ACT ONE, MISSION FIVE: Media Squad (0.5)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You offered the identity card that had been flashfabbed as part of this infiltration - and knew that you were running on the edge of time here. If the card-
There was a chirrup and then a loud blat noise.
"Damn card reader," the marine in question muttered, his thick fingered gauntlet fiddling with the card - yanking it out, then slapping it back in, then shaking the box from side to side as he grumbled under his breath. Shit. The identcard had been a long shot, so you had approximately however long it took for the Dominion marine to figure out the jig was up. Shoot, run, fast talk? The ideas bounced around in your head as Sarah watched the screen with focused intensity, her brow furrowing. Her fingers drummed on the desk and you knew there was only one thing that would work to distract the guard from this - while still not twigging them.
"Uh, Clarke?" Swann muttered sotto voce.
"Follow my lead," you said. You tapped a few commands - waiting a moment, then flicked a switch, pushed two overrides, and-
The chirrup-blat came from the card reader and the Dominion marine groaned audibly. "Oh fucking come-"
-the fusion reactor of the dropship attached to the Galileo blew. Sometimes, wags who hadn't ever worked in military power generation a day in their lives made jokes about the UEF wasting money to build bombs into ACUs so they'd go boom if they got captured - as if any reasonably powerful reactor wasn't just a bomb waiting for a switch. Drop the magnetic bottle containing the fusion reaction in any tokamak reactor, and the end result was as unavoidable as triggering a classic fission detonation: The white flare flashed through the windows in the walls of the C&C and the whole ship rocked slightly to the side. Your marines stumbled and Stettmann let out an excited squeak you were pretty sure was audible even with his visor down.
"What the hell was that!?" A Dominion commander rushed over to the windows - and your marines followed after the marines at the door, the whole group of you fanning up to peer out the windows too. The view was quite remarkable: A good chunk of the spaceport had been turned into a glowing red cherry red slag - whatever dock workers had been out there had been vaporized in the flash or blasted off into space to die. The marines had faired only slightly better: Their armor had ablated away and debris had ripped them into red smears against the sputtering, barely functional deck graviplates. The whole ship was filling with alarms as you enacted the second step.
The mech marines - the backup - that you had had under the shuttle emerged. In the time between giving them the order to cross over onto the underbelly of the deck to the detonation of the shuttle, they had gotten far enough away from the blast and put enough metal between them and the radiant energy that they had only been slightly cooked. These mech-marines weren't jacketed in the colonials power armor: Instead, their bare, skeletal frames gleamed as they swarmed over the cherry red side of the ruined dock. They started to open fire on the few marines that were left, who immediately withdrew.
"We're under attack!" the commander said. He started to bark orders - directing your squad to secure the entrance of the room.
"No offense, General, but you just fuckin' blew our cover," Swann snapped.
"I have a plan," you said, firmly. Now the question was could you execute it...the mech-marines outside were a paltry force and were already getting picked off by the bad guys: You hadn't been able to load them down with the extra armor they normally would have brought for this mission, not and still kept them on the dropship and had the dropship not give away something was seriously wrong by fucking up its acceleration curve. Which was, of course, the entire point. They were the distraction.
And they were meant to lose.
Now, your eyes and scanners picked up and identified the immediate problems between your plan and now. As you rapped your knuckles against your chin, Sarah?
Sarah simply leaned back and watched and nodded to herself - as if she had made up her mind about keeping you. A tiny part of you was pleased, abstractly. It was...absurd, but you did want her to be impressed with your leadership. It was a compliment you hadn't been given too often - in the Infinite War, leadership and generalship often felt like building sandcastles in low tide. Yeah, you could take a world, hold a world, save lives...but there was always tomorrow. Always more nanofabricators spitting out more Aeon walkers or Cybran spider-mechs and then the tide came rolling in...
You shook your head, focusing.
Problem One: The commander. He was in the bridge and giving pretty focused orders. If you just killed him - easy as hell considering his lack of armor and his distraction - then that would blow your cover.
Problem Two: The marines fighting your mechs. If they managed to kill them too quickly then the situation would calm down and people might ask uncomfortable questions about yourself.
Problem Three: You knew that the immediate confusion would cover how the mech-marines got aboard. But that wouldn't last. And if they put the mech-marines arrival and your dropship together...
And you had to deal with those while also slipping in the bug, then sending out the broadcast, then leave them thinking the attack was purely to drop the broadcast then evacuate. Easy.
---
HEAT: 0/6
DANGER: 11
SPARKS: Planning (2)
ENEMIES: The Commander's Attention (Diff 6), the Marines Action (Diff 2, People (1)
As you can see, "combat" encounters don't have to be combat at all! Well, not direct combat at least. Each "enemy" represents a threat to your scheme which you must defeat. You can technically remove any of them by doing shots fired (like, the commander is a diff 1 enemy right now, since he's...like, an unarmored dude with his back turned.) But doing so would blow your cover!
Once the Just as Planned sparks hit 0, the bad guys will notice how sus you're being. So, work fast!
[ ] Operation: Mech Rush! Take a diff 6 charm check (gaining 3 heat) to talk the commander into focusing his efforts on securing the prison and effectively remove him from play. Then use your nanolathe skill vs a diff 1+1 check to add More Mech Marines 6 (Even More Mech Marines 6) (Planning 1))) onto the Just as Planed stack - protecting it by having even more mech marines arrive to attack and make it seem more like a real fight. Gain 3 more heat to bump that up even more, and vent 6 heat to use Just as Planned again, for a total of 6(6(7) sparks - enough to keep them busy.
[ ] Operation: Shock and Awe! Use your UEF commander skill to lead your paltry mech-marines against the Marines in a shockingly effective blitz attack: Strategic Operations 3 vs People 6 (Diff 3) means you take 6 heat to succeed, but manage to rout the marines, allowing your mech-marines to enter the facility and head to seemingly important communication nexus areas as part of the diversion. Then use use your OrbSat 2 mastery to create Micromanagement 6 (Actions Per Minute 6 (Planning 1)) stacked atop the Planning sparks, to protect your identity. Vent 6 to add +1 Planning spark (creating 6(6(4) sparks in total.)
[ ] Write in
Assessment: Mech Rush means sending an endless stream of units at entrenched Terrans to tie them down and removes the Commander from play, while leaving the marines still active and a potential threat. It makes your identity harder to pin down since there's more units running around.
Shock and Awe removes the marines from play and makes your forces seem extremely well commanded (because they are, you're micromanaging them extremely well.) This leaves your identity easier to pin down as the commander is still around and you have less units in the field to distract with.
As a warning: Enemies can be respawned to bring them back into play if the GM is a dick and wants an extended fight! I still have 11 Danger to spend, so whatever plan you choose will not "end" things.
There was a chirrup and then a loud blat noise.
"Damn card reader," the marine in question muttered, his thick fingered gauntlet fiddling with the card - yanking it out, then slapping it back in, then shaking the box from side to side as he grumbled under his breath. Shit. The identcard had been a long shot, so you had approximately however long it took for the Dominion marine to figure out the jig was up. Shoot, run, fast talk? The ideas bounced around in your head as Sarah watched the screen with focused intensity, her brow furrowing. Her fingers drummed on the desk and you knew there was only one thing that would work to distract the guard from this - while still not twigging them.
"Uh, Clarke?" Swann muttered sotto voce.
"Follow my lead," you said. You tapped a few commands - waiting a moment, then flicked a switch, pushed two overrides, and-
The chirrup-blat came from the card reader and the Dominion marine groaned audibly. "Oh fucking come-"
-the fusion reactor of the dropship attached to the Galileo blew. Sometimes, wags who hadn't ever worked in military power generation a day in their lives made jokes about the UEF wasting money to build bombs into ACUs so they'd go boom if they got captured - as if any reasonably powerful reactor wasn't just a bomb waiting for a switch. Drop the magnetic bottle containing the fusion reaction in any tokamak reactor, and the end result was as unavoidable as triggering a classic fission detonation: The white flare flashed through the windows in the walls of the C&C and the whole ship rocked slightly to the side. Your marines stumbled and Stettmann let out an excited squeak you were pretty sure was audible even with his visor down.
"What the hell was that!?" A Dominion commander rushed over to the windows - and your marines followed after the marines at the door, the whole group of you fanning up to peer out the windows too. The view was quite remarkable: A good chunk of the spaceport had been turned into a glowing red cherry red slag - whatever dock workers had been out there had been vaporized in the flash or blasted off into space to die. The marines had faired only slightly better: Their armor had ablated away and debris had ripped them into red smears against the sputtering, barely functional deck graviplates. The whole ship was filling with alarms as you enacted the second step.
The mech marines - the backup - that you had had under the shuttle emerged. In the time between giving them the order to cross over onto the underbelly of the deck to the detonation of the shuttle, they had gotten far enough away from the blast and put enough metal between them and the radiant energy that they had only been slightly cooked. These mech-marines weren't jacketed in the colonials power armor: Instead, their bare, skeletal frames gleamed as they swarmed over the cherry red side of the ruined dock. They started to open fire on the few marines that were left, who immediately withdrew.
"We're under attack!" the commander said. He started to bark orders - directing your squad to secure the entrance of the room.
"No offense, General, but you just fuckin' blew our cover," Swann snapped.
"I have a plan," you said, firmly. Now the question was could you execute it...the mech-marines outside were a paltry force and were already getting picked off by the bad guys: You hadn't been able to load them down with the extra armor they normally would have brought for this mission, not and still kept them on the dropship and had the dropship not give away something was seriously wrong by fucking up its acceleration curve. Which was, of course, the entire point. They were the distraction.
And they were meant to lose.
Now, your eyes and scanners picked up and identified the immediate problems between your plan and now. As you rapped your knuckles against your chin, Sarah?
Sarah simply leaned back and watched and nodded to herself - as if she had made up her mind about keeping you. A tiny part of you was pleased, abstractly. It was...absurd, but you did want her to be impressed with your leadership. It was a compliment you hadn't been given too often - in the Infinite War, leadership and generalship often felt like building sandcastles in low tide. Yeah, you could take a world, hold a world, save lives...but there was always tomorrow. Always more nanofabricators spitting out more Aeon walkers or Cybran spider-mechs and then the tide came rolling in...
You shook your head, focusing.
Problem One: The commander. He was in the bridge and giving pretty focused orders. If you just killed him - easy as hell considering his lack of armor and his distraction - then that would blow your cover.
Problem Two: The marines fighting your mechs. If they managed to kill them too quickly then the situation would calm down and people might ask uncomfortable questions about yourself.
Problem Three: You knew that the immediate confusion would cover how the mech-marines got aboard. But that wouldn't last. And if they put the mech-marines arrival and your dropship together...
And you had to deal with those while also slipping in the bug, then sending out the broadcast, then leave them thinking the attack was purely to drop the broadcast then evacuate. Easy.
---
HEAT: 0/6
DANGER: 11
SPARKS: Planning (2)
ENEMIES: The Commander's Attention (Diff 6), the Marines Action (Diff 2, People (1)
As you can see, "combat" encounters don't have to be combat at all! Well, not direct combat at least. Each "enemy" represents a threat to your scheme which you must defeat. You can technically remove any of them by doing shots fired (like, the commander is a diff 1 enemy right now, since he's...like, an unarmored dude with his back turned.) But doing so would blow your cover!
Once the Just as Planned sparks hit 0, the bad guys will notice how sus you're being. So, work fast!
[ ] Operation: Mech Rush! Take a diff 6 charm check (gaining 3 heat) to talk the commander into focusing his efforts on securing the prison and effectively remove him from play. Then use your nanolathe skill vs a diff 1+1 check to add More Mech Marines 6 (Even More Mech Marines 6) (Planning 1))) onto the Just as Planed stack - protecting it by having even more mech marines arrive to attack and make it seem more like a real fight. Gain 3 more heat to bump that up even more, and vent 6 heat to use Just as Planned again, for a total of 6(6(7) sparks - enough to keep them busy.
[ ] Operation: Shock and Awe! Use your UEF commander skill to lead your paltry mech-marines against the Marines in a shockingly effective blitz attack: Strategic Operations 3 vs People 6 (Diff 3) means you take 6 heat to succeed, but manage to rout the marines, allowing your mech-marines to enter the facility and head to seemingly important communication nexus areas as part of the diversion. Then use use your OrbSat 2 mastery to create Micromanagement 6 (Actions Per Minute 6 (Planning 1)) stacked atop the Planning sparks, to protect your identity. Vent 6 to add +1 Planning spark (creating 6(6(4) sparks in total.)
[ ] Write in
Assessment: Mech Rush means sending an endless stream of units at entrenched Terrans to tie them down and removes the Commander from play, while leaving the marines still active and a potential threat. It makes your identity harder to pin down since there's more units running around.
Shock and Awe removes the marines from play and makes your forces seem extremely well commanded (because they are, you're micromanaging them extremely well.) This leaves your identity easier to pin down as the commander is still around and you have less units in the field to distract with.
As a warning: Enemies can be respawned to bring them back into play if the GM is a dick and wants an extended fight! I still have 11 Danger to spend, so whatever plan you choose will not "end" things.