The Comms Station (28mm Post Apoc)

Panky briefed us on the mission.  One of the other scouts had found somethin' called a  "comms station".  Seen it up on some mountain somewhere, and the boss decided to send out a team to check it out.  

The team is us, some grunts and a couple techies.  Them techies is a weird group, they try to learn the stuff from the before, and make old things work again.  Nice people, but a little out of touch sometimes.  The grunts is good people too, usually, but not always so good out in the wastes.  Too noisy, and don't always know about the dangers.

The Grunts, Techies and recon team not shown.

Anyway, we headed up north for three days, road a couple of infantry carriers out as far as we could go, then started hikin' and climbin'.  A pretty tiring day, but didn't make no contacts, at least not confirmed, though a couple of the grunts thought they seen something a couple of times.  

Did find some abandoned houses and whatnot; probably old farms from the before, judging from how bad off they was.  Spent a night in one of them, gave us some protection from the wind, plus cover if we'd needed it.

We finally caught site of the comms thing. From where we was at, it just looked like a big antenna tower type thing.  Really surprised that it was still up, after all of these years in the wind and weather.  One of the techies said he had some signal from it, but not sure what he meant.  Ya couldn't hear anyone talking on his radio or anything.

Anyway, a tiresome trip, tricky going, but all good 'till we got near the place.  We got pretty close before I saw them.  Some squatters was set up in a little compound with the sloped-sided weird little building.  Reminded me a little of that blockhouse thing we saw on that trip out east, sometime back.

The recon team advances on the Comms station.

 

The team lead by the Lt. enters the table.

The recon team starts to move to the left, the Lt's team is 

climbing in the center, and Sgt. Hand's team is advancing to 

the right (out of view).

Sgt. Hand's team strung out on the right.

The Lt's team makes the last climb in the center.

Sgt. Hand's team preparing to attack on the right.

I was pretty sure I saw someone movin' around up there during our approach, left the other scouts know about it, but not much you could do 'till we got up there.

The Comms station from the southwest.

The Squatters lean-to.

A view looking south.

Wasn't too many of the the squatters, four or five maybe, and really stuck in a hard place; kinda cold, windy, and no way out.  Guess they liked the high ground.  Don't know when they saw us, but when we got close, they wasn't too happy about it.  

Panky, Sam and I started to work our way up the west side of the thing, trying to stay near cover, and trying not to seem like a threat.  But soon as they got a shot, they let loose on Panky with a whole lotta unfriendly.  Submachinegun hit in the chest, knocked her down, but didn't get through her vest.

A squatter gets a shot on Panky, didn't wound her, 

but made her really mad...

Panky got outta there; I stepped back and was able to get a shot on the guy that shot Panky.  Popped 'em pretty good, he dropped.

A moment later, Charlie hits the squatter.

The rest of the team was movin' and started shootin'. Wasn't too many squatters, so they wasn't going to last long.

The Lt's team took out the squatter at the 

south end of the station. 

One trooper was hit with a minor wound.

Sgt. Hand's team took out the squatter on the right, with 

one of hit troopers getting hit pretty bad at point blank range.

By that time, the recon team finally made it to the top on

 the left side of the station.

The female squatter on the building roof was 

shooting at the team to the south...

...so Panky put an end to that.

By the time we got to the top, there was only one squatter left, oblivious to us on the left, Panky took her out, without her even noticing us.

The teckies were hanging back during the fighting, but now somebody signaled for them to come up.  Meanwhile, Sgt. Hand climbed on top of the building and found that one of the hatches was open.

The teckies waiting out the fight.

The rest of us gathered the three wounded squatters, took them down the cliffs, and sent them on their way with two rounds for each of their guns.  Sgt. Hand was ready to just shoot them, but the Lt reminded us that our goal isn't to kill everybody left in the wastes, even when they start the fight.  The Sergeant wasn't too happy.

Squaring away the station.

While the techies were looking into the Comms building, we set up a perimeter around the station, and after only a few minutes, one of Sgt. Hand's team, trooper Lewis, saw some movement down below.  They missed  Lew with a laser.  Big mistake, she had rotary support weapon, put a ton of ammo down range and looked to hit one of them pretty bad.

"Bad guys" can be seen in the distance, 

upper left.

The bad guys limping away.

A moment later another shot hit Panky in the torso, and she screamed and dropped.  Lewis apparently shot that guy too.  Sam and I both ran around to Panky, while a couple other troopers moved to support Lew.  

We thought Panky was dead, but when we got to her, she was trying to get out of her armor.  She was burned from where the laser hit her armor.  The armor stopped the laser, but heated up so much that it burned her pretty bad.

Attending to Panky.

I read about lasers in the books from the Before, but didn't think there were any these days.  The LT was really concerned about it, and wanted us to get one of the lasers, but even though we wounded two of the guys, we really didn't know how many there were, or what we might be getting into.  Sgt. Hand talked the Lt out of chasing them, and just focus on completing our mission. 

Settling in for the night.

The teck guys seemed really excited about what they learned in the building, said we might need to station troops there regularly.   We stayed the night at the station and headed back the next morning.  We had three wounded soldiers, one had to be sort of carried, so it was going to be slower going on the way back.  I just wanted to get home with no more excitement.