marie@nmtvax.UUCP (11/11/83)
This is a continuation of the Traveller Campaign Reports........ Report#4 First, in answer to comments and questions: 1. Yes, all we do is blow things up with our big guns. Death and destruction is fun. After all, there's a war on. (to our one detractor out of our thousands of screaming fans) 2. We also think nuclear war is fun, as long as we are not on the receiving end. 3. Yes, I am a nut. While waiting for our third ship to be built at Ezo, we recruited forty-two marines and purchased eighteen fighters, which we armed with three missile racks each. Each of our ships would carry a contingent of fourteen marines and a squadron of six fighters. Our marines were equipped with auto-rifles for regular actions, but since such weapons were restricted on this world, we also bought 42 submachine guns. We spent most of our time wandering around, terrorizing natives, and being vile and vicious. But things got boring when everyone learned to run away from 42 men with combat armor and submachine guns. One night, someone managed to get aboard one of our ships, the 'Growlfinger'(the other one is the 'Scumme I', named after the troop commander, Fred Scumme.), and disabled the computer. They also cleaned out the armory and ships locker. When we found out what happened, we had the computer overhauled and restocked the ship. Then we went hunting. We left guards on both ships and the rest of us went out into the nearest city looking for revenge. After a couple days, we found a lowly peasant type pawning off the stolen weapons and equipment. This poor fool had a reptilian creature which was apparently his pet. We killed it. Our men surrounded the area and removed witnesses while we proceeded to interrogate the scum. After a thorough questioning (beating), we were convinced that the peasant didn't actually steal the equipment himself, but got it from a man who worked in a local exclusive resort. We left the poor fool to cry over his pet snake. We checked out the name he gave us and found out the person was a waiter at the resort. Not having very high social standings, we went to the local equivalent of a detective agency and hired them to check it out for us, at the cost of 5000 Credits per week. They sent in a man as a janitor. For the first few weeks the only thing he came up with was that people were always turned away on the excuse that the establishment was full, but in reality it was almost empty. Eventually, he recognized one of the people in the resort as a scientist that had been working for the planetary government, but had recently disappeared. When we found out about this, we informed the governments intelligence agency. They didn't seem particularly excited about it, but they wanted to know if anything new turned up. We had increased the security on our ships, and now kept a guard on the airlock at all times, but someone managed to get on board the 'Growlfinger' again. This time he set off the alarms, and didn't have time to cause any harm, but he managed to shoot down our leading sergeant, who was on guard at the air lock. By the time anyone got there, both the burglar and our sergeant were gone. All that remained was blood and bullets. We pressured our man at the resort to get some results, and he said he would check out the restricted areas of the establishment. A few days later, he contacted us and told us he had found our sergeant. For no apparent reason, they had kept him alive and locked him up in one of the restricted rooms. The defective detective had gotten himself caught while checking out these areas and was thrown into the same room. He called in the reinforcements and broke out with the help of the sergeant. They came out seriously wounded, but help got there in time to pull them out alive. They were also able to get the scientist out, but he was too drugged out of his mind to be much help. We informed the local intelligence agency about these developments, but they still didn't want to do anything about it. Instead, they offered to pay us to wipe the establishment off the face of the planet. Having nothing more violent to do, we accepted, this also gave is a chance to try out our new fighters. We sent in our fighter squadrons, who pumped missiles into the area until there was nothing but a smoldering crater left. About this time, our third ship, which we named the 'Scumme II', was completed, and we were able to leave the planet. As were leaving, a ship with the insignia of Lord Almric came in with a message for us. We were being drafted into the Lords Navy. Overall, this wasn't bad, because he would be paying us six million credits per month. We couldn't do much better than that, because we could no longer carry cargo, all our cargo space was now taken up by fighters. We made our way from Ezo to Rewm to Ito to Zalt to Maq and then to Jud, Lord Almrics base planet. Apparently, the Lord was about to start his conquest of the subsector. He has already gathered a small fleet of ships in orbit, which consisted of his 3000 ton battle cruiser and eight 400 ton patrol cruiser class ships. There were also a good number of various other ships landed on the planet. We spent a couple of weeks here outfitting our ships and receiving orders. Our first objective was the neighboring system of Avau, which was actively resisting Lord Almric. Our three ships would be assisted by another ship of the Lords Navy which was identical to ours except for the fact that it carried no fighters. The enemy forces consisted of two 400 ton patrol cruiser class ships, each of which carried one fighter and an armed ships boat. When we got there, the enemy forces came out to meet us. The battle was short, but decisive. We launched our fighters, which hung back to launch missiles as we closed with the enemy. They had more lasers than we did, but we had a total of 66 missile launchers between all four ships and the eighteen fighters as opposed to their 14 missile racks. Before the first wave of missiles reached them, they managed to cripple four fighters and inflicted minor damage on two of the ships. They also achieved a lucky hit on the 'Growlfinger', which became a rapidly expanding cloud of vaporized debris. By now, we had launched three waves of missiles. The defenses on the Patrol Cruisers were able to stop about eighty percent of the first wave, but the twenty percent that got through inflicted major damage, and after the next two waves, there wasn't anything left. We will proceed to secure the star system........ To Be Continued...... signed, Emperor of The Great Quadrangle nmtvax!marie Dave Spicer
rigney@uokvax.UUCP (11/16/83)
#R:nmtvax:-52600:uokvax:2400015:000:228 uokvax!rigney Nov 14 19:39:00 1983 Sounds like the person who got at the Growlfinger's computer also sabotaged its anti-missile programs. Are you sure it was *just* a lucky hit, or is something sneaky going on? (I sure hope so|-) Carl ..!ctvax!uokvax!rigney