Bounty Hunting, or War?
19 Nov 2015Brenner Soriah
Stardate 2011-3301, 0047.Commander Brenner Soriah speaking. Prior to setting out to 'clear the shipping lanes', I went through a few checklists on my own end to set up the Scarlet Current for some heavy work. Seeing as I would spend some seven days or so in Kaushpoos, I had no expectance of travelling and had the fuel scoop removed. In it's place, I put in reinforcements for the bulkhead structure. A cautious man is a living man, and I'll make sure that continues to remain true.
The first couple of days were slow. I winged with an occasional comrade and disciple of mine, giving her a bit more field experience with combat and a chance to earn some more credits for a better ship. One day, I'll get her out of her cobra and into something far more illustrious; not to say the cobra is a bad ship, mind you. I remember my days in that beauty... I digress. The hunting was slow at the system's navigational beacon, and the bounties were nothing impressive. I swear, some of the idiots I claimed, taking on names like "Rusty Nayle", "Fearsome Panda", and "Master Pain". It's laughable and insulting at the same time. I call them all money in my pocket.
The work sped up greatly once I took a shift in my approach. I found a wing of miners, a T9 and their eagle escorts, and followed them out into a hazardous resource extraction site. It's supposed to be "dangerous" there due to interference in narrowband communications, which disrupts the security uplink. As if the police rushing to help really would save your life. Unless you're lucky enough to have them close by, even the minute it takes to approach on destination lock can be lethal. I've never cared nor have I needed police assistance. I'm ranting again, sorry. Anyyyway. Tagging along with them, I hid myself upon a suitable asteroid and powered down most of my systems to wait.
It wasn't very long before an Anaconda came up and started scanning cargo. While it likened itself to selecting it's tastes, I sized it up on my kill warrant databases to a healthy sum of 322,857 credits. The monitor read the ship was piloted by "Computer Al". I somehow wonder if it really was a computer flying that ship, because I finally had a real fight. Even with chaff flying through the air, the beam turrets on that gunboat were fairly spot on hitting at me. It took a considerable amount of ammo and all of my dogfighting abilities to take the ship down. With my shields drained, lacking half my chaff and shield cells, and a few blasts into the hull, I felt it safer to return for repairs and rearming. I was impatient to hurry back out to the mining operation, rushing back out to rejoin the miners. The T9 was long gone, but there were still asps and cobras scrounging their way as honest tradesmen. And I felt quite obligated to keep them safe. The remaining bounties didn't put up as much of a fight, but were still just as lucrative. It was the perfect trap for pirates who let down their guard.
Nearing the end of the week, I saw something much more interesting. Following my earlier plans and laying in wait out at the hazardous resource zones, business continued as usual. I started to spy ships with an unusual color flagging. Painted white or yellow, with tiger stripes of black outlined in red, these new pirates opened fire on other pirates of their organization. And not just one or two, but wings of them. It must've been some sort of power struggle, considering the amount of pressure their ring had been put under by the Kaushpoos Pro Alliance government. To me was an advantage I pressed, using the enemies of my enemies as my allies and swiftly striking down bounty targets they opened up on. The ensuing chaos felt less like hunting criminals, and more like a full blown warzone, and it was my playground. I fell into my groove, and didn't realize just how high my receipts had grown until my cannons clicked out of ammo. I took home 15 million in bounties, with another 11 million from the contract. I'll be taking it easy while I get my ship refit again. Maybe take a few backburner courier missions and build some standing with the Federation. It's been a long time since they promoted me to a Petty Officer and let me loose upon the galaxy. I think it's time they saw my work and got back to pushing me up the chain.
Commander Brenner Soriah signing off.