| Jovian APAworks | Volume 2, Number 3 | March, 2002 |
Pushing his Sabertooth's linear frame to its maximum, Nathan bounded forward, toward a fallen wall thirty meters ahead. A fellow soldier, Erik, followed limping in his already damaged Saber. "Keep it moving Erik!" Nathan shouted over the comm. Suddenly, Republican gattling cannons opened fire from hidden positions, spraying armor-piercing rounds along the two Saber's path. Trying to close the few remaining meters, Nathan leaped, reaching the shelter of the wall.
"Damn," Erik burst over Nathan's comm. "I'm hit, loosing power." Turning to look, Nathan saw Erik's Sabertooth collapse unto it knees, the hydraulic pressure apparently gone from its legs. In an instant, a hypervelocity round from an Ares Rifle ripped open Erik's suit, the energy of the impact erupting out the back end of Erik's Saber.
Turning away, Nathan worked at steadying his breathing from behind the fallen wall, gripping the control joysticks for his Sabertooth intensely. More gattling rounds from hidden Sand Stalkers were still impacted heavily all around, chipping away at the mix of steel-alloy and ceremite rubble that provided a minimum of cover. "Sturm Veir to Sturm Eins" Nathan called out over his comm. "Where is that backup?"
"Sturm Veir, hold tight. We see you on our scope. We're 200 meters from your position," his commander's voice answered. "Hold tight."
Just then the familiar sonic crack of an Ares Rifle round sounded as nearly half of Nathan's rubble shelter scattered from the massdriver round's impact. Nathan cursed over his comm. "Hold tight! Damn Gefeiter! I need you now!" Nathan only heard static on the other end. He cursed again as another massdriver round impacted the ground nearby, just missing Nathan by mere decimeters. With that Nathan guessed at the location of his assailants and let two grenades loose from their arm mouted launcher, hoping to buy him the time he needed to get to better cover. The concussion blasts from the grenades apparently hit their mark, halting the suppressing fire. It was the moment that Nathan needed to cut past the next clearing. He pushed his Saber's frame hard, fighting the inertial weight of the exosuit's heavy legs.
Running east across the rubble-strewn clearing, Nathan turned his head to see two Sand Stalker's emerging from behind a far wall. Nathan let loose with his autocannon, his shots hit their mark on one Stalker, penetrating the weaker composite cloth along the waist. As Nathan watched that suit fall back, the other Stalker barely dodged Nathan's rapid fire, ducking behind a nearby wall.
That was when Nathan saw that two other Sand Stalkers had bounded out from behind their cover in front of him at merely twenty meters. Flipping his weapons selection button, the twin laser cutters on both arms of Nathan's Saber blazed to life. Charging full stride at the Republican pair, Nathan let loose a war cry of desperate determination. The left Sand Stalker raised its massive Ares Rifle trying to get off a pointblank shot. The other exosuit charged, grabbing for its vibroblade. Nathan rolled, dodging the knife strike by the second suit, just as the first suit let loose with its rifle, missing Nathan. Nathan bounded out of his roll, laser cutters flashing as he tackled the first Republican's suit, slicing off his head. Nathan watched the severed helmet fall, feeling a sense of victory.
Before he could regain his composure, Nathan's Saber took a strike to the left shoulder. Yellow instrument lights started flashing indicating the left hydraulic systems had started to fail. Nathan turned, flailing his suit's right arm at the Republican's suit. His strike hit true and threw the exo-suit off. Quickly, Nathan bounded atop the fallen Sand Stalker. The two began tumbling to and fro, each trying to land the deadly blow to claim victory. Nathan cursed as his right laser cutter sliced into the Stalker's left fan turbine. The Republican, in desperation, flipped Nathan's Saber off and overhead, slamming Nathan into a nearby wall. Upside down and trying to right himself, Nathan struggled to regain control, the left hydraulics in his upper torso completely gone. Finally, flipping himself onto his knees, Nathan looked up expecting to see a vibroknife coming down on him. However, the Republican had just stopped, his suit's visor looking up at the sky.
Nathan, still charged with the heat of battle, leaped up and moved toward the Republican's suit, his right laser cutter raised. Ready to strike, Nathan stopped when the Republican held out his suit's left palm, pointing up into the sky. Looking up, Nathan saw the flaming hull of what looked like a Jovian Godfire Battleship falling from the sky, gaining speed as it descended to the east, toward Kurtzenheim. A faint rumble could be heard in the sky. "My God," he exclaimed.
The two enemies stood silently, shoulder to shoulder, the Republican dropping his vibroblade and Nathan deactivating his laser cutter. In the backdrop, the rest of the fighting had also just fallen silent, having apparently caught sight of the same spectacle. The two watched as the now, crumpling hull continued its rapid descent closer and closer to the Martian surface, stunned at the thought of what would inevitably happen next.
Even up to the last moments of the Battle of Kurtzenheim, Republican and Federation ground forces fought desperate battles over the wartorn rubble of research stations and small settlements. Exo-suit to exo-suit, these skirmishes were both violent and bloody, many of the exo-pilots being forced into hand-to-hand combat, as their ammunition ran out due to weakened supply lines on both sides. This scenerio is meant to capture the atmosphere those desperate ground battles in the last hours of the Battle of Kurtzenheim.
The Federation defenders consist of two grupen of Sabertooth exo-suits. They may start anywhere on the designated eastern half of the board.
6 x Sabertooth (level 2) TV 1440 4 x Sabertooth (level 3) TV 2160 Total: TV 3600
The Free Republican Forces consist of two mixed platoons of Sand Stalkers. The Partisan Sand Stalkers are only armed with a single Panzerfaust, but may pick up weapons from fallen comrades. They must start anywhere along the designated western edge of the board.
6 x Partisan Sand Stalkers (level 1) TV 137 4 x Sand Stalker (level 2) TV 1400 1 x Sand Stalker (level 3) TV 788 1 x Sand Stalker (level 4) TV 1400 Total: TV 3725
Create a dense urban environment on your hex map. This can be done by simply outlining building perimeters or wall structures on your hex paper. You can inscribe a number within your building outlines to denote elevation levels, positive numbers for floors and roofs and negative numbers for basements. Exo-suit units can utilize small chess pieces or other tactical game pieces as proxys. Be sure to denote a front and back on your proxy pieces. If you have the time and inclination, you can build more realistic model sets and kit-bash figures to your liking.
Use standard Silhouette tactical combat rules, except instead of using a 50-meter per hex game scale, reduce the scale to 10-meters per hex. To accommodate necessary changes to weapon ranges, just multiply the weapon's base range by 5 (i.e. Ares Rifle has a base range of three. 3 * 5 = 15 hexes). Movement points remain the same value as the time scales are shorter to match the scale change. All other Silhouette Tactical rules remain the same.
| Jovian APAworks | Volume 2, Number 3 | March, 2002 |
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