Operation Endgame
| Operation Endgame | |
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| ◄Eamon adventure #161► | |
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| Author | Sam Ruby |
| Released | September 1988 |
| Revised | 29 June 1991 |
| EAG number | 161 |
| EDX number | 09-11 |
| EDX set | The Sam Ruby Adventures |
| Native format | Apple DOS 3.3 |
| Files |
Eamon 161 - Operation Endgame, Disk 1.dsk Eamon 161 - Operation Endgame, Disk 2.dsk Eamon 161 - Operation Endgame, Disk 3.dsk Eamon 161 - Operation Endgame, Disk 1 (ProDOS).dsk Eamon 161 - Operation Endgame, Disk 2 (ProDOS).dsk Eamon 161 - Operation Endgame, Disk 3 (ProDOS).dsk |
Operation Endgame is a three-disk Eamon adventure written by Sam Ruby and released in September 1988.
Premise
Your nation has long been at war with an aggressive enemy people known as the Breakers, and though your forces have been holding them back on the eastern front, the situation is worsening in the south. To make matters much worse, intelligence has discovered that the Breakers have built a single nuclear weapon and fitted it to a long-range missile, and within two weeks they'll be in a position to launch it against your forces and achieve a quick victory. The missile is housed at a secure base built into a river canyon.
The top brass agrees the missile must be destroyed immediately, but that an all-out assault would likely fail given the strength of the Breaker defenses surrounding the base. Instead they call on you, a decorated member of the Special Forces, to assemble an elite four-man team and lead a covert mission to infiltrate the base and detonate the missile before it can be launched. You pick your three teammates — a sniper, a demolitions expert, and a heavy gunner — and are soon flying on a stealth helicopter to your drop-off point near the base. Being deep in Breaker territory, extraction won't be possible, so once the mission is complete you'll have to find your own way to safety.
| Full introduction | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Part One"Oh, !*@$#!, Commander, look!" A platoon of soldiers was coming over the ridge... fast. The distinctive silhouette of a Breaker AK-47 could be seen in each of the soldiers' hands. "Damn!" Brody grabbed his First Sergeant by the arm and gave him a hard pull. "Forget the ridge. We'll have to find another way out." Hurriedly they made their way across the rocky field, using the large boulders to cover their backs. They could not afford to be caught. Sure, they were expendable — all Special Forces Operatives were, theoretically — but the secret that Commander Brody and First Sergeant Baker carried had to reach Allied hands... The mission had gone all to hell. Brody's six-man team was down to two. He had been sent to rescue twelve others; four were dead when he got there, and eight died in the Breakers' surprise attack. The withdrawal from West Lampton had been hasty; most of the equipment had to be left behind. But the Allies were damned if they'd leave it intact. Two teams from the Special Forces were left behind to sabotage what they could. But they were trapped in the mountains; unable to make radio contact, and behind enemy lines, they were left to fend for themselves. They were not heard from for two months. But then the message came, smuggled out by a contact in the Resistance. The teams had survived, harassing Breaker convoys with hit-and-run attacks. Guerilla warfare behind enemy lines was what the Special Forces Operatives were born for. They would attack convoys, salvage from the wreckage, and move on. This convoy had looked like any other, but what they found in the wreckage would turn the war upside-down. The message of their discovery reached the Allies; and so, a third Special Forces team was sent to get them and their precious secret out. Brody found eight men still alive. But the escape did not go as planned. The Breakers had found them, and Brody was ambushed by a squadron of Mi-24 Hind D assault helicopters. Ten men, two of them Brody's, fell to those flying tanks; two more had perished since. Brody and Baker were the only ones left. "What do we do now, Commander?" Brody squinted his eyes and peered towards the ridge. The soldiers had been joined by two jeep patrols, and the sound of a helicopter could be heard in the distance. He tightened the straps that secured the briefcase to his back. "We try to make it to the river. There's a fisherman's cabin on the east bank that is a Resistance safe-house." Or was it? Intelligence reports had suffered from a recent Breaker crackdown. What was safe two weeks ago might not be safe now... Gunfire exploded across the plain. Instinctively, Brody flattened himself as a helicopter circled above. "C'mon, Baker, we've got to move NOW before that chopper comes around again." He started to move, but there was no reply. "BAKER!" Baker lay on his side, half-riddled with bullets. Blood bubbled from the corner of his mouth; his eyes were barely open. "Jesus... Holy Mother of God..." Brody tried to pull him a ways, but the terrain was unyielding. Baker coughed, and managed a few scratchy words. "Forget it, Commander... go... urhhm..." "No, Sergeant, I'm not leaving any more men behind!" The sound of the chopper grew louder. Baker's eyes were going blank. The ground around him was deeply stained. He feebly raised a finger and pointed at the closing chopper. "You've... the case out of here... leave the bastard to me." The chopper was almost close enough to see them. Brody propped Baker up against a rock, and removed the high-explosive grenade from his pack. He pulled the pin out and placed the large sphere in Baker's hand. He saluted, and dashed off towards the river. The Breaker pilot had spotted one of the enemy soldiers hiding by a rock. He swung his chopper to the side, giving his gunner the opportunity for a sweep pattern. But the soldier was not moving. He lay up against a rock, blood running from his broken body. Orders came over the radio. "...Repeat, you are to take the infiltrators intact, alive if possible. Search their packs..." The pilot landed his chopper. His gunner jumped out and approached the soldier. He was bleeding profusely, and he had no weapon. But his eyes were open..... ...and he was smiling. Brody was climbing down a cliff, with the river below him. The Commander was out of sight now; he had a chance. The explosion caught him off-guard. His foot slipped, and he tumbled into the surging waters below. There was a moment of extreme agony, and then all went numb. Two figures stood over the washed-up body. "A soldier of the Allies. See those markings? Special Forces. We were told to look for these guys." "What do we do? He's in bad shape. Back is broken, possibly spinal cord severed. Nasty bump on the head. He's breathing though... just barely." "We have our orders. He's got to be taken back." "You set up a stretcher..." "I'll radio Resistance Headquarters." Part Two: Crisis"All right, all right, Major, I know we're getting our collective rear end kicked on the Southern Front. No need to rub it in." General Andrew Ryan did not enjoy being reminded of the recent failings, which were under his responsibility as head of SOUTHCOM, the Southern Command. "Moving on, then. The Eastern Front is bogged down in a stalemate, and the Breakers are advancing on the South Front. Right now our production is holding up, and we've got better equipment; but the Breakers hold a numeric advantage, and they're more aggressive than us." "Tell us something we don't know," said Admiral Lawrence Corren, one of the four Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were meeting in response to an as-yet-unrevealed emergency. "Let's get to the point," said the commander of the Eastern Front, General Ted Dalton. "Why were we called here? You know we've got plenty of crap to deal with..." "Gentlemen," replied the Major, "The report is in on that briefcase that came out of West Lampton." "That business with the Special Forces?" "Yes. And I'm afraid it isn't good news. You'd all better get ready for this." "The Breakers have built and deployed a long-range missile armed with a nuclear warhead." "How in the hell..." "Why didn't we know this..." The major raised his hand, implying a wish for silence. "We knew they were working on a long-range missile. We never imagined that they had nuclear technology." "What about our own project?" General Thompson, commander of the rapidly-shinking Non-Combat (civilian) Areas, spoke up for the first time. "It is progressing. We've got the missile & casing worked out; it's in production now. But we just haven't had the time or resources to produce weapons-grade plutonium." "Dammit, we've had nuclear technology for half a decade now. Why the hell haven't we got a working bomb?" "You know the answer. Parliament wanted to keep it all civilian. They were afraid where the use of nuclear power for military purposes would lead to." "The fools. Did they really think the Breakers were worried about ecology? Jesus! And — oh, damn..." "I just realized what this means. They could take out whole divisions, hell, they could take out the 4th Army right now." "It's worse than that, General. If these reports are correct, they have the capability to wipe out two-thirds of our factories with one push of a button. We all know that the only thing that's slowing the Breakers down is our ability to throw several hundred tons of discouragement at them every week. With our production down, they can be at the capital in a month." "A month... why haven't they used it yet?" "I can tell you why," said General Dalton. "They're waiting for better position. Once that bird hits, they want to be able to take maximum advantage." "General," asked the major, "if you were a Breaker, how long would it be before you launched the missile?" "Hmm... I bet they'd wait until they got across the Grand River. Once they could move men across there, they'd be ready for a blitzkrieg." "And how long can your men hold that area?" "Two weeks at the most. Their progress is slow, but steady. Another week and we'll have to blow the bridge. But there are several, and it won't take them more than a week to establish a beachead on the other side." "O.K., so we're at drop date minus two weeks. That doesn't give us any time to take anything other than token measures." "We do know where they're keeping it. They've built a base near the mouth of the Erri River, where the canyon widens somewhat. We've got no maps of the place, but we do know a little about the general area. The site is fairly far into the Breaker homeland, but not as far as you'd expect. Probably has to do with the range of the missile." "Let's bomb the hell out of them." "Already thought of. We'd lose half our planes getting through their defenses; even if we didn't, the actual missile and control center are built into a mountain. We'd need our own nuke to knock theirs out." "There is another option. Most of the land between the front and the base is jungle land. We could send in a Special Forces team; they might be able to get there. Disabling the missile would have to be their greatest achievement, but they've come through for us before." "SF is in shambles. Those idiots in military intelligence — and God knows why they have jurisdicition — have been using them like toilet paper. Got a problem? Send Special Forces. Rough job? It's OK. Special Forces are expendable. And now we've lost three-fourths of them." "How the hell could they pull it off, anyway? We've got nothing on that canyon." "True, but we do have one thing." "What?" The major pulled out a file and placed it on the table. Its label: COMMANDER [Adventurer's name] "He's still alive?" "Yes, though we don't exactly go around advertising it. You remember that dam at Negat? The one that burst, taking out their airstrip?" "His work?" "Yep, and with a four-man team instead of six." The Joint Chiefs conferred for a moment. "I guess this is it," said General Thompson. "If we knock out their missile, we'll have time to build our own. If we don't, we can start practicing our penmanship — for the surrender papers." "Either way, it's the end of the game." "Major, we'll leave you to work out the details of Operation Endgame." Part Three: Operation EndgameLooking around, you notice how dead the base is. Sure, the weather's always rotten, but things never looked this bad. But then, things have never been this bad. The Special Forces are dying. And the Operatives are becoming an extinct breed. Three-fourths of the pre-war strength was lost. Teams had been cut down from the pre-war number of eight to six, then to four. You'd survived, but barely; officially, you were presumed dead. "Commander! Commander!" The voice of the CEO interrupts your thoughts. "I just got a call from the top brass... you were on a chopper to Fort Warren five minutes ago..." "I read you," you reply. The chopper pad is on the other side of the compound from the barracks, but you won't be taking the longer walk; your bags are probably in the chopper already. Forty-one minutes later... "Welcome, Commander, I'm afraid we have very little time and must go directly to Briefing." So much for breakfast. "Are you familiar with nuclear technology?" "Slightly," you answer. "Well, basically, some forms of matter are unstable. Their subatomic particles aren't comfortable. Plutonium is one such element. You get enough plutonium together, it starts to break up on the subatomic level. When this happens, a tremendous amount of energy is released. If the explosion is big enough, it could destroy an entire city and irradiate — poison — areas for many miles around." "Can you make bombs out of plutonium?" you ask. Whoa, this guy catches on fast. "Yes. We've been working on it for five years. But the Breakers have beaten us to it. They've built a nuclear bomb and installed it in a long-range missile that can be fired from their homeland." "Just one?" "Yes. Producing weapons-grade plutonium is a new science. They also wanted to keep the project small, easier to conceal. Of course, we found out." Seventeen Operatives died to get that information, you think to yourself. And Brody... you'd been to see him at the hospital. It wasn't pretty. "They've deployed it to a new base built into a river canyon; south of the Great Jungle, near the ocean. There are several mountains on the south side of the canyon, and they've installed the missile in a launching silo in one of them. Our bombers would be of little use, and an amphibious attack from the sea would give them enough time to launch. Besides, their coastal defenses are nearly impenetrable; trying to fly over their anti-aircraft net would be suicide. No, to get to that missile, we need sabotage. That's why we called on you. You're going to blow it up. You will receive full briefing tonight. Right now, I want you to pick your team. We're still going with the four-man configuration." That would be rough. This canyon would be no ordinary base. But then, the Operatives that were still alive were the cream of the crop... "I want Sgt. Rockman, Lt. Tailor, and Lt. Malley." "All right, I'll see what I can do." After you leave, the major pulls your files...
Later that day, your team is assembled in the briefing room... "I hope this isn't another one of those mickey mouse operations intelligence keeps sending us on," Rock 'n Roll grumbles. "No, Sergeant. I'll let your commander explain, since he knows best what you need to know..." You tell them. Rock 'n Roll is not impressed. "That's because you're too dumb to understand what this means," Tech baits. "Shut up, Junior. Just show me where to shoot, and me and Serenity will do the rest." "This is a stealth mission, sergeant. Don't get trigger happy." "Trigger-happy's my middle name, major. Why the hell am I on this mission? Send me to the front and..." "You're here because you were chosen for the team. Now listen up, people." "Tonight you'll be on a stealth helicopter heading south into Breaker territory. At a certain point you'll be dropped into the jungle; from then on, you're on your own. You'll spend the rest of the day moving southwest, to the canyon. Your best chance is at night, but the place is well-lit. That is all the recon plane could gather." "Your mission is to locate and destroy their missile. Tech, I want you to set two charges on it for good measure. Otherwise they may be able to repair it." "You've all had experience with Breakers, but just for the record, I have to brief you on them." "I'm so excited," says Rock 'n Roll. "Wake me up when the Commies are in shooting range." "The Breakers are physically tougher than we are, standing on the average six feet three, very muscular. Cunning in battle they have; general intelligence they're not known for. They usually carry the AK-47 automatic rifle, but you should stick to your own weapons — they're better, and the AK's damage easily. They'd probably be rendered unusable after a fight. You'll all be equipped with survival gear, climbing gear, and medi-kits." "What about our extraction?" "I'm afraid... it's not possible. This is a Priority 1 operation; and it's for all the marbles..." Priority 1... the mission is to be accomplished at any cost. Operatives may take steps to assure their escape only if there is no interference with the mission. Once the mission is accomplished, Operatives must find their own means to assure their survival. You spend the rest of the night in a stealth helicopter, flying low over the jungle in Breaker territory. Throughout the next day, you make your way south, until you come to a road. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Walkthrough
EAG president Tom Zuchowski wrote a walkthrough for Operation Endgame that was published in the June 1997 issue of the Eamon Adventurer's Guild Newsletter. Though he usually avoided doing walkthrough for adventures that already included a "Solutions" file, Zuchowski made an exception in this case because he felt that even with Ruby's guidance it could still difficult to complete. As with many of his other walkthroughs, Zuchowski begins with some general hints that players can use if they don't want to rely on the detailed solution, the moves into the step-by-step instructions for traversing the Breaker base and destroying the missile.
Gallery
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Base map by Sam Ruby -
The second level
External links
- EAG Online: Master List
- The Interactive Fiction Database: Operation Endgame
- Interactive Fiction Reviews: Operation Endgame
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