[TML] UFO ( was Re: Trade Tables [SEC=UNOFFICIAL])

Tue Oct 2 04:25:47 MDT 2007

--- shadow at shadowgard.com wrote:

> On 2 Oct 2007 at 13:36,
> david.d.jaques-watson at centrel wrote:
> 
> > Dear Folks -
> > 
> > Leonard replied to Stuart:
> > >>But the best was UFO, of Shadow fame.
> > >
> > >SHADO actually.
> > 
> > "10 years...I've given 10 years of sweat and
> sacrifice to get SHADO 
> > running the way I want it. And I won't let some
> young punk like you mess 
> > things up!"
> > - Lt. Col. Straker
> > 
> > Cool show!
> 
> Occurs to me that UFO could be reworked into an
> "interesting" 
> Traveller adventure.
> 
> Instead of Earth, have a world outside the Imperial
> borders. They 
> haven't been contacted by anybody but the
> organlegger "pirates" that 
> have been raiding them for years (a higher TL world
> nearby).
> 
> The players misjump into the system and have to deal
> with SHADO....
> 
> --
> Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
> shadow at shadowgard dot com

Gee... I kinda played around with a semi-temporal
misjump scenario, myself. Jump into the past of a
non-Imperial timeline...

                        From The Machine

                        By Leslie Bates

                            Prologue

                       September 15, 1985

                Somewhere in the United Kingdom

It was a rare sunny day in Southern England when Allen
Keller, a former First Lieutenant of the United States
Army, stepped out of the taxi cab at the front gate of
the Harlington-Straker Studios.  He gave the taxi
driver a one-hundred pound note and told him to
keep the change. 

As far as the rest of the world was concerned this
would be the first day of new career as a
screenwriter.  Of course if the rest of the world
really knew what he was really doing here they would,
in theory anyway, go into total a panic or freak-out
mode. At least that was Mister Freeman, the Australian
gentleman who "hired" Keller to "work" at H-S Studios
told him.

Keller could just imagine what the peace-activist
trash who parked themselves in front of the main gate
at Fort Benning would say: __How dare the selfish
fascist pigs shoot at and oppress those poor desperate
aliens!__

__Maybe if we hand the peace-activists over to the
aliens for spare parts they'll leave the rest of us
alone. __ Keller thought for a moment.  It wasn't any
sillier than any other peace-freak thought. __ And
quite frankly__, Keller thought, __they deserve it.__

Keller walked up to guard shack at the front gate and
presented his newly issued U.S. Passport to the
uniformed studio security officer. 

"Thank you, sir." the security officer said. "This is
for you, sir."

The security officer handed Keller a temporary visitor
badge.

"They'll issue you a proper photo I.D. when you get
inside, sir."

"Thank you." Keller said. "Which way is the main
office?"

For a moment he wondered if the security officer at
the gate was in on the big secret.

"Someone is already on their way to give you a lift,
sir."

Keller thanked the security officer again and stood
waiting for his ride.  It was a very short wait.

A small vehicle came out to the main gate from the
cluster of buildings that formed the main part of the
studio.  To Keller the vehicle looked like a golf cart
designed by someone whose previous job was building
Chieftain Main Battle Tanks.  At the wheel was a
brown-haired lady that Keller would politely describe
as being very well constructed.

She stepped out of the vehicle and spoke to Keller.

"Mister Keller?" 

"Yes." He nodded to her.

"I'm Miss Ellis."  She said.  Would you come with me
please?"

__Of course I would__.  Keller thought. __But let's
work on that later.__

"Yes." Keller said. "Of course."

Miss Ellis drove the cart to the studio headquarters
tower and parked the cart in a clearly marked parking
spot. Ellis and Keller both showed their badges to the
security officer at the building entrance. 

Keller followed Miss Ellis into an elevator. She
inserted her badge into a slot under the control panel
with the magstripe facing down.

"You need to insert yours as well." She said.

Keller inserted his visitor badge into the slot. Miss
Ellis then the floor button for the basement and held
it down. She then let it up and gave the button two
more short taps.

"That's the code for this month," said Miss Ellis,
"one long tap and two short ones." 

Keller nodded.  He felt the elevator descend to the
secret lower level.

The elevator car stopped and the doors opened. Keller
followed Miss Ellis out of the lift. 

In front of the bank of elevators on the secret level
was another security station. This one was manned by
three veteran soldiers in SAS-type body armor and
armed with Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine guns.
Emblazoned on the wall in big bureaucratic letters was
the true name of Allen Keller's new employer.

        SUPREME HEADQUARTERS ALIEN DEFENCE
ORGANISATION 

"Leftenant Keller," said Miss Ellis with the proper
British pronunciation, "welcome to SHADO."

                              ...

              Somewhere above the Ecliptic Plane.

Ditzie Spofulam sat very quietly in the navigator's
seat on the bridge of the Imperial Mercenary Ship
CHAUCHAT.  To all appearances she was an eight-year
old girl with dark brown hair and a taste for odd
slogans on her tee-shirts.  In actuality Ditzie was a
genetically engineered hyper-genius who aged very, 
very slowly. 

And if she had not decided to attempt to tweak the
ship's jump drive so it burn it's fuel more
efficiently they certainly would not be in their
present situation.

Her Uncle Dennis was already upset about the misjump
that CHAUCHAT had only just emerged from.  But there
was now a further complication to an already bad
situation.  He was once again crunching some numbers
on the ship's main computer.

Ditzie decided to say something.

"We _are_ in the Solar System."

Dennis suppressed the urge to snap at her.

"The problem is not where we are," he said with a
level voice, "the problem is when."

"When?" Ditzie asked in reply.

Dennis Aella Sterling, retired naval officer, and
until a week ago in subjective time, a Lord of the
Third Imperium, sat back in the pilots seat of the
CHAUCHAT and sighed.  He waited for the better part of
a minute to calm down before answering Ditzie.

"As close as I can figure," he said, "we are in the
middle of the month of September of the year
nineteen-hundred and eighty-five... _Anno Domini_."

Ditzie was stunned to hear that. 

A week ago for her in subjective time it had been the
Imperial Year 1104.

"I think," said Dennis, "I may have an ancestor who's
leaving the United States Army at about this time."

This of course assumed that Dennis was in fact a
descendant, via a mistress, of the emperor known as
Cleon the Mad. 

But that was not a subject that Uncle Dennis usually
spoke of.

Dennis sat back and closed his eyes as if he were
meditating. He remained in that state for about five
minutes before he moved again.

He looked at the sensor readouts and then hit several
switches on the control panels. He then picked up a
microphone.

"All hands," said Dennis, "This is the Captain, we are
going to do a frontier refueling at Jupiter before we
attempt to approach Terra.  That is all for now."

Dennis turned to Ditzie.

"Now," he said, "we get to see if you could really
build a fusion reactor with a tin can and some old
telephone parts."

"Sure." Ditzie said. "No sweat."

                              ...

                 Somewhere in the Kuiper Belt.

On a frozen dwarf planet, which the system charts of
the Third Imperium would someday call 136199 Eris, the
eyes of the people who now called themselves the
Highfolk watched as one of their worst nightmares
became real.

A small ship, using the faster-than-light drive of
their Ancient Enemy, appeared in the system.

The sensors watched as the ship accelerated on a
vector toward the gas giant planet the Highfolk called
Red-Eye.

The leader of the Highfolk then issued a command.

"Send four landing craft. Kill it."

[End of Prologue]

[I originally wrote the following as part of the
Prologue but decided to use it later in the
narrative.]

On their homeworld, long lost in the distance of time
and space, the ancestors of the Highfolk had built for
themselves a high technology civilization.  They had
mastered the techniques of fusion power and gravitics
and were about to take their first leap across
interstellar space when the Enemy came.

A vast fleet of faster-than-light warships appeared
literally from nowhere above the homeworld and
showered the cities of their race with nuclear bombs
until the survivors on the surface surrendered.

But out near a gas giant planet of the home system
some of their race were in the process of building a
slower-than-light starship.  The construction crews
and the ship's officers who were supervising the
construction watched from a distance as the Enemy
subjugated their homeworld. 

They roughly finished what they needed to finish on
the ship, loaded themselves, their families, and any
parts of the construction habitat that weren't welded
down aboard the starship, and departed the system. 
Never to look back.

Generation upon generation of the people who would
become the Highfolk would be born, live full lives,
and die, before the ship's telescopes would sight a
suitable world for settlement. The third planet of a
yellow star. 

But as their great generation ship entered their new
home system the sensors detected the electromagnetic
pulse of the detonation of a nuclear bomb on the third
planet.  As landing craft were sent ahead to
investigate two more nuclear bombs were detonated.

To their horror they found that the third planet was
inhabited by numerous primitive nations.  What was
more shocking was that race that made up these nations
was human like themselves. 

Fully biologically human.

At that time the people, who would henceforth call
themselves the Highfolk, were virtually unarmed.  They
were afraid that if they had attempted to settle on
the third planet they would have been overwhelmed by
sheer force of numbers.   

Instead they came up with a new plan.

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