Dramatic SFB: Convoy Raid #2272: After Action Report

[joshua s]

You have a gift Paul and I love your sense of humor.

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 12, 2018, at 9:08 AM, Charles Carroll via SFBdrama <sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org<mailto:sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org>> wrote:

Lol...very nicely done.

On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 11:15 AM Paul Meyer via SFBdrama <sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org<mailto:sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org>> wrote:
Mr. Gorntastic was having some kind of celebration and he wanted to impress his guests. That pretty much summed it up. Summed up why he was on this reptile forsaken mission, Captain Slartac thought to himself.

Because the Great Green Gorn empire was an empire of warriors, devoid of most luxury items, he was sent to raid their cousin’s convoy for more luxurious luxury items than we have and take them to Magrathea for the celebration. “I’m surprised that guy is still in office,” he thought to himself. But, a mission was a mission so here he was in his ship the CCH Riojasaurus along with the rest of his fleet, the BC Hagryphus and the BC Halticosaurus.

They had a tip that their cousins, the Great Gorn Confederation, were shipping some luxury items close to their shared border making them the perfect target for this mission.  “Luxury Items,” Slartac snorted at the thought. The Great Gorn Confederation sounded like it was made up of a bunch of Science Officers. Maybe that’s where all of the Science Officer dropouts from the academy were sent.

Captain Slartac had never fought a Gorn fleet before. Yes, he’d done the typical training scenarios in the academy going up against his colleagues, but it’s always different when the plasma is hot. In order to prepare, he spent the week reviewing the historical documents, specifically the ones entitled Arena and Balance of Terror as well as reflecting on tactics that had been used against the GGG in previous battles, most notably against Commanders that are now serving with the Totally Teeny Tholian empire and the Punishing Peladine empire.

Captain Slartac’s thoughts were interrupted by his Science Officer reporting that they had located the Great Gorn Confederation’s convoy. He could smell the cheese and crackers already.

It appeared the convoy was being accompanied by the MCC Princess Bauria (definitely a society of failed Science Officers…), CS Death Stomp, BDD Spine Crusher, and the MSC Brontes. Based on this report, Captain Slartac quickly formulated a plan of attack. He’d approach from their starboard side. He didn’t want to set his fleet up for alpha strikes from all of their weapons right away and he thought this approach would be a good opportunity to see how they’d react. As for targets, he despised scout ships the most. He considered them little ships full of Science Officers. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, they had a tendency to make other ships harder to hit. And he liked hitting other ships…

The second most despised ship in the opposing fleet was the CS Death Stomp. Not only did it have a decent name, but it also carried a Plasma R launcher. And, Slartac did not like the idea of being chased all over space by R torps.

The attack plan was to enter the battle at a speed of 21 and accelerate to 31 about ten impulses into the battle. Besides, that’s probably when the Death Stomp would decide to launch that R torp.

As somewhat expected, the Free Traders started accelerating and turning away from his fleet once they were in range. The Traders were accompanied by the BDD Spine Crusher and MSC Brontes while the MCC Princess Bauria and the CS Death Stomp turned toward Captain Slartac’s fleet to engage.

Sure enough, as the two opposing fleets closed, the Death Stomp and the Bauria launched their torps. Two Ss and one R. Right around that same time, Captain Slartac gave the order to go to 31 and they launched all of their torpedoes at the Death Stomp from the Riojasaurus and the Hagryphus in attack pattern A. He was saving the Halticosaurus torps for cover while the Riojasaurus and the Hagryphus recharged.

Captain Slartac wasn’t sure if that would be enough to cripple the Death Stomp since his previous experience with other captains had them pulling something out of from under their tails at the last moment, severely limiting the damage they took from plasmas. After launching the volley, Slartac gave the order for the fleet to turn hard to port in order to stay in front of the enemy torps. Hopefully they had enough of a lead to run them out and avoid damage.

His fleet was able to stay ahead of the R and two Ss. However, the Death Stomp wasn’t as lucky. Having started at a slower speed and finishing his arming sequence late, he had little energy to apply to stay away from Slartac’s volley. The Confederation Captain was able to apply some energy to ECCM to lessen the impact, but the force of four Ss and four Fs was still too much for the Death Strike to overcome.

Slartac felt a tinge of regret as the CS Death Stomp exploded in fiery ball. But, what real expectations could one have from a bunch of Gorn that dined on cheese and crackers?!? They probably had some wine on those ships, as well.

Finding that the torps had chased them a good distance from the convoy, Captain Slartac realized that it was time to turn back towards the fleeing ships and try to run them down before they escaped. He’d just received a subspace communication that Captain Traccus, who was supposed to be providing the prophylactics and blow to the party, had been raided by the annoying Andromedans. And, if he failed to provide the cheese and crackers, Mr. Gorntastic might lose it.

But, by this time, it was already over. The Riojasaurus and Hagryphus burned too much energy trying to re-charge their plasmas in order to catch up, and the Halticosaurus had to take an extra wide birth to avoid the last of the plasmas that were chasing him. Long story short, Captain Slartac had learned his lesson to not get too far away from the freighters when in pursuit.

As the Confederation ships slipped out of range, the Science Officer called over to Slartac, “Not to add insult to injury, but out sensors tell us that those freighters weren’t even hauling cheese and crackers. They actually had preserves and crumpets.” Captain Slartac rubbed his head with his scaly hand as he began thinking of what he would tell Mr. Gorntastic for the loss…


Great Green Gorn ready to advance...


Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>

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