Wallflower Session 4: Chasing Smoke
A Brief Aside.
The official campaign, No Room For A Wallflower is out. I'm reading through my copy and adapting the content to work with the canon I've established. So far, I'm finding the official version fixes most of the gaps in drafts I've worked around.
Aftermath
Unable to abandon the engineering team to a potential counter-attack, the pilots listened to what information was availible about the attacks on the grey towns, and examined the op-for mechs they had splashed.
The frames were unquestionably mechanical at the core, but had trellis-like frameworks through which the biological chitin had grown. It slowly bled a pale green fluid when pierced.
The pilot of Anvil Gamma was human, with an unfamiliar style of clothing and a intricate henna-analogous design on the forehead and upper face. The design looked somewhere between a cross section of an MRI and calligraphy.
As the engineers finished up, the pilots loaded the mechs onto the flatbeds for transport to Evergreen and further analysis, then set out with all haste to answer the mayday from Serenity.
Pitstop
On their way back to Evergreen, a message from Colonial Atache Edena Ji asked them to rendevouz briefly well outside of town. Atache Ji met them there, and took commands of the wrecks. She ordered her subaltern guards to tear away more of the chitin, and fully reveal the mechanical systems of the frames.
She justified these actions as a way to unmask the enemy; they are not Egregorian in nature. She dismissed the pilots to proceed to Liu Maize, while she herself escorted the engineering team and the flatbeds cargo home to Evergreen.
Scorched Earth
Arriving in Liu Maize, Thunderbird Squadron found it to be in chaos. The distributed outridings of Liu Maize had undergone attacks in the night. Many were dead or dying and several farms had been leveled. Thunderbird Squadron works through the night and well into the next day, escorting refugees, recording footage and collating reports. 19 civilians were confirmed dead, with more missing or injured.
After analysis, they believed groups of five or six combat frames rampaged through this community. They didn't wear the chitin armor, and the pilots wondered if Evergreen gaining mech-scale defenders had prompted them to drop the Egregorian pretense. Worryingly, the attackers have been using deliberately undershielded reactors. Many of the survivors require extensive anti-radiation treatment.
Strange Attractors
Late afternoon the day after the attack, Thunderbird recieved a new mayday from the Châu Maize outriding, sent from a personal slate.
Hello? Is anybody there? This is Albert Châu, out at Châu Miaze. We're completely surrounded by subalterns- Sssh, honey, be quiet.- They're not letting us leave. Please help us. There's hundreds of them.
The pilots hurried to the confirmed coordinates, and found a slowly revolving gyre of subalterns and drones. The ones on the periphery shuffled in circles, looking for a way deeper in, while the ones at the core were locked in place by the press of those behind.
The Châus had barricaded themselves into the farmhouse, and weren't visible to the pilots initially. Pilot Lyndale surveyed the local frequencies, and found there was a transmitter inside the farmhouse that seemed to be drawing the subaltern swarm.
Further probing revealed it to be the Châus' comp-con unit, which had an aberrant account on it, taking up all it's computational and communicative resources. Pilot Lyndale made an attempt to override the anomaly, but made little progress other than retrieving the account id, Beggar1. Meanwhile, pilots Sen and Krell managed to force their way into the passive swarm of subalterns, and started to extract the Châus.
Pilot Lyndale recieved a stream of threatening and incoherent chatter from Beggar1, demanding that the pilots disengage, surrender or evacuate, threatening airstrikes, and claiming to represent Union.
///Notice::: THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPONS. IT IS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. I AM UNION I AM PEACE. HELP IS ON THE WAY.
Finally, shortly after the last of the Châus were carried out, the comp-con unit went silent, and a moment later overvolted its powercells and detonated explosively.
The subalterns began to disperse, slowly meandering eastward and ignoring all commands to halt.
The remains of the comp-con were recovered, and the Châus escorted to Liu Maize. The pilots worried this was a diversion, and resolved to return to Evergreen post haste.