You Can't Save Everyone
Ravana fakes compliance, starting the power-down sequence and gliding for an abandoned section of manufactory floor. The Cyborg doesn't grin, or laugh, or mock him, or anything else. She just stares. He clicks her off the comms, leaving him facing the other racers.
Ravana pauses, face paling. His thumb goes over the broadcast button. He takes a deep breath. This is going to matter.
"Everyone," he says. "We need to take this bitch down. She's not racing," Ravana spits. "She's killing. Sure, we've all sprayed some autocannon fire in each other's direction, but once someone's limping, we just pass them. That's part of racing. Wasting time gunning down someone who already crashed? Going after a little girl? This metal bitch'll pick us off from behind.
"And," Ravana continues, "she wants to win over a field of dead bodies. And you know those straights near the end? That's twenty kilometres of open firing for her. It doesn't matter if she's at the back of the pack for that section, because we all know how many nasty missiles she's got packed into that thing. Or, really, we don't, because she's probably got more. So we take her down. Here and now. We do it together, because this way, we all get to live and get a chance of winning without her murdering us. We stop her shooting us all in the back - and she will, because this is someone who
doesn't care if you bail out.
"Illana," Ravana says, "can you just turn your back on this? Will you be able to live with yourself - if metal bitch doesn't stick a rocket up your tailpipe along with everyone else, at least? Rax, she's been close enough to get full scans of you, and she'll have your radar sig and your schema. Do you think you'll be able to dodge her for 20 kloms? Or you, Marcelina?" Ravana says, desperately grasping for something appropriate. "Don't you think your overcharged engines will be a big target for her from behind with her IRs?
"Chandra." This is almost a whisper. "I'll-"
"Don't bother," he replies, adjusting his shades, "I'm in."
Ravana smiles. "Thanks," he says. Chandra just wears one of those sly as fuck grins he has and adjusts his shades
again.
Then Marcelina pipes up. "Look," she says, "It's a nice speech and all, but she's only been aiming at you and your friends. Cy's been playing nice with the rest of us, and I'm not gonna take micro-missiles to the cockpit for you. I'll see you at the finish line."
Ravana snarls and then turns to Rax. Who's...doing something involving lots of turning and not much talking. Ravana's pretty sure Rax wasn't actually paying attention to that.
Last person. You turn to Ilana's screen. She looks guilty and tries to avoid eye contact. "You're not gonna do it," you say.
"I, look, I
want to," says Ilana, "But he could be in danger, the racers in the canyon could hurt him, she could escape and go after him, and if I died or crashed here I wouldn't be able to stop it. I...I don't think I can."
Ravana's eyes narrow. "Of course," he says directly to Ilana, "you don't have to help. No, you can be oh-so-brave and just fly on. After all, your bland not-a-boyfriend who'll never decide to actually man up and make a choice for once in his life rather than keep playing you along might just be safe from psycho-bitch over there. She might run out of missiles before she can take him down. Shame about how you'll be serving as a meat-shield, of course."
He winces as his engines rattle.
"Well, it's your choice. Fly on, meat shield. Leave the little girl to die and buy the guy in the lead a bit more time."
Man, he's gambling quite a bit on the hope that underneath the fact that she has
terrible taste in men, she has a personality just waiting to get out. And also that she won't shoot a missile at his face for insulting Blando.
Ilana growls at Ravana, but he can see her pull her ship around. She's in. Two out of four, not bad. One last message, then.
"Harmeet, stay safe," you say, "I've got this."
You've said what you needed to say. No takebacks. Time to end this fucker.
You flip the primary power back on as Cyborg closes on you, guns folding out of her ship as you watch. The engine whines and sputters to life, power flooding back to your engines and guns. She fires first, a veritable swarm of anti-fighter missiles leap from her vessel, and a stream of blaster fire rips through the air where you were a moment ago. One thing to do.
Dodge.
Ravana thought furiously. The ship was
kinda starting to have bits fall off. Nothing important, but it was kind of showing its mileage compared to Cybitch's bizarre gunship or Blando's supervessel. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. No computer-aided flight control or stabilization, which means that the bucket of bolts has never even been in the same bar as stability, never mind tried to flirt with it. And that predictive algorithms in, oh, a swarm of anti-fighter missiles and targeting computers predicated on a meatbag being assisted by computer programs were utterly useless in the face of his raw
awesome.
Ravana flips the switch to Awesome, turns off what little guidance assist the ship has, and warms up the blaster cannons. Another switch activates (little used) maneuvering thrusters, sending him neatly skidding past a barrage of plasma fire.
Ship ready, Ravana grips the controls and grins like a madman. This was either going to kill him, or make the audience
scream in excitement. Or both. He throws the wheel, pushes the throttle to full, and the ship spins up and away. By all accounts it looks like he's lost control, narrowly avoiding missiles and walls and even the floor on all occasion. This is false, of course, Ravana's in full control of his vehicle and was planning on
exactly this.
Kind of.
Ish.
...In his defense, it was a
very controlled out of control death spiral, as out of control death spirals go.
Cyborg and the missile swarm follow him, entirely unable to land a hit because their predictive algorithms are trying to figure out what someone with a lick of sanity and computer assist, features Ravana had notably thrown away as useless, would do. He dives into an abandoned assembly plant, missiles detonate against walls and roofs and rusted machinery as he tries to regain control of his ship. The Cyborg nimbly weaves through the machinery, trying to get a decent shot, while Ravana punches his careening deathtrap over and through the tiniest gaps between massive auto-fabs and three-dimensional printers, barely avoiding crashes and a fiery death as swarms of micro-missiles shred the machinery moments later.
Then Ravana finally opens fire, the first shot clips Cyborg's ship, melting armor and overheating a blaster but not much else. The second knocks a string of walkways loose, forcing the cyborg to stop firing and start dodging as Ravana tumbles out of the plant. He thumbs the comms button, just the once, and starts peeling away from the structure as Cyborg shoots her way out.
Cyborg finally gets out and accelerates straight for him, blaster rounds filling the air like rain during a monsoon. He doesn't dodge this time, instead he turns and runs at her, firing into the swarm. One round glances off of his right wing, another sets his left engine on fire, but he's disabled three of her blasters and her auto-cannons are reloading after the fracas in the plant, he has a few seconds before she can bring anything truly dangerous onto him.
And he only needs to keep her here for a few seconds, anyways.
He sees the auto-cannons begin spooling, but it's too late for the Cyborg, Ravana pushes into a dive, heading for the open sewers, and as the Cyborg turns to follow Ilana and Chandra strafe her, slagging the rest of her blasters and much of her armor. She goes into a spin, but gains control again, peppering the pair with autocannon rounds before turning to pursue Ravana. He jinks through the sewers, away from the civilized parts of the manufactory, but the burning left engine fails once, then twice, and a burst of autocannon fire
murders his maneuvering jets. He breaks into open air, Chandra, Ilana, and Harmeet of all people, go for another pass, slowing her down and drawing a wave of missiles away, but Ravana's ship's failed him now. There's no way to escape.
Cyborg begins spooling up the autocannons. Ravana slams on the controls furiously, turning to face the Cyborg as he desperately tries to get the maneuvering jets to sta
rt. Chandra and Ilana swing around from their last pass, trying to hit Cyborg again. Harmeet's gone, Ravana has no idea where. He'll be dead before they get there. Cyborg gives him a tiny, sly grin over the comms. The eject button's never worked, it's not an option. No choice but to go down fighting.
Ravana starts mumbling an apology to Indrajit and thumbs the blaster controls. Cyborg lines up her shot.
And then Rax screams in out of
fucking nowhere, his ship sprouting twin blades of plasma from its wings. The mantis-man comes in sideways, above Cyborg, and his plasma-wing
shears through the Cyborg's gunboat. The murderer's ship falls in half as she desperately ejects, and the crowd goes
wild.
Rax gives Ravana a salute as he de-activates the blades and swings back around. "A lesson for the rest of you," says Rax, "Ravana is not your nemesis. He is
my nemesis."
Ravana has never been so glad to have a weird mantis-man hatecrushing on him.
Then it's back into the race. Ravana pings the comms as he gets the engines working, checking on everyone one by one. Ilana and Chandra are fine, cosmetic damage only. Rax wasn't even hit, just swooped in and saved the day. Harmeet...
Her screen's black. Her death hasn't been announced, but...she's thirteen. She was bleeding from shrapnel wounds. Her comms are off and her ship isn't with the pack. Her odds aren't good, she's probably dead or dying.
It's probably Ravana's fault.
He bites his lip, breathes slowly, and then pushes on. The rest of the track goes quickly, no-one's willing to start shooting again after that, and it's almost trivial to finish the course. Ravana would celebrate, or cheer, or do some stupid stunt, but he can't quite bring himself too.
By the time he gets out of the manufactory, Blando's
just ahead of him, rocketting into the final stretch on his stupid, super-expensive ride. It's dinged and scratched, which would be heartwarming if Ravana's junk heap hadn't taken a volley of micro-missiles a moment ago.
The last canyons are fragile things, repaired by serfs and drones between races so that they're just as horribly unstable every time the course is run. Simply the sound of oncoming ships causes rockslides and boulder-falls, and while the tunnels in the walls are viable shortcuts, they're liable to collapse on you if you try to go through them.
Ravana's situation isn't helped now that the left engine has finally given up the ghost after that missile hit. He'd be crippled if these were straightaways, and it's not exactly pleasant to fly with one engine as is. He needs a plan, and a good one.
Luckily, he's
never been short on those.
Pick One:
[ ] If the rockslides are triggered by sound, then obviously the solution is to
break the speed of sound. You see no way this could possibly go wrong. (+2 Autosux, +2 Hazard. 1.6x)
[ ] Your left engine's gone, but if you stick close to the slag streams the heat
should reignite your fuel for a bit, giving you a boost of speed later. You know, if they don't kill you.(+1 difficulty, +3 dice on next turn's piloting roll. 1.3x)
[ ] Bide your time, take it slow for now, your systems can't take much more damage, so you need to be careful. Maybe try to get some of these switches working again. (-1 Hazard, you can convert threshold successes to remove more hazard.7x)
[ ] STRIFE. Time to start shooting the competition. (+1 Dif, +1 Hazard, Pick a Target. .8x)
[ ] Take cover. You're damaged, if Rax or Marcelina or someone starts shooting at you you can't afford to be hit. (+1 Difficulty, +3 to all DVs. 1x)
[ ] Stalk. The landslides and tunnels give you a unique opportunity to stalk a racer of your choice before unleashing a horrible ambush on them. (+1 difficulty, you roll stealth against an enemy, if you succeed they're treated as surprised if you attack or do something to them next turn, Pick a Target. 1x)
[ ] Zone Out. Knocking someone through a landslide or two, or pinning them in a collapsed tunnel, may well force them to land or crash. (+1 Difficulty, pick a target, whoever gains the least threshold successes of the two of you gains 3 Hazard. 1.3x)
Standings:
This leg is the final leg. It is Difficulty 3, and requires 20 Threshold Successes to complete. You are at a -1 internal penalty from the damage your ship has taken and a -1 internal penalty from exhaustion.
First Place: Blando 3/20 successes.
Second Place: Ravana and Chandra 2/20 successes.
Fourth Place: Ilana 1/20 successes.
Fifth Place: Rax and Marcelina 0/20 successes.
Eliminated Racers: Abhas, Cyborg
Dead Racers: Saboteur, Harmeet? (
status unknown)
