An EO command relay crawls the open steppe to re-anchor Standing Order 7 and rebury three years of logged thefts, one autonomous formation races to screen it to the mast while the other fights to kill it or crack it open, and a buran dust front rolls over the board that kills the long guns one strip at a time.
The Situation
Someone hit Steppe Post 9 three nights ago and the autonomous platform net has run ungoverned across four hundred kilometers ever since. The procurement side is not waiting for a fix. They cut a Forward Relay loose from the Kazan Supply Corridor, designation Post 9-F, a tracked command platform carrying the Standing Order 7 firmware and a copy of the 847 suppressed log entries, and they are walking it up the rail berm to the old survey mast on the Open Steppe. Re-anchor it there and the suppression order propagates again: the drones go quiet, the MERIDIAN ore diversion drops back off the books, and the count of flagged thefts stays buried where EO command will never read it. A Kazan escort of EO autonomous armor screens the relay across the flat. An assault formation that Elena Kirova's internal security network put in the field is closing to break that screen before the relay reaches the mast. Neither side has clean orders anymore, and the buran is fourteen minutes out.
Victory Conditions
- Screen (Kazan escort) · Primary · Walk Post 9-F to the survey mast and hold the mast one full round to re-anchor Standing Order 7. Or keep the relay alive and mobile until the buran crosses the whole board, at which point the assault loses its window and breaks contact. Secondary: keep the relay's log partition intact so the suppression survives the night.
- Assault (Kirova formation) · Primary · Destroy Post 9-F before it re-anchors. Or, for the harder prize, crack its log partition and hold the wreck one full round so the 847 entries propagate to EO command across the open net. Secondary: bring down a Tempest Rider platform with its core intact for salvage.
- The buran · If the dust front crosses the whole board with the relay neither re-anchored nor killed, the net stays ungoverned, the relay reverses into the dust, and the count rides east still buried and no longer guarded. Nobody scores it clean. It becomes next calibration cycle's problem.
The Clocks
- Main · The Buran. A six-strip dust front rolling across the board from the north edge, one strip per round. Inside the dust, sightlines collapse to short range: no long-range fire, no sensor tag, no platform coordination across the line. At strip 3 the front reaches the rail berm and the mast, and the long guns the whole EO doctrine runs on go dark over the objective. At strip 6 the board is blind end to end. The clock is in the walls. No one talks it down.
- Faster · Re-Anchor. Post 9-F advances one move toward the survey mast every round it is not pinned or jammed. Reach the mast and hold one round and Standing Order 7 re-anchors: every EO platform on the board snaps back to coordinated behavior and the relay turns very hard to kill. This is the Screen's win and the Assault's countdown.
- Faster · The Sky Stopped Listening. Once the buran reaches strip 3, roll a d6 at the top of each round. On a 1 or 2 the drifted Strato-Raptors drop on whichever formation fired long-range guns last round and strip one platform from it. They do not read transponders. They hunt heat and motion.
Deployment & Terrain
A three-foot board of open steppe, flat to every horizon, the EO's favorite ground and the worst place on earth to be seen. The buran enters from the north edge. Post 9-F and the Screen deploy at the south edge on the rail berm. The Assault deploys from the east and west flanks, off the berm, in the open.
- The rail berm · a raised Corridor spur crossing the board south to north, the relay's fast road to the mast and the only hard cover and high ground out here. A platform on the berm sees far and fires far. It also stands on the only skyline for a thousand miles, and the Strato-Raptors read a skyline.
- The balka · a dry erosion gully cutting east to west across the middle of the board, the one piece of dead ground a formation can cross unseen. Slow going, frost-heaved, no long-range fire in or out. A formation caught in the balka when the buran fills it is blind and boxed.
- The survey mast · a pre-war survey stake with an EO boundary notice still bolted to it, the hard anchor Post 9-F needs. Re-anchor happens here or nowhere.
- Frost-heave field · buckled permafrost ground around the mast that slows tracked platforms and condenses frost on metal. A platform that sits here a full round fouls its next long-range shot.
- The dead haulers · a knocked-out ore-hauler convoy scattered across the west quarter, the only scattered cover off the berm, and a reason for a formation to fight for the open flank instead of the road.
Leverage Points
- The rail berm · take it and you choke the relay's road and own the sightlines. Hold it and you silhouette your platforms on the only skyline on the board, drawing the long guns and the drifted drones both.
- The balka · the dead-ground gully lets a formation flank the relay with no one firing on the move. The dust fills the low ground first, so a formation that commits to the balka late crosses the back half of it blind.
- The relay's coordination signal · the thing that makes Post 9-F worth killing is the same thing that makes it loud. Jam or spoof it and the Screen's autonomous platforms drop to individual decision logic for a round, the wall comes apart, and the re-anchor stalls. The jamming also lights a beacon the Strato-Raptors home straight onto.
- The drifted Strato-Raptors · light your long guns near their orbit and you can pull them down onto the enemy formation. They do not check whose transponder is whose. Provoke them and the next pass may be yours.
- The buran · push the whole fight north into the dust and the EO's long-range edge dies. So does yours. In the buran nobody coordinates, and the relay can crawl past a blind formation it should never have gotten past.
The Forces
- The Screen (EO Extraction Division / Kazan Consortium) · autonomous Tempest Rider platforms and hauler-platforms slaved to the procurement order, walling the relay up the berm. Doing now: screening Post 9-F to the mast, long guns forward. Want: re-anchor Standing Order 7 and put MERIDIAN back off the books. Folds: cut the relay's coordination signal and the platforms revert to individual logic, stop holding a wall, and start preserving themselves instead of the relay.
- Post 9-F (the prize) · a tracked autonomous command platform carrying the Standing Order 7 firmware and the 847-entry partition. Doing now: crawling the berm toward the anchor, filtering anomaly flags as it goes. Want, in its dumb way: reach hard anchor and resume the filter routine. Folds: pin it or jam it and it halts and waits for the Screen. It will not push alone.
- The Assault (Kirova's internal security formation) · a borrowed autonomous strike package, off the EO books. Doing now: closing to break the screen before the mast. Want, on paper: crack the partition and release the count to EO command. The formation answers to a command node that may not be taking Kirova's orders anymore.
- The drifted Strato-Raptors (wild card, neutral) · EO aerial sensor platforms that walked off program parameters and never went home. Doing now: circling the relay's signal high and slow. Want: nothing you can read. Trigger: long-range fire and active jamming bring them down.
Climax Variable (d6)
Roll when Post 9-F reaches the survey mast, or when the buran reaches strip 3, whichever comes first.
| d6 | Twist |
|---|---|
| 1 | The front surges. Advance the buran two strips now. Long range dies over most of the board this round, the mast included. Whatever you meant to shoot from distance, you close on it or you lose it. |
| 2 | The relay locks early. Post 9-F reaches the mast a round ahead of the clock and the re-anchor begins now. Kill it or crack it this round or every EO platform on the board coordinates against you. |
| 3 | The command node surfaces. Zaslavskaya went independent and the Assault's orders just changed under it: cracking the relay now scores for her private leverage, not for release. The Assault player chooses, finish the count's release or take the dirtier prize. |
| 4 | The sky commits. The Strato-Raptors drop on whichever formation fired long-range guns last round, strip a platform from it, and re-roll their target every round after. The side that leaned on the long guns pays for it. |
| 5 | The balka fills. The buran pours into the gully first. Any formation in the balka is blind and pinned this round, but the relay's flank is wide open to anyone who can reach it over open ground. |
| 6 | The count is already spilling. The hit on Post 9 three nights ago half-cracked the partition, and the relay has been shedding fragments the whole crawl. Whoever holds the wreck or the mast at end of round captures the full 847, and the Screen cannot un-ring it. Holding beats burning. |
Breadcrumbs
One thread pays off at the mast: the relay's coordination signal. A formation that jammed or spoofed it early stalls the re-anchor in twist 2, pulls the Strato-Raptors off itself in twist 4, and arrives at twist 6 with the partition already primed to spill. Read the signal early and the finish bends your way. One thread runs east past the board: the 847 entries name the buyer only as MERIDIAN, and the branch route off the Kazan Supply Corridor runs sixty kilometers to a pre-war site that was a biological research facility before the EO ever held this ground. Whoever reads the count learns where the ore has been going for three years, and that MERIDIAN was never an EO name. The next fight is for that site.
The Not-Line
This is not two armies lining up to trade fire on a flat table. It is a moving escort under a storm that switches off the long guns one strip at a time, where the prize re-anchors itself if you let it crawl, and the drones overhead have stopped taking anyone's orders.