Soldier of fortune in Colonia
04 Aug 2023Shingouzi
Today was supposed to be just another usual material gathering and hoarding for future upgrading of suits, weapons, whatever I'll feel like next.I was handed a mission to raid a mining settlement in Los and eliminate any witnesses inside the premises. Sure, that's what I'll do. Left the station, took a heading towards the settlement. Of course due to the lack of operational security of my employer someone managed to inform the settlement ahead of my arrival in a Cobra Mk IV, the "Settlement Liberator".
No worries, I thought. Approached them and asked for a permission to dock. My plan was to disable the alarms first, as per usual in these kind of situations I'm often at. Never had an inside informant warn anyone before though, so that was new. I usually work with a lot more discreet people obviously.
Local traffic enforcement welcomed me but obviously their superiors noticed and immediately revoked my docking privileges. I was about to get a warm welcome from their activated defense turrets, so decided to hide behind a hill and release the wrath of my missiles and flechettes on them. That didn't work at all, there wasn't a scratch on them after what I thought would be an apocalypse on the ground. Instead my shields came down and it was time to split a few klicks away.
Scratching my head a bit, I decided to set up some encrypted off-planet channels to research if other mercenaries would have something to say on how to approach this kind of a situation. Sure enough they did, suggesting either taking an Apex taxi to their doorstep or an SRV. As I was going to be raiding this settlement for absolutely everything that is not totally and completely secured beyond all means, the taxi option would not work as I'd have to be able to use the storage facilities of my SRV.
So then. Scorpion out of the SRV bay, taking the direction towards the settlement and carefully sliding down the hill meter by meter towards that sweet pile of material waiting for me. Of course, the settlement defenses activated about a kilometer away. That was not a problem as I had a launcher with lots and lots of materials for missile refills. Took quite a lot of missiles to disarm those defenses, but was then able to approach furthermore.
They had some 21 people that needed elimination, most of them research staff. Soldiers started firing from a few hundred meters away, so there I was casually just murdering everyone in sight and getting bounties. After a while, only the researchers were left, hiding inside the buildings. Naturally my plan at this point was to go door-to-door in order to eliminate everyone like my employer suggested.
At this point listening to the alarm started getting on my nerves, so I decided to start at the CMD building. Drove the SRV around to find it and parked in front of it. "This would actually be quite a bad spot to leave in a hurry" was my thought at the moment but leaving in hurry was not my intention. I just wanted to park near the entrance in order to empty my full backpack into the storage a few times.
As I left the SRV, I instantly turned my personal shield on and released the safety of my Manticore Executioner. That was the right call as the air lock of the CMD building opened right after. There were two staff members coming out so just took the first casual shot towards one and missed. They backed off inside the air lock, yelling my position to let the others know. I didn't think the others would be bothered, sure they'd rather just hide inside the buildings. Quite soon I heard a lot more yelling and panicked as I peeked from behind my SRV and saw pretty much all of them running towards me.
Immediately I decided to jump inside my Scorpion noting now how bad of a place this was to park this thing that can't really fly above any obstacles. As I was turning this thing back towards any kind of opening, the researchers were now pretty much surrounding me. Equipped with only small caliber weapons but a lot of them, my SRV shields quickly gave up. "He's trying to ram us" was their initial idea of what I'm trying to do, which actually could've been my intention in any other situation but this time I was just frantically turning around and trying to find any way out of this alive.
My hull didn't last for long either and the SRV was finally finished, exploding something and knocking everyone around unconscious at the same time. That may have helped me as well, maybe the Rescue Rangers didn't investigate further or just didn't care as I was very efficiently transported back to my ship. Someone did get the message out as I now had a small bounty on my head. My employer didn't like my failing of this mission either.
So that was a bit more than an hour's work and all for nothing. In hindsight, I should've just lured everyone outside and stayed safe inside the SRV, delivering peace to this settlement through superior firepower. Learned from this experience and probably will do just that the next time I'm hired to be a murderhobo again.