"The Blood-Stained Desert", © 2000-2005 by
Paul
Lucas, was originally accepted by GDW's _Challenge_
Magazine, which folded before this article ever saw print.
Text-entry & HTML by:
Steve C.
This scenario is designed for up to four experienced American adventurers. Military or law-enforcement backgrounds are required.
The PCs, working for AECA, are assigned as security at the Olympus Mons Base on Mars. One night they encounter infiltrators, who escape in a land-crawler into the Martian desert. The PCs pursue them across hundreds of kilometers of hostile alien territory, during a vicious hemisphere-girdling sandstorm, to confront them in the ruins of the abandoned ESA base.
The party accepts a job offer for a six-month stint as security personnel at the AECA logistics base at Olympus Mons. The pay is good (Lv400/wk) and AECA will provide them with room, board, and necessary training, including basic survival in the Martian environment and how to use standard base equipment. As long they aren't too nosy about the nearby mining facilities, the administration gives them little hassle. Their duties include patrolling the facility, conducting contraband searches, and other mundane activities. On duty, they are typically outfitted with Inertial Armor Vests, hand communicators, police batons (treat as Club), and Traylor Model 57s with two spare clips each.
The base itself is mostly underground and cylindrically shaped, with ten levels encircling a central access shaft. It is large enough to hold up to a thousand personnel, though only 250 are currently stationed there due to cut backs. The upper levels are devoted to base administration and interface traffic, the middle levels are used for housing, storage, and the main AECA offices, and the lower levels are dedicated to maintenance and power. If the Director requires a map, the base described in the Nyotekundu Sourcebook has a similar configuration and layout. On the surface are landing and service facilities for spacecraft, sensors suites, communication towers, and vehicle hangars and garages.
Several weeks after they are hired, the base is choked off from all outside contact by a vicious, hemisphere-wide sandstorm. Air and interface travel is impossible, and radio communication is spotty at best.
While making their rounds late one night, the PCs are alerted by central security that there has been a security breach on Level 4, the main AECA offices, and that four armed fugitives are being tracked fleeing down the corridor toward the central shaft. The PCs are the only security personnel close enough to possibly intercept.
Roll 1D10 divided by 2 to determine on what level each PC happens to be when the alarm sounds. Each level of the base is roughly circular in shape and has major corridors branching out from the main cluster of elevators at 90-degree angles. Central security has shut down the elevators to stymie the intruders, forcing the chase to be carried out on foot.
The intruders are four French agents who were planted at the base months ago and are making their move now, when the least experienced security personnel (the PCs) are on duty. They are Elite NPCs with Ground Military and Field Agent backgrounds. They are wearing custom full-body non-rigid armor (which fit easily under their base uniforms) and are armed with Mueller Rivera P-3 laser pistols (which they snuck on base in component parts). One of the intruders is carrying what looks like a large portacomp, which contains the secret information they are trying to escape with.
The enemy agents' flight through the base should be a harrowing chase, with the intruders always staying one step ahead of the scattered PCs. The intruders will use every trick they can think of to throw the PCs off, including using explosives (they have 4 kg of Plastique-9, confiscated from the nearby mining facilities), taking hostages, and even breaking atmospheric seals. The Director should feel free to give the enemy agents whatever equipment (short of artillery) necessary to keep the PCs at bay. The PCs should only just catch up to them as the intruders reach the surface vehicle bay. There, the agents will pile into a surface crawler (where a fifth member of their team is waiting), and blow the airlock with a pre-set charge. They then peel out into the martian terrain with all the speed the crawler can muster.
The PCs caught in the bay when the airlock blows must either retreat back into the base (which will take at least three rounds) or make it into one of the nearby crawlers (which they can all cram into in one round). Any character caught fully exposed to the Martian atmosphere will take 1.0 DP to his general life level per round after the first.
Once in the crawler, the party will at once be contacted by the base director, Commander Hollings. He instructs them to fire up their crawler and follow the intruders immediately (if they have not already done so), who must be stopped at all costs. The PCs cannot delay, even to go back into the base for equipment; the sandstorm will quickly erase any trail left by the agents' crawler unless the PCs go after them within the next few minutes. It will be at least ten minutes before the base can get people suited up and to another crawler. If the adventurers hesitate, the director will offer them Lv 1000 bonuses for each agent they capture or kill. If the PCs balk still, he will appeal to their patriotism by saying that the agents' capture is vital to American security (though he won't say why), and the party's refusal to go after them could be construed as treasonous.
During the long, long chase that follows, the bad guys will zig-zag and backtrack several times in the hopes of throwing off any possible pursuit. The PCs should be able follow their quarry through the crawler prints left behind in the sand. However, these tracks will be constantly disintegrating under the constant sand-laden wind, and the PCs will lose the trail if they fall significantly behind. They will start about fifteen minutes behind the agents' crawler. For every five hours of the chase, have the PCs make Routine Tracking rolls. Success means they are able to follow the trail with minimal difficulty. Outstanding success means they gain five minutes on their quarry, to a minimum of being only five minutes behind. Failure indicates they lose an additional five minutes.
Visibility is so poor (less than ten meters) that at no time during the chase will the PCs be able to spot the agents' crawler itself. The storm's interference renders most sensors and communication equipment useless, meaning the PCs will have to eyeball the trail the entire way.
The crawlers are Explorer ATVs (Adventurer's Guide, p. 57), modified for use in the hostile conditions on Mars. They are fitted with an airlock and sealed for full life support integrity. In their equipment lockers are six P-suits with built-in 200 km communicators, six spare oxygen bottles, twelve Stik-kits, one pressure tent, six Medkits, 2 kg of Plastique-9 charges, and various excavation tools. If the players think of using the water ploy against the agents (see the Martian Environment section), they will find about twenty liters of water in crawler's recycler.
After twenty grueling hours and a 400+ kilometer chase through blinding sand, they finally spot the enemy crawler's destination--the half-buried ruins of the long-abandoned ESA base.
Once the enemy agents reach the ESA base ruins, all but one will exit the crawler to set up a powerful transmitter to call a shuttle hiding in the nearby mountains. The PCs' crawler should reach the general vicinity of the ruins just as the enemy agents are activating this transmitter. Once the signal is received by the shuttle (assume 1D6 minutes for a momentary radio-friendly window to open up in the storm, plus another 1D3 minutes for the bursted transmission to be received, decoded and confirmed) the craft will take off and fly low until it reaches the ruins of the base ten minutes later.
The adventurers' crawler will be just close enough to pick up this transmission. Though they will not be able to decode the signal, they can well guess that the infiltrators are calling for their ride off-planet.
The ESA base is half-buried by the martian sand, and the surface features that still jut out are pitted and torn by decades of exposure to martian windstorms. There are plenty of jagged metal outcroppings characters can use as cover, but a serious mishap near one may result in a ripped P-suit. The PCs will find no intact equipment of use in the ruins aside from what they and the agents brought, and the entrance to the underground levels is long-since buried and impossible to find.
The party will have to decide on a course of action at this point. Some options available to them are listed below.
Walking In: The adventurers decide to proceed to the ESA base on foot, leaving the crawler behind and hoping to take the enemy agents by surprise. The task difficulty to surprise the enemy agents will depend on how much time the PCs managed to gain or lose on them during the chase. The agents do not expect any pursuit mounted by Olympus Mons base to be very close behind them, but will become more wary as the minutes tick by. If the PCs are only five minutes behind, a Routine Stealth roll will be needed to surprise the agents. Between ten and twenty minutes behind, a Difficult Stealth roll. Any greater time differential will mean a Formidable Stealth task.
Ramming Through: The PCs decide to stay in their crawler and attempt to plow right on through enemy gunfire to wreck the transmitter and/or run over the exposed agents. PCs may ride shotgun on the crawler if they wish. Dismounting the moving crawler requires both Difficult Dexterity and Routine P-suit rolls. Surprise tasks are as above, but substitute Ground Vehicle skill for Stealth.
The enemy agents on foot will react by shooting at radio antennae and PC shotgunners (in that order), while their comrade in their crawler tries to ram the party's vehicle and cripple it. PCs and/or agents may try to hop onto the opposing crawler to plant explosives. This requires a Formidable Dexterity task (hazardous) followed by a Routine Demolitions task.
Any battle that takes place in the Martian sandstorm will have to take into account some special considerations. Visibility is less than ten meters, and all "to hit" tasks are one level of difficulty higher than normal because of blinding gusts of micro-fine sand. Radios are generally useless beyond ten meters, and vocal communication is rendered ineffective by the howling wind. This means that the only practical way characters can communicate is through hand signals or touching helmets.
Characters who suffer a breach in their P-suit will suffer 0.5 DPV the first round, and 1.0 DPV each succeeding round until the breach is repaired. Repairing a small breach (such as those caused by the hand weapons used in this scenario) require one round and a Routine P-suit roll to repair, as well as a handy Stik-kit patch.
Also, the ultra-fine Martian dust continuously blowing about presents a hazard. Though all the PCs' equipment is sealed against it, even minor damage to any item will mean a rupture of that seal and dust contamination. The item immediately suffers a 3D6 Mishap roll.
If the PCs manage to defeat the enemy agents before the shuttle arrives, the unmarked space vessel will glide over the base and hover menacingly. The PCs have absolutely nothing that can harm the ship, but after a few minutes the crew on board will conclude that the mission is a bust and leave the vicinity with all due speed.
If some of the enemy agents are still alive and mobile when the shuttle arrives, they will attempt to flag it down and retreat toward it. If possible, the unarmed shuttle will use the back-blast from its thrusters to chase the PCs off (consider its three landing thrusters to have an EPV of 3.0 each) while lowering a ladder for the agents.
PCs may try to make their way onto the shuttle when it arrives, but this is very unlikely. The crew are all Elite NPCs and are hard to fool with disguise ploys. Forcible entry, assuming they can even make it up the ladder, will have to be through the bottleneck of the airlock.
After the battle, the PCs' crawler can just barely make it back to Olympus Base before its fuel cells are completely exhausted. The base personnel will help the PCs with any wounded. The PCs will receive the bonuses they were promised, but will be released from their contracts with AECA immediately after they are debriefed, no explanation given. A successful Routine Bureaucracy roll will allow them to collect two weeks severance pay before they are shipped unceremoniously back to Earth.
If they learn the Secret (by interrogating a captured agent or somehow decoding the agents' special portacomp on the way back) and carelessly blurt out their knowledge before they leave Mars, they will be immediately inducted into the American Intelligence Service by Commander Hollings to insure their cooperation in keeping the secret. This will mean assigning them both a security clearance and instructing them that their movements will now be carefully monitored by AIS agents for the foreseeable future.
If they are ever caught disclosing the Secret, they will be considered traitors to their country and the AIS may take "prejudicial action" against them.
Mars is a desert world some 6,970 km in diameter with a gravity of 0.44 gee. Its day is 24 hours and 37 minutes long, with a year lasting 686.9 standard days. The red planet has two small rocky moons, Phobos and Deimos.
Mars' surface is dominated by deserts, lava plains and mountains, giving it a bleak, foreboding character. The world possesses polar ice caps, composed mostly of carbon dioxide and water ice, that grow and recede with the martian seasons.
Mars is a dead world, with an atmosphere of carbon dioxide and nitrogen with a density of less than 1% of Earth's. Mars has extensive planetary weather. Daytime temperatures can reach up to 40 degrees C, but at night this figure can plummet to as low as -80 degrees C. Because of the low gravity and atmospheric pressure, it takes much less impetus to produce a storm on Mars than it does on Earth. Wind speed can change from relative zero to a howling 80 km/hour or more in a matter of minutes. Occasionally, during local autumn and spring, massive sandstorms can arise as storm systems feed off each other, giving birth to tempests that can cover an entire hemisphere of the planet for weeks or even months at a time. Visibility is often less than ten meters, and contamination of unsealed equipment from the very fine martian sand is a constant threat. Also, as the sun is blotted out, driving the outside temperature down to a chilly minus 50 degrees C.
Open water, from recyclers, coolant systems, and so on, is very dangerous in the martian desert. Water will combine violently with a potent oxidizing agent in the Martian soil, creating explosive effects.
Treat each half-liter of water that contacts the martian soil as having an EPV of 0.1. Note that this will not work on bare rock, nor will it work on the same spot twice. Clever PCs may use this phenomenon against the NPCs at the ESA base, jury-rigging water-balloons or such to use as makeshift grenades.
In 2265, the human adventure on Mars was on its last legs. The ESA had deserted its base on the planet two decades earlier, and the American base at Olympus Mons was scheduled to be abandoned at the end of the year.
However, three months before the Americans pulled out, they made an astounding discovery. The base personnel were testing experimental prospecting equipment when they discovered a vast lode of tantalum buried deep in the gigantic mountain Olympus Mons, practically on the base's doorstep. It turned out to be the richest such deposit in the solar system.
The American government saw the strategic significance of having such a large source of the essential metal so close to Earth and tight security was instantly clamped down on the discovery. It quickly drew up plans to exploit the lode, but in a way to attract no undue attention. It was leaked that a "minor" strike had been discovered, justifying both Olympus Base's continued operation as well as expanding its on-planet mining operations. In the 2280's, AECA took over the Olympus Base to use officially as a logistics base but also unofficially to increase the influx of traffic and personnel to the red planet and allow the American government to expand both its mining and stockpile facilities there.
The government has taken great pains to keep most of human space believing that the find on Mars was largely inconsequential. This includes hiring non-descript personnel (like the PCs) for the bulk of Olympus Base's operations to keep everything looking legitimately civilian. The mining base is largely automated, and the tantalum is refined and stockpiled in underground bunkers for projected future use. Since the outbreak of the Kafer War, the American government is depending on this stockpile to help in constructing the American fleet that it sees spearheading the eventual offensive into Kafer space.
However, some rivals of America, France in particular, have become suspicious of the extensive American presence on the red planet, and have begun covert investigations.
I've been criticized that the water-soil effect described herein is too "far out" to be believable, but the oxidation agent in the Martian soil is very real. The effect was discovered by Viking probe biology experiments, though what exactly causes it remains unknown. NASA's "best guess" theory is that hydrogen compounds (hydrogen peroxide, hydrogen monoxide, and/or halide compounds) form in the atmosphere, then bond with the elements in the soil over many thousands of years. Some theorize that these oxidation agents may even be responsible for the disappearance of all surface water on Mars.
However, it is assumed that the characters in the 2300 AD universe have long since solved the mystery and the water-soil effect is just another fact of life for personnel stationed on Mars.