Away put your weapons, we do mean you harm!
02 Mar 2021CMDR CWolfXUK
Mining, as I have said before, is not normally an activity I relish. Unfortunately, it is sometimes needed in order to acquire some of rarer materials for improving a combat ship.
On this occasion I had removed most of the weapons from my Imperial Cutter and loaded it up with mining lasers, explosives and other rock digging gear. Then, all set for a long day of potential boredom I headed out to a ringed planet I had previously scanned.
Several hours later and my comm system stirred me from a nap. The time had been uneventful, most would be pirates saw the Cutter and decided against an encounter. I flipped the controls.
"Wolf, you there?" It was Elensar, one of my friends from my squadron.
"Yup, just carving rocks. What's up?"
"I got it, the carrier is ready. Just started the countdown, will be somewhere in Mit in the next ten minutes or so." he sounded quite excited, and for good reason.
Fleet Carriers, once the sole joy of megacorporations and system armies, had become available to the general public. Elensar had been working with his various contacts and money making efforts in order to secure one of the gigantic craft. It had the potential to allow us to operate wherever we wanted, without any worry about finding a friendly dock. Now, finally, he had achieved his goal.
"See you there! Looking forward to seeing this," I said as I keyed in the navcomputer, "Just got to work out where you will pop out."
With a course laid in I pushed the throttle forward and was met with the swirling waves of the high wake jump. A few seconds later the multicoloured swirl became a bright star in my viewscreen, the automatic lenses in the cockpit preventing instant blindness. I started the full spectrum scanner and checked all readings.
"I don't see any sign of a jump point yet."
"No, just on the 5 minute countdown. Keep looking." he replied.
Suddenly a new signal appeared and I zoomed the scanner focus onto it.
[Tetragrammaton]
"I see a Tetragrammaton - that you?"
"Yes Wolf, that's me - see if you can beat me there!"
I locked onto the signal and turned my Cutter to head to the jump point. Luckily it was fairly close and I very soon dropped back out into normal space. A flash alongside me denoted a ship coming out of supercruise and I looked to my left. It was not a carrier, it was a fully armed Fer-De-Lance combat ship who greeted me with a stream of laserfire. I realised that my big ship, laden with valuable minerals and not well armed, must have seen to be a perfect score for a pirate.
A siren went off in my cockpit, different to the one denoting my shields getting hammered this one sounded as if denoting something big. It was. The space in front of me suddenly darkened, not just the blackness of space itself but the area actually got darker as the stars behind it disappeared. The black cloud parted as a massive ship tore into being before me. Emerging like a great sail galleon from the mists, reminding me of the holovid remakes of Earth pirates I watched as a child.
The space around the blackness crackled with lightning, some of which seemed to curl around the carrier, lighting the behemoth in a way that struck awe in myself and probable fear in my pursuer.
"This is a no fire zone, please stow your weapons"
I hit boosters and headed straight for Tetragrammaton. Behind me the combat ship carried on firing, lasers slowly draining my defences. I dodged left and right, watching as the stray shots got closer to the huge vessel.
As we got nearer I could make out the massive defence turrets lining the side facing us and the pilot behind me saw them too. I watched the signal vanish from my scanner as the would-be pirate hit supercruise and got away.
I did a flyby, admiring the fleet carrier's sleek exterior. Then heading for a clear landing pad I docked, looking forward to seeing what adventures this would bring.