Bold Sacrifice
30 Nov 2019Vizz Curio
::CMDR Vizz Curio on Balrog Boogie, at Jameson Memorial, Shinrarta Dehzra::::personal log::
I took my mean combat/all-purpose Anaconda, Dread Barghest, out for a cargo run of Kongga Ale. Fitting that a former pirate ship should haul ale. I wanted to ensure it would get to its destination safely. Lately I've been interdicted by some overly-brazen little pilots and the Dread Barghest is my one ship that I can't easily break an interdiction. Last time it was a Viper mk III.
A puny Viper.
Against the might of my personal small dreadnought.
Search & rescue didn't find the escape pod.
There wasn't one left.
Speaking of escape pods! I got to see space and asteroids from the naked point of view.
While I was cruising around looking for
CMDR Delco was having a lucky evening of asteroid cracking with a half-full hold already, and I was hot-dogging all around the rocks having fun when out of nowhere an Imperial Clipper without Empire markings nor ID appeared and started scanning him!
His mining Anaconda doesn't have any weapons and minimal defenses, and my Imperial Courier* is just a sports ship without any weapons either.
As a cautious & aware commander, CMDR Delco wasted no time retracting his hard-points while maneuvering around the rocks to pick a path out to engage his Frame Shift Drive as soon as possible, while attempting to have some rocks in between him and this pirate Clipper.
The only broadcast we heard was a demand for 20 tons of Void Opals (that's like 32 Million credits worth at the going rates!) but it didn't even wait for a response before opening fire! I buzzed the Clipper twice to distract its attention but it wanted what CMDR Delco was hauling.
In one moment when coming back up from behind I saw this Clipper line up a perfect shot against my friend so I careened my ship with a full afterburner burn at the back/underside quarter of the Clipper and crashed into it!
Physics being what it is and I know it -- two things happened:
- The Imperial Clipper got its nose stuck in the now-cracked ice asteroid, unable to dislodge nor maneuver!
- All of the lights on my control panels lit up and started flashing while Eden was alerting me to all of the system malfunctions as fast as she could call them out. The last one I heard was something like "Warning! Ship integrity has failed. Eject! Eject! Eject!" but it was too late for that.
So there I was. Dead.
Okay, not dead. Just unconscious for a bit. My Remlok suit was sealed and had me contained. I was adrift among the icy asteroids. Fantastic view. Absolutely frightening though. I couldn't see the Clipper, and I didn't know how long I was out. Possible it had left, maybe the pilot or crew were dead from the impact with the rock, who knows?
I passed out again and woke up on a Search & Rescue ship. After my vitals were confirmed stabilized (and what did they inject me with in the IV? I felt tingly) they dropped me off at a station. That place had a hangar, so I called up the Pifvits -- the Pilots Federation Ship Valet Transport Servicer(tm) -- interface and paid to have my Mamba, Balrog Boogie**, brought here. Before long I went back to ShinDez, hailing CMDR Delco to make sure he got out safely. All good.
* Note 1
This is how I knew before I even got a full scan on the Imperial Clipper that it wasn't a legit Pilots Federation registered ship:
One of perks from working with the Imperial Navy and doing some temporary undercover work for them years ago was my access to a special transponder pickup kit. I fit the red horizontal antenna bar for this on every one of my cockpits. It lets my computer identify ships' registrations, or lack thereof, faster if they have anomalous 1s & 0s in their data streams.
One of perks from working with the Imperial Navy and doing some temporary undercover work for them years ago was my access to a special transponder pickup kit. I fit the red horizontal antenna bar for this on every one of my cockpits. It lets my computer identify ships' registrations, or lack thereof, faster if they have anomalous 1s & 0s in their data streams.
** Note 2
Balrog Boogie is named after a unique and awesome swing-slash-metal-slash-opera-slash-???? song by Diablo Swing Orchestra: https://youtu.be/gsmAF9cVPm4.
::end transmission::