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From:	Pharoah <Pharoah@********.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject:	Thor: Steph and her Christmas shopping list.
Date:	Fri, 6 Dec 1996 01:02:27 +0000

Message no. 1 *****PRIVATE: Stephanie
>>>>>[OK, I'm glad DA warned me what you could be like. An entertaining
and informative read I must say.

First. You have made the rather unfortunate mistake of assuming I am
DA's supplier. I'm not. I am, have been and probably always will be his
SIC. My official rank is RSM, you, however may call me Pharoah.

I will pass your list on to our supplier, but... And this is where I
feel you _may_ get sticky. We work on total team compatibility,
everything one person uses is used by all the rest, occassional
specialist weapons are allowed, but basically we need a situation where
if one team member has problems, the equipment carried by another
matches perfectly, and can be used to substitute. The Ares is not a
weapon we use, it's not known for it's reliability in the heat and damp
of a rain forest or the humidity of deep jungle. And it objects
strenuously to being submersed. The AK, however, is something we have
used before and is a well trusted friend, if a little underpowered. I
can't guarantee your ammunition request either. You ask for a lot of
APDS, certainly more than we normally carry, APDS is usually reserved
for _different_ applications. Standard issue on anything like this is
dead lead, and not normally in the amounts you request. We are
travelling fast and light, and really can't afford to be bogged down
with several kilos of rounds we are hopefully not going to need. If at
anytime extra ammunition is required, it can be flown in to us, we have
a number of people in S/CA who are quite happy to deal with us. Strange
as it may seem, DA has made a few friends.

The rest of your kit is not a problem. However, we won't be wearing
body armour, it's too hot and weighs down too much, a day's worth of
forced march through thick jungle and it's a curse. Don't worry though,
any bad guys we meet won't be wearing it either. Armour is mainly
utilised in combat situations for military organisations on a front
line, or FIBUA. Hopefully we won't have anything like that occur. The
NavDat is something that we don't have many of. Usually one member
carries one, we don't tend to share them around, you're new with us, so
I'll make an exception for you, but if DA asks, it's your own toy, and I
just gave you the chips. OK.

So far we have not been disappointed, and have managed to get by.
Remember we're not going down there for a stand up knock down fight,
we're going in hot and fast, and coming out the same way. Again, if
anything a little exotic is required, we can always borrow it from some
of the guerillas, or another source. I'm not sure what sort of combat
experience you have, DA tells me you're a tank commander with some rebel
force, so I figure your used to some serious shit happening around your
ears. We don't go for that big bang macho stuff. Hit hard, quietly,
and fast. Most combat, if any is face to face, so a damn good knife is
essential, as is a good sidearm. The Predator II has proved to be
reliable and pretty rugged, though I prefer the manhunter myself. Long
term firefights are not an option, if you discharge a weapon, make sure
it hits the target, the people down hter are experienced jungle
fighters, and they won't give you a second chance. I'm afraid DA is not
very keen on people capping of full mags at moving targets, only to find
it's a resus, or spider monkey, and the real target has just popped up
to the left while you're with a reload. I'm not questioning your
ability just pointing out to you we can't afford anything that takes
more than an exchange of a few rounds. More than that, and we're in
deep trouble, and it won't matter how many AP's you've got. 7.62x55 is
pretty standard down there, so we can restock virtually anywhere. One
other thing, while I think on it, you may be surprised at some of the
kit you'll see carried by a lot of the forces in Belize, Colombo, and
Guatamala, it's mainly Brit. The militia tend to like some of the
wonderful toys the Brit consulate in Guyana manages to _acquire_. If
you see something that's of use, and the owner isn't too attached to it,
borrow it. It fetches a good price amongst the rebels.

Oh, before you start giving me long lectures on why you prefer APDS to
standard jacket, the reason we avoid it, is it's like gold dust where
we're going. The locals will go apeshit if they even so much as smell
armour piercing, and believe me, they have _really_ sensitive noses.
One thing we don't need is to fight everyone and their mother to get to
where we're heading.

I'm sure you'll understand. I can give you 72 hours to get down here,
and then we have to start thinking about moving out. By then, travel
arrangements will have been made. I believe DA is giving you a
frequency that has an auto monitor attached, so we'll know when your
coming.

See you soon... And I promise, no wisecracks about the figure.]<<<<<
-- Pharoah <01:02:33/12-06-57>

From:	"Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject:	Re: Thor: Steph and her Christmas shopping list.
Date:	Fri, 6 Dec 1996 19:27:57 +0000

Message no. 2 *****PRIVATE: Pharoah
>>>>>[Sorry for the misunderstanding. We may have a couple more, your
unit obviously does things very differently to the way we do, I hope we
can sort them out though.

You have problems with the Alpha? That's funny, it's nearly as good as
the AK as far as toughness goes, our infantry use it and haven't had
anything like those problems, it just doesn't like being left uncleaned
in hot&humid conditions, if you look after it it's fine, and yes they do
a lot of jungle work, though not Amazonia. You didn't try the caseless
version did you? That _does_ tend to act up really badly in humid
conditions. The AK will be fine if it suits your unit, if not let me
know what you use and we'll sort out something. I don't know about
underpowered, though, what made you say that? "Underpowered" is a HVAR
or something like that.

And maybe you work differently but we _live_ in armour in the field. I
know it's hot and heavy and uncomfortable, that's why I asked for the
British D5 vest because it's one of the better ones for that (again it's
what we use) but if you think armour is uncomfortable try grenade
shrapnel through the chest. Good armour isn't any more of a problem than
good web gear, as long as you adjust it properly and don't try wearing
civilian concealable armour which really messes you up in hot and humid
conditions. Especially if we're meant to be moving fast because it
doesn't take much of an injury to really slow you down and I'm not very
good at healing magic.

Aztlan take a pretty loose line on melee weapons (on firearms too) so I
figured I'd bring my own with me, it's not exactly easy for a lot of
people to get hold of riflebutt war clubs and that's what I like for
close quarters work, and a lot of people don't even realise they're
fighting weapons. That's also why I wanted a really good bayonet, the
one for the AK if that's what I'm going to use is a decent fighting
knife and utility knife. And about sidearms, I asked for a Max-Power
because a hundred and twenty years of design evolution is pretty hard to
beat, and it seems to cope better with being slidelocked when you want
it to be really quiet, the Manhunter has a habit of shearing its slide
pin unless you download the ammunition.

And I know quite a bit about not wasting ammunition, because when you're
in a tank with only forty rounds of HESH and twenty of fin and five
beehives for the main gun then you learn to be very careful what you
shoot at and you make sure you hit it.

On the other hand if you're patrolling covert, like we will be, and you
get ambushed front or have a meeting engagement, the best defence is to
skirmish back laying heavy fire and smoke off the enemy so you can break
contact and disengage and that does mean expending lots of rounds at
vague shadows and muzzle flashes, and you have to rely on teamwork and
discipline to cover magazine changes, because otherwise you get pinned
down and that would be really bad news when we're so far from any ways
out.

And the only reason I wanted APDS instead of FMJ is because it's
_light_, I've got to carry all this.

I should be with you within two days, anyway. See you there.]<<<<<
-- Stephanie <19:26:53/12-06-57>

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