Calculated Risks, Bad Mathematics (#4)
09 Jun 2021Neon_nylon
[Wild Space, Thiana System]The Nexus floats motionlessly as Neon sets up the new guns and equipment he had gotten with his last paycheck. While he was upgrading his ship in Ao, he had heard of another way to get paid. Mercenary work. Now, Neon was not an exceptionally skilled combat pilot and he limited his kills on single targets, like a bounty hunter or an assassin. But fighting in bigger battles wouldn't be too hard, right? It's just killing not one, but multiple targets.
All done! Now to get some money. A little bird told me that this system was quite literally on fire. Some sort of civil war or something...
Neon checks his navigation panel and sees quite a lot of conflict zones being registered by the ship.
Haha! Now let's see where to go... This one isn't too far away. Neon sets the conflict zone as the nav target and activates supercruise.
As Neon veers the ship towards his target, a small instance of doubt forms. Is this choice going to be the one to kill him? The thought is fleeting though, and it disappears as quickly as it arrived.
The Nexus comes out of supercruise and stops about 9 km from the conflict zone. No time to waste! Neon floors the throttle. The Nexus responds with the typical whirring of accelerating engines. Neon activates the boost. The Nexus speeds up immensely, pushing him into his seat. He sees a cluster of ships coming closer. The ships are ducking and weaving. They are shooting and being shot at. They are exploding. Neon starts to realise. This is terrible. This is combat. This is death. THIS IS HEAVEN.
PING! A notice pops up on the comm panel. CHOOSE A FACTION TO FIGHT WITH. Neon just picks the first one that pops up. He is connected to his side's comm chatter. He hears pilots calling out to eachother. He hears them shouting and screaming. Neon looks onto his scanner. Multiple red points. Hostiles. He was in it now.
He deploys his hardpoints. A rush of adrenaline flows through him. It's now or never! He heads right into the thick of it.
The closest target is a lone Cobra Mk3. This one seems easy.. Neon veers the ship behind the cobra but keeps his distance to hide his
position. Fire from other ships light up the void, forcing Neon to duck and dodge out of their range. The cobra is now in the Nexus' crosshairs. Neon fires. But not all the shots connect. The pilot of the cobra skillfully rolls out of the way of the hailstorm of bullets. This is gonna be fun. A fully fledged dogfight ensues. The Nexus and the cobra seemingly in a dance of death across the battlefield. Neon and the pilot seem equally matched. Around them more ships explode. More bullets fly. More chaos ensues. Neon is in a state of euphoria. He'd never been this pumped up in his life. But even though he was enjoying it, the cobra wouldn't go down. The difficulty was that flying full speed impedes manoeuvrability. Also if Neon overtook the cobra he'd land in its crosshairs. Neon wanted to get paid and he wasn't gonna lose to one pilot, however skilled they may be. Both ships still in their tango of terror, weaving and ducking, spinning and flipping, all of this while a hail of fire followed them. He had to break this stalemate, this infinite impasse. One of them had to die. Time to do something stupid!
Neon point the Nexus under the cobra and maxes the throttle, starting to overtake the cobra from underneath. Then, just as the Nexus passes underneath the cobra, he limits the throttle, hits the boost and pulls up on the stick like his life depended on it (which it did). This maneuver causes the ship to flip upside down, just now, it was facing the cobra head-on.
For a split-second time slows down...
Both cockpits face eachother. Both pilots face eachother. Eye to eye. For that split-second they are equals. An aura of mutual respect envelopes them. The last moment of peace that day. The cobra's pilot wasn't much older than Neon. They both wore the same confident smirk. In another life they could have been friends, brothers even. But this was not that life. One of them had to go and it had already been decided.
Neon fires. The multi-cannon shells pierce the cobra's cockpit, killing the pilot instantly. Neon veers out of the way of the now uncontrolled ship, its cockpit a shredded mess. A sliver of emotion goes through Neon, but he does not notice. One...down... That guy was good. Not good enough though. Let's hope this gets easier. He heads to his next target.
[3 hours later, Conflict Zone, Thiana system]
Alarms are blaring. Warning lights are flashing. Smoke has filled the cabin.
Neon sat in the cockpit, desperately trying to get the Nexus under control. But it was no use. The thrusters were scrap metal by now and the ship was spinning uncontrollably. Neon felt a searing pain in his head. He was not in good shape. Wincing and dizzy, he looks over to the status panel. Fuck! His shields were down. The hull was at 11% percent integrity. There was nothing he could do. He was a sitting duck. He had made the wrong choice, had taken the wrong bet. He had lost. He was going to die. Here and now, his life was going to end. And the galaxy would still be spinning. His death would mean nothing. His life would mean nothing. It was all insignificant. Like the blink of an eye is irrelevant to a storm. Neon lets go of the stick and reclines in his seat. He closes his eyes...