Port Newton, Northern Ridge, Askarian | 233d/3008AD | Von Hapsburg System
Askarian Shores
Snow (Low visibility. Actions toward distant objects incur a small penalty based on distance)
Freezing Wind (-1 to all actions when exposed)
Try to crack Orion's helmet in any way possible, and if I do, try to force the taser through and put it up to his ugly face and fire.
Initiative:
[6] Hal
[4] Orion
(3) Fisherman
You get up and catch Orion, slipping right past the fisherman who makes no effort to stop you after you enter the boat, reach Orion, and pin him against the inner wall of the airlock.
[5] vs (2) You headbutt Orion, trusting that your official Guild-manufgactured helmet is stronger than a cheap rental. Alas, his breaks and yours suffers not a scratch. Immediately Orion's suit starts venting atmosphere from a small 1cm by 2cm gap in the front of the faceplate.
Orion gets: Fractured Helmet (-2 to actions outside of atmosphere.)(4-2) vs (1) Though disoriented, Orion manages to coerce the fisherman to enter the airlock, shut the door, and repressurize the area.
While he does this, you reach for your death taser and pull it up to his face. Aligning the terminals along the crack in his helmet, you pull the trigger--[1] and nothing happens. Something must have gone wrong with the weapon.
...
Habitat Ship Gamma, Askarian Orbit | 233d/3008AD | Von Hapsburg System
Urban Station
City Manners (-1 Diplomacy during first impressions)
Take a look at the weapons. Priority on flexible use weapons (short -> long range) and reliable ones.
The usual short-ranged weapons of choice are close ranged powerhouses ('shotguns,' as they are colloquially known) and rapid-fire pistols.
-'Shotguns' or 'Closeguns' generally fire a powerful blast, either a spray or a large single shot, and tend to have a lot of stopping power.
-Machine Pistols are generally better at mid-range than a shotgun and can cause more collateral damage. They can engage multiple targets in a single turn.
The primary types of handheld weapons in official, non-specialized use are:
-Traditional ballistics: Accurate, giving you a bonus to initiative, and reliable, needing ammunition but lacking fragile capacitors and coils like most advanced forms of weaponry.
-Coilguns/Railguns: Coilguns are generally more reliable, but are longer and more unwieldy for the same strength. Railguns are more compact, but require maintenance of both rails and energy cells and can fail often. These are the most accurate.
-Plasma bolts: Useful in atmosphere and just as accurate as ballistics. They heat up and cannot fire for extended periods of time, but if you manage your heat their cells will last a long time.
-Particle blasters: At close-range, these can instantly incapacitate targets. On the downside, they are downright illegal in some places and spread a lot when penetrating targets. Very inaccurate.
Guess I'll have to do with the French revolutionaries, but I still want to fight space pirates.
Buy an assault rifle (or whatever equivalent she finds), get some VR training with it, and go check for more info regarding the space pirates on Franz.
Try to find out if there's anyone planning to do something about them, and if there's any shuttles going to Franz.
Also try to see if there's any shuttles going to Francia.
[6-1] You get incredibly lucky, and the cashier fails to ask you for your guild ID card, smiling gracefully as she gives you a VR card. You take the item to a row of doors leading to VR chambers. The sims are are awkward at first, requiring you to wear all sorts of electrodes on your skin, bulky gloves, and goofy glasses. However, once it activates, you get some much-needed practice with the gun, and later purchase the thing for 8 oz. Quite a bargain, compared to what you've seen.
[3] Franz is a remote world and doesn't have much traffic going there. Shuttles can't make the trip on their own anyhow, so the only option would be to hitch a ride on a merchant ship or combat vessel. Nobody cares enough to go help alleviate the issue. After all, it's a pirate
armada.
[6/3] Despite the rebellion, trading is business-as-usual among the Georgian Planets. In fact, it's quite profitable to smuggle arms and robotics to the combatants, even though the Georgian Constitution forbids neutral parties from transporting weaponry to armed parties other than the Orbital Guard, which is currently neutral in the conflict.
You find a whole host of merchant convoys preparing for the voyage, complete with an escort of corvettes and a single frigate, the
Initiative. They are willing to accept passengers.