Looking for a Knight of Goodness Part 7
11 Sep 2020Creamy Goodness III
Here he was again on the way to Citi Gateway, Vodan had left his wing-mates Dyson and Thade a few jumps behind as his ship had better range. The flight from the primary star to Citi was not too long, but still far enough to annoy someone in a hurry, and Vodan was definitely in a hurry. The reports he was getting from the station were bothering him greatly. Vengerfield had made it clear that Vodan had to find the girl that had been with Creamy, or Vodan would no longer enjoy the protection of the raiders. That was a death sentence that his former comrades, including his wing-mates, would gladly collect on. It seemed someone else had decided to chase Creamy and the girl too, and they were not being subtle about it. From what he knew, everyone on Citi Gateway with a wish to stay low key would be twitchy thanks to the noise being made, and on Citi that was a lot of trigger happy people ready to fight. If Creamy and his girlfriend were still on the station, they would be really hard to find now.
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Back on Citi Gateway
He didn’t feel the ship detach, but both the wedges he’d knocked into place popped out and the landing gear joint slid out leaving the rest of the gear behind. Creamy gave a little cheer and ran as fast as he could to the cockpit. Once there he turned on minimum system, he didn’t want to alert the tower that a ship had released. Fortunately, the pad he was on had one of the squat control rooms on the corner of the pad, no tower, so Creamy could quite quickly get his ship out of view. Control watched ships land and take off all day, maybe if he was lucky, they wouldn't notice a ship that shouldn’t have launched just drifted away.
“Ninette, give me thrust but nothing else, not even HUD old girl” whispered Creamy getting into the sneaking mood.
The COVAS did as it was asked and played a soft affirmative tone to indicate it was done. Creamy let the momentum the pad had transfused to his ship carry him up above the control building. He didn’t even correct the left drift nor was he bothered that the nose had dipped. If someone was paying attention, maybe they would think the maglocks had malfunctioned and they wouldn’t instantly disintegrate A Knight of Goodness with the station lasers.
With a bit of altitude achieved, and no one hailing his ship to find out why it was drifting away, Creamy straightened up with the slot and gave it a little forward thrust. Just enough to get moving before killing it and letting her drift on towards the slot. A Shiny Asp Explorer was also drifting in and it was just in the right place to give Creamy some cover from the station defences, so again Creamy risked firing some thrusters to drift under the ship with an expensive paint job.
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The station wasn’t as busy as it normally was, and Vodan felt security checks had taken longer than they should. He was glad he had chosen to take the support ship instead of his hunter because this ship was clean. He decided to fly in slow and evaluate the situation before touching down. There was a light show going on at pad twenty-five, so Vodan eased The Bar, his Asp over to investigate. It seemed Security was having one hell of a fight with a privet army. Vodan supposed it was useless to hope this had nothing to do with why he was here.
Vodan glanced at his landing timer to see how long he could stay here and observe the fight. He saw a Krait drifting towards him. It was brand new drifting slowly towards the slot. It was probably the pilots’ first big ship, so they were taking it easy on the new engines and trying not to scratch the paintwork. He looked back at the fight on the pad trying to identify the privet army. The Krait had got quite close and Vodan couldn’t help but have a good look inside the cockpit. He had to blink and look again.
Unbuckling his harness so he could press his face against his canopy Vodan watched in disbelief as Creamy floated by like leaf on a river. Getting back into his seat, Vodan turned The Bar around and casually overtook Creamys’ Krait. Once outside the slot, Vodan transferred power to the engines and got himself above the station and idled there hanging still in space. His mirror finish paint job reflected nothing but the black this far from the system's star. Vodan waited like a spider above his web watching for Creamy to emerge. He opened coms to his wingmates.
“Dyson, Thade, how far out are you? I got a target leaving the station now” asked Vodan trying not to sound desperate.
“We’re two jumps out man and that’s a long flight to Citi. Bout four minutes at best, more like five” answered Thade.
Vodan punched the arm of his chair. His ship, The Bar was support for the two FDLs his men piloted, the Funnel Web and the Trapdoor. Vodan carried fuel and repair limpets so the FDLs could keep their internals free for combat-focused modules. Vodan had a Wake Scanner but no Interdictor; that was the Funnel Webs’ job. All The Bar had to do was keep the FDLs in the sky and pick up the cargo. Even his weapons were for keeping the FDLs shields topped if someone was stupid enough to turn around and attack them. The Bar did, however, have one Railgun and a full rack of FSD Disruptor Rockets.
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Leaving the station was surprisingly easy. Creamy even checked his seat pockets to see if the lucky wire cobra Nubs had given him had magically brought its self back to him. No, that was the pain killers doing a number on him. Creamy shook his head to wake himself up a little. Now he had drifted out the slot, Creamy gave the thrusters a full burn for a couple of seconds and then let the ship drift away hopefully running too cool to show up on the security ships’ scanners. A Knight of Goodness was dark; Creamy had even disabled life support and his shields to keep the scan return as low as possible.
Creamy checked the time left on his air supply, there was no need to rush. Now he was leaving Citi Gateway behind him, it was time to work out how to get a message to Nerys’ ship and then on to Nerys herself. His own getaway wasn’t clean, but the doctor had people with her that seemed very capable in that sort of situation. That didn’t put his mind at ease at all. Creamy wouldn’t really relax until he knew she was safe. Ninette had recommended A Knight of Goodness should be at least ten kilometres away from the station before she tried to contact Nerys’ COVAS Celest.
When Ninette said they were at eight kilometres from the station, Creamy turned the life support back on and the HUD to give himself some light to work with. Not only did he need to get in contact with Nerys, he had to find a system to idele in until he knew where to meet the Amatas’ ship. He couldn’t very well do that without the Nav Panel. Still drifting, Creamy started looking for the closest Tranquillity leisure complex. They ran a fantastic hotel and all their physical therapists were incredibly good at kneading relaxation back into tired muscles.
There was a loud clang that rang through the whole ship and the tail end dipped to the port side sending A Knight into a slow rotation. Creamy corrected the drift while looking over his shoulder as if he would see what had made that loud noise. It had sounded like a large monolithic slab had fallen in the cargo bay.
“Ninette, what the hell was that did we hit something?”
“Monsieur inconnu. Les diagnostics sont toujours hors ligne, tout comme les capteurs externs” answered the computer.
“Well, we best turn them back on and find ou..”
Creamy was interrupted by another loud clang and the ship jarred tail down again.
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Vodan couldn’t believe it, he’d crept so close to Creamys' Krait he didn’t even need to target it to hit what he wanted. That was the second hit at point-blank range on Creamys ship and the Railgun hadn’t even penetrated the armour. Vodan wondered what armour the Imperial had fitted to his Krait? He gave it a burn from all four of his Beam Lasers as well, but all they did was heat up the armour plate and slow the charge on his Railgun. Vodan fired a third shot with the same result, at least there was a visible dent this time.
The shots had drove the heat up to the red, and station security had noticed the weapons fire. This was embarrassing if nothing else. Vodan had got the drop on a shieldless ship and hadn’t managed to disable its ability to jump away. Vodan could only hope to stop Creamy from escaping before Funnel Web and Trapdoor arrived, hopefully ahead of security. He released a heat sink ready to keep working on A Knight of Goodness with his one Railgun.
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“An attack?” Creamy looked at the hull indicator, it displayed seventy-seven percent. “Bloody hell! Turn everything on Ninette, sneaky time is over it would seem”
Creamy pulled on the stick and hit the boost to spiral away from his attacker. He checked the scope and a triangle icon was on top of him. Turning hard Creamy looked for the ship. He saw something but he couldn’t tell what it was. The thing reflected blackness and the stars; it was like it was made of glass. Creamy couldn’t tell if he was looking through it, or if it was reflecting space. No matter the truth, Creamy wanted that effect on all his ships. It was cool.
With no shields and a recharge time of over a minute, Creamy decided to run. He’d already lost almost a quarter of his hull and he hadn’t even deployed his weapons before, let alone pulled the trigger. A Knight did, however, move brilliantly. After flying Condas for so long, this.. model (Creamy couldn’t remember what it was called) felt like an eager young filly happy to show off her moves. Whatever was chasing him was not as limber, so Creamy was confident he would getaway. After all, he was an expert runner. That didn’t sound like something he should be proud of when he thought about it.
“Ninette, jump us to the maximum fuel limit using only non-scoopable stars. Quick as you like old girl”
Creamy kept up the evasive flying while the computer worked. It felt like forever, but finally Ninett presented some options.
“Voici vos options monsieur, veuillez en choisir une”
Creamy jabbed at one of the options near the bottom on the nav panel.
“That one please Ninette. Looks far enough to stress a pursuers’ fuel tank"
Now all he needed to do was get a clear run at the jump marker while the drive charged. Creamy fainted back towards Citi Gateway as the FSD started to wind-up, he loved that noise. When a blue tracer shot passed under A Knight of Goodness, Creamy knew the chasing ship was following. Creamy slammed the stick forwards and hit the boost again. His flight suit squeezed him hard to stop a red-out as A Knight almost flipped one hundred and eighty degrease. A Knight and the ship chasing him flew almost nose to nose for a few seconds before Creamy engaged another boost making a run for the Jump.
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Vodan missed with the Railgun and a volley from the Beams. Half a moment later, the wash from Creamys’ boost caused The Bar to shudder as his target passed under his Asp. Vodan didn’t waste time being angry from falling for that trick; instead, he changed to the FSD Disrupter Missiles and copied Creamys’ Quick turn. His Asp couldn’t keep up with the Krait, but Vodan got Creamy in his sights soon enough. A Knight of Goodness was eclipsed by the bright glow of an almost fully charged FSD burning through its boosters. A shower of red-orange confetti streamed from A Knight and winked out on Vodans’ shields.
Chaff wouldn’t help Creamy now; Vodan hadn’t actively targeted A Knight of Goodness once. At this range, Vodan didn’t need to. Calmly, Vodan took a deep breath and lined up his shot with the dumb fire missile. He let one missile off the hook, and then with a slight adjustment, released another just in case. The first missile hit and the bright glow from A Knight of Goodness instantly dimmed. The second missile slammed home just as Vodan was passing through the vapours left by the first. Creamy was going nowhere.
“Thade, Dyson, where are you. I can’t keep this arse hole here forever. I need your firepower to cripple him and fight off security when it arrives”
Thade answered his wing leader with good news.
“We’re less than a minute out from Citi. Activate ya wing beacon and we’ll drop in weapons hot”