Hi Sukh
    Well it was a mixed weekend.  Rob didn't come.  He's moving into 
his new house in Bristol.  That's his story anyway.

    On Saturday we finished off Dave's Battletech campaign.  We 
completed our mission successfully (shock, horror) by getting in to 
the factory which makes Gattling AC10's (gimme, gimme), shot a few 
people (as one does), got the plans for the new gun no computer, on 
paper and knicked one of the complete weapons as well.

    We then finished off Phil's Cyberpunk adventure.  We were in 
the Columbian embassy, trying to get secret documents about the 
location of the drug smugglers boat which was morred in the 
harbour.

  Our mission was to take the boat out and thus break up 
the drug smugglers system.  Anyway, we got the plans without too 
much hassle.  You were in the van as driver of course and I was 
netrunning from within the van.  The others piled out of the 
building as the Arasaka guards arrived.

  There was a furious car chase in which two Arasaka guards managed to
shoot their own hands off, and thanks to some brillant driving from you,
we managed to avoid being pushed off the road, but in trying to push back
you managed to skid the van 110 yards down the road to a stop.  The 
guards came along, we jumped out, well the others jumped out, I hid 
under the front seat, we shot them up a bit and then got away.  Phew!

    So now we know which boat is the smugglers.  So now we need a 
plan to sink the boat.
1.  Swim in and limpet mine the bastard.
2.  Get a fast boat and attack from the surface.
3.  Get a big gun and blow the suckers out of the water from the quay 
side.
4.  Train a dolphin to swim up to the boat with exposives strapped to 
it's head.
5.  Get Rich to swim up to the boat with explosives strapped to his 
head.
6.  Get a Greek Trireme, a big guy with a couple of large kettle 
drums, a whole host of rowers, get up to full ramming speed and nail 
'em.
7.  Combinations of the above.

In the end we decided on plan 1 plus me going into the net, 
accessing the boat and disabling their sonar systems.

OK so here's what happened.  I go into the Net, get onto the ship, 
set of the guard-dog programs, take ages finding the sonar systems, 
get to them eventually after a quick tussle with a nasty program, and 
just as I set about disabling them, they disconnect from the Net and 
chuck me out.  However what I didn't realise was that they turned 
their computer off and the sonar systems with it.

The lads go in.  They get paniced by a big fish. SHARK, SHARK.  They 
sneak up to the ship.  They carefully set the timers for 5 minutes 
and start to sneak away.

So far so good.

Problem 1 - they all know fuck-all about demolitions.  Nor perceived 
as a problem at first
Problem 2 - Rich set his to go off after 1 minute.
Problem 3 - Dave decides for reasons known only to himself, to hang 
around, and to try and get into the boat through the submarine hatch 
underneath.

So.... Everybody panics after hearing that Rich's mine will go off 
after 1 minute.  The big fish reappears, but it turns out to be a 
sturgeon, not a shark afterall.  Rich's mine goes off after 40 
seconds cause he knows sod-all about demolitions and didn't set the 
timer correctly.  Results - carnage.

PJ - big guy, quick swimmer gets hurt but survives.
You - get hurt but survive
Rich - Not such a good swimmer but survives because of his skin weave.
Dave - Blown to bits.  

Thus it ended.  Dave has a new character.  Some sort of Bermuda short 
wearing Chicano from a pirate background, now a hard arsed cop.
Rod rolls up a psychotic son of a Triad leader, whose parents claim 
he doesn't even exist.  His most treasured posession is a letter from 
his parents saying how much they love him.  It's so sad!  Sniff.

Back to Battletech : New mission to disrupt an invasion by the 
Capellan Confedaracy by infiltrating one of their border planets, 
find out about force strength on the planet, draw the forces away 
from the EarthWerks factory so a strike force can destroy it.

Yup, were decoys.

We land, we go out investigating, we learn to drive four wheeled 
vehicles!  We drive to a big city to get information.  On route, 
skirting the desert, I see some people in the road ahead (11 on a 
perception roll).  Two of them seem to be hurt.  I notice however 
that they are hiding guns (12 on a perception roll).

I drive up, Rich aka Jennifer Penelope Jones, (he stuck with the name 
and sex Phil and I gave his character last session), looses off a full
magazine of grenades from her auto-grenade launcher from the passenger
seat and blows them into so much gerbil shit.  We just cruise on our 
way as if nothing has happened.

    We arrive in the town.  We take a boat trip to another island 
where we observe the Capellans on manouvers.

Sunday : Unfortunately, the bike wouldn't start on Saturday night, so 
I ended up sleeping at PJs anyway.  In the morning I got the RAC to 
come and start it, and I then had to take it for a good spin to 
recharge the battery.  By the time I had finished that and checked 
the bike over I didn't have a chance to get back to PJ's for the 
Sunday session, so I don't know what happened.

I therefore have no idea when the next session is.  As soon as you 
come back?  Dave won't be available until the new year, but it would 
be a shame not to meet between now and then.  What do you think.

Hear from you soon

Graham.