Two Fighters, One Corvette
02 Mar 2021CMDR CWolfXUK
Bounty hunting is my thing. It has always been my thing and it will likely stay my thing. Recently, however, I was struggling to hit the kind of payouts that I generally expect. I know the reason, a lot of my potential targets are currently prowling a nearby battlezone, having been recruited by nefarious parties to disrupt a rather important galactic event in Sirius. Hunting in and around the Sirius system was providing some profit, just not as much as I would have liked.
My comm buzzed.
"Hi there."
"Wolf, you up for some lucrative work?" it was Elensar and he sounded excited.
Naturally I was interested. It turned out that the job was protecting an installation that was being targeted by a particularly persistent group. Elensar's plan was to fly his corvette to the site and run defence, with myself and another in his ship launched fighters.
I docked at Friend station and made my way over to the crew lounge to await my friend. The music was unusualy subtle for the time of day - the station had a day and night cycle of 30 hours and it was currently around mid morning. Normally the lounge would be full of pilots and support crew, all talking, eating and drinking, either getting ready to go out into the black or returning from a long trip out.
"Where is everyone?" I asked, gesturing to the very few occupants around the room.
"There is a war on in Diaguandri, half of the pilots are out there, seeking glory and credits," the woman at the bar paused, eyeing her reduced suplies on the shelves behind her, "I think the rest are running for as much stock as they can carry - last thing we need is Ray Gateway going under."
I ordered a light snack, some sort of bean meal grown in the inner ring of the station and awaited Elensar.
My comm beeped impatiently.
"Hangar 3 mate."
Thanking the bored looking barkeep I headed out onto the main concourse to one of the internal shuttle tubes to the far hangars. Ignoring the sales reps standing by the double doors leading to the south tube I swiped my wrist wallet over the reader and walked in. The tube was half full of people, all busy on their comm units or engaged in quiet conversation. I felt the dull pull of the inertial compensation field and the shuttle shot up the transport tube. A few seconds later and the doors opened, allowing myself and two others out into the huge hangar bay housing several very large ships. All of these belonged to my friend, the self made billionaire Elensar FXI. Service droids, simple robots with minimal artificial intelligence (in according with the strict non-sentience laws) bustled around cleaning, painting and generally making this small fleet shine. A small buggy pulled up and waited expectantly for me to take a seat, then raced off down the back wall of the hangar past rows and rows of massive engines.
Leaving the cavernous storage hangar we slowed as we entered the launch hanger. Sitting before me I was greeted by the sight of the federal corvette resting on it's enourmous landing gear and looking incredibly ready to destroy anything that challenged it. The view generally took my breath away with my own corvette, yet somehow this gold and black painted one seemed to make even more of an impression.
The buggy moved to the ramp and carried me into the belly of the beast, heading for the pilot lift located directly under the main bridge. I got off, walked up to the lift door and paused for a moment, waiting for the ready light to change. It did, the door slid open and I stepped inside. A few seconds later and they opened again, revealing the large bridge of the corvette. the main pilot seat located at the very front, surrounded around the front and sides by the vast main windows of multi-layered transparisteel. The seat rotated round, revealing the smiling face of Elensar, his light brown hair almost having a golden edge in the bright cockit lighting.
"Blitza will be with us in a mo, take a seat."
I sat in the seat just behind his and to the right, I had just turned it forward when the door opened again. I rotated back to face the new occupant.
"I'm in the mood to shoot things," declared Blitza, taking the other seat on the left, his black helmet reflecting the bridge lights.
"Perfect, let's get going then." Elensar span round in his seat, the lights dimmed appropriately so he could see out into the black.
The massive ship was moved via the even more massive lifting system from the hangar to the flight deck above. The station exit was infront of us, the traffic control cleared us and we took off. The rumbling clank of the landing gear retracting as we headed out the slot. Soon we were clear of the station, the ship computer countdown started.
"Four, three, two, one, engage"
Coming out of supercruise a few minutes later and a great station loomed before us, dwarfing the corvette. It was constructed of various large structures connected with a framework that defied being called a scaffold due to being thicker that our whole starship. Elensar demonstrated this be flying through it with ease. Pulling up we flew over the great cultivation fields, food being grown inside sealed domes with massive arraays of lights positioned ouside to simulate sunlight.
"Any minute now...." he muttered, checking his intel for a third time.
Multiple flashes of light appeared around us, the scanner lit up with multiple contacts. The pirates had arrived.
Flicking the controls I activated the fighter telepresence system and the fighter deployment protocols of the onboard hangars. My helmet deployed from my suit collar and my vision was filled with a new scene; the view from the small GU-97 Imperial ship launched fighter. The bay opened and I was catapulted from the corvette in a tiny ship. The ship launched fighters are basically an engine, power unit, shields and weapons. Even though they look as if they have a cockpit it is really just a sensor suite and a holographic projector - designed by a combat psychologist as apparently seeing the person attacking you adds intimidation.
My first target was a viper class combat ship, a relatively light class of ship it could stillcause quite a bit of damage. Well, it can if it lands a hit. However, my fighter was extremely nimble and caable of outmanouvering even this small attack ship. I got behind it and watched happily as the shields were elted from the viper with my twin beam lasers. As I flew through the fireball of the exploding craft I set my sights on a python that was attacking the corvette. My shots started to affect the much larger ship shields when I got hit hard by something to my right. Fighting to regain control of my spinning vessel I saw a federal assault ship peeling away after ramming me. It started to line up for an attack on my fighter, not good as my shields had been overloaded by the impact. Suddenly a hail of laserfire tore a chunk of hull from the side of the assault ship as Blitza landed some very solid hits. Turning to chase him the pirate failed to notice the path that Blitza was taking. Less than ten seconds later and the assault craft flew directly into the line of fire of Elensar in the corvette and exploded.
I got my control back, my shields regenerated and I headed straight for the next target, this one being another python, this time I did not get the first hit and instead a salvo of missiles ripped into my hull, the fighter was totally destroyed.
Back in the corvette the feed from the fighter faded out and I was back in my seat. I checked the fighter hangar and there was another ship ready for me to take. The bays on the corvette could launch two ships at a time and fabricate a new one if any were destroyed.
Returning to space I was rather pleased to find the same python still flying around. This time I boosted until directly behind it, firing at the engines until the python lost shields. Boosting past my target as it tried to swing around to counter attack I began strafing runs over it's hull until it blew apart.
Between the three of us we decimated the pirate forces and there were a lot of them. I racked up over thirty kills, just ahead of Blitza, although he did hit a lot of the larger ones. Elensar had taken out numerous crfat matching his size, something the fighters would have struggled with.
"OK, time to leave, " Elensar announced, killling the telepresence system and firing up the frame shift drive, "need to report this in at the carrier and then head back out to mop up any that return."
We made three trips to the installation in total, making a very nice profit in bounties between us.
With the installation safe we parted ways, each with our own tasks to do.
This was a fun time for us all, not so much for the pirates and I like to think we made the system that little bit safer for everyone.
One thing is for sure, I will be back in a fighter again soon as that was just too much fun!