(Sci-Fi) #2 A Chance Encounter

In our inaugural installment of science fiction combat, the Blue Martians managed to send out a message to their ship to get them off of this hunk of rock.  Unfortunately,  the pick-up point was an abandoned launch pad quite a distance away.

Gronk, the leader of the Blue Martians, and Froyo, his new second-in-command, assembled the few remaining members of his teams and trekked through the thawing woods.    No security robots seemed to pursue them, so the group fanned out, looking for trouble, but feeling the most relaxed they had been in quite some time.


The Blue Martians simply need to go from the upper left of the picture to the lower right.  Piece of cake.

Gronk was relatively new to leading, so no one quite knew if he had dove into the woods before or after Julio got shot in the head, but he was already behind a sturdy fir tree before barking out orders to the others to take cover.

Half the team followed Gronk, the other rest diving to the other side of the road with Froyo. No one had seen where the shot came from, but a few could remember faintly hearing some noise, perhaps a small jet engine.


The Martians scatter...

The jet engine sound started again, and a lone human in Pathfinder Combat Armor was seen flying through the air.  The Martians unloaded their feeble weapons at it, but within seconds, it had landed behind a copse of trees.

"Wot's that up there"  *KA-BLAM*

Looking around, they noticed Prominent Pete's head had been cleanly removed from his body.  Froyo had been right behind Pete, and he quickly wiped the blood splatter off his face and screamed at the others to get in positions.

"Not Pete!  He owed me money!"

Gronk's team slowly crawled to rocks to get within a safe position to effectively fire back, but Froyo's side charged to get a clean lane to fire en masse at the commando.  Most just bounced off his armor, but one lucky shot broke through the visor, and the human dropped to the ground. 

 

Success!

After recovering the RAM Laser rifle from their fallen foe, the group leisurely walked to the checkpoint, only to be hit by a jury-rigged K-Pulse grenade, obviously set up by the commando.  One more Martian gone, Rest in Peace, Moose Tracks.

The survivors heading to part three....(L to R) Gibbles, Boom-Boom, Froyo, Middleswarth, Amphibious, and Gronk

Another venture in sci-fi and my seven-year old Maja performed well.  With the mysterious opponent with longer ranged weapons and in hiding, her Martians dove for cover and tried their best to navigate through the trees.  A smart commando would have remained hidden and picked off a lot more Martians, but the last time I used the jump packs on this troop type was circa 1996, so it was a mixture pure nostalgia and throwing something new at Maja.

It was also pure luck that any of the Martians pegged me, since they needed an 8 on 1d6.

"Say again?" you might be asking. 

In the Legions of Steel tabletop version, if you roll a natural six, you roll two additional dice.  Any 1s or 6s on the dice are an additional +1 each to the initial roll.  Maja rolled a six, followed by two more sixes.  

Perhaps she should start rolling up for D&D characters.

I wasn't planning on wiping her out, but I at least wanted to set up another grenade and peg at least one more Martian.

As the internet is too tempting not to borrow ideas, this scenario was taken Preacher by Day, who in who used it as his 40k  using Pulp Alley.

Next for Sci-Fi:  The Blue Martians need to leave the confines of the forest for a rocky wasteland before reaching the rendezvous with their ship.  One more encounter, far worse than anything they had encountered thus far...