"Manhunt"

"Manhunt", © 1990, 1999-2005 by Mark Galeotti originally appeared in _Challenge_ #42 (pages 27-29), and is reproduced here with the author's permission.
Text-entry & HTML: Steve C.

With the Kafer War has come a general resurgence of concern for the defense of far-flung colonies, regardless of their proximity to the immediate threat.

This has caused problems for many smaller settlements, which hitherto regarded militias and self-defense forces as expensive diversions of resources from more immediate day-to-day uses. Something, in other words, to leave until the agrarian base is stable, the communications network in place, and industry on the way. Having selected their immigrants and trained their young along more practical lines, they lack a suitable pool of military skills.

So they turn either to their parent governments or, frequently, small groups of "military advisors" - mercenaries to form a cadre training and leading a local unit until its officers and men have acquired the necessary level of experience. The players are one such group, hired by a small island community on the Australian world of Botany Bay. They are on a six-month contract to turn a handful of locals into some sort of credible militia.

The community, Murray Point, is a town of some 1500 people, mainly second-generation colonists from the capital city of New Cairns. For its economic livelihood, Murray Point depends on a small mine providing ore for a newly built smelter on a nearby island. It also depends on a meteorological station which sends unmanned drone aircraft on regular sweeps out to sea to supplement Botany Bay's weather satellite pictures with readings on wind speeds and distances, precipitation counts, and pressure gradients.

The players are provided with a secluded bay for firearms practice and a large warehouse in the town. A force of 30 locals, 18 to 27 year olds, has been assembled along with a little military equipment. All have the equivalent of FC-70 rifles and an abundance of 7.5mm ammunition, but the town council has also managed to obtain five Ramirez-Abruggo BF-1 assault rifles and 6000 rounds for them. Other initial equipment consists of six radios, flares, three pairs of binoculars, and two medikits. Six Songbird hovercraft have also been set aside for the Murray Point Irregulars, one with chronic engine trouble and another with a built-in vehicle radio, along with a fuel station.

The volunteers are all skilled in the use of boats and hovercraft, and most will be adequate shots. They will all be quite enthusiastic (the Kafers are too far away for most to connect playing soldiers with realities of fighting an implacable, murderous race of xenophobes). The main problem will be instilling discipline in the naturally boisterous and individualistic volunteers.

If the players are interested in playing it through, many different situations could arise in the first month. If they feel more equipment is needed, they will have to convince the local council - a task which will face opposition from its more skeptical members. More radios, for example, would be a very useful force multiplier, and telescopic sights would maximize the value of the FC-70s.

The small contingent of local policemen are lukewarm about the existence of the local militia, and any brawls or accidents could involve the players in delicate negotiation with Lieutenant Armitage, the local chief of police - an honest man, but totally lacking in humor, and always prickly about real and suspected slights to the dignity of his office.

Regardless of the amount of detail given in the early stages of play, the player's plans will soon be thrown out of kilter. A local boy who has been serving as a mercenary in the French Arm is coming home. If the players are on friendly terms with the locals, they will hear about Ian Peacock's imminent arrival. This should be checked as a task roll for each player, but a roll sufficient for a Difficult task will also impart the reason for his return: a psychological discharge.

Peacock may be seen as a valuable potential recruit, but if the players speak to him, they will soon realize that he is hardly up to military service. He is twitchy, introverted and moody, and shies away from talk about the war. A successful use of Psychology skill will show how deep the scars are.

Task: To hear about Ian Peacock's imminent arrival: Simple. Streetwise.

Task: To evaluate sanity (Uncertain): Routine. Psychology. 15 minutes.

His grip on reality and self-control is very tenuous since his service on Aurore in the Tanstaafl Free Legion, when he was trapped for over a day, near death, in the wreckage of his squad APC, surrounded by a band of Kafers intent on interrogating his teammates. He was rescued and given psychiatric care, but in war attention tends to be lavished more on those who will fight again, and Ian Peacock's treatment was incomplete and short-lived.

A few days after his arrival, the PCs will be contacted early one morning by a distraught Lieutenant Armitage. Peacock was staying with his widowed mother, and a few hours ago neighbors rang to complain about Peacock crying over and over again, "Just stop asking me questions!" When a squad car could be spared, the door was found open. Peacock was missing, and his mother was dead from over a dozen vicious stab wounds to the face and body. An immediate search was mounted. The body of the town's newest doctor was found in a nearby street. His hovercraft had disappeared.

Armitage explains that Peacock apparently killed his mother and the doctor, stole the craft, and headed out to sea. His course has been tracked by the infrared photographs taken by Botany Bay's weather satellite, transmitted real-time to the meteorological station. He has gone to ground on a small deserted island 100 kilometers away. Armitage adds that Peacock had a provisional license for an F-7 laser rifle.

Armitage has seven men armed with with handguns and a few shotguns. Though it sticks in his throat to admit it (and some tact on the players' part at this point will win them a friend for life), he and his men have neither the equipment nor the training to tackle a trained gunman on the run. Rather than appeal for a SWAT team to be mobilized and airlifted from New Cairns, he and the Council feel that the Murray Point Irregulars should deal with Peacock. The "we clean up our own front yard" ethos is very strong on Botany Bay.

The players may not be convinced, but the fact is that their contract does require them to "aid the civic authorities when said authorities consider the issue to be urgent or necessary." In other words, the council has them over a barrel. They do have some leverage, though. A strong case could be made for commandeering more radios and even some night vision gear from the police if the players realize this and push.

The island where Peacock has gone to ground, Rimmer's Rock, is little more than a small dimple on the coastal shelf. It is roughly triangular, two kilometers long and one kilometer wide. Broad, swampy beaches slope up from the shallow waters to a central rocky outcrop about one kilometer long and 500 meters across at its widest point. The beaches are flat and treacherous, thickly veined with looping seaweed. But the rocky scarp is gnarled and barren, ancinet lava deposits eroded into fantastic shapes by wind and rain.

Players with binocilars will be able to make out the hovercraft from about 10 kilometers offshore. Peacock drove it up the beach and left it half in and half out of a cave amidst the rocks. Peacock himself is nowhere to be seen.

From this point, events will be determined by the players' actions. Peacock has, needless to say, lost even his tenuous grip on snity and now thinks he is being hunted by Kafers. No amount of persuasion will change his mind. He is armed with his F-7 laser rifle, ample power cells, and a Stracher P-11 magnum. He also has a combat knife which he will use on himself rather than be captured by the Kafers.

He is wearing biocontacts which will give him some infrared vision in the dark and up to x5 magnification - something the players will have to discover for themselves. One last souvenir of his service is a military issue radio. He can use this to overhear the Irregulars' radio traffic, so unless they are using code, they will find Peacock one jump ahead.

His skills should depend on the strength of the players, but Peacock will have good Combat Rifleman and Melee skills, Stealth, Recon and Survival. He also has Demolitions-0. He has used this to rig up a crude booby trap on the hovercraft. If investigating characters do not spot it, then roll his chance to rig the trap. If he succeeded, the cigar-lighter will trigger about 20 11mm magnum shells, blasting in all directions.

Task: To spot trap (Hazardous): Simple. Demolitions and Recon. 6 seconds.

Task: To rig booby trap: Difficult. Demolitions-0. 15 minutes.

Two strategies are open to the hunters. They can place pickets around the island and hope to starve him out (investigation of the ship will reveal that all the supplies were left on board). This is hardly viable. The Irregulars' weapons all have 800-meter range to his 1000 meter, and come night the hunters would soon become easy meat for a trained, experienced soldier. Besides, the local boys will soon become restive. Not as restive, though, as the local council which, after a day or so and certainly after a few casualties, will start complaining and probably turn to New Cairns for help.

More dangerous, but more practical, is to go in after him. With some men safely far out at sea covering the beaches with binoculars, the Irregulars can begin to sift across the island, trying to drive Peacock out of cover and either onto the beach or into an ambush force (the so-called hammer and anvil strategy). Small groups could move from cover to cover, in close radio contact with other teams and ready to provide fire support should Peacock start shooting.

One subtlety would be to use the drones from the weather station to buzz the island and try to draw Peacock's fire, helping locate him (though laser fire is largely invisible). Alternatively the players could try tracking him from the hovercraft. The rock does not, however, make for easy tracking, and this will be a Difficult task, at best. It would also leave Peacock in a good position to turn on his pursuers from ambush, with the tracker the target of choice.

Peacock is insane, but if anything, this will make him even more wily and cunning. To flush him out while he monitors the Irregulars' radios would seem an almost impossible task, were it not that two main factors work in the players' favor.

First of all, hunted men often retreat upward, a fact known to any character with 5+ years law enforcement experience or Psychology-3 or better. This will allow the hunters to better predict Peacock's behavior.

Second, Peacock believes he is fighting Kafers. He thinks their use of human voices on the radio is a cunning ruse, and will eventually interrupt the Irregular's communications to crow over the fact that they haven't fooled him (and that he has drawn blood if any militiamen have been killed). This will alert the players, and they will have one chance to initiate a dialogue with him. Attempts to talk sense into him will fail, but a skilled technician with a vehicle radio may be able to triangulate his location to within 50 meters from his transmissions.

Task: To initiate dialogue (Unskilled): Formidable. Interviewing. 10 minutes.

Task: To locate Peacock: Formidable. Communications. 20 minutes.

In addition, Peacock may expose himself to stupid risks, relying on his imagined Kafer enemies' delayed reaction intelligence. He may, for example, mistakenly take for granted his own ability to get in a second shot in an ambush.

Play Peacock as a very smart and dangerous animal, but one prepared to take risks if it will draw blood. He is capable of near superhuman feats in his madness - especially to avoid capture. If events drag into night, he will become especially lethal, particularly if the players have no night vision gear. If they retreat for the night, he may prepare deadfalls and similar traps. if necessary, fudge rolls to avoid a lucky early shot ending the chase too soon. It is better to create a running hunt-gunfight-hunt sequence with a wounded, brooding prey plotting to turn the tables on his Kafer pursuers.

The local militiamen are brave and willing, but they are hardly battle-hardened troops. They will be hard to command once Peacock has started killing by either hanging back or becoming foolhardy in their anger. Ambushes by an almost-undetectable laser are demoralizing enough at the best of times. Leadership skills would probably prove useful to prevent the militiamen from running the first few times.

The outcome will determine the players' continued welcome at Murray Point. Success with no or minor casualties will do wonders for both their reputations on Botany Bay and the morale of the Irregulars, while heavy casualties will lead to the invocation of termination clauses and their sudden, ignominious departure. On the whole, though, the affair will unsettle and embarrass the people of Murray Point, and playing at soldiering will probably become less popular in the city after this brush with the realities of war.