Pythius Rises
28 Jul 2021Benito Stone
"The missiles are installed commander", came a voice from behind."These were not easy to get the parts for. Seems your name is not so well spoken of over on the Lei Rong side".
A small smile creeped up my face. "I expect not". "Were we able to get the capacity to 200"?
"Just a hair shy. 193/198. Still a pretty substantial improvement" the mechanic said, a hint of concern entering his voice.
I turned around and met his eyes. "That'll do for now. She ready to go now", I asked?
"Absolutely", he said. "Paint is done and the PowerPlant updates are done. That salvaged armor plate is added in as well. It's a hell of a machine". A long hesitation and then, "A question if you don't mind", he said quietly, "Pythius, is that like, some variation of 'Python'? Sorry, I was just curious".
"Well", I said with a grin, "Pythius reigns over the fraudulent in hell."
"Oh... Hmmm. That's an interesting..... yeah", he trailed off
"I'd say, just make sure you don't see her sliding in behind you and don't worry too much about it", I added. "So I'll assume no papers to sign then".
"No sir, she's fully resurrected and ready to go. Hard to believe she was that smashed pile of scrap you hauled in here but there were a lot of good modules still in that. Probably 80% of what you'd have paid for a new hull but she'll rock and roll with the best of them now. As far as the pilots federation is concerned she's always belonged to Benito Stone."
I tapped in a code to transfer the funds but held off on initiating and said "Well then, let's go have a look and wrap this shit up."
My time as a pilot in the cut throat space of Kumo Crew had made me enough to finally put together my Python. When I spotted it in Lei Yong Rui space at a breakers yard I snatched it up for a heavy discount. The rail rounds that trashed the thrusters were still embedded in the engines but the guy back at my home station is a damn God of repair. He's put Shadow Raven back together a number of times after some tough fights and there isn't a system he's afraid to wade into to fix. This time though, when it arrived he looked a little white. There was not much left of her that didn't have a hole somewhere and the cockpit was stripped to the frame.
A generous application of credits however turned that heap into well armored transport. The type of transport needed to move goods in a region where law is mostly suggestion. With the weapons load out we gave it the ship is more than capable of dealing with pirate attacks and at least has a fighting chance to escape the more killing-focused adversary too although here avoidance would be key. Without the blue haired princesses shields it's far from impervious to a dedicated killer. Still, the option to move 152T of cargo with 4.5GJ of defensive protection is certainly putting me in a better spot to earn more credits down the road and should even be decent for the occasional bounty mission and patrol work.
"Gods, it's huge", I said checking out the underside of the nose.
The mechanic chuckled and said, "It's certainly going to be a major step up from that Viper of yours. It could probably land on the nose".
"That reminds me. The weapons containers were transferred over from your Viper. I had a feeling you were going to want to take it for spin. Heat is pretty low on it, it's not stealth by any means but it can hold silent running for a surprising time. Apropos of nothing that is".
I gave him a hard look, then hit the execute button on the final payment and walked up the stairs into the lower hallway. The hallway. "It's huge", I said to myself again. Going to take some adjustment to fly this beast.