Life on Derin Su?

Tasker, a middle aged nomad, yak herder, merchant, and doubtless much more, leaned against his yak and watched the ice in front of him. These were the coordinates he had been given. Behind him a dozen more of his clan were huddled, chatting, flirting, or just checking harness for something to do to keep themselves occupied.

As he watched the ice in front of him domed slightly. Then with a sharp crack, a submarine conning tower broke through. He studied the ice around it. It wasn’t shattering. Already a figure on top of the tower was waving to him. He waved back and turned to the waiting group. “Right, down onto the ice, let’s get this over with.”
By the time they arrived close to the conning tower there were already a score of people on the ice. Tasker stepped to one side as his people started unloading yak drawn sledges. Crew members started passing these crates up to the submarine whilst the nomads loaded the sledges with the goods the submarine had brought.

“Why?”

Tasker turned and looked down at his son Arnar. He had brought the boy on this trip. It was as safe as any and the lad had to learn his trade at some point.”
“Why what.”

The boy gestured at the submarine. “That’s a Delcorp boat. Delcorp have their own spaceport. So why do they need us?”

“The Delcorp spaceport is busy, all sorts of people pass through it. Who knows who is watching? But if they deliver to us, we can get it to the University research station and stuff can leave by the next shuttle flight.”

“And why here?”

“Satellite observation. There aren’t many that overfly this area and if you get the timing right, the sub has been and gone before anybody sees it.”
He turned and looked to the four people who were walking towards him. “And these are the real reason. Half the crates are ours, trade goods and a nice bribe. The other half are theirs and grease the palms of shuttle crews and similar.”

He smiled at the four strangers. Three were dressed in nomad winter gear, it looked new and too clean. The fourth was smaller and their clothing seemed to be what had been begged from the crew of the submarine.

“I was expecting three?”
He allowed the question to hang there. It was the smaller person who answered. “I’m the extra.”

The conning tower was already starting to sink back down. Tasker raised his voice. “Right, everybody, let’s get out of here. Doggo, you lead out, take Sari, keep an eye ahead, then our three guests here with a couple more folk to help them if they start to struggle. Finally the sledges, I’ll follow up at the back.”

Tasker looked round, the conning tower had disappeared, the sledges were moving off and Doggo and Sari were already climbing up the snow slope onto the island.

He turned to the fourth of his guests. “The other three I know. Delcorp wants them away. And you?”
The person pushed back her hood so her face was visible. The low sun glinted on her snow goggles. “I arranged it myself. I got pregnant to the wrong man, there was trouble, killing and the security arms of two different companies came looking for me.”

Tasker asked, “And your passage money out?”

She shrugged. “I called in favours to get this far.”

“Right, so it looks like you’re one of us, at least for a while.”

“I’m an aeronautical engineer.”

Tasker smiled at that. “Welcome aboard. At least you’ll be useful. My father was in HR when he ended up on the tundra. It was lucky that it turns out that his training made him perfect for herding yak.” He paused. “How pregnant are you?”

“Seven months.”
“Arnar, catch up with the last sledge, she’s travelling on that. Also somebody will have a couple of blankets.” He turned back to the woman. “They will stink of yak, but you’ll be glad of them just sitting on a sledge.”
The woman looked at him with surprise. “Don’t you even want to know who I am?”

“You’re on your own on the ice. We don’t leave people out here, you’d be dead in a day. We have a summer camp fifteen miles south of here. We need to be there before we dare stop again. With shelter and hot food, then we can sit and swap stories.

♥♥♥♥

I’m working on a new world, Derin Su. This has oceans, pack ice, tundra, tropical islands that are all that are left when a continent sank, two different sorts of aliens, various very different types of human settlers, judicial volunteers, no planetary government and of course, commercial rivalries.

Initially I was just thinking of using it for a scenario campaign book for Hellfire rules, but the more work I do, the more I think that there are going to be some Hell by Starlight scenarios as well. When I wrote Hell by Starlight, I worked on the principle that the user of these rules may well have purchased Hellfire. Consequently I put the rules together with everything pretty much in the same order. Similarly the rules are reasonably compatible. If you have a Hellfire scenario, you can basically take the troop types from it and run a Hell by Starlight scenario with them. Ok, so the reaction tables are different, but this is because I felt that we were dealing with shorter time periods and more intense action, therefore the system had to be different.

What this means is that when, during a campaign, you feel the need to destroy something, you have a choice. You can go with the classic infantry assault supported by air cover and a few improvised armoured vehicles. Or you can have a submarine drop off a few remarkably well trained frogmen just off the shore and when everything explodes, blame it all on careless smoking.

OK but why the fiction? Well at a very basic level if helps me get to know what’s going on, how things work on the world. Also it helps ‘fix’ things. At the most basic level, once you’ve read this, I’m stuck with there being at least one submarine with a conning tower tough enough to break through ice. Not only that I’m also committed to there being ice thick enough to need this. Other than that, who knows? With Tasker and the lady with no name appear in a scenario, even if just as collateral damage? Who knows? Certainly not me, yet.

If you don’t know Hell by Starlight, it’s available from Wargame Vault in pdf for £4

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/384915/Hell-by-Starlight

Or from Amazon, as a paperback for £10 or on Kindle for £4