Traveller Vignette 029

Society on Thracian had been wracked by class strife and political in-fighting, but unified impressively against the external threat. Hastily recalled reservists and armies of civilian volunteers worked round the clock to ready the mothballed ships of the 59th CruRon, and to bring the depleted SDB force up to strength. Technical personnel were restricted to 12 hour shifts, to avoid mistakes, but men in the loading crews worked till they dropped, and rose to work again after a few hours exhausted sleep and a hastily snatched meal.

Work that should have taken months was done in weeks, though many ships had systems that would only be completed and tested while actually under way. When the fleet jumped to the first muster point it was followed by a ragtag trail of civilian merchants carrying final loads of consumables for transhippment during refuelling at the gas giant.

Even so, over a thousand civilian techs stayed aboard various warships when they jumped onward, determined to finish their work despite knowing there would be no chance to put them off before the fleet met superior enemy forces in desperate battle


(Author's note - Obviously, this is some background colour for a naval scenario- the PCs are presumably crew aboard the fleet, or one of the merchant ships supporting it)


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