Adventure Writeup: The Train Job

The Train Job (Artist's Impression)

The Imperium is simultaneously the most powerful and the most impotent institution humanity has ever created. It is the most powerful in that it rules over a vast and endless expanse of worlds, uniting them through a common military and a common government with the Emperor at its head. And yet it is the most impotent, in that it's government sets few laws and does little to regulate the worst abuses of its member worlds. One of those member worlds is Balthazar.

Located in a small corner of a backwater subsector of an unfashionable sector of the Imperium, the world of Balthazar is unremarkable. With a population numbering in the tens of millions, and few exports to speak of, Balthazar has little influence over the rest of the subsector. It is ruled by an authoritarian hereditary monarch, Archduke Ronald 'Ron' Paul VIII, and the Imperium can do little to temper his iron rule. 

One day, four roguish-looking mercenaries walked through the front doors of a prefabricated bar by Balthazar's spaceport, identical to countless others throughout the Imperium. An assortment of shady-looking patrons (lowercase p) looked warily up at them as they entered. The woman in the lead smiled cheerily at them. "Well," she said, "I'm glad to be here."

Those four mercenaries (actually, we prefer 'Travellers') were us, in case you hadn't picked up on that. We'd met at the spaceport, as we were all too broke to do anything besides hang out around the spaceport looking for work. We'd met, and, as these things go, we'd decided to be a mercenary company. It's probably a scathing comment as to the state of the economy in the subsector that a bunch of highly qualified, otherwise respectable veterans like us couldn't land any better jobs.

Our leader, however reluctantly, was Dame Vanai Cordé. She had the highest social standing of any of us- a knighthood, granted for 'distinguished service to the Imperium'- and so she'd look the best on our business cards and brochures and the like. Make us look almost-reputable, maybe. She'd done four terms in the Navy, become a Lieutenant, did various heroic and completely ethical things, and altogether made a series of good life choices. Good for her.

And then there was Alex Movithi. He was also a Navy veteran, but from what he left out when he was telling us about himself, we gathered that'd he'd been doing some shady shit since his military days. Still, he was apparently a good pilot, and he looked fairly scary, with the bandanna of his he always wore, and the huge cutlass strapped to his side.

Dr. Amelia Straffin was with us as well. When we first met her, she was wearing a lab coat and tinkering with some integral part of the spaceport's fuel tanks. We convinced her that this was a very bad idea, and gave her a stun baton to work on. An hour or so later, she was done, and the stun baton had enough volts pumping through it to stun a horse. We hired her on the spot.

And then there was Daniel. The man would have looked completely generic- someone who looked at him would never be able to pick him out of a crowd, or a lineup. We guessed that the latter was more likely, given that he talked about shivving a guy for a few credits in his pocket. He looked completely generic, apart from the huge knife (he called it a blade) he had with him. Except that he spent half the time inside a huge suit of combat armor. Military grade, at least, and enough to transform the wearer into a one-man tank in battle. In our eyes, this completely made up for his numerous ethical failings. We're pretty sure his last name was Warren, by the way. We just can't be sure.

So there we were, in the door of a shady bar on Balthazar. We walked inside, carting our various weapons (an autorifle, an autopistol, a rapier, a stun pistol, a cutlass, a stun stick, plus Daniel Warren and his shotgun) and pulled up seats at the bar. The bartender was sullen, the other patrons ignoring us, and the decor uninspiring. We were thinking of packing up and heading back out into the rain when the door opened and someone new walked in.

He barged in dressed in suit and tie, and he was obviously very drunk already. He staggered a bit as he sat down sloppily next to us, at the only open seat at the bar. We exchanged looks. He ordered a beer, and then his gaze moved to us. We could see him taking in the guns and swords at our sides, and then he saw Daniel, wearing his full suit of combat armor and toting a shotgun. His jaw dropped.

He marched blearily over to us, and started saying that we should turn over our weapons to the authorities immediately, so that they could serve the benevolent government of Archduke Ron Paul. We were just trying to ignore him, hoping he'd go away so that we could finish our drinks in peace. Then he noticed for the first time that Alex was wearing a coat that happened to be gray. We could practically see the gears in his brain turning as his opinion of us went from "heavily armed n'er do well mercenaries" to "heavily armed Greycoat terrorists". He leaned towards us and said, in what he evidently thought was a cunning way to determine whether we were, in fact, associated with that rebel group, said, "You know, today is the anniversary of the defeat of those filthy Greycoats by our glorious leader, Archduke Ron Paul VIII, during the War!" We also tried to ignore this, because we'd all served in the War, and we knew better than most that Ron Paul's regime had likely been covertly supporting the Greycoats themselves.

"Say", the man continued, "that coat looks kind of grey."
"So it is," Alex replied, returning to his drink.
"Hey," the man said, "I think that you're one of those filthy Greycoat scum!"
"I'm not," Alex replied, "and I think that you should go away and let us enjoy our drinks in peace."

The man paused for a second when he heard this, and then bawled out that he was in fact a very important government official, who had the ear of Archduke Ron Paul himself, and that if we didn't immediately give him weapons and come with him to the police station, there'd be consequences. He said some other things too, but we couldn't quite make them out. Something about 'what we do with Greycoats around here'.

Vanai was about to step forward to try and calm him down with her superior social standing, when the man reached into his pocket and, quick as a snake, Daniel whipped out his long knife and stabbed him in the chest.

Because of the noise he'd been making, everyone in the bar was watching us, and so everyone in the bar was watching when Daniel's blade entered his chest and then pulled back out. The man slumped to the ground, blood fountaining from his chest. We looked at each other, and then at Daniel. He shrugged. "It looked like he was reaching for a knife," he said. No one was in any hurry to check if he was correct. We just grabbed our drinks and hustled outside before anyone could see us.

We hurried out into the drizzling rain, and back towards the hostel we were staying at. When we got there, there was a man waiting for us in the lobby, trying very hard to look inconspicuous behind a newspaper. Long story short, we ended up in a dark alley, listening to him explain his elaborate plan for us to hijack a train.

So apparently, this very sketchy-looking guy was with 'the resistance'. No specific name, just 'the resistance'. Apparently, they'd gotten word of the Archduke's regime planning to smuggle a trainload of heavy weapons into Balthazar City from the backcountry spaceport where they'd unloaded them. Those weapons would be transported onboard a mag-lev train tomorrow under heavy guard. The reason that 'the resistance' couldn't just bomb the train is that the regime was disguising this as an ordinary passenger train, complete with several dozen civilian passengers. The guy had a full timetable for the train, and told us that 'the resistance' would reimburse us handsomely if we could pull this off. It's probably a testament to our desperation at that point that we didn't even argue or try to bargain with him.

So we went back to the hotel room to figure out what we'd gotten ourselves into. We threw around a lot of ideas about how we could pull this off. Maybe we could shut off the power to the track to stop the train (too hard). Maybe we could buy tickets and sneak onboard (all the seats were taken). Eventually, as the night got darker and our thoughts less lucid, we decided that we'd jump onto the train.

This wasn't as crazy as it sounded. Looking at satellite images of the train track, we could see that the train would pass below a low hill, so that it would only be a short jump from the hill and onto the back of the train. The train would also have to slow down there in order to go around a bend. We were desperate and possibly drunk at that point, so we agreed that it sounded good and decided to go ahead with it.

Late that night, Vanai got a call on her comm. She took a look at the caller ID, stepped onto the balcony outside, and spent a few minutes talking. She then stepped back inside and coolly informed us that she needed to stay back tomorrow and 'guard the hotel room'.

We didn't take that very well, but she refused to budge. After a long argument, with Daniel muttering disparaging things about 'smug commissioned officers', the three of us all just decided to go to bed and handle the job ourselves. We woke up the next morning, grabbed our weapons and gear, and headed out to go rob a train, leaving Vanai behind to 'guard the hotel room'. It was probably a euphemism for something, we just weren't sure what.

The first thing we realized is that we didn't have a way to actually get to the train car. If Vanai had been with us, she probably would have suggested that we rent a car, and then drive there. We decided that that would be too risky. What if we were recognized? Besides, we'd have to sign for it, and we could be on some government watch list for stabbing that guy in the bar last night, or whatever Alex did in his past life. So, being Travellers, we decided to carjack someone.

We had to do a lot of wandering around in order to find a car. Daniel told us that he was a 'great driver', and that he would be able to drive us to the site as soon as he got exactly the right car. We did a lot of wandering around the streets of the city, looking for cars that would work. We'd see someone getting out of a car, and Daniel would shake his head. "Not fast enough," or "wrong color". And then we saw one car, and his eyes lit up.

It was a cherry-red Lamberrari GT X18, one of the finest- and coolest- cars on the market, with an unbeatable engine and acceleration to die for. And some random old man was stepping out of it, holding the keys in his hand. "I'll distract him," Alex said. He stepped forward nonchalantly towards the old man.
"Hello there," Alex said. "Nice weather, isn't it?"
"It certainly is, youngster," the man said. "I should say, back in my Army days- I was in the Balthazari State Security Forces, by the way- I saw plenty of weather just like this. You see, it was in a little town right here on our great nation, I don't recall the name, where..." Alex just nodded in the appropriate places, as if he were listening intently. Behind him, Daniel and Amelia ran to the car, only to find that it was locked. Amelia somehow picked the lock on the car door and then hotwired the car, all in a matter of seconds. We didn't even see her take out lockpicks, she was so fast. "Alex, I'm in," she called. As soon as he heard that, Alex practically tackled the guy, knocking him over, and holding him down. He jabbed with his fingers at somewhere on the guy's neck, and he abruptly slumped backwards, unconscious. With a random civilian calling for the police behind us, Alex leaped up and sprinted towards the car. We then all piled in as the car's owner was struggling to regain his footing, and took off with a screech of tires.

That car was a dream to drive. Plush leather seats, sporty red paint scheme, smooth streamlined profile- it was the best car any of us have ever driven. Daniel was in the driver's seat, whooping as he crouched over the wheel like a race car driver. Amelia was in the passenger's seat, smiling as we zoomed through the city streets. Alex was in the back, sprawled over the seats, keeping a wary eye out for any pursuit. We got out of the city and into the countryside, and it was glorious. No other cars on the roads, just us and the pavement. And then we figured out that we'd stolen the car from a war criminal.

The Butcher of Balthazar, war criminal during 'the War'.

Daniel was messing with the radio, trying to find a station that played something besides government propaganda, and he finally got to a station that sounded like a police frequency. It was a bit strange that a civilian car was picking up government chatter, and then we heard someone on the radio say something like "Butcher's been carjacked. We're deploying assets to intercept. Wouldn't want him to get upset." We all looked at each other, and then Amelia rummaged through the glove compartment and found a pistol and what looked like a regimental insignia dating back to 'the War'. We were puzzled for a minute, and then remembered that a noted war criminal who served in the Balthazari State Security Forces had become known as the 'Butcher of Balthazar' had been given sanctuary by Archduke Ron Paul. This was probably the guy we'd stolen the car from.

So there we were, driving down the highway in a car we'd stolen from a war criminal, on our way to rob a train full of guns. We could hear the voice on the police frequency saying something about how the police units were on our way, and we freaked out. And then Amelia realized that the radio had a transmit function. She practically cackled upon realizing that she could now transmit lies and false reports to every government agency in the area.

Long story short, a few minutes later, we were still driving down the highway, having told the police, the army, the secret police, the civil defense ministry, and the local firefighters that there was alternately:
1, a Kreynos invasion outside the city;
2, an assassination attempt on the life of an important government official;
3, a band of scruffy yet inexplicably-well-armed Travellers holding hostages inside the spaceport;
4, a Greycoat terrorist attack on civilians at a shopping mall;

5, a little old lady who needed help crossing the street.

Pleased with ourselves for distracting the authorities' attention so easily, we sped on towards the ambush point, still on schedule to intercept the train. And then we saw a police barricade ahead. The entire road was blocked, and the police officers behind it pulled out guns and motioned at us to stop as we drove towards them. They pulled out pistols and started shooting at us, as we instinctively ducked for cover inside the car. Bullets hit our car, and Daniel wrenched the steering wheel to the left, swerving the car into a ditch.

The car stuck in the ditch, partially on its side, with us inside. The police from the barricade stopped shooting, and we all quickly grabbed our guns and crouched behind the car. The first police officer stopped as he approached the car, gun drawn. He turned to look over his shoulder at his colleague behind him. "It doesn't look like..."

Alex shot him in the shoulder, and the man fell. His colleagues behind him started shooting at us, but we sheltered behind the car, so their bullets did little more than damage the paintwork. Amelia got off a shot from her stun pistol, dropping another. There was only one more police officer behind the barricade, and he stopped shooting and ran once he saw that we'd taken out his fellows.

Once he'd run off, we stood up from behind the car and cheered. We'd won our first gunfight, but our car was stuck in the ditch and riddled with bullet holes. And then we saw that there was a police car parked behind the barricade. We couldn't find the keys anywhere, so Amelia picked the lock and hotwired the car, and off we were.

We sped down the highway with no more problems. There were few other cars on the road, and they pulled to the side quickly enough once Daniel turned on the sirens. It was a fun ride, although not as fun as the Lamberrari had been, and we soon pulled down a country road, parked the police car on a hill, and went to walk the rest of the way to the train track.

We were well equipped, although we weren't sure about how many guards we'd be facing on the train. We found ourselves a comfortable position atop the hill and settled down to wait for the train to come. We checked our weapons (Daniel: A shotgun, a 'blade', and a full set of military-grade combat armor; Alex: a cutlass, an autopistol; Amelia: a stunstick, a stun pistol, and her incredible intellect) and settled in to wait.

The train came in right on schedule. As we saw it approaching, we noticed that it had only four cars, pulled by an engine on the front.
"We'll jump onto the roof of the last car," Alex said. "Move up from there." The train was rapidly approaching, and we all tensed for the jump.
"I've just thought of something," Amelia said. "I'm not in the best shape; I'm not sure if I can make that jump."
"Then I'll carry you," Daniel yelled. He grabbed Amelia, slung her over her shoulders, and we all leaped out onto roof of the speeding train.

We landed on the roof of the last car, the wind whooshing past our ears. We looked at each other, and started crawling gingerly towards the back of the car, trying not to look out at the landscape whizzing past us on either side. There was a small balcony on the back of the train, where a single guard with an assault rifle stood, facing away from us. Daniel looked to Alex, who nodded, and Daniel leaped onto the balcony, wrestling with the guard for a minute before throwing him over the balcony. Alex and Amelia looked at each other for a minute, as if to ask "what kind of person did we get involved with?" We hoisted our weapons and got ready to go inside. Then Amelia spotted a communications panel, and she bent down to open it up. She produced a screwdriver and a datapad from somewhere, and started fiddling with its interior workings. "I can get control of the intercom system from here," she announced a few moments later. "Want me to say something?" Alex nodded. Amelia turned back to the communications terminal.
"All right, punks, we're stealing your cargo and there's nothing you can do to stop us!" she yelled into the speaker. Her voice echoed around the train, startling the passengers. On the back balcony, Alex turned to Amelia. "Why would you do that?" he asked.
"In order to intimidate them," she replied matter-of-factly.
"We need to move," Daniel said. "I'll take lead. Alex, stay behind me. Amelia, stay back here and keep messing with their communications. See what else you can do."

Daniel, wearing full combat armor, kicked down the door to the last train car, shotgun in hand. The car was a second-class compartment, full of passengers who turned to stare at the burly figure as he entered. They ran through the central aisle, guns drawn, towards the entrance to the next car. Daniel broke down that door as well, and the two Travellers continued into the next car, which was full of first-class passengers. One of the men there stood up to block the way, but Daniel shoved him aside and continued on to the door to the next car.

"This is probably the cargo," Alex said. "If there's any more guards, there'll be here."
"What do you think the armor is for?" Daniel replied. With a cry of "BREACHING!" he broke down the door and burst through. There were two parallel rows of dark containers, and Daniel crouched behind one, Alex behind another. These must have been the weapons. Suddenly, a guard in a dark balaclava at the other end of the car whirled, pulling out an assault rifle to fire at the Travellers. Two more guards appeared behind him, similarly armed, and fired at the Travellers, who stayed crouched behind the crates. Daniel fired back with his shotgun, and Alex with his pistol, neither of their shots hitting a guard. They quickly ducked back down behind the crates as the guards fired bursts of bullets back at them, sparking off of the wall behind them. "We're trapped," Alex said, making it a curse.

Amelia was sitting in the back of the train, fiddling with the workings of the communications panel via her comm. "Ha," she said, as she reached the train's surveillance system. She frowned at the image on her screen. She could see a gunfight in progress, with her friends pinned down behind the rows of crates. She typed quickly on the device's screen, trying to reach the train's systems. It wouldn't work. Frustrated, she dropped the comm, pulled out her stunner, and moved quickly through the train car, past the passengers huddling beneath their seats, and towards the car with the weapons.

Inside that car, Alex and Daniel huddled behind their respective crates, ducking up every so often to exchange bursts of gunfire with the guards. "We need to do something," Alex called to Daniel. Daniel nodded. "I think that my armor might..." He was interrupted by a small explosion which tore violently through the side of the train car, showering those inside with debris and sending the other crates rattling around on the floor. Wind whooshed through the newly-created hole in the train car's side."Was that a grenade?" Alex asked. At the same moment, Amelia burst through the door, diving behind the crates next to Daniel. The guards, momentarily stunned by the explosion, didn't get off a shot at her.
"That wasn't a grenade," she said. "These crates are full of munitions. If a stray bullet hits any more of these crates..." she trailed off.
"That means the guards will be afraid to fire now," Daniel said. Before Alex or Amelia could do anything to stop him, he stood up from behind the crate, clad in his suit of mechanized combat armor, and charged at the guards, shotgun in hand.

The guards raised their assault rifles and began firing, bursts of gunfire striking off Daniel's armor. He turned to face his startled fellow Travellers and gestured as if to say, 'I'm fine!'. With bursts of bullets continuing to impact on his armor and helmet, he picked up one of the crates and tossed it underhand with mechanically-assisted arms through the hole in the train's wall. Amelia stood and started sniping at the guards with bolts from her stunner, while Alex began to fire at them with his pistol. Meanwhile, they concentrated their fire on the larger-than-life figure in military combat armor who stood picking up and throwing crates of volatile munitions through the train wall only twenty feet away from them, as their bullets continued to have little effect.

Inside his combat armor, Daniel Warren (if that was indeed his real name) was concentrating solely on the crates. Bend, pick up, throw. Bullets continued to glance off of his chest and side, but he mostly ignored them, except to wonder if they were running out of ammunition. Bend, pick up, throw. He could feel the bullets impacting on the outside of his armor as dull shoves, harmless but not unnoticeable. Bend, pick up, throw. The guards shouted to each other, agitated, as if wondering why their bullets were doing nothing to this figure which seemingly ignored them.

As Alex and Amelia saw Daniel toss another crate of weapons off the train, the train suddenly began to slow, sending everyone in the car stumbling towards the front of the train. "We must be reaching a station," Alex said.
"We need to get out of here," Amelia replied. "Let's blow up what's left." As Alex watched, she gestured at Daniel to fall back to their position on the far side of the car from the guards, which he did.
Smirking, Amelia picked up her stunner and pulled loose a strip of material from her lab coat. "I suggest you get behind the door," she said. Crouching behind the crate as the guards began to fire again, she carefully tied the material around the trigger of her stunner just tightly enough not to pull the trigger. "I said, get back!" she said, before tightening the knot and throwing the stunner with the trigger held down as far away from her as quickly as she could. The stunner spun through the air, emitting a solid stun beam as it spun end over end before clattering to the floor of the car. Amelia and the guards both looked at it as the stunner came to a top, the beam of stun energy cutting at a angle into one of the weapons crates.

And then the crate exploded, blowing a hole in the side of the train, much bigger than the previous one. Next to it, another crate blew, and then another, a massive fireball flaring up in the center of the car. We all turned and ran into the next car, as the train car blew itself to pieces behind us.

"That was pretty," Daniel said. "How'd you know how to do that?"
"Knowledge," Amelia replied. "Geometry and engineering, in particular. You might want to consider it." Daniel shrugged and turned away. "Whatever you did, it worked." He pointed to the front part of the train, now pulling ahead as the back two-and-a-half cars we were on began to slow down. The passengers emerged from their seats behind us, and looked at how the train car with the weapons had been ripped in two, with the train's engine and the front half of it pulling rapidly away ahead of us. "Who the hell are you?" one of them asked.
"We're Travellers."