Thargoids, Day 4
07 Sep 2020Korzhakov
I woke up a bit later than I thought I would, and took my time getting up. I have had 3 straight days of combat, I am starting to get a bit worn down. Today will be another one of combat, cleaning up the ship, rearming, repairing and heading back out to do it again. I climb into my Remlok, throw on my jacket and head to the lobby to grab breakfast and get some coffee. I sit at the table and Randy my crew chief joins me. He has been at the station for a while to take care of my ships personally. We order our food and talk about how the Chieftain is handling. She is doing great and more capable that I am at the moment. I am leaning her nuances after having been flying more pointy nosed fighters or my Corvette.
We finish breakfast and he wishes me luck as I head to the hangar. He is headed to bed after working on my ship all night. I thank him for his efforts and tell him to sleep in as I am taking a break after today.
I pass though the hangar doors and as the doors close behind me I stare at my ship for a few seconds before beginning my preflight walkaround. I climb aboard and have Astra run full systems diagnostics. She informs me that Randy did that just before he left. I say "Thank you, that's fine" and walk into the galley. I make more coffee and pour my zero G mug for flight.
I get settled into my seat as Astra runs the preflight checklist with me. I start to feel better as the coffee from breakfast is starting to kick in. I perk up and start getting through my tasks quicker.
We uneventfully launch and clear the station, I put her in super cruise and then start my scans. In this system it doesn't take long to find them. I head over to a signal source and drop in to find some scouts starting an attach on some cargo ships. Once I open fire the scouts all turn their attention to me and it lets the type 9 get into hyperspace. I put the little buggers down one by one. But in this fuzzball there are 7 of them and they get my shields down, and I take like 4 caustic missiles so my hull is looking pretty bad. I take her back to Artemis Lodge for a quick repair stop.
They get me right back up and running within an hour and I am right back at it, but for the rest of the day they never get me good like that again. My tactics, techniques and procedures are starting to pay off as I take less damage each encounter and in some fights start putting down the scouts faster than ever before thanks to some solid shots from the guardian shard cannon. At really close ranges it is devastating and I am getting better at using it. Along with my regular human rail gun shots that do a good bit of damage to the scouts while the AX cannons are whittling them down the most.
This goes on all day, and now it's getting to be late, I am low on rail gun and shard cannon rounds. It's time to go back to the station.
I land at Artemis Lodge and leave the ship in the hangar with the crew going to work on her immediately. I call up Randy and tell him to meet me in the bar in 45 minutes. I get back to the room and get cleaned up and into regular clothes. I meet Randy at the bar and order us some Konga Ale's. "I can't drink Korz, I have to go to work tonight" he says. "Were taking a couple of days off to rest and reset" and then we can get back at it, for now lets balance our time and get some rest after all the hard work of the last 4 days.
"We can tour the station tomorrow after sleeping in late on purpose" I tell him. So we sit at the bar and have a couple of Ale's while talking about ships and combat and future plans for my personal fleet and the carrier as a whole. I bid him goodnight as I head up to my room to get a good night sleep. I plan on relaxing tomorrow and I go to the front desk and schedule a massage in my room mid morning tomorrow just to kick the day off right. I get to my room find a message from Jean back in Diaguandri, she throws out some dates for our wedding, which now leaves the ball in my court to decide. I said that I liked the June 6th date, it just sounds right for us to have our wedding on that date. I record my message and send it back to her. It's nice to hear her voice. I miss seeing her everyday, but this expedition to learn Thargoid combat is in my opinion possibly important to the whole human race. We need to know how to stop these things if they decide to come back in mass.