Flashback, adapted from the original playthrough in Discord chat:
Via Fryderyka’s ex-militia partisans, Ellis sends word back to Ponikla that he has need of Miko’s assistance with some recon and sabotage work. Miko happily loads up a quantity of demolitions that he has only a minimal idea how to use and sets off for the rendezvous on one of the motorcycles.
Ellis he wants to take a look at the airfield north of Tomaszow, which was struck by a NATO tactical nuke during the war. The locals are avoiding it because of radiation fears, but the marauders seem to be visiting it regularly with a work crew, a horsedrawn wagon, and a fuel bladder.
The early August weather is hot and sunny with clear skies. The moon is a waxing crescent. The airfield sits on mostly flat ground with abandoned farms to the north and west, forest to the east, and a low hill to the southeast (partially blocking view from Tomaszow).
The duo moves in quietly, slowly, and carefully, watching for observers (or snipers). Ellis’ main focus is on finding their source of fuel so he can gauge how much is left. He thinks he can estimate how much the marauders need for a [REDACTED SPOILER] he’s previously observed and, if it makes sense, sabotage that supply. Preliminary reconnaissance at long range gives them the general layout of the facility:
Ellis’ training and experience suggest the base was hit with a cruise missile. Yield would’ve been 150kt, more or less. It was an airburst, so the “crater” label is a misnomer, but there is a permanently glazed spot north of the runway. Not a direct hit, but close enough to put the place out of business:
- The base administration buildings are flat – scoured down to the foundations. The north half of the housing complex is the same, and the rest of it apparently burned after the strike.
- The hangars were hardened, but not for this. The frames are standing but they look rickety and unstable. The remains of three Su-25s are visible inside one of them.
- The fuel farm was located in a secure area surrounded by a berm, with a razor-wire fence and security cameras on poles. It looks like the base armory and maybe some comms or crypto was also in there once. The fuel tanks are ruptured and scorched, and everything else in there burned. Wherever the marauders are getting their fuel, that isn’t it. The aboveground tanks look to be about the right size for a small airbase like this one. Underground tanks are a possibility, but Ellis doesn’t see any of the usual indicators of their existence.
- The Geiger counter is reading slightly elevated radiation downwind of the impact site but the overall area isn’t so hot as to be concerning.
Miko and Ellis wait for sundown to move in closer. The crescent moon is casting minimal illumination conducive to a stealthy approach. Upon closer inspection, the base admin facilities are toast – no salvage to be had. The hangars are in slightly better condition and it might be possible to pick up some salvageable bits here and there. The Su-25s do not appear to have been stripped, probably because of radiation immediately after the blast (or because there was no one with enough knowledge of aviation to figure out what to pull off of them). None of them are ever going to fly again, though.
(Judging from the stuff on the surviving interior walls, it looks like the Su-25s weren’t an original tenant unit at this facility. This appears to have been home to an Mi-8 transport squadron. The Su-25s must have been staging out of here for CAS.)
The high-security area is also a total loss, thanks to catastrophic fires. It’s evident the marauders aren’t getting their fuel – or anything else – from there.
The team heads to the tower. It’s leaning in a way that suggests major structural damage, but if it hasn’t fallen by now, it’s probably settled into a somewhat-stable alignment. The stairs creak alarmingly as Miko goes up… but they hold.
From the elevated vantage point, no activity beyond normal wildlife movement is visible. They can see that the rail line terminates over by the base admin area. There’s a single warehouse over there (the rectangular building with the metal roof by the parking lot), which burned in the fires that consumed the base housing area. However, there’s a larger cargo handling facility (at the “Rail Station” label,) with a cluster of eight warehouses built so that a rail spur actually runs through them (not reflected on the photo, but I’m improvising here). Those are scorched blast-damaged but still standing, and there appear to be a few rail cars parked inside them.
Ellis and Miko spend about an hour poking around the base, looking for signs of foot and wagon traffic. All indicators point to the rail freight depot. The marauders may have scouted the rest of the airbase, but that’s pretty clearly where they’ve been focusing their efforts.
They head in, checking for mines, tripwires, and other nastiness along the way. Miko does spot the wires of two directional mines across the service road leading into the depot. They’re affixed to the skeletal poles of scorched road signs – easy landmarks and reminders for a crew that probably disengages and resets them each visit.
The depot contains a short string of railcars. All of them bear signs of damage from the nuke and a couple are derailed; one boxcar is completely on its side:
- Two flatcars are both empty, with no sign of what they once contained (beyond the fact that it was probably massive machinery, judging from the heavy chain tiedowns).
- The derailed boxcar is half-full of some sort of prefab construction material. Ellis recognizes it as the sort of runway matting used for emergency repairs after a runway has been cratered by bombing or artillery.
- One more boxcar has been forced open and thoroughly looted.
- A third boxcar also has been forced open, but it’s not completely looted (yet). There are four pallets of what, upon inspection, are Soviet-made chemical defense suits, gas masks, and extra filters. It’s probably enough to equip 80 people, subject to appropriate sizes.
- Last, there’s a tank car. It’s derailed and the outer envelope is dented, but there’s no sign of leakage and the valves show clear indications of recent use. It was parked by the fittings for transferring fuel to the airbase’s storage tanks. Cracking it open and dropping a weighted cord into it, Miko is able to estimate that it’s down to the dregs… but on something this big, the dregs are still about 4,000 liters of Jet-A.
Ellis and Miko back off and discuss. Neither of them is a demolitions specialist, but Miko brought along a good quantity of plastic explosive. How hard could a shaped charge be?
[I roll. Miko’s stupid luck comes through again: 3 successes on a pushed Tech roll.]
Miko scrounges around in the ruins. Finds a couple of flowerpots to use as a mold for the plastic explosive. Packs it in, braces it in place with rubble, plugs in three detonators. Wires it up. Backs way the hell up, to the very limit of the 100m wire spool he brought.
Miko and Ellis are behind the hardest cover they can find, so they don’t actually see the explosion. And it’s inside the rail depot anyway. But there’s a sound like the world’s largest soda can being crushed under a giant’s foot. And then the fire starts.
They probably heard the blast, and can see the glow, in Tomaszow.
The whole rail depot is on fire. Gonna make it hard to find any evidence.
They should probably leave now.
The response arrives in about fifteen minutes. Twelve guys on horses, backed up by a BRDM-2 Ellis hadn’t seen before – the marauders probably were keeping it in a restricted section of the power plant that’s their primary base.
The BRDM stays on overwatch while the riders dismount and search the area in trios. There’s not much for them to find, though, and they’re certainly not getting close enough to the fire to see any evidence there.
They stay on site until dawn, when a similarly-sized force comes out to relieve them. The relief force is led by the marauders’ warlord, Anatoliy Utkin. The flames have died down by then and the ashes are cool enough for him to approach. He goes in with a couple of dudes – not bodyguards, from the body language and equipment. They’re possibly his technical experts. They poke around for about half an hour, focused on the tank car.
From a few hundred meters away, Ellis can’t tell what conclusions they come to, but when Utkin comes out, he pulls in the sentries and they ride back to Tomaszow. It looks like, at least for the short term, he’s writing this off – there’s nothing left here for him to exploit.