An Explorer's War Story
24 May 2018Scubadog
Well, in manner of speaking. Not exactly a war. It was a battle.So, anyone who knows me knows I'm an explorer by trade. My home is at Colonia Dream and, honestly, I love it out there. But a couple of months back I decided to make the trip back to the core systems to do some engineering and pick myself up a Chieftain. After engineering my Anaconda and Chieftain, I found myself needing to replenish the old bank account, so I began working a lot of missions of various types. On the latest mission, I came close to discovering it's none too smart to look mostly at the $$ and not the nature of the mission.
The mission was for a Federation faction from Jameson Memorial. I have Allied status with them, so this was a top tier mission. They had a nasty little terrorist to erase, and it didn't require a wing to work, so I thought this should be a challenge but not an insurmountable one for my engineered Chieftain. Oh, silly me. I went to the system dictated and fired up my scanner. Shiny! New info popped up on the target's whereabouts. I swung The Ceti Rena around and headed to the planet the latest intel showed he should be hanging around. Except this was different. He wasn't. I discovered that I needed to drop down TO the planet and hack a data terminal to get additional intel. Okay, I've scanned terminals before. Upon landing near the site, I discovered this place was heavily guarded. Four massive cannons, each surrounded by at least three smaller lasers, and what did I find circling above? A Corvette and two Vipers. A quick scan showed they were all official federation navy ships! What the actual? Why would a Federation faction send out a mission against Federation assets? Or, more importantly, why would Fed navy be protecting a terrorist?
Okay, I put that confusing mess out of my mind and set to figure out exactly how I was going to do this. My first try did not go so brilliantly. Scanners picked up the terminal, I locked in the target and I attempted a full-on straight run from the west. I crossed into the "Thou Shalt Not" boundary and quickly got the attention of the canons. Initially, the birds overhead didn't seem to care. I was, after all, only in an SRV. Turns out, they definitely didn't need to worry because, before I knew it, I found myself waking up aboard my orbiting Chieftain. Well, back to the nearest port to get me a new SRV.
Attempt number two required me to think about this a little more thoroughly. I noticed a sizable crater just to the southeast of the base and decided I could set down the Rena there and below, literally, below their radar. Safely nestled below the crater's edge, I hopped in my SRV and made the longish trek up the wall to the near edge of the base. I locked in the comm terminal. I took a deep breath and hit full throttle. One thing I hadn't taken into account was that this was a low gravity planet with ice. Virtually no traction. At full tilt, it didn't take much of an oversteer or a big rock to send my SRV in an out-of-control spin, taking me precious seconds to recover from. I finally got within range of the comm terminal and smashed the scanner button (as if increased pressure would make the thing work faster). Finally I was rewarded with the sound that the scan was finished and I'd acquired the info I needed. A mostly-uncontrolled 180 and I was screaming back toward my ship. By this time I'm getting hammered by canons AND the birds overhead. One of the most difficult things to do is maintain a true heading on a skidding SRV under fire while simultaneously trying to command the synthesizers to repair the expanding damage to my SRV hull. After FOUR shots at repairing my battered hull, I sailed over the crest of the crater to find my ship...gone.
In all the chaos I had not noticed my ship decided I was too far away and had popped back up into orbit. Now I had to keep moving down into the crater (escaping at least the canons, but still taking damage from the pursuing ships), repair my hull AND try to recall my ship. Seconds (that seemed like minutes) later, the Rena settles down near my chaotic dance with death, beckoning me to re-board. I returned to the ship, which was now also taking on damage, and was met with two massive boulders! Are you KIDDING me? I'm mere centimeters away from being able to board and I can't GET there because my stupid autopilot decided to park on top of boulders? After wasting 45 seconds trying to get under the ship from other directions (a BIG failing of the Chieftain is there's one way in or out from the SRV bay) I dismissed the ship.
While the Rena went into orbit to recycle so I could attempt another recall, I went back into the dance with the attacking Fed navy ships. another FIVE repairs of my hull, the Rena landed in a much better spot in the crater, and I quickly lined up the SRV, got aboard and hightailed it to the nearest port. Oh, but this was not the end of my story. After repairing ship damage was taken while I tried twice to board, I examined the information I hacked from the base's comm terminal. My little terrorist was in another system, it turned out. One jump later, I was now scanning the system to find him. And find him, I did.
Act Three of our little play started out traditionally enough. Circled the planet for several minutes until scanners finally picked up my target, who was occupied attacking a Federation navy Gunship with his Corvette. Cool, I thought, this will end up being two against one. Again, silly me. My first wrong assumption was that the Fed Gunship driver knew what he was doing (which, compared to ME in combat situations, should be better). My second wrong assumption was that this Corvette driver was relying more on the "scare factor" of his Corvette and adequate combat skills than anything else. Terrorists are not known for generally being great pilots, just crafty SOBs at striking fear at soft targets. No, sir. This guy had clearly enhanced his ship. Even with my engineered pulse lasers and multi-canons, I found myself in a punch-for-punch slugfest. This was a plain old fist fight in a very tight dance. And I was stupidly doing this against a ship engineered better than mine, and me fancying myself to be a combat pilot. My advantages were tenacity and maneuverability.
As the bitch-slapping continued for fifteen minutes--the Fed navy ship had long since abandoned the fight and jumped out, the coward--my shields fell and rose many times and my hull was down to 58% and I hadn't even stripped away the second layer of this bastard's shields. I tried switching focus to different critical subsystems, hoping that a more specific attack would break through shields faster. By the time I started poking at his power distribution module my hull was down to 30% and I was down to my final Shield Cell Bank. My Chaff was spent. Our dance got tighter and tighter, and I felt like Rocky and Clubber Lang, just trading punches. And then...my stomach got sour. CRRRACK Little fissures magically appeared everywhere I looked and my canopy dissolved before my eyes. Helmet ON, man!
I had a crucial decision to make at this point. Is $2.5mil credits worth this? I'd already been through a lot to get to this point. Hierarchy of needs. I can breath still, my hull is still at 30%, but my enemy's shields are down to 1 layer. What the hell, why not? Watching my emergency air supply closely, I worked feverishly to NOT be in front of the Corvette. I quickly checked my MC ammo, which I still had plenty of AND I could synth more if necessary (though it was cost time that he could rebuild his shields). I kept hammering him from behind and, finally, his shields gave way. Now my engineered MCs could really go to work. I had used my last SCB, so I had to continually manage power distribution to get shields on line and still pound this guy. Now I'm down to 20% hull, one multi-canon is completely down. But with his shields down, I'm watching his beam lasers go buh-bye and his hull is dropping. 70%. 50%. 25%. By the time his hull went to zero mine was down to 17%. I had, in the midst of all this, had to replenish my O2 twice.
Although he had some juice cargo, my hatch was dead, along with most of my ship, and I now had to concentrate on limping to the nearest port to fix my ship. I was running low on Iron materials, so I wouldn't get too many more refills on my O2 supply. Making the sloppiest landing on an outpost ever, I quickly contacted starbase services....wouldn't you just know it? I can refuel and I can re-arm, but they had no repair facilities! No choice, now. I topped off my O2 supply, took off and jumped back to Shinrarta Dezhra, back to Jameson Memorial. As I finally keyed in my docking request, I was down to 3 minutes left of air, no resupply left. I limped through the force fields of Jameson, greeted with "Atmosphere Restored". I sat on the pad, listening to my systems winding down and the seemingly distant "docking clamps engaged, enjoy your stay, commander" coming over the comms from the station controllers. Under my gloves--shaking visibly at this point--I knew my knuckles were the whitest they've ever been. That was close.