Log#2 Getting back on my feet
04 Aug 2015Elden Frost
Log date and time: August 4 3301, Time is 06:49So after fixing my flight computer (Yayyy fixed!)and telling future business partners where I’ve been rather then who has been trying to kill me took quite a bit longer than I expected, I decided that my best bet to make a quick buck was to go right back to my normal route of Apurui to Namon and back. I’d transport imperial slaves to Maanen Docks in Namon and then bring Crop harvesters back to Hereford City in Apurui, this time around I jumped back and forth with not too much incidence earning myself a pretty penny going about my way. I made a stop at Maanen Dock and dropped off my load, I got a contract that wanted me to bring a lot of goods to Marcy’s Gateway in Apurui, and how could I not? They were offering so much money! I refueled, set the coordinates for Radiant and I Jumped right off back to Apurui. I touched down in Marcy’s Gateway and fulfilled the contracts in no time, it was easy peezee…Then of course, like all wonderful things… I ran into some trouble with the law….
So I finished off the contracts and I was walking back to the ship to see if refueling or repairs were needed when I happened upon some of star port officers herding what looked like imperial slaves around the station. When one of the officers starting laying into this poor punk who looked to be in his mid-twenties, I immediately went over and in my own very colorful fashion told the officer that what he was doing was wrong and this was an imperial citizen not a criminal. I believe that just because you’re an indentured servant does not give people the right to beat the living hell out of you. Treat you like trash, ok, but not assault and battery! He turned and pulled that imposing crap of putting a hand on his waist side firearm and stating “Move along citizen, this is imperial business.” What could I do? I started to walk away when a female officer walked over to the other officer I’d just talked to and stated something like “These are not imperials, they are just slaves someone dropped here… better to execute the lot of them now to save space in the jails.”
Now, my brain started working its little cogs… and they worked oh so wonderfully for the moment without much foresight. Slaves…. Illegals….. Money….high amounts of money…. I need illegals… I turned right around, raced up grabbed the officer’s waist side firearm that had her back to me and put it against her head. “I’ll be… umm… Liberating your little band here me thinks…” It was kind of weird because the kid that got beat on had this weird looking light in his eyes… I am not particularly sure what it was…. Glare?...hope?... stupidity? I don’t know but what I do know is… imperial officers do not take kindly to uppity citizens. I motioned for the lot of them to follow me along… only the kid got up and moved… the rest of them just kinda sat there which bothers me a little, they didn’t do a damn thing and just gave a half-baked stare like they weren’t looking at me but looking at the center of the universe. He just grabbed my shoulder and shouted practically in my ear “RUN!” I glanced slightly over my shoulder debating how to get back when I remembered where I was… I stared at a bunch of officers just sitting around, when some of them spotted me they dropped what they were doing and just gave a blank stare like “really… you’re dumb enough to try this here?!?” Now… I’m not known for being quick but by god did I run screaming as hails of lasers and bullets flew around me. The kid and I made it back to the ship, and I slammed on the hatch door to emergency close, listening to the laser fire and bullets hit the blast doors. I bolted up towards the front of the ship to the cockpit, the kid following behind me, I made it inside panting and huffing like crazy, pulled myself up to the pilot’s seat. I started turning on all of the systems as fast as I possibly could, feeling the sweat running down my back as I heard the station guns start powering on and tilting…towards me. The kid vanished underneath me but I heard systems I hadn’t even gotten to turning on so I guess he was being useful. “SHIELDS ONLINE”… Thank you baby thank you… Radiant shuddered violently as she took a barrage of laser fire to the side. “WE ARE UNDER ATTACK”…. I KNOW DAMN IT! I rammed the accelerator to the max, lifted the ship up and boosted the hell out of the station taking so many hits… “SHIELDS DOWN, SHIELDS RECHARGING” I could feel my baby shaking as she took a couple more hits just as I cleared the hanger door at full boost moving four hundred and twenty kilo’s an hour. The outer perimeter officers started turning and responding to this “Criminal threat” A Vulture was close on my tail, I turned off flight assist and made Radiant spin while forcing a large boost forward and to the left making a very large corkscrew motion. I took some hits but dodged the heavy rail shot that zoomed past in front of the ship. I activated the FSD and locked onto the system beacon… in seconds light had distorted and we were gone in a flash.
My heart was still pounding… I got up out of the chair and made my way towards the kitchen… I opened the fridge door… nothing…but water….Why did I buy no beer… why… I sighed and grabbed a bottle when I hear “Thank you…” I froze and peaked over the fridge door to see the battered kid standing in the kitchen doorway looking at me. One slave huh… you can’t really sell one slave…. Whelp… I guess I’m avoiding Marcy’s for a while… “Yea… well some of your other friends didn’t want to come along… but…ah well… so what’s the name and where did you learn how to run a part of a ship before?” I threw him a bottle of water and started thinking about repair costs and some such while the kid went through this whole convoluted speech about how he was raised around ships most of his life and how he magically learned to work them by looking at them… yep… kids… then he said something that caught my attention. “I worked on a ship called the Disney Cruise-liner…” This… little prick… just said he worked on my old type 6… ok… that’s it… let’s see how far he goes with this. “did you know the captain of it? I heard he was amazing and absolutely spectacular, probably the best around.” His response… would make a grandmother’s heart grow.
“He was probably one of the best, He taught me a lot of things about ships and how they work and just he was a really great guy… I’m just sad we got separated and I put into slavery…” I looked at him and wanted to laugh… so I responded… “Look…kid… I have never met you before and you’ve never been on my ship… I don’t do the slaves bit too much…” His face turned a beautiful shade of white, “but since you’re a pretty damn good liar and an even better co-pilot… I’ll keep ya… just do me one favor, cut the crap and be straight with me about everything else… I could use you on this ship.” I stuck out my hand waiting for a hand shake, and he slowly crept up and put his hand in mine. “Elden Frost”….”Relenth Penumbra…” “ALRIGHT THEN RELENTH! Let’s hope that the closest station will let us do some field repairs and hopefully Marcy didn’t send out a system wide notice yet…”
We made for Dugan Gateway, dropped out of super cruise and to my sorrow found out that we were wanted even here, but we needed some food and supplies so I pulled my magic and turned off flight assist and put the ship on silent run as we drifted into the station at about 300 Kph. Slowing down was easy enough and landing without getting detected was a miracle of modern science but regardless we got ourselves supplied and set up. At around this time I had gotten a message from one of my wing-mates, Jason Wolfe asking if I wanted to join him about 5 systems over in Hip 93889, he’d apparently found an asteroid field that housed a ridiculous amount of pirates. Since Apurui wouldn’t be forgiving me for a little while I sped off into the stars towards my wing-mate. I brought a discovery scanner along since I could make a quick buck while jumping between systems and I could even test out my co-pilot’s capabilities. While we were in drift I had him run over what he knew about a ship and I gave him tips and trick and even had him test out in the sims for a while telling him stories of adventures of conquest, some I actually did… others I was too hammered to tell accurately. After a little while we pulled into Hip 93889 and I made for Jason’s navlock beacon. I dropped in the middle of an asteroid field with various ships zooming about, whether they be system police a few miners and passersby. I caught up to Jason and we hovered over the field and found ourselves some marks. The money was not bad at all and Relenth proved himself capable in a firefight. I gave him controls for a bit against lesser threats like sidewinders and such. Towards the end of our bounty hunting experience we came up against an Imperial Clipper. Jason jumped the gun a bit and was a few kilos away from me, I made my way behind the bugger and started laying into him with the 2 beam lasers I had waiting for the shields to drop so I could have my machine guns lay into his face. My ship shuddered as space was distorted, there was a beam trail from the clipper leading to Jason… his Shields were down… his hull went from about 80% down to the low 20s… there was one thing to do… I full boosted forward towards the clipper from behind, turned off flight assist, and forced the nose down unloading along the entire route… Relenth screaming in my ear saying this was crazy. I wasn’t about to lose a close buddy of mine today! NO SIRRE! I slammed my fully shielded ship into the front of the clipper putting myself between him and Jason so I would take the brunt of the bombardment. While Jason was making his escape to let his shields build up, I went toe to toe with a clipper getting my shields shredded but laying into him with everything I had... “OVERHEAT….HEAT DAMAGE…WARNING WARNING…” DAMN IT I KNOW! The console smoking in front of me… BANG a beam of light slashing across Radiant… Machine guns running hot, I landed a lot of good shots where his power plant was… and then…BAM… the Clipper broke up the front half flying in my direction slamming into my ship causing me to spin a bit to regain control.
After the chaos and letting out a few hollowed laughs… I locked in on the closest star port which was this low tech dinky little station named Kibalchich Orbital. We called it a night there and with our wallets a little more full I gave Relenth a small percentage and pooled the rest for the ship. All in all it was a pretty damn exciting few days… The empire decided to reward me for something (I still don’t know what) by giving me a master rank with the imperial navy, I don’t think I’ll be sending in a complaint though.
Elden Frost, Signing out