A Day Of Blood And Fire...
26 Apr 2019Cyrus Hade
I spent the day tracking back and forth across Sharur. Each time I drop from Super-cruise more of the Raven Corsair fall prey to my pulse lasers. In my wake I leave nothing but twisted wreckage and corpses. Damned Ellis for being right. I do have a talent for this line of work no matter how distasteful it was. The Corsairs over-confidence and complacency had made them relatively easy pickings. On two occasions they were even courteous enough to interdict my cruise and drop me at their feet. Scanning my meagre hold and finding it empty they thought to leave me unmolested and move onto more profitable prey. On neither occasion did they get the opportunity, though the second put up more resistance than any of my previous targets. While victorious I had my shields stripped and took a little hull damage.
The real problem had become finding targets to complete the quotas I had been contracted to fill. In hopes of finding the last few Corsairs that I needed I dropped into an asteroid mining zone in the rings of the gas giant Sharur A3. We were warned at the academy that pirates love to hunt these places. Large cumbersome transports converted to mining vessels confined amongst the fields of station sized rocks makes for easy pickings.
I was not disappointed. In just an hour I managed to notch up another five confirmed kills, it helped that system security had a small patrol in the area, the only one I had seen in Sharur all day., that helped keep some fire from coming in my direction, even allowing me to jump in against some targets well beyond the abilities of both myself and the valiant Intrepid IV.
Darkness fell across the extraction site as Sharur A3 rotated on it's axis. I turned towards Archias Port to turn in my bounties, refuel and rest before heading back to Mawson to claim payment on the completed contracts, glad to be done with the whole bloody and distasteful business that I had really wanted no part of to begin with.
They came out of the darkness amidst the mist shrouded boulders of the planet's rings, a wing of three ships sporting Raven Corsair colours and they struck at my blindside with merciless efficiency before I realised the attack was even coming. In seconds, while I was still reeling in confusion and panic, Intrepid IV's shields were stripped away and the thunderous roar of ballistics shells reverberated against her exposed underbelly as Eden began screeching critical warnings and every light on my console began flashing red with dire warnings.
To Be Continued.........I hope.