Thargoid scouts, Part 6: An unexpected encounter
10 Mar 2020Orodruin
It had been some time since I had first joined the war effort against the Thargoids. Having survived several skirmishes over the course of more than a week, my combat flying skills had improved significantly and I had gained more and more understanding of how to best push the capabilities of The Witch King to the limit.- "Who lives, learns." another combat pilot had told me during R&R just the other day.
Judging from the scars on his face, his introduction to Thargoid warfare had been at least as rough as my own. It had even come to the point where I had stopped noticing the new pilots coming fresh from pilot training, never having travelled more than a couple of light years away from their homes, they were looking to make theirselves a name. Most of them joined the countless nameless graveyard of space. Of those that did make it back, a large number decided that this life was not for them and fled back home almost quicker than they had came. Only a handful stayed and I could not help but feeling some sort of pride at surviving the first culling. Still, that very pride was dangerous.
- "Pride will get you killed." the other pilot told me. "Pride leads to overconfidence and overconfidence leads to idiocy, which leads to death."
I knew he was right. I had to be careful with what I thought of my skills.
During the most intense period of the fighting I had been assigned to Tactical Response Wing Zulu-Bravo, a riffraff of freelancer pilots with ships dedicated to quickly dispose of Thargoid Scouts, something The Witch King was tailored to do. In many cases, the slaughter of Thargoid Scouts drew the attention of the more dangerous Interceptors. We had clear instructions.
- "Once you have incoming Interceptors, you should get out of there ten seconds ago if you don't want to become space debris."
The flight coordinator had been very clear.
- "Hand over the fight to Alpha Wing Spec Ops."
The Alpha Wing were seasoned pilots with countless kills of Thargoid Interceptors to their name. They could handle themselves and I followed those orders. The Witch King was simply not equipped for that kind of fight and would be of little use anyway.
On the other hand, combating Thargoid Scouts had become second nature and I had well over a thousand kills under my belt. Quickly locating the next target and focus firing along with my wing mates was done without thinking. I had also learned not to draw the attention of the Scouts with the turrets too early. Many of them were often busy focusing on other ships and made easy pickings for my gauss cannons. Once they were alerted to my presence they were harder to keep in the crosshairs. Keeping my trigger finger in check until a Scout presented a nice juicy target at relatively close range was probably the most useful skill I picked up. Once caught in the gauss cannons, the AX multicannons quickly mauled down what was left of the Thargoid hull while the thermal vent beam laser dumped the heat generated by the gauss cannons onto the Scout. Invariably, being in a conflict zone, I was sometimes also directly attacked by one or more scouts. The caustic missiles that had once almost destroyed me no longer bothered me much. Quickly dispatching the Thargoid usually gave me pause enough to release a decontamination limpet and search for the next target while it removed the caustic residue.
The direct threat to Titan's Daughter had been averted. After a few days of intense battle, the Thargoids had been mostly driven out of the Taygeta system. Although they appeared sporadically throughout the system, the coordinated response from the rescue megaship quickly dispatched pilots with the appropriate ships and experience to handle them. It was time to move on. Searching the GalNet newsfeed, no stations had come under recent attack. Were we winning? The Thargoids had been driven back from most systems where incursions had occurred. Only one system remained within the region, HIP 16813, where the megaship Vanguard KT89 was directing the war effort. I decided that this is where I was most needed and after bidding farewell to the handful of people I had spent the most time in Taygeta with, I had The Witch King run through a maintenance checkup before taking off from Titan's Daughter, where repairs of the damage suffered throughout the recent fighting were quickly progressing. Once clear of the station, the navigation computer quickly suggested a route to HIP 16813. It was only going to be a few jumps.
- "Three ... two ... one ... engage."
The ship computer announced the initiation of the last jump to HIP 16813. The journey so far had been uneventful and quick. Jump, steer clear of the main star, wait for the frame shift drive to cool down, and initiate the next jump. The scenery of the nearby star was exchanged for the familiar but always somewhat unsettling tunnel of hyperspace. I had paid little attention to the system I was jumping from. It was only a transit point after all. Something was wrong. The Witch King jerked sideways and tilted to the left as the hyperspace conduit broke apart.
I had heard the stories, but they had seemed like legends and I had not thought it possible. Ships being ripped directly out of hyperspace in the middle of nowhere. Yet it was now happening to me. There it was. A Thargoid Basilisk. I was just able to catch a glimpse of it before all instruments turned off and the cockpit became dark and silent. The Witch King slowly turned about, finally rotating sufficiently to again give me a clear view of the Basilisk.
- "So this is how I die." I thought to myself.