Now that we can finally fight, we shoot them, a science officer gives me a report on how much damage we did to their shields, we change course and speed. They move a bit, turn, take some pot shots, their engineering officer brings their shields up a little bit while their science officer tries to focus their shields on where they expect we are… rinse and repeat. Over, and over, and over. They have a LOT of shields, compared to our damage output. The fight is long.
Really long. They can’t find us to hit us, and while Stephanie and The Brute aren’t very fast, it’s still quite the guessing game for them, so we’re mostly fine… but between the three ships on our side we have a grand total of three heavy weapons and two light ones. Yeah, we slowly whittle down their shields (we hit them harder than their engineers can divert power to restore them… but their science officers keep rebalancing their shields, so we don’t punch a hole until they’re gone… and they have a lot of shields) while they guess at our locations and check with weapons fire. They DO get lucky and hit Stephanie, once - but the shields manage to soak most of it (fortunately, the only capital weapon on these attackers were the mines… the rest are “just” heavy weapons), we have the UPBs for repairs, and it doesn’t take my summoned engineering team long to get the shields back in order (mostly because they’re not very thick to begin with). After that, I task a science officer with keeping the shields balanced pointing at the enemy. We do win, but we don’t get to loot the enemy: Shortly after we start actually putting holes in one of the ship’s hulls… all three of them just power down their engines while we continue shooting at them, and engage their own Drift drives to leave... which feels like a very hollow victory: They lived to learn from their mistakes. I imagine that next time, they won’t use mines the Rustbucket can easily avoid. We’ll need a solution for that… hmm….
Still… the battle is done. I send the necessary orders for docking the Rustbucket, and think while my minions do their jobs. Do I deliver or not? On the one hand, the report was of a colony that was basically wiped out… but we were attacked at the Drift coordinates we were given, ambush-style. A very planned ambush, I might add. But on the other… well, I don’t want folks starving when their supplies run out. And everyone here is either essentially immortal or expendable. Fine. I will at least look at the colony.
For obvious reasons, I keep the ship on high alert (not that it’s much different from normal alert). “Pilot, take us to the planet… start with a high orbit.”
I mostly ignore the confirmation as I talk to one of the science summons, “Give me as detailed of a scan as you can without us actually diving into the atmosphere.”
We reach the planet… after clearing MORE mines… ugh… they made quite the minefield… but at least now we don’t need to be subtle about it; we can just blow the ones in our path out of the sky, as well as the nearby ones for safety. Shortly after we reach orbit, the science officer sends me the pictures... of craters. Great. Well… at least I can mostly cross off the shipping company itself as being the bad guy, but at a minimum they have a leak. Not that, you know, a shipment to a colony is exactly secret. Hmm. Doesn't really require much of a spy network, does it?
Well… we can check for survivors. Surprisingly easily; Commune with Planet is a fifth level spell for Mystics, well within range of Limited Wish. Three facts per casting… but I have all the castings I want, for free. So:
Major settlements? One.
Basic attributes I skip, as we have those from the scanners… or enough that we care to have.
Ecological State? Untamed.
Intelligent Life? Yes: Humans, Morlamaw, and Endiffians.
Presence of Powerful or Unusual Creatures? None.
Technological Installations? None.
Okay, so yes, survivors. And we do have sufficient supplies to make a colony. It's unclear if they'll want to rebuild or not… well, I guess I should land and ask. Stephanie can't land, of course.
So… “Stephanie, you have the ship. I'll take Cowbird and Linda over to The Brute, we'll land and check with the colonists to see how they want to proceed, please have the summons stand by to bail us out with the Rustbucket if things get too hot for us to handle.”
“Aye Admiral Alex Abrams,” my obedient ship acknowledges. And… eh, whatever. I can be an Admiral, sure.
I also use my magic com to talk to Euler, of course: “I want to find and talk to the colonists. I'll bring Linda and Cowbird over shortly, then I'd like you to land, and we can go out.”
“Yes Admiral, sounds like a plan,” she's got it too… did they discuss this on their coms without me?
I also get on the coms for Linda and Cowbird, “Linda, I'm planning on a trip to the surface to see what the surviving colonists want. The plan is to land The Brute, please meet me at the main airlock. Cowbird, you come too.”
“Yes Admiral,” they both reply in unison.
… seriously? Ah well… I meet them at the airlock, Linda and Cowbird in their armor. We cycle through, take a short jaunt through the vacuum of space, and enter The Brute.
As soon as we're aboard, Euler gives the order, and down we go. The trip takes two hours (I specified a high orbit to start), and soon enough we're flying slowly over the craters.
Okay, I can recognize that there used to be a colony here. Kind of. The crater walls have bits of metal in them, in addition to all the rocks. I… can't tell what the bits of metal used to be, though. That happens when they use the big guns, I guess.
At least there's a flat place for us to set down.
We don't yet, of course. Sensors are sharply limited inside an atmosphere (just 250 feet), so we fly an expanding spiral pattern to find survivors. After a couple of loops, we spot them: About ten human-looking folks standing around a campfire, plus two green walruses with four tusks each in suits… ah, those would be the Morlamaw. They're all armed, but everyone is in this world, and really… their colony was recently nuked from orbit: I don't blame them.
We set down in the nearest flat area to their camp (which isn't far, just a few hundred feet to a suitable crater) and cycle through the airlock after giving the summons appropriate orders: We don't want anyone hijacking us, after all.
We travel openly, although armed in our armor, and… hmm. Maybe I should have left a Keyhome linked to the others back on the ship? Eh, no biggie. Stephanie can take care of herself well enough. The summons will obey her orders.
Regardless, it's a short walk, and while the ship is stealthy enough, all the dirt and dust kicked up by the landing certainly got their attention: When we arrive, four of them are hiding in the trees, and all have weapons drawn.
Good for them.
I start, “Hello, I'm Alex Abrams, I was sent here with an order of building supplies to help with that nasty storm you all had a while back… but given my reception space side, and the holes in the ground, I'm guessing the situation has changed a mite?”
As they sit there blinking at me, I take a bit to examine them. It looks like ten humans (three males, seven females) and two Morlamaw (one male, one female)... but Endiffians are shapeshifters, and… aha. True Seeing doesn't help (their shape-shifting isn't magical), but Perception does. Five of the women aren't human… and two of them aren't natively female. All of them look like they've missed a few meals…well, except that one guy hiding in the trees: He's been eating fine. I wonder why he doesn't share?
The female walrus-like person answers first, “Hah! A talent for understatement. Yes, the situation has changed. How did you get past the ships in orbit?”
I shurg as the guns slowly stop pointing at me… the ones I'm supposed to see, anyway. The guys hiding stay at full alert, “They fled when it became clear they weren't going to win; activated their Drift engines and vanished. Stephanie Steel is a good ship.”
The female Morlamaw barks out in laughter, “You fought off three Battleships, and you’re delivering cargo? Seriously?”
I smile, “I don't like fighting, but I'm very good at it. Speaking of…” I turn and look each of the ‘hidden’ people straight on, “You can come out. Surprise only works if I can't see you.”
They join the party, and I ask, “So… do you folks want me to make delivery so you can start rebuilding, or do you want off this rock?”
Now that we can finally fight, we shoot them, a science officer gives me a report on how much damage we did to their shields, we change course and speed. They move a bit, turn, take some pot shots, their engineering officer brings their shields up a little bit while their science officer tries to focus their shields on where they expect we are… rinse and repeat. Over, and over, and over. They have a LOT of shields, compared to our damage output. The fight is long.
Really long. They can’t find us to hit us, and while Stephanie and The Brute aren’t very fast, it’s still quite the guessing game for them, so we’re mostly fine… but between the three ships on our side we have a grand total of three heavy weapons and two light ones. Yeah, we slowly whittle down their shields (we hit them harder than their engineers can divert power to restore them… but their science officers keep rebalancing their shields, so we don’t punch a hole until they’re gone… and they have a lot of shields) while they guess at our locations and check with weapons fire. They DO get lucky and hit Stephanie, once - but the shields manage to soak most of it (fortunately, the only capital weapon on these attackers were the mines… the rest are “just” heavy weapons), we have the UPBs for repairs, and it doesn’t take my summoned engineering team long to get the shields back in order (mostly because they’re not very thick to begin with). After that, I task a science officer with keeping the shields balanced pointing at the enemy. We do win, but we don’t get to loot the enemy: Shortly after we start actually putting holes in one of the ship’s hulls… all three of them just power down their engines while we continue shooting at them, and engage their own Drift drives to leave... which feels like a very hollow victory: They lived to learn from their mistakes. I imagine that next time, they won’t use mines the Rustbucket can easily avoid. We’ll need a solution for that… hmm….
Still… the battle is done. I send the necessary orders for docking the Rustbucket, and think while my minions do their jobs. Do I deliver or not? On the one hand, the report was of a colony that was basically wiped out… but we were attacked at the Drift coordinates we were given, ambush-style. A very planned ambush, I might add. But on the other… well, I don’t want folks starving when their supplies run out. And everyone here is either essentially immortal or expendable. Fine. I will at least look at the colony.
For obvious reasons, I keep the ship on high alert (not that it’s much different from normal alert). “Pilot, take us to the planet… start with a high orbit.”
I mostly ignore the confirmation as I talk to one of the science summons, “Give me as detailed of a scan as you can without us actually diving into the atmosphere.”
We reach the planet… after clearing MORE mines… ugh… they made quite the minefield… but at least now we don’t need to be subtle about it; we can just blow the ones in our path out of the sky, as well as the nearby ones for safety. Shortly after we reach orbit, the science officer sends me the pictures... of craters. Great. Well… at least I can mostly cross off the shipping company itself as being the bad guy, but at a minimum they have a leak. Not that, you know, a shipment to a colony is exactly secret. Hmm. Doesn't really require much of a spy network, does it?
Well… we can check for survivors. Surprisingly easily; Commune with Planet is a fifth level spell for Mystics, well within range of Limited Wish. Three facts per casting… but I have all the castings I want, for free. So:
Major settlements? One.
Basic attributes I skip, as we have those from the scanners… or enough that we care to have.
Ecological State? Untamed.
Intelligent Life? Yes: Humans, Morlamaw, and Endiffians.
Presence of Powerful or Unusual Creatures? None.
Technological Installations? None.
Okay, so yes, survivors. And we do have sufficient supplies to make a colony. It's unclear if they'll want to rebuild or not… well, I guess I should land and ask. Stephanie can't land, of course.
So… “Stephanie, you have the ship. I'll take Cowbird and Linda over to The Brute, we'll land and check with the colonists to see how they want to proceed, please have the summons stand by to bail us out with the Rustbucket if things get too hot for us to handle.”
“Aye Admiral Alex Abrams,” my obedient ship acknowledges. And… eh, whatever. I can be an Admiral, sure.
I also use my magic com to talk to Euler, of course: “I want to find and talk to the colonists. I'll bring Linda and Cowbird over shortly, then I'd like you to land, and we can go out.”
“Yes Admiral, sounds like a plan,” she's got it too… did they discuss this on their coms without me?
I also get on the coms for Linda and Cowbird, “Linda, I'm planning on a trip to the surface to see what the surviving colonists want. The plan is to land The Brute, please meet me at the main airlock. Cowbird, you come too.”
“Yes Admiral,” they both reply in unison.
… seriously? Ah well… I meet them at the airlock, Linda and Cowbird in their armor. We cycle through, take a short jaunt through the vacuum of space, and enter The Brute.
As soon as we're aboard, Euler gives the order, and down we go. The trip takes two hours (I specified a high orbit to start), and soon enough we're flying slowly over the craters.
Okay, I can recognize that there used to be a colony here. Kind of. The crater walls have bits of metal in them, in addition to all the rocks. I… can't tell what the bits of metal used to be, though. That happens when they use the big guns, I guess.
At least there's a flat place for us to set down.
We don't yet, of course. Sensors are sharply limited inside an atmosphere (just 250 feet), so we fly an expanding spiral pattern to find survivors. After a couple of loops, we spot them: About ten human-looking folks standing around a campfire, plus two green walruses with four tusks each in suits… ah, those would be the Morlamaw. They're all armed, but everyone is in this world, and really… their colony was recently nuked from orbit: I don't blame them.
We set down in the nearest flat area to their camp (which isn't far, just a few hundred feet to a suitable crater) and cycle through the airlock after giving the summons appropriate orders: We don't want anyone hijacking us, after all.
We travel openly, although armed in our armor, and… hmm. Maybe I should have left a Keyhome linked to the others back on the ship? Eh, no biggie. Stephanie can take care of herself well enough. The summons will obey her orders.
Regardless, it's a short walk, and while the ship is stealthy enough, all the dirt and dust kicked up by the landing certainly got their attention: When we arrive, four of them are hiding in the trees, and all have weapons drawn.
Good for them.
I start, “Hello, I'm Alex Abrams, I was sent here with an order of building supplies to help with that nasty storm you all had a while back… but given my reception space side, and the holes in the ground, I'm guessing the situation has changed a mite?”
As they sit there blinking at me, I take a bit to examine them. It looks like ten humans (three males, seven females) and two Morlamaw (one male, one female)... but Endiffians are shapeshifters, and… aha. True Seeing doesn't help (their shape-shifting isn't magical), but Perception does. Five of the women aren't human… and two of them aren't natively female. All of them look like they've missed a few meals…well, except that one guy hiding in the trees: He's been eating fine. I wonder why he doesn't share?
The female walrus-like person answers first, “Hah! A talent for understatement. Yes, the situation has changed. How did you get past the ships in orbit?”
I shurg as the guns slowly stop pointing at me… the ones I'm supposed to see, anyway. The guys hiding stay at full alert, “They fled when it became clear they weren't going to win; activated their Drift engines and vanished. Stephanie Steel is a good ship.”
The female Morlamaw barks out in laughter, “You fought off three Battleships, and you’re delivering cargo? Seriously?”
I smile, “I don't like fighting, but I'm very good at it. Speaking of…” I turn and look each of the ‘hidden’ people straight on, “You can come out. Surprise only works if I can't see you.”
They join the party, and I ask, “So… do you folks want me to make delivery so you can start rebuilding, or do you want off this rock?”
