40K Dark Heresy: The Recondite War

[Jaevric]

Darien grabs a spare clip of autogun ammunition if one is readily available on the corpse then takes cover behind a stanchion, flipping the firearm to single shot.

Raising his voice to be heard over the gunfire, Darien suggests, "We may want to split up and try to get a team closer to these bastards, we're getting shot to pieces and they've got a range advantage with those rifles!"

((Edit: If I still have time to shoot after that I'll do so, just wasn't sure how long grabbing some ammunition and getting into cover would take ))

[Lancer]

Mercurius grabbed his lascarbine with one hand and swung it out from behind his back as he moved to the nearest available cover, returning his laspistol to its thigh-holster. As he did, he made sure the fire selector on the lascarbine was set to semi-auto.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Eli will stay down and crawl closer to the guys in the long coats.

[White Haven]

Ajax clamps down on any of a large number of possible vicious oaths as he takes a solid shot, spinning partway around with the impact force, then letting the motion complete so he looks dead. With only his laspistol to play with, he won't be accomplishing a whole lot against targets that far away, and there are better things to do than play 'shooting gallery.' Like not play shooting gallery, for starters.

Besides, being covered in blood already is great for someone trying to look like they're dead.

[NecronLord]

Darien took a moment to get hold of another clip - they'd left them in the bags they'd been carrying, evidently thinking that spraying the area with thirty bullets would be enough. There were also a couple of knives and bread rolls in there. Meanwhile, Eli slunk back up onto the now deserted heli-pad, and from there, the most obvious way over was over the roof of a building marked with bright caution signs he would recognise as 'fuel' warnings, typically stamped on pipes in ships...

[Free actions if anyone wants them.]

[Block]

With an angry snarl, Scar shook his head and fired again.

[Lancer]

Now crouched down behind cover and armed with a weapon that could reach the heretics shooting at the 'Witchhunters', Mercurius leaned slightly to the side, and methodically unleashed controlled bursts of semi-automatic fire at the nearest sniper from his lascarbine.

[NecronLord]

As Scar fired, one of the men with the guns span around, his arm simply falling off at the shoulder. The other heretic looked at him in surprise, and turned, running down the hill away from his apparently dead companion, disappearing behind the crest of the hill.

[We can go to narrative time now if you like...]

[Block]

"From the Scourge of the Kraken, our Emperor, deliver us..."

Scar finished the song, his smile returning. Pointing to Mercurius he said, "Go check and make sure that one is gone. Make sure the other one is dead as well, if he's not, signal us. Ajax, if you're done playing in the blood, check the pair that we already dropped, see what they were carrying, see if you can... get anything from them. Darien, bring the prisoner. See if he knows these men. Eli, go with our Techpriest, make sure he doesn't spend an hour examining the machine spirits of the weapons."

Wiping the blood of his face, Scar felt the wound and nodded, "That'll do for a record of victory," he muttered to himself.

[Lancer]

Mercurius nodded then stood, grimacing for a moment. Lascarbine at the ready, he made his way to the armless sniper's position, his eyes constantly scanning the area ahead for any sign of the remaining man in black, gold and crimson. That first shot had been quite painful, and Mercurius had no intention of catching another.

When he reached the downed sniper, his first impression was of the pool of blood centered around the stump of an arm. Waving Eli up to cover him, he checked the man for signs of life, laspistol in hand and pressed directly against the heretics head in case he was more resilient than appeared.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Eli goes over to bring back the body and wargear of the heretic that shot him.

hopefully the long jacket can be salvaged, not to mention the long rifle. Besides goods like that are a clue in themselves, not to mention a good indication that we are in the right place.

[Jaevric]

Nodding agreeably at Scar and resting his captured autogun in the crook of his arm, Darien rises and touches his face lightly, then winces. "I'll get a first aid kit while I'm up there, or have the crew contact the local medicae for assistance. I want us patched up before anyone else decides to start shooting at us."

With that, he starts back to the helipad and Troveo. I hope he doesn't decide to do something stupid when he sees I'm injured. I'll just have to shove a gun in his face straight off and remind him that if he so much as twitches in a way we don't like we'll get to test the Proctor's explosive collars.

[Balrog]

Mithras had no doubt that the escaping heretic was gone for good; hiding in a run-down place such as this would be trivial. Lowering his lasgun, the guardsman turned instead to police the bodies of their first assailants, checking for any items of interest among them.

[NecronLord]

When Eli arrived, it became quite clear that the man with only one arm, lying on the floor, was dead as the proverbial apostate, and his jacket, for what it was worth, was a useful seeming flak material, though it seemed like it was the wrong size without some modification. The gun, of course, had two shots remaining in its clip, each of the bullets visible inside the magazine, and seeming very strange, the bullets, though not the casings, were made of a dark coloured metal that seemed to shine with blackness.

Of the other assailant there was no sign, save some slight tracks leading down twenty meters of the hill, into what seemed to be a processing plant of some kind, concealed on the other side.

[Lancer]

Satisfied that the heretic was actually dead (one of the tales his mentor told of his exploits as an Exporator involved a standoff against an extensively bionic mercenary who had an arm and both legs blasted off him, and yet continued to shoot back with his remaining arm until a bolt-round had been planted square between his eyes), Mercurius stood and examined the man's outfit more closely, noting every detail that he thought might be significant in his dataslate before they moved the body.

"Look for his other arm. Even dead, he's more intact than the other two."

[The Yosemite Bear]

Eli hands the rifle to the techpriest, and asks him what he thinks of the ammo.

and with difficulty proceeds to try and carry the heretic back to the landing pad, (Fireman style, if I in real life, can lift and walk with someone over 50 pounds heavier, then Eli should be able to do this.)(hopefully someone used to lugging heavy things will give him a hand)

Knowing some criminal societies mark thier members with tattoos, and other marks as do other groups, there may be more information on the man's body that they could use, besides getting someone to fix/refit the jacket might be a good project....

[White Haven]

Ajax, belatedly due to RL concerns, scrambles up to his feet and begins trying, ineffectually, to get cleaned off. After a minute or two, he gives up and heads over to the cluster of comrades around the disarmed heretic slowly, clearly not having the most pleasant time of things with a chest wound.

[NecronLord]

In the helicopter, the copilot was watching Troveo, having produced a laspistol from the forward compartment of the vehicle and headed back to ensure that the prisoner wouldn’t be rescued alive. He glanced over at Darien, and listened; apparently there was nothing more than a very basic medical kit on board, but they could call what passed for air traffic control here and have a medic requisitioned…

Finding the arm of the dead heretic was easy enough, the clothes themselves were of a fine make, and the gun, merely ordinary, at least on a cursory examination. The man’s pockets held nothing terribly interesting, a packet of ‘lho sticks that smelt strange.

Mercurius could instantly identify the ammunition used; it was of a very rare type, Hyper-density Penetrators, (nicknamed 'body blowers') manufactured only n the Lathes, using a type of heavy, compressed metal that penetrated very well, and most importantly, could be used to craft variant bolt shells that retained their strength, they were said to be used by a space marine chapter, and probably the most distinctive type of small arm ammunition in the sector, with each one having a market value around one hundred thrones. Nonetheless, they were somewhat widespread, and could be picked up at many places the high society that frequented garden worlds purchased their weapons, albeit at a significant markup.

Eli, meanwhile, found himself a tattoo (or rather, a brand) on the inside thigh (not terribly pleasant searching for that) of the dead man, in the shape of a circle, bisected by a lightning bolt.

[Jaevric]

Darien hesitates a moment, still a little light-headed from blood loss and the blows to his skull, and tries to consider the possible negative repercussions of calling for medical assistance.

If we call for medical assistance we're going to get local law enforcement as well, and those coats looked an awful lot like uniforms. Then again I'd imagine the local enforcers, if not the planetary Arbites, are already on their way after that much shooting in public. I don't think we have time to clear out before they arrive, and even if we did, our ride is here...

Finally shaking his head with a barely-disguised wince, he decides they're already going to have to deal with official attention at this point and there's no reason not to call for medical assistance.

"Yes, call for medical aid. And my thanks for keeping an eye on our prisoner -- your loyal service will not be forgotten."

Turning to Troveo, he switches out the autorifle in favor of his shotgun (which he reloads), and says "Alright then. Come along; we need you to try to identify some bodies. I hate getting shot, it puts me in a foul mood, so don't give me a hard time."

[White Haven]

Standing over the last corpse, Ajax frowns to himself, more than a little distracted from the fact that he has, indeed, been shot. Still, something's nagging at his mind...

And eventually, he can put his finger on it. "Comms. See if any of them have voxes or commbeads or some such...they were damned well coordinated to ambush us so quickly, and we might be able to learn something from them, at least a frequency to listen for." He stoops to begin riffling though the sniper's things, only to grimace and straighten up again, "Someone without what feels like a cracked rib."

[Lancer]

Mercurius walked up to the group, holding the clip of hyper-density penetrators so that everybody could see the unique bullets it held.

"This just confirms what we had already suspected. We're facing a well-funded and highly organized group. They had to have been notified somehow that we were comming here; otherwise, they could have been waiting out here for us for days. I'll check the vox logs directly and see if any outbound transmissions were detected." He looked down at the wound in his side. "You said that the medicae was inbound? How long before they arrive?"

[Going to use my electro-grafts to directly inferface with the transports cognator and make a Tech-Use test to check for any anomalous outbound transmissions either from the transport or the fortress, and/or evidence of tampering with the vox-logs.]

[NecronLord]

Despite being able to access communications records, there was nothing to be found, no matter how deeply Mercurius probed the records, if there were any anomalous transmissions, they were well hidden indeed, and he was left with the idea that there was little left to find. The copilot said, “I’m just doing it now, lord,” and disappeared into the cabin.

Meanwhile, all three bodies were found to have a type of removable comm.-bead that plugged one ear, and apparently had capacity for subvocalisation…

Troveo, meanwhile, reluctantly trooped out to wherever Darien prodded him with the shotgun...

[Balrog]

Mithras held the comm-beads in his hand, having pulled them off of the corpses in the street. There seemed nothing extraordinary about them, but indicated that this was a professional operation. In a flash of inspiration he removed his own comm-bead and, cleaning off one of the heretic's, inserted it into his ear and activated it. C'mon, speak to me...

[Jaevric]

Darien leads Troveo -- or, rather, directs the man from several feet behind the prisoner with a shotgun pointed at his back -- over to the corpses of the ambushers.

"Anyone you recognize? And do those coats mean anything to you?"

[Lancer]

Mercurius sighed, dissapointed at his own lack of progress and troubled by the wound in his side, and made his way to a seat near the inventory of siezed equipment to rest until the medicae arrived, plugging in the charge packs for his laspistol and lascarbine to recharge them while he waited. From the way the heretics had been equipped, he would have guessed them to be from either a company of mercenaries or a private militia.