Out of the Dark I don't think I've ever been in a fight as tight as that one. We got the order to scramble, and we boosted, grabbing blue and clawing towards the black. The Marik raiders were coming in at high G, fast and hot, the best pilots the 4 1h Anclarien had. We hit them head on, and their fighter wall dissolved into a swarm of spacecraft, dodging, diving, swirling. We were already short, one of our pilots grounded by a medical, another by a fever. Fever? We were all a bit feverish, keyed tighter than I'd have ever thought possible, kncwing that we were all that was standing between that swarm of raiders and the bluewhite beauty of Wyatt. Like I said, the enemy fighter wall fell apart as we blasted through, piling on the Gs. Then we were mixing with them, hauling around on our vector thrusters and standing our ships on their tails to fall back into a new intercept course. It was just after that first pass that Randy started shouting blue murder over the tac frequency. Hell, we didn't blame him. In a moment we could all see what he saw... four bloody great DropShips vectoring towards the planet. And it was right about then that the Red Eagle came plummeting out of the dark at us. That's when I knew we were going to fail... --from On Wings of Steel Eagles by Lieutenant Sharlene Gurtman, Tharkad Press to be released in 3028 GAME SET-UP The Aero Tech mapboard is used. The planet printed on the map represents the planet Wyatt. The moon and its gravitational effect hexes are ignored. Attacker The Attacker is a raiding force of House Marik fighters and DropShips, identified as elements of the 4th Division of the Defenders of Andarien. It includes the following: 1 Slayer 8 Stingrays 2 Thrush 2 Sholagar 4 Union-class DropShips Use green Liao Thrush counters for the two Sholagars (the silhouettes are the same), and keep track of which is which by the numbers printed on the counters. This is so that the Slayer can be the only red counter on the board. Defende The Defender has elements of several squadrons of House Steiner fighters based on Wyatt. They include: 6 Corsairs (3rd Squadron, 1 01h Skye Rangers) 3 Seydlitz (2nd Squadron, 1 01h Skye rangers) 2 Lucifers 2 Chippewas The Attacker may set up anywhere, so long as his nearest fighter is no closer than 20 hexes from the planet. The Defender begins on the planet. The Attacker 'has the initiative on the first turn. The Defender may begin launching his fighters as soon as the Attacker completes his first move. Victory Conditions The Attacker is attempting to land his DropShips on Wyatt. To do so, he must first eliminate the defending fighters. The Defender is attempting to turn back the Marik assault on Wyatt. In order to determine victory, each side wins Victory Points according to the following schedule: Marik forces land on Wyatt: 100 points per DropShip landed Per fighter destroyed: 1 perton Damage to Marik DropShips: 1 per 5 points of damage 500 per DropShip destroyed The side with the highest number of Victory Points when the combatants agreeto ceasefighting wins. The Commonwealth player mayforce the Marik forces to retreat by destroying 70% (fighters totaling 390 tons or more) of the attacking force. Once the Marik player has lost fighters totalling more than 390 tons, Janos Kleber, the Marik admiral directing the battle from one of the DropShips, will conclude that it is impossible to achieve aerospace superiority and will order the attacking force to withdraw. Finally, the Marik player should designate one of his DropShips as the command ship, carrying Admiral Kleber, by writing the ship's number on a piece of paper but keeping the choice secret until the conclusion of the game. If the designated DropShip is destroyed, the Marik forces must withdraw, and the battle is lost for the Marik forces. Special Rules These rules are entirely optional. The Marik Slayeris piloted by Dmitri Pawoloski, a former Kurita AeroTech ace who has defected to the Free Worlds. His ship is painted red and black, in the pattern of a giant bird of prey. His ship's appearance and his notoriety give him a considerable psychological advantage. To reflect this advantage, all Steiner pilots who fire at Pawoloski's red Slayer add a DM of +2 to each shot they make at Close range, and a DM of +1 to each shot made at Medium range. A second optional rule reflects the late arrival of Lieutenant Shaneyfelt to the battle. Shaneyfelt's Corsair must remain on the planet until Pawoloski's Slayer damages any one Steiner fighter. As soon as this occurs, Shaneyfelt's Corsair may launch. Situation: 1627 hours, 25 September, 3027 Wyatt The Raid on Wyatt Admiral Janos Kleber was seeking to relieve Steiner pressure elsewhere against the Steiner-Marik frontier by launching a raid-in-force against the border world of Wyatt. Wyatt had, for some time, occupied a salient extending into Marik space and represented the focal point of several years of strategic maneuver between the two governments. General Felix Mario Radnor, C-in-C of the Wyatt garrison, had augmented his defenses with elements of the 1 01h Skye Rangers, which included a squadron of new Davion CSR-V12 Corsairs which had recently been sold to House Steiner as part of a recent series of mutual defense and trade treaties. The fighters at Radnor's disposal gave him a slight edge in tonnage overthe incoming Marik f ighters but left him at a disadvantage against the additional firepower carried by the Marik DropShips. The Marik admiral, for his part, sought to eliminate the defending fighters without risking his precious DropShips-even though fully committing the DropShips would be likely to win him a clear victory in space. Both sides were quite aware that even the conquest of the planet would scarcely be worth the loss to Kleber's forces of precious DropShips and the BattleMechs they carried. The contest, then, became a classic screening action by the Marik fighters, and a series of lightning maneuver-and-strike thrusts at the DropShips by the defenders. The presence of a particularly colorful and well-known ace among the Marik forces added a psychological edge to the attackers' side. Back to BattleTechnology 3 Table of Contents Back to BattleTechnology List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1988 by Pacific Rim Publishing. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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