Session 5b: What the fuck just happened?

Night falls over Bormane, and with it a semblance of peace.

Despite the failure of Charington Company to fully destroy the bridges across the Bors and its tributary, the Ress have broken off the engagement. It turns out to be blessing, for as the militia shores up its defenses and prepares for the coming day, civilians begin to trickle southward. Company command is exasperated. The town's local militia unit is supposed to have cleared out the civilians, but clearly people remain even after two days of open warfare in their city.

One of those people is an old man running a gun store called The Hold Out. Sid finds it after the unit quartermaster indicates he doesn't have any particularly great rifles for her. Surprisingly, even after two armies have occuiped the city, the store is still well-stocked, and the old codger trades a scoped and accurized hunting rifle for Sid's promise to kill some Ress and a wad of her cash.

Meanwhile, First Platoon's assault squad, ever anxious to find ways to die, has decided to venture north and attempt to establish the location of the Ress lines. As they prepare, Sid and Salazhar swing by with a crazy idea: to hunt down the Ress Zeppelin, now presumably resupplying nearby. There's general agreement with the sentiment, and the deadly duo decide to move out with the assaults. The group picks up Butcher (who has, at some point, picked up the nickname Cabbage) on the off chance a medic might be needed in a war zone, then everybody piles into jeeps and heads off.

As the jeeps approach the bridges, Sid and Salazhar chatter excitedly about how fun it will be to destroy the Zeppelin. Both Butcher and Trost, the assault squad leader, take note and dismiss the notion as foolishness. Turns out orders have trickled down, and the assault squad's priority is to assist in the evacuation of Fuckville. It's disappointing, but noble, and there's no argument.

Soon they all quiet down and cross the bridge. The jeeps kill their lights and everyone strains to see in the darkness. Their efforts aren't in vain--shortly, they spy figures hiding in a nearby bush. Word is whispered around and the jeeps roll to a halt while Kara and Salazhar quietly dismount and start sneaking that way. When the jeeps hit the bushes with their high-beams and the militia call for the figures to stand up, two unarmed Ress soldiers stumble out and surrender. Before anyone has time to be confused by this development, Salazhar cooly walks over to one, raises his sawed-off shotgun, and blows off the Ress prisoner's head.

What the fuck just happened? The other Ress soldier, now wearing his buddy's last thoughts, is clearly horrified, and nobody in the militia was ready for this development. Weapons turn, train on Salazhar, and plenty of people tell him to lower the weapon and stand down. Ottomar soldiers take prisoners, they say. Executions are for the Ress. Salazhar grumbles, but relents, and one of the jeeps relays the surviving prisoner back to the HQ while the other starts back into the city, looking for signs of hold outs.

The hold outs they find turn out to be elderly folks--people who have settled down, and will not move from this recliner in this building in this city just because some Ress fucker has got delusions of grandeur and thinks a few tons of bullets and high explosives will make Bormane anything other than Ottomar. Trost tries to be reasonable, which doesn't work. He also tries his sergeant voice, and that doesn't work either.

Just as the first old couple decides its time for the Royal Ottomar Militia to get off their lawn, Butcher tries his luck. His wrinkles, grey hair, cantankerousness and slightly addled mind all add up to Old Person Cred, and before long he's evacuated a couple jeeploads of crazy old people to relative safety across the Bors.

While this work continues, the Ress Zeppelin drones across the sky to the north again. Its searchlights sweep the town, but ineffectually, and in the dark it seems more benign than terrifyingly destructive. The group keeps an eye on it while they continue, and just as they decide this there's a new sound in the night: a continuous, high-pitched whine. No one has heard this before, and, owing to its vague resemblance to the sound of incoming artillery shells, Kara suggests that everybody take cover. They do, and as they regard the sky they see a strange red light, growing brighter as the sound grows lighter. Then it arcs off toward the zeppelin, which promptly explodes.

What the fuck just happened? As the militia soldiers gawk, the Zeppelin's spine is broken amidships, and the behemoth erupts in flames. It struggles to stay aloft, maneuvering briefly, but shortly plummets and shatters into an inferno northeast of the sawmill.

On every face there is confusion, wonder, or fear, except for the face of Nathan Salazhar, who smiles smugly, as if he understands. When Sid asks if he knows what just happened, he denies it, but his denial falls so flat that it's immediately obvious he knows something. The questions start coming, and the denials continue, and then...

...Kara recalls Salazhar executing a defenseless man, and overflows with rage. She inserts herself into Salazhar's personal space and lays out an ultimatum: Salazhar will tell everyone exactly what he knows, or he will be left to rot. Salazhar is more than shocked and spills it: he heard someone talking about a plan to destroy the zeppelin. He swears he doesn't know who, and Kara doesn't accept it, pointing out that everyone has a nametape. Her submachine gun comes to her shoulder and wordlessly echoes her threat. Butcher starts to protest but is cut off by Kara's shout "SHUT THE FUCK UP, CABBAGE," and Salazhar starts to plead. Trost orders her to lower her weapon, and she doesn't. Mages says her name. She twitches, practically deflates, and lets Salazhar alone.

The group sits in silence for a bit. In the distance, a false sunrise glows above the fallen zeppelin. Inspired, Kara suggests that the Ress will surely be sending a team to rescue the airship's crew. Why not fuck with that?

The group unanimously decides that's a great idea.

The jeeps charge off for the northeast. They rapidly arrive at the zeppelin's funeral pyre, lights on, looking for all the world like a Ress rescue team to the beleaguered survivors of the crash. Sid hops off, finding a snipey spot, and the jeeps split up to catch different pockets of troops. It's only when a jeep rolls in close to a group of three that the Ress realise they've been duped. Faced with a mounted MG and a handful of Ottomar militia who are pretty damn pleased with themselves, two of them immediately surrender. The officer with them--it's always the officers--decides he's not dealing with that shit, though, and bolts into the night. Kara immediately rushes off after him, but the guy runs like a motherfucker and is getting away. He continues to get away until Sid puts a rifle round through the meat of one of his thighs. Then he drops to the ground, spent, and Kara easily manhandles him back to the jeeps.

As they truss up the prisoners, more headlights appear. The actual rescuers have arrived, and so it's time for the miltia to bolt. The jeeps rendezvous, Sid is picked up, and they begin offroading like motherfuckers, headed back toward town. The rescue party manages to guess that these departing jeeps contain people that still need to be rescued, and so they give chase and open up with their machine guns.

The chase goes on for minutes. It starts in the open, but the Ress jeeps' big machine guns drive the militia into the streets, where no amount of crazed driving seems to shake the pursuers. The two groups trade fire seemingly endlessly. The machine gunner on one of the jeeps seems to simply absorb a bullet from Butcher's rifle, and everyone seems to be missing. Finally, a shot from Sid badly injures the driver of the lead jeep, which loses control and slips off the road in a relatively minor crash. The other jeep closes in, though, and no one can seem to touch it.

As things look bleak, the group passes a church, and the pursuing jeep suddenly veers away. Its driver spasms and goes limp. The keen eyes of the militia see movement in the church's bell tower as it fades into the distance behind them. A sniper! But who? What the fuck just happened?

The group returns to Ress HQ without having sustained a single casualty, and carrying four Ress prisoners--three in one jeep, including the officer, and one in the other--bringing their total to five for the night. Their mission has gone splendidly and HQ assures them commendations are coming down for their heroism.

Now deep into the night following a very long day, most of the group breaks up and goes off to sleep. Salazhar storms off somewhere. Sid starts to follow. Butcher says something about going to find out something from the historian. And Kara slips back off into town, wondering about the bell tower.