+^+
/4\
(O 1)
/M+2\
[]E 1[]
/\C 1/\
You are standing by as your G- Launch "Ferrymon", which you've refitted for shuttling between earth and her lunar outposts, is being wheeled out on the hangar deck, and totting up expenses for the month in your head, when you are determinedly approached by Marchion ("Marki") Hanes, executrix of Sol Searching investment brokers. She proposes to hire your ship to transport herself with only her personal luggage up to the SkyHook (High Orbit Office Complex) spaceport as soon as you're ready; and offering a suitably exorbitant recompense.
How can you refuse? (Initially, that's not a rhetorical question.)
She folds her arms and scoffs out a "Really." Silently pondering: and has that scared you off, too?
Hands on hips, she challenges with a what if offer about turning this trip into a company sponsored excursion, on her say- so.
Snagging your arm, she says she's on the level; and besides, it's a serious enough matter or she wouldn't be here, all right?
She distractedly rummages in her handbag, then gives a resigned sigh and turns to go look elsewhere.
Your character's full player stats are:
Attempting to retake some initiative, she starts to insist upon what she calls prioritizing the flight's rerouting through the tower scheduling linkup.
| 1, 2: crewmen (?) | R: robot redcap |
| M: Marki | Y: yourself |
| #: ship's hull | CB: cargo bay hatch |
In the course of these negotiations, as a robotic redcap lugger moves past your field of vision heading for the terminal, your gaze focuses on a couple of men approaching across the hardpan: seemingly part of the ubiquitous ground crew. However, you've noticed that the second crewman's toolbelt holsters what looks more like the butt of a sidearm than the grip of a handsaw.
You make the reaction SV and can get set for the encounter. Maybe to pitch a bottle at them from the cooler with your lunch in a Throw action, or use some other object readily to hand.
It seems they can't be held up for long, and their continuing to press forward forces the both of you to now head into the ship on the run.
Looks like the best way to deal with them is going to be to make some kind of threatening demonstration that'll dissuade them from closer pursuit, before beating a retreat to the ship.
You secure the bay doors and work around the stacks of cargo to make it up to the ship's pilot console with Marki in tow, where you check over the onboard computer and ship status readouts. As she settles herself in, you find that her additional luggage had previously been brought aboard.
Pressed for an explanation of the apparent assault outside, she says that her firm has been told to back off from an investigation into the trafficking of siliceous moon rocks, and her hiring of you might have given some adversary the impression that she's intending a visit to the moon.
As soon as you raise Flight on the comm.s for launch clearance, you're notified that the ship's immediate destination has already been updated for you to put in at Skyhook station.
With a pleading look, Marki resumes her ongoing argument that there'd be no extra customs passthrough on a jaunt out of earth to her Skyhook sister station. And, it's an easy trip to rendezvous in orbit there; as the spaceport would be passing through earth's protective shadow on the far side.
Ground control comes on again to ask what's holding things up?
You propose that the ship should follow a tracking trajectory to make contact with the space station when it's on the sunward side of earth, where the moon is similarly positioned at present. Yet, you're advisedly reminded that the magnetosphere and solar wind turbulence are more unreliable at points in that region.
You'll have to try to convince them you're capable and can manage to cover such a route.
The ship lifts off and soars out to clear earth's atmospheric coccoon. Only a slight shifting of the baggage stowed in the forward compartment is recorded.
Space encounter: Upon your ascent into the orbital path of an ordinarily passive Space Surveillance Network monitor satellite, it surprisingly detaches a weaponized Vampire drone ship that blasts off in your direction.
[ place holder ]
(This dogfighting top subsection references the relative position of the ships. It asks for an option choice from the player or the opponent whose turn it is or who's won a maneuvering pilot check. The choice to attack is only available to a pursuing ship whose turn it is. For this game, the Flee flight option is treated the same as the Turn option when ships are engaged, instead of putting the opponent in pursuit. In order to escape from the battle by disengaging, the player has to manage to Flee or Turn from engagement, then Flee from there to long range disengagement, and lastly Flee to escape from disengagement; whereas the drone on its part will be trying to overtake to reengage and nullify these efforts.)
Execute option - mid turn subsection.
(This dogfighting middle subsection processes the acting side's choice of option and works out the results if a roll is called for. Then when the link is activated it either goes back to get the specific flight choice if there's a winner in a maneuvering pilot check, or else goes on to any status revision for the ships (ie taking damage or disengaging), followed by end- of- the- turn accounting.)
Status update - end turn subsection.
(This dogfighting end subsection monitors ship conditions and shows the player when anything significant happens. The drone would get an automatic attempt to counterattack following a ram by the player, even if destroyed; and gets a 4- dice roll to hit with a Final Firing Run should the player manage to escape from the battle by disengaging.)
Your damaged ship has flamed out and gets blasted into an orbital degradation of accelerated decay. If not effectively repaired before reentry is unavoidable, you'd spiral into a splashdown back on earth.
You have the choice of trying to angle the ship and use the retros to gain some altitude to give you more time, or to apply your knowledge of the ship for discovering the most likely fix and taking the requisite steps to a solution.
Try to alleviate tumbling and gravitational pull over momentum to remain in a slightly higher decaying orbital path by a SV 3D: DX with no ship's Maneuverabilty bonus. Failure causes a decrement in level, and each attempt reduces your eff DX for the next attempt by -1.
You have a shot at making repairs by a SV 3D: IQ with a penalty of -1 for each of the ship's current orbital levels below level 4 (+1 at level 5, which is the highest you can get). A successful roll result restores one ship's section, and if Operations is first to be restored, you'll further need to try to get Engineering up and running in order to lam out of here.
Potential drop in an orbital level on repassage through the Middle to Low Earth Orbit (MEOw & LEO) debris field (? possibly without shields).
The ship is irretrievably grabbed by earth's gravity and plummets into a reentry & splashdown; hopefully toward a landing somewhere not too rocky. Once it's lifeboat functions are instituted there's no recourse but to ride it out.
You can count on being located by area rescue elements alerted to the ship's emergency transponder signal, and recovered without personal physical harm to either of you, but the ship will be a loss. Marki might be instrumental in getting you some compensation, since she's on hand as an eyewitness, but you know how these counter- accusation of negligence suits will drag on ever since the earliest days of ships lost at sea.
Your XP awards for the game total=
== Game end ==
Heading out again after this desperate mixup, you're inclined to thank your lucky stars for a narrow escape from a near thing. You may opt to check over the ship for worsening damages, or to make a sweep of the proximate area and communicator traffic for indications of what might be going on.
You receive a further award of +1 XP in the overcoming of this challenge: your total XP now=
You'd been concerned that the violence of the recent encounter might be having some progressive underminig effects on your ship's pilot- handy spaceworthiness. But, your process of weightlessly floating through a going over of the control lines and a slight redistribution of stores ensures that it still retains its Maneuverability bonus of M+2.
In the process of your examination, you see a warning light that causes you to make your way along weightlessly to an access booth where you discover Marki at the airlock preparing to jettison a cosmetics case- size container adrift into space. When you start to prevent her in these ungainly conditions, an overgrown starship's cat akin to a golden- eyed bobcat or lynx launches itself into a pounce at you.
| AL: Airlock | M: Marki |
| Y: yourself | W: Wildcat |
Zero- G mapping orientation is more of a shipwise- vertical spatial crossection than a horizontal surface plane representation.
Combat in these cases consists primarily in trying to disentangle from grappling or disengage from an adjacent hex opponent witout getting rebuffed.
Marki apologizes for her cat's aggressiveness. She'll claim that what she was caught in the act of doing was just deploying a company experiment to check on varying levels of radiation in the Van Allen belt. The device is housed in a secure and hardened lockbox somewhat bigger than a breadbox.
The outlines of the Skyhook spaceport cluster become more discernible as you approach on a stabilizing orbit. You'll be passing the shipyard's megaform construct prior to gaining the commercial garage traffic lanes, and need to decide whether you have more interest in evaluating your ship's condition or a priority for checking in at the core station's courtyard to get shed of your passengers first.
In making for the hookup, you get a docking SV to mate with the appropriate coupling, avoiding any significant deviation. This DX SV gets a penalty of half of any wounds you may still have, with a bonus of the ship's present Maneuverability rating iat spacedock, or a penalty instead if the ship's Cargo section is destroyed at the more delicate station transfer.
You ease into spacedock. As you're getting familiar with the personnel and waiting for a maintenance slot, Marki assembles her remaining gear and shuttles off to her conference venue. After a while a service team runs through some diagnostics and lets you know that the ship appears to be in satisfactory operating condition.
You make a rough entrance into spacedock before you can cut the engines in a timely manner. Seeing that your ship looks to have been through the mill, the on- site exminers swarm aboard for an assessment, holding up both you and Marki for the time being.
With them busy around you, one sidles up to issue a low- voiced warning that an arrest order for Marki has been circulated at the principal station offices: at which she'll turn to you and ask to continue to accompany you on your futher travels, rather than being let off here.
Your approach to the station is smooth and competent enough that you can execute docking while keeping an eye on Marki. As a result, you're both aboard and settling up when a delegation from the administration's council comes by to greet you.
The ship makes the station at an adverse angle that jars you almost out of your seat. You hear an alarm claxon from somewhere in the interior and have to scramble to get the ship back on the right rail. By the time you've resolved the problem, a concerned denizen of the station pokes his head through a hatchway that's been recently left open to advise you that some police are coming. Marki meanwhile appears to have absconded and dissolved into the labyrinth of the station's passageways.
The inspectors find suspicious spillage from a damaged container in the cargo section, with smuggled materials hidden under the goods inside. They'll move to detain you when it turns out that any knowledge of your run gets denied by Waybread's officials.
Whereupon you may try to use your connections to allow you leave to take off again looking to find out more about these charges for yourself before answering to the prosecution.
The ship is boarded with an armed escort and you get charged with complicity in the misappropriation of sensitive material relating to industrial espionage. They intend you to be placed in custody until the legalities can be worked out.
All seems to have turned out well. The adventure wraps up with you signing off on your way into space, bound for the moon.
Your XP awards include +1 for getting out of the jam here, for a game total of
== Game end ==
You're remanded to the holding tank for a medical examination along with an interrogation, and your ship is impounded until further investigation can clear you of wrongdoing. It's a pity to wrap up the adventure in this way, but use this opportunity to take it easy and you'll likely be out and about again in no time at all.
Your XP awards for the game total=
== Game end ==