Issue 2+ were set in the universe created by Terra/Sol games. I've left them as is, which could be considered laziness or promotion depending on your outlook.
Editorial: On The Edge
Let’s file that one under ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’.
RSS Avenger is currently in the Edge star system, right on the fringe of explored space. Getting here required passing through a bunch of perfectly interesting systems we could have stopped off at instead, then a long and tedious deep-space transit to reach the Edge system. Worst of all, the captain is eying that great unknown out there and asking about course plots to investigate whatever shiny thing has caught his attention most recently. We’re not keen on that idea.
We? Ah yes. For those who don’t know, we are the crew of Research Star Ship (RSS) Avenger. Well, the crew plus assorted hangers-on, ne’er-do-wells and friends of the captain who seem to have come aboard and never left. Our mission is to investigate and report at first hand on, well, pretty much everything we encounter. We’re also expected to try out a range of exiting, useful and just plain dumb gadgets we’ve been sent, to document new species, and to generally create a definitive guide to everything and everyone, everywhere.
Standard disclaimer about the gear we test out and the reports that go with it: Not all of the devices we’re given work as well as advertised, and we tend to call it as we see it, even if it’s not pretty. Note that the crew of RSS Avenger cannot be held responsible for the use, misuse, loss, accidental discharge or unexplained by-product of using the items we review. Nor for your own irresponsibility, though that surely cannot exceed ours.
With that in mind, let’s proceed with Starfarer’s Gazette #2. This time around we have a truly in-depth look at the contents of the Edge system, reviews of some weaponry you’d be well advised to take with you if you visit, and a wild tale we overhead in a bar. The reliable content level of these items varies considerably, but not predictably… It’s more fun that way…
This issue of Starfarer’s Gazette contains the following sections:
Okay, please extinguish all smoking materials and fasten your seat belt; here we go….
Ports of Call
The Edge System
The imaginatively-named Edge system lies right on the, yes… edge… of well-explored space. It was settled a fair while ago by a scattering of underfunded colony missions that never received any real support and thus never grew into a viable technological society. A combination of distance, apathy and the lack of anything really useful on Edge resulted in the colonies being forgotten about, other than as an obscure dot on the starmap. The occasional ship does come through, but this is rare enough to be big news on Edge itself.
The system contains a G5 star named Neider, orbited by two rocky planets and two gas giant worlds, plus a fairly large concentration of asteroids at the Trojan points of the gas giants’ orbits. The innermost world is pegged on our starmaps as ‘Neider 1’, following the convention that worlds are known by their orbital location and the name of their primary (star) unless inhabited or claimed.
Neider 1 is an airless rockball of a world sufficiently close to its primary that surface temperatures are extremely high. It is tidally locked, with a hot side and a cold side. There is no official record of either face ever being properly explored, and we didn’t bother either. Who knows what riches await discovery there? We don’t, because we headed straight for Neider 2, better known as Edge. Edge has bars, Neider 1 does not. Do the math.
Neider 3 is a medium-sized gas giant with a pretty good ring system and a collection of moons. Most are typical rockballs but one seems to have enough atmospheric gas to be given the grand title of an atmosphere. You can’t breathe it of course (well, you can but you’ll die; it’s mostly methane) but our instruments claimed that you could extract useful gases from it. We landed briefly, stuck a flag in the ground (okay, it was a tea towel on a pole, but the intent was there) and named the world Fibble. Recognition by the astronavigation authorities is still pending on that one.
There are several ‘empty orbits’ between Neider 3 and Neider 4, which is an insignificant little (as these things go) gas giant with a huddle of equally trivial rockballs masquerading as moons. Chances are nobody has ever even been there, and we weren’t inspired to be the first. There are also fairly extensive asteroid clusters at the Trojan points of the gas giants’ orbits. Oh good, more rocks. We didn’t visit.
EdgeOur starmap said Edge was habitable. Lies, lies, lies! It’s survivable, we guess, but nobody would actually want to live there. It’s a dismal, wet, mid-sized planet with a breathable but damp and smelly atmosphere. Which is, by the way, prone to dump vast quantities of rain or hail on unsuspecting starfarers at frequent intervals. Storms are also common, and can be quite destructive. And this was in the ‘most habitable’ area of the planet. Yeek.
According to the pack of lies that is our astronav database, about 25% of the surface of Edge is land, with the implication that there is plenty of habitable terrain. This is not true; much of this so-called ‘land’ is in fact swamp, marsh, flood plain or river delta, or else prone to flooding after one of the frequent storms. Most of the rest is uninhabitable for other reasons, usually because it is composed of post-volcanic badlands or near-vertical mountains which may or may not contain active volcanoes. There are also a number of earthquake zones.
However, planets are big, and even with all this damp crappiness going on, there are still a large amount of places that people could dwell if they really wanted to. These were targeted by a number of well-intentioned and determined settlement missions, which landed in widely separated areas. With no follow-up or support missions, the result was a number of very small colonial ‘nations’ each going its own way and trying to survive. Some of these proto-nations died out entirely and most collapsed back to a scattered frontier existence, with handfuls of people dispersed over a wide area and maintaining only the most tenuous of contact.
Today the world population is estimated at about 82,000, with only three of the ‘nations’ having a population of over ten thousand and something resembling an industrial base. Only these have access to air transport (and very little of it even then) and other relatively high-tech items. The remainder of the population dwell in small enclaves of a few hundred to a couple of thousand and make do with a rugged and basic frontier-style technological base.
We landed on the largest continent – that is, the biggest collection of swamps and mountains – on Edge. The locals call this chilly, wet and thoroughly dismal land mass Kimber. It is home to two of the three main ‘nations’, both of which are located in the so-called temperate region at the southern end of the continent. To the north is a pretty badass mountain range which protects the region from the ‘really bad’ (we shudder to imagine) weather encountered on the other side. Apparently people live there, mainly in a region known as the Northeast Frontier. We felt sorry for them, but we didn’t go experience the crappiness of their existence for ourselves.
The town where we landed called itself Dryburgh, which is probably apt when compared to the rest of the region. Dryburgh is essentially a city-state, home to about 17,000 people in the town and its surrounding region. It is not a pretty place, being designed to withstand storms rather than to attract tourists, but inside the homes of the residents it is cheery enough. The locals like bright colours and ‘busy’ patterns, probably as a reaction to the utter drabness of their world.
The political system in Dryburgh is not untypical of small frontier societies. There are several democratic-sounding offices such as ‘president’ and ‘minister for agriculture’ but no signs of a democratic process. Instead, it seems that a suitable candidate is installed by a combination of self-appointment and popular acclaim, and holds the post until they step down or some setback causes loud enough demands for a change of leadership. In practice this means that the leaders of Dryburgh’s society have mostly held their posts for a long time and are a mix of talented, competent experts and well-connected or popular individuals – usually a bit of both.
Decision-making is rather informal, but there are few big decisions to be made anyway. Dryburgh has a stagnant society with no rapid changes to face, and can afford to wallow in inertia most of the time. Indeed, it is difficult to do much else given the lack of resources and people to wield them.
There is no military as such in Dryburgh, but several ‘sheriffs’ exist (again, often by self-appointment) who handle law enforcement, such as it is, and lead armed parties to chase off or kill dangerous creatures from the immediate vicinity of the town. Smaller communities have a similar system but less firepower.
Law is, predictably, loose. It is also not written down in most cases, with a common body of what amount to social values rather than laws instilled into most citizens from birth. Dryburgh has a jail for holding people who break these pseudo-laws that ‘everyone knows about’ (we tried the cells out a couple of times, proving that maybe not everyone knows all the local laws), and in many cases serious criminals are exiled. This is not much short of a death sentence, given the general hostility of the outback and the lack of other places to go, but the locals maintain that the criminal is given a fair chance. In many cases exile is for a fixed term, and some exiles have actually lived long enough to come home.
There is a little industry, but with such a small population the emphasis is on subsistence rather than large-scale production. Workshops fix machinery and vehicles on a craftsman basis, with no two jobs exactly alike. Technology is pretty stable too, since there is no possibility of complex technological research. True, sometimes someone comes up with something new through tinkering, but it’s more likely to be a clever new way to use existing tech than a huge leap forward.
Bigger projects are occasionally planned. That tends to be as far as they go, but every now and then a bunch of people get together and make something happen. The locals can be very industrious when they need to. They’ve managed to build a very decent drainage and flood-defence system, which is probably just as well. There are also a couple of ongoing projects that have been in the works for years. One is a long-range exploration flying-boat type aircraft capable of withstanding a serious storm. It’s pretty impressive, even though it’s only half-built and will probably stay that way forever.
The other project is a bit less ambitious, but larger in scale. The locals at Dryburgh use fairly typical electrically powered trucks and ground cars in town and around the immediate area, but transport to other communities, notably the largish town of Pale River to the west, is problematical. Attempts to improve communications are focussed on constructing an embankment with a road on the top all the way to Pale River. This is a pretty big undertaking for a part-time workforce, and thus far the only progress has been to raise the existing road above some of the wettest parts of the route. Even this modest success has made a difference to road communications on Edge.
We took a drive out along this road, for reasons that seemed good at the time. In the area immediately surrounding Dryburgh things are relatively civilised, with little ranches and farms scattered across the relatively well drained land. There are even a couple of smaller towns on high ground. Pretty soon, and without much warning, we found ourselves in the outback. That was a whole different ball game.
The outback between Dryburgh and Pale River is less wild and soggy than in other areas, but it was bad enough. It’s a bit like the entire world was painted in four colours – greeny-grey, greyish-green, dreary, and depressing. Marshy areas are common, and some are pretty extensive. Thankfully, there weren’t all that many insects in these regions; they probably found somewhere less grim to live. All the same, a foray off the road to test out the camping gear or to collect interesting rocks is not a good idea in this region. The swamps are treacherous. Well, actually that’s not fair… there’s no actual treachery there. The swamps are just plain deadly and it’s not their fault that they look almost exactly the same as ‘dry’ land.
Vegetation is pretty much what we expected. It’s coarse and low-lying, as if it just can’t be bothered to stand up. Everything has thorns; stems tend to be extremely flexible and resilient. This makes hacking planty obstructions away very difficult, and the damn stuff simply does not want to be pushed aside. Some of the plants grow real fast too, which can make an area impassable again just weeks after it has been cleared.
We spotted some wildlife while we were out and about, ranging from big grazing beasts with thick enough hides to simply plod through the thorny mess to a strange creature that dwells in dryer, rocky upland areas. This beast is known locally as a Joke, and it’s not hard to see why. They smell truly appalling, taste worse no matter how you cook them or what with, and they are possibly the most inventively stupid creature found outside the command deck of RSS Avenger.
Sadly for the locals, the Joke is also the most useful beast of burden that Edge has produced, which means that they get used as transport or farm animals by people who don’t have access to the infrastructure needed to maintain and support vehicles. Joke-wranglers sometimes take trade caravans around the outlying settlements, an impressively difficult undertaking even without the propensity of the beasts to hurl themselves into the nearest swamp or get stuck in a thorn patch.
The rivers and swamps are full of life, and most of it would like to eat anyone foolish enough to enter the water. There are various small swimming creatures, which are not much of a threat but might nibble your toes, but the real hazard is a long-necked creature that can reach an alarmingly long way out of the water to tear off vegetation, grab small animals or bite the radio antenna off a truck. These river-monsters seem entirely happy to eat whatever comes within reach. It’s not always possible to tell if a nearby pool is deep enough to conceal one, which can be interesting to say the least.
The real animal threat on Edge is the Springer. We’re told these are uncommon on the ‘civilised’ side of the mountains, but they have begun to filter through the high passes during the recent string of unusually dry summers (we don’t want to see this place when it’s not ‘unusually dry’) and are now breeding on ‘this’ side of the barrier. Judging by the ones we encountered, that’s going to be a problem.
Springers are about the size of a large dog, usually, with long back legs that let them, well, spring for want of a better word. They can jump several metres and use this ability to bring down prey. Their front limbs are a bit feeble but they have a mandible that can allegedly bite through a man’s arm. We didn’t test that for ourselves, though we did discover that a 5mm assault rifle is entirely adequate for dealing with these creatures providing there’s not too many. They hunt cooperatively, and we’re told they are willing to ambush lone humans or even small groups. This planet sucks.
Our trip to Pale River was far longer and more depressing than we thought, and also much harder work. And this was on the main trade route between the planet’s two largest ‘nations’. The rest of the outback is much worse, apparently. That might explain why there’s so little contact between the settlements, and why most of the planet is entirely unexplored even today.
A cursory survey with our ship’s instruments indicated a fairly average abundance of mineral resources, and a few sites that might merit investigation as high-yield mines. However, exploiting such a remote system is always a problem; transport costs eat into the profits from any extraction operation, so somewhere like Edge might be simply too expensive to mine. That has not, apparently, stopped someone from trying. Our survey showed a few areas that seemed to have artificial structures, albeit very overgrown ones, and also what looked like a couple of abandoned colony sites. With so much crappy outback and such a small planetary population, an expedition might be completely missed.
There are rumours that exploration or scientific parties have visited the world, poking around in the outback where nobody goes. Of course, there are also rumours of mountains of gold and a paradise region where the ground is dry and the wildlife doesn’t try to eat you. We didn’t investigate.
By the time we reached Pale River we were thoroughly sick of Edge. A cursory look at the town suggested it was quite similar to Dryburgh, at which point we called in the shuttle and left. Our impression of Edge is that it’s a place where you could live and even make a decent life for yourself, but you’d not want to given the choice. There are resources to be had, and perhaps the rumours of exploration parties are true. Edge is a vast wilderness that could contain almost anything… but probably doesn’t.
And we’re not volunteering to go looking.
Slices of Life
Outback Exile
Yeah, I did it. I stole the only performance motorcycle in town and tried to jump Casey’s Gully. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Sheriff Mitchell scraped me up off the ground and took me to the clinic, and after I healed up they put me in front of a tribunal. Fixed trial? Well, yes. The owner of the bike, the guy whose store I robbed, and some woman who was trying for a permanent job as some kind of chief judge. They found me guilty before I got in the room, and I got a year’s exile. Not just for the bike thing; there was some other stuff too. Lots of other stuff.
Well, I foxed them, didn’t I? I went and survived.
They took me out to the foothills of the Osogom mountains and turned me loose with a pack of stuff and a knife to my name. Not even a Joke to carry stuff for me, no gun, no idea what to do next, and no way back for a year. Chances are they expected me to try to come straight back in; probably had folks watching out for me in the outer settlements. Well, I didn’t see the point so I went outward instead. Up into the mountains, where it’s a bit drier.
‘Course, there’s not much to eat up there and you can get killed in all kinds of ways, but I had nothing to lose to I kept climbing. Ended up on a high plateau where it only rains most of the time. There were herds of wild Jokes up there, tame as you like. Did you know they’re quite graceful and sure-footed in the wild? It’s like the get stupid when you try to domesticate them. Maybe being around humans makes them dumb or something. Seems to happen to people, too.
So, I hunted wild Joke with a spear I made, and nearly starved. I wasn’t a good hunter, but it’s just as well maybe – they taste like old socks. Anyhow, I wandered further up into the mountains and found a high pass. I’d heard tell that there were ways across, but I wasn’t looking for one, not really. Just wandering about with no idea what I was doing. But once I’d found it I just had to take a look.
So I got across the mountains and down the other side. It’s not much different there, just wetter if you can imagine that. I ended up heading down the far side looking for a meal and shelter. As I got into the foothills there was a particularly bad storm, and I had to look for high ground in case of a flood. Well, sure enough half the hillside washed away, and I crawled under what I though was a mass of Screwleaf bushes – you know, the ones with twisted leaves and massive thorns. I was pretty desperate at that point.
I was a bit surprised to find that there was a hut under the bushes. They climb up boulders and cover them, so I guess a metal hut’s not much of a challenge. Unusual thing to find out there on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, but I wasn’t complaining. I had a poke around and found that the place even still had power from a fuel cell. The door was jammed but once I got it shut I was pretty snug. Heat, light, dryness… what a find!
Turns out someone had set up some kind of base there. It’d probably been abandoned for a good while, maybe five or six years, to judge from the bush coverage. Some kind of prefabricated four-room plus a bathroom – well, shower room – and an entry hall that was half full of Screwleaf growth. I eventually got that cleared out and cut myself a tunnel through the bushes for access.
The place was set up for maybe four people to live in; two bunk rooms, a sort of kitchen-living area type place and a room that looked like a workshop or a lab. There was a whole lot of some kind of ration blocks and the water recycling still worked. I also found a lot of scientific stuff that I didn’t understand, including computers that used a language I’ve never seen before. Not a computer language, I mean I’ve never seen symbols like those before. There were also a couple of guns.
What I didn’t find, not right away, was any sign of the occupants. Once the rain eased up a bit I started looking for them. I think that’s how I got through the days – trying to figure out what had happened to the people who set up that shelter. It gave me something to do with my time. I lived for three years in that hut, all on my own in the wilderness. I hunted whatever I could get so that I wouldn’t have to eat the rations – they were pretty dreadful – and spent my days searching the hills for the previous owners of my hut.
I found some instruments, but no people. One set looked like a weather monitoring station, right up on a high hilltop. Nearly killed myself getting back down, but I don’t think that’s what happened to the scientists or whatever they were. The other instruments I found were near a river bank, with probes in the soil and cables running to some sort of device in the water. That’s when I saw my first Springer.
I was watching out for nasties in the water, and I just plain forgot that something from the land might try to munch on me. First I knew, something hit me in the back and sent me flying face-first into a tree. That’s what saved me; I bounced one way and the Springer on my back went the other. I was carrying the guns I’d found; I dropped the shotgun but I managed to get the revolver out. The critter was up on its feet before I’d got to my knees, but fortunately I went for the gun before I tried to stand. It hit me square in the chest and bowled me over, kinda wrapped its back legs around me and grabbed my jacket front with its little stubby front legs and tried to bite my face. I stuck the revolver where its ear would be if it was, you know, some kind of face-biting person.
I’m still a bit deaf in my right ear, but I blew that critter’s head right off with a single shot. Which was just as well, since it brought its family. I emptied the revolver as they closed in, and somehow managed to dive to the shotgun. By the time I was finished there were four more dead ones, plus Mr Headless to make five. Then I ran all the way back to my hut, barricaded the door and stayed inside for nearly a week.
In the end, I started having to go out again, but I was a bit cautious after that. I did some more exploring and found a few interesting things. Springers lay eggs, and there was a whole lot of smashed shells buried in a little pit behind my hut. What looked like Springer remains too, like someone was studying them. Chances are that didn’t work out all that well for the people in my hut.
I stayed there until I figured my exile time must be up, and tried to get back across the mountains. That turned out to be a bit of a problem but eventually I made it back to an outpost. Turns out my time had been up for a couple of weeks when I set out on the trip back; it was three months more before I got home.
And genius that I am, I told my story. Which meant that I was suddenly an expert on Springers and the only guy who could explain how they were getting across the mountains when they never did before. So now I’m the Chief Springer Ranger or whatever you want to call it. I’m in charge of hunting them down before they can breed up their numbers, and of trying to figure out everything about the beasties. And that in turn means endlessly yomping around in the wilderness risking sudden death by critter or quicksand.
Seriously, I was better off in my little hut. At least I could stay indoors when I felt like it.
People, Places and Things
Barslich Automotive
Barslich is a small, vehicle manufacturer that specialises in wheeled offroad vehicles. The firm prefers to be known for its paramilitary and exploration range, but they also make ‘pretend offroaders’ for rich city folk who feel they need a 9-seat exploration wagon to drive to the office. This segment of the market provides about 75% of Barslich’s income, embarrassing as it may be.
Barslich’s pretend-offroad vehicles are actually a bit better than similar offerings from many rivals, in that they do not immediately break when climbing a kerb or crossing a grassy picnic area. In fact, Barslich is one of the better makes in terms of actual offroad performance. However, it is important to distinguish between a vehicle designed to climb over obstacles in the outback and one intended to look like it might be able to. Trying to use one of Barslich’s urban-offroaders as transport in the outback is an endeavour doomed to failure.
However, the true-offroad range is fairly decent. Barslich Automotive produce a very serviceable range of six-wheel-drive offroad trucks and four-wheel-drive utility vehicles. They are best known, however, for their ‘dune buggy’ type vehicles, which range from a very small one-seater ‘fun buggy’ to serious paramilitary or exploration vehicles.
The ‘Fast Attack Vehicle’ concept fell into disrepute some years ago, but there is a trend towards renewed interest after several high-profile mercenary units began using FAVs for the patrol, strike and convoy escort roles. Armed with a machinegun or a grenade launcher on a pintle mount, a 2-seat buggy can, in theory, provide fast-moving firepower wherever it is needed. Experience in the field has shown that this is not always as easy as it sounds, but overall the concept seems to be working.
Some merc outfits use Barslich FAVs as missile platforms, launching anti-armour or anti-aircraft missiles from a fast-moving vehicle that makes a small target even when it is not obscured by terrain. This, too, has been modestly successful, and military sales of Barslich vehicles are increasing at a very respectable rate.
This trend has been accompanied by an aggressive marketing campaign and a strategic alliance with Freedom WeaponSys, which provides many of the armament systems for Barslich’s off-the-shelf paramilitary vehicle range. The wisdom of this move is debatable; Freedom has a dubious record when it comes to sales. Its weaponry has turned up in the hands of many revolutionaries and insurgent groups. However, in the short term the move seems to have made both firms a lot of money.
Exploration, Inc
Exploration, Inc is a small company with offices on a handful of worlds. It undertakes a variety of exploration and survey tasks on behalf of its clients, ranging from mapping through mineral surveys to search-and rescue. Personnel are also available as guides or advisors for private expeditions.
Personnel are usually recruited through a low-key advertising programme or by word of mouth. It is rare for untrained individuals or college graduates to be hired; more often prospective personnel have considerable experience as field scientists, military personnel or specialists in their own field. Colonists from ‘backwoods’ areas are sometimes recruited however, as they usually have extensive experience of the sort of conditions they might encounter in their new line of work, even if they lack formal training.
Exploration, Inc offers a training service for anyone willing to pay the fairly reasonable fee. The usual clients are engineers, surveyors or scientists expecting to work in remote areas or under difficult conditions, but large-scale programmes have also been set up to train prospective colonists. This seems to be a growing business, suggesting that a new wave of expansion or colonisation is being planned by a private organisation.
This theory is borne out by the fact that several Exploration, Inc parties have been hired to undertake mapping and survey operations. The firm is discreet and does not reveal the details of its contracts, but the length of time that certain well-respected members of the Exploration, Inc staff have been out of circulation suggests that they have visited very remote worlds or possibly undertaken a very long-term project, perhaps as part of a training contract.
Exploration, Inc also undertakes its own survey and exploration missions, usually selling the data gained on the open market. It has an extensive pay-for-access database and also sells ‘blind surveys’. These are the results of detailed investigations of a set area, usually a 100km square region of a planet, moon or asteroid. They include details of mineral resources and other economic prospects and are offered for sale, as the name suggests, ‘blind’. The client gets the survey for a small fee. It might contain the key to riches, or it might not.
For an additional fee the client can ask who else has bought this data, and/or request that it be taken off the market. Critics have suggested that Exploration, Inc is not only selling data on worthless areas in many cases, but actually sells it several times over. The firm counters by pointing out that the surveys are undertaken at its own expense, which is incurred whether or not something useful is found, and that the cost of finding out that a region is not very economically useful from a third-party survey is rather lower than the price of sending an expedition.
Alex Kein
Alex Kein is an explorer-for-hire. He usually, but not always, works on contract through Exploration, Inc. He can, however, be hired privately. A fairly unassuming individual of late middle years, Kein has an excellent track record as both an instructor and a field operative.
Kein is able to cope with most environments but is most closely associated with rugged, mountainous terrain. He has climbed many notable peaks and was the first person to reach the summit of Mount Ailer on the airless moon Woldak by climbing. Others have landed directly to the summit, but Alex Kein was the first to ascend in a specially made space suit.
Kein is an inveterate adventurer and does not like to be idle. As a result he often becomes involved in almost childish stunts between contracts. He climbs trees like an eight-year-old and will sometimes leave a building via an upstairs window just for fun – and much to the consternation of passers-by in the street.
These foibles aside, Kein is an expert in his field, able to advise on a range of subjects. Although he is an outdoorsman rather than a researcher or engineer, he has accompanied so many archaeological or scientific expeditions that he can handle many complex instruments, and knows a wide range of specialist techniques. He does not mind helping out with research, surveying or scientific tasks, especially if the subject seems interesting or he gets along well with the team he is accompanying. However, those that try to treat Alex Kein as a research assistant or extra pair of unskilled hands usually receive a blunt reminder about his capabilities and what he was actually hired to do.
This trait has cause Alex Kein to fall out with a number of eminent scientists and explorers, and there is now a significant list of people he will not work with (or who will not work with him). This is of no real consequence to Kein providing the matter is left to lie, but he is intolerant of any suggestion that problems on an expedition might be his fault. Kein is currently involved in a long war of words with Dr Erich Magunnen. This takes the form of articles and counter-articles published in the exploration and scientific journals that both write for.
The Kein/Magunnen dispute began over a decade ago during an expedition to some frontier area that neither will name for client-confidentiality reasons. It seems that the team was sent to follow up a good lead that should have led to new plant-based pharmaceuticals. Magunnen insists that Kein all but sabotaged the expedition by being uncooperative, while Kein alleges that Magunnen was taking excessive risks with the safety of his field personnel, and that his data was useless anyway due to sloppy technique among the scientists. Magunnen counters that Kein is a machete-happy yokel who is not qualified to comment on scientific technique… and the debate rages on. Many readers avidly await the next issue of Field Team Monthly to read the latest instalment in a saga that shows no signs of ending any time soon.
When not battling with equally eminent figures in the specialist press, Kein is available to train or lead all manner of expeditions. He tends to be selective about the jobs he takes, favouring ‘something interesting’ over financial considerations. In between interesting commissions he takes training jobs, but although most experts of his age tend to settle into a training role Kein seems to genuinely prefer to get out into the field and will take a training contract only to pass the time until someone comes along with an intriguing destination.
Stuff and Nonsense
Somewhere in the bowels of RSS Avenger there is an auxiliary cargo bay. Its floor is strewn with a variety of items and objects sent to us by manufacturers in the hope that they, out of all the companies that have tried, will somehow manage to convince us that their stuff is worth the effort of getting the package, box or crate open. In keeping with our mission to review and report, we go in there from time to time and grab whatever’s nearest the door. The dampers in the bay are a bit dodgy, so stuff gets stirred around when the ship manoevres. The resulting random selection of objects then accompanies us planetside and when there’s time, we play with stuff and try to break it. This is called a ‘comprehensive product review service’ in case you’re interested.
Barslich Automotive ‘FGV-4’ Open-Frame Ground Vehicle
Type: Small Vehicle, 2-seat.
The FGV-4 (Fast Ground Vehicle, 4 Wheels; imaginative huh?) is basically a four-wheel-drive chassis with big balloon tyres and a pair of seats up front and a cargo area in back, with an electric fuel-cell system powering motors in each of four heels. A lightweight tubular frame acts as a roll cage and attachment point for equipment… and the white knuckles of the crew.
There are many ‘dune buggies’ of this sort on the market, but Barslich have tried to expand their potential market by building in a number of paramilitary features. The FGV-4 has an excessively good suspension for its weight, allowing it to carry additional equipment across very rough terrain. Its tyres are filled with self-sealing gel and give enough buoyancy that the vehicle can cross calm water, albeit semi-submerged with the crew’s butts in the water.
The FGV-4 the usual basic lights and controls, plus seats for two and room for a fair bit of equipment in the back, or an extra crewmember standing up and clinging on to the frame. There is also a mounting post for a light support weapon such as a belt-fed grenade launcher or a machinegun. The post can also carry a wide array of military or civilian instrumentation, making the vehicle popular with explorers, surveyors and field science teams.
The FGV-4 is pretty robust. We smashed it into a variety of objects (sometimes deliberately) and rolled it a bunch of times. We also carried out a ‘gunfire test’ with an assortment of weaponry. What we found was that the vehicle’s frame doesn’t offer all that much protection to the crew but there is a reasonable chance that rounds meant for the crew might hit the frame, seat backs or solid parts of the chassis. These will stop or deflect smallarms bullets reasonably well, and the vehicle’s components are fairly resistant to damage.
For additional protection, plastic inserts are available for the sides and front. These include skirts to cover part of the tyres and a bullet-resistant windshield. Protection is somewhat improved, but the vehicle becomes a bit claustrophobic despite the open top. It’s hard to avoid banging elbows into the inserts every time you try to do anything, including steering, so the inserts may not be a great idea.
Flat out on a road, this buggy can top 145kph. This can be increased to over 170kph with some alterations to the power delivery systems (basically, we ripped out the safety governor) but it’s not an especially good idea. The powerplant drains very fast at high speed and the motors need a lot of careful maintenance to avoid a really spectacular failure. Incidentally, the tyre gel is flammable. It takes a lot to get it going… say a really spectacular failure in the overheated motor next to it. You get the picture. Oh, and the vehicle is unstable to the point of being totally uncontrollable at anything over 150kph. But apart from that, high speed is a great idea.
Offroad performance is pretty decent, at about 38kph on rough ground and more on flat grassland. Hill climbing (and flight distance off the top of small ridges) is also pretty good. In crawl mode (super low gear) the FGV-4 can climb a frighteningly steep slope and can cross a thirty-degree side slope with ease. It has a self-rescue winch with a rocket to assist deployment for those times when the driver gets a bit too ambitious or when a damp hollow turns out to be a full-on swamp. With quicksand. Don’t ask.
Overall: Not the cheapest of buggies, but it’s a quality offering. Good off the road, robust, and with more carrying capacity than most similar vehicles. The FGV-4 is not sold as a fun-buggy (though it is great fun, especially once you tear out the safety governors), but as a high-performance working vehicle for explorers and the like. It’s also been adopted as a Fast Attack Vehicle by various security forces and militias. With a light support weapon aboard it’s a reasonably competent combatant, so long as you don’t actually want to hit anything when firing on the move. That’s a bit much to ask from a vehicle that was built to bounce.
Bush Pistol and Carbine
Type: Smoothbore revolver and carbine
Weapons of this sort are produced all over Edge, usually on a cottage-industry basis by craftspersons who fix or make a range of mechanical devices. Most weapons fit a general type, but it is not uncommon to encounter significant variations in barrel length and quality of decoration. What rarely differs is lethality – these weapons are pretty crude but they hit real hard and they’re reliable under almost any circumstances.
The locals on Edge mostly use a 14mm cartridge and favour carbines in the same calibre rather than carrying two different types of ammunition. They refer to their weapons as ‘bush pistols’ and ‘bush carbines’, and generally handle them well. However, where possible those who expect to use weaponry on a frequent bases try to obtain more conventional hardware.
The revolvers we tried were all very long-barreled models; most were in the 25 to 35cm range. All were single-action, needing to be thumbcocked after every shot. This may have been a regional foible, but we got the impression that it’s much the same everywhere. The long barrel somewhat compensates for the lack of accuracy inherent in a smoothbore weapon, but all the same the handguns had a very short accurate range. That’s fine; most shooters can’t hit anything with a pistol beyond a few metres anyway.
Bush revolvers are fed through a loading gate behind the cylinder, with the weapon at half-cock to allow the cylinder to revolve. We did indeed have one go off at half-cock. The recoil from such a large cartridge is impressive, and also produces a very impressive flare of flame from the muzzle when firing at night. When the weapon goes off whilst jammed between your knees, well… let’s just say that it was an unforgettable experience.
The carbines we tried out used the same cartridge, fed from a six-round internal tube magazine under the barrel. This is loaded though a gate, with rounds chambered manually. The mechanism varies from one maker to another. Some favour bolt-action, some use a lever that doubles as a trigger guard. Pump-action carbines are less common but are sometimes encountered. What they have in common is an extremely robust action that is very hard to break and easy to fix even under field conditions. The same comment applies to the revolvers.
Both weapons are serviceable and fairly easy to use despite their considerable recoil. Maintenance is extremely simple, and cleaning is easy. That’s just as well, as the local propellant causes excessive fouling. Being smoothbores, these weapons have a short range but hit hard at close quarters. Many locals carry their weapon with a shot cartridge rather than ball as the first to be fired, mainly to deal with small but nasty critters. Shot cartridges have an even shorter range than ball, but the spread of shot is sometimes worth the tradeoff. Performance at close range is pretty similar between both rounds.
Overall: These are big, manly guns that made us feel good about ourselves. We liked the commonality of ammunition between carbine and pistol, and we all learned to respect their robust nature. We all agreed that we’d rather trust our lives to something a little more advanced, though.
Colonial Essentials Inc. ‘Bush Buddy’ Individual Field Kit
Type: Equipment package, cheesy
Colonial Essentials Incorporated (CEI) produce a fascinating array of things that they want gullible tourists to think they need for trips outside of town. Most of this stuff is just about serviceable for a picnic in the park but would cause the average frontier colonist to die laughing. However, some of their gear is actually quite good. It’s overpriced though, and covered with logos that would be pretty cheesy in their own right even if they didn’t identify the user as a clueless noob who’s never been further into the outback than the garden fence.
The ‘Bush Buddy’ pack supposedly contains everything an explorer absolutely must have for a trip into the outback. The gear is usable and of decent quality, and we have to admit that it does constitute a decent basic outfit of bush gear. But there is no way you’re going to convince us that all those tassels and fringes are necessary.
For your 175 credits you get a pair of reasonably good waterproof hiking boots and a set of gaiters that attach to the top of the boots. These are a bit uncomfortable but they’re tough and will protect the lower leg from small animal bites, thorns and the like, and from damp conditions. They don’t keep out water if you leap into a stream however, and they won’t stop a knife. Yes, we tried.
There is also a sleeveless windproof jerkin with many pockets, plus a tan Pseudohide ‘frontier jacket’, complete with tassels along the sleeves and across the shoulder blades, plus a matching wide-brimmed hat. Both are tough and reasonably weatherproof, and for a mere 25 credits more you can get them ‘pre-weathered’ for that rugged outdoorsperson look. Yeah, right. You don’t get trousers or a shirt in this pack, but CEI do sell a nice range of tasseled tan pesudohide trousers and lumberjack shirts at a merely outrageous price.
The rest of the kit fits in the jerkin pockets or on a broad waist belt which has a single diagonal shoulder strap for additional support. From this hangs an unfeasibly large machete (which we found performs similarly to the standard Blade for all its awesome size), a water bottle with filters and a clever little dispenser for water purification tablets, and a large pouch for other items.
CEI seem to think that it is permanently dark in the outback. The front of the belt’s supporting strap has loops for no less than 26 small chemical lightsticks. These are pretty decent and provide about 5 hours of good light and maybe 90 minutes more of increasing dimness. There is also a pendant that can hold a lightstick around your neck, enabling you to ruin your night vision and fall over stuff more effectively. More bizarrely, there are also holders on the hat (the brim creates a shadow so you still can’t see where you’re putting your feet) and on the boots (so you can see the ground for nearly a whole metre in any direction). Fortunately, there is also a generator flashlight which is charged up by squeezing it repeatedly. This can be switched between a narrow beam and a dim beacon, and has a backup battery good for a few hours.
Within the pouch is a poncho/tarpaulin type object which serves as a reasonable groundsheet for a picnic or barely adequate rain protection if worn. There is also a fire-starting kit which assumes that the user is a total incompetent. Rather than the usual basic tools that can be used for years, this kit contains four twin-tube chemical firestarters which self-ignite when the tubes are twisted together. Apparently they’re perfectly safe until you want to use them.
There is also a large supply of candy… officially it’s ‘two days of highly nutritious iron rations’, but this stuff is not really iron rations as such. The food bars are nutritious enough, but they’re also so tasty that they tend to be devoured within the first hour of a field trip. In fact, CEI really should get out of the exploration market and just make luxury chocolates. You can buy refills for the kit’s disposables, but you can’t just get the food bars. As a result we have a huge pile of spare firestarters and light sticks, but no food bars.
Overall: It actually does have a bunch of stuff you might need, and it is useable. But expect sniggers. Lots of sniggers.
Colonial Essentials Inc. ‘Still Buddy’ Field Distilling Unit
Type: Field still/boozemaker
The Still Buddy claims to be an electrically powered purification unit for use in the field. Well, you can use it for that, or you can make booze in it. It’s basically an electrically powered heater unit with an evaporator/condenser and a series of switchable containers, allowing re-distillation or takeoff of the early part of a run. The unit has a decent internal battery, good for a couple of days of operation, or can run on external power.
Depending on what you need, the Still Buddy can be used to extract moisture from any water-bearing material – plant leaves or even wet sand works fine – or to distill clean water from whatever murky filth is available. This could be vital to a field expedition, and many small communities in the outback use similar devices to provide fresh water. However, water is not the only thing that can be distilled with this device,
It is possible to distill or purify a range of other fluids, such as fuel oils, to remove impurities. This makes the water taste funny (at best) however, so it is best to use a spare set of internal pipes or at least thoroughly flush the system a few dozen times. Best of all, the Still Buddy can be used to distill spirits for medical, fuel or recreational use. What you get out depends very much on what you put in, and the maturation process tends to be a bit short in the field. The resulting booze is a bit rough, but entirely drinkable. In fact, the more you drink, the more acceptable it becomes.
Overall: It’s compact, portable, and it works. The logos on the outside are a bit embarrassing and the system is more than a bit power-hungry, but overall this is a decent piece of kit that gets the job done.
Colonial Essentials Inc. ‘Truck Buddy’ Vehicular Field Kit
Type: Equipment package, vehicular, cheesy
We’re not entirely sure whether this is supposed to be a survival kit, picnic set or something in between; the designers probably didn’t either. It’s designed to be carried in any vehicle and – we think – cover the interstellar law requirement for a survival package as well as providing a range of useful camping equipment.
The kit comes in an impressively compact hard plastic box, which has three compartments. One is large and contains most of the items that will see frequent use, while the other two are smaller. Of these, one contains the survival-kit type stuff and the other is for food and other essentials.
The ‘food’ box comes packed with goodies. CEI claim to produce ‘nutritious iron rations’ but in reality their stuff has about half the food value and ten times the taste of real survival food. Some of the ration bars are a bit odd, with flavours like Chilli Cheeseburger and Vegetarian Caesar Salad. Textures vary as well, ranging from a soft cake block to a crunchy, nutty type bar, which tends to shatter when bitten. There’s something rather odd about a beef and mustard flavour cake bar but it tastes okay.
Also in the food box is a small electric stove with an ingenious set of pots that can be used to cook totally inadequate amounts of stew or other foodstuffs. Providing you’re not in a hurry, or actually hungry, the stove is entirely useable. It has an internal battery but is normally powered using a lead from a larger power cell in the box. This in turn can be kept charged by plugging it into a vehicle power supply.
The survival kit is a bit basic, to say the least. It contains a small medical box that would be better suited to the bathroom wall than the wild outback, a hatchet, two of the bluntest survival knives ever made, a box of 24 twist-to-burn firestarters, about a million chemical lightsticks (120 actually), a squeeze-to-charge flashlight and a water purification kit. The latter is a bit superfluous given that the box not only does the same job but, if power is available, chills it.
We discovered – quite a while after opening the kit – that the box has a false bottom which contains several cells for storing water. It is filled up through a concealed (we missed it for quite a while) foldout funnel and runs in through a set of pretty good filters. Gunk is removed through a tray in the very bottom of the box, and fresh water is dispensed from a fold-out tap located on – for some reason – the back corner. It is pumped out (rather vigorously) if the power cell is charged. If there is no power or you like exercise you can fold a little hand pump out of the opposite back corner and work for your drink.
The main box seems to be aimed at the typical one-kit-per-4 people setup favoured by firms that make actually useful outback gear. That’s a bit harsh, but only a little; the stuff in this kit is useable but on the whole not very good. There are four pretty decent silver rain poncho/blankets, four warmish and slightly windproof sleeveless jerkins, four entirely serviceable respirators and goggles to go with them, eight waterproof (ish) sheets and a bunch of poles that can be used to make a tent/windbreak/shelter/pile of poles depending on what is needed and the skill of the users.
The box also contains a basic toolkit with adjustable spanners, screwdrivers, hammers, a chisel, saws and the like. The tools are entirely serviceable, as is a rather peculiar foldout pole/ladder device that was included for some reason. There is also a vast amount of cord/rope that can be used for climbing, and an assortment of hand-coverings including thick gardening and thin plastic surgical-type gloves, plus waterproof over-mittens. There may be some logic to this sudden obsession with gloves, but we couldn’t figure it out. More usefully, there are also four handheld fire extinguishers.
Repacking everything once you’ve had anything out of the box can be a problem as there is little spare space. Our kit ended up buried under a pile of stuff we just couldn’t get back in the box, but if you can get everything back in, it doesn’t take up much room.
Overall: We’re still not sure what to make of this one. It contains some useful stuff and some semi-junk. Perhaps the best feature is the fact that if you dump out the food side of the box and turn the water chiller right up, it’ll keep a considerable number of beers ice cold until the power runs out. What could be more important to wilderness survival than that?
Colonial Essentials Inc. ‘Big Gamer’ Electrically-operated Crossbow
Type: Crossbow, with added gizmos
Well, this is an interesting piece of kit. It’s essentially a technological take on the ‘repeating crossbow’ concept seen in innumerable fantasy adventure vids. The weapon itself is a powerful but lightweight carbon-fibre crossbow similar to the ones used by hunters who feel that it is more sporting, or more challenging, to hunt with a bow rather than a firearm. However, this weapon takes itself out of the back-to-basics category by including an electric recocking mechanism and auto-reloading from a three-round bolt holder under the body of the weapon. This gives the user four shots; one on the string and three reloads.
The Big Gamer also has an advanced sight which normally operates as a fairly simple passive optical unit. The sight can be switched between light-amplification, thermal and holographic zoom modes, and can also make use of its built-in laser rangefinder/beam pointer for added unfairness. All this is powered by a battery which has petty good endurance provided the electronics are not left constantly running.
Overall: An amusing oddity at best. It will probably sell really well to would-be stealth assassins, ever since Dan Raymon used one in an episode of Silent Warrior. It does what it is supposed to do, but seriously people… if you want a gun then just buy a damn gun.
Freedom WeaponSys ‘Freedom Weapon System’
Type: Firearm Kit, Projectile
Freedom WeaponSys is well known for its basic, no-frills firearms and liberal sales policy. Alongside their more standard gear they also offer this rather interesting mid-tech modular personal weapon system, which is based on their popular MG55 light machinegun and R54 assault rifle. Many parts are common with those weapons, making maintenance simple and, just as important, cheap.
The kit is based around a 5mm fully-automatic receiver. This is of standard layout, with the magazine well located in front of the trigger guard and a fairly typical pistol grip. The weapon has a rather basic selector which functions like an on/off switch; the weapon can either fire full-automatic or not at all. There is an insert in the kit that converts the rifle to semi-automatic should the user want to fit it. Most people do not.
The magazine well can take a 32-round ‘rifle’ magazine (8 are supplied) or a 150-round ‘support’ magazine (you get four. That’s 600 rounds of mayhem. And it’s heavy so you’ll want to get rid of some of it ASAP). Either magazine can be used with any set of accessories, unless a grenade launcher is fitted. The support magazine is too large to permit this; it blocks part of the space needed for the launcher.
The receiver can take any self-contained sighting system and has a reasonable set of iron sights. A very rugged 4x scope and an optical reflex sight are both supplied. The latter is an effective aid to point-and shoot combat at fairly short range and, with some skill, can be used for a sort of pseudo-sniping at surprisingly long ranges.
The kit contains three barrels: short, standard and heavy. The short barrel is intended for urban combat, vehicle crew use and so forth. It reduces the accuracy of ranged fire somewhat… well, quite a lot actually. It also causes the muzzle to climb rapidly under autofire. The heavy barrel is intended either for machinegun mode or with the semi-auto insert to create a mediocre sniping rifle.
All barrels can take one accessory. This can be a Freedom WeaponSys grenade launcher, but sadly one is not included in the kit. A bayonet, bipod and vertical assault foregrip are all supplied. Swapping between them is extremely awkward due to the nature of the fittings, which are designed to take a range of accessories and thus are both large and complex. Many users fit one accessory to each barrel and swap the whole front end of the weapon, which takes about three minutes rather than the fifteen required to change accessories without detaching the barrel.
The back end of the weapon is also configurable. A full stock and a skeletonised folding stock are both provided, or it can be left off entirely. We found the full stock to be very usable and robust enough to bash things with, whereas the folding stock is a bit flimsy and causes the weapon to wriggle around alarmingly under autofire.
Trying out the obvious configurations, we used a heavy barrel and full stock to create a pretty poor sniping weapon or a decent light support weapon. However, the barrel is prone to overheat under autofire. This is normal with mid-tech support weapons; most come with one or more spare barrels and quick-change fittings. This weapon does not, limiting its utility in the support role.
As an assault rifle with medium barrel, folding stock and bayonet we found the FWS entirely usable. Nothing special, but certainly a decent tool. However, the bayonet sometimes gets in the way. Removing it is a long job, as noted above, so you either fit it or you don’t. It can’t be used as a knife when dismounted, by the way, because of the great block of fittings associated with it.
The short barrel and vertical foregrip, used with a folding stock or, better, without a stock at all, creates a light and handy assault carbine. It just begs to be fired from the hip as you leap out of a vehicle or kick a door in. A word to the wise though… trying to leap from a vehicle and kick a door in at the same time is not a good plan. With a 32-round magazine the weapon is very handy and manouvrable in close combat. With the 150-round box it’s… not. Firepower is awesome, but you can utterly ruin the barrel in the course of a single firefight. Freedom offer replacements at a reasonable price, but you have to buy them in multiples to be worth the shipping cost.
Freedom also offer a ‘platoon kit’ built around this modular weapon system. It contains enough parts to put together three heavy-barrel support weapons, three heavy-barrel semi-automatic scoped marksman’s rifles, twenty assault barrel/full stock assault rifles and ten short barrel/foregrip/folding stock carbines. You also get 200 32-round magazines and 10 150-round magazines plus 20,000 rounds of ammunition. It costs 25,000 credits, which seems like a bargain to us. If Freedom WeaponSys send us one we’ll let you know whether it is or not.
Overall: Basically, this is an assault rifle for people who don’t know exactly what they want. It’s fun to play around with the configurations, but really it’s only good value if you need the flexibility.
Hawken Armaments ‘IDW’
Type: Shotgun, short
Hawken is a small company specializing in the self-defence and personal security end of the market. The firm manufactures some of its own gear and outsources the rest, acting as a marketing brand for several small manufacturers. Standards are reasonably high for the budget end of the marketplace, and Hawken gear is generally well respected.
The IDW (‘Installation Defence Weapon’) is a short, stockless, pistol-grip shotgun with a stubby barrel. The underbarrel magazine holds three rounds, plus one in the chamber if the user desires. These weapons are designed to be held in a wall bracket on the bridge of a starship, in an airlock or a security office, clipped under a desk… maybe in the door of your personal vehicle… in short, anywhere that there might be a sudden need for an easily manouvred but deadly close-quarters weapon.
The IDW is basic but entirely serviceable. The pump action is robust and works fine even in vacuum. Lubrication is vacuum-proof too, and since most propellants contain oxygen, any available shotshells will do. The action is very tolerant of mud and grit (not that you get much of that in space) and will also handle slightly irregular ammunition such as our gunnery officer’s hand-loaded shells. There are extremely ‘hot’ loads which might strain a less robust weapon, but Hawken’s IDW handled them without exploding or otherwise malfunctioning.
The weapon can be bought ‘as is’ for 120 credits. For that, you get the gun and nothing else. That’s fine if you plan to clip it into a bracket (10 credits each from Hawken, or much less if you visit a hardware store and buy some of your own) or leave it in a drawer. Alternatively, you can buy four guns (just the guns, no ammunition or accessories) and four brackets for 400 credits, or a slightly more comprehensive pack.
The IDW pack costs Cr150. For that you get the gun, 50 shells, a basic cleaning kit, a shoulder sling and a belt rig. This has holders for a couple of dozen shells and also an attachment point for the weapon so that it doesn’t swing about quite as much when it’s slung. The shotgun is secured by a breakaway device that actually works quite well – it holds when you want it to and releases when you need the weapon.
Finally, Hawken also offer a low-powered training/non-lethal shell filled with small plastic beads that sting like hell. There are those that question the wisdom of using training rounds in a standard weapon like this, since you can’t tell what is in the chamber and thus the possibility of accidents is… not inconsiderable. There are those who will tell you that good safety procedures will eliminate this possibility. We’re not sure either way; we just now know that it is possible to miss repeatedly with a shotgun whilst having a firefight in an airlock… and that the training ammunition does not make the gun itself safe when used as a club.
Overall: A nice little weapon, but very much a ‘grab gun’ rather than something you’d take into a firefight if you had the choice.
Hawken Armaments ‘PAW’
Type: Submachinegun, large calibre, low-recoil
Hawken’s ‘PAW’ (or Personal Assault Weapon) is built around the standard low-recoil/large calibre round used by shipboard security personnel. As such, it is an effective low-gravity weapon but this is not its primary role. Instead, Hawken has created a range of weapons designed to take advantage of the specialist ammunition types manufactured for shipboard weapons.
The PAW lies right on the borderline between an assault pistol (a handgun designed or adapted for autofire) and a true submachinegun. Where most assault pistols are obviously pistols and use an external slide, the PAW has an internal bolt and no external moving parts. However, it is apparently designed to be fired one-handed. There is no foregrip nor anywhere to put your hand in front of the trigger guard – not without removing parts of your fingers, anyway. A two-handed pistol-shooting stance works well enough, with both hands on the grip. Since there is no slide, you can alternatively put your hand over the top of the weapon, but this is awkward until you get used to it.
The PAW is fed from a custom magazine that slots into a holder on the top of the weapon. It is pushed forward into place, which suggests to us that the designers expected shooters to use the hand-on-top steadying position. However, this weapon really works best in a one-handed spray-and-pray mode.
Recoil is low with all ammunition types, making autofire surprisingly controllable. This is just as well, as the PAW has a very high rate of fire. Performance of the standard ball round is as expected, i.e. pretty disappointing compared to a standard handgun in a similar calibre. However, once we loaded up with high explosive, things began to happen. As in, explosions, property damage and the occasional small fire. The HEAP (High Explosive Armour-Piercing) round is equally destructive, and also penetrates well so you can blow stuff up on the other side of a fence.
Overall: Yeah, okay, this one works. It’ll punch through a light flak jacket and turn the occupant into soup. Should you ever have to deal with a group of lightly armoured assailants, a PAW might not be a bad choice. And one-handed autofire with explosive ammuntion is something everyone should experience. Ideally from a safe distance.
Hawken Armaments ‘PDW’
Type: Handgun, large calibre, low-recoil
Hawken’s ‘PDW’ (or Personal Defence Weapon) uses the standard low-recoil shipboard round, but like some other Hawken offerings it is not intended for low-g combat. It works well enough in space, but it is basically a small self-defence pistol that takes advantage of specialist ammunition intended for spacefarers.
The PDW looks and functions like a conventional semi-automatic pistol in most ways. It has a concealed hammer and no sights or other protrusions to snag on clothing. The only safety device is the somewhat heavy double-action trigger pull. This makes shooting a fairly deliberate act. There is little chance of accidental discharge – if you pull the trigger then this weapon believes that it is within its rights to believe that you want to shoot, and will act accordingly.
With no sights and a heavy double action, the PDW is not a target weapon, but then it does not pretend to be one. It is a self-defence tool intended for use at very close range, and within those limits it functions well. Ammunition performance is pretty much the same as the PAW, above.
The PDW comes in a nice box with three magazines and 50 rounds of ball ammunition, plus a holster which can be fitted to any belt or within most other clothing. Alternatively, you can buy a pair of PDWs with nice chequer-pattern grips and a double shoulder rig, plus a total of six magazines and 100 rounds of ball ammunition, for Cr300. It’s a nice little gift set that might be suitable for your aunt’s birthday.
Overall: The PDW is small and easy to carry, and can be brought into action quickly without snagging on your clothing. It makes a very convincing noise and can be used to dispose of bad guys. We found the trigger pull tiring during extended testing, but for a desperate adrenaline-fuelled firefight that’s not much of an issue. The ball round lacks stopping power but the HE or HEAP, if you can get them, are more than sufficient.
Hawken Armaments ‘PEW’
Type: Handgun, large calibre, low-recoil
Hawken’s ‘PEW’ (or Personal Emergency Weapon) also uses the 10mm shipboard cartridge. It is simply a single-barreled derringer type weapon chambered for a big round, enabling you to cause someone to suffer a personal emergency. There is no safety device as such, just a firing pin disconnector that prevents the weapon discharging unless the trigger is pulled. The double-action trigger is every bit as heavy as on Hawken’s other self-defence weapons, but that is probably a good thing in this case.
Reloading uses a tip-down break-open action, whereby the barrel is swung down on a pivot and the expended round is vigorously shaken out. That’s important; spent rounds are notoriously reluctant to come out for some reason. Not that it should matter – if things are dire enough that you have deployed a derringer and you need to reload, chances are your troubles will soon be over.
One rather nice feature is that the improbably short barrel has a chromed ring around it, making it seem larger. You can’t actually see the chambered round by looking down the barrel, but the combination of large calibre and short barrel make it look like you have a railway tunnel pointed at you.
Overall: This is a surprisingly intimidating weapon for all its small size, which means that you might not have to fire it after all. If you do, then its explosive or HEAP round will stop most assailants cold – though you will almost certainly need a change of clothes afterwards. The ball round, as noted elsewhere, is not very powerful and might not be a good choice for last-ditch self-defence unless you can’t get anything better.
End Notes
This concludes our foray out to the very edge of civilisation… no pun intended. We’ve been given instructions to swing back into Twilight sector on a survey mission, but the captain will probably ignore them. He’s got that look that suggests he wants to head off into the great unknown and make heroic discoveries. We’re hoping that means more exploration of Crescent sector, because the big dark is awful close and there’s probably no good restaurants out there.
So if we go off the net for a while, you know where we’ll be. Out there… somewhere.
RSS Avenger, signing off.
Summer 2010
Let’s file that one under ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’.
RSS Avenger is currently in the Edge star system, right on the fringe of explored space. Getting here required passing through a bunch of perfectly interesting systems we could have stopped off at instead, then a long and tedious deep-space transit to reach the Edge system. Worst of all, the captain is eying that great unknown out there and asking about course plots to investigate whatever shiny thing has caught his attention most recently. We’re not keen on that idea.
We? Ah yes. For those who don’t know, we are the crew of Research Star Ship (RSS) Avenger. Well, the crew plus assorted hangers-on, ne’er-do-wells and friends of the captain who seem to have come aboard and never left. Our mission is to investigate and report at first hand on, well, pretty much everything we encounter. We’re also expected to try out a range of exiting, useful and just plain dumb gadgets we’ve been sent, to document new species, and to generally create a definitive guide to everything and everyone, everywhere.
Standard disclaimer about the gear we test out and the reports that go with it: Not all of the devices we’re given work as well as advertised, and we tend to call it as we see it, even if it’s not pretty. Note that the crew of RSS Avenger cannot be held responsible for the use, misuse, loss, accidental discharge or unexplained by-product of using the items we review. Nor for your own irresponsibility, though that surely cannot exceed ours.
With that in mind, let’s proceed with Starfarer’s Gazette #2. This time around we have a truly in-depth look at the contents of the Edge system, reviews of some weaponry you’d be well advised to take with you if you visit, and a wild tale we overhead in a bar. The reliable content level of these items varies considerably, but not predictably… It’s more fun that way…
This issue of Starfarer’s Gazette contains the following sections:
- Ports of Call – places we’ve been and things we’ve seen
- Slices of Life – tales we’ve heard… often several times, all from people who swear it happened to them
- People, Places and Things – features about this and that
- Stuff and Nonsense – equipment, weaponry and stuff-in-general that we’ve been sent to review
Okay, please extinguish all smoking materials and fasten your seat belt; here we go….
Ports of Call
The Edge System
The imaginatively-named Edge system lies right on the, yes… edge… of well-explored space. It was settled a fair while ago by a scattering of underfunded colony missions that never received any real support and thus never grew into a viable technological society. A combination of distance, apathy and the lack of anything really useful on Edge resulted in the colonies being forgotten about, other than as an obscure dot on the starmap. The occasional ship does come through, but this is rare enough to be big news on Edge itself.
The system contains a G5 star named Neider, orbited by two rocky planets and two gas giant worlds, plus a fairly large concentration of asteroids at the Trojan points of the gas giants’ orbits. The innermost world is pegged on our starmaps as ‘Neider 1’, following the convention that worlds are known by their orbital location and the name of their primary (star) unless inhabited or claimed.
Neider 1 is an airless rockball of a world sufficiently close to its primary that surface temperatures are extremely high. It is tidally locked, with a hot side and a cold side. There is no official record of either face ever being properly explored, and we didn’t bother either. Who knows what riches await discovery there? We don’t, because we headed straight for Neider 2, better known as Edge. Edge has bars, Neider 1 does not. Do the math.
Neider 3 is a medium-sized gas giant with a pretty good ring system and a collection of moons. Most are typical rockballs but one seems to have enough atmospheric gas to be given the grand title of an atmosphere. You can’t breathe it of course (well, you can but you’ll die; it’s mostly methane) but our instruments claimed that you could extract useful gases from it. We landed briefly, stuck a flag in the ground (okay, it was a tea towel on a pole, but the intent was there) and named the world Fibble. Recognition by the astronavigation authorities is still pending on that one.
There are several ‘empty orbits’ between Neider 3 and Neider 4, which is an insignificant little (as these things go) gas giant with a huddle of equally trivial rockballs masquerading as moons. Chances are nobody has ever even been there, and we weren’t inspired to be the first. There are also fairly extensive asteroid clusters at the Trojan points of the gas giants’ orbits. Oh good, more rocks. We didn’t visit.
EdgeOur starmap said Edge was habitable. Lies, lies, lies! It’s survivable, we guess, but nobody would actually want to live there. It’s a dismal, wet, mid-sized planet with a breathable but damp and smelly atmosphere. Which is, by the way, prone to dump vast quantities of rain or hail on unsuspecting starfarers at frequent intervals. Storms are also common, and can be quite destructive. And this was in the ‘most habitable’ area of the planet. Yeek.
According to the pack of lies that is our astronav database, about 25% of the surface of Edge is land, with the implication that there is plenty of habitable terrain. This is not true; much of this so-called ‘land’ is in fact swamp, marsh, flood plain or river delta, or else prone to flooding after one of the frequent storms. Most of the rest is uninhabitable for other reasons, usually because it is composed of post-volcanic badlands or near-vertical mountains which may or may not contain active volcanoes. There are also a number of earthquake zones.
However, planets are big, and even with all this damp crappiness going on, there are still a large amount of places that people could dwell if they really wanted to. These were targeted by a number of well-intentioned and determined settlement missions, which landed in widely separated areas. With no follow-up or support missions, the result was a number of very small colonial ‘nations’ each going its own way and trying to survive. Some of these proto-nations died out entirely and most collapsed back to a scattered frontier existence, with handfuls of people dispersed over a wide area and maintaining only the most tenuous of contact.
Today the world population is estimated at about 82,000, with only three of the ‘nations’ having a population of over ten thousand and something resembling an industrial base. Only these have access to air transport (and very little of it even then) and other relatively high-tech items. The remainder of the population dwell in small enclaves of a few hundred to a couple of thousand and make do with a rugged and basic frontier-style technological base.
We landed on the largest continent – that is, the biggest collection of swamps and mountains – on Edge. The locals call this chilly, wet and thoroughly dismal land mass Kimber. It is home to two of the three main ‘nations’, both of which are located in the so-called temperate region at the southern end of the continent. To the north is a pretty badass mountain range which protects the region from the ‘really bad’ (we shudder to imagine) weather encountered on the other side. Apparently people live there, mainly in a region known as the Northeast Frontier. We felt sorry for them, but we didn’t go experience the crappiness of their existence for ourselves.
The town where we landed called itself Dryburgh, which is probably apt when compared to the rest of the region. Dryburgh is essentially a city-state, home to about 17,000 people in the town and its surrounding region. It is not a pretty place, being designed to withstand storms rather than to attract tourists, but inside the homes of the residents it is cheery enough. The locals like bright colours and ‘busy’ patterns, probably as a reaction to the utter drabness of their world.
The political system in Dryburgh is not untypical of small frontier societies. There are several democratic-sounding offices such as ‘president’ and ‘minister for agriculture’ but no signs of a democratic process. Instead, it seems that a suitable candidate is installed by a combination of self-appointment and popular acclaim, and holds the post until they step down or some setback causes loud enough demands for a change of leadership. In practice this means that the leaders of Dryburgh’s society have mostly held their posts for a long time and are a mix of talented, competent experts and well-connected or popular individuals – usually a bit of both.
Decision-making is rather informal, but there are few big decisions to be made anyway. Dryburgh has a stagnant society with no rapid changes to face, and can afford to wallow in inertia most of the time. Indeed, it is difficult to do much else given the lack of resources and people to wield them.
There is no military as such in Dryburgh, but several ‘sheriffs’ exist (again, often by self-appointment) who handle law enforcement, such as it is, and lead armed parties to chase off or kill dangerous creatures from the immediate vicinity of the town. Smaller communities have a similar system but less firepower.
Law is, predictably, loose. It is also not written down in most cases, with a common body of what amount to social values rather than laws instilled into most citizens from birth. Dryburgh has a jail for holding people who break these pseudo-laws that ‘everyone knows about’ (we tried the cells out a couple of times, proving that maybe not everyone knows all the local laws), and in many cases serious criminals are exiled. This is not much short of a death sentence, given the general hostility of the outback and the lack of other places to go, but the locals maintain that the criminal is given a fair chance. In many cases exile is for a fixed term, and some exiles have actually lived long enough to come home.
There is a little industry, but with such a small population the emphasis is on subsistence rather than large-scale production. Workshops fix machinery and vehicles on a craftsman basis, with no two jobs exactly alike. Technology is pretty stable too, since there is no possibility of complex technological research. True, sometimes someone comes up with something new through tinkering, but it’s more likely to be a clever new way to use existing tech than a huge leap forward.
Bigger projects are occasionally planned. That tends to be as far as they go, but every now and then a bunch of people get together and make something happen. The locals can be very industrious when they need to. They’ve managed to build a very decent drainage and flood-defence system, which is probably just as well. There are also a couple of ongoing projects that have been in the works for years. One is a long-range exploration flying-boat type aircraft capable of withstanding a serious storm. It’s pretty impressive, even though it’s only half-built and will probably stay that way forever.
The other project is a bit less ambitious, but larger in scale. The locals at Dryburgh use fairly typical electrically powered trucks and ground cars in town and around the immediate area, but transport to other communities, notably the largish town of Pale River to the west, is problematical. Attempts to improve communications are focussed on constructing an embankment with a road on the top all the way to Pale River. This is a pretty big undertaking for a part-time workforce, and thus far the only progress has been to raise the existing road above some of the wettest parts of the route. Even this modest success has made a difference to road communications on Edge.
We took a drive out along this road, for reasons that seemed good at the time. In the area immediately surrounding Dryburgh things are relatively civilised, with little ranches and farms scattered across the relatively well drained land. There are even a couple of smaller towns on high ground. Pretty soon, and without much warning, we found ourselves in the outback. That was a whole different ball game.
The outback between Dryburgh and Pale River is less wild and soggy than in other areas, but it was bad enough. It’s a bit like the entire world was painted in four colours – greeny-grey, greyish-green, dreary, and depressing. Marshy areas are common, and some are pretty extensive. Thankfully, there weren’t all that many insects in these regions; they probably found somewhere less grim to live. All the same, a foray off the road to test out the camping gear or to collect interesting rocks is not a good idea in this region. The swamps are treacherous. Well, actually that’s not fair… there’s no actual treachery there. The swamps are just plain deadly and it’s not their fault that they look almost exactly the same as ‘dry’ land.
Vegetation is pretty much what we expected. It’s coarse and low-lying, as if it just can’t be bothered to stand up. Everything has thorns; stems tend to be extremely flexible and resilient. This makes hacking planty obstructions away very difficult, and the damn stuff simply does not want to be pushed aside. Some of the plants grow real fast too, which can make an area impassable again just weeks after it has been cleared.
We spotted some wildlife while we were out and about, ranging from big grazing beasts with thick enough hides to simply plod through the thorny mess to a strange creature that dwells in dryer, rocky upland areas. This beast is known locally as a Joke, and it’s not hard to see why. They smell truly appalling, taste worse no matter how you cook them or what with, and they are possibly the most inventively stupid creature found outside the command deck of RSS Avenger.
Sadly for the locals, the Joke is also the most useful beast of burden that Edge has produced, which means that they get used as transport or farm animals by people who don’t have access to the infrastructure needed to maintain and support vehicles. Joke-wranglers sometimes take trade caravans around the outlying settlements, an impressively difficult undertaking even without the propensity of the beasts to hurl themselves into the nearest swamp or get stuck in a thorn patch.
The rivers and swamps are full of life, and most of it would like to eat anyone foolish enough to enter the water. There are various small swimming creatures, which are not much of a threat but might nibble your toes, but the real hazard is a long-necked creature that can reach an alarmingly long way out of the water to tear off vegetation, grab small animals or bite the radio antenna off a truck. These river-monsters seem entirely happy to eat whatever comes within reach. It’s not always possible to tell if a nearby pool is deep enough to conceal one, which can be interesting to say the least.
The real animal threat on Edge is the Springer. We’re told these are uncommon on the ‘civilised’ side of the mountains, but they have begun to filter through the high passes during the recent string of unusually dry summers (we don’t want to see this place when it’s not ‘unusually dry’) and are now breeding on ‘this’ side of the barrier. Judging by the ones we encountered, that’s going to be a problem.
Springers are about the size of a large dog, usually, with long back legs that let them, well, spring for want of a better word. They can jump several metres and use this ability to bring down prey. Their front limbs are a bit feeble but they have a mandible that can allegedly bite through a man’s arm. We didn’t test that for ourselves, though we did discover that a 5mm assault rifle is entirely adequate for dealing with these creatures providing there’s not too many. They hunt cooperatively, and we’re told they are willing to ambush lone humans or even small groups. This planet sucks.
Our trip to Pale River was far longer and more depressing than we thought, and also much harder work. And this was on the main trade route between the planet’s two largest ‘nations’. The rest of the outback is much worse, apparently. That might explain why there’s so little contact between the settlements, and why most of the planet is entirely unexplored even today.
A cursory survey with our ship’s instruments indicated a fairly average abundance of mineral resources, and a few sites that might merit investigation as high-yield mines. However, exploiting such a remote system is always a problem; transport costs eat into the profits from any extraction operation, so somewhere like Edge might be simply too expensive to mine. That has not, apparently, stopped someone from trying. Our survey showed a few areas that seemed to have artificial structures, albeit very overgrown ones, and also what looked like a couple of abandoned colony sites. With so much crappy outback and such a small planetary population, an expedition might be completely missed.
There are rumours that exploration or scientific parties have visited the world, poking around in the outback where nobody goes. Of course, there are also rumours of mountains of gold and a paradise region where the ground is dry and the wildlife doesn’t try to eat you. We didn’t investigate.
By the time we reached Pale River we were thoroughly sick of Edge. A cursory look at the town suggested it was quite similar to Dryburgh, at which point we called in the shuttle and left. Our impression of Edge is that it’s a place where you could live and even make a decent life for yourself, but you’d not want to given the choice. There are resources to be had, and perhaps the rumours of exploration parties are true. Edge is a vast wilderness that could contain almost anything… but probably doesn’t.
And we’re not volunteering to go looking.
Slices of Life
Outback Exile
Yeah, I did it. I stole the only performance motorcycle in town and tried to jump Casey’s Gully. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Sheriff Mitchell scraped me up off the ground and took me to the clinic, and after I healed up they put me in front of a tribunal. Fixed trial? Well, yes. The owner of the bike, the guy whose store I robbed, and some woman who was trying for a permanent job as some kind of chief judge. They found me guilty before I got in the room, and I got a year’s exile. Not just for the bike thing; there was some other stuff too. Lots of other stuff.
Well, I foxed them, didn’t I? I went and survived.
They took me out to the foothills of the Osogom mountains and turned me loose with a pack of stuff and a knife to my name. Not even a Joke to carry stuff for me, no gun, no idea what to do next, and no way back for a year. Chances are they expected me to try to come straight back in; probably had folks watching out for me in the outer settlements. Well, I didn’t see the point so I went outward instead. Up into the mountains, where it’s a bit drier.
‘Course, there’s not much to eat up there and you can get killed in all kinds of ways, but I had nothing to lose to I kept climbing. Ended up on a high plateau where it only rains most of the time. There were herds of wild Jokes up there, tame as you like. Did you know they’re quite graceful and sure-footed in the wild? It’s like the get stupid when you try to domesticate them. Maybe being around humans makes them dumb or something. Seems to happen to people, too.
So, I hunted wild Joke with a spear I made, and nearly starved. I wasn’t a good hunter, but it’s just as well maybe – they taste like old socks. Anyhow, I wandered further up into the mountains and found a high pass. I’d heard tell that there were ways across, but I wasn’t looking for one, not really. Just wandering about with no idea what I was doing. But once I’d found it I just had to take a look.
So I got across the mountains and down the other side. It’s not much different there, just wetter if you can imagine that. I ended up heading down the far side looking for a meal and shelter. As I got into the foothills there was a particularly bad storm, and I had to look for high ground in case of a flood. Well, sure enough half the hillside washed away, and I crawled under what I though was a mass of Screwleaf bushes – you know, the ones with twisted leaves and massive thorns. I was pretty desperate at that point.
I was a bit surprised to find that there was a hut under the bushes. They climb up boulders and cover them, so I guess a metal hut’s not much of a challenge. Unusual thing to find out there on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, but I wasn’t complaining. I had a poke around and found that the place even still had power from a fuel cell. The door was jammed but once I got it shut I was pretty snug. Heat, light, dryness… what a find!
Turns out someone had set up some kind of base there. It’d probably been abandoned for a good while, maybe five or six years, to judge from the bush coverage. Some kind of prefabricated four-room plus a bathroom – well, shower room – and an entry hall that was half full of Screwleaf growth. I eventually got that cleared out and cut myself a tunnel through the bushes for access.
The place was set up for maybe four people to live in; two bunk rooms, a sort of kitchen-living area type place and a room that looked like a workshop or a lab. There was a whole lot of some kind of ration blocks and the water recycling still worked. I also found a lot of scientific stuff that I didn’t understand, including computers that used a language I’ve never seen before. Not a computer language, I mean I’ve never seen symbols like those before. There were also a couple of guns.
What I didn’t find, not right away, was any sign of the occupants. Once the rain eased up a bit I started looking for them. I think that’s how I got through the days – trying to figure out what had happened to the people who set up that shelter. It gave me something to do with my time. I lived for three years in that hut, all on my own in the wilderness. I hunted whatever I could get so that I wouldn’t have to eat the rations – they were pretty dreadful – and spent my days searching the hills for the previous owners of my hut.
I found some instruments, but no people. One set looked like a weather monitoring station, right up on a high hilltop. Nearly killed myself getting back down, but I don’t think that’s what happened to the scientists or whatever they were. The other instruments I found were near a river bank, with probes in the soil and cables running to some sort of device in the water. That’s when I saw my first Springer.
I was watching out for nasties in the water, and I just plain forgot that something from the land might try to munch on me. First I knew, something hit me in the back and sent me flying face-first into a tree. That’s what saved me; I bounced one way and the Springer on my back went the other. I was carrying the guns I’d found; I dropped the shotgun but I managed to get the revolver out. The critter was up on its feet before I’d got to my knees, but fortunately I went for the gun before I tried to stand. It hit me square in the chest and bowled me over, kinda wrapped its back legs around me and grabbed my jacket front with its little stubby front legs and tried to bite my face. I stuck the revolver where its ear would be if it was, you know, some kind of face-biting person.
I’m still a bit deaf in my right ear, but I blew that critter’s head right off with a single shot. Which was just as well, since it brought its family. I emptied the revolver as they closed in, and somehow managed to dive to the shotgun. By the time I was finished there were four more dead ones, plus Mr Headless to make five. Then I ran all the way back to my hut, barricaded the door and stayed inside for nearly a week.
In the end, I started having to go out again, but I was a bit cautious after that. I did some more exploring and found a few interesting things. Springers lay eggs, and there was a whole lot of smashed shells buried in a little pit behind my hut. What looked like Springer remains too, like someone was studying them. Chances are that didn’t work out all that well for the people in my hut.
I stayed there until I figured my exile time must be up, and tried to get back across the mountains. That turned out to be a bit of a problem but eventually I made it back to an outpost. Turns out my time had been up for a couple of weeks when I set out on the trip back; it was three months more before I got home.
And genius that I am, I told my story. Which meant that I was suddenly an expert on Springers and the only guy who could explain how they were getting across the mountains when they never did before. So now I’m the Chief Springer Ranger or whatever you want to call it. I’m in charge of hunting them down before they can breed up their numbers, and of trying to figure out everything about the beasties. And that in turn means endlessly yomping around in the wilderness risking sudden death by critter or quicksand.
Seriously, I was better off in my little hut. At least I could stay indoors when I felt like it.
People, Places and Things
Barslich Automotive
Barslich is a small, vehicle manufacturer that specialises in wheeled offroad vehicles. The firm prefers to be known for its paramilitary and exploration range, but they also make ‘pretend offroaders’ for rich city folk who feel they need a 9-seat exploration wagon to drive to the office. This segment of the market provides about 75% of Barslich’s income, embarrassing as it may be.
Barslich’s pretend-offroad vehicles are actually a bit better than similar offerings from many rivals, in that they do not immediately break when climbing a kerb or crossing a grassy picnic area. In fact, Barslich is one of the better makes in terms of actual offroad performance. However, it is important to distinguish between a vehicle designed to climb over obstacles in the outback and one intended to look like it might be able to. Trying to use one of Barslich’s urban-offroaders as transport in the outback is an endeavour doomed to failure.
However, the true-offroad range is fairly decent. Barslich Automotive produce a very serviceable range of six-wheel-drive offroad trucks and four-wheel-drive utility vehicles. They are best known, however, for their ‘dune buggy’ type vehicles, which range from a very small one-seater ‘fun buggy’ to serious paramilitary or exploration vehicles.
The ‘Fast Attack Vehicle’ concept fell into disrepute some years ago, but there is a trend towards renewed interest after several high-profile mercenary units began using FAVs for the patrol, strike and convoy escort roles. Armed with a machinegun or a grenade launcher on a pintle mount, a 2-seat buggy can, in theory, provide fast-moving firepower wherever it is needed. Experience in the field has shown that this is not always as easy as it sounds, but overall the concept seems to be working.
Some merc outfits use Barslich FAVs as missile platforms, launching anti-armour or anti-aircraft missiles from a fast-moving vehicle that makes a small target even when it is not obscured by terrain. This, too, has been modestly successful, and military sales of Barslich vehicles are increasing at a very respectable rate.
This trend has been accompanied by an aggressive marketing campaign and a strategic alliance with Freedom WeaponSys, which provides many of the armament systems for Barslich’s off-the-shelf paramilitary vehicle range. The wisdom of this move is debatable; Freedom has a dubious record when it comes to sales. Its weaponry has turned up in the hands of many revolutionaries and insurgent groups. However, in the short term the move seems to have made both firms a lot of money.
Exploration, Inc
Exploration, Inc is a small company with offices on a handful of worlds. It undertakes a variety of exploration and survey tasks on behalf of its clients, ranging from mapping through mineral surveys to search-and rescue. Personnel are also available as guides or advisors for private expeditions.
Personnel are usually recruited through a low-key advertising programme or by word of mouth. It is rare for untrained individuals or college graduates to be hired; more often prospective personnel have considerable experience as field scientists, military personnel or specialists in their own field. Colonists from ‘backwoods’ areas are sometimes recruited however, as they usually have extensive experience of the sort of conditions they might encounter in their new line of work, even if they lack formal training.
Exploration, Inc offers a training service for anyone willing to pay the fairly reasonable fee. The usual clients are engineers, surveyors or scientists expecting to work in remote areas or under difficult conditions, but large-scale programmes have also been set up to train prospective colonists. This seems to be a growing business, suggesting that a new wave of expansion or colonisation is being planned by a private organisation.
This theory is borne out by the fact that several Exploration, Inc parties have been hired to undertake mapping and survey operations. The firm is discreet and does not reveal the details of its contracts, but the length of time that certain well-respected members of the Exploration, Inc staff have been out of circulation suggests that they have visited very remote worlds or possibly undertaken a very long-term project, perhaps as part of a training contract.
Exploration, Inc also undertakes its own survey and exploration missions, usually selling the data gained on the open market. It has an extensive pay-for-access database and also sells ‘blind surveys’. These are the results of detailed investigations of a set area, usually a 100km square region of a planet, moon or asteroid. They include details of mineral resources and other economic prospects and are offered for sale, as the name suggests, ‘blind’. The client gets the survey for a small fee. It might contain the key to riches, or it might not.
For an additional fee the client can ask who else has bought this data, and/or request that it be taken off the market. Critics have suggested that Exploration, Inc is not only selling data on worthless areas in many cases, but actually sells it several times over. The firm counters by pointing out that the surveys are undertaken at its own expense, which is incurred whether or not something useful is found, and that the cost of finding out that a region is not very economically useful from a third-party survey is rather lower than the price of sending an expedition.
Alex Kein
Alex Kein is an explorer-for-hire. He usually, but not always, works on contract through Exploration, Inc. He can, however, be hired privately. A fairly unassuming individual of late middle years, Kein has an excellent track record as both an instructor and a field operative.
Kein is able to cope with most environments but is most closely associated with rugged, mountainous terrain. He has climbed many notable peaks and was the first person to reach the summit of Mount Ailer on the airless moon Woldak by climbing. Others have landed directly to the summit, but Alex Kein was the first to ascend in a specially made space suit.
Kein is an inveterate adventurer and does not like to be idle. As a result he often becomes involved in almost childish stunts between contracts. He climbs trees like an eight-year-old and will sometimes leave a building via an upstairs window just for fun – and much to the consternation of passers-by in the street.
These foibles aside, Kein is an expert in his field, able to advise on a range of subjects. Although he is an outdoorsman rather than a researcher or engineer, he has accompanied so many archaeological or scientific expeditions that he can handle many complex instruments, and knows a wide range of specialist techniques. He does not mind helping out with research, surveying or scientific tasks, especially if the subject seems interesting or he gets along well with the team he is accompanying. However, those that try to treat Alex Kein as a research assistant or extra pair of unskilled hands usually receive a blunt reminder about his capabilities and what he was actually hired to do.
This trait has cause Alex Kein to fall out with a number of eminent scientists and explorers, and there is now a significant list of people he will not work with (or who will not work with him). This is of no real consequence to Kein providing the matter is left to lie, but he is intolerant of any suggestion that problems on an expedition might be his fault. Kein is currently involved in a long war of words with Dr Erich Magunnen. This takes the form of articles and counter-articles published in the exploration and scientific journals that both write for.
The Kein/Magunnen dispute began over a decade ago during an expedition to some frontier area that neither will name for client-confidentiality reasons. It seems that the team was sent to follow up a good lead that should have led to new plant-based pharmaceuticals. Magunnen insists that Kein all but sabotaged the expedition by being uncooperative, while Kein alleges that Magunnen was taking excessive risks with the safety of his field personnel, and that his data was useless anyway due to sloppy technique among the scientists. Magunnen counters that Kein is a machete-happy yokel who is not qualified to comment on scientific technique… and the debate rages on. Many readers avidly await the next issue of Field Team Monthly to read the latest instalment in a saga that shows no signs of ending any time soon.
When not battling with equally eminent figures in the specialist press, Kein is available to train or lead all manner of expeditions. He tends to be selective about the jobs he takes, favouring ‘something interesting’ over financial considerations. In between interesting commissions he takes training jobs, but although most experts of his age tend to settle into a training role Kein seems to genuinely prefer to get out into the field and will take a training contract only to pass the time until someone comes along with an intriguing destination.
Stuff and Nonsense
Somewhere in the bowels of RSS Avenger there is an auxiliary cargo bay. Its floor is strewn with a variety of items and objects sent to us by manufacturers in the hope that they, out of all the companies that have tried, will somehow manage to convince us that their stuff is worth the effort of getting the package, box or crate open. In keeping with our mission to review and report, we go in there from time to time and grab whatever’s nearest the door. The dampers in the bay are a bit dodgy, so stuff gets stirred around when the ship manoevres. The resulting random selection of objects then accompanies us planetside and when there’s time, we play with stuff and try to break it. This is called a ‘comprehensive product review service’ in case you’re interested.
Barslich Automotive ‘FGV-4’ Open-Frame Ground Vehicle
Type: Small Vehicle, 2-seat.
The FGV-4 (Fast Ground Vehicle, 4 Wheels; imaginative huh?) is basically a four-wheel-drive chassis with big balloon tyres and a pair of seats up front and a cargo area in back, with an electric fuel-cell system powering motors in each of four heels. A lightweight tubular frame acts as a roll cage and attachment point for equipment… and the white knuckles of the crew.
There are many ‘dune buggies’ of this sort on the market, but Barslich have tried to expand their potential market by building in a number of paramilitary features. The FGV-4 has an excessively good suspension for its weight, allowing it to carry additional equipment across very rough terrain. Its tyres are filled with self-sealing gel and give enough buoyancy that the vehicle can cross calm water, albeit semi-submerged with the crew’s butts in the water.
The FGV-4 the usual basic lights and controls, plus seats for two and room for a fair bit of equipment in the back, or an extra crewmember standing up and clinging on to the frame. There is also a mounting post for a light support weapon such as a belt-fed grenade launcher or a machinegun. The post can also carry a wide array of military or civilian instrumentation, making the vehicle popular with explorers, surveyors and field science teams.
The FGV-4 is pretty robust. We smashed it into a variety of objects (sometimes deliberately) and rolled it a bunch of times. We also carried out a ‘gunfire test’ with an assortment of weaponry. What we found was that the vehicle’s frame doesn’t offer all that much protection to the crew but there is a reasonable chance that rounds meant for the crew might hit the frame, seat backs or solid parts of the chassis. These will stop or deflect smallarms bullets reasonably well, and the vehicle’s components are fairly resistant to damage.
For additional protection, plastic inserts are available for the sides and front. These include skirts to cover part of the tyres and a bullet-resistant windshield. Protection is somewhat improved, but the vehicle becomes a bit claustrophobic despite the open top. It’s hard to avoid banging elbows into the inserts every time you try to do anything, including steering, so the inserts may not be a great idea.
Flat out on a road, this buggy can top 145kph. This can be increased to over 170kph with some alterations to the power delivery systems (basically, we ripped out the safety governor) but it’s not an especially good idea. The powerplant drains very fast at high speed and the motors need a lot of careful maintenance to avoid a really spectacular failure. Incidentally, the tyre gel is flammable. It takes a lot to get it going… say a really spectacular failure in the overheated motor next to it. You get the picture. Oh, and the vehicle is unstable to the point of being totally uncontrollable at anything over 150kph. But apart from that, high speed is a great idea.
Offroad performance is pretty decent, at about 38kph on rough ground and more on flat grassland. Hill climbing (and flight distance off the top of small ridges) is also pretty good. In crawl mode (super low gear) the FGV-4 can climb a frighteningly steep slope and can cross a thirty-degree side slope with ease. It has a self-rescue winch with a rocket to assist deployment for those times when the driver gets a bit too ambitious or when a damp hollow turns out to be a full-on swamp. With quicksand. Don’t ask.
Overall: Not the cheapest of buggies, but it’s a quality offering. Good off the road, robust, and with more carrying capacity than most similar vehicles. The FGV-4 is not sold as a fun-buggy (though it is great fun, especially once you tear out the safety governors), but as a high-performance working vehicle for explorers and the like. It’s also been adopted as a Fast Attack Vehicle by various security forces and militias. With a light support weapon aboard it’s a reasonably competent combatant, so long as you don’t actually want to hit anything when firing on the move. That’s a bit much to ask from a vehicle that was built to bounce.
Bush Pistol and Carbine
Type: Smoothbore revolver and carbine
Weapons of this sort are produced all over Edge, usually on a cottage-industry basis by craftspersons who fix or make a range of mechanical devices. Most weapons fit a general type, but it is not uncommon to encounter significant variations in barrel length and quality of decoration. What rarely differs is lethality – these weapons are pretty crude but they hit real hard and they’re reliable under almost any circumstances.
The locals on Edge mostly use a 14mm cartridge and favour carbines in the same calibre rather than carrying two different types of ammunition. They refer to their weapons as ‘bush pistols’ and ‘bush carbines’, and generally handle them well. However, where possible those who expect to use weaponry on a frequent bases try to obtain more conventional hardware.
The revolvers we tried were all very long-barreled models; most were in the 25 to 35cm range. All were single-action, needing to be thumbcocked after every shot. This may have been a regional foible, but we got the impression that it’s much the same everywhere. The long barrel somewhat compensates for the lack of accuracy inherent in a smoothbore weapon, but all the same the handguns had a very short accurate range. That’s fine; most shooters can’t hit anything with a pistol beyond a few metres anyway.
Bush revolvers are fed through a loading gate behind the cylinder, with the weapon at half-cock to allow the cylinder to revolve. We did indeed have one go off at half-cock. The recoil from such a large cartridge is impressive, and also produces a very impressive flare of flame from the muzzle when firing at night. When the weapon goes off whilst jammed between your knees, well… let’s just say that it was an unforgettable experience.
The carbines we tried out used the same cartridge, fed from a six-round internal tube magazine under the barrel. This is loaded though a gate, with rounds chambered manually. The mechanism varies from one maker to another. Some favour bolt-action, some use a lever that doubles as a trigger guard. Pump-action carbines are less common but are sometimes encountered. What they have in common is an extremely robust action that is very hard to break and easy to fix even under field conditions. The same comment applies to the revolvers.
Both weapons are serviceable and fairly easy to use despite their considerable recoil. Maintenance is extremely simple, and cleaning is easy. That’s just as well, as the local propellant causes excessive fouling. Being smoothbores, these weapons have a short range but hit hard at close quarters. Many locals carry their weapon with a shot cartridge rather than ball as the first to be fired, mainly to deal with small but nasty critters. Shot cartridges have an even shorter range than ball, but the spread of shot is sometimes worth the tradeoff. Performance at close range is pretty similar between both rounds.
Overall: These are big, manly guns that made us feel good about ourselves. We liked the commonality of ammunition between carbine and pistol, and we all learned to respect their robust nature. We all agreed that we’d rather trust our lives to something a little more advanced, though.
Colonial Essentials Inc. ‘Bush Buddy’ Individual Field Kit
Type: Equipment package, cheesy
Colonial Essentials Incorporated (CEI) produce a fascinating array of things that they want gullible tourists to think they need for trips outside of town. Most of this stuff is just about serviceable for a picnic in the park but would cause the average frontier colonist to die laughing. However, some of their gear is actually quite good. It’s overpriced though, and covered with logos that would be pretty cheesy in their own right even if they didn’t identify the user as a clueless noob who’s never been further into the outback than the garden fence.
The ‘Bush Buddy’ pack supposedly contains everything an explorer absolutely must have for a trip into the outback. The gear is usable and of decent quality, and we have to admit that it does constitute a decent basic outfit of bush gear. But there is no way you’re going to convince us that all those tassels and fringes are necessary.
For your 175 credits you get a pair of reasonably good waterproof hiking boots and a set of gaiters that attach to the top of the boots. These are a bit uncomfortable but they’re tough and will protect the lower leg from small animal bites, thorns and the like, and from damp conditions. They don’t keep out water if you leap into a stream however, and they won’t stop a knife. Yes, we tried.
There is also a sleeveless windproof jerkin with many pockets, plus a tan Pseudohide ‘frontier jacket’, complete with tassels along the sleeves and across the shoulder blades, plus a matching wide-brimmed hat. Both are tough and reasonably weatherproof, and for a mere 25 credits more you can get them ‘pre-weathered’ for that rugged outdoorsperson look. Yeah, right. You don’t get trousers or a shirt in this pack, but CEI do sell a nice range of tasseled tan pesudohide trousers and lumberjack shirts at a merely outrageous price.
The rest of the kit fits in the jerkin pockets or on a broad waist belt which has a single diagonal shoulder strap for additional support. From this hangs an unfeasibly large machete (which we found performs similarly to the standard Blade for all its awesome size), a water bottle with filters and a clever little dispenser for water purification tablets, and a large pouch for other items.
CEI seem to think that it is permanently dark in the outback. The front of the belt’s supporting strap has loops for no less than 26 small chemical lightsticks. These are pretty decent and provide about 5 hours of good light and maybe 90 minutes more of increasing dimness. There is also a pendant that can hold a lightstick around your neck, enabling you to ruin your night vision and fall over stuff more effectively. More bizarrely, there are also holders on the hat (the brim creates a shadow so you still can’t see where you’re putting your feet) and on the boots (so you can see the ground for nearly a whole metre in any direction). Fortunately, there is also a generator flashlight which is charged up by squeezing it repeatedly. This can be switched between a narrow beam and a dim beacon, and has a backup battery good for a few hours.
Within the pouch is a poncho/tarpaulin type object which serves as a reasonable groundsheet for a picnic or barely adequate rain protection if worn. There is also a fire-starting kit which assumes that the user is a total incompetent. Rather than the usual basic tools that can be used for years, this kit contains four twin-tube chemical firestarters which self-ignite when the tubes are twisted together. Apparently they’re perfectly safe until you want to use them.
There is also a large supply of candy… officially it’s ‘two days of highly nutritious iron rations’, but this stuff is not really iron rations as such. The food bars are nutritious enough, but they’re also so tasty that they tend to be devoured within the first hour of a field trip. In fact, CEI really should get out of the exploration market and just make luxury chocolates. You can buy refills for the kit’s disposables, but you can’t just get the food bars. As a result we have a huge pile of spare firestarters and light sticks, but no food bars.
Overall: It actually does have a bunch of stuff you might need, and it is useable. But expect sniggers. Lots of sniggers.
Colonial Essentials Inc. ‘Still Buddy’ Field Distilling Unit
Type: Field still/boozemaker
The Still Buddy claims to be an electrically powered purification unit for use in the field. Well, you can use it for that, or you can make booze in it. It’s basically an electrically powered heater unit with an evaporator/condenser and a series of switchable containers, allowing re-distillation or takeoff of the early part of a run. The unit has a decent internal battery, good for a couple of days of operation, or can run on external power.
Depending on what you need, the Still Buddy can be used to extract moisture from any water-bearing material – plant leaves or even wet sand works fine – or to distill clean water from whatever murky filth is available. This could be vital to a field expedition, and many small communities in the outback use similar devices to provide fresh water. However, water is not the only thing that can be distilled with this device,
It is possible to distill or purify a range of other fluids, such as fuel oils, to remove impurities. This makes the water taste funny (at best) however, so it is best to use a spare set of internal pipes or at least thoroughly flush the system a few dozen times. Best of all, the Still Buddy can be used to distill spirits for medical, fuel or recreational use. What you get out depends very much on what you put in, and the maturation process tends to be a bit short in the field. The resulting booze is a bit rough, but entirely drinkable. In fact, the more you drink, the more acceptable it becomes.
Overall: It’s compact, portable, and it works. The logos on the outside are a bit embarrassing and the system is more than a bit power-hungry, but overall this is a decent piece of kit that gets the job done.
Colonial Essentials Inc. ‘Truck Buddy’ Vehicular Field Kit
Type: Equipment package, vehicular, cheesy
We’re not entirely sure whether this is supposed to be a survival kit, picnic set or something in between; the designers probably didn’t either. It’s designed to be carried in any vehicle and – we think – cover the interstellar law requirement for a survival package as well as providing a range of useful camping equipment.
The kit comes in an impressively compact hard plastic box, which has three compartments. One is large and contains most of the items that will see frequent use, while the other two are smaller. Of these, one contains the survival-kit type stuff and the other is for food and other essentials.
The ‘food’ box comes packed with goodies. CEI claim to produce ‘nutritious iron rations’ but in reality their stuff has about half the food value and ten times the taste of real survival food. Some of the ration bars are a bit odd, with flavours like Chilli Cheeseburger and Vegetarian Caesar Salad. Textures vary as well, ranging from a soft cake block to a crunchy, nutty type bar, which tends to shatter when bitten. There’s something rather odd about a beef and mustard flavour cake bar but it tastes okay.
Also in the food box is a small electric stove with an ingenious set of pots that can be used to cook totally inadequate amounts of stew or other foodstuffs. Providing you’re not in a hurry, or actually hungry, the stove is entirely useable. It has an internal battery but is normally powered using a lead from a larger power cell in the box. This in turn can be kept charged by plugging it into a vehicle power supply.
The survival kit is a bit basic, to say the least. It contains a small medical box that would be better suited to the bathroom wall than the wild outback, a hatchet, two of the bluntest survival knives ever made, a box of 24 twist-to-burn firestarters, about a million chemical lightsticks (120 actually), a squeeze-to-charge flashlight and a water purification kit. The latter is a bit superfluous given that the box not only does the same job but, if power is available, chills it.
We discovered – quite a while after opening the kit – that the box has a false bottom which contains several cells for storing water. It is filled up through a concealed (we missed it for quite a while) foldout funnel and runs in through a set of pretty good filters. Gunk is removed through a tray in the very bottom of the box, and fresh water is dispensed from a fold-out tap located on – for some reason – the back corner. It is pumped out (rather vigorously) if the power cell is charged. If there is no power or you like exercise you can fold a little hand pump out of the opposite back corner and work for your drink.
The main box seems to be aimed at the typical one-kit-per-4 people setup favoured by firms that make actually useful outback gear. That’s a bit harsh, but only a little; the stuff in this kit is useable but on the whole not very good. There are four pretty decent silver rain poncho/blankets, four warmish and slightly windproof sleeveless jerkins, four entirely serviceable respirators and goggles to go with them, eight waterproof (ish) sheets and a bunch of poles that can be used to make a tent/windbreak/shelter/pile of poles depending on what is needed and the skill of the users.
The box also contains a basic toolkit with adjustable spanners, screwdrivers, hammers, a chisel, saws and the like. The tools are entirely serviceable, as is a rather peculiar foldout pole/ladder device that was included for some reason. There is also a vast amount of cord/rope that can be used for climbing, and an assortment of hand-coverings including thick gardening and thin plastic surgical-type gloves, plus waterproof over-mittens. There may be some logic to this sudden obsession with gloves, but we couldn’t figure it out. More usefully, there are also four handheld fire extinguishers.
Repacking everything once you’ve had anything out of the box can be a problem as there is little spare space. Our kit ended up buried under a pile of stuff we just couldn’t get back in the box, but if you can get everything back in, it doesn’t take up much room.
Overall: We’re still not sure what to make of this one. It contains some useful stuff and some semi-junk. Perhaps the best feature is the fact that if you dump out the food side of the box and turn the water chiller right up, it’ll keep a considerable number of beers ice cold until the power runs out. What could be more important to wilderness survival than that?
Colonial Essentials Inc. ‘Big Gamer’ Electrically-operated Crossbow
Type: Crossbow, with added gizmos
Well, this is an interesting piece of kit. It’s essentially a technological take on the ‘repeating crossbow’ concept seen in innumerable fantasy adventure vids. The weapon itself is a powerful but lightweight carbon-fibre crossbow similar to the ones used by hunters who feel that it is more sporting, or more challenging, to hunt with a bow rather than a firearm. However, this weapon takes itself out of the back-to-basics category by including an electric recocking mechanism and auto-reloading from a three-round bolt holder under the body of the weapon. This gives the user four shots; one on the string and three reloads.
The Big Gamer also has an advanced sight which normally operates as a fairly simple passive optical unit. The sight can be switched between light-amplification, thermal and holographic zoom modes, and can also make use of its built-in laser rangefinder/beam pointer for added unfairness. All this is powered by a battery which has petty good endurance provided the electronics are not left constantly running.
Overall: An amusing oddity at best. It will probably sell really well to would-be stealth assassins, ever since Dan Raymon used one in an episode of Silent Warrior. It does what it is supposed to do, but seriously people… if you want a gun then just buy a damn gun.
Freedom WeaponSys ‘Freedom Weapon System’
Type: Firearm Kit, Projectile
Freedom WeaponSys is well known for its basic, no-frills firearms and liberal sales policy. Alongside their more standard gear they also offer this rather interesting mid-tech modular personal weapon system, which is based on their popular MG55 light machinegun and R54 assault rifle. Many parts are common with those weapons, making maintenance simple and, just as important, cheap.
The kit is based around a 5mm fully-automatic receiver. This is of standard layout, with the magazine well located in front of the trigger guard and a fairly typical pistol grip. The weapon has a rather basic selector which functions like an on/off switch; the weapon can either fire full-automatic or not at all. There is an insert in the kit that converts the rifle to semi-automatic should the user want to fit it. Most people do not.
The magazine well can take a 32-round ‘rifle’ magazine (8 are supplied) or a 150-round ‘support’ magazine (you get four. That’s 600 rounds of mayhem. And it’s heavy so you’ll want to get rid of some of it ASAP). Either magazine can be used with any set of accessories, unless a grenade launcher is fitted. The support magazine is too large to permit this; it blocks part of the space needed for the launcher.
The receiver can take any self-contained sighting system and has a reasonable set of iron sights. A very rugged 4x scope and an optical reflex sight are both supplied. The latter is an effective aid to point-and shoot combat at fairly short range and, with some skill, can be used for a sort of pseudo-sniping at surprisingly long ranges.
The kit contains three barrels: short, standard and heavy. The short barrel is intended for urban combat, vehicle crew use and so forth. It reduces the accuracy of ranged fire somewhat… well, quite a lot actually. It also causes the muzzle to climb rapidly under autofire. The heavy barrel is intended either for machinegun mode or with the semi-auto insert to create a mediocre sniping rifle.
All barrels can take one accessory. This can be a Freedom WeaponSys grenade launcher, but sadly one is not included in the kit. A bayonet, bipod and vertical assault foregrip are all supplied. Swapping between them is extremely awkward due to the nature of the fittings, which are designed to take a range of accessories and thus are both large and complex. Many users fit one accessory to each barrel and swap the whole front end of the weapon, which takes about three minutes rather than the fifteen required to change accessories without detaching the barrel.
The back end of the weapon is also configurable. A full stock and a skeletonised folding stock are both provided, or it can be left off entirely. We found the full stock to be very usable and robust enough to bash things with, whereas the folding stock is a bit flimsy and causes the weapon to wriggle around alarmingly under autofire.
Trying out the obvious configurations, we used a heavy barrel and full stock to create a pretty poor sniping weapon or a decent light support weapon. However, the barrel is prone to overheat under autofire. This is normal with mid-tech support weapons; most come with one or more spare barrels and quick-change fittings. This weapon does not, limiting its utility in the support role.
As an assault rifle with medium barrel, folding stock and bayonet we found the FWS entirely usable. Nothing special, but certainly a decent tool. However, the bayonet sometimes gets in the way. Removing it is a long job, as noted above, so you either fit it or you don’t. It can’t be used as a knife when dismounted, by the way, because of the great block of fittings associated with it.
The short barrel and vertical foregrip, used with a folding stock or, better, without a stock at all, creates a light and handy assault carbine. It just begs to be fired from the hip as you leap out of a vehicle or kick a door in. A word to the wise though… trying to leap from a vehicle and kick a door in at the same time is not a good plan. With a 32-round magazine the weapon is very handy and manouvrable in close combat. With the 150-round box it’s… not. Firepower is awesome, but you can utterly ruin the barrel in the course of a single firefight. Freedom offer replacements at a reasonable price, but you have to buy them in multiples to be worth the shipping cost.
Freedom also offer a ‘platoon kit’ built around this modular weapon system. It contains enough parts to put together three heavy-barrel support weapons, three heavy-barrel semi-automatic scoped marksman’s rifles, twenty assault barrel/full stock assault rifles and ten short barrel/foregrip/folding stock carbines. You also get 200 32-round magazines and 10 150-round magazines plus 20,000 rounds of ammunition. It costs 25,000 credits, which seems like a bargain to us. If Freedom WeaponSys send us one we’ll let you know whether it is or not.
Overall: Basically, this is an assault rifle for people who don’t know exactly what they want. It’s fun to play around with the configurations, but really it’s only good value if you need the flexibility.
Hawken Armaments ‘IDW’
Type: Shotgun, short
Hawken is a small company specializing in the self-defence and personal security end of the market. The firm manufactures some of its own gear and outsources the rest, acting as a marketing brand for several small manufacturers. Standards are reasonably high for the budget end of the marketplace, and Hawken gear is generally well respected.
The IDW (‘Installation Defence Weapon’) is a short, stockless, pistol-grip shotgun with a stubby barrel. The underbarrel magazine holds three rounds, plus one in the chamber if the user desires. These weapons are designed to be held in a wall bracket on the bridge of a starship, in an airlock or a security office, clipped under a desk… maybe in the door of your personal vehicle… in short, anywhere that there might be a sudden need for an easily manouvred but deadly close-quarters weapon.
The IDW is basic but entirely serviceable. The pump action is robust and works fine even in vacuum. Lubrication is vacuum-proof too, and since most propellants contain oxygen, any available shotshells will do. The action is very tolerant of mud and grit (not that you get much of that in space) and will also handle slightly irregular ammunition such as our gunnery officer’s hand-loaded shells. There are extremely ‘hot’ loads which might strain a less robust weapon, but Hawken’s IDW handled them without exploding or otherwise malfunctioning.
The weapon can be bought ‘as is’ for 120 credits. For that, you get the gun and nothing else. That’s fine if you plan to clip it into a bracket (10 credits each from Hawken, or much less if you visit a hardware store and buy some of your own) or leave it in a drawer. Alternatively, you can buy four guns (just the guns, no ammunition or accessories) and four brackets for 400 credits, or a slightly more comprehensive pack.
The IDW pack costs Cr150. For that you get the gun, 50 shells, a basic cleaning kit, a shoulder sling and a belt rig. This has holders for a couple of dozen shells and also an attachment point for the weapon so that it doesn’t swing about quite as much when it’s slung. The shotgun is secured by a breakaway device that actually works quite well – it holds when you want it to and releases when you need the weapon.
Finally, Hawken also offer a low-powered training/non-lethal shell filled with small plastic beads that sting like hell. There are those that question the wisdom of using training rounds in a standard weapon like this, since you can’t tell what is in the chamber and thus the possibility of accidents is… not inconsiderable. There are those who will tell you that good safety procedures will eliminate this possibility. We’re not sure either way; we just now know that it is possible to miss repeatedly with a shotgun whilst having a firefight in an airlock… and that the training ammunition does not make the gun itself safe when used as a club.
Overall: A nice little weapon, but very much a ‘grab gun’ rather than something you’d take into a firefight if you had the choice.
Hawken Armaments ‘PAW’
Type: Submachinegun, large calibre, low-recoil
Hawken’s ‘PAW’ (or Personal Assault Weapon) is built around the standard low-recoil/large calibre round used by shipboard security personnel. As such, it is an effective low-gravity weapon but this is not its primary role. Instead, Hawken has created a range of weapons designed to take advantage of the specialist ammunition types manufactured for shipboard weapons.
The PAW lies right on the borderline between an assault pistol (a handgun designed or adapted for autofire) and a true submachinegun. Where most assault pistols are obviously pistols and use an external slide, the PAW has an internal bolt and no external moving parts. However, it is apparently designed to be fired one-handed. There is no foregrip nor anywhere to put your hand in front of the trigger guard – not without removing parts of your fingers, anyway. A two-handed pistol-shooting stance works well enough, with both hands on the grip. Since there is no slide, you can alternatively put your hand over the top of the weapon, but this is awkward until you get used to it.
The PAW is fed from a custom magazine that slots into a holder on the top of the weapon. It is pushed forward into place, which suggests to us that the designers expected shooters to use the hand-on-top steadying position. However, this weapon really works best in a one-handed spray-and-pray mode.
Recoil is low with all ammunition types, making autofire surprisingly controllable. This is just as well, as the PAW has a very high rate of fire. Performance of the standard ball round is as expected, i.e. pretty disappointing compared to a standard handgun in a similar calibre. However, once we loaded up with high explosive, things began to happen. As in, explosions, property damage and the occasional small fire. The HEAP (High Explosive Armour-Piercing) round is equally destructive, and also penetrates well so you can blow stuff up on the other side of a fence.
Overall: Yeah, okay, this one works. It’ll punch through a light flak jacket and turn the occupant into soup. Should you ever have to deal with a group of lightly armoured assailants, a PAW might not be a bad choice. And one-handed autofire with explosive ammuntion is something everyone should experience. Ideally from a safe distance.
Hawken Armaments ‘PDW’
Type: Handgun, large calibre, low-recoil
Hawken’s ‘PDW’ (or Personal Defence Weapon) uses the standard low-recoil shipboard round, but like some other Hawken offerings it is not intended for low-g combat. It works well enough in space, but it is basically a small self-defence pistol that takes advantage of specialist ammunition intended for spacefarers.
The PDW looks and functions like a conventional semi-automatic pistol in most ways. It has a concealed hammer and no sights or other protrusions to snag on clothing. The only safety device is the somewhat heavy double-action trigger pull. This makes shooting a fairly deliberate act. There is little chance of accidental discharge – if you pull the trigger then this weapon believes that it is within its rights to believe that you want to shoot, and will act accordingly.
With no sights and a heavy double action, the PDW is not a target weapon, but then it does not pretend to be one. It is a self-defence tool intended for use at very close range, and within those limits it functions well. Ammunition performance is pretty much the same as the PAW, above.
The PDW comes in a nice box with three magazines and 50 rounds of ball ammunition, plus a holster which can be fitted to any belt or within most other clothing. Alternatively, you can buy a pair of PDWs with nice chequer-pattern grips and a double shoulder rig, plus a total of six magazines and 100 rounds of ball ammunition, for Cr300. It’s a nice little gift set that might be suitable for your aunt’s birthday.
Overall: The PDW is small and easy to carry, and can be brought into action quickly without snagging on your clothing. It makes a very convincing noise and can be used to dispose of bad guys. We found the trigger pull tiring during extended testing, but for a desperate adrenaline-fuelled firefight that’s not much of an issue. The ball round lacks stopping power but the HE or HEAP, if you can get them, are more than sufficient.
Hawken Armaments ‘PEW’
Type: Handgun, large calibre, low-recoil
Hawken’s ‘PEW’ (or Personal Emergency Weapon) also uses the 10mm shipboard cartridge. It is simply a single-barreled derringer type weapon chambered for a big round, enabling you to cause someone to suffer a personal emergency. There is no safety device as such, just a firing pin disconnector that prevents the weapon discharging unless the trigger is pulled. The double-action trigger is every bit as heavy as on Hawken’s other self-defence weapons, but that is probably a good thing in this case.
Reloading uses a tip-down break-open action, whereby the barrel is swung down on a pivot and the expended round is vigorously shaken out. That’s important; spent rounds are notoriously reluctant to come out for some reason. Not that it should matter – if things are dire enough that you have deployed a derringer and you need to reload, chances are your troubles will soon be over.
One rather nice feature is that the improbably short barrel has a chromed ring around it, making it seem larger. You can’t actually see the chambered round by looking down the barrel, but the combination of large calibre and short barrel make it look like you have a railway tunnel pointed at you.
Overall: This is a surprisingly intimidating weapon for all its small size, which means that you might not have to fire it after all. If you do, then its explosive or HEAP round will stop most assailants cold – though you will almost certainly need a change of clothes afterwards. The ball round, as noted elsewhere, is not very powerful and might not be a good choice for last-ditch self-defence unless you can’t get anything better.
End Notes
This concludes our foray out to the very edge of civilisation… no pun intended. We’ve been given instructions to swing back into Twilight sector on a survey mission, but the captain will probably ignore them. He’s got that look that suggests he wants to head off into the great unknown and make heroic discoveries. We’re hoping that means more exploration of Crescent sector, because the big dark is awful close and there’s probably no good restaurants out there.
So if we go off the net for a while, you know where we’ll be. Out there… somewhere.
RSS Avenger, signing off.
Summer 2010
