Kalisz: Trading Fire

5 November 2000 0535H: Kalisz, Poland.

The sun would be up soon. The light level was already increasing.

Maks’ team was coiling to make its run across the bridge. It was past time to get out of here. They’d already disabled a communist Polish Army Humvee just in front of them. Reinforcements had been arriving erratically so far.

They gently tossed smoke grenades ahead of them. Wojciech found a nook and took watch ahead. The sergeant from the 21st MRD – their mission observer – clutched his manacled ZOMO captain, alive so long as he behaved. Grant Derek William – across the river – shot up the ZOMO jeep that’d just arrived with his SVD, killing the gunner and sending the jeep fleeing the way it came.

The ZOMO troops had proven to be unreliable and ineffective. The red Polish army was another matter, consistently more aggressive and able opponents.

Polish troops, who had been charging into the theater earlier, came out and confronted the party at close range. They were quickly cut down. One party member tossed a frag into the entrance area.

The blast killed one ZOMO lurker, and wounded a Polish soldier. He stumbled out of cover and was cut down by Barna Áron, who’d been over at the Humvee covering just that zone.

The rest of party had just crossed over to the Humvee when the other Humvee flanked from the south.

The party was caught broadside. Three party members, plus their prisoner, were in the Danger Zone for automatic fire.

The danger zone is the area where persons not actually aimed at may be hit by stray shots from a burst of automatic fire… an area five meters to either side of a line drawn between the firing character and the target, and includes all potential targets which are within the same range band as the target.

[And then inexplicably, I forgot to use the Polish gunner’s autofire the first turn, instead firing single shots. I randomly rolled the ZOMO captain as target this time, and Barna Áron.]

The ZOMO captain died instantly from the one .50 round that caught him. Their prisoner was dead. Barna Áron got clipped by another shot in the abdomen.

[Slight Wound! Almost a serious wound, really low damage roll for that .50 caliber. “Hey, it’s just an abdomen wound, just walk it off!” we joked.]

The whole party returned fire. Wojciech fired his Soviet BG-15 grenade launcher, which hit low and damaged the suspension of the Humvee. A few more rounds hit, but to little effect. More Polish troops, with a couple of freshly-inspired ZOMO goons, supported their comrades in the Humvee.

A brawl ensued.

A lot of rounds went up and down range. The enemy got the worst of it, but several of the party were taking wounds. BA, now manning the M2HB in the nearby Humvee, got hit in the head by round fragment.

1d6 x 1d6 hp Crewmember hit, per Vehicle Combat rules, mentioned last time. BA’s hit location was Head. But he was lucky again, only 6 hp of damage. Still, the Quick Kill rules (Twilight 2000 v2.2 rulebook, page 210) apply to all head and chest wounds.

I had my brother make a Quick Kill roll for Barna Áron to survive the head wound.

“Quick Kill: Any shot which hits the chest or head may constitute a killing shot. Roll a D20. If the roll is less than or equal to the damage value of the shot, the target is instantly killed except on a roll of 20 exactly.”

The rules advise to not apply instadeath here to PCs, inflicting double damage instead. We haven’t had to deal with that yet.

Since the damage was 6, that was the number Barna Áron had to beat on a D20, else Quick Kill get applied.

He succeeded, rolling an 11 if I remember right. BA lives, for now.

The enemy M2HB gunner died after squeezing those rounds off [a burst. I remembered!]. Wojciech was hit by enemy infantry, as well as the Soviet sergeant attached to the party.