From the Diary of Natalia Meredine, 12th of Spring TN1920

I can't believe it!, I mean I never expected this from him. There we were doing some repairs on Gun and he asks me to change the oil. I unscrew the release and *tink out it comes. At first I thought it was a washer or something, but then I cleaned it off and even with the grease it sparkled. I'M ENGAGED!

"Natty" he says, "With you I'm the luckiest man in the world, let's show the rest of the world just how lucky I am. Marry me in Khayr-Ad Din. The city where we met, the city we were re-united in, the city that knows us for what we are... Happy"

At least I know why Tessa's been acting so weird, according to Gade if not for her, he'd have had no chance at surprising me. That little grease monkey, she's got more subterfuge in her then I thought.

I sometimes worry about whats gonna happen to him when I'm gone. But every time I even try to bring it up he just closes the subject reassuring me that he'd rather be happy for a short while, then unhappy for all time. But I'll make him happy, he deserves it... I think deserve it too.

Tulsa, TNTR and you.

The Khayr-ad Din Terranovan TransRail office was immaculate and pristine, as usual. The air conditioning was the perfect relief from the dirty trash city. Outside, but within earshot, Basil Paleologus was being courteous and diplomatic towards his next meal, a WestRail executive he had summoned. Inside, Tomohiro Chambers waited quietly. He read the datapad readout in his hands, summarizing its contents in his mind:

WestRail was the largest railroad company in the Protectorate. It had a very important rail line which ran south along the western slopes of the Westridge Mountains, and the Westridge Line's spurs were a prime mover of raw materials and goods in and out of the Badlands. Because the Westridge Line crossed the Gamma Maglev, Westrail's rolling stock were often seen on TNTR cargo pallets, which meant that the goods coming in and out of the Westridge communities were destined for global distribution. This was big business. Doc Chambers looked over the intel report from Tulsa. Kain had done good work.

The door opened and Paleologus entered, preceded by the willowy, elegant WestRail employee.

"-and this is my associate, Dr. Chambers," Basil nodded as the the Doc stood and shook hands, "CEO of the Badlands Caravan Guild. I've asked him to be here for this meeting."

"Doctor," the woman nodded, all business, "Perer Jenn, WestRail Liason to TerraNovan TransRail."

For a moment, Chambers felt a twinge of pity for the young woman. It was, however, soon overtaken by righteous greed, a satisfying compound emotion if there ever was one.

"Please, Ms. Perer, sit," Basil's oily smile was noticed only by Chambers, "a drink perhaps?"

The Doc took the cue and walked over to the small bar. He poured three glasses of Fort James Special, neat, and placed the bottle back on the counter with a clunk. Perer smiled to the Doc quizzically as she took the drink.

"Very well," Paleologus nodded, his hands clasped behind his back. He had yet to sit down, "Ms. Perer, I want you to offer the Badlands Caravan Guild preferential shipping rates on all WestRail lines from Wounded Knee to the Saragossan mountains."

"Excuse me?" Perer's eyes narrowed as she put her drink down. She began to suspect an ambush, "as much as TNTR can afford to provide such services to a small organization such as the Guild, WestRail is not a multinational with such leeway in its bottom line!"

"No, but WestRail is acting in conjunction with a Polar intelligence agency, Ms. Perer." Paleologus never hesitated in going for blood, "and that contravenes the agreement you signed with TNTR in order to operate in conjunction with us." He handed a datapad to the woman. His manner was very casual, but his eyes betrayed anger, "here, read it if you like."

Doc Chambers smirked.

"No, thank you, Mr. Paleologus, I am intimately familiar with our agreement, " she replied icily, "and your claim is outrageous."

"The town of Tulsa?" the Doc chimed in, "Mining operation? The Caseback Company, out of Fort William? I've treated three cases of radiation sickness among TNTR employees who have handled rolling stock going to the Gamma Maglev from your lines."

"There have been two more cases of radioactive contamination at the Fort James Gamma Maglev station," Paleologus was non-plussed.

"I see, and you are accusing me and my company?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because the Caseback Mining Company is wholly owned by WestRail," the Doc shot in, "madam, you have colluded with Western Intelligence assets to smuggle Lithium-7, a means of generating tritium, out of the Tulsa diamond mine and into the Protectorate."

"All the while, using TNTR and WestRail rail stock," said Paleologus.

"So in exchange for ceasing operations, you want the Badlands Caravan Guild to get preferential treatment?" Perer shrugged, "done."

"Oh no, Ms. Perer," Paleologus' face betrayed his predatory nature, "the mining and smuggling of lithium-7 out of Tulsa has already ceased. You will do this favour for me and the Doctor in order for this information to be buried. Otherwise, I will personally see to it that WestRail will be reduced to a single garbage train running a circular track in Fort Henry's weapon testing range."

-----------

"Well, that went well," Doc Chambers smiled, sipping a second glass of Fort James Special.

"Quite," Basil nodded, "well Doctor, your guild now has unfettered access to the Westridge Range for at least the next five cycles. I hope your plans are suitably ambitious."

"They are, thank you Basil."

"Oh, don't thank me Tom. Not yet."

Scavenger and Saint

Sandra stood motionless. She could smell the kill lying in front of her, bleeding out. Sam Tarmalin didn't draw. Well, he didn't draw a gun. It left her a little queazy. She lowered her revolver slowly, drawing aim.

"No!" a voice called out. Sandra looked up. It was that kid, Ellen, from the caravan. Running right towards her from the train platform. Sandra blinked. Usually she tuned out Sam's nonsense, but he didn't draw. She didn't get it. She stood there, too confused to act.

"Sam Sam Sam Sam Sam..." Ellen was babbling as she knelt down beside the gunslinger. Sam was whispering something to her. There was blood everywhere. She started first aid, and injected him with a sedative.

*click*

Sandra drew the hammer back on her weapon, "get away from him, Ellen."

Ellen Cranby ignored her.

"Ellen, step back or I'll spray your brains all over Sam's body."

Ellen pulled a coagulant injector out of the little first aid kit she carried on her belt, under her cloak.

Keening with rage, Sandra kicked Ellen in the shoulder. Ellen fell over sideways into the dust.

Sandra knelt over Sam's body.

"Vulture!" Ellen snarled at the revolver aimed at her. She watched as Sandra pulled Sam's guns out of their holsters and jammed them under her belt.

"That's how it goes! He'd have taken mine! That's how it goes!" Sandra stood and turned towards the buggy. She holstered her pistol. Without looking back at Ellen, she called out, stepping into the buggy, "he didn't draw, Ellen. The moron didn't draw." The buggy sped off.

Ellen wasn't paying attention. She knelt over Sam's body and tried her best
to stop the bleeding.

What is the sound of no guns firing?

So I just helped my ex-girlfriend rob the payroll train, and now she has a gun pulled on me; I should probably be feeling surprised, but really I'm more confused than anything else. It just all seems so... complicated. "Did you really need all these people, Sandra?" I ask, not really expecting an answer. "You probably could've done it with just two others, why involve everyone else if you were only planning to shoot them afterwards?"

Sandra's calling me naive, and an idiot, and a whole lot worse, but I can see the Old Woman of the Desert kneeling over the dead henchmen and nodding at me. {Would have been simpler to do it like that, boy, but there's something even simpler, isn't there.} I know I'm hallucinating, but this is nothing like those months I spent high on painkillers and alcohol. This feels right.

I try to work it out. "Wouldn't... wouldn't it have been simpler to just get work that makes you happy, instead of wasting all this time and energy on overly complicated plans?"

Sandra's waving her gun at me and yelling something about how I'm nothing more than a tool and how the money's all hers, but I can hardly hear her above the Old Woman's whisper: {And there's something even simpler than that, isn't there? Wouldn't it be simpler to just be?}

Suddenly the Old Woman's gone and Sandra tunes back in and everything seems so damn clear and so painfully loud I can barely stand it.

"When I met you, you were just a delusional hick, Sam! I turned you into a killer! I made you, and then you abandoned me for that lame-ass caravan of yours." The gun stays trained on me while she rants, but I'm not afraid. For the first time since I got shot in Malachi Flats, I'm not afraid. I can hear her pistol breathing; its breaths are my breaths.

"I made you, and now I'm going to unmake you!" she spits out.

It's true.

Faster than she can see, faster than I've ever moved before, faster than thought, I shape my hand like a gun and point it at her head. But really I'm pointing it at mine, aren't I?

"Bang," I say. But I can't hear myself above her gunshot, and then I'm falling, and then Ellen's there. Turns out she was always there, I just didn't notice.

"Oh, hey El, you're getting blood on your face. Let me get it." She's freaking out, and I'm just making the mess worse, so I stop.

"I'm... fine, El." It's getting kind of hard to breathe, but this seems important, so I push the words out. "This is... way better than... the last time... I got shot." I try to chuckle, but it comes out more like a gurgle. Then she injects me with something, and

29 May 2009 Some loose ends

"Every time we come down into this hole, it looks completely different." Hands on hips, Kain Delacroix stood on the observation level of the brand-new oasis tower/maglev spur station. Looking down over the water of Grotte deValmont, he could see the gleaming row of corporate enclaves, aligned in perfect geometric form. A new pier ran far out into the water; even now, a submersible was taking on cargo from a large truck.

He and Gade were both in mufti. No Regulator coat or poncho for this little job. It wouldn't do to get noticed. Kain had gambled that security would be considerably loosened under the new sovereigntist Baja regime; Lenny Green had indeed chased the SRID out of the underground city, and the MILICIA were contained in a small base near the entrance. Getting in had required a quick medical scan (you don't want any nasty bugs in a semi-hermetic environment!) and a cursory glance over their (fake) documentation.

******

Shelly Crawford had been enjoying a quiet evening in when he got the call. The fire marshal declared that the cause of the warehouse blaze was arson. It wasn't a big deal at first, what with the warehouse being out in the abandoned part of New Baja, dating from the initial migration and settlement underground. But then three bodies were found in the charred rubble. Three badly burned and charred bodies meant it was potentially a homicide.

Shelly frowned, datapad in one hand, cawfee cup in the other, as he hunched over his desk at the New Baja Police Grotte Precinct. The coronor's report was grisly. The men had been tortured, shot and stabbed before their bodies were burned, still tied to the chairs. The polymer ropes had melted into their skin.

"Lenny has got to see this," he declared.

Moments later, Shelly was in the office of the Chief of Police. Lenny and Shelly went back to the days of the anti-Earth Resistance and then they both signed up as Kain Delacroix's Regulators. They were two of the three men who stayed behind when Marshals Delacroix and Tarmalin took the rest of the Regulators on as caravaneers. The two men were united in the same vision that they had when they joined the Regulators: freedom, security and stability for Baja. It wasn't working out according to plan, but it was, Lenny was fond to say, "a work in progress."

Lenny looked down at the datapad Shelly handed him.

"Prophet wept, Shelly, this couldn't wait until after I had my breakfast?" Lenny grunted and pushed his plate of eggs and johar grass to the other side of his desk. The datapad contained grisly pictures of the warehouse and the bodies found within.

"Sorry boss, but we got the IDs on the three victims. Igasawa, Rodriguez and Bertrand. All of them from the Mekong Development Company."

"Shit. I suppse I should be hearing from our friends at the MDC soon enough," Lenny sighed. Whatever appetite he might have still had was now completely drained.

Shelly gave a sympathetic nod, but then continued, "those names ring any bells?"

"Huh?" Lenny was as sharp as ever, but he wasn't a detective anymore. He was preoccupied with the minutia of keeping a city running safely, "hmmm...Mekong suits. A fire. A warehouse. I'm not following."

"The Karin Hassan 'kidnapping'?" Shelly concluded, sitting down across from his boss. The door to Lenny's office was already closed.

"Well, I hope that next time he'll be able to come say hello," Lenny nodded.

The two men shared a silent smile.

From the Diary of Tessa Lin, 7 Spring TN1919

It all happened so fast. But everything moved in slow motion. Moving underground wasn't too bad, and I was helping out at the UnderHang. Karin's family had a new inn all set up real quick. It was my first job. And I guess it's my last in Baja. I'm on a Longrunner truck with Karin. We're never going back. Karin doesn't even talk right now. Not after what her father did. Everyone's fucked up from the war, but I can't believe her own flesh and blood would sell her out like that.

Where can I begin?

We went underground, I started at the UnderHang as a hostess, like Karin. We were busy. All those Mekongese and Republicans staying, planning the city of New Baja. Suits and power meetings and ... Well they kept us busy. But it was those three Mekong suits. We got their names off the hotel registry. I guess we should have been smarter, but I never thought ... After they got flirty in the lobby, Karin and I kept our distance. So sleazy. But Karin had to clean the room, and they were waiting for her.

I only heard her cry out once. I ran to see. So stupid. I can't believe how stupid I was. Karin was on the bed, one of them was hitting her. One was watching. The last hit me a few times, left me to sit in the corner, and then watched. Karin was real quiet. So I was I. I guess I froze, because it took me so long before I saw the gun. Karin had to wait for me to think straight. I guess they thought that they'd be in real dangerous places down in the Badlands, because there it was. Just sitting on the desk out in the open. I guess they didn't think we'd be too much trouble. I just remember going for it. Not even looking. Then I cocked it. That's when they turned towards me. They told me to put it down. They said I was scared. They were right. But I lived through Baja. I wasn't scared enough. I got Karin out of there and we ran.

The next day Karin told her dad what happened. Karin's tougher than me: I've been crying since I picked up the gun, pointing it at those creeps. She only cried once she told me that her father didn't believe her. He said that those men give the town good money and that we shouldn't rock the boat if we ever want New Baja to get on its feet. Karin said she didn't know where to go. But Marshal Delacroix' caravan was in town. Karin remembered that they had this mechanic, Gade, who was nice to her when he was with the Regulators.

We talked to Gade and told him everything. He just said that we could stay with him on the caravan and that he'd vouch for us. He looks a little dirty, but he doesn't seem too bad. Everyone on the caravan's from Baja. Lots of former Regulators, so I've got a good feeling about this. I just wish I could stop crying. Karin sure is brave. She won't talk about it, but I know that one day we'll set this right, somehow.

Warrior III "Scrap"

"I swear, sometimes, I wonder what the hell Gade was thinking?" Trishaw Carmichael, formerly a Paxton gear designer, grunted as he was busy cleaning out the filters of the Warrior III named Scrap.

Everyone in The Cave ignored him.

"Damn kid is lucky that he never got asphyxiated in this rust-bucket!" Carmichael grunted again, "missing at least five safety filters and a bypass valve!"

Natty and Karin nodded absentmindedly, working hard as Carmichael raved. They didn't know that Carmichael had been responsible for the addition of three of those five safety filters and the bypass valve. The Warrior III was Paxton's workhorse trooper gear, much like the Hunter and Jager, but it was designed with the Badlands in mind. That meant that air filters and valves got clogged. He marveled that Gade's patchwork construction hadn't fallen to pieces cycles ago.

"...and he didn't even use the right actuators for the wrists!" Carmichael's complexion had reddened some, but the old goat was attentive enough to see that he was being studiously ignored by his younger colleagues. He sighed. Scrap had worked exactly right since he joined the caravan, and Kelly, the gear's regular pilot never reported any serious irregularities.

Carmichael was just about to resign himself to quiet work when he found the hopper skeleton lodged in behind the gear's leg panel. He pulled the chicken-sized mass of cartilage and bone out with a grimace and held it up to the stunned and sickened girls.

"That's right!" he declared, victoriously, "and there's probably more where that came from!"

****

Scrap was the first gear Gade Vonyran built out of spare parts collected from the junk heaps of Khayr-ad Din. The Warrior III is a standard design, and Gade had access to other similar gears to ease the process. The end result was a patchwork gear that was serviceable and reliable: a testament to both Paxton's engineering and Gade's abilities. The gear's Optical Neural Net was transferred from the Warrior III and into a Blitz Iguana for a while, but has now returned to its rightful place in its original chassis. Scrap is a well-behaved machine with tenacity and loyalty. It does have a tendency to twitch when idling, a result of being a scratch-built machine and the transfer to the Blitz Iguana and back.

The only person on the caravan who has a grudge against Scrap is Avatanya Brom, who happened to like the original Regulator office in New Baja Town.

UPDATE: Kelly Lebeau has taken to driving Scrap as the leader of the reserve squad of Caravan gears. She tends to carry an MR-55 30mm cannon, a 52mm rocket pack, and a pair of War of the Alliance-issue heavy panzerfausts she dug up in Khayr-ad Din.

HEAVY GEAR VEHICLE RECORD SHEET
NAME:					VEHICLE SPECIFICATIONS
Scrap					SIZE:			6
MODEL:					CREW:			1
PA-01 Warrior					BONUS ACTIONS:			0
CLASS:					CREW SKILLS
Trooper Heavy Gear					PILOT:
					GUNNERY:
					MOVEMENT
					PRIMARY COMBAT:			4 / -1
					PRIMARY TOP:			7 / +1
					SECONDARY COMBAT:			6 / 0
					SECONDARY TOP:			12 / +2
					MANEUVER:			0
					ELECTRONICS
					SENSORS:			0
					COMMUNICATION:			0
					FIRE CONTROL:			0
					ARMOUR
					LIGHT DAMAGE:			15
					HEAVY DAMAGE:			30
					OVERKILL:			45
WEAPONS
CODE-NAME:				RANGE	DAM	ACC	RoF/CLIP	Special
Vibroblade				0	x8	0	-	close combat
Hand Grenades x 3				0	x15	-1	-	close combat, AI
APGL				50m	x3	-1	0/6	AI, AE=0, IF
MR-55 Medium Autocannon				150m	x10	0	1/40	1 extra clip
LRP/24				50m	x12	-1	+3/24	IF
HPZF x 2				100m	x25	-1	-	single shot
PERKS
NAME:				RATING:	GAME EFFECT				AUX
Easy To Modify					+2 repair/modify rolls
Manipulator Arm x2				6	Can Punch
Hostile Environment Protection					Desert
ECM				1	Offensive EW equipment				YES
FLAWS
NAME:				RATING:	GAME EFFECT				AUX
None
DEFECTS
NAME:				RATING:	GAME EFFECT				AUX
None
xxxxxx	xxxxxx	xxxxxx	xxxxxx	xxxxxx	xxxxxx	xxxxxx	xxxxxx	xxxxxx	xxxxxx

Dice Dropping Rules Revised

OBSOLETE - 8 September 2010

Aiming/Called Shots
Special Maneuvers
Hurrying

All of the above reduce (or in the case of Aiming, add) dice from a given skill level. This represents a given ability to be consistent, solid in the face of adversity and/or cool-headed, which generally comes with skill, experience and training, rather than innate ability.

Called Shots:
-2 Dice for locations other than the Head/AUX systems
-3 Dice for Head or AUX systems

Aiming:
+1 die per round aiming, to a maximum of the skill level (i.e.: a level 2 Small Arms skill can benefit from 2 rounds of aiming at most).

Special Maneuvers:

Attack of Deception - A.K.A. "Dropping Dice": This maneuver is very straightforward in execution. Simply reduce number of skill dice available to an opposed roll, and the opponent must reduce his/her dice by the same number. Once a die pool is reduced to zero, roll unskilled. This maneuver is available for any opposed roll in which the opponents have direct, close interaction, e.g., a showdown, a close quarters battle. It can also be used in psychological and non-combat instances, though some roleplaying is required here.

Hurrying a Task: Dropping skill dice here represents cutting corners and taking risks in order to complete a task, usually a non-opposed threshold skill roll. Each die dropped reduces the required time of the task by (provisionally) 20%. That is to say, dropping one die on a 10-hour task reduces it to 8 hours, two dice to 6 hours, etc.

Naturally, Emergency Dice may be spent to counteract any dice lost.