Vitae Memorandum

19-Crash Course

The four girls were due to meet with the Marauders for the morning, to sit in for another meeting. It was otherwise a very normal morning, all things considered.

"No. Like I had told you, I'm not going to recklessly throw you into danger when you are still so new to everything here." "But how do you expect us to get experience when we aren't even experiencing anything. All four of us are just sitting at home, beating up sheets of metal while reading books. That's not exactly what I would call practical experience." Like normal, Rhyde and Qheria were arguing again. "There is still a lot you have left to learn.." ".. and there is very little time left to learn it, so why are we wasting time here? From what you've said, we should be expecting our families to come pick us up anytime now. We've got a lot of knowledge that can be of use to you, just giving up on it at that point and having us leave, wouldn't that just be a giant waste of your time? We don't want to get dragged off either, if we have nothing to show for our efforts, things are going to get a lot harder for us. Give us a CHANCE!!"

Yuxzn stepped in at this point. "If I may, sir, this might be a good opportunity to at least get some information, especially considering how none of the reports they have read have actually included our own tactical implementation of dealing with Destroyers." Yuxzn was discreetly talking about their usage of tar to block up the enemy's weapon so that it explodes, something the others still did not know about. "Qheria, if you were to be faced with the task of taking out an enemy Destroyer who was preparing to attack, how would you do it?" "Uh, tank mines? Wait, we probably don't have those. It's a shame, because an explosion from its underside could destroy the treads, bust the engine, and maybe even kill the people inside. Oh, maybe just the old classic of digging a big trench and hiding it, so that a tank would drive over it, fall in, and get stuck. If done right, the gun is usually pinned into the ground too, so the whole thing is completely useless. Then it's pretty easy to even get on top, open the door, and kill all the occupants." Qheria didn't even take long to think up a few rough strategies, borrowing from her Terran memories.

Yuxzn and Rhyde were both stunned. This single question had already gotten them a lot of new information. Yuxzn wanted to look into this further. "Wait, you're using a lot of Terran again." Terms like 'Tank Mine', 'Treads', 'Engine', and 'Gun' were all brand new, and needed some explanation. Yuxzn resumed after that was cleared up. "Ah, so the way these things pull themselves around, it's like taking out someone's legs. Hearing where the heart of these weapons are is also very interesting, but it sounds too complicated to work with. The main barrel, however you called it, that's what we had been targeting. Clogging it up resulted in the whole thing destroying itself. It sounds like even taking out its strange legs would make the task so much easier."

Rhyde thought about it for a moment. "There is a camp not far from here where a few of the bandits had acquired some Destroyers that weren't working fully up to specs, the barrel's firing ranges are much too low. The Fortress doesn't care about them if they don't meet their expectations. However, being so weak, they made suitable testing targets. Usually, if their weapon was weaker than normal, we would be cautious about using our usual approach. A weak weapon might not have the usual explosive reaction we had been depending upon. However, it is exactly as mobile as the rest, so it makes for a good experiment."

Yuxzn considered this for a moment. "Ah, I see where you are going with this. The Destroyers are parked in two locations, usually we would have to divide our forces to deal with all 5 of them. There are no leaders in the area, and no Fortress activity at all, so this is about as harmless as it comes. We can leave their party to address one location while we take care of the other. This way, if they need backup, we won't be far away." Having been given the parameters of the mission, the tactician was, as usual, quick to make the rest of the plan.