Subject:
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Battle of Tank Stream
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.loc.au.nsw.syd
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Date:
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Mon, 5 Jun 2000 12:58:23 GMT
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3148 times
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Righto guys,
This is so draft that its extremely unworthy, but I'm guessing some joint
work will sort it out post haste. I won't bother commenting out the bits
that I think are ok, the bits that are bones, and the bits that hardly exist
at all - it seems fairly clear I think.
I have filled in about 70% of what I remember happening to and around Ahab,
and I am well aware that there will be bits I have forgotten, and quite
possibly bits I have repressed. The plunge of the Saucy Sal still has me
waking in a cold sweat ;-)
I have sketched in a missiony bit, but that's more down to James and PeterC,
and the Vill-Idge people could no doubt be better donw, and I look to DavidL
to add some colour and movement there. I settled on SHAG only because it
was on my mind at the time - I fully expect you guys will do much better.
I will start adding this to the studs site as it settles down, and look
forward to populating it with pics as the PeterC's salesgirl permits.
So, as a starting point, a draft for dicussion purposes only (did I say that
already?), read on below
Richard
Still baldly going...
Check out Port Block at http://www.hinet.net.au/~rparsons/port/
Battle of Tank Stream
Stardate: umm, longish in the future (4 June 2000)
Once upon a time, there was a suave and debonaire master spy by the name of
Commander Bond, ladies' man extraordinare and all round nice guy (as well as
talented assasin and general saviour of all good things and stuff).
He came to know of a new secret base of SHAG (Super Humans Against Gagh) and
realised that for the safety of gagh everywhere, the base had to be excised
from existence.
Yet the base was strong and well defended, and his own militia (strong and
worthy as it was) would be no match for SHAG. Bond knew he would have to
enlist help.
The planet on which SHAG had built their base was already inhabited by the
Vill-Idge people, a hairless species of tallish ewoks. SHAG kept the
natives in beads and mirrors to keep them away from the base, and to keep
them working as a kind of early warning system, to keep SHAG awake to the
landing of attack fleets. The Vill-Idge people were poor and their material
posessions were worthless-ish, but Captain Ahab did not know this. (As a
side issue, the Vill-Idge people were steeped in invaluable understanding of
the swinging of the hips and the puckering of the lips, but like so many
invaluable cultural type things, it proved to be no match for a blaster).
Captain Ahab and his black guard and his tanker babes and his especially
cross piratical space dudes thought the hapless Vill-Idge people were
custodians of great wealth and treasure. They believed this because that is
what piratical folk like to believe of everyone else, and because that is
what Commander Bond told them to be true.
So Ahab and Bond landed their respective forces together far enough away
from the SHAG base that no-one there or in the forest would hear them
preparing. Presumably because of the flawless application of unbelievably
advanced stealth technology, that meant they landed within an hour's walk,
completely undetected. Obviously someone in communications at the SHAG base
was going to be in some deep doo doo.
Boxer Tanbrix, newly appointed and youngest ever General Secretary of SHAG,
stood on the parapet after receiving the news of the impending attack.
"<<expletive indicating profound regret and resignation deleted>>" said he.
"So this is to be my very first battle - will I be demoted to farm-boy, or
will I fulfil my destiny, and become the equal of the great Tiberius Flint,
the first General Secretary of SHAG.
Commander Bond joined Ahab, and conferred on strategy. They agreed to
pretty much stay out of each others' way, and go give the Vill-Idge people a
right bollocking. Still Bond kept to himself the minor detail concerning
SHAG's presence, high tech weapons, probable numeric superiority, long
memory, vindictive streak and general badness.
Ahab was not stupid, he was just a bit over-awed at the prospect of denuding
the Vill-Idge people of their stunning (and unfortunately non-existent)
wealth.
Early encounters were fairly straight forward. Where ever the Vill-Idge
people poked up their heads, Ahab's men shot the Vill-Idge people's heads
pretty much clean off. The gleaming Cutlass of God flashed through the sky,
doing a fair amount of smiting.
Bond's men marched more or less unopposed through the undergrowth directly
towards the SHAG base.
Bond's plan was going rather well, until he received a radio message from
Ahab "Commander Bond, what are the freaky things on wheels".
The freaky things on wheels were SHAG's first line of defence - immensely
quick self mobile mines. They loved Bond's and Ahab's men. These little
mines loved chasing the men through the forest just to be close to them. And
when they got close to them, the mines were so happy, they just exploded.
Ahab's men didn't know this at the time of course, but, in their normal
especially cross piratical space dude way, shot up the mines anyway. Bond's
men didn't shoot them as well as Ahab's men. Consequently several of Bond's
men were seen doing Icarus impersonations without even the faulty wings.
Ahab's men dealt with the mines and went back to slaughtering the Vill-Idge
people, pushing forward on the right. Bond's men did not get around to
dealing with the mines when SHAG's second line of defence turned up - Fast
Attack Vehicles (FAVs). While Bond's superior local firepower dealt with
the first, the second wrought a havoc of its own, and still there were mines
going off here and there.
And distracted by the FAVs and the mines, Bond's speeder bike squadron
forged ahead without clearing the slopes, allowing the leader of a decimated
troop of Vill-Idge people pikemen to leap aboard one of the passing speeder
bikes. A short struggle ensured, but a pike is no match for a hand blaster.
A near miss blew a rear wheel on the remaining SHAG FAV, sending it
cartwheeling across the meadow, flinging the gunner about. The heavy
suspension held on the fourth roll, slamming the FAV down. But the gun was
still operational, and the navigator grabbed the handles with a fierce
determination, and blew the turret of the nearest hovertank. While he was
distracted, a heavy skiff bearing the Bond Women closed.
In the centre, one of the hovertanks executed a mostly perfect high energy
turn. The tank settled gloriously into the ideal position for its next
attack, inadvertently flaming a friendly mech with his engine wash. The
mech, a Judge II class walker (or Phil, as he was known to his friends) was
working out the appropriate weapons setting to hit yet another of the
<<expletive indicating extreme irritation deleted>> self mobile mines, when
he was mildly surprised to find his head on fire, followed by a force like a
hovertank's main engines throwing him on his back. As the last of his
positronic vacuum tubes burst, he radioed his fellow mech, Steve, "Um Steve?
It's happened again......"
The Saucy Sal (a liberated Police Gunboat) and a SHAG snowspeeder were
involved in a short, vicious exchange of fire, made all the more vicious by
the strains of "You can't stop the music" blasting out of the speeder's pa
system. The glancing shots along Sal's hull did considerable damage to a
nearby Attack Rowboat, but Sal herself ploughed on. With his port engine on
fire (and, under the Dack combat rules, the harpooner already dead despite
all the damage having come from dead ahead), the speeder pilot made a big
call, and pushed the throttle up to ramming speed. But with one engine
failing, the speeder flew in a tight circle, smacking the Sal and taking out
most of her bow weapons, but largely missing her. The snowspeeder slewed to
a steaming halt, squishing a bunch of the remaining Vill-Idge people, and
all was quiet. As the Vill-Idge people pilot (the construction worker, if
you must know) struggled to get out, the ejector seat fired, but the canopy
charges did not, making a nasty red sploogy mess of the construction worker,
who frankly could have lost a few pounds anyway.
Ahab was not amused by the whole "You can't stop the music thing", much less
the fact that a bunch of tree hugging, milk loving, hippie Vill-Idge people
had a fully operational snowspeeder. The radio traffic between Ahab and
Bond was getting increasingly strained.
VSP blasted the top off yellow speeder, which landed on the archers, and a
land mine and did nothing
J's mech yanked on the tow cable of the gopher with tow cable
Attack rowboats moved in on the villagers, cleaning them out, but losing an
attack rowboat's mobility to a grenade run over (while in the hand of a
Vill-Idge person).
As one of SHAG's missile carriers was destroyed, its missiles fired
aimlessly. One destroyed a rock (and the two combatants obliviously hard at
it near the rock), one killed a tree, and a third struck Ahab's remaining
mech in the gun, which blew the gun clean off, and built up an overload that
blew the mech's crotch off - there were ball bearings everywhere
Speeder comes apart, leaving a small pod: which falls to pieces revealing
ABBA. ABBA promptly pick up a few crossbows and a harpoon lying around,
and start firing, taking out a medic, an engineer, Comm Bond (straight up
the blaster rifle). Benny confronts Something Scary, and went mano a mano
for the rest of the battle (til the end of time)
Both tanker babes taken out by Pete's missiles. Ahab screamed, and turned a
ver angry shade of purple
Exploding mountains, destroyed ninjas, snipers, speeders and an Indian Chief
Commandeered jeep lands in a crater
One of the missiles struck Ahab's skiff dead on - while the shield blocked
the blow, the force sent the entire skiff rocketing backwards until it came
to rest, <<expletive referring to the posterior sections of the rowboat
deleted>>-up against a rocky outcropping.
In sheer bloodymindedness, knowing full well that the tanker babes were
extremely unwell if not dead, that Ahab himself had been smacked, and that
she now mounted only a single grenade thrower and a swivel machine blaster,
the helmsman of the Saucy Sal drove on into the full horror of SHAGs
mechanised force. One missile caught her under the bow and pitched her up
to about twenty degrees. A second missile struck under the hull, further
kicking her back further still, until the bow pointed fairly into the sky.
Not sure himself whether he was trying to attack the base, or disengage, the
helmsman pressed the button marked stardrive.
Now there's a lengthy chapter in the Police Gunboat care and maintenance
manual that deals with all the reasons why one does not press this
particular button in an atmosphere, near the ground, while under heavy
weapons fire, without the impulse engines already running at full, when the
helmsman has been drinking, when the bow had been pretty much shot away, or
when you are trying to protect your resale value.
The Saucy Sal lifted majestically away from the ground, following her 80 odd
degree ascent vector for all of about 2.7 seconds. She reached 100m, and
everything seemed to be going so well. Then the engines stopped, which is
never a good thing. The even balance turned into a list, into a bad list
into more or less a complete inversion. And then the Saucy Sal did what any
hundred and seventeen tonne object should do while hanging unpowered above a
decent sized planetary body.
Fortunately for SHAG, she fell just outside the main doors, in the centre of
what suddenly became an anarchic collective of ex-Saucy Sal parts. SHAG
space marines were flattened, once of the main base blast doors came off its
track, Darth Maul, standing on the parapet was struck by shrapnel in his
Achilles tummy and separated into two more or less equi-sized parts, and the
colourful potted petunias that adorned the jambs of the blast doors turned
white in shock.
a hail of light weapons fire blows the missile carrier driver's head out
from under his helmet, and the rudderless carrier careens up some terrain to
sail into a dead volcano and wakes it up.
The battletrak fires on the one remaining forward rowboat, knocking it over
and throwing the men out.
Two especially cross piratical space dudes run onward up onto the front of
the battletrack, firing at the gunner as they come. In fear and desperation
the driver, deep down in the vehicle fires the main guns at the two
especially cross piratical space dudes and the explosion takes out the
dudes, and everything else that was loose and on the front of the battle
tank, including the tracks.
A black guard leaps into the turret, succeeds in turning it to fire on the
base, and hits the already flaming wreck of the saucy sal, reducing it to a
flaming slag heap, before the base commander finally wheeled one of the
turbolasers to bear, and entirely erased the tank from existence.
Still the pirates came on. Two Black Guards and a handful of especially
cross piratical space dudes sought safety from the withering heavy weapons
fire by running headlong into the midst of the light weapons fire of three
SHAG squads of classic space marines. Giving good account of themselves the
inevitable conclusion closed in. Soon there were only two, clear of the
space marines and running for the base doors, jammed open by the untidy
landing of the Saucy Sal a little earlier.
The especially cross piratical space dude had made it by sheer agility. The
Black Guard had made it by elite discipline and hand to hand force, walking
calmly among the space marines, applying the Vulcan neck pinch to man after
man (with such vigour that head after head just seem to pop off), and using
the bodies to block incoming fire, he strode forward.
Then the Jedi appeared - a half dozen of them, walking calmly out through
the broken doors like the proverbial eye of the storm, and a few things
happened at once.
Ahab took one look at the lightsabres and cloaks, and left. He was not an
idiot, and knew that no-one fights the Jedi. He ordered his rowboat back to
the Saucy Sue forthwith, vowing to hunt down Commander Bond's family, pets,
community, planet and species.
The onrushing especially cross piratical space dude keeled over on his face
and simply died of exhaustion.
The Black Guard recognised his kin, and safetied his blaster.
AAT and Battletrak opened a temporal rift into which fell Timmy
Remaining AAT went feral, and grazed happily on the native wildlife until
its batteries died
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: Battle of Tank Stream
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| (...) I'm sorry about that, it worked out well nethertheless. (...) Battle of Tank Stream Stardate: umm, longish in the future (4 June 2000) <Big snip for bandwidth's sake> I'll add my flavour bits as soon as I stop laughing. I had fun on the day (...) (24 years ago, 5-Jun-00, to lugnet.loc.au.nsw.syd)
| | | Re: Battle of Tank Stream
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| (...) <snippage of the mighty battle> Excellent work Richard -- perhaps contributions to the text would be inspired by a draft page on the Studs site that has some of PeteC's pics as they come to hand. In the meantime, something to add near the (...) (24 years ago, 8-Jun-00, to lugnet.loc.au.nsw.syd)
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