This series of posts spans one session of planning, two and a half sessions of gameplay, and some asynchronous private chat conversations, all focused on concluding one story arc. In play, both groups were active simultaneously, with focus shifting between the two every 15 to 30 minutes of realtime or every one to three rounds of combat. For narrative purposes, Parts One through Four of this series will alternate focus somewhat asynchronously.
Combat in this session was run using the CQB rules for Urban Operations, with a fairly abstract map.
In the museum’s administrative wing, it’s decision time. By now, someone surely is aware that the marauders’ headquarters is under siege. The infiltration element hasn’t encountered Shotkin, Rasputin, or any prisoners yet.
Cat, holding position on the door to the lobby, spots something large and low-slung moving in the street. She can’t be certain, but it’s the right size for the marauders’ BMP-3. The infiltration team has nothing that can penetrate an infantry fighting vehicle’s armor.
“We’re on a clock,” Ellis decides. He pulls back his cuff and rotates his wristwatch’s crown. “We’re going to see what’s down there. Fifteen minutes and we’re leaving.”
There’s a rapid weapon swap. Pettimore takes point with Thoughts and Prayers up, despite the close confines. Miko is close behind him with a flashlight and his machete. Ellis takes up the middle, taking over the KS-23 that Miko recently liberated from a downed marauder. Erick and Cat bring up the rear with shotguns ready.
The bottom of the stairs lets out into the museum’s mechanical room. It’s dirty, greasy, rusty, wet, spider-infested, and far too tight for comfort. Pettimore takes a knee and motions for Miko to lower his flashlight. In the single passageway between machinery and storage shelves, layers of footprints in the muck tell the story of frequent and recent passage. There’s some evidence of bare feet, too – and drag marks. The Marine points them out and frowns.
The tracks lead to a set of heavy double doors. Cat casts her light around, landing on a grime-covered sign bolted to the wall. Pettimore sweeps a hand across it: Schron Przeciwatomowy.
“Fallout shelter,” Miko translates.
With guns pointed, the team pulls back the doors. The space beyond is cavernous. Rows of benches sit empty, with crumpled ration boxes and discarded clothes and bedding drifted around their legs. At the far end of the space, the flashlight beams barely can pick out another set of double doors, these cracked open about a meter. Nothing but darkness is visible beyond them.
The team advances into the shelter. They’re halfway down its length when gunfire erupts from the doors at the far end. Something smashes Ellis’ chest and he goes down. Miko drops his flashlight; the rolling beam picks out sickly yellow-white mist boiling up.
“Gas, gas, gas!” Pettimore yells. Suppressive fire goes out as the team backs out, pulling on their gas masks. A metallic thud echoes through the shelter as the doors at the far end of the space are hauled shut.
Ellis coughs hard and tries not to fold over at the pain from ribs that, if not broken, are most certainly going to be a spectacular mass of hematoma in the morning. He pulls out a handful of his spare KS-23 rounds and holds one under Cat’s flashlight. “Tear gas round,” he says. “Bet they’ve got another one of these.”
“You’re lucky you still have a chest,” Pettimore observes. He plucks a different round from Ellis’ hand. “I read a tech brief about these slugs. They’re designed for vehicle stops. If it’ll go through a Volga’s engine block, I’ll bet it’ll go through that door. Wish we had a breaching charge, though.”
Cat snorts. “Hey, you guys remember when we were planning this op and Ellis asked Betsy to build one of those for us?”
Ellis wipes at his watering eyes. “I did? I did. Yes.”
Cat unslings her pack and produces a duct-taped assemblage of broken tent poles with a kilo of C-4 at its heart. “So, I don’t actually wanna haul this back to camp…”
With four guns covering her, Cat advances to the far door. The tear gas fumes burn on her exposed skin. Working as quickly as she can, she emplaces the charge and retreats, unspooling the fuse behind her. “Close the doors,” she advises. She takes a knee, starts the fuse, and quickly covers her ears…
WHAM-crack!
The team swings the shelter’s entrance open. They don’t need their flashlights to assess the results of Betsy’s prior work and Cat’s deployment of it. Beyond the now-open doors at the shelter’s far end, flames dance. “Assholes rigged the doors with a frag and a Molotov,” Erick observes.
“That means they’re not right there right now,” Ellis says. “Move it.”
“Hold up,” says Pettimore. He releases the magazine from Thoughts and Prayers, pulls the charging handle to eject the chambered round, and returns the cartridge to the magazine. He returns the magazine to his chest rig, then reaches into a separate utility pouch. The magazine he withdraws is striped in silver paint pen. He seats the new mag and runs the Dragunov’s bolt. “Okay. Good to go.”
Beyond the doors, an old subterranean utility corridor runs east-west. It’s lined with generations of pipes and cables. To the east, it opens out into what looks like a storm sewer. To the west, it continues only a few meters before ending in an old collapse. The nook that the collapse forms, though, shows signs of recent habitation – and several sets of chains set into heavy bolts driven into the stone and concrete.
The storm sewer is old but still stable. Narrow walkways run along either side, flanking a broad semicircular channel that’s currently about half-full of runoff from the ongoing rainstorm. The tracks in the muck lead south.
The team pushes up cautiously. As they advance, they begin noticing irregular speckles of light on the ceiling. Beyond the reach of their flashlight beams, a greater darkness yawns. Firelight glimmers off the surface of a retention basin.
Across the channel, something stirs. It’s a carpet hung across a side entrance. At a gesture from Ellis, Miko slips into the water and crosses to check it out. He’s easing the tip of his machete forward to sweep it aside when he spots motion at the entrance to the retention basin.
The team drops flat as gunfire erupts from both sides of the entryway. Cat grunts as a round finds her, but she props herself up and begins returning fire along with Erick and Pettimore. Ellis rolls into the channel and starts working his way forward, only his head above water. Miko yells and dashes forward, bringing his machete down. The blade rings off a gun barrel as his target parries.
Beyond the archway, the team spots Shotkin standing on a metal inspection platform that extends over the water. Behind him is a slab of concrete or stone, its purpose obvious in context. In front of him are two of the prisoners whose reception the team witnessed during their earlier reconnaissance mission. Both of them are unresisting – unresponsive, even – despite the erupting gunfight and the lack of visible restraints.
“Got you,” Pettimore hisses. He comes up to a knee and steadies Thoughts and Prayers.
Shotkin raises his face to the ceiling and the sky beyond it. “Al-Khidr, come to us now and strike down these intruders who defile your sacred altar!” he shouts in Russian. There’s a flash of bronze as he reaches around and cuts the throat of the teenage girl standing at his right hand. She offers no resistance. Blood begins to pulse as Shotkin pushes her into the pool.
Pettimore screams in rage and fires. Shotkin staggers back but snatches the shirt of the remaining prisoner and pulls the young man in front of him.
Erick and Cat concentrate their fire on the marauder with the submachine gun who’s holding the left side of the entrance. He pulls back at the hail of bullets. Ellis comes out of the water almost at his feet and narrowly misses him with a round of buckshot. The marauder rips a burst into Ellis’ chest but the agent’s armor holds. A second 6-gauge blast tears through the marauder’s vest and the organs behind it, dropping him.
Pettimore puts a round into Shotkin’s forehead. The Kazakh staggers but still doesn’t fall. Unbelievably, he draws a revolver and begins returning fire.
Miko’s opponent empties his shotgun but can’t connect with a machete-wielding teenager in his face. Miko cuts him down and starts running toward Shotkin.
Pettimore breathes and fires again. The Kazakh warlord collapses. His prisoner staggers and falls forward into the pool.
Miko swings his shotgun around and moves in cautiously. Pettimore and Erick start running toward the platform, moving around the other side of the drainage channel. Without speaking, they drop whatever encumbering gear they can remove quickly and slip into the pool, moving toward the two prisoners.
Pettimore feels a surge of motion against his leg. Something pulls the girl’s body beneath the dark surface in a rush of displaced water. “Out of the water, out of the water now!” The two men haul themselves and the surviving teenager out of the basin.
Pettimore stands, unholsters his MEU(SOC), and empties it into Shotkin’s head. Then he reloads and trains his sidearm on the water. Just for a moment, not long enough to take a shot, he catches the impression of a pair of large, unblinking eyes beneath the water. A swirl of long, powerful limbs. And a sense of cold, dispassionate disappointment. Then it’s gone. Quietly, Pettimore intones, “I see you, monster. I see you, and I rebuke you.”
Ellis reloads and looks at his watch. “Three minutes,” he orders. “Miko, with me.” Miko looks up from where he’s looting Shotkin’s body. The two move to the carpet-draped entrance again and cautiously clear it. Beyond is a small maintenance alcove converted into one-person living quarters and a study. They toss it ruthlessly. A rickety bookshelf yields a Russian translation of the Koran, heavily annotated, and a couple of notebooks. Miko also turns up half a can of radium-laced luminescent paint.
Cat looks at the can in Miko’s hand as he comes out of the side chamber. “That explains something.” She jerks her chin at the softly-glowing motes scattered across the ceiling. “This is a star map.” Her hand comes up and she traces the invisible lines connecting a few constellations. “Looks like it’s centered on… Altair.”
“How’d he get up there to paint it?” Ellis asks rhetorically. He turns to Miko. “Hey, do those dead guys have another Molotov left?”
Miko checks. “One here.”
Ellis flicks a hand in the direction of Shotkin’s burrow. “Burn it.”
Pettimore prods Shotkin’s still form with the toe of his boot. “You see that?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Erick says. “That ain’t normal. Get the video camera.” He pulls a scalpel from his medical kit and begins peeling back Shotkin’s remaining scalp, narrating as he goes. “Skull is thicker than it should be. There’s some sign of irregular bone growth. Something weird here – hey, zoom in on this. Blade’s having a hell of a time cutting it, it’s like there’s something woven just under his skin. Aaaand… ew. Left side of the torso, just below the collarbone, we have a circular wound about four inches across. Unknown mechanism of injury. Some inflammation and scarring, like it’s recurring trauma.”
“Looks like a lamprey bite,” Pettimore comments. “But bigger.”
“Time’s up,” Ellis declares. “Get a blood sample for the doc and we’re out of here.”
The ambush and infiltration elements link up without further incident. As they head back to Kamiensk, taking a roundabout route to deter tracking or pursuit, they can hear gunfights erupting in the city…