A Love Letter to Space Legs
27 Jun 2022Amethyst.
Awoken from her deep sleep by the blaring sound of the ship's proximity alarm, Cmdr Sapphire vaulted from her bed, threw on her jacket and dashed to the bridge. Quickly surveilling the array of blinking panels and flashing screens, she got her bearings."This was supposed to be a vacation!" she muttered to herself, rapidly taking stock of the situation.
Having landed her Beluga, "the Peaceful Rain" just outside of Chon Tourist Hostel on LHS 1541 A 4 so that her tourist passengers could disembark and enjoy a guided tour of some of the local flora, the last thing either her or her delegation was expecting was unwelcome visitors, but tell that to the six Mercenaries rapidly disembarking the Viper Mk IV that had landed suspiciously close-by.
Jumping into the pilot's seat, Sapphire sprang into action, quickly closing and locking the cargo bay hatch whilst scanning the Viper for its ID-tags, which came back as a wanted ship, "the Ashen Reaver". She prepared to raise the ship's shields and prime its turreted weapons, but as she entered her authorisation code to unlock the combat panel, she realised the Peaceful Rain's shield generator and weapon systems had been taken offline. Clearly this was either a malfunction in the modules or, more likely given their uninvited guests, evidence of sabotage by someone on-board the Peaceful Rain.
Her mind raced as she prepared for the possibility of the ship being boarded - this was clearly not a chance encounter. These mercs knew where she would be and, it seemed, how to breach the ship's defences. Not good.
She slammed her fist into the right arm of her captain's chair, activating the ship's intercom. "Drake, report to the bridge immediately!" she barked.
Yannick Drake, Chief Engineer of the Peaceful Rain, flew into the bridge somewhat flustered - it appeared he too had been awoken by the alarms, and was trying to work out what was going on.
"We're about to be boarded, looks like we may have a saboteur, get to engineering and bring our defences back online stat!" she instructed. Drake could tell by the slight cracking of her voice that this was very serious, and he ran out of the bridge and down the corridor towards the main elevator that would take him to the engineering level.
Both Sapphire and Drake stopped in their tracks as they heard the sound of some sort of heavy machinery spooling-up outside the ship. It sounded like a drill ? "Must be something to help them get on board" Drake thought to himself as he scuttled onward.
Sapphire relayed a distress warning with the ID Tags of both ships to ground personnel at Chon's Tourist Hostel, grabbed her firearm and prepared to get down to it. If these mercs knew enough to have the ship's defences disabled before they started their assault, they would surely know the easiest point of entry would be the emergency escape door in the dining cabin and, that in mind, Sapphire left the bridge, keying-in a new security code on the bridge door before heading on.
The sound of metal grinding against metal filled her ears as the ship started to shake slightly from the impact of whatever the mercs were using to breach the hull. Sapphire knew she didn't have much time before things started to get very messy.
All the lights on the ship went off for a moment and then came back on a few seconds later.
"Drake, report!" she whispered into her comms bracelet as she proceeded, gun in hand, down the corridor towards the impending breach.
"Power coupling has been disengaged, and whoever primed the ship for the attack has redirected the energy from the turret capacitors into the shield banks and overloaded them. I'm rebooting the ship's systems in a bid to try and galvanise some of the healthier modules into accelerating the repair of the shield generator at least. It's not good boss" he replied.
"Time to repair ?" Sapphire queried.
"I can get something up in a few minutes, but it will take hours to repair this damage properly - whoever sabotaged these systems knew what they were doing" Drake answered.
"Understood - get to work, I'll buy you some time" Sapphire replied, before shutting off comms and getting her game face on.
In spite of her spitting orders at Drake, Sapphire genuinely did have a lot of time for the old boy. In addition to trusting him with her life on a number of occasions, Drake was a fantastic and natural tinkerer, and had made a number of improvements to most of the systems in the Peaceful Rain over the years. Custom work, nothing off-the-shelf.
Passing by one of the mood lighting panels they had recently had installed, Sapphire paused for a moment and paired this system with her suit's HUD, before changing the panel's mode to "soft light", which dimmed all the lights on this entertainment level to a much lower and more intimate setting.
Rounding a corner and entering the main dining area on this level, Sapphire came upon the source of the hull breach. She figured she had one, maybe two minutes at most before her new friends outside let themselves in, and she wasn't about to surrender this ship without a fight. Hunkering down behind a crate of Lavian Brandy that was going to be served to her guests as a surprise at this evening's meal, she made ready to defend her position. Time for a stock check. Two frag grenades, one shield disrupter, one shield projector, and her trusted Manticore Tormentor by her side. She was as ready as she was ever going to be.
Sapphire switched the shield disrupter and both frag grenades to sticky mode. She threw the shield disrupter to the far side of where the breach was going to take place. She then set her shield projector down at her side, primed one of the frags, and took aim with the Tormentor. Now it was just a waiting game.
Taking a deep breath, what seemed like an eternity but in reality could only have been a minute at best passed, before the emergency door from the dining cabin to the outside blew open, and it was time to engage.
Meanwhile, downstairs in engineering, Drake was frantically trying to bring some sort of defence system back online. The saboteur knew the main systems, but thankfully not any of the custom work that he had put in. "It must have been one of the guests on the ship that had snuck down here and messed about with the systems before disembarking" he thought, and if that was the case then it should be easy to work out who it was, as they would have been tracked by the ship's interior security logs, and they would presumably be the only guest not to return from the excursion.
Whilst replacing the power coupling was straightforward, realigning it would take thirty minutes at least, as simply powering it back up without going through the recalibration process could risk blowing the ship's power core entirely, so that was off the table. Much more practical would be to re-route power from some of the ship's optional internal modules to the shield generator, as bringing that back online could at least keep anybody outside of the ship at bay, and trap anybody inside from leaving. Checking the ship's external cameras, Drake concluded that the close proximity of the Ashen Reaver to the Peaceful Rain meant even if he could bring weapons back online, firing upon the ship and destroying it at this range would likely cause significant hull damage to the Peaceful Rain, so again, not ideal.
Drake entered his personal security code and began toggling power distribution between systems, whilst checking the status of the reboot of the ship's shields. 16%. Slow but steady. In order to improve performance, he started powering down each of the guests' cabins in turn, re-routing their power back to one of the ship's reserve tanks, in preparation for the shield coming back online.
Sapphire's years in the Federal Military kicked-in, and her body moved almost on its own. As she saw the first pair of boots enter the cabin she activated the shield disrupter from her suit's HUD. The first three mercenaries suffered an immediate loss of shield power from the shield disrupter, and fell quickly to a trio of well-aimed shots from her Tormentor.
The fourth mercenary was clearly in a state of shock from what he had just witnessed, and Sapphire had just enough time to tap the shield projector with her foot as the merc dashed into the cabin and fired his laser rifle wildly in Sapphire's direction. Her shield projector took all the blasts and she hit him in the leg as he dove for cover, taking his own shield offline in the process.
Sapphire darted forward, throwing her sticky frag grenade above the breached entry point, and tossing her other frag out through the breached hole in the side of the ship. She didn't hesitate, and unleashed a trio of blasts from the Tormentor into the recoiling merc, ending him in the process.
"Four down, two to go" she whispered to herself.
Realising they were either up against a small army, had been poorly-prepped by their man on the inside, or were very rusty, the two remaining mercenaries fell back and regrouped. As Sapphire was going through the pockets of the mercs she had despatched inside the ship, she heard the unmistakable metal clanking of two grenades being thrown into the cabin from outside.
Before she could react, Sapphire was blown off her feet and thrown backwards at speed into one of the bulkheads. The wind was immediately knocked out of her and, whilst her personal shield had thankfully taken the brunt of the impact, she was momentarily dazed which gave her remaining assailants time to enter the cabin with her.
Poking her with the muzzle of his rifle, the barely conscious Sapphire's hand flopped to her side momentarily, leading the merc to think she was unconscious.
Realising she had a momentary advantage, Sapphire sprung back into action, pulling the merc to her by the barrel of his rifle whilst activating the sticky frag grenade behind him. This combination of drawing him to her and activating the explosion stunned merc number five, whilst this poor sod got used as a human shield. His personal shield was taken offline by the explosion of the frag grenade, and Sapphire unloaded three rounds from her Tormentor into him whilst he was at point blank range, terminating him.
The remaining merc quickly got back to his feet, and fled down one of the corridors leading from the dining cabin towards the guest suites, firing wildly behind him to try and dissuade Sapphire from pursuing.
"Drake. One merc remaining - what can you do for me ?" Sapphire whispered into her comms bracelet.
"Shield coming online now boss" Drake replied, adjusting sliders on the ship's power transfer console to redirect the stored energy he had accrued from shutting down all power to the passenger cabins back into the shields to give them a temporary boost.
Sure enough, the overwhelmingly relieving sound of the shields powering-up reverberated through the ship, as the familiar blue crackle bathed the ship in soothing light, and sheltering it from further incursions.
"Now you're mine" Sapphire muttered through gritted teeth as she set off in pursuit of the Peaceful Rain's final interloper.
Activating night vision mode on her Maverick suit, Sapphire could see in the dimly-lit corridors as if it was bright as day, and this definitely gave her the upper hand. Following a trail of fresh burn marks in the walls where the mercenary had blindly been firing in her general direction made it quite easy to track his position on the ship, and she soon caught up with him in, of all places, her own Captain's Quarters.
As she rounded the corner to enter the cabin the merc unleashed what felt like an entire clip of ammunition randomly in her direction, destroying precious ornaments, damaging ship panels and tiles, and generally wreaking carnage on her private space.
"That does it!" she thought to herself, using her suit's paired connection to the ship's mood lighting to bring it up to maximum in one single blink. The resulting surge temporarily blinded the mercenary, who instinctively attempted to cover his eyes.
Taking full advantage of this moment, Sapphire unleashed another three rounds from the Tormentor into him, and he slumped down against the side of her chair, dead.
Sapphire tapped a few buttons on the air-conditioning settings in her cabin to clear the smoke from the gunfire, and surveyed the damage. They would have to put in for repairs at Chon Tourist Hostel, but fortunately they weren't far. All that remained now was to make preparations for the return of their guests.
"Drake, monitor the externals and bring power back to the guests' cabins ahead of their return. Scan the mercs' bodies for bounties, put in for some muscle from the settlement to help remove these bodies, and let me know when weapons are back online. Oh, and Drake ? Great work today" Sapphire directed.
"Thanks Boss, understood" Drake replied.
Within about 15 minutes of the incident getting under control, ground crew from Chon's Tourist Hostel arrived on scene to help. They removed the mercs' bodies, impounded the Ashen Reaver, and transferred a handsome credit reward to Sapphire's coffers. "That should cover the repairs nicely" she said, smiling inwardly.
Returning to the bridge, Sapphire reclined in her chair and waited for the return of her passengers ...