On Your Marks... Get Set... Fire!
22 Dec 2018WolfLDrakarn
Instead of returning to the resource sites of hazardous occupation as usual, I decided to relieve myself from the cluttered echoes of The Bubble, taking a long-awaited trip some thousand light years away to a small nebula where I spent most of my time. There, I discovered countless astronomical anomalies, saw hundreds if not thousands of brilliantly beaming stars, felt the rocky ground of high gravity planet's under my wheels and soared through the black with no aim, no goal, no heading, no ambition. Exploration relieved that duty to kill as a bounty hunter, and replaced it with the void of tranquility… until coming too close to a ball of fire and momentarily becoming a space-oven. Several months I spent in the black void of uncharted space, and when I returned again to the inhabited sector of our galaxy, I was greeted by an odd request from an old friend in the Empire - to help hunt down and kill a wanted Alliance CMDR... catch was; my friends heard the target was competing in a race that we had no information about, and the only way to get any was to qualify through an earlier race, meaning we could only find him by placing in the top three, as to locate the race our target would be flying in. My friend needed my help as these races were restricted to Imperial Eagles, and having an A-rated, modified Imp Eagle myself, I stood a better chance of placing in the top three, though this didn't stop him from joining in with his unmodified ship. Stripped down for the most speed I could gain and with level five modifications to everything, I lined myself up on the starting line come the day of the race.The track lead us through a winding canyon on a three g planet. Weaponry was banned. I managed to ultimately achieve second place thanks to my modified engine and thrusters, with my friend coming sixth. I was then given the coordinates and time for the second race - where our wanted target would apparently be located. When we arrived, I scanned the crowd, confirming our target's presence. All the racers that day were of course shieldless and without weapons... except for my friend and I who kept our cannons stowed, lining up for the race as if nothing unordinary were to happen. When the signals bellowed and the engines roared into blazing life, we managed to tail the target closely, waiting for the right time to deploy our hardpoints and open fire. When a narrow bend in the valley we were racing in came along, we knew it was time! With no way to defend himself and far enough away from any external eyes watching the race, we took the mark. We open fired, letting the barrels spin into the surprising hails of gunfire and, as quickly as the race started, had our target's hull become torn open, crashing into the canyon walls before burning its way to the rocks below. We turned nose and boosted for the open sky, the bounty claim flooding our ship's terminal as the FSD kicked into life.