Unexpected Encounter 23
20 Dec 2016Rebecca Hail
Ria woke up in the medical bay of the Anaconda. She remembered this room. When she had first seen it, it was white and sterile like a hospital. Now it was a mess- blood on the floor and on the walls, cabinets open and medicaments wildly scattered all over the countertops and floor.Still dizzy from a massive amount of painkillers, she tried to sit up, but found herself retrained in place by heavy straps across her body. Her face hardening, she struggled against her bonds for a moment, stinging pain erupted in her side from the effort.. Seeing that effort was futile she relaxed. Lifting her head and looking down, Ria grimaced as she beheld the wound on her side. A section of her flight suit had been cut away. Under it, the gouge in her skin had been stapled together, the blood already beginning to dry. Several tubes went into a catheter fixed on her arm.
Letting her head fall back into the pillow, she heard the sliding med bay door open. Rebecca stepped in, her atmo suit replaced by worn-looking white and silver combat armor.
"What ... happened?" Ria uttered over the pain.
Rebecca didn't answer. Instead, she walked slowly to the control terminal of the medical machinery and tapped a few times on the display. An outline of Ria’s body was on it, red zones on her torso where the wounds were worst. Responding to her directions, a mechanical arm rose and injected a clear liquid into Ria’s arm. Rebecca closed out the display and turned to look at her friend, her eyes hard.
"I'll explain later. It's best if you go back to sleep now."
Ria felt her eyelids get heavier, slowly shutting over her eyes as her world went dark. The drug was coursing through her body, and soon she would again be unconscious.
"I ..." she let out. It was all she managed before fading back into sleep.
As the med bay door slid shut behind her, Rebecca picked up the weapon case she’d left on the deck and began walking to to the ship’s bridge.
The situation was complicated. Things had gotten messy fast after the drone arrived and began to massacre the survivors around the ship. Their leader had seen his chance and managed to pilot the little fighter out of the hangar bay by the time Rebecca had overpowered the two idiots he left to guard her. She had to admit that she was more than just a little impressed that he managed it to fly it out through the frame of the boarding ramp. Usually the fighter was deployed by lowering the entire hangar floor and catapulted to reach combat speed. Launching it out of its usual frame in the ship was risky at best and suicide at worst.
His gamble worked out for him, though. He was familiar with how both the Condor and an Anaconda worked, staying out of the larger ship’s firing arcs while keeping steady fire on it. The turrets had been powerless to track the smaller, more nimble ship. Worst of all, it hadn’t taken a lot of fire to bring down its shields- the Anaconda had been rigged for exploration, not combat. It wasn’t long before the Condor’s plasma bolts were melting a hole through the armor plating that held the ship’s power plant. The automated damage control systems of the Anaconda tried their best to keep reactor output up, but it was a losing battle, and Rebecca knew it. She retracted her hardpoints and throttled down, the stolen Condor hovering in front of her canopy. The comms chirped, and she angrily answered.
“What do you want?!”
The man’s answer was almost immediate. "Hey, bitch- I'll give you two minutes to step out of your ship and hand me the ship keys.
Rebecca’s face turned into a scowl. If he was only right on front of me, she thought.
“Or else what?” she said defiantly.
“Or else I'm blowing up your powerplant. If I'm not going to leave, you're not going to leave either."
"And what's in it for me?"
His tone went from serious to deadly. "You don't die."
"No thanks. I'll pass."
"Shame," he said, then he squeezed the trigger and send the first volleys of blue plasma into the Anaconda’s hull.
Rebecca turned and ran, picking up the weapon case and letting it drop as she pulled out its contents- a high-powered anti-vehicle rifle she’d saved from her days in the Federal Elite. It had been designed to puncture slow-moving, armored targets, requiring an exo-frame around her shoulder just to avoid breaking it from the recoil. Rebecca opened the hardpoint access and fitted the frame around her shoulder, alarms sounding throughout the ship as it took fire. Crouching next to the weapon contained within the hardpoint, Rebecca jammed the clip into the weapon, readying it and activating the scope.
It’s now or never, she thought.
"Deploy large hardpoints," she said in a loud voice. The concealing hull doors opened as the platform she was on moved upwards. Almost immediately, she saw the Condor, still firing into her hull in his attempt to knock out the power plant.
Hopefully he’s focused on that and not me, she thought.
She closed an eye and raised the weapon, letting the scope auto-adjust. The fighter was still darting from side to side, avoiding the Anaconda’s return fire and causing the scope to endlessly re-acquire the target.
Gritting her teeth, Rebecca ripped off the scope and tossed it aside. It had been designed to help destroy slow-moving targets, and there was no way that the Condor was staying still long enough to accommodate the software. Rebecca activated her bionic eye, letting the virtual iron sight overlay her vision as she once again raised the weapon.
This rifle wasn't intended to hit fast moving targets, so the first shot had to connect. She had calculated that she had less than a second to aim and hit the fighter before the bandit realised what was going on.
The moment the fighter came in sight she knew she wouldn't hit it. It was too far left of where she had assumed it was. Letting intuition guide her more than her vision, she shifted her aim and and jerked the trigger.
A giant, white-yellowish muzzle flash shot out of rifle and the shield of the little fighter rippled, but it didn't come down. The recoil from the blast almost caused her to stagger. Rebecca’s left hand shot forwards and grabbed the loading lever to pump the next round into the chamber. Seeing her new tactic, the fighter pilot had already abandoned his attack and was speeding away.
With a roaring noise the Condor boosted over her head, leaving a thick trail of smoke behind. Rebecca spun around, following the little ship with her sights as she heard the click of the next round settling into the rifle’s chamber. Four cartridges were left in the magazine, and she had no idea how many it would take to bring down the Condor. The man wasn’t flying smart, only fast. His straight line would make a shot possible if Rebecca didn’t act hastily.
She dropped to one knee, taking a deep breath as she focused on the Condor through her eye’s virtual sights. Letting out half her breath, she let the target be her only thought as her finger tightened around the trigger...
[OOC]Sorry for the long wait and many thankies to M. Lehman for helping me with the english language
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