The Odd Squad

OK, so I told you a bit about my current IHWSC campaign. The PCs are a group of Marines on planet - they call themselves the "Odd Squad" - and the bridge crew of the frigate Copperhead. The PCs were dropped on Basher - the crater world I talked about last post - in drop capsules fired out of the drop tubes of the frigate as she passed by the planet. In the drop, the young NPC ensign died - it was his first drop and he screwed the pooch - and the other PC officer died soon after, while crossing the rim wall. So the PCs were being led by a PC corporal.

They knew there was a military intelligence person inside, who had given the ship the warning - why she had dropped the Odd Squad to investigate - so in order to find this agent in a crater with 100s of millions of people, they sent out an anonomized message on the word net in the same code used to contact the ship. He contacted them in return - he was hiding in the capital in a government building, with security searching for him. He had data he had to get to the Copperhead ASAP. The Odd Squad told him to hold on and await rescue.

They found a tube-train station and broke through an air shaft, riding the top of the trains all the way to the capital, switching trains when necessary. They come up though another air shaft into an alley near the government building. They hit a security squad at the entrance and blew through them like wolverine through a wet paper bag. Luckily for them it was a holiday - Glorious Founders' Day - and few people were at work, but they had to gun down a couple squads of security. They located the spy, who turned out to be a Navy Lieutenant. He now had to get his message to the Frigate, and all they had were ground to orbit comms.

They called up maps from the World net and found Panatek - communications company like Sprint or AT&T - had a building nearby. They escaped the government building and walked into the Panatek building, wearing full Marine combat armor, and requisitioned it. The building was in two halves - one on the ground about 10 stories high, and another floating above it about 20 stories high, connected by A-grav elevators. They were most of the way to the upper building when the elevators stopped. They figured the bad guys were on the way, so they tore the door off the elevator and floated up the open shaft to the studio floor. They positioned men to guard the elevator shafts, then the officer walked into the studio and delivered his message. The government of Basher, a member state of SaVaHuTa, is attempting to form an Empire by taking over another world - strictly forbidden.

On the Copperhead, several light seconds out, the bridge crew hear the info and get the uploaded data. They talk among themselves - with the Lieutenant on mute - and decide they have to warn SaVaHuTa. They inform the Lieutenant that they cannot pick him and the Odd Squad up because they need to race for the jump point, otherwise the Basher Space Defense Force will have time to get big ships in their way. Besides, trying to pick anyone up from Basher would be tantamount to committing suicide. He is given command of the Odd Squad and told to delay, destroy, and create confusion until he can be picked up.

Meanwhile, the Odd Squad defeats two armored insertion strikes simultaneously, leaving their Corpsman badly wounded. The Lieutenant tells them the bad news, which they cheer - these *are* Marines, after all, and it gives them license to go wild. They reprogram the central computer, hijack the top part of the Panatek building, and float it off down the streets of the capital, with HAPPY GLORIOUS FOUNDER'S DAY messages scrolling all over the configurable color coating on the building, as if it's a holiday float. Then they reconfigure the powerful communications emitters and receivers into active radar - recording, inverting, and rebroadcasting any radar signals hitting it, rendering it invisible to radar. Besides, they have about 2500 civilian hostages who work in or were visiting the Panatek building.

The police try to stop them as they drift towards their next target, but they are pretty much harmless to a plasteel building 20 stories high. They beat the military to their target - a battalion munitions dump. They crash through the roof using the bottom of the Panatek building as a battering ram. They take out the two following military vehicles with a shoulder launched rocket system, meanwhile wiping out the 20 MPs holding the arsenal within a single round.

Next they reprogram the battalion's robots, and with their help, loot the arsenal. Then they head off into the nearby lake and sink themselves into it until only the tip of the building is showing. They are feverishly working to mount all the hardware they looted onto the Panatek Building. Meanwhile, the Copperhead has won the race, and has to get through only one PDS ship to get to the jump point. That's where we ended.

This is what I have to deal with every week! They're brilliant, inventive, insane, and drive me crazy! I know you GMs are all saying "better him than me!" about now.

-clash