Bicky Is Dead!

We had our first Top Secret player-character death during this week's outing of The Tuesday Knights... and it was me.

There was nothing that could be done about it either. I hadn't screwed up, Pete hadn't backed us into a corner. It was a firefight and one of the enemy agents rolled the dreaded double zero (in game terms: a head shot for maximum damage) and I was out of luck points. It wasn't the way I'd imagined Bicky going, but the dice gods were against me.

It really changed the mood at the table and everyone appeared genuinely shocked. I did insist (from beyond the grave) that the other characters didn't leave my body on the roadside and brought him home so he could have a proper Christian burial.

And things had started so well...

We had organised the boat party where we intended to "kidnap" would-be defector Andre Lerekhov, but then realised that it could be the decoy Lerekhov who attended the party while the real one was spirited away from the hotel by his handlers.

Thus we had to split the party. Big M (Simon's character) stayed at the hotel on surveillance detail, while Bruno  (Kevin) manned the "escape boat" and everyone else attended the party.

Meredith was unable to make Tuesday's session, so the rest of us "role-played" her character, Rose (but she was always always going to be kept out of harm's way anyway to protect her cover identity).

The party got into full swing, but once we were on the water, Rose quickly ascertained (with the evening's first roll of double zero... ironically rolled by me!) that, as we had feared, we were courting the decoy.

The real Andre Lerekhov had been spotted - by Big M - leaving the hotel with a number of goons. He hopped in a cab and demanded that it "follow that car".

Unfortunately for Big M, the cab driver was also an enemy agent and a little ways into their journey he drew a pistol, turned in his seat and shot Big M a glancing wound in the head. A fight broke out as the two men wrestled for the gun. Both were injured, but Big M ultimately overpowered the agent and managed to dump him out of the car.

Bruno had picked Bicky and Hermione (Clare's character) up from the party boat and taken us to land.

Bruno and Bicky took our limo and sped off in pursuit, while Hermione followed along behind in a white van Bruno had secured for us.

Liaising with ORION (as Big M had noted the escaping car's number plate), we were able to keep tabs on the car carrying Lerekhov while it was still in Budapest.

We overtook Big M and managed to catch up with Lerekhov's car just as it entered Croatia. Pulling up alongside, Bicky eventually shot out one of their front tyres, but their driver expertly drove into the skid and safely pulled the car over onto the hard shoulder.

Bruno cut in front, parking us about 15 yards away. Unsurprisingly a gunfight erupted between the two cars. Bruno made a dash for the boot, where his weapons' cache was stored, as Bicky tried to keep the enemy pinned down.

It was at this moment - just as Bruno had grabbed some flashbangs from the trunk - that the 'shot heard around the world' took Bicky between the eyes.

Bruno hurled the flashbang at the enemy car, blinding all the occupants, then calmly went over and shot each of the goons in turn with a knock-out dart.

Hermione pulled up in the white van, with Big M onboard (who she had picked up on the way), and the blind (and sedated) Lerekhov was bundled into the back of the van - next to the corpse of Bicky.

Our heroes drove five hours to the coast, reached an ORION safehouse and were transported back to Blighty.

The loss of Bicky - one of the longest, continuous-serving, agents in our team - was a a bit of a downer. But he died in the execution of the mission and, at least, after all these weeks of gaming we actually succeeded. It would have been a lot worse if he'd died and the team had failed to get Lerekhov.

So now Pete and I have to arrange a time a time to get together and roll me up a new Top Secret SI character, while the next Tuesday Knights' session - in early October - will be a character workshop for my fantasy RPG where I shall walk all the players through the character generation process for my Crypts & Things variant, Tekralh.