Traveller Vignette 026

After the fighting on Darkholme, the Aslan were punctilious about providing details of human troops killed or captured, less for humanitarian reasons than because it reflected on their own fighting prowess. With the information came the wreck of a man in a cryotube. Corporal Anubis Chen had been manning a VRF Gauss nest when his regiment's line collapsed under the Aslan assault, and it was obvious both that his position had to be held to buy time for human forces to establish a new defence line, and that to do so would be suicide.

Chen told his loader to get out while he could, then held off repeated Aslan attacks for the next four hours, despite being wounded three times. With the gauss ammunition gone, he fought with a captured Aslan rifle, and finally called in artillery on his own position as it was overrun.

The human delegation were disconcerted to discover Chen had actually been mortally wounded in the fighting, and had survived only because he had received multiple organ transplants from the human dead of the battle, including a pancreas, spleen and one lung.

Along with Corporal Chen's body the Aslan returned his personal weapon, carefully cleaned, and a scroll in their elaborate calligraphy. It expressed the hope that Chen would survive and sire many strong sons to provide worthy enemies against whom future generations of Aslan could earn honour in battle, or that if he died of his wounds, that he would be reborn Aslan in his next life.

(Author's note - I suppose we could regard the scroll as the Aslan equivalent of a “Get well soon” card. If Chen survives, he might be a useful NPC, either still in the military or retired from his injuries. In either way, he'll be decorated and famous for his bravery, and how he deals with that is up to the referee. Will he be modest, boastful and throw his weight around when dealing with people (the PCs perhaps?) who haven't seen combat, or will he be haunted and trying to live up to his past reputation?

Alternatively, if the referee. is running a military campaign, they might have to hold the position instead of Chen, or be trying to stem the retreat and get new defensive lines established)