8-6-3306: Farragut Cannon Fire Jump Rope!
06 Aug 2020Ingrid Elfridr
Things around here overall are a hell of a lot more quiet than they used to be, at least if one ignores the extra machinery we had to ship in to finally rebuild the areas of Reightler Dock that got hit the worst during the war in 3304. Work more or less has been regular save the random times that the Brotherhood gets some stones or when Zachary Hudson sends some of his flying monkeys to start poking around Draguan Nu. It was nice for awhile, but after a couple of months it began to get boring. Perhaps it was Culinus no longer getting ahold of me to get me to throw myself and my guys into one of his conquests? Probably, to be honest. Luckily that has allowed us to focus on what was neglected, hence all the restoration work and recruiting.That changed when I got back from my normal patrol route, Rho was already waiting in the hangar for me to arrive. I didn't even get to the cargo ramp when he eagerly thrust that datapad of his into my hands. He hasn't spent a lot of time in the field lately, but has been doing a lot of work on the political angles. That's something that I'm really grateful for, I've become more proficient on the political front but it is not something that I'd consider being part of my skill set.
Apparently he had been speaking with another nearby faction about the market situation in Kehperagwe, which has been a notorious rollercoaster since the recent mining boom. We knew the ripple effect would be felt from Borann, but there was not so much of a ripple effect as it was a truckload of bricks effect. I admit that I only gave the datapad a glance, being more interested in feeding the cat and getting an Irish coffee. Rho must've known this, thrusting the datapad at me again and using words that he knew would get my attention.
"It's time to go to war, and with the Federation this time." he said teasingly, waving his map and sortie plans temptingly and mere inches from my face. That caffeinated fox knows me too well, and at that point I decided to give it a look. He had already met with some of the commanding officers of our new allies and they had laid out a well-thought out sortie plan. I sent these to Skeggjold's nav computer, opted for a regular black coffee instead and headed out with a third of the fleet fifteen minutes later.
After a short rendezvous and ship count in front of Carson Terminal we split up and hit the conflict zones at the same time. Compared to the times we have assisted in systems like Shana Bei or fought in our own system the battles were incredibly protracted in the high risk zones. I've encountered this a couple of times, but never have I had to coordinate with the other commanding officers in the low density battle zones to switch out so that our pilots could touch down just long enough to get their weapons reloaded. The times that I had to do this myself I could see the dock crews pulling pallets of ammo so quickly, and there were so many of them around that it reminded me of watching a busy anthill back home.
The sorties were very successful so far, and though I'm taking a short break for sleep and paperwork the good reports keep coming in. Lucky for me, and my ever glitchy translation software, these Ukrainian guys know English or I'd have only half a clue what was going on. During the last deployment before I had to go back for repairs, also WHY I had to go back for repairs, we must have caught the attention of the lower Federal brass. One minute Nkizo and I are flying circles around a spec ops Vulture while carving it like a bird with lasers, the next all of us detect the Farragut that came in as backup. I should've at least photographed it as I can't remember the name off the top of my head, not proficient in German. I've decided to call her "Franz Liszt" until I get it off of the combat log.
Folks, it's easy to dodge gunfire in something like a Vulture, but have you fought two Vultures in a Corvette while jumping double dutch around gunfire from a Farragut? Some of the best fun I've ever had in my life. A few of the guys in my fleet decided to join in the fun, and after about ten minutes of that Farragut being out in the field the guys had picked off all of its weapons. It didn't matter how tightly the Feds clustered in near that capital ship, they were scattered like gulls by most of the fleet while Nkizo and I worked on breaching the hull and taking out its heat relays. Melting those didn't take long, though the unfortunate part of that was that I couldn't shake the other two spec ops ships in the process, nor could any of my guys draw them away.
We somehow wound up winning, though over half of the fleet that I brought had to limp back to Reightler Dock, myself along with them, two had to make an emergency landing at Carson Terminal, and Skeggjold limped back with only 21 percent hull integrity and a power core with what I would call a slight case of hiccups that ripped my ship out of supercruise a couple of times. Without any serious fighting going on Sam was able to catch up with fixing all of my combat ships, even did some additional tweaking to Skeggjold's thrusters. Must admit that was likely what saved my ass. However when he saw that I barely brought her back in one piece he almost dropped his cutting torch and had the most hilarious look of disbelief on his face, asking me how in the hell I flew her back.
Presently we are very close to an outright victory, for the duration of things I'll be jumping double dutch with Herja instead, and apparently have to get a new biweave for Skeggjold. I thought the shield generator had merely gotten disabled and that was why it outright stopped working, but apparently one of the spec ops guys on my ass had melted almost a third of it with corrosive missiles. Gotta hand it to them, they royally screwed up my best combat ship, but breaking things doesn't mean much if you get wiped.
Either way I have reports to file and get some rest before we next head out five hours from now, so I'll wrap this up here before Snider begins wondering where said reports are, plus if I add another paragraph to this thing folks might start to get bored. XD