KINGSNAKE & THE FINGERNAIL
31 Oct 2021Goldgunner1
He wasn't sure if the rivulets of water on his visor were simply condensation of thin atmo on the freezing glass of his wide-frame helmet or the beginnings of the first rain here on the first planet in the Achenar system. He was tired and the expression on his face, should you have been the unlucky one to peer into his helmet would have been one of disgust. The iron grey hair and the even harder grey eyes made for dismal viewing, coloured as they were by the soft, faded royal-purple facial tattoos. Without a thought the pilot tore off another plastic soft-cover from the face of the visor and sprayed a moisture suppressant on the next one. The rivulets separated and drizzled away allowing his vision to be far more precise. He decided it was probably condensation as he stalked across the dusty planetary surface heading for the landing pad. The dust, coagulating in the dew, made the resultant mud cling to his boots. Sitting on the landing pad was Kingsnake. One hundred and sixty eight metres of sleek lines and belligerence. The Federal Corvette was as subtle as an axe in the face but a thousand times more lethal.
The pilot had made sure that she wasn't an easy mark. "A tank" they called her and rightly so. The three forward mounted hot-beams were calibrated to exert their shield eating effect at maximum range and could be modulated with the trip of a switch to the opposing frequency pattern. Gimballed to allow target tracking, the deadly beams compensated for the slow turning circle of the heavy ship. In their second pattern, those same shield-eaters would pulse megajoules of energy into the capacitors of a friendly ship. Regen; vital gear for a long range hunter-killer. Mounted in the nose cone of the blunt-faced, heavily armoured fighter were twin multi-cannons. Both of them on rapid fire cycles and both loaded with shells that were coated in distilled goidcid. Loading those cannons was a long and storied process. The pilot paid someone else to do it for him since he valued the longevity of his hands. Motor control in his fingers was more valuable than thrift since his fingers were the basis of all of his flight related skills. Technicians who were goidcid specialists had damaged hands and a limited life span as armourers. The pilot had never been sure whether the rumours around these shell coatings being the province of captured Thargoid body fluids was true or whether the acid had just being given that colloquial name by pilots who lacked imagination. The acid was lethal and in munitions grade, ate through target hulls, circuitry, control-rods and hydraulics. A basic but effective all over systems baller. It was his habit to switch one off when hunting to conserve their ammunition. He wasn't made of money and it kept him in the field for longer.
The usual collection of heatsinks and point defence turrets studded the surface of the ship and they had all been carefully and at some cost upgraded to carry extra ammunition. Dotted across the hull were shield boosters and they gave that mighty hull a head start in terms of defence. Some work and a few clandestine favours for a high ranking member of the Aisling Duval family had put the pilot in a place to purchase the prismatic shield upgrade components that gave the ship its massive shields. Deactivated, the shields were invisible but, activated they screened the hull in a soft blue shimmer like an ancient marine environment. They spat like a cornered felix when moisture or dust struck them. Mounted to the rear of the great battler, in canopied armoury bays, were the pride and joy of this ship. Twin, heavy-duty, Class 4 multi-cannons. Quad barrelled, heat baffled, titanium-rifled, long-tubed weapons with massive under hull reservoirs of caseless ammunition. No ordinary ordinance. The upgrades made these weapons hard hitting and capable of firing right the way through an engagement. If the victim was a small ship and if the pilot was close enough, the hits to the enemy hull from these two mules would punch the little ship backwards or off course. Not that the pilot cared, a bounty hunter couldn't afford to be bothered by the niceties of equal fights or some faded sense of chivalry. It was a long, drawn out bar room brawl out there and it was a brawl he intended to win and keep winning. The receiving agencies in system had started to look a little drawn as he handed in mission after mission and racked up the kills with single minded monotony.
The hull that all of that potential devastation was seated on was armoured and, once again, the pilot had spared no expense at the cult of engineers. Taking this powerful ship through the foundries of Selene Jean's planetary base had given the ship's armour several sequential surface melts and alloy hardening treatments. The thirty percent additional durability gained by adding the alloys and applying the arcane blade forging processes to the management of the density of ship metals was a great advantage. An advantage only won by suffering the inconvenience cost of days spent living in cramped conditions on base while his ship had been gutted and reformed. The pilot had elected to stay the extra time to allow the engineer's massive, custom shaping-plates to compress the soft new metal after every melt. That repetitive angled compression had also angled the crystallography of the metal and forced it into even deeper, more cohesive and richly interlocked molecular forms. This final upgrade had made the hull almost impregnable, even without the shields.
Kingsnake was a platform to fight from all right and the pilot never missed an opportunity.
He strode over the platform, onto the easy-lay tarmac of the landing pad. It was one of the temporary ones created by bounty management, a little way away from the base. No need for the higher ups ordering the hunting to be sullied by the view of people like him coming and going. No need for them to see the scorched armour and the dismounted weaponry after a heavy fight. Hypocrisy wasn't nice, but around here, in deep space, the opportunities it provided paid the bills. As he closed the distance to the ship he activated her systems with a simple voice command. She'd been at rest, with only her anti personnel frag-defenders activated. The absence of organic detritus meant that they hadn't been needed. The soft blue shields flickered into view for a second and then subsided and he could hear in his earpiece the start of the AI pre-flight checks. She had been fully loaded with new ammunition and fuel and she was ready to go. He had a fist full of mission requests and data banks full of targets.
As he stepped into the entrylock he activated the decontamination function with a punch of a button. The mud on this boots and the moisture on his suit was vaporised by microwaves and the ship acknowledged his entry.
Goldgunner had heard that there was a ship out there with the name "Fingernail". A pirate ship. It was probably unrelated to matters past, but he would put that ship down. The Black Conclave had an issue with fingernails.
Great engines finally hot, Kingsnake lifted off the easy-lay and slipped her docks and umbilicals. She drifted to thruster height and engaged her cruising engines. The dark ship with the deadly payload and the merciless pilot translated into near space with a whisper of dissipated energy. The settlement seemed almost relieved.