Taking the Power Plant

Characters: Joe, Arthur, Darrurz, Mazun
NPC:Thaedznou, Aerrak
Location: Akofotsidano Downport
System: Akofitsidano

1202.24.2 - 14:00 IST, 2:34 Local Time (21 hour, 16 minute day)

The pack briskly make their way to the opposite side of the warehouse. There's a pair of double doors like earlier, and after listening to the door and hearing nothing, they proceed through them. There's another small room that serves to connect the two buildings like before. The sign above the next set of double doors says, "Power Plant."

The muffled sound of machinery comes through the doors. The pack opens the door, hoping that the sound covers their entrance.

On the other side of the doors is a long, partially lit corridor. The ceiling extends up six meters. To the right is a long wall, broken only by a single set of doors, consisting of a metal frame surrounding glass, midway down the corridor. To the left is a series of reinforced glass panels extending from hip height up to the ceiling. The panels are nestled among a steel grid, vertical supports thicker than the horizontal. Each panel is a square meter. The panels continue the length of the corridor, broken only by a pair of doors midway down and directly across from the other doors.

The room on the other side of the reinforced glass is well lit. It contains what the group would consider archaic power generating equipment. The two guards can be seen talking to someone in the room sitting in a chair with his/her legs on a desk. The guards are blocking the view of this person, otherwise they'd be spotted.

Joe says, "OK, looks like the best approach is to crawl along the corridor, keeping below the glass panels to left. Hopefully, one or two of us will be able to get some quick shots off before an alarm is raised or radio activated. This close to the machinery, the noise should be drowned out by the power generators."

Thaedznou nods in agreement and taps Aerrak and Arthur to go with him.

The trio crawls down the corridor and set themselves up at the door into the paneled room. Joe indicates to Arthur that when the door opens he'll ideally shoot the Vargr sitting down first, but if the two guards are still blocking his sightlines, he'll take out the one on the left first. At the end of the crawl, Joe and Arthur ready themselves then signal to Aerrak that they're ready for the door to be opened.

Neither the guards, nor the guy sitting down, notice the door opening fast enough to prevent Joe and Arthur from getting their shots off. The guards collapse in a heap. The guy sitting down falls over backwards in his chair and is now hidden behind the desk. Joe and Arthur leap to their feet and charge into the room with Aerrak behind them. Thaedznou and Mazun move to cover the entrance, keeping an eye out on both ends of the hallway.

Joe and Arthur move to outflank the guy hiding behind the desk. Aerrak watches their six. They converge on his location, finding him cowering under the desk with a pistol in his paw.

He spots them and shouts, "I surrender! I surrender!"

"Drop the gun! Drop the gun!" Arthur shouts, his language translator software on his PDA instantly barking orders in Gvegh.

He obeys. Joe grabs it while Arthur keeps his weapon trained on the raider. Once the weapon is secure, Joe grabs the guy and hauls him back into his chair. Arthur doesn't waver from keeping him in his sights.

Joe looks around for something to tie up the raider. He spots some electrical wire and opts to use that to bind him. While doing so, he looks up to see who's watching the corridor and notes that Thaedznou and Mazun are there. Once he's done, he says to the captured vargr, "Ok, tell me who's in command. And where are they?"

"Kuzsokh! And he's in the director's office."

"Where's that?"

"In the main building! Fourth floor!"

"Any guards with him?" Arthur shouts.

"Of course! Yes!"

And then the inquisitors overlap.

"How many wolves in the starport?" Joe asks.

"How many others in the main building?" Arthur asks.

The captive looks from one to the other. "I don't know. Maybe fifty."

Joe tries to calm him down. "Take a breath."

The captive takes a couple of breaths, but their ragged.

"What's your name?"

"Aen."

"Ok Aen. Can you speak to Kuzsokh on that?" He points to a large, hard plastic stone-shaped device on the desk.

"You mean the telephone?"

"Yeah."

"Not directly. He's got a guard that handles that while he's sleeping. That wolf will have to wake him up."

"How long before those guys," he tilts his head towards the two dead guards, "are missed by someone?"

Aen takes a couple of deep breaths. "Uh. I don't know. End of their shift? I don't know how guard duty works. I'm just a power plant engineer."

After everyone has finished questioning Aen, Joe wheels him on his chair into a closet and leaves him to plan with the others.

Joe, Arthur, and Aerrak join Thaedznou and Mazun by the door. Joe explains that his plan is for one of the vargr on the team to call up Kuzsokh on the comm, masquerading as the pup you just captured, and allude to a problem with the power plant he needs to see for himself. Hoping that he will come down with a small guard, the group then either captures him and force the rest of his pack to stand down or they eliminate him, leaving his pack without a leader.

But before starting that into motion, he'd like to hear what the others think.

Mazun, keeping an eye on the hallway entrances, says, "Would it be worthwhile to have someone as close to the main building as possible, just to give advanced notice of the group size?"

Thaedznou replies, "Darrurz can tell us if they move to block us from outside, but his position doesn't give him eyes on the interior. If we put someone outside the main building, he'd be able to get a whiff of what they're sending us inside, but if they divert some wolves outside, there's a chance that he'll be spotted, especially if they put the lights on."

Joe says, "Great thinking, Mazun. Knowing the odds would be great, but the downside of being discovered is too much of a risk, not only do we lose surprise, but it would put us on the back paw tactically."

Arthur shakes his head. "I'm thinkin' we may want to go the assassination route. A bit more info on the guards at the main building, maybe an infil if the guard force is light or asleep, and hit the boss wolf in his sleep. Grease his ass and take over, running the 'lead wolf' Vargr angle with the balance of the pack."

Mazun asks, "Infil?"

Joe answers, "Infiltrate."

Aerrak says, "I'm glad you asked." He taps his earpiece. "It didn't translate. And that last part?"

Joe chuckles. "Figure of speech, not to be taken literally. A euphemism for 'kill'."

Arthur grumbles. "Somebody needs to update Tsougak Trade Federation tech."

That gets a smile out of Thaedznou. "Maybe when this is all over, you can spend a week with our linguists so that they can re-program their algorithms."

Joe waits for a moment to steer the conversation back to the plan. "I'm not too happy with the assassination path. Reminds me too much of orders I received while a Vakh priest, and I’d be the one in Kuzsokh's position, receiving the bullet. Still, if the boss is asleep, he may be annoyed with a waking for a power plant issue and come down with more than a token guard. Arthur’s plan may be the better approach if we can pull it off without waking too many other guards."

Joe pulls out his sword. "Ok let's try the infil approach"

Characters: Joe, Arthur, Darrurz, Mazun
NPC: Thaedznou, Aerrak
Location: Akofotsidano Downport
System: Akofitsidano

1202.24.2 - 14:30 IST, 3:04 Local Time (21 hour, 16 minute day)

While the group is working out the infiltration approach, one of Aerrak's ears twitches. He goes over to one of the dead raiders and grabs his radio. He puts it up to his ear to better hear it over the din of the generator. He frowns.

He returns to the group and says, "They know something's up." He relays what he's hearing. "Whoever's in charge of the patrols is complaining about most of them missing their check-ins. One patrol group is acknowledging her. She's recalling them, telling them to go dark." He looks at the radio. "I've got nothing now."

Thaedznou leaps to his feet. "Darrurz, are you seeing anything?"

"Nothing yet."

Joe turns to Mazun. "Can you disable the power plant so that we can restart it if we need it?"

"Sure. I can just turn it off. No sabotage necessary."

To everyone else, Joe says, "They'll come here once the power is out. I'll hold it and take them on a merry ride. Arthur, take the rest of them up to the command station and take it out.

"Good luck, everyone!"

Joe moves to the corridor, changes his rifle and pistol loadout to AP rounds and readies a grenade to throw at the first group to enter the corridor.

Mazun winds down the generator. As the turbine cycles down the lights start to flicker. He joins the others as they make their way to the back of the power plant, looking for an exit.

The lights finally fade out, the turbine winding down slower and slower. Joe switches over to nightvision, crouching in the darkness, waiting for the raiders to come.

Characters: Mazun & Arthur (Darrurz)
NPC: Thaedznou, Aerrak
Location: Akofotsidano Downport
System: Akofitsidano

1202.24.2 - 14:45 IST, 3:19 Local Time (21 hour, 16 minute day)

The group of four exit the power plant and find themselves outside with only the stars providing illumination. Straight ahead is passenger concourse. To the right, the hangar and open tarmac. To the left is the warehouse—adjacent to the power plant—customs and, connecting customs to the main terminal, the control tower, looming above the downport.

Thaedznou radios Darrurz, asking him if he can see any activity in the control tower.

"Yes," Darrurz replies, "But I can't make out how many people are in there, even with nightvision."

The group on the tarmac don their nightvision goggles and hustle along to the base of the control tower. There are concrete steps leading up to a pair of glass double doors. Inside, several raiders have assembled at the base of the tower and seem to be conferring to one another inside at the base of the staircase, which runs along the perimeter of the tower. Your group hasn't been spotted and is keeping out of sight by lying flat and using service vehicles for cover.

A muffled explosion is heard. The assembled Vargr inside turn their heads towards the direction of the sound, then charge in that direction, towards customs.

"Joe got their attention," Thaedznou says. On the comm, he says, "Joe, you've got company. Looks like ten to fifteen."

"Great!" Joe replies. "That's ten not chasing you."

The group creeps up towards the entrance, trying to keep out of sight of the windows and doors. Like the doors on the east side, these doors also pull open, but the push bars on the inside have been chained together to resist opening.

Thaedznou growls and smashes the glass in the lower pane of one of the doors with the butt of his rifle. Aerrak keeps watch while Thaedznou clears the rest of the glass from the frame. Once he's done, Aerrak charges through. While he keeps watch, Thaedznou goes through, followed by Mazun and Arthur.

No one appears to be coming down the corridor to investigate the sound, so the group heads up the stairs. Aerrak and Thaedznou keep their rifles trained upward in case someone comes down. Mazun focuses on them as he heads up while Arthur keeps watch on their six.

As they approach the top of the stairs, they reach the stairwell ceiling. Rather than being open, it's covered. At the top of the stairs, they're now flush with the ceiling they climbed under. There's a narrow door with the words, "Control Tower: Authorized Personnel Only."

Aerrak tries the door handle. It isn't locked. There are voices on the other side of the door. They sound agitated.

Thaedznou readies his ACR and gives Aerrak a nod. Aerrak throws open the door. It opens up to a lounge for air and space traffic controllers. There's a kitchenette, a table, some couches. In the middle of the room is a ladder leading up to the tower control room. The voices, three of them, are coming from there.

Aerrak slings his rifle and pulls out a pistol. Holding the pistol out in front of him, he carefully climbs the ladder. Thaedznou trains his ACR on Aerrak's blindspot. When Aerrak catches sight of someone, he stops on the ladder and fires two quick shots. Barks ensue. He fires two more at another target before he gets shot in his left shoulder. Thaedznou spots the shooter too late, but manages to dispatch him with a burst.

"Are you alright, Aerrak?" Thaedznou asks.

"Yeah, must've been a small caliber round. Didn't penetrate the armor." Aerrak holsters his pistol and finishes climbing up the ladder. Thaedznou follows.

Thaedznou comms Joe and Darrurz, "We've secured the tower."

"I've got a live one," Aerrak announces. "Though he might not be for long."

"We should interrogate him," Mazun says.

Thaedznou grabs the raider by his jacket. "Where's Ithalloefegz? Your boss, where is he?"

The raider spits blood onto Thaedznou's snout.

Thaedznou drops him and wipes his snout. "We can treat that wound. We've got the med tech. You don't have to die for that ptak."

The raider takes a few seconds to reply. "I'd rather die for him than you."

"Then that's what you shall do." Thaedznou takes out his knife and delivers the coup de grace.

He stands. "We already have some idea where Ithalloefegz is." He points to the administration building. We can enter from one of four ways: from the corridor that connects to the control tower, the front door, the structure that looks like a parking garage, or through the terminals."



"I don't like the main entrance. And we haven't reconned the parking garage. We could try to flank them by making it look like we're headed down the corridor here while sending some guys through the terminal, but I'm not sure we can do it with the four of us. We would need Darrurz and probably Joe to make it work. Problem is: Joe's busy with his own diversion and losing Darrurz's sniper position will cost us a set of eyes that can spot any attempts by the raiders to outflank us. Thoughts?"

There's a muffled rumble. Probably another grenade.

Arthur says, "Bounding through the terminal is probably fastest. We avoid a tube fight in the corridors and the unknown of the garage like structure. Whatever we do, we do it now, while we still have some advantage of surprise with us. No time to readjust Darrurz or Joe's plans. We need to move."

Thaedznou nods, "Right. Down and out we go."

The squad leaves the control tower and trots down the stairs. Once on the ground floor, they make their way through the smashed glass door and back out onto the tarmac.

Character: Joe
Location: Akofotsidano Downport Power Plant
System: Akofitsidano

1202.24.2 - 14:45 IST, 3:19 Local Time (21 hour, 16 minute day)

Joe has been lying in wait for several minutes when he picks up Vargr voices coming from the direction of the warehouse. He keeps his eyes focused on the doorway.

Suddenly, the doors burst open. There's three of them, unarmored, and each has a flashlight which they use to see where they're going. Pistols are drawn but not pointed at anything. They're clearly not expecting a fight.

Joe tosses a fragmentary grenade. It falls short of the raider trio by a meter, but it's close enough. The blast sends them flying: one to the outer wall, one to the wall with the viewing windows, and one straight back into the doors. The glass viewing windows on the power plant side of the corridor spiderweb but hold. The doors leading to the inter-building foyer have been smashed open by the flying raider.

Joe is a bit too close for comfort to the blast. While safely out of the way, the sound dampening of his helmet was nearly overwhelmed. He peeks into the hallway to see if the raiders are still alive. The two on the sides appear to be stunned and are struggling to move. The one that went through the doorway is still.

Over the comm, Thaedznou is heard to say, "Joe, you've got company. Looks like ten to fifteen on their way."

Joe replies, "Great! That's ten not chasing you."

He takes a moment to set up for the next wave to arrive while keeping an eye on the three Vargr. He places a frag grenade by the door to the power plant and props it up in such a way that if anyone opens the door, it'll detonate. As soon as he's done, he heads down the hallway and crouches in front of the doors to the hangar bay, ready to fire a quick burst at the first Vargr to pop their head through the doors at the warehouse end of the hallway.

He notes that two of the Vargr that were hit by the frag grenade are regaining consciousness and starting to move limbs while lying on the floor. Not wanting his position to be revealed, he dispatches each one with a single shot.

A minute later, at the far end of the hallway, the warehouse doors burst open onto the buildings' interstitial space. With the power plant doors already open from the earlier grenade blast, Joe can see several Vargr coming through. In the near dark, they can tell that something's wrong from the doors on the far side of the interstitial space and the bodies on the floor.

Before they can change tactics, Joe fires off a couple of bursts at the group, concentrating one burst per target. Both of Joe's first two targets fall. Some wild shots are fired in Joe's direction as the Vargr change tactics, diving for cover.

Joe waits patiently for targets to present themselves. When one does, he fires a single burst. Most of the shots hit and the target drops. This elicits a round of return fire, less wild than before. While it sounds like their single shot rifles, the coordinated volley makes it more dangerous. One bullet finds its mark on Joe's left arm. Fortunately, the armor takes most of the bite out of it, leaving him with just blunt force damage.

Another volley comes at Joe before he can reset and focus on a new target. Fortunately, none of the rounds find him.

Thaedznou's voice comes over the comm. "We've secured the tower."

A target presents itself and Joe fires another burst. The target slumps to the ground. This time, the return volley is better honed in on his position. Three bullets strike Joe: one in each leg and one in his abdomen. Again, his armor holds, but the impacts still sting. Feeling exposed, he decides to retreat into the hangar, laying down some cover fire as he does so. The timing is fortuitous as one of the rear guard Vargr made a play for an empty position in the front. He's cut down.

Next: Terminal Access