Look Ma, no hands
29 May 2022EasyFraggle
Just the other day, I found myself hopping from outpost to outpost, scouring the galaxy for pre-modified flight suits and other elite personal gear. As usual, I had my fingers crossed for a visit to a Pioneer Supplies store that actually lived up to its slogan, where "the best stock" wasn't just marketing fluff, and "if I don't have it, it's not worth buying" rang true.While browsing the station's mission board, I noticed something peculiar: every minor faction in the system had a beef with a small pirate group in a neighboring system. The bounty and material rewards were lucrative enough to pique my interest, so I quickly maxed out my mission quota.
The plan was straightforward: switch to my T10, a beast outfitted with massive shields and turreted long-range lasers, and bring along my trusty ship-launched fighter pilot, Kaitlynn Simmons. The jump to the target system was uneventful; witchspace dazzled as always, and soon we found ourselves orbiting a local mining resource site nestled within a planet's rings. T7s and Keelbacks hummed with laser mining activity, while system police patrolled the area in Anacondas and smaller ships. It seemed an unlikely spot for any pirate with half a brain to cause trouble.
Kaitlynn and I were in the middle of a lively debate, weighing the pros and cons of the Gu-97 versus the F63 Condor. She teased me about my old-school flying style and that one time I lost my lunch after pulling g-forces in her beloved Gu-97. It was all in good fun until, out of nowhere, some lowlife scanned my ship and spotted the 8 tons of gold I'd forgotten about in my solitary cargo rack. They radioed in, demanding I jettison half the cargo or they'd "melt my bulkheads." The pirate gave me a mere 15 seconds to comply, but I had no intention of being strong-armed into surrendering my cargo.
Luckily, Kaitlynn had already launched in the fighter, and my weapons were deployed with shields fully charged. We swiftly dispatched the would-be pirate, marking one down for the missions I had picked up. That night, pirate after pirate scanned my ship, demanding a share of the cargo. Kaitlynn was brilliant, and with the aid of my turreted lasers, I barely had to touch the flight controls. We even had some assistance from the system police, and together, we kept the area secure. Between pirate waves, the T10's shields had time to regenerate, and Kaitlynn only lost three fighters over the course of eight hours. We faced everything from novice pirates in Eagles to full wings of Anacondas, obliterating over a thousand ships in total.
The next day, I returned to the outpost to cash in on the mission stack. Payment went off without a hitch, and the mission givers were astonished that Kaitlynn and I had completed the entire batch in just one day. We raked in about 500 million credits and a good haul of materials. Kaitlynn took her customary 10% cut and headed off to Pioneer Supplies for a well-deserved shopping spree. We later celebrated our success at the bar. While I was already eyeing the next set of missions, I kept it to myself until the following morning. Kaitlynn had done most of the heavy lifting, and she deserved a full night's rest without the pressure of the next mission looming over her.