The salvagers’ camp is a pentagonal shipping container compound built around some rich Pole’s hunting lodge. Each corner has a sandbagged watchtower with a GPMG or HMG. Parked inside are a warty-looking BRDM-2 with its engine compartment propped open (a BRDM-2RKh, for the gearfondlers playing along at home), a HMMWV, a Zil-131, two trailers of decontamination gear, a 1000-liter water trailer with siphon pump, and the military forklift the salvagers used to move the conexes. Cleared lanes of fire extend at least 200 meters in every direction. An array of containers inside the perimeter holds various items of salvage. The compound is set up with a decontamination lane, a laundry and shower setup, a still, and a separate kitchen.
The place appears to be home to about fifteen to twenty people, with ample room for visitors to park – it’s clearly intended to function as a caravanserai. Guards on the towers track the team’s approach, but they raise their muzzles when Ryba waves a signal flag in what’s clearly a prearranged signal. As the UAZ noses through the gates, a marshaller with two rags tied to sticks trots forward to direct them into a parking location.
A sharp-featured woman with intense eyes and inelegantly-hacked short auburn hair comes forward to check on her wounded. Once she’s sure they’re in no immediate danger, she turns, greets Ryba enthusiastically, then introduces herself to the PCs as Raissa Kavaliova.
Cat is practically vibrating with her need to ask questions. For weeks, she’s had a growing sense of dread/hope that she and Hernandez may not be the last survivors of Task Force Cobalt. Finding gear in Dobrodzien from one of her friends in that unit is what led them here. Hernandez is a calming presence at her shoulder, but he, too, is leaning forward with anticipation.
Kavaliova’s crew is accustomed to hosting Ryba and his team. Eleven extra people (and one dog who thinks he’s people) are a bit of a strain, but they can accommodate. The merchants pitch in to get dinner going while the PCs (less those pulling maintenance and security) follow Kavaliova into the lodge for a drink and a serious discussion.
Kavaliova is grateful to the team. She doesn’t have a surgeon on staff and at least one of her wounded people would not have survived without Octavia’s intervention – to say nothing of how the overall marauder attack would have turned out. Her people recognized several of the raiders as deserters with whom they’d previously done business, and she suspects their intent was to take hostages and force her to open the compound. So she’s more than forthcoming under Cat’s not-quite-interrogation and Hernandez’s not-quite-cross-examination.
The gear that piqued Cat’s interest back in Dobrodzien was part of a batch of trade goods that Kavaliova’s crew took in from a group of very sickly deserters, two weeks ago. They numbered nine or ten, and Kavaliova’s lone infantryman, Anatoli, recognized some of them as former fellow soldiers of the 9th TD. The group was traveling in two vehicles: a shot-to-shit GAZ-66 medium truck and an American LAV-25 with succubus nose art and the name “Miss Anthropy” tagged on the bow.
Cat and Hernandez exchange a look. That LAV-25 is the one vehicle from Task Force Cobalt that, until this conversation, was unaccounted for. It”s the one Bill Hughes was riding when Cobalt was ambushed near Przedbórz in late August.
The marauders were cagey, Kavaliova says, keeping heavy guard on the truck and not letting anyone see the back of it. They also were sickly – the salvage crew clearly recognized advanced radiation sickness. They had a mixed batch of NATO equipment and small arms – weirdly, including two Geiger counters, a scintillation counter (gamma detector), and some other CBRNE defense gear. They wanted food and medication. The salvagers got them on the road as quickly as possible. The marauders didn’t know how to use the gear they were trading off, but something in that truck was hot. They let slip that they were headed for Krakow…
Cat asks if the salvagers have anything else left from that batch of trade. Kavaliova nods – they’ve decontaminated and screened everything, but her people still have an uneasy feeling about it, so they haven’t rolled it into the rest of their inventory yet. She pushes her chair back and leads the team to the bank of shipping containers that holds her crew’s merchandise.
Cat catches her breath. Some of it is just gear, but she recognizes a number of things. The AN/PRC-148 radio sitting on top of the pile was Hughes’, as was the MR 73 in the shoulder holster. There’s a Mk. 11 DMR and a partial set of Trivial Pursuit cards that Joey Pasquarelli carried. The sanitized CADPAT fatigues, the Rush Counterparts tour shirt, and the C7A1 belonged to… she looks at Hernandez. “Shit, what was that Canadian guy’s name?”
The team investigates the rest of the gear. Most of it, as advertised, is generic field kit or CBRNE protection. Octavia holds up a box of exposed dosimeters. “Something was hot,” she notes acerbically.
Ellis notes that the weapons haven’t been cleaned since they were last used, and that was probably three months ago, judging from the rust and corrosion. They’re all in good working order, though. The helmets and fatigues all have minor tears and scorching consistent with combat damage. From the smell, he suspects a vehicle fire – scorched fuel, hydraulic fluid, and other stuff. But they’re sufficiently intact that the wearers probably survived that experience.
Among the Trivial Pursuit cards, he finds a folded note. He reads it and his eyebrows go up. Without saying anything, he passes it to Cat. She has just enough time to read:
29 Sep
Azure 1-5
2 US 1 CAN POW
Sov deserter custody
destination Krakow to RV Carter - subj unk, poss defector
— before the note crumples to black ash as it touches her fingertips. She snatches her hand back, involuntarily waving it as pain shoots through it. The Geiger counters chatter urgently for a moment.
Octavia stares incredulously. “That… doesn’t work that way.”
“Witchcraft,” Cowboy mutters.
Over the following hours, almost everyone who was present – Octavia, Ellis, Cat, Cowboy, Miko, and Hernandez – falls ill with the telltale symptoms of radiation sickness. Erick marshals Betsy, Bell, and Ortiz to be his hands as he does what he can to treat the symptoms. Miraculously, everyone pulls through over the next 24 hours, though still suffering lingering weakness – Ellis and Cat worst of all.
“Just take it,” Kavaliova says, when asked what she wants for the merchandise.
This was the first time in the campaign that we’d really dealt with the radiation rules. Cat and Ellis wound up each picking up a permanent rad from the experience, which is one of the clearest cases I’ve ever seen of the dice enforcing the story.