Starfarers Gazette 4

Editorial: Still Here
They say that no plan survives contact with the enemy. Nor with the crew of RSS Avenger, it seems. Our plans to move on elsewhere have been put on hold for a while for various reasons; not least while we get enough of our people out of the slammer to actually crew the ship.

So we're still here at Terra/Sol, exploring this enigmatic world and its impressive array of fermented and distilled beverages. There’s a lot here to see and do, and we’ve only just scratched the surface so far. And we didn’t really scratch it all that much. They did make us pay for the damage, all the same…

This time around we have some insider info on Terra/Sol and its people, places and business opportunities plus the usual reviews and general abuse heaped upon the guns, gadgets and gear we’ve been sent to review.

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.

So, without further rambling let me welcome you to Starfarer’s Gazette #4. In these pages you will find an array of ill-assorted but highly useful data. We have a report on places on Terra/Sol so you can pretend you’ve been there, a couple of starfarers’ tales to amaze and impress your in-laws, features on institutions, corporations and starships we’ve encountered, plus of course the usual reviews and abuse flung at the goodies we’ve been sent to review.

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, here we go. What could possibly go wrong?

Ports of Call

En Route Through Nova Parthia
We entered Nova Parthia overland, from the Caspian Scatter to the north. They wouldn’t let our shuttles use their spaceports; maybe they’ve heard of us. But anyway, the contrast between the Scatter and Nova Parthia is pretty stark.

The Scatter is a region of small city-states and the occasional league or alliance, with enclaves belonging to larger powers here and there. The cities tend to be fairly individual and distinct from one another. There is enough good land around each, and sufficient distance between, that conflict is not a way of life in the Scatter. Indeed, there are some pacifistic cultures there and they haven’t been overrun or murdered yet.

Nova Parthia is a rather different proposition. There is a trans-border zone dotted with obstacles, bunkers and the occasional minefield, which extends about ten miles each side of the border. Our impression was that, however difficult the local officials were about us entering their nation, they were more concerned with keeping their own citizens in.

Anyone found anywhere near the border needs a good reason to be there or they’ll be arrested by guards who seem disappointed when the suspects don’t run or resist. We heard gunfire as we passed through, and nobody seemed to be concerned. Best guess is it’s normal. It seemed best not to ask.

The trans-border zone would not stop a major assault, but then it is very unlikely that one would be mounted from the Scatter. This broad, bunker-strewn strip of cleared land with no hiding places is very effective at preventing infiltration in either direction, and of course at the border itself there are strict controls.

Once we got into the country, we found it to be a bit grim. Nova Parthia has a lot of desert, with rocky highlands for variety. Some areas of the nation are very sparsely populated, mainly because they’re crappy places to live. Cities are concentrated near natural resources or sources of water.

Everywhere we went there were armed people wearing the same clothes. We’ll not grace these guys with the terms ‘military’ or even ‘paramilitary’ – for the most part these were badly trained pseudo-militias masquerading as some component of the armed forces. There are some better formations, such as the National Army and the Border Guard, but every city seems to have several other armed organisations, and they’re not choosy about who they recruit. Nor do they seem to have heard of ‘discipline’, ‘training’ or ‘personal hygiene’.

These militias or whatever they are seem to be variously loyal to local political figures or business entities, and are supposedly responsible for protecting their patron’s interests. In practice, this seems to mean fighting among themselves for greater influence within their home city. The ‘fighting’ is mostly a matter of armed posturing, with groups making sure nobody forgets they’re there and getting into pointless disputes about which part of what street is in or out of someone else’s jurisdiction.

The militias do occasionally end up exchanging shots, usually when a confrontation boils over. These matters are generally kept within limits, with few fatalities, but they do lead to feuds among the groups. And then, of course, there’s the matter of open rebellion.

Nova Parthians certainly like their revolts and insurrections. While we were in the country we encountered three different rebellions. One was a relatively polite affair, with civil disobedience and strikes as the main tools. That didn’t stop the authorities from sending in their goons (the ones that weren’t involved in the revolt, anyway) to beat up anyone who looked the least bit rebellious. There was also an armed standoff between the supporters of two influential political figures in the city of Birjand, and a full-scale insurrection going on in the outback.

None of these situations seemed to be in any way related to one another, and nobody seemed inclined to make any connections. That seemed odd to us; surely they’d be more likely to succeed if they made common cause with other rebels? But that’s just it; there are no common causes in Nova Parthia. Just loads of people who are unhappy with the government and one another to varying degrees.

For all the blatant militarism and the vast number of people wandering around wearing various uniforms, Nova Parthia’s armed forces are extremely ineffective. Not incompetent as such; the National Army troops we saw were smartly turned out and could handle small-unit tactics well enough. But even if they were much more competent than the local political paramilitaries, they were poorly led and unenthusiastic about tackling the rebels. We got the impression that was largely due to the fact that any time you put down a revolt in Nova Parthia, another springs up in its place. With no prospect of victory, why try too hard?

As to the rebels, we managed to slip away and contact one of the groups operating in the outback. What we found was a large number of vaguely disaffected people and a few with serious, clear-cut grievances, all opposing ‘The System’ as they call the government in Nova Parthia. Cooperation between the rebels was loose at best and mostly non-existent which places severe limitations on their effectiveness. There is apparently some sort of tacit understanding between authorities and rebels; so long as any given insurrection stays low-key then suppressing it remains such a low priority that it will probably never happen.

No rebel groups ever seem to become powerful enough to be a real challenge to The System; if the need presented itself, any given rebellion could be crushed. However, there are so many distractions and other minor insurgencies going on at any given time that the government is satisfied to just contain the problem until the rebels eventually fade away. Most insurgencies burn themselves out after a time.

That seems to be how Nova Parthia keeps a lid on its internal difficulties. It’s not in the interests of the rebel groups to make serious trouble; that would trigger a major response that they could not cope with. So instead we see occasional half-assed ambushes and incompetent snipers firing at (and usually missing) government personnel, raids that fail to obtain much in the way of supplies and weapons, responded to by half-hearted sweeps of the countryside by unenthusiastic and sometimes incompetent troops.

Overall, our main impression of Nova Parthia was one of enormous corruption within The System, which further hampers attempts to pacify the country. Elements of the government tend to fall out with one another on a frequent basis, and anyone who is too successful at dealing with his local rebels might become a threat to those mired in their own troubles. This is usually prevented by economic or political underhandedness, derailing the efforts of anyone who might rise above his fellows through actual competence.

As you might imagine, this isn’t a pleasant place to live. It’s hazardous at times and dangerously unstable at others. Probably the only reason Nova Parthia doesn’t implode into civil war is that local politics are so complex, with so many cross-cutting agendas. Nobody dares make a move because they can’t predict who their allies and enemies might be. There are plenty of groups in Nova Parthia that might make dangerous opponents, and others that would be equally hazardous as allies.

We were pretty glad when the south-west border zone came into sight. Getting through was a bit of an epic, but we got out. We even had some shirts made – they say ‘I went to Nova Parthia and couldn’t even get a crappy T-shirt’. We found it funny at the time.

That says a lot about our time in Nova Parthia.

CraterWe just couldn’t help ourselves.

When we heard about the city-state of Crater, located in the, yes, crater of an extinct volcano east of Lake Victoria, we just had to go see. After our road trip through the labyrinth of political agendas in Nova Parthia (and an actual road trip through Nova Parthia, which got pretty hairy at times), almost anywhere else seemed like a good idea. So, we wheeled our way overland to Sinai City and down the Nile Valley via the Trans-African Superhighway, and then…

… we boarded a solar-powered airship liner for passage to Crater.

Solar-powered airships. How cool is that? Well, it’s not only cool but also surprisingly comfortable, if a bit cramped. Crater manufacturers the flexible-solar-panel material they use to make the airship bag from, and not surprisingly uses a whole fleet of them for transport. Apparently they’re dirt cheap to run once you cover the build costs, and so long as you’re not in a hurry they’ll get you more or less anywhere.

There had been some trouble in the region when we arrived. We hoped it was something exciting, like maybe airship pirates, but we never found out. However, we did get an escort into the port at Crater itself from a gunship airship or whatever the locals call them. We had our noses pressed to the windows all the way, and almost missed the view.

That would have been a shame.

Crater rests in the volcanic crater atop Mount Edwards, which is a pretty big mountain. There are a few other mountains nearby, with deep jungle-filled valleys between. The contrast between bare rock and lush forest is breathtaking, or at least it seems to be until you crest the crater wall and look down on the city below. Then you see what breathtaking really looks like.

The crater is big, and Crater is a fairly small city. It covers the outer parts of the crater, surrounding a caldera in the centre. This is a shallow, warm lake with several islands. It’s a rather beautiful light blue due to minerals, and the vegetation of the islands is many-hued. It’s gorgeous, and the city takes nothing away from that.

Crater is a city of spires and terraces, partially underground in the crater rim and stacked up around the edges. The air/spaceport is located on a wide part of the rim, above the city, so you can look down the terraces as you descend for landing. The effect is hypnotic, creating a feeling of falling into that light blue lake which some of us thought was awesome and others found utterly terrifying. It was mostly flight personnel, i.e. pilots, that were disturbed. Probably something to do with the way the perspective messes with your judgement of angle and distance. Maybe it affected our airship pilot, maybe not. We got down okay though.

Crater has several research institutes and universities, largely due to its anomalous nature. Mount Edwards is one of the few major features of Terra/Sol that has no parallel on Earth, and that attracted attention when the world was first settled. However, we were disappointed to find that today most of the institutes are doing boring things like particle physics and advanced mathematical analysis of dataflow and market trends.

We’d hoped that the place would be full of crazy theorists and fringe scientists, but everything in Crater seemed to be straight-laced and sensible. Respectable, even. Turns out that the early investigations into what lies under Mount Edwards found a bunch of boring old lava tubes and not much else… except for piles of easily extractable minerals. So now there are several mining sites nearby that pay a percentage to the city, and that funded entry into the education-research-and-training marketplace.

That’s how Crater makes its money these days. Clever inventions like the solar panel fabric they make the airships from, training geologists and engineers for the mining companies, and a range of educational services from vocational training to highly specialised research. And no wild-eyed crazies. At least, not officially.

There had to be some, we theorised, so we went looking.

And we found them. The ‘proper’ universities are all respectable and corporate, but there are a few backstreet colleges that study the paranormal and the downright strange. It was at one of those that we met the members of the Ambley Expedition.

Professor Ambley (professor of what? We didn’t like to ask in case the answer was sensible and above-board, i.e. boring) is a dedicated explorer of Terra/Sol’s mysteries. Mount Edwards is one of the foremost of those. It’s a huge volcano with no parallel on Earth, with what Professor Ambley calls ‘something distinctly odd’ about its composition and the layout of its lava tubes. His explanation of exactly what was odd caused us to lose the will to live halfway through, so he moved on to the good stuff.

Basically, according to the delightfully disreputable Professor Ambley, Crater is built over a mountain that remains from before Terra/Sol was altered to become a parallel of Earth. There are a few such sites, widely separated, and Ambley thinks that these were the positions of key equipment in the terraforming (should we call it that? No idea. It’ll do, we suppose) process.

And according to Ambley some of that equipment might still be there, deep under the mountain in long-lost chambers. His expedition has made several forays into the maze of lava tubes, accessing some via the tube network and others by way of boreholes dug by the early investigators. Crater’s government has forbidden the drilling of more shafts, though Ambley claims that some mineral companies are still drilling holes illegally. ‘They don’t know what they’re risking’ he said in tones of dark warning, and then to our delight he added ‘or maybe they do…’

I seem to recall some of us actually applauded that sentence.

Turns out that the Ambley Expedition has spent literally weeks at a time down in the holes, tubes and shafts under Mount Edward. They’ve got a lovely 3D map of the upper tubes, with all kinds of anomalous sensor readings, odd sized tunnels and anything else that might be remotely out of the ordinary marked on it. There are a few disturbingly big lava tubes marked, as well as natural caverns and chambers. Most of these are not on the official maps of the mountain, for the good reason (say the authorities) that they’re entirely imaginary.

You can’t get to these deep caverns of course. There are blocked tunnels and even guarded access points to negotiate. These are ostensibly to allow genuine researchers to look for minerals while keeping out the crazies, but the Expedition’s guys hint that the authorities are going to a lot of trouble to prevent people from getting lost in caverns that supposedly don’t exist.

Whatever the truth of that, access is restricted and we couldn’t get in without local help. Not that we tried that hard; Ambley told us that there are ‘secret ways under the mountain’ that he knows about. We thought that sounded like he’d been reading too much Tolkein, but he insists that he knows how to get into the caverns that officially don’t exist, and he does have a huge collection of rock chips and mineral crystals to prove it. Not that it does prove anything of course, but he’s very proud of his collection all the same.

After we got stopped at the checkpoints, Professor Ambley offered to guide us down into the caverns. We accepted eagerly enough; who wouldn’t?. After due preparations (bathroom visit and a quick trip to the local shopping centre for sandwiches) we headed down into the bowels of Terra/Sol. Well, actually we got about 100m into a lava tube. And not even a very interesting one.

We were arrested by a patrol and thrown in the slammer. Funny thing, that. We were detained and then deported from Crater for ‘messing about in the tunnels’ or whatever the local legalese for that might be, and Ambley was released without charge. Some of our crew who hadn’t gone on the trip claim he was buying dinner for his ‘expedition’ guys that night in a very expensive restaurant, which was at odds with the generally down-at-heel image of his organisation.

Which begs the question… what if Ambley and others like him are there to trap outsiders who might otherwise venture into the caverns? What if their job is to be found by crazies like we must have seemed to be, and to prevent them from finding out what’s really down there? That’s clever and devious, so we like the idea. Unfortunately we can’t go back and find out because we’ve all been banned from the city and, worse, from flying on their airship fleet.

We thought about it and came up with several possible options: maybe Ambley is incompetent and/or a fake, or maybe we were unlucky. Maybe he and his people are a sting operation to prevent idiot treasure-hunters from getting killed in the lava tubes. Or maybe there’s something under Mount Edward that the locals don’t want anyone to know about.

We really like that idea…

Slices of Life

In The Hole
Mount Edward? You don’t care about Mount Edward. No you don’t. You just want to know about The Hole. Or so you think…

Yeah, I’ve seen it. I was on the first – the only – expedition to reach the bottom. They don’t let anyone near it these days. Actually, they don’t let anyone into the tunnels at all, not unless they’re nice tame government researchers who’ll not find anything they’re told not to, or mining surveyors who would kick an undiscovered civilisation aside to look for a copper deposit.

It was different in my day. You could get in through all kinds of entrances. Lava tubes, boreholes and natural fissures. Some of them are gone now. Just gone, like they were never there. Holes in mountains don’t just close up and vanish, but that’s what happened.

Of course we looked in the right places. The entrances are gone, I tell you. Gone.

But anyway, back then you could get in. We did, down a mining borehole for the first few hundred metres. That’s straight down a smooth-sided vertical shaft a metre wide. It broke through a cavern at about 300m down, so we set up base camp there and explored the tunnels over the next three months.

Yes, three months underground. That’s what I said.

Not all of us were down there all of that time. We rotated out to do sunlight-and-supplies duty. Feeding packages of food, water and pretty much everything else up and down the shaft. That was pretty unpleasant at times. We lost a chemical toilet at one point. A full one. It slipped out of the harness and dropped down the shaft, past the cavern and down to who-the-hell-knows-where. Maybe there was a mining survey team down there. Or perhaps our toilet is in a museum now, as an alien artifact discovered in a deep shaft.

Well, anyway. So we sent teams down the lava tubes and fissures leading from the cavern. We also abseiled down what became known as the ‘toilet shaft’ for a few hundred more metres. Nothing but darkness above and below, all but featureless, smooth borehole walls all around, just a metre-diameter pipe straight down to Hell itself for all we knew. We loved it at the time; it was uber cool, but some of us started to go a bit strange down there.

We never did find the bottom or what remained of our toilet. The Hole kinda focussed our attention once we found it.

And afterwards… well, anyway. We’d penetrated down real deep – maybe not as deep as the borehole, but certainly deeper than rational people should want to go into the ground. There was a twisty maze of lava tubes and a couple of vertical descents to deeper caverns – no more than fifty metres at a time, but that’s a lot of straight down when you add it all up. Finally we got to this really big cavern. Big? Huge. Enormous. Gigantic. Actually we don’t know how big it is, because our lights wouldn’t go far enough to reach the walls.

That’s an eerie feeling, by the way. Knowing that anything or anyone in the cavern can see your lights, see you, but you can’t see anything beyond the little bubble of illumination.

Well anyway, we were a bit over 3km down at this point, and it should have been really, really hot in there. It wasn’t. It was warm, but not excessively so. We found one wall and stopped looking for the others after we came across The Hole.

It was somewhere in the floor of the cavern, about 20m in diameter and not in any way uniform or anything like that. Kinda shaped like a rough ovoid with a few projections if you looked at it from above. There was a hot wind coming out of it. No sign of, you know, spouts of lava or anything like that, just a rough tube full of fall, so to speak. It went down and down and… well, you know.

Down.

There were loose pebbles and chips of rock around the place. I dropped one in, listened for it to hit bottom. Nothing. Tried bouncing one off the sides; still nothing after the first couple of bounces. Some of the others got upset at me for that, and even worse when I started dropping flares and lightsticks in. They just fell out of sight, and the way they lit the sides on the way down was hypnotic. Almost made me fall in.

There was this moment when we expected something to happen. Like drums to start up or something horrible to come leaping out of the pit. Nothing happened of course, except for the others yelling at me. I pointed out that if they were worried about disturbing some ancient evil sleeping under the mountain then maybe screaming abuse might not be the way to go, and that just made them madder. My buddy Jeff told me to go jump in The Hole if I wanted to find out what was down there.

So I did.

Not immediately of course. You think I’m crazy? Well, these days maybe. But not back then. Obsessive curiosity and all that, but no actual madness. No more than the average cave explorer, anyway…

No, we brought down all the rope we could get and I went down on a winch. Took a few days to prepare and… I don’t know exactly how long to get down there and back up. I fell asleep a couple of times during the descent and my chronometer malfunctioned. Or maybe I did the malfunctioning. It was hot and even with breathing gear it got pretty unpleasant. I suspect I might have started hallucinating after a while, since all I could see was rock wall whizzing past in my little bubble of light.

Eventually the lead cord hit something and the winch stopped me. The lead cord was a good hundred metres ahead of me with a big-ass weight on the end. When it hits something the cord goes slack and my harness tells the winch to stop. The first time it happened it woke me up pretty suddenly. Turns out that was just a ledge, but I was close to the bottom by then. Few more stops and starts, and there I was suspended over the bottom of The Hole.

I called it in, but I got no reply. My harness could talk to the winch but for whatever reason the communications link to the team topside just returned a channel-open signal. I found out why later. In the meantime I lowered myself down manually and stood on the bottom of the world.

There I was, in a 20-metre diameter pit, an unknown distance below the bottom of a cavern that lies about three point two kliks from the surface of Terra/Sol. No communications with the team above. Just a tiny bubble of me and light in the bottom of The Hole. Just because I felt like it, sheer terrified bravado to tell the truth, I unsnapped my harness and picked my way carefully across the floor. It was littered with small stones like the ones I’d dropped in, plus the flares and lightsticks.

I crossed from side to side, touched the walls. Picked up some pieces of stone from the ground. They might have been the ones I’d dropped in, probably not. Then the realisation hit me and I ran back to my harness. I was still fastening the straps when I hit the up control and killed my lights. I think I was in a fetal position for the first few hundred metres back up, and that’s hard to do when you’re hanging by a harness.

You see, it’d suddenly hit me. There were odd stones all over the cavern floor, but none very close to The Hole. Like someone had, you know, picked them up and dropped them in. And statistically, what are the odds that all those stones would be at the bottom of a twenty-metre pit? There were a few dozen lying around in the part of the cavern we’d explored, but… more than that… on the floor of The Hole.

I think it took a couple of days to get back up to the cavern, and a lot longer to walk back up to the base camp. I met a search party on the way; they’d come down when the cavern team failed to report in. A couple of the guys escorted me up to base camp while the others went down to look for Jeff and the rest of the cavern team. That was the last I saw of them, too.

We never found out what happened to the cavern team or the guys who went looking for them. Or the rescue team that went in after them, either. They had to sedate me to put me in the harness to go back up the borehole, and to this day I’m frightened of the dark. I also have acute claustrophobia. Spent some time in an institution and talked to a lot of cops about my missing buddies, but the truth is that nobody wants to know what happened more than I do.

Someday I’m going back down The Hole. But not today. Maybe not tomorrow, either.

What’s so scary you ask? Well, think about it. We were deeper under this planet than anyone has ever been, or so we thought. We felt compelled to drop things down The Hole to see how deep it was. Don’t you think that anyone else who saw it would do the same?

And that’s the thing. The Hole was twenty metres across, roughly circular. And the floor was completely covered in stones. They were piled up in places, several layers deep.

Several.

Layers.

You don’t want to know about The Hole, guys. You just don’t.

People, Places and Things

Universal Components, Incorporated
Universal Components is a fairly large corporate body specialising in ‘factored’ components for industrial equipment, spacecraft and vehicles. Machinery of any kind really. ‘Factored’ in this case means a generic version of a specialist part sold by an item’s manufacturer for a hugely inflated price.

Thus you can buy a flow regulator for your Irikami Mekatek Portastill from Irikami themselves, and pay their crazy price, or you can get an unbranded one from Universal Components for about half the cost. This does void warranty in many cases, but for older equipment it’s well worth doing.

UC started out fairly small but has grown rapidly over several decades, always increasing the range of components offered. This has caused friction with several manufacturers, who would prefer to preserve the lucrative after-market spares business for themselves. UC has survived numerous lawsuits and a hostile takeover bid from one of the big starship manufacturers, and has benefited from both a good legal team and a very wily management.

There are rumours, likely to be true, that UC has resorted to corporate espionage to obtain information on its target products. In many cases this is not needed; most equipment and vehicles can be reverse-engineered from an example bought on the open market, or obtained through a scrap dealer. However, programmed components are more difficult to copy, yet UC seems to manage it.

Thus, when UC managed to put a factored version of the self-contained, self-regulating actuator motors for Irikami Mekatek’s new automated logging robot on the market just weeks after it appeared, suspicions were raised. Nothing has ever been proven, but it seems that UC is not just sailing close to the wind; they are stealing data from anywhere they can get it.

Proving Services Unlimited
Formerly Proving Services, Limited, PSU went corporate a few years back. The firm specialises in putting together ‘colony proving’ packages. A proving mission, properly speaking, is a small colony (often as few as a dozen people) who live at a prospective colony site for a few months to prove that it is viable. However, the proving process is often taken to include everything from exploration through surveys to constructing accommodation for incoming colonists once proving is completed and the settlement is approved.

PSU, with its slightly tongue-in-cheek new name, has a sizable pool of permanent employees and also hires freelancers to fill out its missions. It will provide training to new recruits who show good potential, but usually hires experienced personnel with a verifiable track record.

The firm owns and operates a few starships but usually relies on chartered vessels for its routine operations. At any given time it has explorers out looking for new prospects, surveyors working at newly discovered sites and a number of proving colonies in progress. These are usually well supported and will not only show that ‘yes, people can live here’ but will present a thorough study of the local environment to the client at the end of the mission.

PSU believes – rightly – that for all the science and surveys in the universe, you can only really learn about a place by living there for a year. This remains their main function, but for an additional fee PSU will undertake to set up the prospective colony for the new arrivals. Thus its personnel will build homes and dig sewers, set up a power grid and even plant crops for the new arrivals, enabling the new colony to get off to a faster start.

Some clients try to use PSU to cut corners, sending poorly trained colonists to a new site rather than using more skilled people for the setup process. PSU has responded with a training offer – again, for an additional fee – whereby its personnel will stay on and train up the new arrivals in skills that they really should have arrived with.

The ‘babysitting noobs’ aspect of proving missions is unpopular with PSU professionals, but it is part of the service and is generally seen as a necessary evil. There have been problems in the past, however, usually when a colony’s backers took liberties and sent under-equipped and untrained personnel to a new site, expecting PSU to look after them to an extent far beyond the remit of their contract.

PSU will do so, but imposes a very large fee for this service, payable out of the revenue generated by the new colony. After a number of legal battles, they made this stick. In some cases that has resulted in backers abandoning the project and PSU effectively gaining ownership of a new colony. In a few instances the firm has had to put serious money into keeping a colony gained in this way from collapsing, but on balance it has come out ahead.

Thus today PSU has revenue coming in from several successful colonies and owns a number of others outright. These are beginning to develop into large settlements and may someday be recognised as nations, which will create a rather interesting legal question: can a corporate entity own a sovereign nation?

Hallowed Rock
Hallowed Rock is a deep-space asteroid, whose location is not particularly significant. No major space travel ‘firsts’ took place in the vicinity, no disasters either. Nor is there anything very unusual about the asteroid itself.

For whatever reason, the place has become a sort of shrine for spacefarers. There is a small settlement, populated by a few hundred people, on the surface of the asteroid, and usually several ships close by or landed on the surface. About a third of the population are technicians who keep everything running; the remainder minister to starfarers one way or another.

The services offered by Hallowed Rock range from the religious to the carnal, and include more mundane activities like drive servicing and a couple of good restaurants. Some come to Hallowed Rock for maintenance, some for R&R. Others believe that they will have good luck in their journeys if they visit every few months. And some come to pray.

A significant proportion of visitors do a bit of all of these things. Servicing and component replacement is done rather slowly on a cottage-industry basis, giving crews some downtime. It is not uncommon for that time to be spent more or less equally in religious or spiritual activity, visiting restaurants, bars and brothels, and just hanging out with other spacefarers.

On the entertainment front, Hallowed Rock offers nothing that any small trade port does not. There are opportunities to pay over the odds to eat, drink and get laid, to watch movies and play sports. Nothing out of the ordinary but for some reason the experience is somehow ‘better on The Rock’.

The religions represented at Hallowed Rock tend to be fairly mainstream and of a sort that takes the view: ‘We’re out here in space, so clearly that’s part of The Plan’. There are various priests and spiritual leaders, who share a single religious/spiritual centre on a complex arrangement whereby nobody is ever denied a place to worship or just talk to someone. Joint ceremonies are not uncommon, which can get really bizarre at times. The official attitude of the religious staff seems to be ‘well, obviously this is part of The Plan, too’.

It is not uncommon for a new ship to visit Hallowed Rock for a blessing from the belief system of choice and the spacer community in general upon completing its trials, and increasingly ships actually perform part of their trials near The Rock. The post-trials parties sometimes spill over into a church/temple/whatever service, and vice versa.

There is a real atmosphere of goodwill at Hallowed Rock. Religious people claim that it’s because the place is special in some way. Others have different explanations, but the fact is that there is virtually no crime; even career criminals seem to reduce their activities on The Rock. People just seem to get along better and be more tolerant during and just after a visit. This defies explanation of course, except of a purely spiritual sort.

Most of the visitors to The Rock are not religious people, except maybe in a ‘can’t do any harm’ sort of way. It seems that somehow The Rock has become a centre for both spirituality of the organised sort and also a real spacer-community spirit that has nothing to do with mysticism or gods.

Whether due to The Plan or some quirk of human nature, Hallowed Rock is or has become a genuinely good place, a centre for secular pilgrimages by hard-nosed spacer engineers as well as those seeking truths. It is also a good place to pick up stories, rumours, odd little jobs and crewmembers. Deals made on Hallowed Rock just seem to turn out better than is normal elsewhere. Nobody knows why, and maybe it doesn’t matter.

Stuff and Nonsense
They sent us more stuff to review. I mean… really? What did they expect would happen to it? ‘’Testing to destruction’ is not a figure of speech, folks. We test something, things get destroyed. That’s how it works. If you want nice comments send your latest gun or armoured vehicle to Everybody’s Best Friend Magazine. Or maybe you’d better not. They might get upset if they have to look at nasty violent objects.

Anyway, here’s some stuff that manufacturers were courageous enough to give us. What’s that, ‘loan for testing’? Nope, it was ‘give’. Definitely ‘give’. Okay, we’ll mail the pieces back if you really want…

Konigsburg Forge ‘Elegante’ Tactical Rapier
Type: Sword, Pretentious

Seriously; ‘Tactical Rapier’? Some manufacturers think that bolting the word ‘tactical’ onto anything will double sales. Sadly, they seem to be right. The ‘Elegante’ costs nearly twice what a more standard rapier (or Foil, if you insist in misnaming a combat weapon as a sporting tool) would, and it’s really not all that much better.

So, for your 175 credits you get a rather nice real leather belt and scabbard and a workmanlike swept-hilt rapier. It is, we have to admit, a bit better than the average offering. Using high-tech metallurgy, Konigsburg have managed to create a slightly lighter and more durable version of the standard rapier. Metal parts are guaranteed corrosion-resistant (we tried the usual seawater-and-mud approach and the Elegante held up okay) and the real-leather wrapped hilt is well enough put together to last through frequent use.

The point and edge are both good; the edge stays sharp and is resistant to being nicked by impacts with other swords as well as things like the door of a ground car. The point will go through a ground car door, by the way, if you try hard enough. Repeated bashing against a rock will eventually cause distortion but the blade seems to be shatter-resistant.

For an additional 25 credits, Konigsburg offer a book-and-hologram course in their ‘Tactical Rapier Fighting Method’ and a course of lessons at their fencing school in Konigsburg on Terra/Sol. The system seems workable enough, and is designed around countering standard rapier techniques. In a rapier-vs-rapier fight against a conventionally armed and trained opponent, this might give a slight advantage. It’s useless in a brawl with all manner of weapons being used. And as to gunfights… well, we all know not to bring a knife to a gunfight, right? This is really just a large and pretentious knife. Do the math.

Overall: It’s a good-looking and practical sword, but since they insisted on sticking the dreaded ‘tactical’ label on the poor thing we’ve decided to hate it. It’s not the sword’s fault but… really. ‘Tactical Rapier’? Gah.

Konigsburg Forge ‘Practicale’ Tactical Blade
Type: Sword, Short, Tactical. Whatever that is supposed to mean…

Konigsburg Forge continue to pander to the tastes of the Tactical-Everything-Including-Underpants brigade with this offering. It calls itself a Blade but it’s basically a version of the timeless Roman Gladius Hispaniensis, which is one of the most effective and all-round useful swords ever produced. And this one is, yes, tactical.

There are many blade-and-hilt weapons out there that go by the generic descriptor of ‘Blade’. Some are machete-like weapons, some are gladius-like shortswords, and some are in between. Some are geared to use as a weapon and others to service as a tool. As a general rule, a decent stabbing point is an indicator that the ‘blade’ in front of you is primarily a weapon; lack of a point suggests it’s more geared to hacking your way through the undergrowth. However, all blades are potentially lethal; a tool that will chop through a tree branch will take off an arm pretty well.

Despite the ‘tactical’ label, the Konigsburg ‘Practicale’ tries to sell itself as being equally useful as tool or weapon. In truth it’s more of the latter. Tool-blades usually have a bellied blade in increase impact when hacking; the Practicale is straight. It has a good point, a straight blade and a small disc hilt. It’s a weapon first and foremost, and a pretty decent one.

For about twice the price of a standard generic ‘blade’ you get a real leather belt and scabbard (Konigsburg must own shares in a tannery or something) and the weapon itself, plus a small accessory kit including whetstones and lubricants. These are not really necessary; the Practicale will hold its edge for a long time and should be sharpened using a precision wheel, not a bit of stone. However, the whetstone does appeal to typical Tactical Underpants people. It gives a sense of rugged self-reliance that seems to make them happy.

The Practicale serves quite well as a tool, though the weight of the blade is not concentrated towards the tip but uniformly distributed. This makes it more useful for stabbing than heavy-duty hacking, though it will go through undergrowth and the occasional light branch reasonably well. Combat with the Practicale is primarily based around a stabbing style, as illustrated in the rather cheesy user’s manual. This shows a few rather obvious ways to stick a pointy metal object in someone. There’s also one that appears to be physically impossible, but maybe we’re doing it wrong.

Konigsburg seems to have fallen in love with the idea of ‘point for fighting, edge for working’ with this weapon, but in fact it chops through flesh reasonably well. The balance is good for a stabbing combat style with the occasional slash, and the weapon itself is durable enough to survive a pretty serious fight.

Overall: Overpriced and of course a bit too ‘tactical’ but not a bad choice for self-defence. It’s a bit more practical (hence the name we suppose) than a longer sword; easy to carry and deploy in a confined space. And it does make a decent tool as well. You could do worse.

Konigsburg Forge ‘Formidable’ Tactical Hatchet
Type: Axe, Throwing or Hand
Cost: Cr35. TL: 10. Mass: 0.8kg. Heft: 0
Skill: Melee (Axe) or Athletics (Thrown). Damage 2d6+1

Oh look, this one is tactical too. At least they didn’t feel the need to bolt an extra ‘e’ on the end of ‘formidable’. That’s got to be worth something. Anyway, this is a well-made, well-balanced short-hafted axe that is supposedly useful for throwing at people, hacking lumps out of them and chopping firewood to cremate them afterwards. Actually, it does two of those things quite well.

The short haft is of metal, with a leather-wrapped grip section. A loop of Velcro-like material allows the axe to be fixed to a belt or pack strap, or the loop can be stuck to a length of similar material (which is supplied), allowing you to carry your tactical hatchet in whatever position suits your fancy. Just attach the strip of tactical Velcro to your pack, jacket or household pet and you’re ready to practice ripping your hatchet free from its perfectly-positioned holder until you can do it with just the right degree of nonchalant expertise. Very tactical. Well done.

Or you could just carry the damn thing like any other tool.

Anyway, the hatchet itself is well balanced for throwing and is very blade-heavy. This gives a good solid impact and a satisfying thunk as it hits home. The balance is intuitive for most users, making this one of the most noob-friendly throwing weapons we’ve encountered – for whatever that may be worth.

In the hand, it’s a good solid combat weapon which works well at close quarters. However, as a tool it’s not so hot. The metal shaft transmits the shock of impact to the user’s hand, along with a vibration that seems to go on for quite a while afterwards - no wonder everyone wants to throw this thing away. The blade cuts well enough, and is backed with a short hook/pick that is not much use as a weapon but can be useful when climbing or using a cut-and-drag action to clear branches.

Overall: It’s a reasonable, if overpriced, piece of kit. Not ideal as a tool though; the shock and vibration tires the user’s hand rapidly. But as a climbing aid or weapon it’s effective.

Konigsburg Forge ‘Penetratore’ Tactical Combat Pick
Type: Axe, Throwing or Hand

This is getting silly, the way Konigsburg keep insisting on putting an ‘e’ on the end of every weapon name. We understand; it’s for brand recognition. And the ‘tactical’ thing sells more units. But all the same…

Anyway, the ‘Penetrator’ (we refuse to recognise that extra ‘e’, okay?) combat pick is an out-and-out weapon. Interesting idea, but probably not something we’d want to bet our lives on. It’s a short hafted one-handed weapon with a double head. The striking surface is a short, curved spike (called a ‘beak’ in Konigsburg literature) which is designed to break off and stay in the wound. The curve of the spike is matched to the striking arc of a typical user and penetrates armour well.

This is the function of the Penetrator; it’s designed to punch a hole in armour and then leave a spike in it. Why? Because the spike then explodes of course! You can then turn the weapon around and use the opposite striking surface for a second spiky-death blow. After that all you’ve got is a heavy metal haft type thing which makes a reasonable club. New explodey spikes can be fitted by a competent armourer/gunsmith… or by our gunnery officer, though that’s not necessarily guaranteed to be a safe process.

The Penetrator is (obviously) designed for use against armoured opponents, and seems reasonably effective. There is a delay between detachment of the spike and detonation, which is typically about 3-4 seconds. It’s not all that predictable for some reason – we got a whole 7 seconds on one occasion and just two on another.

For the target, this delay must be somewhat unpleasant, though probably not as bad as having a metal spike explode in your body. Theoretically it may be possible to pull a spike out before it detonates, but since it will be buried in armour and flesh this seems unlikely. Trying to do so leaves the victim wide open to being hit again, but that’s probably the least of his troubles. The explosion is not large, but how big a bang inside your chest cavity counts as ‘trivial’?

Overall: Oddball, possibly effective, but not really our thing.

Konigsburg Forge ‘Defendore’ Personal Defence System
Type: Shield, Small. With delusions of grandeur
Cost: Cr100. TL: 10. Mass: 1.25kg. Heft: 0
Skill: Varies. Parry Value: 2

Well, at least this one isn’t ‘tactical’, though it is deliberately mis-spelled to make the extra ‘e’ sound a bit less lame. It’s also suffering from the delusion that it’s something special. In fact, this is little more than an updated version of the archaic buckler. Never mind ‘personal defence system’; it’s a shield.

Actually, it’s quite a good little shield, offering similar protection to a standard buckler whilst being a bit lighter. Konigsburg recommend that you pair up this item with one of their tactical sharp implements, but we decided it was better paired with something like, say, a handgun. Then we decided to ditch the shield and just use the gun… but if you absolutely must get all Renaissance on someone’s ass then this is a decent enough tool to help you survive.

In addition to the normal uses of a buckler, this gizmo has an interesting extra; a one-shot flechette cartridge built into the boss. This permits the user to deliver a single point-blank surprise in addition to whatever else he is doing at the time with his hand weapons. It can (obviously) only be used against the opponent directly in front of the buckler but it is very easy to aim; just point the shield and press the trigger stud. There is a robust safety cover on the stud, fortunately, to prevent accidental discharges every tome the thing is picked up.

Reloading is a two-minute job using custom cartridges that do not fit standard shotguns. You get 10 with the weapon, and a further pack of 10 costs Cr20, mainly for the specialist fittings.

The shield itself is light and robust, and can be carried on a belt loop (check that the safety is engaged first though!). It survived encounters with various weapons and also being bashed against rocks and our vehicle, and although it lost its shiny finish it remained useful.

Overall: A decent enough piece of kit, with a clever one-shot surprise. But you could just buy a gun instead…

Windward Armsco ‘Autovolver’ 8mm Handgun
Type: Handgun, Projectile

Windward Armsco have taken it upon themselves to reinvent the wheel (or more aptly, the wheelgun) with their ‘autovolver’. This peculiar piece of kit is fed from a magazine inserted in front of the trigger guard rather than the more usual position within the handgrip. From there, each round goes on an epic journey before being fired.

Rather than the more usual (read: rational) slide system of a semi-automatic pistol, the Autovolver uses a three-chamber cylinder as both firing chamber and feed system. Each round is fired from a chamber in the cylinder as it lines up with the barrel, in much the same way as revolvers designed by normal people operate. However, in normal revolvers the cylinder holds the ammunition; not so in this oddball device.

Ammunition is loaded into the weapon using a magazine which can be of three sizes; eight, twelve and twenty rounds. The latter sticks out of the bottom of the weapon a fair way and is quite bulky; the other two are more sensible. Magazine spring pressure pushes the round up unto the ‘loading chamber’ above the magazine well as soon as it is empty. From there it is pushed back by another spring into an empty chamber in the cylinder, and is then carried around into firing position.

At any given time, there should be a loaded chamber under the hammer, another on the way up and an empty chamber moving round to pick up the next round. Ammunition is caseless, i.e. the ‘case’ is made of propellant, so there is nothing to eject. All rounds have a tracer component, however, so that you can see where they’re going. Oh yeah, and the cylinder is powered.

Yes, that’s right. The cylinder is driven round by a motor. The battery for this is located in the handgrip and is good for several hundred shots at least. The cylinder has to lock briefly in the loading and firing positions (which, for mechanical reasons, are different positions) which gives the weapon a weird staccato twisting motion. However, this does mean that you can hold down the trigger and pop through a whole magazine in a sort of slow and jerky autofire mode.

We wondered why anyone would go to all this trouble, and the manual’s explanation isn’t all that convincing. There’s some vague waffle about the slide of a semi-automatic affecting accuracy (like a jerky powered revolver cylinder doesn’t?) but the real answer seems to be ‘to see if we could’.

Windward have done a couple of useful things though. A revolving cylinder tends to be more robust than a slide mechanism for the same weight of materials, so although this is a heavy gun for the calibre, it’s very tough. That’s just as well, because the special caseless tracer ammunition is enormously overpowered for its calibre. If you can find a standard 8mm that it will fit in, don’t try - it may well blow your gun apart in your hand.

The result is a round which, although light, comes out at incredible velocity and has truly excellent armour piercing properties for a handgun. The tracer effect is a byproduct of the caseless construction, and we think it wasn’t deliberate, but it is useful. Although hard to control under autofire, you can ‘walk’ a series of shots (it’s not really a burst; the rate of fire is pretty slow) onto target and when it arrives you’ll like the results. The target won’t; this is one of the most potent handguns in its calibre range.

Overall: This thing is a bit gimmicky, fiddly and difficult to control for our liking. Clever and cool in an odd sort of way though. This is a gun that says ‘I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m doing whatever it is in style!’ The ammunition is great, though. If only they’d put it in a proper gun…

Notes: All attacks with this weapon (single or full-automatic) are subject to a –2DM to hit due to the unusual mechanical activity in the weapon. An ‘autofire’ attack uses up 4 rounds and is treated as an auto rating of 3. I.e., three dice are rolled to hit and whichever one the player dislikes the most is discarded.

Windward Armsco ‘Three-Ten’ 10mm Weapon System
Type: Weapon Kit, Projectile

A slightly more conventional offering from windward, the ‘Three-Ten’ system is named for its calibre (10mm) and the fact that it can be configured three ways to create quite different weapons.

The system is built around a submachinegun-type receiver which uses a wraparound bolt and fires from an open bolt. The three-position selector allows the options of ‘safe’, ‘semi-automatic’ or ‘full-automatic’ but depending on the barrel fitted one of these options may be unavailable. A lug on the barrel blocks the selector internally; this can be filed off if you want, to give all three options in all configurations.

For your six hundred credits you get a receiver, three barrels, a solid stock and a folding metal one. Plus four 16-round magazines and four 32-round ones. These load through the pistol grip; the smaller ones fit right inside and the longer ones stick out. Both can be used in any configuration. There’s also a sling/harness/holster thing which takes some figuring out but can eventually be set up to carry the weapon however you want it.

The basic configuration is essentially a somewhat bulky pistol. There is no slide (what is it with Windward and slides?); the weapon uses an internal bolt instead. With the ‘pistol’ barrel fitted, full-automatic fire is not available unless you’ve been filing bits you shouldn’t. A stock is not normally fitted but could be if you want. While this is a bulky and heavy weapon for a handgun, it is very comfortable to shoot. It’s also reasonably accurate and really quite robust.

By fitting either the solid or the folding stock (the former could have been done away with really; the folding one works fine) and a full-length barrel with a conventional forearm, you can create a pistol-grip semi-automatic carbine. It has a decent set of sights and little felt recoil, and it makes a pretty decent gun for small game or users who want a longarm but don’t feel the need to carry a full-weight rifle around. Again, full-automatic fire is not available on this configuration unless you file that lug off the barrel.

In between these two is the ‘intermediate’ configuration (Windward don’t like the word ‘assault’ any more than they like ‘slide’, apparently). The barrel has a fixed vertical foregrip with no pesky lug to block the full-auto position. The weapon can be set up with a fixed or folding stock, or a buttcap instead if you prefer to fire from the hip.

Windward offer two kinds of ammunition with this weapon. Both are identical in size and are differentiated by the colour of the casing. ‘Red’ rounds are full-powered. Actually, they’re slightly ‘hotter’ than standard 10mm and should not be used in a conventional 10mm semi-automatic pistol. They’re fine in submachineguns, but a handgun may not withstand the high chamber pressures very well, and that can be bad. ‘Blue’ rounds are reduced-power loads for those who can’t handle the red ones, and also for low-penetration applications such as internal security aboard starships.

Although, as noted, the pistol is a bit bulky there are advantages to this weapons system. Interchangeability allows you to configure your weapon for various needs, or to carry say a submachinegun and a handgun which use the same magazines. Indeed, for Cr1000 you can get set containing two receivers, twice the usual number of magazines and the standard set of barrels and stocks. This allows you to put together two different weapons around identical receivers.

The main benefit is probably in terms of training and spares availability. Using just one weapon across the whole of your security service allows personnel to be trained more quickly (though not much more quickly; it doesn’t take long to comprehend a one extra weapon) and to be able to maintain their kit more readily. Thus buying a single Windward kit will not save any useful amount of money for the private user, but a corporate user might make a decent saving on a hundred units, or a thousand.

In all configurations, the weapon was simple and easy to use, and shot well enough. The red (‘hot’) loads were a bit fierce in the handgun but fine in the longer configurations. ‘Blue’ rounds were easily controllable. In such a heavy handgun, even your granny’s cat could handle them.

Overall: One of the better multi-weapon systems on the market.

Windward Armsco ‘PD’ 20mm Flechette Gun
Type: Longarm, Multiple Projectile

Windward’s ‘PD’ is, naturally, an alternative take on the shotgun concept. PD stands for ‘put-down’, and is supposed to imply what will happen to the target. Since most buyers don’t know what PD stands for and the manual doesn’t say (we had to ask their head office), the marketing value is a bit limited. However, many users think it stands for Police Department, and that sounds cool so maybe it’s not a dead loss.

As it happens, this weapon is actually used by a lot of police departments, due to its good stopping power coupled with virtually nil penetration. It will not seriously harm anyone wearing body armour, but neither will it go through walls and endanger innocents beyond.

The PD is a single-barrelled smoothbore longarm fed by an 8-chamber revolving cylinder. Presumably the more common pump-action or gas-operation system felt a bit too much like a slide for Windward’s tastes. Whatever the reasoning, the cylinder is loaded through a gate and is powered by one of those motors that Windward seem to like.

Ammunition is caseless, so there is nothing to eject, and feed seems to be smooth and malfunction-free. There is none of the jerkiness encountered with the Autovolver. Nor is recoil a problem; the PD fires lightweight plastic flechettes rather than buckshot, and uses a relatively light propellant charge. Recoil is thus pleasantly low unless you do something silly, like firing one-handed.

Fire selection offers semi-automatic and a slow automatic mode similar to the Autovolver’s. The whirring motor and satisfying thump of the gun is a nice combination, and the low rate of fire allows for excellent control. This mode is disabled (rather thoroughly) by the manufacturers unless you can prove it’s legal where you’re going to use the weapon. That’s a damn shame, because we think the crime rate would drop fast if every family had one of these in the house. The mortality rate might go up, but that’s a different problem.

Speaking of death, performance against unarmoured targets is entirely acceptable, and if anything slightly better than a standard shotgun out to about 50m. However, beyond this distance the flechettes lose velocity fast and the shot pattern disperses rapidly. Penetration against any sort of armour is utterly laughable, but that’s possibly a good thing when firing at a hostile in your house, while your kids are in the next room.

Overall: This is a pretty serious combat shotgun, well suited to the civilian urban defence market. 8 rounds is a lot of firepower and the slow-auto mode is intimidating and effective. Windward got it right with this one, we think.

Colonial Essentials Inc. ‘Terrain Buddy’ Individual Mobility Kit
Type: Equipment package

We’ve looked at stuff from Colonial Essentials before. This kit is supposedly a one-stop-shop for everything you need to get you moving in any terrain. It’s unlikely that you’d encounter all possible forms of adverse terrain on a single trip, so Colonial have kindly broken it down into subsets, each with its own carrying bag.

The biggest objects in here are a pair of basic-quality skis and poles to go with them. Incredibly, Colonial Essentials have found a way to convert these into a canoe. Yes, really. The tips clamp together to make a deep v-shape, with a small inflatable frame to create a rounded stern area where the intrepid canoeist can sit. Yes, the frame is inflatable. It fits over the end of the skis and holds itself in position using a combination of weight, pressure, and a liberal amount of hopes and dreams. Over all this a waterproof cover is fastened, and there you have it! Your very own single-seat watercraft, suitable for calm waters and dry land. Of course, there’s paddle-ends to fit to your ski poles, though you can only use them one at a time.

The kit also includes a set of inflatable boot covers with a mesh sole. These are surprisingly durable and puncture-resistant and can be inflated to create a sort of snowshoe or marshy-ground walking aid. Colonial Essentials recommend using a ski pole for balance with these, which is probably wise.

Most of the smaller items in the kit are carried on a vest which can be inflated to act as a lifejacket – and you’re going to need it if you try to use that canoe-type-object. The smaller objects include a multipurpose hand axe/pick that can be used to chop vegetation or assist climbing, a set of boot spikes and a pair of rather curious claw devices that supposedly help when scrambling up steep earth slopes or fibrous vegetation such a tree trunk.

It is possible to climb a suitably wide tree using the claws and boot spikes, but if you try you’ll be glad of the small hammer, anchoring spikes (Colonial Essentials don’t call them pitons for some reason) and safety cord. There’s also a belt harness that lets you dangle upside-down after falling off a tree trunk, and a length of very decent rope/cord for your buddies to try to rescue you with.

Some of the gear in this kit is very usable, some of it is rather fanciful. One of the bits we liked best was extremely mundane. It’s a set of waterproof foot and leg covers which come up to mid thigh, and arm cover/gloves that reach to an uncomfortable spot in the middle of your bicep. Although not pleasant to wear these items keep out water really well, and can be paired up with a waterproof poncho and ‘hat’ to keep you fairly dry. The hat is a bit embarrassing, however, since it’s basically a glorified shower cap, but it does cover the back of the neck and keeps rain from entering the neck hole of the poncho.

Overall: Gimmicky in places, pretty good in others. Chuck away the silly bits and this is a pretty workable kit for those who lack the time or knowledge to put together a proper field kit of their own.

Colonial Essentials Inc. ‘Spotter Buddy’ Individual Sensor Kit
Type: Equipment package, sensors

Colonial Essentials had to outsource most of the gear in this kit, though the idea of combining it all was their own. Or at least, nobody else seems to want to produce something similar. Like their terrain kit, this is supposedly a complete package of every sensor you’re likely to need.

The kit fits into a belt and a custom vest with plenty of pockets. The latter is a bit garish, with logos everywhere, but it seems durable and serviceable. Most of the smaller stuff is comfortable enough to carry, but you might consider leaving some of the bigger bits behind if you’re going to be walking anywhere. Otherwise they’ll end up being thrown into a pond.

The bigger items include a set of electronic multipurpose goggles, a wide-spectrum emissions detector and a chemical analysis unit. The idea, we think, is that all of them can be in use at once, feeding data into the goggles worn around your neck while the others are worn on your belt. Problem is that they’re just a bit too bulky around your waist, and they get in the way of even routine tasks like walking.

The instruments are powered by a battery pack carried in the vest. It’s well dispersed and although it adds some weight there’s little bulk. The goggles rest comfortably on the head and can display data gathered by other sensors. On their own they function as a decent set of sunglasses and can be used to zoom up to 16x magnification, and to collect thermal, optical or low-light visual images at the same time. They will also allow some limited microscope function, or act as a truly badass set of reading glasses.

The goggles can be used to project an electronic image either on top of your normal vision or in place of it. This function, like most others, is selected using a belt-mounted control unit. Hitting the wrong button can have hilarious results, especially since you can display totally different images into each eye. Thus it is possible to have one eye set for 16x optical telescope effect with light amplification while the other displays chemical analysis data at normal magnification.

This function requires the other sensors to be present. The chemical analysis unit is fairly specialised and will detect a range of harmful and non—harmful chemicals using vapour analysis – i.e. you have to present it with a sample. More usefully, it monitors air composition and quality and can tell you if you’re breathing something unpleasant. Although officially a ‘chemical’ detection system, this device can also do some very limited biological analysis and will detect some organic compounds such as fungal spores or, allegedly, airborne droplets carrying some common diseases. Yes, it can give you early warning of exposure to the common cold… well, kind of.

The multispectral detector monitors everything from radiation to radio emissions. It feeds into an earpiece to allow you to listen to local broadcasts (because you don’t possess any other way of doing that, do you?) and provides a breakdown of the strength and type of emissions in the area. That means you can set up your detector to tell you how good your personal communicator reception will be.

More usefully, you can monitor radio traffic and what band it is on, even if you can’t (or don’t want to) listen in. Similarly, the kit will give you a breakdown of radiation in the area by strength and type. That can indeed lead to a breakdown as you try to remember what dosage of what type will harm you. The kit doesn’t say as such, though there is a nice simple white-yellow-orange-red indicator and audible tone to tell you that you’ve just walked into a hotspot.

The vest also contains some image processing software which can be used to build up composite images from thermal, optical and other emissions. It will point out things that its programming think are out of place in the surrounding environment if you don’t turn off the setting. Whilst potentially useful when hunting game or enemy snipers, this feature does occasionally get it spectacularly wrong, suddenly presenting the user with the image of a haulage van in the middle of the jungle or something similar. It usually fixes its errors within seconds as the collected data builds a better picture, but these errors can be humorous or alarming depending on circumstances.

The processing software is designed to help the user search for things ranging from a section of ruined wall in an overgrown ancient ruin to a small game animal for lunch, or a larger animal determined to make you its lunch. It tries to build up a full outline from the data available and will superimpose it on the normal optical image to help you find the target. If the object or creature is recognised, it will be flagged by name where possible. As noted above, this does lead to the occasional message like ‘furniture van – 3% confidence’, quickly replaced with ‘trees and wall – 92% confidence’ or some such.

Overall: This isn’t a bad bit of kit, but it tries to do too much and ends up being too bulky. We’d have dumped the chemical processing equipment maybe, and slimmed down the multispectral detector. But it does do what it’s supposed to, and reasonably well.

End Notes
This brings us to lurching to the end of issue 4 of Starfarer’s Gazette. If we cared at all we’d say we hope you find this information useful. Fact is, we don’t really care at all. If you want to make the same mistakes we did, feel free. We’re told it’s more satisfying to make entirely new mistakes of your own, though, so maybe you could try that.

Either way, you might want to be careful out there. Because we’re out there too. Think about it…

RSS Avenger, signing off.
Fall 2011