The Story So Far

As the students settled down in their seats and prepared themselves for another couple of hours of intensive "learning", the droid at the far end of the room blinked into life and began to spew forth the contents of its database ... Such was life in Cadet Training School No. 3618.

Over the years the authorities had come to learn the lesson that "survival" in the vastness of space relied more on adequate training than on "good luck" and therefore had initiated a series of courses that would implant this knowledge in the thousands of cadets that swelled their ranks yearly. One such bunch of cadets was about to embark on phase one of such a course and you will be amongst them.

"For the purpose of this lesson we will return to a time when the Earth was in crisis and war was raging across the Galaxy. Earth and her colonies were locked in battle with an alliance of Alien beings who regarded the Earth's colonialism as an intrusion upon their collective space. However, neither side was making any great progress, and despite the odd sortie against each other a "stalemate" existed. But moves were afoot to put an end to this and on Terran the military scientists were hard at work developing a supreme bomb, to be known as the 'Nova' ... after the effect created by its explosion. Project Nova excited all concerned and increased government funding soon had the project in full flow. However, alien agents infiltrated the research department and enticed a technician to steal the prototype and the design master copy.

A great search was initiated and the aliens were finally tracked to a pre-war Terran space-station, abandoned at the outbreak of war and left unoccupied in an alien occupied part of space. Plans were then made to recover the prototype and the design master copy.

The aliens intended to build and operate the Nova device to suit their own ends ... to destroy the Earth and end the war in one fell swoop. Supremacy of space would be theirs!!

The Terran authorities sent in a couple of small fleets but these were destroyed by a much larger gathering of alien craft and so it was decided to send in one highly-trained agent in the hope that one small craft cold sneak in undetected. The agent was supplied with a canister of "flu virus" with which to eradicate all alien life from the space-station. This lone pilot was a Flight-Sergeant Smith of the 3rd Martian Combat Squadron.

Your task today is simply to recreate Smith's incursion onto the planet and to attempt to carry out the task in hand as though you yourself were Smith. So plug you neurological interfaces into the data consoles and your cerebral cortex will be fed simulated information concerning Smith and his surroundings. If you have studied your introductory work correctly then this test should pose few problems ... so load your test programmes and commence when you are ready. Good luck."

Notes

Use the commands "RAMSAVE" and "RAMLOAD" to store/recall a game position using memory but use "LOAD" and "SAVE" to make a more permanent record on tape.

Use the command "AGAIN" to repeat the last command and the command "HOLD" to pause the passage of time.

"TEXT" will turn the graphic system off and "PICTURES" will turn it back on again.

The game will recognise the use of the word "EXCEPT", so use it in the context of "GET ALL EXCEPT THE DEAD ALIEN".

To change the main character set simply use the command "CHARS A", or "CHARS B", or "CHARS C".

The player will be allowed to "EXAMINE ALL" either "HERE", "CARRIED" or "WORN".

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