The team continues on towards Perelane after investigating (from a distance using only NRay vision) the site of the massacre of zho civilians. They come across several more bodies outside the city, mostly male.
The city is much quieter than the previous day with no more signs of resistance. Aerospace fighters still patrol overhead and, at one point, Mack reports seeing an aerospace bomber. But no ordinance is dropped as the team scouts the city from below. At one point, Rock notes an undestroyed sub-basement of an otherwise destroyed building that contains food. It looks like there was originally a food store on the first floor of the building, which was at least 20 to 30 stories tall, and their warehouse was below the store. Rock tunnels into the sub-basement and the team loads up on food, taking mostly canned goods and foods that will keep for awhile.
After a time, Rock tunnels in the direction of the spaceport to observe activities there. He stops some distance away and Mack begins making observations. Whereas the city was almost completely empty of invaders, except for a fortified position on the road leading from the city to the spaceport, the spaceport itself is very busy. A lot of the debris has been cleared from the landing strips and most of the holes have been repaired. Several more ships are on the ground and, as Mack watches, two more ships come in for landing. They are quickly moved to the edge of the spaceport to make way for more ships to land. Over the course of the next three hours, Mack sees over a hundred ships land at the spaceport. The first dozen or so were obviously military ships but most of the remaining ships were and odd assortment including tankers, freighters, mining ships, passenger ships, space yachts, etc. Most of the non-military ships carried people, all adults and mostly male. After one of the ships land, the inhabitants disembark and immediately set about unloading the ship. Within the holds of the ship were many large crates that all had a uniform look. As the crates are opened, they reveal some sort of strange apparatus that is obviously technical but to what purpose Mack is unable to determine.
Once all of the gizmos are uncrated, technicians begin working on them. It looks like they are preparing to use them in some way.
Meanwhile, ships continue to land throughout the day until, by evening, there are almost 250 ships on the ground.
By this time, the men working on the strange apparatuses seem to have completed their tasks. One by one, the bronze machines rise into the air. After each has climbed to an altitude of several hundred meters, jets kick in and the machines fly off in many different directions. After the last of the 22 machines has departed, the technicians return to their ship.
As all of this is happening, invader soldiers are busy fortifying the spaceport. Prefabricated guard towers, with emplaced heavy weapons, are set up around the perimeter of the spaceport. As with all other tech of the invaders, the guard towers appears as a mix of high and low tech - heavy bronze housings containing intricate electronic components.
As darkness falls, Rock suddenly notices some sort of machine burrowing through the ground a hunderd meters away in the direction of the spaceport. It is not coming towards them but is acting exactly as a soldier on patrol might act. It is patrolling slowly this way and that as it burrows through the ground. It leaves no tunnel behind as dirt, rock and debris that is excavated at the front is cycled to the back to fill in the tunnel behind the machine. The device is about two meters long and half a meter in diameter. It's bronze body is smooth.
Scanning quickly, Rock notes two more of the devices much further away also on patrol. As he watches, the first device turns lazily and begins moving in the direction of the team. It's actions don't seem to indicate that it is honing in on them. It is more like it has decided to patrol in this direction now.
GM: What do you do? The device is a good 50" away and moving at about 10" per minute.
MACK: Mack checks his machine pistol, safety on, full magazine.
ROCK: Rock will pass along what he has seen. "Not sure if it's detected us but we may need to leave unless we want to risk combat." Looking to the others, "What do you think?"
PETER: "Let's move out of it's path and then down about twenty or thirty meters. I want to minimize the chance that a random movement on its part will catch us. And let's be as quiet as we can in case it's listening for anything."
ERICT: "Since we're trying not to tip them off at all, I would say back off for now and try to analyze their patrol pattern so that we can move in again more safely. Hopefully they don't have ultra-sensitive seismic scanners that will automatically detect your tunneling as we move away... Will the thing come straight here or just pass nearby, 5m away or something? If it senses movement, but can't actually spot us through the rock, holding still would be the better move... Lieutenant?
PETER OOC: That's a good question. As I read it the thing was coming straight for us. If it's only close, then Erict has a good point.
MACK: Mack will provide ranging details as it moves. He'll call off in intervals of 50m.
The team heads back down the tunnel with Rock in the lead and Shooter in the rear with Mack just ahead of him and spending most of his time walking backwards to keep an eye on the burrowing machine. The machine is 100 meters away when the team begins heading back down the tunnel. As it starts moving in your direction, it starts out lazily but then almost immediately picks up speed and heads for the end of the tunnel. It is now traveling at about 24" per turn and will intercept the open tunnel in about 24 seconds.
MACK: Relays this information, with ranging updated at 25m intervals. When it gets within 50m, that'll change to 10m rangings.
MACK: "Lieu-tenant, Sir! We're gonna need a call back here. Friend or foe. 100 meters and closing."
MACK (OOC): While it looks like a Harley {VROOOM!} on the map, what is it's motive force? Wheels? And I've assumed I can't see inside it, so I can't tell if it's manned. Or did we see these things being manned aboveground? Too many brown/bronze things running about.
PETER: "Rock, dig ninety degrees off away from the path of the device. And if you can quickly collapse the tunnel behind us, do so. Everyone into the tunnel as soon as it's dug. Mack, keep those updates coming."
MACK: "That was the plan, sir."
MACK (OOC): This may end up being important. How do you want line order? If Rock is going to collapse the tunnel, where does he have to be, and who's going to cover him?
ROCK: "Aye, sir. Do you want me to change the elevation any? How long do you want the tunnel?"
PETER: "Whatever is quickest, and long enough to hide us all," he says quickly, conscious of Mack's increasingly frequent announcements of the digger's progress. "Just get it dug now!"
MARKO: He gets a bit nervous as the underground machines get closer to the group.
GM: I just noticed that neither Rock nor Mack have any means of seeing in total darkness, which means that they really can't see objects in the earth. I'm guessing, in Rock's case anyway, that this was an oversight in design and he had assumed that his character could see into the earth rather than just through it. In Mack's case, he may have just wanted the ability to see through objects and use the light that would normally be available. This wouldn't change anything regarding your observations of the spaceport since you were looking through the earth, and the spaceport itself was well illuminated by the daytime sun.
MACK: Mack is definitely designed for artillery duty, but you could just apply the darkness mods. also, if it's moving underground, technically it starts as a perceptible power, which might include sparks of light as it tunnels, running lights, or neon signs that blink out a big arrow.
GM: At this point I am not going to change anything and will assume that you still saw the objects burrowing towards you but can't make out any details. However, don't expect the same for future encounters. For Rock, I would suggest taking Radar or Sonar with N-Ray and, when you can afford it, Discriminatory. It's a bit expensive, of course, since it can't go into a framework, but you can buy it with a number of limitations to start with and then slowly buy them off. An obvious -1 limitation on the Radar/Sonar is that is only works underground.
Rock quickly begins making a new tunnel at right angles to the current tunnel while Mack continues to monitor the barely seen shape burrowing towards the team. As Rock begins tunneling, the object abruptly changes direction, picks up speed and begins heading directly towards Rock. It is now moving at 4" per second and is about 75" away from Rock.
ROCK: Rock will update the group on this latest development. "As with those zho transports it seems to be following my tunneling. Maybe we should run down the existing tunnel and see if it follows. I can seal off the tunnel once we're through."
ERICT: Erict turns to Mack, "Did it react to him closing off the original tunnel? If not, maybe we could use that against it, have him tunnel a few seconds longer to draw it completely into this new tunnel, and then retreat and close it off from our current tunnel. It would find nothing of significance in the new tunnel, just a pocket of air within the rock. If it started digging around looking, we will be farther gone, and Rock can continue closing the tunnel occasionally to make it look like there were just some odd pockets of air in the rock
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PETER (OOC): Oh well, so much for tunnelling as a hidden mode of transport. Every opponent we run into seems to be waiting for it. :-( I'll handle this in character, but for the record it looks like unless Rock can buy Tunnelling with invisible power effects, it's a power we'll rarely want to use. Given the fact that the invaders will soon know there's someone capable of tunnelling and that they have means of detecting it, tunnelling is actually a worse means of transport than walking on the surface. It's slower and it restricts our movement significantly. It's main advantage was that it was covert, and that's no longer true.
MACK: it still is covert from air spotting. the question is which will pose the greatest problem when/if we leave the city.
ERICT (OOC): Given the complete thoroughness of the invaders so far, and their brutal efficiency, I think it was only a matter of time before they deployed underground sentries. Presumably they can't guard the whole city though, only the main spaceport, for now. They also obviously can't sense tunneling at any great distance, since none of them reacted to Rock's earlier tunneling, only when he did it closer than 100m away. That reminds me though...
ERICT: "Mack, are any of the other machines also homing in on us or just the one? If they are communicating/networked that would be bad."
PETER (OOC): As for what we do now, I'm inclined to just run away down the tunnel. I can't imagine that the machine digging is faster than us running. But I realize that I've kept us from fighting for a number of encounters. If the group is spoiling for a fight, I don't want to be the one keeping people from their fun.
ERICT: Fighting just for the sake of the action is for another campaign, IMO. This one has the cloud hanging over our heads of serious consequences just to being discovered, so it makes all the sense in the world to avoid a fight when we can.
MACK: if Mack had wanted a fight, he'd have had one weeks ago......
PETER (OOC): As a final note, I've been with Mack for the past six months so I'd have a reasonable chance of knowing abit how his powers work. You mentioned that it's indirect. Could you target something in the earth (say, a tunnelling device) if you knew where it was? Even if it was surrounded by tons of dirt? If you bought it as indirect, I'd imagine the answer is yes. Mack? Steve?
ERICT: He'd have to be able to sense the target with a Targeting sense, but other than that, it should work?
GM: I should mention that it is not my intention to totally negate tunnelling as an effective means of covert movement. The main issue here is that your are close to the spaceport which they are in the process of fortifying heavily. For reasons which may eventually become clear, the invaders do not overlook possible underground threats when fortifying a position.
PETER OOC: My guess is we've got a bit of a High Crusade going on and our invaders are worried about sappers taking out their heavy walls.
GM: If Rock were to buy invisibility to the hearing group on his tunneling, that would definitely foil the seismic sensors that the zho were using, and would also have affected this encounter a bit. It wouldn't have changed the fact that the burrowing machine detected an open tunnel and was coming to investigate, but it may have prevented him from noticing Rock's new tunneling.
GM: I will also say that if you had just kept going full bore back at RP5, you would eventually have gotten out of the area where the zho had planted their seismic sensors and they would no longer have been able to follow you.
GM: None of this information is out of character. You have several people in the group who are very smart and who have tactics that could have figured all of this out. :)
PETER (OOC): Thanks for the clarification. It's always hard when dealing with "high technology" to know what's common (or even possible) and what's not. Is tunnelling commonly used in warfare? are portable seismic scanners commnly avaialable? Does a modern army typically employ them? That sort of thing. Based on your comments it seems that the sorts of detectors we're talking about are possbile and used in special cases, but are not commonly avaialable. We could expect them in highly secure areas, but not distributed around the city. One final question, though, do we know how portable they are? My concern with the chase at RP5 was that the plane had a detector that could find us and that it would have tracked us forever. Based on our understanding of "modern" technology, would a man portable or vehicle mounted sensor be possible?
PETER (OOC): Regardless, it seem like it would still be helpful for Rock to get invisible power effects for Tunnelling. (How free I am with his EXP) ;-) Cheers |