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- The Confederation picket destroyer Rodger Young is sitting in cover behind
- the first moon of Terravia. You and your team just got here by fast
- courier, burning at high-G all the way. Right now, you're sitting in the
- Rodger Young's briefing room with the rest of your team, listening to
- final instructions from Lieutenant-Colonel Halloran, the senior officer in
- the Terravia system, before you 'port down to the Terravia planetary
- defence missile base. The missile base has apparently been overrun by
- something, but no-one's quite sure what; the frantic message requesting
- urgent reinforcements was badly garbled, and cut off part-way through.
- Your special unit gets to find out what's down there and clean it out....
- happy happy, joy joy.
-
- "...We're dropping you in at night," the Colonel tells you, "because
- there seems to be less activity down there at night. Our on-site team,
- Team Alpha, dropped in by daylight, and none of them even made it inside
- the complex. We're hoping that by sending you down at night, you'll have
- a batter chance. You have one advantage they didn't have, too; one of the
- two men who managed to get into the armory was able to bring the
- transporter pads in there back on line, so we're 'porting you directly
- into the armory. You won't have to take fire dropping in on agrav."
-
- "Unfortunately, there's some bad news for you too. We have audio from
- Team Alpha's helmet cams, but no video - something seemed to be jamming
- the signal. The last man left from Team Alpha said that something had him
- cornered in the heavy-weapons ammunition locker, and said something about
- fire. Shortly after that, the transmission stopped abruptly; scanners
- showed a sharp spike in the infra-red, apparently confined to that side of
- the armory. We deduce that there was a fire and explosion in the
- heavy-weapons locker, but the blast door was able to contain it. So,
- you'll have no BFG's, very little chaingun ammo, and no rockets besides
- what's in the launchers in the ready-use rack. The bulk plasma will be
- gone, too. We'd stock you up here, but we gave Team Alpha everything we
- could spare when they dropped, and the resupply ship isn't due for two
- months. Make the most of what's in that armory, because it'll probably be
- all you get; it may have to last you through the entire base. There
- should at least be a reasonable amount of plasma cells - don't go hog-wild,
- though. We were able to fill Alpha out pretty well from our plasma stocks,
- so they shouldn't have taken too much from the armory."
-
- "There's another thing, too: Whoever - or whatever - is down there,
- they've apparently got the plasma cannon emplacements in the compound into
- action. That's what took out most of Team Alpha. We're picking up energy
- readings that suggest they may have been damaged by Team Alpha, though;
- indications are that the plasma couplings may have become unstable. It's
- not much, but it may give you a chance. We're picking up a lot of other
- intermittent energy readings that we don't understand; we wish we could
- tell you what they mean, but we don't know."
-
- "Judging by our infra-red scans, you can expect to encounter large
- numbers of troops in the compound. Take them down fast, but don't waste
- your ammo - god alone knows what you'll find inside. You may need every
- round later."
-
- "Oh, and once you're in, it's up to you to get back out again. If
- things go bad, we daren't risk attempting an extraction. If they've got
- the defence missiles operational as well, we wouldn't stand a chance.
- We're taking a big enough chance just taking one more fast pass into
- transporter range. We've spotted a shuttle on the field that appears to
- be still operational - if you can get to it. If you don't make it out...
- there won't be a third team after you. General Samuels is due in two days
- on the battlecruiser Bellerophon; if Terravia Base is still in hostile
- hands when the Bellerophon arrives, I expect he'll order a saturation
- thermonuclear strike from orbit."
-
- The Colonel closes his folder, and gives you a grim look.
-
- "Just one other thing: Good luck. You're going to need it."
-
- With a feeling of foreboding, you report to the transmat staging pads....
-
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