Session 59: Broken Arrow

The artillery struck, but instead of napalm or explosives the players were met with cannisters spewing noxious gas. The nightkin were prepared with gas masks; only Jason was left unaffected with his full face respirator.

Jeremy and Reshaun had to fall back as they were on deaths door. Blair who was also in rough shape had to be ushered away by Jason. They all faired worse than Kutter however, he and May were in the thick of it, but unlike her he no longer benefited from the berserker rage, and felt the full brunt of the falling sledgehammers. They were both ready to drop. Kenny pushed in hard to assist, toughing through the gas and sliding down onto the frozen pond and sliding onto the ice for a better angle. Him and David fire from the ditch and take some pressure off, even more so when Kenny dives in for a flying kick coordinated with a quiet shot from David the sends the mutant sliding into the shattered ice like nothing happened.

Kutter ups the antee, crushing the captive super mutant in his claw while Kenny pushed the advantage with a flurry of blows. Jason laid down fire with Blair assisting in the heavy cycling of the repeater for Jason to make a follow up shot absolutely vaporizing the targets head. Kutter sent Robert to heal Rem, while the swordsman himself laid into his opponents, cleaving clean through two of them in a sweep before he continued to butcher the remainder.

With this second wind the team rallied and pushed back hard, with Jeremy and Sharos keeping the snipers off them they made quick work of the remaining nightkin.

When the dust settled, the snipers were dead or running, and only one nightkin remained alive as he surrendered. David profusely apologized for the misfire. Kutter summed it up to all's well that ends well. The surrendering nightkin introduced himself as Ivan, and said he was an infiltrator to the Red Tide and he was originally from out pretty far out west. He teamed up with the players and quickly earned their trust by giving them everything he had on Echo's battle plans and SOP also baiting the remaining enemy snipers to make easy shots for Sharos, Jeremy, and David, though the enemy Lieutenant ran a tight ship, with almost paranoid levels of operational security, often leaving his own men in the dark with only him knowing the master plan. He told the Echo was a pre war ghoul, military trained special operations sniper. Kutter put together that this was the silent ghoul sniper he had run into during his own infiltration down in Newport.

The mission continued with Robert taking Rem back to base. Soon after the players spotted a blinking signal, indicating a minuteman squad in distress, they moved to assist, but were ultimately brought into a trap, they were hit both by the trojan horse snipers and from the rear by an extremely high-caliber rifle, likely 20mm. David was hit, losing an eye and being concussed by one of the snipers ahead. Jeremy was hit next, instantly hitting the ground and beginning to bleed out, Sharos put out a smoke to cover Kutter who ran in to save the downed Jeremy. Jeremy called, "Boss-" before a 20mm sailed right through the smoke and hit him clean through the chest, killing him instantly.

Sharos tried to get a location, and saw a puff of heat in the car distance, allowing him to barely dodge the snipers next devastating round. Pinned on both sides Ivan suggested hitting the rough locations of each group of snipers with artillery and booking it, which the team proceeded to do. Heading back to the FOB the leadership decided it was time to mount the offensive, and it had to be slow and methodical, they couldn't afford to lose more of their best men.