The lessons continue
12 Jul 2017Pauly_C
Space, space can teach you many lessons. Yet again last night I found myself on the receiving end of a harsh one.It was late, I’d been flying Bounty Hunting runs in HIP 17692 RES for probably too long, but I was in the zone, criminals were falling to my beam lasers and multi-cannons left and right. On docking at Blackmount to cash in and rest up I thought “I’ll just take a quick look at the mission board” and there it was a Federal Navy Contract. I’d been waiting for one of these for days; I was yet to rank up with anyone and was keen to get climbing the ladder that leads to the big ships. On inspection it was a data delivery to The Indra, “that’s two quick jumps” I thought “and there’s a high RES right next door owned by Pleiades Resource Enterprise, I can bag some more bounties while I'm there”.
I take off; jump quickly and cleanly to Merope, supercruise in, dock, cash in the contract. I'm now a Federation Recruit! Happy days I'm on my way.
So to the High RES I go, I drop in and immediately there is a target in front of me, I pop my guns, put all pips to systems and weapons and come about to line up my prey. I lock on, as soon as they come up wanted I open up on them. Mistake, it’s a federal gunship and the pilot is deadly, ok it’s going to be a fight, and then I notice his wingman, another gunship!! Within seconds my shields are down and I'm taking huge amounts of damage, missiles are incoming from every direction, I've no chance.
Its run away time.
I push all power to engines, hit boost and aim for clear space, before I get anywhere a missile strike takes out my thrusters and I go into a wild uncontrollable spin. “Well that’s it, I'm dead” I think to myself as I await the inevitable. I notice that my wild spin is carrying a lot of forward momentum so think “Why not” and put silent running on, after all I'm in an asteroid field in a dead spin with 5% hull integrity, it’s worth a shot.
As I wait for the killing blow to land I notice I'm waiting a long time, it looks like they've disengaged, whether they lost me in the field or took pity on me I will never know. I take the opportunity fate has handed me and fire up my AFMU to repair my thrusters and my shield. As soon as the repair bots get to work I come out of the spin as thrusters shut down. I spend a tense 5 minutes in silent running, only switching off at 85% heat to let it dissipate then switching it back on. The repair bots do their job, I bring everything back online and flee back to Blackmount for repairs and to give myself a good talking too.
Lesson learned #1 look before you engage.
Lesson learned #2 AFMU can save you, if you haven’t got one, get one.
o7