Not Paid Enough For This...
11 Jan 2017The Cynical Chef
It's been a long time since my last log update. I've since become the proud owner of an Anaconda. The Ribbon of Black. The Anaconda was for the longest time one of the biggest ships the Pilot's Federation had on offer. She's... interesting. The Anaconda's used to be marketed as freighters with good survivability, but now they're considered heavy multipurpose vessels. Not combat vessels. I mean you can use them as combat vessels, Ribbon of Black has taken a few heads, but she's slow, and her hull is fairly weak. Unless you spend close to half a billion souping her up, she's just not a combat ship. And... yeah, i haven't done that. So far she's been used for trading and mining, i leave combat to my Python.And today...
Well i suppose i shouldn't be surprised. I grew up in this area. Riedquat was always TECHNICALLY Federation space, and TECHNICALLY supposed to be patrolled by Federation Naval Services. Wars break out all the time around here, so i took a break from asteroid mining to give Li'l Lappy some love and let her take some lives. Bringing down pirates taking advantage of security being spread thin or defectors is good money if you can live to spend it.
But i'm not totally ruthless. i see a distress signal, i'll at least take a peak. And be sure to make sure to cull anyone who tries to take advantage of that. But... this? Even if i do business with Edmund Mahon and want to see Riedquat join the Alliance, i still work with the Federal navy. When one of their ships sent out a mayday while i was nearby, i responded. A Battle Cruiser being sabotaged needed covering fire from pirates. The ship was registered as the Formidable, and the pirates... well, they no longer matter, they couldn't keep up with a Python.
That's when things got weird. The pirates were really fighting to try and hold down this Battle Cruiser. Why? Even if they found a way to block local system authority vessel responses, they had to know by my arrival distress calls were going out, and that FNS reinforcements wouldn't be too far out. And... yeah, they weren't too far out. Another Farragut Battle Cruiser, with Viper, Eagle, and F63 escorts, dropped in. And... fired on the Formidable. I scanned the new arrival, and was puzzled. The FNS Formidable was firing on the Formidable. A detailed scan of the Formidable revealed it had been taken over by pirates.
I must have been out of my skull to stick around by that point. Even with the FNS Formidable being there, Capital Ships are no joke. But hey, i had ammo to spare, the escorts of the pirate Formidable were already dead, and the pirate Formidable was focusing on the FNS Formidable...
So, i open fire. I knew already how to bring down Capital Ships. They're too well held together with too many redundant systems to just shoot down like any other ship, but if you do enough module damage all non-essential systems shut down and the ship at that point can either stay and risk annihilation or pull out. The Pirate Formidable lost power to it's weapons after i flanked it and destroyed it's primary generator, maybe the pirates didn't have a proper crew and didn't know how to divert power, and from there it was just flying around, destroying the heat vanes, until it suffered a heat cascade and jumped out.
Helping disable a rogue Capital Ship? That must have been worth something, right? Capital Ships are strong enough to bring down entire convoys, crush outposts, even cause significant damage to major starports.
150,000 credits.
For routing an extremely dangerous ship that was active in a populated system. I got paid less than what Riedquat Corporation paid me for a rush order of methanol monohydrate. These capital class ships cost billions to manufacture, can cause trillions in damage. I got paid less than a mining job or the assassination job i took on.
And the Federal Navy wonders why i'm sticking with the Pilot's Federation. 150,000?! The Federal Gunship i shot down protecting my shipments gave me more!
Ah screw it. I'm close to home, La Seour Du Dan Ham is as close to going back to Waterloo as i can get these days, might as well put my feet up. That's the nice thing about getting up to a Python or an Anaconda. You don't need to check into hotels for pilots, your ship has nice enough living quarters.