The Deck Is Uneven

With the end of September looming, I suppose I ought to get around to clearing the traffic jam in which my playthrough of Steve Jackson (American) and Creede and Sharleen Lambard's Car Wars Adventure Gamebook Fuel's Gold has been stuck. As explained previously, my character is a professional autoduellist and part-time militiaman, who's been given a delivery job (and an inordinately high number of opportunities to nope out of the mission) and is now preparing to help defend an old friend's truckstop from a terrorist attack, following the conclusion of a side quest involving a hitch-hiker and an unexpectedly cultured biker gang called the Hellriders.

So, heading back to Louie's, I encounter a militia roadblock. I display the pass I got from the Colonel, and am allowed past. After a quick word with Louie, who's overseeing the installation of a mortar (artillery, not masonry), I report in with the Colonel, who briefs me on the imminent hostilities and gives me a hat to show which side I'm on.

It seems that the Anarchists are travelling in a disorganised convoy, with a few non-combatant vehicles mixed in because they're too anarchic to set rules about who can drive with them. The plan is for me to lead a group of unmarked Militia vehicles in infiltrating the convoy, and intervening when the Anarchists start trying to cause trouble.

We blend with the convoy easily enough, and use our CB radios to monitor chatter from both sides of the impending conflict. Once we're about five miles from Louie's, a call goes out on the Anarchists' channel for everyone to identify themselves. They're using playing card-based code names, and as I recovered a card from the thugs who tried to attack me in the hotel, I could try passing myself off as one of them.

Not the smartest idea I've ever had. The Anarchists already know that their goons messed up, and I've just identified myself as the man responsible for their arrest. Multiple cars break off from the convoy to deal with me, but judging by the fight that ensues, they're doing it one at a time. First up is Five of Diamonds, whose Defense Class is high enough that I need to roll 13 or above on two dice to be able to damage him. Yes, six-sided dice, so I think I'll just skip all the tedious-at-the-best-of-times rolling and turn straight to the 'If you lose' section.

Oh, bother. It's not an automatic 'game over'. That means I'm going to have to play through the fight after all, since the Special Damage Chart includes the possibility of wounding the driver, and I'll need to know if I'm injured or not going forward. Well, to save time I'll only roll for the enemy's attacks, since I know mine can only ever end in failure.

34 rounds later my car finally gets put out of action, the vengeful mob loses interest in me, and the convoy moves on. Remembering what Louie told me about a hidden tunnel leading out of the truckstop, I decide to try and use it to get in, in the hope of being able to make a more meaningful contribution to the defence of the place.

It takes a while to walk along the tunnel, but I get through okay, and head for Louie's office, where I find that the mole the Colonel speculated about has come out into the open. Louie is on the floor, badly wounded, and standing over him is a 'trooper' I recognise - possibly the one who interfered with my earlier investigation of the area, though the text doesn't specify exactly where I saw him before. As I'm not wearing the hat, the infiltrator can't immediately tell which side I'm on, and asks what my card is.

Not keen on making the same mistake twice, I resist the temptation to say 'Mister Bun the Baker', 'Colonel Mustard', or 'Uno reverse', and just open fire with my submachine gun. He retaliates, and after several rounds of combat (which is not a whole lot less tiresome without the cars), he's dead and I'm wounded. Louie's condition is somewhere in between our states, so I decide to see if I can find a medic.

Nope, the Militia are all rather busy dealing with a massive horde of Anarchist vehicles allowed in by their inside man. Considering how heavily outnumbered the Colonel's men are, and how badly hurt I am already, I don't think I can achieve much by joining them, so I'll see if I can get Louie to safety through the tunnel.

Transporting him to the tunnel isn't too much bother, but it's obvious that we're not going to get much further without a vehicle, and I no longer have a car. Still, there are enough around that I should be able to get hold of one, so long as I don't get hit by a stray bullet or a moving vehicle.

It turns out that my character is smart enough not to head into the thick of battle. Returning through the tunnel, I reach the road and find a few wrecks - plus a damaged but still functional car, whose driver (Eight of Diamonds) fell victim to a lucky shot. I can't see that trying to impersonate him will do much to tip the odds against the Anarchists, so I'll stick with trying to at least save my friend's life.

Once I've collected him, I head for the highway, but another vehicle moves to intercept me. I'm going to have to fight again. And this combat has an inadequately explained complication: my opponent has a front-mounted, driver-operated machine gun, and a gunner with a flamethrower in the back. Given that they face in different directions, only one of them will be able to fire on me in any given round, and... You'd think that with the book having three authors, someone would have thought to ask 'How will the reader determine which of the car's occupants is in a position to attack?', but no, I'm going to have to make something up.

The gunner is significantly more likely to be able to hit me, so I shall try and manoeuvre to stay out of his way. At the start of each round I'll make a Control Roll, and if I succeed, I stay out of the gunner's field of fire, and the driver shoots at me. That means that five times out of six I'll be fired upon by the less dangerous foe, but if the authors wanted to have him play a larger part in the fight, they should have been less vague about how to handle the either/or bit.

In any case, I lose. I did more damage to the enemy car than they did to mine, but since my vehicle was pre-damaged, they managed to do enough to total it. And Louie didn't survive the wreck.

For once the book doesn't ask if I want to opt out of the action. I make for the hill that the Colonel designated an emergency rendezvous point, and as I'm now wearing the hat he gave me, the militiamen assembled there recognise me as an ally. And, it turns out, the highest ranking man present, so I'm suddenly in charge.

Things are not looking good. Most of the Militia are dead or taken hostage, the Anarchists have control of the truckstop, and they've taken in four trucks laden with barrels of gasoline, and are threatening to immolate the hostages if their demands are not met. On the slightly less negative side, we have just captured one of them. Do I risk taking the time to interrogate him? I think I'd better.

I had vaguely hoped that the prisoner might turn out to be one of the Hellriders, providing an opportunity to get the bikers involved, but no, it's an Anarchist. Ace of Clubs, to be precise. I attempt to intimidate him into providing some useful information, but even with the boosts to Prestige I've gained in the course of the adventure, I'm just not imposing enough.

So, do I go back through the tunnel again and try to salvage something from the situation, or just sit and wait to find out if the Anarchists are serious about torching everyone? Another question not worth asking. I don't remember much in the way of 'just don't do it' options in the other book in the series by Mr Jackson, which suggests that this relentless drive to have the reader avoid participation in the plot is the Lambards' handiwork. Sneaking a peek at the later books, I see that they also wrote the fourth one, so I'm expecting every other decision in that book to be a variation on 'Are you sure you wouldn't rather just go for a holiday somewhere quiet?'

Using a trike (presumably motorised), I return to the truckstop once more, and snoop around for a bit. While the occasional flash of light reflecting from binoculars indicates that the trucks are under surveillance, there's no sign of any Anarchists here, leading me to conclude that there must be remote-controlled detonators attached to the trucks. Consequently, the 'try driving one of them away' option offered here looks impressively suicidal. So do I try to find and remove the detonators, or attempt to release the hostages? If a watch is being kept on them as well, there'll be little likelihood of my freeing them without attracting attention and prompting the Anarchists to prematurely set off the explosives, so I'll have to see if there's any way of discreetly disabling them.

A quarter of an hour remains until the deadline for detonation. Not having been able to get any details from Ace of Clubs, I spend three minutes searching before I find out where the detonators are. Defusing one requires me to roll equal to or under my Mechanic skill (which is just 2) on two dice, with a bonus for every non-catastrophic failed roll in sequence.

The first detonator takes two minutes. It takes 30 seconds to move from one truck to the next. Time is short, but I'm still in with a chance. A lucky double one enables me to put the second detonator out of action before the four-minute mark. The third is inoperative by the sixth minute. And I get a disastrous double six while working on the final one, setting it off.

In some circumstances, three out of four isn't bad. This is not such a situation.