Later that day (after jumping to the Terra system and
transferring two new sparkly clean ships)
The next thing I know I’m floating in space with my suit
avionics dampened to local signals only in the midst of a mangled missile
launcher and some old TR thrusters parts.
I caught a glimpse of the Cutlass that gotten me here making haste
towards outer system. Mitch’s Aurora is
nowhere in sight.
Moving to the platform was pretty easy. I didn’t even have to think about it
much. Hand over hand up the conduit and
a quick walk across one of the energy confinement tubes that are routed
underside of the platform. A quick look
at my chronometer showed 23 minutes since drop off. Crap. At the edge of the
platform I saw the Stealth Hornets lined up neatly in a row. The closest one was less than 10 meters away.
I don’t remember moving from the edge of the platform to the
ladder of the ship but suddenly I was in the Stealth ship attaching the crypto
set into the avionics deck and firing up the systems. A quick look around and a long few seconds
for my HUD to sync up with the ships avionics and the canopy closed. No warm up just throttle to max and drive
away was the plan. The ships systems
seemed to be reluctant to comply with this and I had a scary moment that the
engine systems were locking me out. The
ships computer finally agreed that this was an emergency takeoff and released
the lockout but I only had minimal power but I was off the platform. A quick look at my Glass gave me relative
bearing to my first waypoint.
24 minutes since drop off
Systems check: power levels approaching the low side of
optimum, EM signature minimal, tracking systems to passive, weapons
offline. The munitions display seemed to
be lagging the other systems emergency start up procedures. I tapped it and the
blinking stopped.
The Stealth ship was crisp under my control. Passive radar indicated several Hornets had
been launched in answer to the obvious theft of the Stealth ship. I started evasive maneuvers as soon as I saw
the first pulse sliced space off to my left.
The plan was to get to the way point as quickly as possible and trust
that my colleagues would be lurking in the shadows ready to ambush the pursuing
ships. That would have been great except
I was flying at reduced power with barely a 2 minute head start on the Marines
in the Hornets. Plan ‘B’ was to make
best speed to the ancient mining colony in the belt, quite a ways off from the
offloading platform but doable. Plan ‘C’
was, well, I hoped we didn’t have to go there.
Something about ejecting seconds before slamming the ship into a large
space rock didn’t seem like a good choice.
Even in the worst of times.
Ok scratch the way point defined in Plan ‘A’, Plan ‘B’ it
is. Luckily the engine had finally
attained max power and I shoved the throttle full forward altering shields to
full rear and a course correction to make the best speed to the belt. Passive still showed 3 targets closing
fast. This was emphasized by bolts of
plasma and laser all around with thunks and splatter sounding impacts coming
from the shields. I remember muttering
to myself not to make it easy for them as I ran through evasive moves designed
to cause the pursuit craft to split up.
One of the UEE Hornets was trying to vector in on me by
flying through one of the many structures in near space. I estimated where he would reappear and
turned toward the structure and attempted to arm the guns. The munitions display was still acting up but
I was able to get the two wing guns online after a few intense seconds of
dodging plasma and poking the screen repeatedly. As soon as the guns were active I turned in
and started firing at the structure damaging the traffic pass through. The explosion that occurred shortly after I
had started firing was a lot bigger than I expected. This was primarily due to the Marine jigging
to avoid the twisted metal and slamming his Hornet into a larger very dense
portion of the pass through.
One Hornet down two to go with a quite large expanse of
space between me and the ancient mining colony.
I set the engines to take me to 0.2 and allocated remaining power to
rear shields. The Marines were closing on me as the first pulses from the
engine pressed me back into the seat.
After I attained 0.2 I began to study data describing the belt in all
its gory detail. I located the refueling
platform and set course towards it as an intermediate destination.
Far off vision
Then I was somewhere else flying across the void mesmerized
by the intense beauty of the nebula light-years away from me but directly
centered in my field of view. The nebula
I was looking at would be the birthing place of stars and planets where in
millions if not billions of years from now those iridescent clouds would calm
and merge to cultivate life.
Shouts, thumps, heavy boots running
Then there was a commotion in the corridor outside my bunk
that made me sit up and yawn.
Ships chronometer indicated several hours had passed. I must have dosed off, laying there blinking
my eyes I reflected on the last exchange with Nadine and just how distraught I
felt having to deal with her demeaning crap.
Not to mention the loss of a true friend that was caught up in one of her
schemes. And the bitch was making me out
to be the bad guy. Are the creds worth
this amount of anguish? I slammed my
head back down into the pillow, grabbing the blanket I flung it onto the
floor. I wanted to scream badly but
worse than that I wanted to go back redo the mission. That wasn’t going to happen though. I could see this whole thing turning out to
be a pointless exercise in futility costing lives and equipment for the
financial gain of a greedy fleet owner.
Fucking bitch.
_-o-_
Disclaimer:
I do not work for nor represent Star Citizen, Roberts Space
Industries, Cloud Imperium Games or any other Star Citizen related entity in
any form or fashion with the possible exception that I am a Backer and have a
huge passion for this game already.
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