Episode 2: Space Race from Space

Eying the contraption with a slight sense of contempt, Dane circled around so he was still facing the surrendered cops. "Get on the ground," he said to them. "Place your hands on your heads."

Once they had complied, Dane began to examine one of the snowmobiles. It's controls were foreign, but not totally alien to someone who had spent some time on Earth. He triggered a switch that looked like the on button, and the craft roared to life. "I think I can drive it," he said to his companions. "It doesn't look as complicated as Wang's Eye-fone." He pronounced the two syllables separately. That device was one of the few things that scared him, he was ashamed to admit. It was so complicated, and it could do everything. Whats more, whenever Wang needed information, he pulled out the small phone, so it was clear the iPhone knew everything as well. Did it know about that one time that he and Armos had--

He decided not to think about it.

--

Driving skill is Dex-2, or 10. Roll is 7.

Kespa and Dane straddled their snowmobiles, ready to go. The Russians cowered in fear.

--

Kespa's skill as a pilot gives her +1 to Drive, making her barely able to handle it.

--

We'll give Amadea a chance to interact with the fight area and/or board a snowmobile before continuing.

Amadea chose to trust the newcomer's driving skills over Dane's, and climbed aboard the snowmobile behind her.

The three victorious operatives mounted up and started moving for the crash site.

Meanwhile, Wang finally arrived. He saw the crater, and small bits of metal strewn about. But most of the ship was missing! It was presumably loaded into the back of five heavy troop trucks that were just finishing loading.

Russian soldiers with carbines stood watch, looking in all directions nervously. At first glance, Wang guessed there were around 20 of them.

The trucks were loading to start moving north-west; clearly not heading toward Norilsk.

--

The snowmobiles will arrive at the crash site in 20 minutes.

Wang whipped out his talkie again, hunkers down and spoke in a voice low enough to be not heard,"Sorry to spoil the party guys, but how fast do you think you can be done and get to the crash site?" While he is talking, he takes out his iphone and starts to look for the "timed bomb" app that makes the screen flash red and beep, as movie bombs always do. He downloaded it to spook Dane a few weeks ago, never thought it might be useful here. "I always imagine I'd be perfect Otacon material, who knew there would be a chance for me to go all Sam Fisher," he thought to himself

OOC: GM, I need to know how far I am from the bunch of them, anything that's big enough to be used as cover for a 5' tall skinny Asian, any way I can get to any of the trucks without getting seen, and if there's any way Wang can recover FP at the moment. Would be fun if there's a grid I can reference

edit: Also, I need to know how much damage is needed to a) Break the axle of any of the truck; b) Blow the truck up entirely; and c) Create a fireball out of the fuel from a truck

Now THIS was podrac--

Snowmobiling. He needed to stop letting Wang drag him into watching those boring screen-recordings of what other people had done. Didn't the young man know it was better to make your own story?

Snowmobiling was exhilarating. It might have been even more fun if it weren't for the biting cold that was seeping into his muscles even as they traveled. He was glad Amadea had chosen to ride with the alien, as it gave him a chance to line up a clean run on that snow mound he saw up ahead...

"Guys?"hearing no response, Wang sounded really worried. He called out again into the radio. Could it be that they actually lost?

Sensing a need to alert Wang, Amadea sent him a telepathic message: "We've defeated the Russians and taken their snowmobiles. We're headed toward you now."

Receiving the message, Wang asked the rest of the team:"Glad to know you're alright, how long will you take to get here? We've got a situation here and we need to deal with it fast. Also, Bulldog, how much beating did you say Martha can take again?"

Amadea read Wang's distant message and related it to Bane, also using telepathy to communicate with him, because the snowmobiles were too loud to yell over.

"What?!" Dane shouted. It was kind of a weird experience when the snowmobile was loud enough that he couldn't tell if Amadea was tele-sending or just plain shouting. Of course it was all complicated by the fact that it happened at the exact second he launched into the air off the snow mound, momentarily causing him to lose control of his vehicle. He maneuvered the craft into a decent landing by making use of his wings for balance, but it proved slightly more painful that he anticipated.

Landing secured, he whipped out his radio, through which Wang was chattering. "Have the Russians found the... what was the word? Bogey?" he asked through the small device whose inner workings were magic to him.

Seeing that her telepathic communication attempts weren't helping much, Amadea kept quiet. She made a mental note to come up with a way to keep the others from being discombobulated when they debriefed from this mission.

"Not only that I'm afraid. Remember the video of ants dissecting a worm that iked you out? That happened to the craft. I'm looking at around 20 Russians armed with carbines. So I'll need extra hand here ASAP. Fly if you need to." So glad talking is a free action, Wang thought to himself

"We got snowmobiles - a bit faster. I estimate about 15 minutes to the crash site if all goes we--" he was cut off as he hit another snow mound, this time managing to not go airborne. It sounded like the crash site would offer all the excitement he needed.

Kespa followed Dane's snowmobile, but avoided the unnecessary bumps and jolts. She was also careful to not let her corrosive skin touch her passenger.

As she grew more comfortable handling the snowmobile, she sped up and weaved in and out between the trees.

"Let's go, Dane!!" she yelled.

Kespa pushed the engine to its max.

You can floor the pedal to gain extra speed on your snowmobile, but there's a chance you'll wipe out. Here's how you do it: give yourself +1 to your snowmobile Driving skill and roll again. The time to reach the target will be adjusted by your margin of error or success. For example, success by 5 means you arrive in 15 mins rather than 20. Failure by 2 means you arrive in 22 minutes, because you spent some time digging your vehicle out of a snowbank.

"Can either of you contact your friend? There's an engine core that will destroy my ship. He'll need a code."

"I can do it." Amadea said, and telecommunicated to Wang: It's Amadea sending a message. There's a code that can destroy the engine core. Aloud, she yelled over the noise to the newcomer, "I told him. What's the code?"


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OOC: We haven't exchanged names with Kespa yet.

OOC: Oh awkward!! Srry :p

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"The code is 4518. Look for a glowing blue color behind the metal; that's the engine core. One charge should be enough to cause the whole thing to explode."

----

Note: the code will only open the shield. You'll still need to use explosives or a bullet to detonate the core. It is highly explosive, so get well away before you blow it.

I'll post a map tomorrow.

Wang realized that he had passed out only when he raised his head and saw that the Russians were preparing to move out. He only had a few minutes if he was going to blow ship pieces before they left.

As he blinked to clear his head, he noticed the greek Omega symbol scrawled on the side of each truck. These weren't Russian army regulars. Something else was going on here ...



--

First time making an RPG map that wasn't hand-drawn; I'm learning how to strike a balance between quality and time. The maps will get better, promise.

OOC: The other three of us are North of Wang on this map, right?

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Amadea sent the code to Wang and held tightly to the back of the snowmobile. She used telepathy (it didn't seem to bother this alien) to say to the driver, "Any chance you can telecommunicate in Russian? Might come in handy with those guys at the crash site."

You're due east of this position - headed from Norilsk to the crash site. See the map on page 1 of this thread for details.

OOC: How long until we reach the crash site from here?

--

Taking in the situation from Wang, Dane hit the pedal to the metal. The throttle hit maximum and the craft roared forward through the snow. Unfortunately for him, his reactions were slowing from the cold weather. The snowmobile collided with a partially submerged log and came to a complete stop, catapulting him forward into the snow and potentially damaging the craft.

If he were warm blooded, he probably would have turned bright red at this point.

--

Roll to maximize the speed is 18, a critical failure

Dane's snowmobile sputtered and died. Black smoke billowed out of the engine.

--

You have two basic options:

1) triple up on the other snowmobile and take a -50% hit to speed, or
2) try to repair the snowmobile using the Mechanic skill. It defaults to IQ-5, Engineer-6 (+2 if you specialized in something that includes snowmobiles), or Machinist-5. If your TL is not 8, you take a penalty to this roll. You can make a Mechanic roll every 15 minutes, +20% each time you fail.