Prison
"What's next?? My army in a cage with no weapons against the entire Battle School???" ~Ender
<<September 6, 1998>>
You draw your head quickly back into the window as a beam of water slices through the air where your head was a second ago. Reflexively your right hand springs down to the holster where you keep your backup weapon -- the 25 of the classic series -- but you stay your hand. Now's not the time to be making a stand.
Closing the window, you turn around as one of your teammates approaches with a report. "We've gone through the storage, only 5 balloons left."
You nod solemnly. "Fill 'em up, we're going to need all the help we can get."
Without wasting a second, he turns on his heel and races back to the other end of the house to begin filling the water balloons -- your only available weapon except for the 25 at your waist. At least water wouldn't be a problem as long as you stayed inside . . . . .
Carefully keeping a distance from the screen door, you exit on the opposite side of the room and walk into another to look out the windows on either side of the front door, to see a fistful of opponents smiling back at you. The arrogant fools weren't even bothering to hide . . . . .
Scanning the room and seeing that all the windows couldn't be opened and making sure the front door was locked, you bypassed the bedrooms where "civilians" were conducting their own affairs and went up the stairs into the room which had been temporarily converted into a conference room. Two people were circling around a table with a rough map drawn on it, arguing.
"There's too much fortification on that side, we can't risk an exit! Now if you'd only listen, I've got a reasonable plan for--"
"For what, getting us killed? There's only two direct paths leading to the store from that exit and if they've got half as many troops as your estimate they'll mow us down if anyone tries to take either one of them!"
"No, they'll just guard the store and have done with it."
"But they'd be expecting us to assume that, and they'd split up along the way there to catch us off guard and get us before we even start evading! They can't guard the store, the de-militarized zone extends to--"
"Gentlemen?" you say, interrupting. "You don't need to argue so vehemently yet, even the two of you combined aren't a majority ruling. Save it for the conference."
Somewhat embarrassed, they nod their heads.
"Now," you continue, "I'm going to have a look around in my room again to see if there's anything else we can use, everyone'll be up in about five minutes for the conference, be prepared to brief us on all the plans, including the ones you don't recommend."
Without waiting for a response, you immediately turn and step back down the stairs and walk back through the two rooms you just checked to a third where the five water balloons are almost all full. After spotting the two windows and noting them for consideration, you continue in a straight line through and into your own room where the shelves lie cluttered with junk, and begin searching for anything that might help . . . .
* * * * *
"Now," you begin as soon as everyone is seated upstairs, "let's get a nice report of the situation."
One of your teammates begins. "As you all know, this house is roughly L-shaped, with the corner to the southwest and the legs extending north and east. We've checked all the doors and windows to get an idea of what we're up against, but to sum up, it doesn't look good." He motions to a crude map drawn minutes earlier. "The primary weapons store is here to the south and east, and we've hidden three XP 105s in the bushes behind a hammock up here to the northeast which we don't think they know about. We've got to get to these weapons so that we stand a chance at this battle -- but first we've got to get out of the house alive."
He nods to someone across the circle, who stands and begins to speak. "There are two doors on the north end of the L, the front double-door opening east at the tip, and a screen door opening west about half way up the leg. We have confirmed" (here a couple of people grimace) "that both are thoroughly guarded. The windows in the same room as the front doors are all sealed, and thus cannot be used to pass or shoot through the walls. The room with the screen door has one window next to the door which can be opened swinging outward towards the door out to 90 degrees and is large enough to allow one person to pass through at a time, not without some difficulty.
"At the corner of the L, there are two sliding glass doors, one opening south and one west. The terrain outside each of these doors is totally open, which means we could be seen easily, but we can't see anyone guarding it. The door leading west slants up sharply and the door leading south slants down sharply, so you can only hop between the two sections of terrain near the house, or there's a tree which would allow you to go down but not up about 20 meters out. There's one window in that room facing northeast out the opposite side. The pane of glass has been taken out of the window because it got broken about a week ago and there's only a screen in its place, but we could probably pop that out pretty easily -- from the inside, at least. The window is at ground level and is only about 2' x 2' so only one person at a time, and you'll probably have to army crawl out. There's a row of bushes extending along the house on either side outside of that window, so we haven't been able to determine whether anyone's out there.
"On the east leg of the L, there's one large 5' x 5' window facing each direction about half way down, and the garage is at the end. The garage door can only be opened or closed from inside, but the motor doesn't go very fast and we'd have a hard time surprising them if we went out that way, although they probably don't expect it. The driveway outside the garage only extends about 20 feet before it joins the road, which is the eastern boundary, so essentially we've only got one dimension to maneuver in out that way. It's pretty much clear north and south along the road from there, so if we left there we'd have a clear shot down to the old empty barn we converted into our store, but they probably wouldn't have a real hard time catching us. The windows, on the other hand, have their base about 5 feet off the ground and lead up onto terraces the same height above the ground, with a line of bushes running parallel to the house just below. To the south there's a small patch of light woods and to the north there's just a few scattered islands of bushes in the remainder of the square the L defines two sides of."
"What's the terrain like outside on the northern section of the L?" another person asks.
"Straight north its clear for about 15 feet before a small patch of light woods on a downward slope, which the hammock and our extra stash is about 30 feet down. The wooded slope extends all the way east and west along the northern edge of the property. To the west of the northern L leg there's a bunch of hay bales set up, both horizontally and vertically, scattered around the field -- they'd provide good cover from enemy fire, but they're too spread out to conceal our presence."
"What are our resources?" the inquisitive one asks again.
This being your department, you clear your throat. "There are, obviously, five of us. I happened to be wearing this 25 on my waist when they trapped us in here, and we found five spare water balloons in the house, which we filled. I went through my room looking for anything else we could use, but not much luck. There's enough materials to build a small funnelator, there's an old toy plastic medieval-style shield that we might be able to use for a little additional cover, and an old rock collection I had could be scrapped for the rocks, which we could use to create faint rustlings in bushes we throw them into -- admittedly the chances of that working are slim to none, but every little bit helps."
One of your teammates looks puzzled. "What's a 'funnelator'?"
You smile. "A funnelator is a type of waterballoon slingshot, made of a large funnel in the center and two large, thick rubber bands attached to either side. You either tie off or have someone hold each of the rubber bands, and then someone pulls the funnel back and releases it to shoot the water balloon off. Because my rubber bands aren't real big, the range would probably be limited to about 30 feet, although bigger ones can go a lot farther."
Someone else looks up. "What about cardboard? Couldn't we either cut out more shields, or else just use boxes themselves as shields, to give us a little more protection?"
You consider this for a while. "No, all our cardboard boxes have to be saved. However, I've got two old plastic bags we could cut holes in to use as chest armor."
"Well then," the person who drew the map began, "my plan is to--"
"Oh no you don't!" another one yells. "You two have already proven you can't agree! Time is of the essence; we need to turn it over to a single person."
Everyone looks at you expectantly.
"Oh no you don't!" you yell, a perfect mimic of the last speaker. "I'm not about to take this whole thing onto my--"
Someone interrupts you. "We didn't make you captain for nothing!"
Sighing, you consider the options. "All right, here's what we'll do . . . ."
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I would hide near the eastern door on the north side. I would use my SS 25, and I would bring one guy with me with one water balloon and the shield. The three other people would go out the east door and try to distract everyone -- one with two balloons and the funnelator and two each with one water balloon and some rocks.
Perhaps I wasn't clear, but unless its secured in place, the funnelator is a 3-person weapon -- you need one person on each end to hold it steady while the third loads and fires if you want to shoot it more than about 3 feet.
Then there's another problem -- if you'll recall from earlier in the POW text, there were several enemies smiling at you through the windows at the front door, which is the eastern door on the north side. In addition, sending three people out the same door to try to distract them, especially with minimal defenses, isn't going to do you much good -- I'm assuming that you didn't mean to send them out of a DIFFERENT east-facing door because the only other one is the garage door, and you wouldn't have called that "the east door".
I would then grab the XP 105s. I would then return, go east and call everyone in. Then I would set up the weapons as follows: My best spy/sniper would use the SS 25, whoever is most skilled with water balloons will use the funnelator with any remaining water balloons and the shield and the rest would use XP 105s. The spy and the person with water balloons would use the chest armor.
How on earth can you listen to a description of a funnelator slingshot and then expect a person to use it alone with one hand??? That's totally impossible, short of pulling the funnel back with your teeth!
And of course, there's several more subtle problems lurking in there -- like how two people are going to run 4 weapons, a shield, and possibly a water balloon past heavily armed enemies back into the house? More immediately, how are you going to dash all the way down there past these enemies supposedly "distracted" by the rest of your team and get these weapons without having half the enemy force on your tail in seconds? Being followed makes it very difficult to backtrack.
My spy would then leave through the southernmost exit on the east side. He would run, under stealth, to the weapons storage, and return with the two largest weapons in the storage that he can carry under stealth (which would probably be smaller than 105s.)
There are a whole whopping TWO exits facing south, one of which is a window, and the best cover you'll have all the way to the KNOWN WEAPONS RESERVE is some light woods -- not much cover against prying eyes at all. Unless the enemies are set up really stupidly (in which case that suicidal dash would turn out to be a piece of cake) you'd better have a pretty darn good plan for getting the spy through if you expect him to be back.
The smaller of the two is Weapon 1 and the other is Weapon 2. When he returned, I would distribute the weapons and items as follows:
Weapon 1, SS 25 backup
Weapon 2, funnelator and remaining water balloons (if any)
XP 105, shield (me)
XP 105, armor
XP 105, armor
Then we would go out the southernmost exit on the west side and make a run for it!
P. S. Actually, perhaps my first suggestion was a bit unrealistic, but the third is quite possible.
~Nathan M G Hannon
The third being making a run for it once you've got all that equipment? Yes, that sounds fairly reasonable, aside from the fact that you keep expecting one person to use the funnelator unaided (and usually with another thing in their hands at the same time).
I'm sorry, but I can't give you much credit on the third part because it depends on the previous two, which have an almost 100% chance of failure EACH.