Friday, May 20, 2016

IW 5 - Blue Jungle

Context

The crew of the CAMEROON has received a distress call of their clients. The call, extremely weak, is taking them deep in the hinterland of Brethrow, a backwater on Prometheus. The clients are shady hunters from Terra. They are short of weapons, and are suspecting that the extraction will be complicated by the presence of raptors.


The air is thick enough to make soup with it.

Location

Prometheus is the oldest Terran colony. Brethrow is a distant developing nation where little laws are in effect. The air is thick, the temperature an uncomfortable 35C(95F). The topography is made of mountains covered by a dense jungles.

The insertion spot (purple), the creek (orange), the cave entrance and exit (blue).
   

Location: 400m of approximate extraction site, mainworld, Prometheus system
Terran timestamp: May 1, 2170 AD

The CAMEROON descends to 20m and release the air raft. On board of the raft, Tom and Anika. The only weapon on board is a 4mm gaussian pistol that Tom puts between his legs as he drives the craft over a creek heading up the slopes. On the CAMEROON, Diane pinpoints the signal from the transmission to a nook at the foot of the mountains. She passes the data to the raft and the CAMEROON begin sweeping the area. The free trader grates against the tree canopy to mask the approach of the raft. Jane has the dual 100MJ laser at the ready.


Location: some godless creek bed, mainworld, Prometheus system
Terran timestamp: May 1, 2170 AD

Anika clings to her dazzler laser flashlight. Tom is speeding over the creek bed in a scary display of driving prowess. Debris and leaves are rubbing against the craft and the visibility is down to nothing from her point of view. When the raft begins banking, Tom swerves to avoid crashing into trees. A 5m long raptor is now perched at the rear of the raft, and came out of nowhere. Anika has to throw herself off the raft to avoid a deadly bite to her torso. She lands heavily in the creek bed, but the nanoweave suit turns a deadly fall into a bad one. Her hands clings to her dazzler. As she wipes the wet hair from her face, she sees the raptor lose its footing and falls into the creek, some 20m upstream. 


Hey, Anika, you smell like lunch.

Tom has abandoned the wheel and takes a few shots at the raptor. One 4mm tungsten rod hits the beast hard enough to make it jerk out of sight. Anika is struggling in the heavy foliage on the bank. The scene calms down: only the cackle of the creek and the drone of the CAMEROON overhead remains. Anika climbs back on the raft, sore from the fall.

On the CAMEROON, Diane detect a heat signature as well as a weak electromagnetic signal. The location is piped on the raft’s computer with a precision of 1m. Tom hits the throttle until the creek becomes too narrow. The raft then starts to slalom in slow motion at 15m off the ground, sandwiched between the undergrowth and the canopy.


Location: Cave entrance, mainworld, Prometheus system
Terran timestamp: May 1, 2170 AD

The raft descends through the undergrowth and get a visual on the entrance of a man-made cave. A trail of smoke is coming out, and the smell of thermite lingers. Tom lands the rafts and head to the tiny hole, both weapons trained on the unknown. Anika trips, hangs upside down and panics. She thrashes and tries to climb back on the raft as Tom slips down into the cave.

Tom finds a tablet, but it is locked. He switches his flashlight to the LED. The tunnel is about 1.5m high by 0.6m. The air was sucked out by the burning of a thermite grenade. He finds the mangled body of Phillip, one of his client. He was somehow dragged by a small toothed creature that held him by the throat. The dirt nearby has turned to glass by the heat.

Anika takes a hold of herself and slips down into the tunnel. The smell of thermite is intense. She can see the glimmer of Tom’s light ahead, but keeps the dazzler mode on, just in case. The two meet a little past Phillip’s body, into a small antechamber. The room is filled with trash, some of the wrappers are Terran household brands "Mr. Noodles". The place was used recently. They head out by the other access tunnel.


Location: Cave exit, mainworld, Prometheus system
Terran timestamp: May 1, 2170 AD

The cave exits to another sealable trapdoor. The light is blinding as Tom peers outside. Nothing snatches his head, but a raptor could be a few meters away and he wouldn’t be able to tell. Three horribly mutilated bodies are lying on the ground next to him. The scene makes him woozy and he needs to catch his breath. Anika looses her cookies loudly back into the cave entrance. Amongst their anxious whimpering, the weak voice of a man hanging overhead. Tom recognizes Marion, the other hunter and client. He is swinging at the end of a rope, attached by his waist. His head is badly beaten.

Marion cues Tom of the impending charge of a raptor. Tom blinds the monster with his dazzler laser. The raptor runs into a tree and finds a way to get out of sight in the thick undergrowth. They can hear it scurry away. Maybe 150m to the North the CAMEROON has opened fire with the dual laser. In the thick and moist atmosphere, the laser makes noise analogous to thunder. Tree trunks explode in the intense heat of the beam. A number of raptors seems to be scattering away from the scene.

Anika locates a rope and climbs to meet Marion. He points at three terrorized men clinging to a tree 20m above. He refers to them as targets/flags. Tom makes the connections. He thinks back at the 3dT of unknown cargo that was in his hold before and figure out that the targets had been smuggled in a cryo state.

“Have you smuggled these men to hunt, asshole?”, Tom and Anika seem to be on the brink to execute Marion on the spot. Marion begs for mercy, but his voicebox has been smashed and nothing but gargles come out.


Location: Brethrow airspace, 1000m alt., mainworld, Prometheus system
Terran timestamp: May 1, 2170 AD

It turns out that the targets are Prometheans natives. They speak a hard to parse cajun. Tom finds on the damage dinosaur gun and make it his. Marion is hauled onboard and given to the care of Aeryn and Flo. If Marion survives, which he should, they’ll make him pay and then turn him over to law enforcement for his sins.


Character Cast

  • Tom Anders: Retired Marine, gruff, good hearted. Now get off his cargo hold.
  • Diane Ayetou: born rich and far less qualified than given credit for. Gets an A for A-fort.
  • Jane Calhoun: Business-like business end of things. Reluctant pilot, appreciate spirits and solitude.
  • Anika Kaprescu: Recluse. Did some time, killjoy. The ship’s cat.
  • Aeryn Lorien: Stumbling steward, athlete and nurse. Gets the ribbon for caring the most.
  • Molly Pepper: Engineer and ship’s puppy. Her giggles are wasted on the crew.

Friday, May 6, 2016

IW 4 - Hunters

Context

While crossing the asteroid belt at 2000 miles per second, the TCIV CAMEROON was recruited by the UWO Interplanetary Police to engage a corsair. The engagement was brief, and left the ship with a hull breach through the habitat. Lucky for them, the UWO covered the repairs and medical bills of their passengers. The crew is now in Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) while Molly tests the new Jump-2 drive and the UWO shipyard patch the old trader.

Location

TSS Obama is a Class A space station largely employing UWO personnel. It is a hub of interplanetary travel, which leaves the drydocks for jump-capable ships slightly underutilised.


Location: TSS Obama, LEO, Terra system
Terran timestamp: April 15, 2170 AD

The CAMEROON entered a pressurized enclave for large scale repairs. The crew was offered to attempt to obtain a deputy license. The crew was enthusiastic as the insurance coming with the deal was rather attractive. Diane, officially dead to avoid prosecution by the Wheat Board and a messy divorce with her wife, made herself invisible as the UWO inspected the ship. Jane, Molly and Tom got certified while Aeryn failed her attempt at the medical officer placement. Anika and Diane took a pass on the events.

A holomail came in on the 27th from the belters that were saved by their intervention. It turned out that their 100MJ laser fused the corsair’s maneuver drive, breaching the hull. Most of the crew perished before rescue could arrive on the scene. The corsair ship was sold for scrap and the proceeds used to pay the insurance premium of the belter community. As a thank you, the belter recorded a folk song and had it sent to the CAMEROON as a thank-you gift. The crew was the hero of a community of about 20 souls. As if this day had not been good enough, the Sisters of Mercy transferred the passage of the two nuns. One of them suffered a stroke, but the other called from the hospital to thank the crew.

Brethrow: come for the client, stay for the drinks.

Location: TSS Obama, LEO, Terra system
Terran timestamp: April 18, 2170 AD

The CAMEROON loaded up nearly to capacity the holds with packaged good bound to Prometheus. They settled the hunters into the high passage cabins and went on their way. The pre-jump thrust was uneventful. For the first time of their contract, the CAMEROON jumped.

Location

Prometheus is the oldest terran colony. With a jungle-like environment, some 850M terrans are living a colonial life mostly in high tech installations. The population is mostly of the Mormon faith in the centers. Gravity is 0.93G, temperature is around 30C-25C. Control rating is 3 and TL 10.


Location: Prometheus, 100D line, Prometheus system
Terran timestamp: April 25, 2170 AD

Philip was a dentist and Marion owned a 3D printing manufacturing business. They paid good money for the crew to insert them into a corrupt backwater on Prometheus named Brethrow. The terms: no paperwork filed to the highport and 3 dT of mystery cargo. Tom figured out that they were on some poaching kind of trip while Aeryn found them easy to keep happy as passenger. Tom noticed that they were preparing very high-caliber rifles for their trip. 

When the CAMEROON arrived, they made a beeline for Brethrow. The place was more or less an unregulated space. They landed on a Class E strip barely big enough for the Hero-class to land in the jungle. 

The hunters debarked, the crew stopped for a drink and soaked up the 35C, dense and moist atmosphere for an hour. They then departed for the UWO lowport to deliver their cargo and wait for the hunters for their call back home.


Location: Prometheus, Low-port, Prometheus system
Terran timestamp: May 1, 2170 AD

Six days went by at the lowport. Aeryn disappeared into the gym/MMA scene while Tom rounded up a few passages back to Terra. An ex-scout agreed to a medium passage and so did two needy and irritating pompous aristocrats. Diane managed to get the hulls full of jobs while Jane tried in vain to locate speculative cargo. 

The timing was rather good because a message came in, weak, from Marion. The message was garbled, video and audio failed. It fell back to text:

Help!
Philip is dead.
I’m trapped, we’re surrounded.

A set of coordinates then got uploaded. Diane rallied the crew into the bridge to await more details. Twenty-five minutes later, the CAMEROON came in LOS and scanned the coordinates. It was dense jungle, mist and 700km North from Brethrow. Diane found a pond some 400m to the east where the airraft could be inserted as the tree canopy around appeared to be some 60m high. By then, there was only 5 minutes to the entry window.

The crew decided to gear up for an extraction to recover Marion, the sherpas and the corpse of Philip the dentist. Someone pointed out that they never got around to purchase personal weapons other than the dazzlers lasers that Diane got in Douala. The exception was the carbine in the ship’s locker. In the interest of time, they voted against dropping by Brethrow to purchase better weapons.

The CAMEROON approached the coordinates. The 100m low precision became obvious when they realized how difficult the terrain turned out to be. More text streamed in:

()*(*ASDSDHLKSJDHSHAGU kslkjfs raptors sjkldkshlkjhflskjhd wd w9809udsjnl high-powered rifles kjsdjkhlakjdhfd9809adfpahdflandf asfkdj;f ;;;;

Tom and Anika suited up and boarded the air raft as the ship sliced through the jungle mist just before dawn...


Character Cast

  • Tom Anders: Retired Marine, gruff, good hearted. Now get off his cargo hold.
  • Diane Ayetou: born rich and far less qualified than given credit for. Gets an A for A-fort.
  • Jane Calhoun: Business-like business end of things. Reluctant pilot, appreciate spirits and solitude.
  • Anika Kaprescu: Recluse. Did some time, killjoy. The ship’s cat.
  • Aeryn Lorien: Stumbling steward, athlete and nurse. Gets the ribbon for caring the most.
  • Molly Pepper: Engineer and ship’s puppy. Her giggles are wasted on the crew.