Boris opened the hatch and reached the control board, dominated by the eerie silhouette of an hollow man. "How's our malware doing, Wintermute? Have you found anything worthy?"
The android turned to him without unplugging from the control board, stretching the cables that once controlled the ship, before its wreckage had been elected as their base of operations.
"That Alisaa Mudlock, Aleph's aspect on the station, she's been interrogating the scientists."
Boris had always tought the hollow man's voice sounded like underground drilling operations on Dawn.
"Now she wants to inspect an old cargo that left the station two days ago. Some components of Project Laocoön may have been sent to Neoterra without autorization. They want to retrieve the components, but they think it might be a trap since the cargo is such in a bad shape: it looks like the hull is compromised."
"Well" said Boris, relieved by the good news "I think we just may prove them right this time, shouldn't we? Take Chrome and Newrose with you: we'll steal those components right under their nose".
This 300 point mission was The Armory, from ITS season 12 supplement.
Tunguska went for a tightly packed deployment, exploiting the additional cover provided by localized decompressions to control access points to the objective room during the first reactive turn.
With only one order stripped down thanks for Shukra's counterintelligence, during turn one the MK2 proxy shoots down the first hollow man of the fireteam core from the vantage point acquired via infiltration.
The rest of the orders were used by the Naga to mine two of doors to the objective room, as the Yadu haris link advanced towards the room, destroying one Tsyklon remote in exchange of three NWI.
During Nomads' first turn, the remains of the hollow men fireteam core tried to shoot down the sniper, but to no avail. With a few orders left, the other fireteam with Perseus, Raoul Spector and the Stempler advanced on the Dakini side.
On turn two, Aleph entered the objective room and opened one of the panoplies, securing the zone of operations. With a few orders left, Tunguska shot down the Deva with MSV in the Dakini link and prepared for a final assault to the armory.
Turn three wasn't much different from turn two: Aleph kept dominating the zone of operations while Tunguska tried to turn the tide but failed to conquer the heavily fortified objective room despite the selfless sacrifice of Perseus and Spector.
The match ended in a sound victory for OSS, who managed to retrieve the genetic assets fundamental for Project Laocoön.
What next?
Boris Legasov sat down on the Captain's chair on the main deck. He had just ended a spiky holoconference with Tunguska's Command where he had to balance the important intelligence he had gathered with the recent defeat on the cargo. His comlog blinked impatient, indifferent to his adsorbed reasoning.
"What now? It better be important."
"It's about Space Station Donacimiento: they just sent a distress signal to Neoterra."
