Log#3 Onto bigger and brighter futures
06 Aug 2015Elden Frost
Log Date and Time: August 6 3301, Time is 08:12I got some really exciting news, but first things first... Since the kid joined up with me, we struck up a deal that he gets a small percentage of whatever we sell, he gets room and board and he gets to learn from yours truly about piloting a ship. Now this might sound really one sided in his favor, but now I get to be lazy and make the poor critter fly Radiant all over, letting me sit back and play around on the Gal-net. However I did teach him a couple tricks of getting past station security without having to silent run, (TRADE SECRETS!) which definitely helped us start raking in the cash, and by god were we busy bees for the past 2 days. (Flight Logs)
He asked me why I could rake in the cash so fast, and to be honest, it's a little luck of finding high price trade missions and screwing around with trial and error. Was I going to tell him that? NOPE! I lied through my teeth saying some such bull hoggle about looking at the station info and taking a gander at what they need! Regardless, we finally made it back to somewhat known space after taking our sweet time in mineral extraction areas around hip 93889 and making a decent buck at hunting down bounty marks. (Bounty monies, yayy) We (I) decided it was time to head to some more familiar area of space. Relenth made a fuss saying that they probably have not forgiven us yet and would open fire on sight. He really didn’t want to go back but alas, after much civil discussion, (a few bribes of good food and money from the bounty hunting) we made our way back to Apurui. To my surprise, they didn’t actually try to kill us…(home sweet home) Relenth had his hands on the ejection lever the entire time just in case. We started on the trade route from Apurui to Namon, because oh sweet jesus does it make a lot of money. I’d seen advertisements for the clipper and I kinda wanted to get one, so the best course to go about it… get about 35 million in assets since well… It is damn expensive. There was something strange about flying around in Apurui though, we kept getting interdicted and we have all these strangers showing up… Like this, (New arrivals)… and just… they were not even that threatening… we got pulled out of space and we could clear up most if not all of the ones that pulled us out… like this poor sucker. (I see you Kumo!) Hell, I was using the bathroom at one point and I feel the ship shudder then being thrown against the wall, Relenth was screaming his head off saying something about a “big f***ing ship” so I ran up to the cockpit to see us face to face with an anaconda that was unlocking its hard points. Sweet, Jesus did we jump out of that one fast… he had us mass locked, taking a couple hits form his turrets but thankfully the main gun kept missing us. The countdown finally started for the FSD and we were just about out when we took 1 more hammer to the back… life support for whatever reason failed. ATMOSPHERE LEAKING, PLEASE PUT ON PRESSURIZED ENVIROMENTAL SUITS.. We had 7 and a half minutes till full oxygen leak and we were about 5000 light seconds out… we sped out way to Manaan dock in Namon as fast as the ship could handle it. Cracks started appearing on the canopy glass and the timer was dropping fast. 6 minutes….4 minutes… 2… I don’t know how we did it but we emergency stopped about 60 km from the station… waited about 30 seconds jumped to make it to 10 km. We almost didn’t ask for permission from the docking authorities because we boosted into the station. We started breathing easier when we entered the atmospheric bubble of the station, it… was spectacular to breathe properly again. After taking a giant break and letting our heads cool off, we decided to give it another go for a little while longer.
The kid is a fast learner, we walked around the docks and got ourselves set up with a few contacts and regulars that could give us… the not so legal but very well paying jobs… the kid could talk, he could flirt, and smooth talk his way into a new deal. It was amazing to watch, and well I was genuinely impressed since we could rake in over half a mil per haul. We set down in Apurui for the last time in Radiant. She’d served us well by taking all those beatings and she kept going… My kinda woman… but it was starting to show that she couldn’t quite take much more, the steering was a little sluggish, she drifted to the right a little and you had to practically be on top of someone to hit them with the weapons system. Since we had enough stored up I got the helmet for my environmental suit and dropped a couple papers in with different ship types in it. Since Relenth was a officially my partner and co-pilot, I had him drop in a few ship ideas of his, personally I was hoping for just some simple like another asp or a courier, but the gods of chance willed it… I pulled out one of the slips of paper Relenth had put in, “Imperial Clipper” read across it in very craptacular head writing. I looked at him… I looked back at the paper… I looked at our credit balance… “How… in god’s name are we affording this?!?! It’s bloody 22 million!!! We only have 12 and with our luck we might get just barely 5 off of Radiant here!” He smiled, “I know where we can get it cheaper by at least 2 million… as for making the other few… well… I was hoping you could help me with raising that bargain on Radiant.” I twitched a little… but I was willing to trust the kid for a bit… He put in coordinates for deeper into another faction of the empire’s space, to a system called Vaka.
The trip was a little long but thanks to the 5a FSD we got there in maybe 4 jumps. We touched down and landed in this really high tech shiny station. We wandered around for a bit looking at all the low price machinery and equipment and deciding what to buy on our way out to make a profit, when we finally decided to head down to the shipyard to look at the clippers they had. They had 3 of them, 1 was really badly beaten up, one was practically straight out of the factory and the other one had just been sold off apparently by someone else. The last one was out of the question since it would already be in the 50 mil range if it had been worked on, and I didn’t want to trade Radiant for a flying death trap so that left only the brand new one. Like Relenth said, they were selling these things cheaper for some reason, 20 million for the factory settings one. We walked over to the shipmaster who this very heavyset, balding Italian man was wearing a 3 piece suit talking to other executive looking bunch. We’d told the shipmaster that we wanted to buy the clipper by trading in an asp as discounting more, he looked at us like we were special, but after working a little charm we had an inspector follow us back to Radiant to do a price calculation. The inspector was this short thin little man wearing a black and grey jumpsuit that had a little badge on it with the words “Inspector” across them. He had slightly sunken eyes, gaunt cheeks and this slouched, tired demeanor about him. His hooked nose was practically pressed against the paperwork that he had on the little clipboard of his. “Well… she might not be pretty on the outside but if you gut her and take out a lot of the internals, she’s got quite the stock pile of goods that sell fairly high.” The inspector scoffed at my remark and just kept writing things down the clip board, muttering about how useless this ship would be. That kinda pissed me off but we needed to figure out how to get this thing jacked higher. “Well I don’t know about you but this ship has done pretty damn well for itself and I can guarantee that even if you resold it to someone else it would do just as well in their hands! You’re not going to find many asps now-a-days with a 5A FSD sitting in the back powering it.” The inspector froze, turned and looked at us… He stuttered a little as he said,“5A… FSD” I didn’t think I could smell money but looking at this man made me excited. He had us escort him to the drive on-board and you could see the lights sparkle in his eyes a little. He looked at us and asked us for a price estimate, before I could say anything Relenth squeezed in and said “20 mil” The inspector pursed his lips and shook his head… “15 mil”… “19.5”… “16”… I finally chimed in… “19 mil or we just drop this baby off in a dumpster to be turned into scrap” The poor guy gagged at the thought and agreed to the terms… we traded in radiant for 19 million and went back to the shipmaster to buy us our new Clipper. The suited Italian man was clearly not happy that he was getting a beaten up asp for 19 million… he did like the sound of the 5a drive but he was still very red in the face. He grumbled as he handed us a holoboard to read and sign off on purchasing the clipper. A lot of the writing was insurance filing and proof of who I am, purpose of buying, cost of moving it to an appropriate docking bay… you know useless things you don’t really pay attention to (other than the insurance because if this puppy blew, it’s 1.5 mil!!!) I signed off on it and I watched the credits in my account drop to around 31 to 11 million. I am now the proud owner of a Clipper…(My Precious!) I had Relenth go on board and start things up and see that all was working properly. I was a little jealous since I’d never seen the inside of a clipper before, and I wanted to oh so badly but I was forced to follow the shipmaster to call in some dry dock tugs to pull the clipper to a docking bay. It got pulled into this very large open docking bay, after the tugs dropped it off they drove off leaving me the shipmaster and Relenth standing around. He was giving us the final checklist and the ignition codes, when he finished that something kinda weird happened. A couple spooks and about a dozen imperial officers in full combat gear came into the hanger, the officers hung around the doors leading out of the hanger but the spooks in suits crossed the long docking bay towards the 3 of us standing there.
“Imperial intelligence, this is an emergency crisis and an Imperial Edict declaring that anyone without authorization to exit the docking bay is punishable by use of lethal force, and any attempt to operate vessels is to be put under arrest for conspiracy and possibly espionage. We ask for your cooperation and ask that you show up your qualifications and some identification.”
I was freaking out inside my head thinking I had no idea what this crap was about but if the spooks were hunting and they were here, if we did not leave… we’d be dead. I just kind of paused, looked over at Relenth then over at the shipmaster. “Uh… yea, I’ll just uh… get my Holo-data and send it over… it’s on the ship. Relenth, come on let’s get our info out… we’ll leave these 2 business men to talk.” The spook did a hand motion, and 2 of the officers by the dock doors ran the length of the bay in seconds (damn scary to see). The spook pointed at the 2 of us, and the officers followed along. “Move along civilian, get your papers and come back.” They followed us to the ship doors, I didn’t know what I was doing since it was a new ship but it was really god damn cool. The doors slide open with a wooshing noise, it was god damn beautiful. They stood just outside the cockpit doors and I sat down and was shuffling things in various compartments, I looked at Relenth. The boy was scared out of his mind, he was frozen looking right back at me in the co-pilot chair. “Ok, look kid, we’ll get out of this… I… think I got an idea…” As I said that we peered over the glass and looked down at the spook who was talking to the shipmaster, then back at the officers just outside the door… “Officers can one of you come in and help me a sec… I just bought this damn thing…” The 2 of them looked at each other, the larger one sighed and stepped through the door and wandered over, he put his rifle down leaning against the chair. I just heard a very faint… popping noise, and watched Relenth start swearing softly and twitching, I immediately looked over the officer’s head and looked outside. The spook just shot the shipmaster, and was walking out of sight towards the airlock. OH… DAMN… OH DAMN OH DAMN… only thoughts of prison or worse firing squad going through my head. The officer that was next to me also saw what happened, and immediately when for his rifle, I punched him in the Adam’s apple, and jumped on him punching him below the belt, in the solar plexes and then slamming his head against the floor. Relenth took the rifle and just started pulling the trigger on the other officer, he got him from behind in the leg, then again in the left arm and then again in the other leg… the kid was a crappy shot… “AIR LOCK, CLOSE, NOW!” We both jumped into the chairs while the other officer gagged and squirmed outside the door… “GOD DAMN IT YOU SHUT UP, I’LL HELP YOU IN A MINUTE!” Relenth focused on closing hatches and I focused on getting the ship fully on and operational. After hearing the engines roar and come to life… the other officers started opening fire on the canopy glass. I turned on the ship pulse lasers and just opened fire into the docking bay doors, with a loud shudder and an even louder suction sound, some of the guards were lifted up and out of the docking bay. This was going to be one hell of a test flight… “Relenth, FSD and weapons, keep em charging, keep em off us…” “Got it…” I unlatched the landing gear and slammed on the accelerator. The station just started opening fire on us as we blew through… THIS SHIP IS WAY TOO DAMN FAST… 400 KPH AND WE WERE GONE AND OUT OF THE STATION. Station security following in hot pursuit with an anaconda, two vipers and a couple eagles hot on our tail. The Eagles’ weapons weren’t getting through the class 6 shields but I wasn’t scared of them. The station was powering its main guns and then BAM! The shield dropped in seconds… but we were just too damn fast for them. The yaw on this ship was spectacular… it was like I was flying a glider on the wind. We were gone in a flash. “What… the hell was that about!?” Relenth looked at me absolutely terrified… “Why is it that everywhere we go… someone is trying to kill us?!?? And us specifically!?” The officer behind the doorway groaned. “Well… I don’t know but… let’s deal with these 2 at least…” I walked over to the one outside, and kicked the rifle away. “Alright… come on... we’re going to the med-bay…. Err…. Well we’ll find out where it is together.” I dragged the poor guy through the ship while he was bleeding over it… The clipper was damn pretty inside, everything was white and pearly looking. I felt upper-class sitting in this bad boy. We finally found it just in front of one of the thrusters on the left side. I plopped the officer on the table and started rummaging through the basic supplies, I turned the on-board doctor on and it scanned him then proceeded to work on him with little instruments, tying him down, applying Anesthesia and clogging holes. We tied up the big guy first and left the straps on the other one. After that we went to the Galnet to figure out what the hell was going on. EMPEROR HENGIST DUVAL DEAD “Jesus…. And they think it’s us??! Why??!? We weren’t anywhere near him!?” Relenth was curled up shaking in the chair next to me. “Relenth… I don’t think they believe it’s us… I just think they are probably scared and suspecting everyone… let’s… let’s just lay low… let’s outfit this guy in Aisling space and wait it out. We’ll drop the 2 in back off at our next stop… set a course for Chona.” After a few taps… Relenth looked back at me… “With the drive she anit making it… let’s head to Apurui then double back to Chona… sound good?” I nodded, and then went to check up on our 2 new passengers. I explained that I didn’t want to hurt either them and that I’d drop them off at the next station with a bit of cash and food to get home, they seemed quite reasonable despite spewing that I’d be crucified and hung by my entrails… lovely people…
Before we landed we stopped about 100 km outside Hereford City. Let’s change the transponder signals and codes shall we… we don’t need the whole imperial navy trying to blow us away…. What to call you…. Hmmm…light bringer… nah… duck hunter… no that’s dumb… uh…huh… why the hell not…” I change the name of the ship from some serial number clipper to Dusk Chaser. Relenth giggled behind me… “Why do you suck at naming things??”…”What’s wrong with Dusk Chaser?? Why what would name it???” He was still giggling… I wanted to hit with my boot… “It sounds like it comes out of a story book or something stupid like that… and I’d give it a name like The Milano.” I twitched a little… pursed my lips and did a little finger air jabbing. “You want me to name it after a cookie??? Are you kidding me??? Shove it, it’s too late now, it’s the Dusk Chaser!” We dusted off in Hereford, and no one seemed to care about our existence so I’m guessing the code changing was worth it… We dropped the 2 guards off and while they wanted to rip my liver out, they did seem a little grateful for the food. The only thing is, I dropped them still tied up…. I like my liver where it is thank you very much. We took off and headed for Chona with some cargo and dropped off in smoot station. We got our 5A FSD from here so maybe we could get another one. I went down to the outfitters down by the docks… and Lady Luck only strikes true twice for us it seems… “We’re sorry sir but we sold our last one to a…. Commander Jason Wolfe we’re sorry for any inconvenience this causes you.”… I fell to my knees… “GOD DAMN IT JASON!!!!!” (You know it's true!) Regardless we still outfitted the ship fairly well and got it in ship shape, even getting cleaned… LOOK HOW PRETTY MY BABY IS! (Front Canopy), (Pilot Side), Relenth was in the kitchen for this one, (Co-Pilot side). It’s a beauty, we’ll see if she can do as much maybe more work than Radiant. I wish you luck girl, and my heart goes out to you, you beautiful Asp.
Elden Frost, Signing out.