Another Day, Another Combat Bond
12 May 2024TigerAce121
A quiet day.Or, that's how it was supposed to be. I woke up this morning in my cabin onboard the Endeavor, having refused to take my chances in the starport's rent-a-bunks for the night. AXI runs a tight ship, for sure, but those hotels aren't really much to look at. Copernicus Observatory was, as always, busy and tense. The Thargoids around here may not be violent, but even those who rarely leave the Pleaides Nebula region are well aware of the going-ons in the bubble. There's no saying if or when the bugs here might choose to engage us on a new front.
The schedule for the day was pretty calm. Do some more practice against Basilisk-class interceptors, to get back into the groove of things, and maybe take a trip back to the squadron's HQ to see if anything new was going on. I had the yardbirds put the gauss cannons back onboard my ship, as well as the flak launcher that I bought and almost never use. As they did, I made sure the Ranger was still in her bay, waiting for whenever I'd return to civilization and the war on that front.
About two hours after waking, I was cruising out into Asterope proper, looking for my quarry, and it went well; I added a few more Basilisks to my tally, and returned to Copernicus for rearm and repair. As I went, I recalled a message from one of my acquaintances, who'd been prodding me the past few days to move up to the Medusa-class Thargoids, much to my dismay.
Somewhere along the line, I sighed and decided to go all-in. Once I repaired, I tuned into a signal matching the aforementioned danger daisy class and went after it. The battle, though not overly difficult per se, was certainly not in my favor. Any experienced pilot could have easily told I was rusty, being unable to even exert the first heart while dodging the thargon swarm that seemed intent to piss itself off by flying by me. I quickly departed before I took serious damage, rearmed and repaired, refit my modshard cannons, and went back out.
Those Medusas are tough to find; I traveled to Merope before I found my next one, which went about as well as one might have thought. At this point, my aforementioned acquaintance, along with a few others, had taken it upon themselves to come watch my efforts via my ship's camera. I was certainly grateful for all the input, until someone decided to say 'Oh, you've got this.'
I swear, those words cursed me. Despite doing well up until that point, impressive given that it was only the second Medusa I'd faced alone (and the third I'd ever seen), I dropped the ball, ending up getting caught by the interceptor's lightning attack. By itself, I'd have done fine, but the Thargon drones took advantage of my inability to move to agitate themselves, and as I managed to break free from the interceptor, they fired a kamikaze strike that very nearly ended my life. Bless the Endeavor and the designers of the Challenger, because she may have only been held together by a few screws, duct tape, and some hope, but she held, long enough for me to get back to safety and repair.
However, I was emboldened at this point. It had taken me multiple passes on the Basilisk-class to even take more than one heart, and on my second attempt against the Medusa, I'd managed three. As I went back out, I took a deep breath and focused; it was just another Thargoid, just another heart, just another attack run. All my training, my research, practice, and mentorship I'd received kicked in, and for once, I seemed to finally find my groove. This was nothing like when I'd killed my first Basilisk, messy and barely surviving. It was, for the most part, clean, concise, and quick; maybe not a perfect kill, but the best I'd ever managed. As I write this, I recall at least two of the hearts being amazingly clean, taking only the barest traces of damage before the Thargoid lost it's heart. I managed to duck, weave, and avoid the swarm, and when I did finally mess up and agitate it, I managed to avoid nearly every kamikaze volley it fired.
When I got that kill, when the bond notification popped up, it wasn't a huge sigh of relief, as my Basilisk had been. It was a smile, a small cheer to myself, and some congratulations from the folks watching. Thargoid it may have been, a Medusa no less, but just like every one before it, as long as I stuck to my training, it was simple.
Except, now my plans are all out the window for the remainder of this weekend. Now what?