Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 058 – Feb 27th

Let’s start today right. I pay the crew. In the next hour, I get side arms TL-1 at 4 secs. each. I buy 8,500 of them and break for orbit. We double jump back to Imperia and have two ours of daylight left.

Our entry encounter is interesting. We respond to a distress call and get jumped by pirates. They storm the ship, 1 through the airlock and 3 enter the cargo bay. They have suits, so depressurizing won’t help much. They carry TL-1 side arms and a magic axe that can incapacitate anyone it hits. Fun.

My crew also has suits, military U-suits with PS bots. We’re going to play this out the hard way.

The first time I read this, I wondered how many pirates there were. The rules say that unless I kill all intruders in a single turn, 4 more enter the next turn in the same fashion. Ok. That is interesting.

Emily and Duke take the airlock. Lucy and Ratchet with side arms head to the cargo bay along with Deadeye, Lefty, David. The non-engineers have Heavy Side Arms with explosive rounds, TL-4.

Duke kills his target in one shot. Emily heads to the Cargo bay. In the bay, the fire fight is frantic. Ratchet hits a target for one point of damage. Lucy misses. The other all hit, leaving only one guy standing with 4 hits left. He fires and misses.

Next round. Duke incapacitates another target. In the bay, the fire fight continues. Emily, Deadeye, and Lefty down 3 bad guys, David misses. Lucy and Ratchet fire on the last guy doing one more point of damage each. He fires back and hits Lucy for one point of damage.

Third round. Duke retreats to the cockpit area where the doctors are and vents the atmosphere. In the bay, the team guns everyone down again, 3 are incapacitated and the last guy is dead.

Round four. Duke returns to the airlock and is fired on. He’s hit for one point of damage. Emily returns to the airlock area. David, Deadeye and Lefty all hit with explosive rounds. It doesn’t matter what they roll, they all have ruptured suits and drop.

Round Five. Let’s start in the Cargo bay. Round four is repeated, with all three pirates going down. Duke and Emily get the same result. The battle is over.

Time to gather up the goods. We strip the enemy ship of 1000 secs. worth of stuff before it’s engines malfunction. I take another 640 secs. from the dead pirates, plus their 20 side arms.

Duke and Lucy are hurt, suffering one point of damage each. Could be worse. I am also out of hypercharges, so we can't jump.

We descend toward the planet, in our final hour of the day. We are heading to the slums to unload these side arms.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 TL-1 Ship’s Guns.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.
2 Boat guns, TL-2.
8,520 Side Arms, TL-1.
2 CU Status unit in Cockpit and Engineering, 8 1 CU Status units in Crew Quarters and 1 1 CU unit in Gunnery.
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
10 Fuel Units in the Ship’s Boat,
8 Repair units,
5 Life Support Units in the Ship’s boat.
7 PS-bots, 1 per character,
10 TL-1 military U-suits.
6 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons for sale, 4 for characters use,
7 Side Arms TL-1, 1 Side Arm TL-3, and one TL-4.
10 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket.
and the ship is fueled with no hypercharges.

I have 6,271 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.