November 2203 part 4
November 18th 0800 hours/near Rizhao, China
Bao tried to calm his breathing. He was tired and his legs hurt. Things were not on schedule. At least he was on the way to the pick up point. In the next few hours he should be able to get out of China.
The last two hours had been busy. The last member of his cell had died giving Bao a chance to escape. While Bao had used the maser to take out the electric substation to the airport (and the only local radar station), his friend had driven up to the front of the airport at Tianjin. The Astrolite-1-5 in the trunk should have taken the front off of the terminal. The fire had sent plumes of smoke up into the sky. Bao had then used the maser to take out several of the fence mounted cameras, and then cut part of the fencing and wires on the perimeter. He had then climbed back on his scooter and left. The police and military should spend hours going through every plane and vehicle near the airport.
Bao was now near Rizhao. He was to meet a contact on the coast. But he was late already. A roadblock had forced him to abandon the scooter, and he was now on foot. Bao crept through the underbrush as he neared the beach. He held the maser low, trying to keep it hidden. It was definitely not a precision weapon and its range was only about 50 meters, but the microwaves were very damaging to electronics and flesh. Cyborgs would ground out the beam with a great deal of sparks, but nothing else. He hoped there were no cyborgs.
Bao saw the boat on the shore, and two figures crouched beside it. He flashed the small laser sight on the maser across the rocks on the beach in front of the pair, as he had been instructed to do by the handler. Two flashes from a small flashlight let him know that he was to approach the boat. Clutching the satchel with the data cards inside it, he moved forward. Soon he would be away from China.
0830 hours/Beijing, China
Minister Po sagged against his desk. He would be sacked, or killed. Regardless, his life was over as he knew it. The Research Facility had been breached, and although they could find nothing that had been taken, they would have to assume the project had been compromised. Thankfully the two prototypes had been undamaged. Only hours before the break in, they had managed to conduct the first small scale test of a field generator. It had been a resounding success. A full sized generator had been constructed, and was now being disassembled for shipment on five separate cargo freighters bound for Venus. It could not wait. They could not chance that it would be intercepted before construction and installation of the units began. In only a little over a month, the Tung group would have the first generators fitted and operational. Assuming nothing else went wrong.
Po looked up at the monitor. Steps were being taken to contain the leak. To try and prevent any further damage to the project. Perhaps they could catch the thieves. Perhaps not. Several were already dead, another had died sabotaging a costal radar suite. The Attack Frigate Yunnan had moved into orbit over the area to provide sensor coverage. But the lookdown capability was limited by ghosts and clutter caused by ground interference. Maybe all of the spies were dead. Po didn't think so.
He laid his head down on his desk. The next few days would be long. If he survived them.
November 21st 1750 hours/Heavy Escort Tatianna, Earth orbit
Rear Admiral Brenna Muldoon watched her monitor screen. The external pickup was showing her a view of the two latest Attack Escorts to be built. Both were still docked at the Pan Euro Station, but word was they would be released for trials in the next few days. She looked hard at them. Even now the names had been stenciled on. The Rachel Pierce and the Keely Sereg. They were the first to bear names of commanders who had died fighting the aliens. They had originally been intended to be convoy escorts, and not belong to any particular Battle Group. It didn't look like that was the plan anymore. Their was no 'official' word on what the deployment plans were for the pair, but rumor said they would be going out past the belt to try and locate the alien's bases and colonies.
Brenna was fairly sure that they wouldn't be going alone. Whether they accompanied the 1st or 3rd Battle Group was anybody's guess. Brenna was fairly sure that she would be the one to have the chance to see space out beyond the belt once again. But if she didn't, it wouldn't bother her.
It looked like the US was getting ready also, with two of the latest Interceptors under construction at the US Space Station. If she was the one who was making the schedule, the group wouldn't be hanging around much longer. They would get to celebrate Christmas out in space, far from any home.
Brenna looked at the ships. She wondered if Keely's kids would get to send her ship off.
November 24th 0755 hours/USS Tacoma, Sea of Japan
Captain Russel Goehring looked over the reports from the Communication Officer. The transmission had come through, and encryption had verified the content and sender. "Bring the ELF cable in. We're heading home." The sub commander knew this was not the safest place for a US sub, and with the package delivered, it was time to get back to the States. It would take a week or so, but they couldn't risk surfacing with the information that they had just received. It would wait till they were in port.
November 30th 2335 hour/Queensland Corporation Airstrips, Australia
Bao stepped off the small plane onto the landing strip. He had finished his mission. In a few more weeks he would be able to take a flight to the United States and start a new life. He had risked his life, and spent weeks hiding and running. They had managed to get the data transmitted to a waiting contact only a few days ago. The two men who had accompanied him the whole time had looked Chinese, but were actually US Seal Team members. One was even a pilot. They had managed to 'acquire' a small plane and had flown it to the FSC in Australia. Although the FSC was on friendly terms with China, they had no extradition. In a short time it wouldn't matter. It was raining lightly, but the breeze and rain felt good. He felt clean, and for the first time, free.
At that moment the Queensland Research Facility disappeared in a nuclear fireball.
///////////////////////////////////
Yes, you read right. That was the shocker for month 11. Just when it looked like the Earth (and the players) really were getting to where they had a good chance against the aliens, it fell apart.
We have some old house rules for espionage that we made up years ago for a 3rd Ed. game, and have just kept them. You can pay a paltry 1MC(each) to keep an espionage cell in place on anyone you had a trade agreement or better with. For this game they could have one on any or all the other players. They all had some in place. For another amount, you could activate them to try and accomplish certain tasks. The harder the task, the bigger the minus to the roll. I keep a chart that gives results for the rolls, and I (or whoever was the SM) made the rolls secretly. In this case, the US activated a cell in China. This was actually a case of real world espionage carrying over into the game. Let me explain...
The middle boy (China) had a favorite chair that he likes to sit in and do his turns in. It has its back to the wall, and a small light beside it. He kept his turn sheets with him most all the time, even taking them to school (paranoid huh, apparently with good reason). The only thing behind the chair is a steep stairway to the boys' bedrooms upstairs. The nine year old always goes up to get his pajamas around 8 pm or so. The oldest boy (US) bribed the nine year old and slipped him a small digital camera one day (or so I'm told). The nine year old managed to take a few pics of the middle boy working on his sheet for turn 11. The oldest boy then blew up the pics on his computer and managed to make out that China was in the middle of researching shields. Knowing that China had made the breakthrough, he decided to activate his cell and try to get any info he could before the middle boy got too far ahead. (Back to the saying that for $100 anyone can be James Bond anymore.) Now we get back to the espionage sheet.
The roll for the cell indicated that it was destroyed, but succeeded in getting one piece of information on the targeted area. The lowest level of info would be the breakthrough, so that is what the US got. The roll also gave China the information that they had been compromised, the area that had been breached, but not who had done it. The middle boy decided that his sneaky older sister was the only one who would know that he even had shield technology, and must have been after tech data or copy info to speed up her research. Well then (he figured - I think) she must be close, and maybe even got a working copy. He decided he needed to stop her from finishing it, and slow up her ability to field it as she was the only other one with the breakthrough (this is all conjecture on my part - maybe he was just mad at his sis and decided to nuke her only RDS because he could).
Regardless, you can see where this is going and will lead. The next few months will be difficult times for humanity. I actually wondered at times if they were going to be able to survive each other, let alone the aliens.
As for the combats, the Nemotian ships had the worst rolls I have had for a long time. Granted I needed ones against the Chinese to hit the Shek, so eight misses wasn't a big surprise. Against the base, they needed a three to hit. They launched 15 torpedoes and only managed 3 hits. Not the best of luck. The Euro station and ship usually needed 2's or ones to hit the patrol ships and managed 5 hits in the same amount of time. Kind of disappointing.
China also had a roll to see if they succeeded on their second shield research project as the middle boy had accelerated the RDS as much as he could. He had a whole 10% chance. I made him use my dice. He rolled a 01. I gave up - no fighting good luck. He now had shields, and took a focus breakthrough to double the RP's at normal cost for the next 3 turns on getting shields to regenerate every hour project. -China was on a roll.
For those curious, here are the stats for the active ships this month.
Chinese Ships
Cruiser Chiang Kia Shek (BG -1)
as Mao Tse Tung (Sept 2203 pt 4)
Missile Frigates Shangxi , Henan
as Missile Frigates (Sept 2203 pt 4)
Nemotioan Ships
Patrol Corvettes 13 , 17 (BG +1)
as Patrol Corvette (Sept 2203 pt 4)
Pan Euro Ships
Destroyer Queen Mary (BG -3/incomplete) DD 30HS
[2} o o o o o o o o o o o Qa o Ra Ya Ra Ra (Cp) [2/1]
each o is an empty hull space taking 1/4 pt of damage each.
each system has a 3.3% chance times the # of days into the month of working the first time used.
Mercury Space Station
Core SS 82HS
Military Modules 1-6 (BG -1) SS 12HS
and for those who like to blow up human ships
Pan Euro Pass FT 0127s FT1 12HS
[2]A (BbS) Qv Qv Qv Qv H Qv Qv Qv Qa (Cp) [4]/gtos x1
Thanks for reading, and please don't think my family is as dysfunctional as it sounds.
We really do love each other (most days).