wasting time.” He grimaces at that, an apologetic smile and gesture for coming across a bit more harshly that he seems to have intended.
“It wasn’t recordings,” Jenkins says softly. She looks up, glaring at Ellis. “It wasn’t recordings, and it wasn’t Star Trek tachyon bullshit.” Her voice grows louder. “They were on our channels. They were reacting to us. They could hear us. They were trapped and they were trying to trap me with them, trying to get me to talk to them.” She leans forward, eyes focused on a radio console only she can see. “I didn’t say anything to them, but I heard them die, okay? I heard them burn. Is that spooky enough for you, Mister Ellis? Chaplain’s aide?” She slumps back, spent.
Ellis listens to Jenkins vent her frustration, fear and dismay and nods, not unsympathetically when she finishes. He doesn’t ask any further questions and, as she turns to go, he returns to his notebook thoughtfully jotting a few things down, letting the rest of the conversation carry on towards its natural conclusion.
Dern clears his throat. “That’s… why we stay off the radios at night, now.”
Wheeler shoots Warren an undecipherable look. “That’s enough, Maribel,” he says, not unkindly. He puts a hand on Jenkins’ shoulder and nods toward the door. When she stands, he escorts her out, closing the door behind them.
Cowboy sighs and puts another metaphorical card on the table. “We’ve been picking up…radio broadcasts like that for a couple of weeks at least now, but never responded to any of them, not wanting to give away our positions…and sort of assuming they were echos…radio signals do bounce around the atmosphere, but they are so fast they don’t…stick around long. A radio wave can bounce around the entire globe about seven times a second…but usually it’s too garbled to actually distinguish anything once it passes the horizon, but if you get lucky, you can still pick up some of the first radio broadcasts from the 1930s.
“We were actually picking up some broadcasts before we came here. Russians, from the signals, over to the west of here. We haven’t had a chance for someone to translate it yet, but we got a recording. Cat,” she nods at the other woman, “said it sounded like requests and responses for artillery back up. Hernandez’s assessment is that they were somewhere around Opole and the Silesian borders.”
Cat’s gaze follows Jenkins out the door. She’s tensed as if she might follow the intel specialist. For a moment after Cowboy calls on her to talk about a broadcast she’d heard, she almost panics. Then she realizes, oh wait- the other broadcast. Her shoulders go down a fraction of an inch, and she nods. “It was the rythm of it,” she says. “It was just like the call and response before artillery can act, giving coordinates.”
“The things happening west of here, at least, are probably legitimate,” Warren says, looking marginally less uncomfortable. “There’s still an organized Soviet force over there… the 129th Motor Rifle Division. They’re based out of Opole and have about a half-dozen perimeter garrisons that we know about, and they’ve been getting into it with Silesia for the last few weeks.”
“And if you can D-F them,” Dern says, looking at Hernandez, “that’s another indication that they’re, um, real. The others, we can’t find a bearing that their transmissions are coming from.” He’s still a bit pale.
“So. To your point, corporal,” Warren says to Erick, “we have seen – and heard – some ‘weird shit,’ as you put it. Whatever it was on the radio. We’ve all noticed that this town is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to people still thinking clearly. We’ve had a couple of gunfights with deserters, bandits, whatever, who didn’t behave normally – didn’t react to pain, were far too organized for men who didn’t speak to each other. And every time the merchants show up, they have another batch of secondhand stories about things other people claim they’ve seen at night.”
She leans forward, focusing on Pettimore now. “And that’s the real point of this chat, Staff Sergeant. You’ve clearly seen some similar things. We don’t have much here, but we have enough that’s worth defending, and I’ve got not nearly as many troops as I need for that job. If you and your people want to come in from the cold, and I mean that both literally and figuratively, because it’s almost winter… I can give you a place here. I could damn sure use the manpower, and you’d be among fellow Americans again.”
Cowboy leans back and her shoulders go down a fraction of an inch. “Okay, thank God I can talk about this shit without sounding like that crazy person in a fucking horror movie.”
Cat crosses her arms. “Yeah, I still feel like that, really. Crazy person in a horror movie sounds accurate.”
Hernandez snorts at Cowboy. “If you and Bell and I die first, then you’ll know we’re in a horror movie.”
Cat snorts. Twitches. Finally she laughs. “Damnit, Hernandez.” She leans back in her seat, actually looking amused instead of haunted for the first time in a while.
“Apologies, Captain, for ripping the Band-Aid off of this one as I did,” Erick says deferentially. “However we all got to where we are, I can completely empathize with your setup here and wanting to make it work. I certainly am not trying to jump the train of command here, ma’am.” He gestures towards his own unit-mates. “Clearly this ragtag bunch deals with their trauma with humor,” he says, with a spreading grin.
That’s about where we left off with the in-character discussion, but Ellis had some more to say… to be continued in tomorrow’s post.