Brian Storm and the Mark
23 Aug 2022MdN
Brian Storm had been waiting for an hour when the flash of a new arrival caught his eye.Hovering around the star had become tedius. He'd filled his fuel tanks in the first five minutes of his patrol and had spent the rest of the time scanning every ship in proximity. There were a few questionable characters whom he could have despatched for a profit, but didn't want to compromise his watch. The mark would be along shortly, he knew.
His unwitting informant had let it be known that the young man with the Sidewinder would be delivering the data chips within the next five hours, and he was always punctual. He was their favourite errand boy in fact. Brian Storm didn't care about that, but always appreciated a punctual mark, it made his job much more efficient.
He spun the blood red nose of the Viper Mk2 to point at the latest visitor and initiated the scan. Already he was manoeveouring the Blood Red to line up behind the prospect who was skimming for fuel to fill his tanks. Like a cat stalking its prey, the only visible action of the take-down would happen in a flurry of manic thrashing, over in an instant and largely invisible to those around them.
Brian Storm would sneak up behind the mark, accelerate towards it (always it, never him nor her), and fire the interdictor. Essentially using his Frame Shift Drive (FSD) in reverse to drag the target out of Supercruise with the Blood Red in tow. It resembled a cowboy on the plains of Ancient Earth lassooing cattle to bring them to ground. That's how it worked, that's how Brian Storm always succeeded in his job.
Except this time, the Blood Red could not get behind the mark. The Sidewinder re-oriented itself to face him every time. The FSD could only lock onto the target from the rear. Brian Storm was familiar with optimised fuel scooping, chasing solar plumes for the best quality fuel vapours, but this was taking things to the extreme.
It was almost as if, no, surely not.
***
Salvaw had noticed the Viper as he arrived in-system. That blip on his scanner, plus four others had piqued his interest. The other three had drifted away while he set the Sidewinder to safely scoop fuel. The Viper remained, almost stationary initially, but now slowly creeping behind him.
He remembered the lessons taught to him by Matt. "Be wary of any ship closing on your six," he'd said. "Change your orientation to face them and watch carefully."
He'd done that here, and still the Viper circled behind him.
At this point Salvaw was grateful for the trial runs he'd role played with Matt. Only four of the first five interdiction attempts had been successful for Matt against Salvaw in this very ship. The next six had all seen Matt comprehensively sent crashing out of supercruise alone.
He knew the advantages his little Sidewinder had over this Viper (there weren't many) and watched in amusement as the likely pirate tried in vain to latch on. Tracing an S-shaped path around the star gave the would-be assailant no hope. In the end he gave up and flew away.
Salvaw, satisfied there were no further threats, opened a link with the nearby space station to check for further delivery instructions.
***
Brian Storm rarely encountered a mark who knew how to resist. Most jobs were dull affairs. This one suddenly became more interesting. His quarry was actually resisting. A smile broke across his face.
Plan B was put into action almost without conscious thought. He turned the Viper around and flew away from the star and away from his prey. The next zig-zag manoeuvre was missed by the Sidewinder as Brian Storm expected. His smile returned and he adjusted his tie in satisfaction.
What his mark hadn't noticed was that the Blood Red was leaving the scene at an angle that would put him within the required interdiction angle within a few minutes. Brian Storm expected no further counter-moves, received none, and as he turned back towards the mark a few minutes later, the Viper had picked up so much speed that it was accelerating towards the mark at an aggressive rate. Once within range he fired the interdictor and it attached first time. The Sidewinder had no chance, it was dragged out of supercruise before the pilot had a chance to attempt evasion.
"Good try," he muttered to himself, "you would have beaten a simple pirate with your moves, but not Brian Storm."
***
The interdiction alert snapped Salvaw's attention back to the console like an unforecasted storm. The inevitable creaking of the hull, the shrill siren, and the instant rush of unbridled adrenaline flowed through him. The necessary escape vector showed on his screen for an instant and then was gone. He yanked the stick to change course, not knowing where to change it to. The meter said he was losing rapidly, he already knew that from the gut wrenching groans made by the hull. It sounded like the ship was about to lose integrity.
He could have submitted and saved damaging the FSD. It was too late now, the damage would be done either way. Smoke was building up in the cockpit as if in confirmation.
Salvaw slammed the throttle to full stop and dropped out of supercruise, the Sidewinder spinning and tumbling as it did. He struggled with the controls, desperate to regain stability, and eventually managed to.
"Shit!" he screamed at himself, knowing he'd been too cocky to dismiss the threat so early. It was a Viper MkIII, he knew that much but little else. He spun his ship on its axis to face the direction he'd just come from - that's where the Viper would appear in moments - and hit boost a dozen times in the forlorn hope that the engines would fire with more urgency.
The FSD was slowly recovering from the excitement of the interdiction. His escape route was already plotted as Matt always insisted, and he'd be able to jump to whichever random star system he'd selected on arrival (never the closest two and never the furthest Matt had always said).
"Thank you old friend," Salvaw realised the wisdom of those rules when escape was your only hope of staying alive.
He needed to evade for a few minutes to give the FSD time. It was on him now, on his flying skills. If he'd reacted quickly enough the boost should see the little Sidewinder shoot over the head of the Viper's arrival. Passing out of sight before his assailant could level weapons on him.
There was a blinding flash ahead of him and the Viper emerged on collision course. He thumped the boost button a dozen more times, desperate to get out of its cross hairs. The few ship lengths distance between them closed ever so slowly, and each passing second saw Salvaw's pained face grimace tighter and tighter.
He saw the Viper's hardpoints deploy in front of him. A volley of shots on target and his already underpowered shields would be toast. His hull was not tough enough to stand up to a barrage of even small kinetic weaponary. He had to avoid being hit at all costs.
He thumped down on the boost button again but to no avail.
The dreaded flashes of light spewed from the four hard points facing him. Some part of his brain registered that all four hardpoints were energy weapons, there were no kinetics. A different part of his brain told the first to shut up, it didn't matter, four lasers would rip apart his hull as sure as projectiles.
Eventually the boost worked and the Sidewinder shot forwards, missing the Viper's canopy by metres, and away from the fangs of light hoping to kill him.
Pass one - success.
As soon as he felt the boost kick in, he flipped the Sidewinder on its axis again, just about keeping the larger ship in view as it passed under his nose and began to circle back on itself.
One thing Salvaw could rely on were his flying skills. Honed around the racing rings in tiny skiffs where flight assist was unheard of, he would need every bit of experience in throwing small ships around to escape this encounter. He knew he couldn't outrun the hunter, he was too slow; his token pulse lasers would take forever to deplete the foe's high energy shields, fighting was pointless; his only objective was staying alive long enough for the FSD to generate a high wake and pull him to the safety of a nearby star.
He just needed time.
***
"Whoaaa, where did you come from," asked the bounty hunter ducking in his chair as the Sidewinder shot just metres over his canopy. He managed to loose off a few shots, but the speed of the ship's approach had startled him.
He pulled back on the stick to loop the Viper back towards the escaping Sidewinder.
"One good salvo on target, and you're pay day," he said while directing a greater share of the capacitors towards the engines. "Come on baby, turn. Turn. Turn!" The Sidewinder was dead ahead, speeding towards him once more. "What the hell!"
He flashed another couple of shots towards the target, missing both times as it buzzed over his canopy once more.
"How are you turning so quickly?" he asked the retreating ship as he quickly toggled off flight assist and boosted into a high G turn.
Mathematician Sir Isaac Newton formulated three laws of motion in the 17th century. The first states that a body continues in uniform motion, in a straight line, unless acted upon by a force. In space, where ships fly in a near vacuum, that means a ship will continue to move straight and level unless the thrusters exert force at an opposing vector. If the ship is facing perpendicular to the direction of travel and no force is applied, it makes no difference, the ship continues along it's current path irrespective of where it faces. That behaviour makes flying a space ship incredibly difficult without automation, a so-called fly by wire system known as Flight Assist.
Flight Assist works by making space flight as predictable as atmospheric flight. The onboard flight computers read the control inputs (stick, throttle, etc) and interpret that as high level instructions of where the pilot intends for the ship to go. Pull back on the stick, flight assist interprets that as a request to pitch and climb the ship - not simply pitch the nose into a continuous spin as Newton would expect. For most pilots, Flight Assist provides an excellent simplification of what they desire rather than how to achieve it.
Highly trained combat pilots think otherwise however. They like the ability to spin their ship to face backwards while maintaining forward momentum (or what used to be forward, which is now backwards). That way they can attack a pursuer without slowing down or changing direction. They like the ability to strafe a target perpendicular to their direction of travel, keeping guns on target as they traverse the length of a capital ship for instance.
There are times when Flight Assist gets in the way, so most ships allow it to be toggled on and off according to the pilots whim.
Brian Storm had just executed one such manoeuvre - an FA off boost turn. An aggressive, high G move that stressed the airframe and pilot's stomach in equal measure. It brought the Viper's nose around quickly to point at the prey, but at a cost. Brian Storm felt consciousness drifting away from him as blood accelerated away from his brain. He braced every muscle in his body to force blood to stay put and feed his brain the oxygen it craved. Through blurred vision he saw his beams strike out towards the cross hairs and the fuzzy blue of shields being struck.
Sidewinders are decent small ships for their class, but a Viper MkIII outclasses it in every department. His skilled turn put him in pole position, he was sure. His beams would do their job he knew, as the highly focused energy shot away from him. Eyes closed he shook his head to clear the fuzz as he flipped the capacitors to flood his own shields with energy to protect him as he crashed through the wreckage ahead.
Except there was no wreckage.
***
There are two classes of pilot with the confidence to fly without computer assistance. Combat pilots and racers. Salvaw had grown up on the racing circuit.
As with so many skills, those learnt as a child are more natural and fluid than those learnt later in life. Children learn through play, they think nothing of hours spent drifting around racing rings. It's fun, let it last forever. And so it does, crashes and all.
Adults want to learn right now, this instance, they're less forgiving of mistakes and understand all too well the costs of crashing. They aren't prepared to invest the same time and energy into developing the skill. The results are often mechanical and cumbersome. All thought and less instinct.
The best combat pilots are usually childhood racers, at one with their ship. Those taking up combat as adults often continue to rely on Flight Assist. For them Newtonian flight is never instinctive. They flip in and out, toggling off for key manoeuvres to get a quick advantage, but then reverting to the safety net once complete.
Salvaw was a pure unassisted flyer. His hands gave the control inputs low level instructions. A tug on the stick meant pitch, not up. His hands told the ship how to move, not where to go.
He pitched the Sidewinder while approaching the Viper for the first time, the larger ship never left his sight as he spun on his axis. He hit boost as soon as both ships faced the same direction, cancelling his momentum and starting the acceleration back towards his adversary starting his turning arc ahead of him. He recognised the tell-tale signs of an FA-off boost turn: the Viper pitched quickly, and the thrusters erupted into life with a plume of burning gas.
He was running out of time, the Viper would be nose on in seconds. Panicking, Salvaw slammed his own boost trigger a dozen times praying for the engines to obey. They didn't. Just a chugging vibration through the small ship as the boost attempted to burn more fuel, but didn't have the energy to respond.
Bright beams of light spewed out from the Viper towards him. Two or three hit the shields leaving ionised gas fizzing blue all around him, before space abruptly turned black once more - shields gone! Then his engine vibrated and he was pushed back into the chair as the boost pushed the little Sidewinder towards the assailant but under his beams.
Violently, he pushed down on the stick as both ships accelerated towards each other at maximum thrust. He was dead, he knew he was dead. One more hit and his hull would disintegrate leaving him in the harsh vaccuum of space.
"Shields offline," said the far too calm cockpit voice.
"Shut up!" Salvaw screamed at nothing.
Could he execute another fly pass?
No, he was dead.
He had to, or he was dead.
He was already dead.
Do it anyway.
The confusion of panic froze the young pilot. Valuable seconds flashed by, his hands shaking, brain not sending coherent instructions - just noise.
"Frame Shift Drive online," said the calm cockpit voice once more.
"Shut u...," his jaw dropped open as he remembered his last life line.
His hand stabbed the button to spool the drive. It would take a few seconds, did he have enough time? Surely fate could not be so cruel now.
***
When Brian Storm was out to acquire a target, his eyes were on fire.
Soaked in sweat from the fight, Brian Storm was left confused and dazed by the lack of wreckage crashing against his shields.
He caught a glimpse of the smaller ship boosting straight at him once again before it changed course to dart beneath him. He knew his time was up, for this occasion. He knew the mark was about to fire up his FSD and escape.
There was no point chasing this one through hyperspace. He won't be jumping to the nearest system, not after flying this skillfully, and there were 6 or 7 others in range for a Sidewinder to choose from. He was also exhausted from the chase.
He'd expected this to be an easy mark. Nothing in the dosier had prepared him for those moves. He'd be better prepared for their next meeting.
"Well, see you later, innovator," he said to the blip on the scanner as it changed from target red to high wake grey.
They would meet again, and soon.