Session 63: Bruised and Bloodied

The Session began with the party, along with their command staff and the visiting Ivan, under intense psychic assault from the Red Tide commander Jimbob, and Silence attempted to scry on. Sharos, who was just outside, was unaffected, leaving him, Kenny, who resisted the attack, and a few others capable enough to call for medics. The medical team rushed in, unable to do much against psychic assault, they injected sedatives to stop the seizures. Jimbob came to and immediately rallied the entire company to evacuate, he recognized the spell effect to be mind-reading and told everyone to think about brick walls or something. As they came to, Cecile and Silence, along with Jimbob, began attempting to block the spell's effects on affected individuals one by one. Cecile figured out how to cast a field that would shield those they couldn't safeguard yet. But it had to be stationary.

Still recovering from the brutal mission the day before, and now this psychic assault, new orders came at the worst possible time. While the Liberators returned to their forward command post, Jane radiod the liberators personally from mid firefight, she reported that the lines of battle had broken in Quincy, and they were now in a chaotic urban blender. Worse than that, a Red Tide force had circumvented all the minutemen forces and was assaulting the Quincy Quarry, which she revealed was the location of Vault 88, the Minutemen's doomsday bunker, where Kutter had been kept prisoner with 1st Vanguard. She said she didn't have a man to spare, and they had to break the siege of modified robots drilling through the vault door, or the consequences would be absolutely catastrophic. She reported that she had just lost contact with the inside of the installation, saying the enemies were also hacking into the servers inside.

Kutter insisted they deploy immediately; he was ready to leave despite his entire head aching like a sledgehammer had been taken to his temple, and the rest of the team was in a worse state. Wiser minds prevailed, and they managed to convince Kutter to let the rest of them recover, also gaslighting him into thinking that the quarry, which was only a few miles away, was actually dozens out, so that he wouldn't just walk over there in the meantime.

Kutter, with the players' blessing, still put together a forward scouting party of some of the power armored troops, one of his newer super mutant recruits, Bingus, and the pit fits veteran Big Mac, also planning to send in the breachers to help in the close quarters combat that would inevitably ensue inside the vault should the enemy force breach before. With all other high-ranking field officers under the psychic probing or otherwise incapacitated, Doc volunteered to lead the forward force. Kutter grilled Barry for anti-robot ammunition for the assault force, and Barry told him to have Sharos pick up the armor-piercing slugs from Vantage on one of his trips, to which Sharos agreed. With the plan set, the players and command staff set in for a long rest as Sharos deployed the assault force in waves with the instructions to probe enemy positions and stay safe.

When the players awoke, Jimbob, Cecile, and Silence continued to work to remove the probing effects from the remaining affected troops. Jimbob opted to stay behind and continue the work while Kutter, Cecile, Silence, Kenny, Sharos, and Jason assaulted the Quarry. Kenny went to find May, both of them nearly relapsing from the mental stress of the psychic intrusions, but Kenny barely managed to power through and crush the psycho syringe May stole before they did anything stupid. She hit him, asking him if it was really more important than letting their friends die because they're weak and strung out, and Kenny stonewalled her. He convinced her to come on the mission, and she agreed, saying she may as well be there for more of her friends dying.

The players set off: Hank Richards, Robert, Rem, and Chokehold also joined. When they landed, they found Doc in a state of disarray, the breachers had established a perimiter around the Quarry, but they were unable to use radio communications as the robot forced had been picking up on it and homing in. Additionally, on the first scouting mission, they had been spotted from much further away than expected and were instantly set upon by a swarm of sentry bots, faster than should be possible, the players arrived to find all three of the power armor troops dead, as well as Bingus, Doc was tending to Big Mac who like him, barely made it out alive. Kutter froze up and was comforted by Hank, who asked Kutter if he'd like him to say a prayer for them. Kutter agreed, and they did so.

Meanwhile, Jason was able to deduce from Doc's account that the sentry bots were working on a hivemind, and the control unit was inside the cave in the quarry. He and Silence devised a plan to use one of Silence's hacking algorithms uploaded to Jason's pipboy to hack into one of the robots, hopefully disrupting the network or even shutting down the bots entirely. The players rallied their full force, including all the breachers and Kutter's full AT squad, led by Chokehold with his Autocannon and Rem with her Gauss Rifle. It was decided the party would move in and attempt to divert the hivemind's attention while Jason moved in to sneak hack one of the units, either that, or they would score a mobility kill on one of the sentry bots for Jason to safely move in and hack. Silence opted to stay back, and Kutter chose to take Hank over Robert for his better ability to tank damage head-on.

They put the plan into action with Kenny, May, Kutter, and Hank pushing in hard along with the breachers who were under Kenny's command; meanwhile, Jason and Blair moved invisibly on the flank to see if they could score a hack early, all while Sharos, RM, and the AT crew rained down fire on the sentry bots. The frontline was hit hard, but even the backline on the cliffs wasn't safe as missiles flew up at them. Things only got more hectic when two mortar sentry bots deployed from the cave entrance and began raining down fire on the stationary backline.