Starlance

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

Fuck, Kiran was dead. Died near the breakers. The breakers she’d mentioned a second or two before the jump. No, no, she couldn’t think about it like that. He would’ve done it anyway. Guy was a lot smarter than the dreadlocked beach bro one might write him off as at first glance, else he wouldn’t have been there in the first place.

“Yes ma’am.” Vigdis confirmed chief Zhao’s order as she switched off the shield system, salvaging what little power the still-intact control circuits were drawing before getting on the reactors. Undoing her straps, she moved over to Kiran’s former station and strapped in there. First thing she did was access diagnostics to figure out just what the hell the problem was. Whatever happened, it wrought havoc on power control, with Unit 2 scrammed and Unit 1 reeling from the experience. A short investigation quickly uncovered the culprit: the shields, and to a certain extent the FTL drive, simply demanded so much they robbed the number two reactor of the power its magnetic containment and fuel feed systems required to keep it running, but the reactor itself was undamaged. Normally that wasn’t supposed to be possible, but whatever caused the FTL anomaly might’ve been a software bug that could’ve also affected power distribution. The first reactor encountered a similar problem on a smaller scale, the fuel supply fluctuating within limits and slowly recovering. Next she opened the reactor relight menu, comparing what she was seeing to what the reactor and power guys had told her between beers.

Fusion reactors required a lot of power to start up, meaning one could be started either by another reactor or by a big capacitor. That was why safety regulations mandated ships with multiple reactors never bring any of them below five percent. Well now one of theirs was dead and she didn’t dare try jumping it with the other one for fear of something important dying on them as a result, which left option two: A battery dedicated to starting the reactors, enough to jump one. One last hail mary. If that failed, they’d be in trouble as charging it would take hours if one reactor was running well and the auxiliary wasn’t anywhere close. Fuel: Check. Containment magnets: Check. Preheat: Check. The reactor had fortunately been down for such a short period of time that going back up to operating temperature only took a few seconds. “Unit 2 relight in six seconds.” Hopefully, but she didn’t say that out loud. Urged by Anselm’s warnings, Vigdis rechecked her seatbelts, started the relight sequence and braced.

Just three seconds after she did, the high-pitched whine returned to the formerly silent reactor, the engine tune had changed into a more familiar, continuous screech and the whole ship shifted upwards as if a massive hand grabbed it and gave it a boost from below. Any jubilation lasted about five seconds before being ended by an impact. The noise was horrible, the ship might have rolled, or it might’ve been just her imagination, she couldn’t tell. Four years in space, she’d never been in an actual on board emergency, save minor ones. Vigdis couldn’t tell how long it lasted, probably no more than 30 seconds, but it felt like an eternity. As soon as her head stopped spinning, she undid the straps and patted herself down to verify nothing was broken. Checking the manufacturer label on the seat, she made a mental note to purchase Martin-Baker stock once back home and stood up, stumbling before catching herself due to the floor’s unexpected tilt. “You guys intact?”

The Conflict

It made sense that the ground-level windows and/or rooms were blocked. Secure them so you don’t have to guard them, keep a few passages you can guard. She could deal with window boards with little issue, but any bigger barricades would be a problem. With the patrol approaching, Yekaterina moved her rifle to her back to get it out of the way. She briefly considered using the halligan for a weapon - knowing what the spike could do to a car hood made her morbidly curious for a moment - but it wasn’t appropriate for this situation. The situation called for speed and silence, and keeping this down would be hard enough without swinging around five kilos of 1040 steel. Besides, the day’s been a damn rollercoaster and a lot of it was still ahead, so if she could avoid tiring herself out like that, all the better. The half-empty magazine from the checkpoint breakthrough was a better, disposable tool. If time permitted, she’d have to search the bodies for a knife or a baton.

Yekaterina unfortunately didn’t have time to watch Hayden destroy his skinny along with the wall, there were more where that one came from. Unwilling to try to tackle her target and bet on surprise now that her three compatriots had begun their attack, she instead aimed to disable. Taking a swing at his right wrist with the magazine in her left, the strike ought to have been enough to make him drop whatever he was holding. Chiefly though, it was a distraction that opened the door for a right cross to his windpipe. She may have been just a featherweight, but a hit to all the cartilage in the throat was a great equalizer. She may have even hit an artery, she wasn’t sure, but the guy certainly wasn’t having a good time going by the sounds he was making as he stumbled backwards. She threw the magazine in the general direction of his face just for good measure, the ‘Oh, crap!’ reflex making him flinch and raise his right hand to shield his face. Closing the distance again, Yekaterina barged into him with her shoulder, grabbing his right wrist with her left hand to keep control of him and in his state he went down on his back without much resistance. A pair of wet crunches signaled that her heel had found its target, his throat between his adam's apple and clavicle bones now pushed in a few centimeters. He was still alive, but unable to breathe, much less stand up and fight, and his clock was ticking down to zero fast.

Seeing the immediate coast around her was clear, she picked up her magazine and stood-by to assist anyone who looked like they may need it and keep lookout in case more showed up.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

They did have SAMs. Lady Luck had been standing somewhere else this entire day. Apparently they didn’t want the ship intact after all, so what the fuck were they? Religious extremists claiming FTL went against God’s plan? Of course the pilot did what pilots do and seemingly did everything except turn the ship so the active shield segments were facing the threat, evidenced by a bang and the sound of shearing metal. Some of the missiles hit the shield after all and as soon as they did, the reactor output readout completely lost its marbles. She recalled one salvage job where the ship in question had power problems and was unable to scram their reactor, so they turned on everything that could draw power and blacked out their ship, causing the reactor scram to initiate automatically. If the FTL drive was ‘running away’ then robbing it of its power should do the same as long as they didn’t trip the reactors as well. Sitting at the shield control console, Vigdis entered the command to power up the remaining shield segments.

ERR: Insufficient power, FTL system priority!
<OK>

Of course the ship was designed to prevent this. A smart thing to do under any other circumstance except here. She would find the computer geek who thought this error window only needed an ‘OK’ button and not an ‘ignore’ option alongside it and smack some sense into him when this was over. When the noise kept rising, something in her mind went ‘Yeah, this is beyond hope.’ and she gave up attempting to handle the situation and instead strapped in for the fallout. Crap, where was the Jackal? Did she secure it when she disarmed herself or did she just leave it lying around somewhere? A glance confirmed the sling was tied around the frame of a machine beside the door. Good.

Then, an idea. Primitive and straight out of the ‘Geriatric’s Manual of Computer Repair’, but an idea nonetheless. “Breakers!” Vigdis yelled, figuring whatever damage would be caused by physically cutting the connection between the FTL drive and the ship’s power grid would be limited to the drive itself and wouldn’t hamper their escape attempts, but not even hoping there was enough time for it.

---

The unholy noise reached its peak and the room flooded with unnaturally bright light before turning into pandemonium. It seemed like half of the Really Bad Lights and their accompanying bells and whistles came on at the same time. The machine behind her seat crapped out a shower of sparks and some more alarms sounded. As Vigdis grabbed one of the three kilogram powder fire extinguishers affixed by the console to address that latest problem, the rest of the room didn’t seem to be faring much better. It was getting hot and she could see some of the cables were straining against their mountings as the current flowing through them created magnetic fields strong enough to move them. Something vile assaulted her nostrils. “Charred insulation. Smells like a failing grade to me.”

Having put out the closest fire, she returned the empty extinguisher back into the bracket and returned her attention to her assigned station, fielding a sea of warnings and errors - electrical resistance in the shield cabling reading infinite, voltage zero, temperature just below melting point. “Chief, we’ve lost the shields. Looks like melted or severed conduits.” Vigdis reported, anxiously waiting for a similar report on propulsion.

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

The trek to the dam was every bit as bad as she expected it to be. In an attempt to stave off the boredom, she started reading through the Archer’s user manual, figuring the 900 page, A4 format grimoire would last a few hours even if she didn’t understand half of the maintenance sections. Apparently, Earthwerks Inc. also made the Thunderbolt. She didn’t know that. What was it with Earthwerks’ seeming inability to design a ‘Mech that had enough heatsinks, Marit thought as she worked a straw under the neurohelmet’s seal to take a sip of MRE lemonade that had gone disgustingly warm during the 17 hour road trip through the tunnels. One day, one day she would find a working, unattended minifridge somewhere and tape it into her cockpit. Lovett would complain about fire and loose object hazards in the cockpit, but it was hard to express how little she cared.

As they neared their objective for the day, she reached for the push to talk. ”Lance Leader, I’ve been thinking: breaching a dam doesn’t take much, all you need is to weaken it and the weight of the water behind it will do the rest. Now our working theory was that they’ll drive a truck full of explosives in from the South or something along those lines, but what if they load up a boat with explosives and come from the West side?” She offered a suggestion she’d been going over in her mind for the past 45 minutes, ”Should I post up by the Northern end of the dam? That way I could see the upstream water and have an easy way of getting onto the dam if they came from the South as expected. It would also help with collateral damage. I can’t accidentally hit the dam if I‘m standing on top of it.”

When the Colonel mentioned dirt roads to the South of the dam, she at first thought that played into their hands until she remembered she was on fucking Espia, where it rained 696 days of the year and a few days on top of it for good measure, so dust clouds kicked up by moving vehicles wouldn’t be a thing. And if what the Colonel warned them about was true and the lunatics got their hands on actual military hardware, would they use it and how? Distractions so the actual bomb could slip through? At least she didn’t have to worry about aiming too much. Once a lock was achieved, the missiles did their own thing, guided by gods knew what space magic, and the directions the attack was expected to come from didn’t have much cover.

𝚆𝚑𝚒𝚜𝚔𝚎𝚢 𝙾𝚞𝚝𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚝

As others have noted, a general idea of the tech level of the setting would be nice to know (For example more like Aliens or more like Heinlien's Starship Troopers etc.)
Looking to try playing a combat medic, so any medical advancements/tech would also be appreciated.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

Maybe some simple mechanoid body remotely operated by the ship's AI a la EDI? Engineers can't be arsed to handle clogged shitters.

𝚆𝚑𝚒𝚜𝚔𝚎𝚢 𝙾𝚞𝚝𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚝

Still here.

𝚆𝚑𝚒𝚜𝚔𝚎𝚢 𝙾𝚞𝚝𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚝

@DeadDrop
You got a set minimum number of players requirement in mind?

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

“Mister Varen. Can I hel-”

That was a gun. She complied with their instructions on partial autopilot, still working through the fact that she’d just been directly shot at for the first time in her life and was now being held at gunpoint by someone she knew. Having a coworker pointing a gun at you was a jarring experience in a completely different way. She wanted to ask what they were looking for, why they thought she was a threat or at least have some witty remark about the lead engineer’s ‘copping a feel’ comment, but her mind just kept going back to the shotgun threatening to do what the bad guys hadn’t managed while at the same time processing Varen’s getup. Contrary to the situation and to her own surprise, she started snickering at the display of tactical beachwear.

“Hostiles kitted out like local armed forces, comm jamming, ship full of whoever happened to be close by... ‘Shitstorm’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. Probably shaved off at least three years off your dear Captain.” She summed up what little she knew on her way to the shield console, “We’ve got about two and a half tons of extra live mass on board.” She guesstimated the weight of the thirty-or-so extra people that weren’t supposed to be on the ship. Plus 65 kg of live mass and tools, give or take, she wasn’t supposed to be there either. Why was she even there? Damn ship was done, she could’ve gone on vacation and left the routine stuff to someone who needed some overtime. She wanted to see Iceland ever since she learned her family was originally from there. She could’ve at least taken a sick day and stayed at the hotel. Of all the times she could’ve chosen to let the inner workaholic loose, she had to do it now.

“Friendly reminder, I supervised hull construction, I only know as much about the shields as was necessary for that purpose.” She cautioned the other engineers. Fortunately, at least the interface looked simple enough. Now, she knew the maximum rated output of both reactors - which was really the ‘long-term safe’ output and thus up to 105% of that could be sustained for brief periods, that was industry standard - but didn’t have access to power control, so had no clue how much power the rest of the ship was drawing except that it was taxing the power supply by at least 50% on account of the engines. Who knew what life support was using up with 30 extra people on board or if it could even keep up with that demand? Unlike the reactor guys, whom she knew well, the life support equipment team supervisor was an insufferable bint whose presence Vigdis could never stand for longer than the amount of time it took to use the coffee machine. No, Denise, I don’t care that you write poetry in your spare time, your garbage doesn’t even rhyme. Rear hemisphere would do for now, they were in a fjord anyway, only places to go were forward and up. “Chief, how much free power capacity do we have for the shield?” Unless the attackers brought anti-ship weaponry, she assumed the shield - presumably designed to handle debris and civilian-grade ship weapons - would hold up just fine. But what if the bad guys did have access to anti-ship missiles? They had army equipment after all… Somewhat back in her element and with no bullets flying around her, her brain had at least gotten some traction and was quickly working through the gears. Of course the boys were suspicious. If you wanted to pull a stunt like this, having someone on the inside would’ve helped and she’d been there for two years, knew every one in three bolts and welds on the ship and knew someone who knew the other ones.

‘Can you blame them, chief?’ That would’ve been a good one, damn it.

𝚆𝚑𝚒𝚜𝚔𝚎𝚢 𝙾𝚞𝚝𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚝

A pic from Aliens right out of the gate. Well played, sir.