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The Hit

Jan 04, 2005 tramshed link
It was another day as usual in the wild expanses of unclaimed space. Some light fighting here and there as I plied the trade of the unwanted, but nothing out of the ordinary and far from a profitable day. Growing weary of missed chances and elusive traders, I decided to take my chances flying into UIT space. Being infamous and universally hated, it was a risk, but one I was willing to take in order to make the day successful.

I flew in from the lightly guarded Azek system, knowing I had the best chances of slipping in undetected and avoiding the zealot droids known as Aerna Seekers. Upon entering Dau there was a lone trader who, while unprepared, was only establishing national ties and securing trade agreements and as such was in a light fast ship in order to more freely communicate with his contacts.

Giving up the chase and thankful he didn't raise the alarm, I set course for Verasi where I had made a deal with the system monitors to quietly ignore my presence. Shortly after exiting the wormhole a lone, lightly armed, UIT pilot entered the sector and hailed me with a proposition.

They were having trouble with a pair of missleboat poachers in Bractus and were willing to pay me 250,000 credits to take them out of the picture. Knowing this was today's one big chance and that doing it would mean I could retire for the day at Corvus Prime and relax for a change, I couldn't turn it down. Not wanting the lone pilot to know how badly my day had been and cutting back the price, I replied somewhat loftily asking for more details. The pilot responded that they were heavily armed, with some of the most advanced and feared missle weaponry in existance, Swarms.

"Oh Great, Swarms" I thought as I eyed my tiny Centurion. A great ship for chasing people down being as its pretty much just a life support pod strapped to an engine with a gun welded to the front, it was not going to cut it against a pair of heavy gunners. Still, I couldn't refuse and accepted The Hit.

Knowing I could avoid the dreaded Swarms if I illegally ramped up the power to my ship control implants, but doing so wouldnt allow me to target them efficently without cooking the little bit of organic material left in my brain. I programmed my comms system and established a link with a fellow outcast and often partner in the shady annals of the Corvus domain. I called this pilot in particular from past experiences with his ability to pilot medium sized support ships like fighters.

He expressed some interest so I beamed him over all the information the lone pilot had gave me. Musing over it a minute he replied with a reasonable plan that, if executed properly, would guarentee payday. There was just one issue with the plan, there being two of them, we were still pretty heavily outgunned, and decided to call in a third pilot. After arranging things with him we all set course for the Odia side of the Odia-Bractus wormhole to regroup and flesh out the plan.

The flight to Odia was rather long due to the fact I had to avoid Bractus in order to not tip off the potential targets I was in the area, and gave me time to adjust my cybernetics some in order to pull the most out of my piloting unit, I was going to need it. Finally reaching the destination and finding the other two pilots already there, and getting rather impatient, we worked out the plan.

We had decided I would fly in, and using my freshly hacked piloting implant and extremely agile ship, would engage and distract the two missle boats for a short period of time. The other two pilots had outfitted themselves with Warthogs loaded up with a Swarm launcher and Gauss on each, making for some truly heavy firepower when in range. My job was to hold the targets attention long enough for the other two to fly in and get into position, simple enough on the outside, but a pair of Ragnaroks is not something to be trifled with lightly.

Ramping power to the engine in order to build up that needed critical power level in order to bend the fabric of space and time, I completly shut down my targeting systems and diverted as much power as I safely could to my piloting implant. I left the disconcerting place thats in between two points in reality and immediatly saw both targets, both in range. They were obviously waiting for unprepared pilots to come in being so close to the wormhole, and immediatly started moving toward me.

Now or never I thought, and slammed the acceleration to max while preparing the innovation known jokingly as "turbo" that allows you to ramp the engines way over thier acceptable power limits at the sacrifice that if you change direction while engaged, you ship is torn to pieces. I roasted right past them a few times trying to get them spun around a bit and not looking at the hole. Seeing they were in front of me and I could see the hole, I fired off the signal to my partners letting them know it was go time.

Just as I saw the reassuring sight of two forming wormhole exit points, the targets unleased thier most feared weapons. Knowing that my backup was too far away for me to simply ignore these dreaded things and try to outmanuever them at close range, I started the program I had devised to allow me some degree of mobility while using the turbo. Fencing back and forth through them I caught the edge of one explosion, doing some reasonable damage to my ship, but nothing too dangerous. Finally, I hear the reassuring beep that said my reinforcements had just fired swarms of thier own and were closing into gauss range. Backing off, I watch as the two Ragnaroks turn to face this new threat, having just enough time to see the barrage of swarms make direct contact with thier unmanueverable ships, ripping thier hull to pieces and giving them a lovely taste of space.

Glad I had survived and all of us relieved we had pulled it off without a problem, we contacted the lone pilot and arranged to meet in Edras. We stopped long enough to scoop up the remnants of thier comms system that has thier unique identifier code, and engaged drives to Edras. Turning over the proof of the contracts completement, we split up the payment and set course to Corvus Prime. It would be a fine night, with the rare occurence of some luxury and indulgence in the otherwise bleak expanses of the unclaimed systems.
Jan 04, 2005 softy2 link
Very nice :).

Now to bed!
Jan 04, 2005 ananzi link
dude did that really happen? cool
Jan 04, 2005 tramshed link
Based off of true events
Jan 04, 2005 Borb II link
Nicely written.
Jan 04, 2005 Shapenaji link
And let me add, such contracts are freely available from the corsairs: contact one of our local representatives for more info.
Jan 04, 2005 Shapenaji link
Tram kicks ass dont he?
Jan 04, 2005 RelayeR link
You've got some talent, tram! Nicely told. :-)
Jan 05, 2005 tramshed link
thanks for all the feedback