In Shock
03 Jun 2016Asagao
Sat in a slightly battered Vulture in bay 29 of Tognini Dock, wondering what just happened. I'd been coming in to cash in bounty vouches from the nav point, prior to jumping back to Mehet. I'd got careless on the approach, and some young punk pulled me out of supercruise. Having submitted to the interdiction, I waited to see what he'd do. He demanded cargo, despite the lack of racks installed. When no cargo was forthcoming, he opened fire.I was somewhat outmatched, but not badly. The element of surprise was also on my side; having submitted to the interdiction, I think he expected me to run, not fight. It wasn't going particularly well, but I was hanging on, when two other ships showed up. I had three and four duplicates of the side displays, but the main scanner was plain enough. My heart sank. Vultures are fight-or-flight creatures; you can go from the first mode to the second, but it takes a while for the FSD to come up once the weapons power down. Three triangles now showed on the scanner, and I prepared to make a run for it.
Before I could stow the lasers, the two new ships opened fire - on my opponent! I plowed back in, wondering if this was a mistake by an inept wing and I was about to get hit, but nothing was showing up, and a minute or so later the pirate's ship exploded. Turning to get a better look at the others, I saw they were system security vessels. I could hardly believe it. I have never seen this happen before. Sure, you'll see them show up at nav beacons when it gets rough, and patrolling RES points (depending on the system), but I've never seen them show up for an ordinary craft in peril. Hell, the day before I'd got my canopy shot out in front of three of them in a different system and they'd sat back and enjoyed the show.
These guys scanned me over - only to be expected - thanked me for my assistance, told me to take care and sent me on my way.
I checked the HUD. Njuwar. Mehet's rulers had let their system get over-run with low-life, so maybe it had started spilling over into neighbouring systems, and they'd reacted accordingly. Good for them. This system's getting bookmarked in the galaxy map - it might have been a fluke, but it's given me the warm fuzzies. If I ever get round to settling for a home base, I'll come back and check this one out.