The Ice Mines of Chana, Part 5
15 Nov 2016TheDarkLord
Chana 6, Chana. Faulcon deLacey Anaconda “TDL Agamemnon”.June 3302.
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4
We had over fifty tonnes of Methanol Monohydrate in the hold, so were progressing well against our target of 112. We were running low on limpets though, so we were going to have to leave the ring and restock. Claudia had proven adept at managing the refinery, venting water, liquid oxygen and methane clathrate before it got to cargo. It left me to concentrate on flying, managing the lasers and the limpet controllers. Even so, the yield from the ice ring was pathetically low – definitely sub-1m Cr, not including the Methanol Monohydrate, for which the buyer was sitting to my right.
The last limpet expired, leaving us just shy of half way to completion. Time to head to a station, sell off everything not pre-sold, and restock on limpets. I cycled firegroups to bring the pulse turrets online, then retracted hardpoints, pointing the nose of the big Anaconda towards free space. Power to engines, we were close to breaking mass lock when all hell broke loose.
A Mark 3 Cobra dropped out of supercruise five kilometres away. It was quickly followed by two Eagles. Heading towards us at a slow pace, the Cobra started hailing us:
“The rumours were right. Glad I found you first!”
“You want to live, I want to be rich. Drop your cargo now!”
Pulling Agamemnon’s throttles closed, I targeted the Cobra and waited for the scanner to do its thing.
David Archer…Dangerous…Hrymonada Creative Exchange…Wanted…Wing 1/3
Ping, ping, ping, ping, ping.
The scanner IFF popped data up on my target panel. David Archer, the name rang a bell. A pilot pledged to a minor faction in a nearby system coming up as wanted here wasn’t unusual. But the name rang a bell.
“Scan detected” announced the computer, and then again, and again. All three of the small ships were pinging Agamemnon. I returned the favour.
“I think we have a misunderstanding here. I’ll be on my way,” the pilot of the first Eagle sent. He turned and headed off towards one of the marked extraction sites.
The second Eagle followed, sending “This one looks like more trouble than it’s worth.”
“GET BACK HERE! This is a mission priority target!” screamed Archer from the Cobra. The second Eagle slowed, but the first one was out of sensor range. I rechecked the info panel.
Wing 1/2
“That name rings a bell,” I mused aloud. Claudia didn’t say anything, but when I looked over at her, she had gone white.
“That’s my boss’s name.”
The Cobra fired reverse thrusters 1.4km from my bow, with the remaining Eagle stopped just outside laser range. I keyed the comm, and said “Whose mission?”
“Rumour has it you’re working for Chana Jet Life. They are a competitor of ours. We do not accept their operations in this sector. Go back to your Federal war, you Imperial meddler!”
“That’s him,” Claudia said. “Why is he working against our company?”
“We have a voice ident,” I said over the comm. “You are David Archer of the Chana Jet Life organisation. Please state your business and the reasons for your action.”
I deployed hardpoints and directed power to weapons. I set the turrets to “Fire at Will.”
Archer accelerated the Cobra and fired at us. It seemed that the time for talking was finished. Either we were going to die, or Claudia’s boss was. The former was unlikely, the latter would create problems that I’d have to worry about later.
Two railgun slugs from the Cobra impacted Agamemnon’s shields. The Anaconda’s dorsal turrets oriented to the Cobra and started to return fire. I accelerated too, setting up a jousting pass. As we crossed, I put power to shields, and flipped Flight Assist off. The attitude thrusters somersault-rolled the big ship to face the pitching Cobra. Power to weapons, and firing recommenced. We were still drifting backwards in space, tracking the Cobra as it tried to avoid the fire from the three large pulse turrets.
“Under attack,” chimed the ship’s computer. The second of the two Eagles had turned back towards us and opened fire. This split the mind of the targeting computer running the turrets. It was time to retake control. I flipped the targeting mode back to “Target Only”, and targeted the Eagle. As dozens of multicannon shells impacted against my shields, the turrets fired back. The Eagle – a short range lightweight fighter craft – was not set up for 2v1 combat against a battleship, and soon Archer in his Cobra was on his own in the fight.
Archer continued to blast out slug after slug from his railguns. As I turned Agamemnon toward him and targeted, he fired whole batteries of missiles. My Point Defence got half of them. He was shields-down, and only 45% hull, coming toward me. We closed on each other at a combined speed in excess of six hundred metres per second.
At the last moment, Archer pitched up and boosted. I matched the pitch rate, and was now presented the Cobra’s plan view. Four pips to shields, two to engines, I boosted the thousand-tonne Anaconda towards the little Cobra.
The Anaconda’s nose cone pierced the Cobra’s hull just aft of the cockpit, tearing the ship in two. As the halves of pirate ship scudded down the sides of the Conda, key systems aboard the Cobra failed explosively. Agamemnon was bathed in the flames of the dying ship.
It was brutal.
Aside from the gentle thrum of the thrusters pushing us forward at 200m/s, and the super-high-pitched buzzing of the shields regenerating, there was silence aboard Agamemnon. Confirmation of the kills and bounties had been messaged from the issuing authorities, including Claudia’s employers.
Over recent months, thousands of ships had fallen before me. But in each case their pilots were unknown. They or their employers had wronged me. In most cases there had been escape pods and the knowledge that ship destruction had not meant death of the pilot. Not in this case. The Eagle pilot had ejected and his pod had entered witchspace on its own journey, but Archer had not. The sun had glinted off the Cobra’s canopy at the last second, so there had been no visceral observation of a flailing pilot.
But still, my mind’s eye put him there.
The silence continued for a while longer. After a minute or so, I decided to get on with the job. I retracted hardpoints, set Kooi Hub as my destination, and engaged the Frame Shift Drive. Just as the charge was about to complete, Claudia said:
“So… You just killed my boss.”
Shit. I cancelled the jump to supercruise.
“Yeah.” I could think of literally nothing else to say.
“He was an asshole,” she said. “But how the hell am I going to explain away commissioning a pilot to do some mining, going along for the ride, and then watching as that pilot kills my boss?”
I was about to reply, when:
“… by fucking ramming him, with a fucking ANACONDA!” She half-screamed the last part. She slumped back into her chair.
After a few more seconds, she undid her belts, got up, and went aft.