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A Scout's tale
- Thread starter Blue Ghost
- Start date
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I want to thank everyone who's glanced at this thread, and apologize as well. Going back and editing this stuff a year later has proven interesting and embarrassing both.
I may continued to add onto this thread, but I'm not sure. Personal reasons.
As per comments on other threads, now that I understand the law enforcement angle with a kind of 1950's pulp sheen, I see this game and its official setting almost like a modernized Buck Rogers / Adam Strange / Flash Gordon minus Ming the racketeers and all the rest, but with the same kind of gist with adversaries.
And I guess that's a small reason of why I didn't add too much more to this thread. Again, I'm an "original" T fan where the game can emulate any setting. But the official setting and thrust is kind of hard to navigate at times; i.e. it's no TTA, no Trek, no SW but with some common themes for SW.
Thanks again! And thanks to Hunter and our gracious host for keeping the forum alive.
I want to thank everyone who's glanced at this thread, and apologize as well. Going back and editing this stuff a year later has proven interesting and embarrassing both.
I may continued to add onto this thread, but I'm not sure. Personal reasons.
As per comments on other threads, now that I understand the law enforcement angle with a kind of 1950's pulp sheen, I see this game and its official setting almost like a modernized Buck Rogers / Adam Strange / Flash Gordon minus Ming the racketeers and all the rest, but with the same kind of gist with adversaries.
And I guess that's a small reason of why I didn't add too much more to this thread. Again, I'm an "original" T fan where the game can emulate any setting. But the official setting and thrust is kind of hard to navigate at times; i.e. it's no TTA, no Trek, no SW but with some common themes for SW.
Thanks again! And thanks to Hunter and our gracious host for keeping the forum alive.
KAIJU!
Tongue in cheek mode on
Shogo Takahashi, dressed head to toe in his business best, dropped his briefcase and grabbed the crying little girl standing next to a woman who had been holding her hand moments before, but whose life had ended with a chunk of concrete striking her head, and took cover behind an ally corner, covering her body with his own. A missile from a popup battering from the machine-creature’s dorsal missile battery, ignited and ended both their lives in an act of blind fury. Throngs fled in panic, some occasionally looking back only to continue their flee to be met by the planet’s military finest rolling in with armor, infantry, and battle suited warriors who stood between three to ten meters tall depending on their armor suit’s class.
A hail of bullets, autocannon and missile fire poured into the thing, but for naught.
High above the violent swirl of vortices roiling through the open cargo door made it nearly impossible to talk as clothes billowed and rippled through Team Leader Richard Aston and Chief Engineer Vash, both attached to the type-P prospector via high tensile cable life lines attached to heavy nylon harnesses. Below they watched the planetary tactical fighter wing swirling around a behemoth half beast half machine tearing a swath of rubble through Neo-Town in backwater system-X. A balkanized world within the Imperium that had nebulously requested help for “large danger”, and the incredulous Imperial Interstellar Scout Service knowing the paranoia that ravaged the mind of the local dictator, had sent Aston and his team to scope things out and make a report as soon as possible.
The swirl of concrete dust, the bright flashes of missile impacts on the creature’s superstructure followed by a splash of orange plumes ejecting chunks of shrapnel streaming trails of black smoke, was a visage of obliteration as the thing relentlessly, yet torturously and deliberately slowly stomped through one building after another, clouds of dust from a myriad of construction materials billowing up with each collapse. Below on the streets, like ants, local militia and heavy armor scurried to firing positions and delivered hopeless rounds against the juggernaut. Large bore chemical percussion weapons mounted in armored turrets thundered round after round of armor piercing ordinance, but the attacks only brought lethal reprisal in the form of twin high-energy beams slicing molten swaths through the world’s finest armored defenders, some of them exploding on the spot as their magazines erupted in a spectacular metal tearing explosion, killing both crew and anyone nearby who was not protected by a thick layer of concrete and steel.
The creature itself looked like a mechanical perversion of a titanosaur with a long neck capped with a large dragon like skull replete with horns and two blue glowing eyes that cut through buildings, traffic, expressing lethality by way of twin bright blue lasers.
Aston turned to Vash, raised his voice, and yelled to be heard over the rush of air violently swirling in the nearly empty cargo bay, “I don’t think our laser is going to cut it!”
Vash nodded, “I don’t think anything short of a cruiser is going to hurt that thing.” The Vargr’s words were sloshy and slurred as the wind pushed on his canine tongue.
Aston looked around the bay, and saw the crates strapped down against the aft bulkhead of the bay, then struggled to make his way towards them to open the lid of the one labeled MK G-Driver Type III. With his shirt, jacket and sleeves whipping violently about his body, he unlatched the lid and lifted the lid, which nearly snapped open with the winds. Inside was a shoulder mounted anti-armor weapon, grav driven.
Vash, still at the bay doors opening with sunlight and shadow moving over his face as the scout ship continued its orbit with the creature at the conical apex down below, glanced at Aston hefting the one point five meter long single shot device. Aston struggled back to just shy of the lip of the cargo bay. He didn’t like heights, and wasn’t reassured by virtue of the fact that a cable was keeping him from flying out and falling to his death. Nevertheless he motioned to Vash to help him swing his legs out over the side so he could seat himself properly. Once done he motioned to Vash to help him wield the weapon.
Vash helped place it on his shoulder, and Aston focused on the eyepiece as he moved it over the target which shook and jittered with every subtle body motion Aston made to fight the wind and Second Lieutenant Sharon Shattuck’s correctional piloting as she manned the controls in the bridge.
Aston pushed the velocity all the way to max, not knowing how it would affect the target. If nothing else, if the ordinance shell was tough enough, it would punch a hole through the monster-machine. Ideally it would merely punch through the skin and detonate, but after seeing the luck the local defense forces had had against it, Aston leaned towards putting his money with Vash’s line that nothing short of a naval ship’s battery could stop it.
It looked like a mechanical dinosaur from the depths of the netherworld, necromanced by some mad engineer and machinery simply to wreak havoc and give the local populace a good scare. The wherefores and other questions as to its origins would have to wait, but Aston couldn’t help but wonder where it came from as he drew a bead on the thing maliciously and mercilessly clomping its way through the heart of downtown.
Aston mentally cursed himself for not requesting a few marines or even army personnel to accompany him. His legs dangling below the lip of the cargo deck, fighting the wind pushing against his body, even with Vash holding onto him to help stabilize his aim, the image of the machine-beast still bobbed in his aim. He calculated at first, then simply guessed, and pulled the trigger.
Over the roar of the wind the weapon let loose it’s familiar thumping-whoosh as the smokeless projectile vanished into the confused tangle of the grid of buildings and path of destruction carved among them. A second later a huge plume of energy shot up just shy of the monster’s left shoulder, spewing a column of cloudy dust and debris.
“You missed!” Vash admonished.
Aston ignored the comment, “Get me another round.”
Vash pulled Aston back inside, then went to drag one of the cases to the forward, re-anchored it, then passed Aston another gravitic round.
“Tell the Sherry woman to keep her steady!”
Vash nodded and went to the intercom telling the second lieutenant at the controls to maintain a steady orbit. The prospector was grav driven, but even so was still subject to aerodynamic forces as she speared through atmosphere, even in a lazy orbit about a central spot as she now was.
This time Aston was fully inside the cargo bay on one knee, bracing himself by leaning against the forward bulkhead that separated the bay from the port tanks and common area. It helped some, but instead of large wind gusts causing the sights on the weapon to bob, the target image itself seemed to vibrate over the target.
Aston pulled the trigger. Again the thumping whoosh heard over the howl of high altitude wind, and the projectile speared downward, just missing the creature’s right rib cage and sending up a plume of energy and debris.
Vash knelt next to him, “You missed him again!”
“Yeah, I know! Give me another round!”
Vash grabbed and passed off another round to Aston, who quickly loaded it up. “Have Sherry give us some angle … like five degrees or something!”
Vash moved off to the intercom again and passed on the word. The prospector gently canted five degrees to port, maintaining her orbit around the machine beast, still plowing through buildings and fighting off combat suited soldiers, infantry and tracked tanks, sawing it’s eye beams left and right with another battery of missiles plowing into untouched buildings, turning them into infernos and mounds of rubble.
Aston found the target easier to track. Fighting every man’s inherit acrophobia, he ignored the possibility of falling out and plummeting to his death (in spite of his safety harness), and zeroed in on the thing. Another trigger pull and another thumping whoosh. A split second later the projectile hit home as it speared into the creature’s right shoulder, and an ear shattering scream from the massive cyborg permeated the air as the TDX within the warhead did it’s job of ripping through the thing’s super structure.
It whipped its head about in agony, bringing down several media helicopters and planetary fighters as well as cutting into more skyscrapers—one severed in two, its upper section crashing in a cloud of pulverized construction materials.
Vash chagrinned at Aston, “You sure this is the right solution?”
Aston ignored the comment, “Get me another round!”
Dutifully Vash handed him yet another round, and moments later Aston hit the thing with another hyper-velocity round in its dorsal section, tearing it asunder with another column of geysering energy and debris like a Roman candle. The creature stretched its neck skyward with one last defiant roar, then lost all signs of life as its neck and head crashed to the surface like a collapsed construction crane, spewing more dust.
Tongue in cheek mode on
Shogo Takahashi, dressed head to toe in his business best, dropped his briefcase and grabbed the crying little girl standing next to a woman who had been holding her hand moments before, but whose life had ended with a chunk of concrete striking her head, and took cover behind an ally corner, covering her body with his own. A missile from a popup battering from the machine-creature’s dorsal missile battery, ignited and ended both their lives in an act of blind fury. Throngs fled in panic, some occasionally looking back only to continue their flee to be met by the planet’s military finest rolling in with armor, infantry, and battle suited warriors who stood between three to ten meters tall depending on their armor suit’s class.
A hail of bullets, autocannon and missile fire poured into the thing, but for naught.
High above the violent swirl of vortices roiling through the open cargo door made it nearly impossible to talk as clothes billowed and rippled through Team Leader Richard Aston and Chief Engineer Vash, both attached to the type-P prospector via high tensile cable life lines attached to heavy nylon harnesses. Below they watched the planetary tactical fighter wing swirling around a behemoth half beast half machine tearing a swath of rubble through Neo-Town in backwater system-X. A balkanized world within the Imperium that had nebulously requested help for “large danger”, and the incredulous Imperial Interstellar Scout Service knowing the paranoia that ravaged the mind of the local dictator, had sent Aston and his team to scope things out and make a report as soon as possible.
The swirl of concrete dust, the bright flashes of missile impacts on the creature’s superstructure followed by a splash of orange plumes ejecting chunks of shrapnel streaming trails of black smoke, was a visage of obliteration as the thing relentlessly, yet torturously and deliberately slowly stomped through one building after another, clouds of dust from a myriad of construction materials billowing up with each collapse. Below on the streets, like ants, local militia and heavy armor scurried to firing positions and delivered hopeless rounds against the juggernaut. Large bore chemical percussion weapons mounted in armored turrets thundered round after round of armor piercing ordinance, but the attacks only brought lethal reprisal in the form of twin high-energy beams slicing molten swaths through the world’s finest armored defenders, some of them exploding on the spot as their magazines erupted in a spectacular metal tearing explosion, killing both crew and anyone nearby who was not protected by a thick layer of concrete and steel.
The creature itself looked like a mechanical perversion of a titanosaur with a long neck capped with a large dragon like skull replete with horns and two blue glowing eyes that cut through buildings, traffic, expressing lethality by way of twin bright blue lasers.
Aston turned to Vash, raised his voice, and yelled to be heard over the rush of air violently swirling in the nearly empty cargo bay, “I don’t think our laser is going to cut it!”
Vash nodded, “I don’t think anything short of a cruiser is going to hurt that thing.” The Vargr’s words were sloshy and slurred as the wind pushed on his canine tongue.
Aston looked around the bay, and saw the crates strapped down against the aft bulkhead of the bay, then struggled to make his way towards them to open the lid of the one labeled MK G-Driver Type III. With his shirt, jacket and sleeves whipping violently about his body, he unlatched the lid and lifted the lid, which nearly snapped open with the winds. Inside was a shoulder mounted anti-armor weapon, grav driven.
Vash, still at the bay doors opening with sunlight and shadow moving over his face as the scout ship continued its orbit with the creature at the conical apex down below, glanced at Aston hefting the one point five meter long single shot device. Aston struggled back to just shy of the lip of the cargo bay. He didn’t like heights, and wasn’t reassured by virtue of the fact that a cable was keeping him from flying out and falling to his death. Nevertheless he motioned to Vash to help him swing his legs out over the side so he could seat himself properly. Once done he motioned to Vash to help him wield the weapon.
Vash helped place it on his shoulder, and Aston focused on the eyepiece as he moved it over the target which shook and jittered with every subtle body motion Aston made to fight the wind and Second Lieutenant Sharon Shattuck’s correctional piloting as she manned the controls in the bridge.
Aston pushed the velocity all the way to max, not knowing how it would affect the target. If nothing else, if the ordinance shell was tough enough, it would punch a hole through the monster-machine. Ideally it would merely punch through the skin and detonate, but after seeing the luck the local defense forces had had against it, Aston leaned towards putting his money with Vash’s line that nothing short of a naval ship’s battery could stop it.
It looked like a mechanical dinosaur from the depths of the netherworld, necromanced by some mad engineer and machinery simply to wreak havoc and give the local populace a good scare. The wherefores and other questions as to its origins would have to wait, but Aston couldn’t help but wonder where it came from as he drew a bead on the thing maliciously and mercilessly clomping its way through the heart of downtown.
Aston mentally cursed himself for not requesting a few marines or even army personnel to accompany him. His legs dangling below the lip of the cargo deck, fighting the wind pushing against his body, even with Vash holding onto him to help stabilize his aim, the image of the machine-beast still bobbed in his aim. He calculated at first, then simply guessed, and pulled the trigger.
Over the roar of the wind the weapon let loose it’s familiar thumping-whoosh as the smokeless projectile vanished into the confused tangle of the grid of buildings and path of destruction carved among them. A second later a huge plume of energy shot up just shy of the monster’s left shoulder, spewing a column of cloudy dust and debris.
“You missed!” Vash admonished.
Aston ignored the comment, “Get me another round.”
Vash pulled Aston back inside, then went to drag one of the cases to the forward, re-anchored it, then passed Aston another gravitic round.
“Tell the Sherry woman to keep her steady!”
Vash nodded and went to the intercom telling the second lieutenant at the controls to maintain a steady orbit. The prospector was grav driven, but even so was still subject to aerodynamic forces as she speared through atmosphere, even in a lazy orbit about a central spot as she now was.
This time Aston was fully inside the cargo bay on one knee, bracing himself by leaning against the forward bulkhead that separated the bay from the port tanks and common area. It helped some, but instead of large wind gusts causing the sights on the weapon to bob, the target image itself seemed to vibrate over the target.
Aston pulled the trigger. Again the thumping whoosh heard over the howl of high altitude wind, and the projectile speared downward, just missing the creature’s right rib cage and sending up a plume of energy and debris.
Vash knelt next to him, “You missed him again!”
“Yeah, I know! Give me another round!”
Vash grabbed and passed off another round to Aston, who quickly loaded it up. “Have Sherry give us some angle … like five degrees or something!”
Vash moved off to the intercom again and passed on the word. The prospector gently canted five degrees to port, maintaining her orbit around the machine beast, still plowing through buildings and fighting off combat suited soldiers, infantry and tracked tanks, sawing it’s eye beams left and right with another battery of missiles plowing into untouched buildings, turning them into infernos and mounds of rubble.
Aston found the target easier to track. Fighting every man’s inherit acrophobia, he ignored the possibility of falling out and plummeting to his death (in spite of his safety harness), and zeroed in on the thing. Another trigger pull and another thumping whoosh. A split second later the projectile hit home as it speared into the creature’s right shoulder, and an ear shattering scream from the massive cyborg permeated the air as the TDX within the warhead did it’s job of ripping through the thing’s super structure.
It whipped its head about in agony, bringing down several media helicopters and planetary fighters as well as cutting into more skyscrapers—one severed in two, its upper section crashing in a cloud of pulverized construction materials.
Vash chagrinned at Aston, “You sure this is the right solution?”
Aston ignored the comment, “Get me another round!”
Dutifully Vash handed him yet another round, and moments later Aston hit the thing with another hyper-velocity round in its dorsal section, tearing it asunder with another column of geysering energy and debris like a Roman candle. The creature stretched its neck skyward with one last defiant roar, then lost all signs of life as its neck and head crashed to the surface like a collapsed construction crane, spewing more dust.
The commotion had died for the moment. Battle suit soldiers one story tall, weapons still held high, crept in with infantry and armor support. The flashing lights of law enforcement, fire fighters and Emergency Paramedics encroached on the swath of wreckage and debris, filling the quiet air with their own audible presence.
“I think that got him.” Aston carefully offered.
Vash, the former corsair turned Imperial Engineering officer, gave his CO a leery look. “You think we should stick around and talk to the planetary governor?”
“Our job here’s done. Besides, this place is balkanized.”
The prospector with a faded IISS emblem stenciled on its upper and lower half, battered by radiation exposure and micrometeorites, closed its cargo door, then nosed up, and given a massive boost by twin thrusters blasting twin blue flames aft, speared skyward into the infinite blue and beyond.
The End
“I think that got him.” Aston carefully offered.
Vash, the former corsair turned Imperial Engineering officer, gave his CO a leery look. “You think we should stick around and talk to the planetary governor?”
“Our job here’s done. Besides, this place is balkanized.”
The prospector with a faded IISS emblem stenciled on its upper and lower half, battered by radiation exposure and micrometeorites, closed its cargo door, then nosed up, and given a massive boost by twin thrusters blasting twin blue flames aft, speared skyward into the infinite blue and beyond.
The End
Wandering Profit
SOC-1
I love this line!
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