Captain Grognard blushed in the Captain’s chair. He was checking his messages on Shipper, the ship wide social network. A crewwoman in engineering wanted to stop processing biowaste and get a job as the Captain’s Cabin Girl. The position was already filled but this applicant had sent a long filthy description of the kind of duties she was looking forward to.
“Lords of Space!” Isis yelled. Captain Grognard quickly closed his messages and spun around in his chair. He was terrified for a moment that Isis had somehow read his message. He saw that Isis was frantically stabbing at buttons.
“Two ships dead ahead at thirty-six Scribe-units!” Isis yelled. “They came out of nowhere!”
“On screen!” Captain Grognard said. Well, they knew a ship was in this area. The Reroll had been hunting it for the past 2 days. He wanted one more merchant haul before heading in to cash in their loot. Thirty-six Scribe Units was awfully close but he wasn’t worried.
The screen pulled up images of the two ships. Captain Grognard got very worried indeed. They were two warships!
“Identification protocols tag them as The Guardian and The Lance,” communications reported. “The Guardian is a Heavy Cruiser and The Lance is a Destroyer.”
“Well drek,” Captain Grognard said.
***
Welcome to part 4 of my first Space Pirates AAR. After capturing the Ponzi Index, The Reroll went off on an intercept course for the last PEF. A few activation rolls later and we have contact.
Hey look, it is the Gaea Prime PDF! No weak merchants for me today! I determine that there are two ships and I nervously find out which kind. I get a Class Four Heavy Cruiser with a Rep of 3 and a Class Three Destroyer with a Rep of 4. Ack! We got ourselves a fight!
The PDF manage two successes on the long range scans and the Pirates get one success. We are 36 inches away.
The PDF goes first. They close to within 25 inches and open fire with guns. The Heavy Cruiser has 4 guns and the Destroyer has 1 gun. The Destroyer can’t pierce the Reroll’s 2 shields while the Heavy Cruiser can get two hits if they are lucky. I make the decision that the two ships will combine fire for a concentrated attack.
I roll one success for cruiser which means half of the 4 guns for a total of 2. I get 2 success for the destroyer’s one gun. Combined, that is 3 guns vs 2 shields for a penetration of 1. I roll the dice and get zero results.
Now it is the Pirates’ turn.
***
“Shields are holding! Captain, what do we do?”
Captain Grognard stood up. Yeah, what do they do? The odds are two against one. The Guardian was a match for The Reroll by itself but it had help in the Lance. It would be risky but The Reroll might win. If they defeated two warships, the crew would feel invincible and surely stay on as pirates. Glory and respect was within his reach!
On the other hand, there was a lot of loot waiting for them at the rendezvous. And there was always the matter of the crewwoman who wanted to be a Cabin Girl. Unlike sim games, Grognard wouldn’t be able to hit the reset button if things went sour. He had too much to live for, this week at least.
“Activate the jump drives! We’re getting the drek out of here!”
***
The Pirates run. In Star Navy they can instantly leave the board without further trouble.
Well, that was short. I had been looking for a real fight but I was hoping for one that was a bit more weighted in my favor. It also seemed silly to get into a real fight when I had three encounter’s worth of loot to enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment