Hello Everyone!
Welcome to another of our Conductor's Logs, where our heroes try to raid another Facility - this one a train station, only this time, they've actually prepared properly.
Conductor’s Log 11: Eleven Minutes
Driver had managed to stop the train so perfectly that when our boots hit the station, we were covered from most sides by crates and a shelter, giving us cover from the myriad of robots patrolling the station. I watched one, pacing back and forth in the snow, and wondered, as I often had over the last couple of weeks, what on Earth (or Inara, I guess) had gotten into them, and why the machines which had meant to prepare the world for our arrival before becoming our helpers, our servants and our guards had turned on us so completely.
I shook my head, now was the worst time to be thinking about anything other than what was in front of us, and I started to pay proper attention.
Driver joined us on the station platform a minute later, and hissed that we had 11 minutes before the train ran dry and we’d all be dead. Shooter raised up his assault rifle, and told everyone to get ready, before sighting on a robot on the platform which was making its way toward us. He opened fire with the weapon, and I soon realised why he’d dubbed it the rave. The rifle fired bright rounds so quickly that it was impossible to look at it as he fired, and you could barely see the robot for the sheer number of impacts it was taking. Almost as soon as it started, the robot fell, and Shooter stopped firing, grinning as he whooped. I exchanged a wry shake of the head with Brains before peeking out from our cover and firing my pistol at one of the robots on the platform.
The next five minutes were both the longest and the shortest of my life. As a group, we worked our way down the platform, taking out the robots with massed firepower, often before they had time to fire back. Brains tagged just behind, scooping up each corpse with the salvager, gathering more resources that we’d realised were going to be our only hope when it came to surviving out here.
Everything was going fine, and the staccato bark of Shooter’s assault rifle, so much louder than our other weapons, signalled the end of robot after robot. I took a couple of hits when one of those damned spider droids managed to sneak up on me, but I took it out with my pistol, emptying a full clip into it as I screamed. I quickly checked the vitals on my exosuit, and realised the cold was starting to seep through the unit.
I quickly used the suits UI to select the hot soup in my toolbar, and sucked down on it, yelling over the radio for the others to do the same. I got back a series of dry, “witty” remarks, pointing out everyone else had taken the strange concoction before they got off the train, and that I was an idiot for waiting so long.
We laughed until Shooter walked around the side of the main station building before jumping backwards as he took a chest full of fire from the Turret, which had been awaiting him around the corner. I quickly pulled him into cover, thankful he’d managed to dodge most of the fire, and told him to take some health stims and suck it up.
Brains crept up to the corner, and, leaning around it, he quickly snapped off a shot from the EMP pistol at the turret. Its shield vanished, and the gun dropped as it went into a reset cycle. Brains yelled that the turret would be down for a few seconds, and that someone should shoot at the damn thing. Shooter stepped up to get his revenge and opened up on the damnable thing with his rifle. Once the glare had cleared, we found the turret unharmed, gleaming in Inara’s strange light, continuing its restart cycle. Brains fired at it again with his EMP, looking at me utterly confused. They told us that they could keep the turret powered down for now, but that we’d need to figure out something bigger to kill the things.
We quickly dispatched the remaining robots while Brains kept the turret stun locked, and then we looted our way down the platform. Once we’d grabbed everything that wasn’t nailed down, we quickly retreated back onto the train, boarding just as the train's horn sounded to warn us the battery was getting low. Driver headed straight to the cockpit and started the train moving, and the battery timer in our HUDs started to rise.
We all relaxed before sharing a proud look.
Everyone headed to the storage car, storing all the loot we’d grabbed, while Brains babbled on about making something to break down some of the items we’d found, as he was sure they could be turned into something useful….