Silent Storm — Mission 9: You Just Can’t Find Good Help These Days!

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Bogey, Viper, Doug, Sook, and the rescued Doctor Locke scurry out of the lab and back into the light of day. We head home, feeling more than a little defeated.

Despite the horrible mess that mission was, Bogey snags a Military Cross out of it. Yeah, I don’t know how…

What we also get out of the whole debacle is some very interesting intel:

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Locke’s description of the “futuristic” armor sounds awfully similar to the “advanced infantry armor” we recovered film of way back on our second mission. Coincidence? No. Since this is a videogame, I’m going to go with definitely no.

The confrontation with Mecha-Hitler draws near. I can smell it. In the meantime, we do have two openings in Team Bogey to be filled.

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This room’s feeling a little empty these days.

For now we’re going to grab another grenadier and soldier, though I don’t think anyone can fill ol’ Jerzey’s shoes.

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These are the guys we pick: Bob Rousseau, Frenchman with a dark and tragic past; and Oz Baxter, dumb muscle. May they fare better than their predecessors.

Now, for our next mission. We’ve got a bunch of options: “A small English town,” “German Town,” and “German Store” — the last being the warehouse Locke gave us the location of. I’m not sure I want to send our 33% brand new team on a mission where we’re almost certain to come up against powered armor suits, though. For now, we should cut the new guys’ teeth on something theoretically less dangerous.

Maybe the German town? I honestly can’t recall why this is a place we can go or what we’ll find there, and the description doesn’t help either.

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Were we supposed to be assassinating somebody? I haven’t got a clue, but it doesn’t sound too bad. Let’s do it!

Everybody on the bus; we’re headin’ out!

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Our heroes find themselves in the streets of the nameless German city. The area consists of five large apartment buildings at the edges of the map, all around a central T-shaped street. I’ll number the buildings for clarity. You can see two of them (1 and 2) flanking this side road we’re standing on. Across the main road are the other three. Here:

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And here:

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We can’t see anything yet — civilians, enemy soldiers, invading Martians. Nothin’.

As soon as we move up, though, it’s a different story.

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Almost immediately, we catch our first sighting — two snipers on the third-floor balcony of building #4. There’s no sense trying to be stealthy on an open map like this, so we start taking potshots as soon as we see them.

Pretty soon, Nazis are pouring in from every direction.

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Being able to see them coming at us from down the street gives the team a huge range advantage, so most of these guys pose virtually no threat to us. Oz and his machine gun cover the ones that do.

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We make our way straight ahead, but at a snail’s pace. Every few steps, a new enemy comes into view — and we mow them down.

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The central building, number 4, seems the most heavily-guarded, not to mention that it’s the most imposing… or that the side road leads directly to it. I figure it’s a decent bet at least one of our objectives is there.

By the time we reach it, the front door looks something like this:

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We’ve taken a little bit of damage getting here, but nothing Bogey isn’t able to soothe away with his soft touch and reassuring words.

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Since he’s supposed to be our meatshield, Oz approaches the door.

We shoot through the door only to find two more soldiers right on the other side. They get the drop on Oz, and he takes five or six shots directly in the, uh… breadbasket, apparently.

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Is breadbasket Australian for your face?

But he survives! He might do Jerzey proud after all. While he’s getting healed up, the others pick off the guys inside.

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Then we take a couple minutes firing up through the ceiling at a third soldier we can hear but can’t see.

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…I will never stop loving this game.

Anyway, once he’s downed, the building is pretty quiet. Oz and Bob scout the place out, and except for one officer (who brings Oz to the brink of death again), it seems to be clear.

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All that’s left is the basement. We’ve had two close calls, so let’s take it nice and easy…

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So far, so goo–

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Whoa– GEEZ. Talk about overkill.

ss_portrait_viperShots fired! We got hostiles in the basement!

We’ve got to get rid of that guy down there before we send anyone else. If we could get some grenades into the basement…

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A few grenades later, we haven’t done much damage to the floor. Oz’s aim is terrible.

We decide to send Viper in for a little more of a surgical approach. He gets positioned over our attacker and ready to make the shot, but then I realize he’s just spotted another through the hole.

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(That’s an enemy on the floor below, who Viper can see out of the corner of his eye, through a hole in the floor that’s almost invisible in this screenshot. In case you couldn’t tell.)

And Viper’s out of action points for this turn.

Dangit. If we don’t do something about it right now, Viper could be dead by our next turn. We scramble to get Doug in and as many shots off as possible.

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But it isn’t enough to kill German. Oh god.

Soooook!

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Sook bolts in, but we position him wrong and most of his bullets get lodged in the floor instead of going through the hole.

No one else is close enough to come to the rescue. All we can do is hit End Turn and hope.

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We… we made it! Everyone survives the volley with relatively minor scrapes. Next round, we finish him off.

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And Oz jackhammers through the floor so we can get his friend too.

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Alright. Finally. We’re going to try getting into that basement again.

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ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

…okay. Fine. Alright. It’s explosives time.

The duty falls to Doug. He sets a mine in the foyer, steps back, and opens fire.

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The dust and debris settle, and I can’t imagine anyone surviving that explosion. Still, the enemy soldier was a floor below, so maybe. At this point, anything is possible. But we’ve got to get the gear Oz and Bob were carrying. Especially those grenades; I’m not about to let Nessie’s old collection fall into Nazi hands. Besides, after how well-guarded this place was, there has to be an objective in here somewhere.

We send Doug in a step at a time. Every step he takes, he fires down into the now-completely-exposed basement.

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Even this close to the doorway, he hasn’t spotted anything. Is the German really dead? Is the nightmare finally over?

Another step forward. Another burst of blind fire. A step to the right. Blind fire. A step to the left. Still nothing.

One… more… step…

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Oh, alright then. He finally comes into view… and he’s been dead all along. That was a lot of ado over nothing at all.

Doug drops down into the basement and strafes around the place just as carefully as we’ve been doing the last few minutes. He even rockets some walls down from a distance so as not to get surprised in close range. And after all that work?

The basement turns out not to contain a single thing of importance to the mission. At least we get our grenades back from, um…

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Wow. You guys really have seen better days.

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Our four remaining team members reassemble outside.

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ss_portrait_sookSir? What is the plan?

ss_portrait_bogeyWe have to abandon the mission. I’m running out of disposable peop–

I mean… we’re taking too many loses. I can’t risk any more lives.

We ain’t leavin’. We’ve got a job to do.

ss_portrait_dougAgreed.

Yes, many more lives are at stake than just our own.

Hey, who’s in charge here?

Not you. That’s fer sure.

Against my better judgment, we carry on. I would leave now, but I honestly don’t know what would happen if we left a mission without completing a single objective. Probably nothing good.

But there’s still four buildings to check. If we do the math… two deaths per building… yep, that puts us potentially as low as negative four party members by the end of the mission. Great.

Completely at random, we pick the building slightly up the street as our next destination. Building #3. It’s as good as any, I suppose.

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Breach and clear, boys!

Sook stealths up and does the rounds. He searches the entire building and finds only a single soldier.

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Until the attic, that is, where he opens a door and finds —

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By sweet, sweet, pure, unadulterated luck, we’ve stumbled upon both the spy and the documents we were here for.

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Everyone opens fire: Sook from the doorway, Doug from right behind him. Bogey and Viper — by sheer willpower, I think — shoot through the exterior wall and at least one or two floors to hit him. The spy goes down, the basket flies apart, and the documents flutter to the floor. Mission complete.

That was… easier than expected.

Maybe we should have started with this building…

On to the next episode!
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