"It was easy, really. You did well, too. I'm going to go down to the AI control centre for now, tell me when you need help gathering the whale parts."
Go to the AI, hone my mind playing various boardgames like Space chess and Space battleship.
Int:20,19
AI:5,7
You walk up into the control room and fire up a simple chess program on one of the secondary consoles. You manage to beat the AI before Scoot manages to fire the engines. This AI clearly hasn't been built with chess in mind. A game of 3D Battleship proves more difficult, and you're down to just a pair of corvettes before you finally pulverize the last of the AI's fleet.
"Ye-hiiii!"
Scoot cackled as the ship came right-way up again, his unshaven face split in a huge, manic grin.
"Aw hell, goin' ta hafta get the hang o' this... Reckon I'm rustier'n you, girl!"
He patted the side of the control panel fondly and gave another laugh before getting back to work, squinting at various view screens as he did his best to intuit the functions of the buttons arrayed before him.
> Bring us in to weapons range of the creature, do my best to provide the team with a steady shot whilst still keeping up with the thing.
((I died a little inside when I looked at that link. :-/))
Piloting:9
Propulsion:8
You fixate your eyes on the dark spot fidgeting under the roiling blue clouds, and grin. With a mix of surgical precision and reckless abandon, you jam the control buttons a half-dozen at a time, firing maneuvering thrusters and main engines in rapid succession, directing the Blue Damn Fury after the escaping monster. The engines respond in perfect synchronicity, following your orders almost before you make them. The bow of the ship turns after the whale, and the main drives rip up a great chunk of cloud behind the stern as the ship speeds off after it.
((Or sea transport. We're a whaling boat, after all.))
"Give me some warning next time!" Jak shouts through his built-in radio, "What, is the whale on the surface of the planet?"
Hop into the harpoon blaster. it -is- closest, after all.
Weap:10
You throw yourself into the tiny control seat of the harpoon turret and track the dark shape of the whale as the ship gradually gains on it. As soon as you think the monster is in range, you jam the triggers and let the harpoon fly, a flexible cord of some unpronounceable material trailing behind it. The whale jerks sideways, the harpoon seeming to strike its target, but by the ease with which the reel brings the cord in you guess that it wasn't a solid hit. You curse under your breath and wait for the harpoon cannon to reload.
On second thought man the comp-laser turret.
Weap:3
You slam the helmet on your head and climb out through the top airlock, clambering with some difficulty onto the seat of the comp-laser turret. Scoot does a great job of piloting, bringing you within range of the whale within seconds. Your shooting, however, leaves a lot to be desired. Like a panicking Japanese turret gunner at Pearl Harbor, you clutch both handles of the laser and wildly spray everything within a hundred meters of the whale with tightly packed photon pulses, not hitting the whale itself even once. The whale, for its part, seems to have turned itself upside-down, using its pair of short tentacles to backstroke through the clouds, not even bothering to dodge. You have a feeling it's mocking you.
"Man the... um... Come on chaps! Sound the alarm! Dive dive dive! Pilot, hold her steady! Crikey!"
Colonel Yirkut takes a heady pinch of spacesnuff, grabs his harpoons and dashes out the hold. He immediately returns, sets the jackbot straight, and strolls back out.
On to the deck! Attach myself very securely but with a good few dozen metres (or whatever is appropriate) play on the wire. Ready my best harpoon for a brainshot, and crouch behind... something.
"Officer on deck! Attennnnnn-shun! Oh. No one about. Blast. Oh wait, hello, space sailor! Come on Jak, we'll have this bleeder between the eyes before he knows what an Eponymous Blue Fury even looks like! Pinch of snuff? Oh no, you've got your fishbowl on. Oh well."
((I assume I'm wearing my armour...))
Agility:7
You stand on the prow of the ship, and shake your head in disappointment as Jak misses his mark with a turreted harpoon cannon. Ready to show the inexperienced youth how it's done, you affix yourself to the deck with one of the available cables and stand with your best diamond-tipped harpoon raised, waiting for the ship to close distance with the whale. The monster fidgets around under the surface, but Scoot keeps the Fury hot on its heels, and soon you see the dark shape of the monster from merely a couple dozen meters away.
It's an ugly one, a short fuzzy body, pitch black with a tiny head set with a number of large, glowing white eyes. A pair of thick tentacles hang from the sides of its body, and on one side it bears a wound oozing with translucent white goo - probably from Jak's harpoon.
You spare no more than a few seconds soaking in the appearance of the monster, before you throw your harpoon at it with all your strength. The whale seems to grunt, and suddenly shifts quickly to the side, moving out of the path of the projectile. You think fast, and pull on the harpoon's cord as it flies past the beast, making the super-sharp tip trace a long gash along its side, the wound immediately starting to ooze the same translucent goo.
"Good find Lime!, Lets take this whale down!"
Try to fins a safe place to shoot my laser from, aim for the nearest thing recognaisble as a head on the whale, aim for eyes.
Weap:4
Following Claire, you climb out onto the top of the ship and get ready to fire. Much like Claire, your shooting leaves a lot to be desired, but you actually manage to score a few hits on the beast, even if your weaker weapon doesn't really inflict a whole lot of damage to it, just scorching a few holes in its hide that don't even bleed, probably cauterizing immediately.
Suddenly the whale makes a somersault out of the cloud, its tentacles flared out! Scoot is momentarily surprised, but realizes, a second too late, that the creature is attacking the Blue Damn Fury. He banks her sharply to the right, but cannot do it fast enough as the fuzzy mass of meat and tentacles come crashing down onto the stern of the ship. The Fury lurches upwards as the mass of the whale pushes the stern down, raising the prow and making the powerful main drives push the ship out of the atmosphere. Scoot and Lime look around for damage reports, but there are none - it seems the last-second dodge maneuver had caused the whale to land directly onto a reinforced support beam, dealing no more damage than a particularly large trout being thrown into the back of a pickup truck. (Agi:2,3,4,1) The force of the impact, however, throws people on deck off their footing. Claire is thrown out of her turret, landing awkwardly on the metal surface of the tower, unharmed. Dr.Bruce falls and slides down the slope of the back of the tower, coming to a stop upside-down, right next to the mass of tentacled whale still lying on top of the Fury's engine section, its white eyes fixating on him. Colonel Yirkut, from his position on the prow, is thrown clear overboard, almost plunging him into the depths of the ammonia ice giant. Thankfully, he has cable, from which he now rather helplessly dangles. Only Jak managed to remain in place, his large body firmly wedged into the small space provided for its operator by the harpoon turret.
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Topic: Space Whaling Adventure RTD - CQB: Cetacean Qabab Barrage (Read 16806 times)