Racing the Darkness - An Alpha Centauri Photologue

[MysticWind]

Chassis: Truck

Well, sunspot, I got good news and bad news for you. The bad news is a major fungal bloom took out 300 clicks of the road between here and there. The good news is the Crawler Don't Stop. We're going over the red stuff. The worms, well, they will not like that one bit, so the kids stay in the panic box, and everyone else carries a flame gun. You fought worms before? Good, good. And it don't look like you got your eyes chewed out, neither. Ok, sunspot, grab a flamer and a bench. And, whatever happens, whatever the worms make you see, you do not get off the Crawler while we're crossing the red. Cause, like I told you, sunspot, the Crawler Don't Stop.

The truck was a workhorse that spanned the stars, forming a major component of the Unity motor pool. Ranging from electric ultralights, to gasoline-powered pickups and utes, to diesel tractor units with semi-trailers, trucks were used primarily for supply transport. On Planet as on Earth, trucks brought unrefined mineral ore from mines to smelters, harvested crops from farming settlements to residential cores, factory-built waste fission batteries and fuel cells to newly-founded bases, and perhaps most crucially, water from treatment plants to any and all colonists. Beyond necessities, trucks brought salvage from Unity wreck sites to reclamation crews, battlefield rubble to the recycling tanks, and commodities- the lifeblood of trade pacts- between factions.

Modified for the alien high-grav terrain but not always for the atmosphere, many of these vehicles proved to be reliable, if dangerous, mainstays of the colonization effort. Just as most pilots of speeders or Terraformer Transports always carried a breather mask, or wore full-on envirosuits at all times, Chironian truckers were prepared to deal with cab breach. Especially since many of their rides were simply Earth originals hastily-converted for interplanetary travel. Yet the factions used them just the same. While far smaller than prime movers, pickers, formers, rigs, and their own successor, the supply crawler, trucks proved to be more versatile, cost-effective, and abundant.

The original Leyland-Toyota Kingsman, popularly known as the Unity Lorry, became the standard cargo truck of Planet

A panoply of vehicle manufacturers supplied trucks for the mission, but none as many as automobile giant Leyland-Toyota. Along with Chiron-compatible Startrain tractor-trailers, compact Hilux pickups, and miniature kei trucks, the Anglo-Japanese manufacturer built the Kingsman, a semiautomated extraterrestrial environment heavy hauler with a capacity of nearly 50 metric tons. Like Unity Rovers, it was equipped with a radiothermal generator- supposedly much cleaner than the microreactors of the Soviet-produced junked armored cars- and all-wheel drive. The service console contained an Oya-class (親) autodriver that could navigate around obstacles and over difficult terrain, rated for traveling thousands of kilometers without operator input. Indeed, many behind the wheel of a Kingsman were more overseers than drivers. For its durability and quality engineering, not to mention its ubiquity, the truck was widely referred to as the Unity Lorry.

As provider of mechanical expertise and a wide range of trucks, up-armored buses, agricultural machinery, Rovers, Land Cruisers, robotic laborers, vans, and even atmospheric processors, Leyland-Toyota was one of the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri’s twelve Prime Contractors. However, neither Leyland, Lancashire nor Toyota, Aichi deigned to purchase a billet, and so there were few loyalist employees on Chiron to refound the company. As with many major brands, multiple succession claims arose, usually arguing on behalf of an ex-executive or another as the legitimate commanding officer. The leading pretender was once director of operations at Ashok Leyland who rebuilt the South Asian division in the aftermath of the Six-Minute War, chosen as figurehead for a NoxCo rights resurrection project (a practice often derided as “patent necromancy”). A rival company-in-exile was based in the Chiron Cartel, a group of high-ranking engineers who had defected to, and then travelled to Alpha Centauri as employees of, Foden Trucks. But due to the proliferation of Leyland-Toyota machines, factions built custom copycats, from the Emporium’s militarized Laager variants courtesy of Imperial Logistics and Materiel to the Data Angels’ open source Toyland versions by the Download A Car campaign. As L-T designs became universally adopted, ownership claims were rendered moot.

Convoy of Unity Lorries in twin tail formation shuttling goods and supplies over the Sunny Mesa

During the early colonial period, the relative speed of the cargo truck made it the preferred motor transportation for bulk delivery, alongside atomic locomotive-powered speedtrains and rail-converted rovers. Even later trucks were fielded as they were nimbler and smarter than their low-track crawler descendents. Not until the vast mag tube Planetary Transit System did their use decline. Autodriver semiautonomy, increased later to virtually full independence with Robot Cluster Control facilities, enabled massed caravans with minimal personnel. As trade routes formalized, onsite human presence could be reduced to a single crew at the head of a convoy, even three- driver, co-driver riding shotgun, and backup gunner. As valuable as their payloads were, the drive to ship more goods to more destinations in less time outweighed security considerations. Speeder escorts could be better deployed elsewhere. “Convoyers” who rode lead lorry faced a lonesome time in the empty wilderness.

A convoy captain calls Warm Welcome Traffic Control over Centauri CB. Unlike commlinks, truck radio frequencies actually increased range during higher sunspot activity

Convoyers fit uneasily into base life. Many possessed a pronounced yearning for lost Earth- some even shaky psych profiles with uncertain prognoses- and so were assigned to the solitude of truck convoying. Ironically, extended time in the lonely wild was usually salutary, leaving drivers softly melancholy yet with a certain zest for life. Psych chaplains suggested that fresh air- so to speak- away from cramped and claustrophobic colonies was the secret to improved mood, prosocial behavior. Many convoyers became devotees to the lifestyle, opting to take off on unscheduled jaunts between shipments, weaving between fungal patch and tower. Some who finished their contracts or tours went as far as to purchase their own lorries, becoming independent truckers repairing sensor installations, inspecting weather stations, assisting scientific surveys, making small time courier runs. These nomads were nicknamed “road smacers,” romanticized by basers as enviably loose and free, reminiscent of the cowboys of the American Wild West. They were said to live by the rules of the road, forging allegiances that went beyond factions.

For all of the supposed kinship among convoyers (also likened to the Pony Express) their livelihood had all the struggle, danger, violence for the frontier, but little of the camaraderie- at least not between trucks. While there did exist a rudimentary code of honor among convoy life, it was often a luxury in the face of attacks by smacer bandits, Irredeemable Holnists, Darwin Raiders, even lunatic Muckers. A particularly nasty tactic by the more duplicitous factions was to feign distress over the radio, luring overly magnanimous and credulous crews into traps off the road. Many convoy captains refused to heed pleas for help. And even when meeting a fellow convoyer from the same faction under true colors, there was no telling if its drivers might not have gone wormmad.

Notes

Opening quote is from this /tg/ post. Fun idea from that thread: “A civilization of truckers, for example - forever on the road, driving enormous landships that might as well be mobile cities, transporting goods in raw materials in mass quantity, using their vessels' enormous bulk to breach even the thickest fungus.”

Leyland-Toyota was the original name for the Company from Alien, as proposed by concept artist and designer Ron Cobb, who wanted to “imply that poor old England is back on its feet and has united with the Japanese, who have taken over the building of spaceships the same way they have now with cars and supertankers”- but obviously the movie could not use British Leyland and Toyota’s actual monikers. For an extensive origin story of W-Y, see this history on Alien Explorations. For an attempt to come up with how an actual L-T could have arisen, perhaps by preventing the earlier merger that formed BLMC, check out this thread on the Alternate History forums, namely post #7. To prevent having too many preexisting megacorps running around Planet, I made it so Leyland-Toyota only supplies the mission, and not outright joins it.

(‘)Formers are formally called Terraformer Transports in the GURPS Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri sourcebook, pg. 112.

According to the SMAC Flavor.txt, the Supply Transport module has a capacity of 2575 mt (metric tons?), which is a hundred times that of a modern day semi-truck’s load.

Unity Rover details also from GURPS, pg. 110.

Oya is a Japanese way of speaking of one’s parents, and a nod to MU/TH/UR 6000 from Alien and FAR/TH/UR 2600 from Alien Resurrection.

Warm Welcome is located in a polar region, not unlike Antarctica Traffic Control from Alien.

High frequency band radio communications, including CB and ham radio, are indeed enhanced by greater solar activity.

The idea of wandering drivers on an alien planet is actually inspired by the Rovers subculture from the Outpost Mars RPG setting by Paul Elliott.

Image Credits

Mercedes-Benz Unimog is Red Mars conceptual art by William Bennett- his work has to be seen to be believed

Space truck is from the Outpost instruction manual, page 48

Space trucks is from Outpost 2: Divided Destiny as a unit type. Here is a short story about one.

Space trucker is Tom Skerritt as Captain Arthur Dallas from Alien

Previous posts

Prime movers

Chassis: Crawlers

Pickers

Soviet fission-powered armored cars

Trains

[MysticWind]

Operation: Checkpoint Chasers

Fly, you fools! - The Fellowship of the Ring, Datalinks

Chiron Guard squaddies, themselves trespassing over Hive soil, accost an unaffiliated smacer in the Uranium Flats region of Nevaeh, Security Roadblock 375

Like their pickup cousins, cargo trucks were used for vendettas on Planet. War bands fielded them as ammunition, fuel, or loot mobile depots for extended raids. Discarded haulers made for impromptu barricades, even when burnt out. Desperate defenders rigged truck reactors to meltdown when their bases were overrun. But perhaps its most novel use was in preserving the freedom of movement.

Planet’s burgeoning road system gave malefactors opportunities to exploit. As factions sprung up and marked their borders, they also sought to limit access to territory. Over time, the act of taking roads and setting up checkpoints drifted from strategic necessity to extraction and extortion. Motorists became subject to search and seizure by guards toting heavy shredders and laser sidearms. These illicit sentinels permitted passage only after pocketing bribes from irritating to budget-breaking. Not only factionless smacer brigands practiced checkpoint shakedowns. Lord’s Believers forced tithers, Nautilus Pirates on shore leave, Morgan motortransaction billers, Darwin Raider roadlords demanding “Silk Road maintenance tribute,” Watchers of Chiron speedtraps, Pilgrim homesteaders performing customs inspections in the name of retrieving contraband stolen from Governor van de Graaf- nearly every faction had members complicit in highway robbery. Even corrupt Gaian Rangers erected toll booths selling mandatory “hydrocarbon credits” for passersby to offset emissions, regardless of vehicle type. Hapless travellers that lacked the energy were told to go the long way around, or off-road. For the good of Gaia, of course.

The one faction singularly opposed to the practice was the Hunters of Chiron: maker, maintainer, and now self-declared guarantor of the passageways of Planet. Having had enough of their ‘former crews disrupted while en route, the pavers of the Roadrunner Lodge and the street knights of the Saluki Lodge teamed up to create a new sweeper squadron independent of Main Force Patrol. A former National Army of Colombia commander led the initiative. The Andean country, like Chiron, suffered from “having more geography than state.” The interminable Colombian internal conflict was exacerbated by the remoteness of the periphery and by the privation of its people. This was addressed periodically by building and rebuilding roads to connect far-flung regions for security and development. But the other side of the infrastructural sword was that it allowed guerrillas and paramilitaries- later, Kellerites and hypersurvivalists- to travel around more easily, increasing rates of narcoterrorism and sales of coca, then metacoca. As these insurgents and the cartels assumed control of highways and byways, even adding their own routes, they stopped travellers to kidnap them for ransom, a steady income source. And, as on Planet, to charge unofficial tolls.

Order of battle for the Checkpoint Hunter Squad Type B of the Colombian Motorized Road Control Company’s Observation and Reaction Platoon

In response, the Colombian government developed the Plan Meteoro national highway safety program, clearing out illegal street blockades with mobile tactical teams. The commander, once the NCO executive officer of the 10th Motorized Road Control Squadron that patrolled the Pan-American Highway from Bogotá to the Venezuelan border, adapted its operational manual for a Chironian context. The so-called Meteora Record devised militarized highway convoys composed of a command staff, motorized assault groups, and an observational support vanguard. Vehicles were driven by the Superchargers of the Saluki while the Roadrunners brought the soldiers. In true Hunters of Chiron fashion, the positions were derived from British fox hunting.

Checkpoint hunting parties were led by Houndsmasters, senior combat officers seconded from the Main Force Patrol, in a single armored speeder. Motorized assault (the Field) provided mounted fire support from the rear of the convoy. Road recon (First Field) searched for checkpoints in heavy weapons Humvees. Overwatchers (Second Field) brought base of fire with roof-mounted turrets on improvised gun trucks clad in scrap metal armor or Kokirri APCs. At the back, Sustainment (Hilltop) supplied maintenance, logistics, and medical support from a medium-duty rigid box truck, e.g. the Morgan Ford 8X, the Chevrolet-Monarch Consolidated Kenai, or the Leyland-Toyota DynaAce.

Observational support vanguard (the Pack) was both the convoy’s tip of the spear and the blunt at its back. Scouts (Hound Dogs, or Dogs) on Japanese motorbikes or monobikes like the Morgan Azawakh rode at the front, searching for illegal stops. Sometimes, civilian speeders like the Fairchild-Grumman Light All-Terrain Reconnaissance Vehicle, known as the Scout Rover, acted as decoys (the Drag, from drag hunting), inviting ambushes far ahead of the convoy. The vanguard’s support included pickups (Whips, from Whippers-in) carrying infantry armed with heavy weapons including impact autocannons, a solar array laser, and MANPADS. As on Earth during the Sahara Burst Wars, CEO Nwabudike Morgan would once again sell secondhand Leyland-Toyota Hiluxes as military vehicles. Another Sustainment truck (Kennel) remained at the rear and served as a backup evacuation vehicle.

Finally, the heart of the vanguard was the Checkpoint Destroyer Vehicle (the Huntsman), a Unity Lorry upgraded with level 55 armor capable of shrugging off 7.62mm UN standard all the way to resisting particle impactor blasts. Armed with even more heavy weapons the faction could muster, 360-degree surveillance across the EM spectrum, and dozens of infantry (Terriers), the final boss of the convoy eliminated enemy checkpoints via fire and maneuver. When either the Drag or the Dogs spotted unauthorized occupiers on the road, the Huntsman would throw off its civilian disguise by raising its turrets and unloading its Terriers, which like proverbial dogs cornering a fox gone to ground, annihilated the hostiles. Whips pulled ahead to give the dismounted troops additional forward cover, and the Kennel guarded the Pack’s rear. If the enemy was dug in, the Fields caught up to finish the job.

The Meteora Record codified these specialized Hunters as a distinct unit. In time, they would be honored as a new lodge, Aullador - the Colombian Fino Hound.

While most factions reserved Wolfgang armor for wetware probes, the Hunters’ wolfmen also served as shock troops, shedding camouflage to bare fearsome helms

The checkpoint hunting parties revenged themselves against the roadblocks with uncharacteristic deviousness. Huntsmen were disguised as unassuming civilian vehicles trucking fat stores. Painted to look like Morganite, Cartel, or Bourse lorries transporting planetpearls, thorium, or nutrient bars, they were such tempting targets that perps argued it was entrapment. Hunting parties varied themselves with honeypot semiautomated caravans, surprising bandits as the middle or caboose truck grew turrets and started blasting, trailer door irising open to reveal a dozen Hunters armed with penetrator carbines.

The unlucky Spartan levy legion at Point Amphion was caught unawares when a seemingly defenseless former from a TERRA disaster relief convoy sprouted a ‘Sabre’ missile launcher, obliterating the shakedown squad and blowing past their getaway koutí to attack their field HQ hidden nearby. The bunker was razed to the ground by powerful terraforming tools, robbers narrowly climbing out of the ruins and straight into the back of an Aullador paddy wagon. The Nimrod would smash half a dozen more checkpoints before it was finally destroyed by the Infantry Support Tracks of a Pilgrim stadtholder who had caught on to the trick.

Hunters of Chiron, more stoic than Pirates but no less impetuous, eschewed using their Huntsmen as passive mobile observation bases, contrary to the original cautions of Plan Meteoro. Instead, an autodriver would take a Huntsman many klicks ahead of the Pack, let alone the Field, with only a few Hounds shadowing off-road. Stopping at a checkpoint, would-be truckjackers were presented with an abandoned cab and a cargo hold full of empty cages. As the bandits entered to inspect, wolfmen materialized from the shadows, ballistics-resistant armor deflecting futile rounds as guns were ripped out from their hands and they were thrown into their holding cells. Charged at High Hide with attempted highway robbery and illegally impeding traffic, arrestees were ransomed to their home factions.

Affectionately known as Highway Hounds, checkpoint chasers were widely celebrated among the Hunters of Chiron for cleaning up the roads. Among adversaries, they were bitterly despised- Colonel Corazon Santiago and ARC CFO-CHIO Suzanne Marjorie Fielding independently gave them the epithet ‘Los Viejos Aulladores’ - the Old Howlers, or rather, Yellers- promising what their respective factions would do to the devil dogs.

In the synthmarble halls of the Planetary Council, emissaries groused at the interfactional law-flouting detention of their citizens. No less luminary than Commissioner Pravin Lal himself accussed the Hunters of Chiron of creating militias impersonating civilians, flouting the conventions of vendetta. Warden J.T. Marsh cooly replied that his were not military forces but undercover law enforcement, upholding unfettered freedom of movement because PlanetPol wasn’t doing its job. They operated at will because as the original builders, Hunter jurisdiction extended to all of the roads. He also made pointed references to crooked Peacekeepers setting up unauthorized blockades around nonexistent conflict zones, waving in those who offered kickbacks. Lal quickly withdrew his complaints.

Notes

Operations are one-shot effects in Pandora: First Contact. I figured combat convoys are a little too niche a doctrine to be a SMAC research tech Doctrine, so I classified them as an operation. Hypothetically let’s say in a game it clears all the roads within a radius of banditry (probes?). Or it gives you a special convoy unit for you to do it yourself.

This post is indebted to Battle Order, whose in-depth “Why Colombia Raised a Highway Cavalry Corps” provided not only the inspiration but many of its details. The awe-inspiring Checkpoint Hunter Squad B, and the graphic, can be found @9:05.

I don’t actually know anything about fox hunting, besides an allegorical representation in the music video for “Sirens” by Dizzee Rascal, but Wikipedia seemed like a solid place to get an idea of the roles involved in a hunt, as was “An Introduction To Fox Hunting” by Chloe DeYoung.

The Colombian Fino Hound, or the Saubeso Fino Colombiano, has Aullador (“howler”) as one of its names in unspecified other regions. It ​​is the only recognized breed of dog native to Colombia. Ironically, the country banned hunting for sport in 2019.

Amphion was a centaur who tried to plunder Pholus of his wine and was killed by Hercules.

The reason why wolfman is in lowercase because like frogman, it is meant to be a general term for a specialist that wears the armor, not a specific tactical unit.

Image Credits

“Checkpoint” is by OmeN2501, Marek Okon. I first saw this picture on David Larkins’ Rifts 2112 blog, specifically his reimagining of the Coalition States

Predator-looking power armored humanoids are Scavs concept art by Ed Natividad for Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion

“The Wandering Earth Cargo Truck” is by Zhiyuan Li

Previous posts

Roadrunners and Saluki lodges

Kokirri Armored Personnel Carrier

Morgan Azawakh monobike

Fairchild-Grumman Light All-Terrain Reconnaissance Vehicle Chassis

Koutí