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Space Captain Starke and the Slaver Fleet of Amarr

Published on 24. Oct, 2009 ... written by Shae Tiann.

The wrecked battleship, though wing-clipped, was anything but dead: over the years, the escaped slaves had worked to restore and adapt its systems to meet their needs, and the soft rumble of pumps and generators had for decades been a comfort.

Scall was particularly proud of her work on the sensor and communications arrays. After taking the Republic University’s distance-learning courses on starship electronics and mechanics, she’d dedicated her hours to bringing the systems back up to near-perfect functionality. It was her pet project, and her husband had long bemoaned that she spent more time in the ship than she did at home.

There were still a few bugs to work out, though, and Scall had decided to open up one of the consoles and find out why it wasn’t lighting properly.

Something pinged unpleasantly as she pulled a wire free of its contact.

‘Crap.’ She plugged it back in and the ping sounded again, then again. She started sorting through the mass of fibreoptic spaghetti, then realised the sound wasn’t related to her work. The noise was becoming repetitive, and urgent, and the stocky woman spun to see several sensors lit up at once, points of amethyst, amber and ruby flickering across the boards.

‘Oh no… no, no, no…’ Hurriedly, Scall woke up the display they’d jury-rigged into the capsule trunk-leads in order to see the command overview. Multiple pilot signatures filled the system channels; a bit of fiddling with the spliced-in controls revealed the fleet transponder codes.

Heart in her throat, the specialist sprinted for the comms chamber above, sandaled feet pounding the metal steps, and slapped her hand on the alarm.

************************************

Coiled in the guts of the metal beast, wires excised from other parts of the ship and grafted in to modify the functions of other parts stirred with current for the first time in generations. Even as the improvised alert system blared a warning across the rooftops of the colony, the focussed-band FTL transmitter fired off a pre-set message.

The Republic communications relays were not the only ones to receive it.

************************************

TIIA EDGRIET stalks through station halls filled with men and women in uniforms hurrying this way and that; the legend in the lower-right corner reads Dal I: Tribal Liberation Force Assembly Plant. The commander looks tense and anxious, a datapad gripped in one hand as her secretary struggles to keep up with her. Rounding a bend in the hall, she spies SPACE CAPTAIN STARKE and ALISTAIR AVION and changes direction to meet them.

EDGRIET:
Starke, where the Hel have you been?

STARKE and AVION exchange a look.

STARKE:
The clone bay, updating.

The Brutor captain presses back against the wall to let a group of pilots hurry past.

STARKE:
What’ve we got?

EDGRIET tosses the datapad at him over her shoulder as she leads them toward the lift to the capsuleer hangars.

EDGRIET:
Emergency signal, not encoded or anything. Straight from Ubtes, contains a snapshot of what was on the scanner when they pushed the button.

The smaller woman halts and turns suddenly, nearly causing STARKE and AVION to pile into her. She stares up at STARKE with the intensity of a solar flare.

EDGRIET:
Your staged informant scenes aside, there’s no more time to waste. Are your pilots ready, Captain?

SPACE CAPTAIN STARKE studies her for a moment, then nods.

STARKE:
We’re at your command.

The Sebiestor commander studies him a moment longer, then nods sharply.

EDGRIET:
To your ships, then, gentlemen.

ALISTAIR AVION watches EDGRIET leave, then cranes his neck up and around to eye his commander.

AVION:
Try not to do anything stupid in order to impress her, will you?

STARKE is frowning at the datapad.

STARKE: (muttering distractedly)
I can hold it together, don’t worry about me.

He hands the ‘pad over to his Amarrian second in command.

STARKE:
We’re not going to make it before their fleet’s in position.

************************************

Watching sunlight glimmer off the cloud structures far below, the Reclamation fleet’s scout almost missed the appearance of a new signature on her local grid. She frowned as it winked out before identification could be made. Was that…? ‘Command, scout. We may have company, What’s your ETA? …Five minutes, understood.’

Small points of gold began to appear at the edge of the atmosphere fifty kilometres away: support ships followed by a group of five battleships, gleaming in the refracted light. The signal was given, and the shimmering whirlpool of a cynosural field lit up, heralding the arrival of the fleet’s primary component, an Archon-class carrier filled with dropships to collect the Matari settlers.

The beacon collapsed suddenly, and comms descended into a mass of confusion as the pilot of the generator frigate lost both his ship and his life in rapid succession. The Retribution-class assault frigate which had destroyed the generator under the nose of its own fleet was quickly torn apart as the Amarrian forces obtained targeting locks, but the space around them was beginning to flood with unaffiliated ships. Alarms blared as the Reclamation fleet struggled to restore order and reorient towards the unexpected threat. Lasers began to cross the sky, searing and crackling in the high-level atmosphere.

The Ammatar had arrived, and they were not happy.

************************************

‘Everyone form up on the gate. Libbies, you with us?’

”Libbies’. Starke, you cheeky bastard…’

‘With us or not, Tiia?’ Sylar grinned to himself, feeling his assault frigate responding easily to his commands. Alistair has his recording equipment running at peak performance; this fight might easily be more desperate than any they’d ever been in before, but that was all the more reason to get every moment into the show. A Reclaiming fleet was not the sort of thing most Minmatar would ever see, let alone the rest of the cluster. People needed to know this was still happening.

‘You know better than to ask that.’ Tiia’s Tempest and the rest of her squadrons formed the bulk of the fleet; the Novas in their smaller frigates and cruisers appeared fewer in comparison, though their numbers were about even.

Sylar chuckled. ‘We all need to loosen up here. Riva, whatcha got in there?’

‘Ubtes is hopping, sir. Looks like there’s a fight going on.’

A fight? ‘Who’s involved?’

‘Lemme actually get out of warp, huh? …OHH! Cap’, we’re missing the fun. Looks like the local Ammatar have decided to let the Amarr fleet know they’re no longer welcome out here.’

Tiia’s voice cut through the comms. ‘Nice to know they’re serious about making their peace with the Republic.’

Mind racing, Sylar asked, ‘Riv, what kind of opposition are we looking at?’

‘There’s wrecks all over the place. Looks like an Amarr carrier and standard support fleet versus a varied Ammatar fleet. No cynos up, looks like their generator frig got popped. Field looks balanced, the carrier is holding off drop pattern.’

‘That’s because it’ll be vulnerable to attack with the drops down. Locate the Ammatar commander, I want a word with him before we get involved.’

************************************

‘Scall, let’s go! Everyone else is out, what are you still doing in here?’ Aoli tugged at the communications specialist’s shoulder. The older woman flapped her hand impatiently.

‘You go. Someone needs to listen in. We need to know what’s happening.’

‘And if the slaver ships land?’

Scall held up the small laser pistol she’d liberated from the Apocalypse’s armoury; it was an antique, but it worked still. ‘They won’t take me alive.’

Aoli slapped the back of Scall’s head. ‘You be careful, dammit.’ Scall was right, but the younger woman still worried as she hurried from the battleship wreck towards the treeline and the hills to the south. When the ship had first landed, the escaped slaves had hidden among the woods, fearing the ship would be found by rescue parties. None had come, however, and the hidden caves had lain abandoned until now. Again, they would shelter the colonists… hopefully.

She paused at the edge of the village, glancing up at the sky above. Bright flashes had been seen; they could only hope it was Captain Starke holding the Amarrian fleet off.

************************************

Realspace coalesced around the Matari fleet as they dropped out of warp, vivid bursts of missile impacts and laser-fire filling their overviews.

‘Good timing, Captain,’ the Ammatar commander, Mirithak Hatthro, said. The Nefantar tribesman’s deep voice threatened to overwhelm the communications link, resonating with a richness better-suited to a holo-performer than a thirty-year career officer. The incoming fleet had disbanded and re-formed as squads under Hatthro’s command, putting them into the same comms frequency. Tiia and Imkara had been less than fond of the idea of joining the Ammatar fleet, but it was the only way to coordinate. ‘We’ve got the carrier pinned down, but there’s a lot of logistics being used, Starke. We’ve been picking off the little ones, but it’s slow going.’

‘You focus on the battleships, we’ll take care of the support,’ Sylar responded. The Matari ships surged forward into the mess, squads peeling off in different directions as leaders called primaries.

Amarrian pilots’ signatures began to wink out one after another as the balance shifted. As he came around for another pass on an enemy Guardian-class cruiser, Sylar spotted a lone Amarrian frigate moving toward the Ammatar fleet, guarded by destroyers. ‘Riva, get me a scan of that Punisher, fast! I don’t like it.’

‘I’m too far off… oh, just brilliant.’ The Vherokior pilot cursed as the Punisher activated another cyno beacon. ‘Now what?’

A blinding flash announced the arrival of another Amarrian capital ship; as the glare faded, the menacing, pointed prow of a Revelation-class dreadnaught turned with terrible purpose toward the Ammatar ships, turrets larger than a cruiser rotating smoothly around to focus on the enemy fleet.

‘All battleships, evasive manoeuvers! Don’t make an easy target of yourselves!’ Hatthro ordered hoarsely. It was the worst possible situation the battle-scarred veteran could imagine, and he gripped the arms of his command chair tightly. Only the presence of the capsuleers in his fleet stopped him from calling a retreat. ‘Someone take out that cyno frigate before anything else comes through.’

‘On it. Cherry, cover me,’ Sylar responded tightly, his assault frigate banking gracefully towards the stationary target.

‘Syl, you back the fuck off, those are destroyers–’

‘Al, trust me.’ Sylar settled into a tight orbit alongside Cherry’s Hound, autocannons and missiles tearing the Amarrian frigate apart, their own shields beginning to buckle as the trio of Coercers turned their guns on them.

‘I’m webbed! Gonna try–’ Cherry’s transmission cut off as the destroyers’ small lasers broke through her shields, melting quickly through armour and hull; one of the ships got a lucky lock on the outlaw’s capsule, and the egg-shaped craft imploded under a fat volley of laserfire. Sylar Starke’s Jaguar and capsule quickly followed.

‘No!’ Tiia cried, seeing Sylar’s overview icon redline and vanish. ‘Shit! Shit! Al, you’re in charge there, keep the fires burning. Swap targets!’

************************************

‘Ugh!’ Sylar surged upright, shaking cloning-vat fluid from his head, instantly missing the feel of his dreadlocks; those were gone, now, part of a body he would never wear again. In the next vat over, he could see Cherry struggling to unhook herself from the input wires, looking strange without her tattoos. The Caldari cloning bay attendants looked alarmed.

One of them stepped forward, regaining most of his composure. ‘Welcome to Ebodold Kaalakiota station. I’m Doctor Mi–’

‘Spare us the speech, we need to be flight-ready ten minutes ago,’ the captain grunted shortly. ‘And set us up for fresh clones, we may be seeing you again today.’ The attendants hurried forward to remove the wires the pilots couldn’t reach, handing them towels as they emerged, dripping translucent blue fluid on the cloning-bay floor.

The captain reached over and slapped the younger woman’s shoulder. ‘Let’s saddle ‘em up. You ready?’

The former pirate grinned broadly up at him as she wiped vat-fluid from her generous curves. ‘I been waiting for this since the day I bought her. Those suckers won’t know what hit ‘em.’

************************************

To Be Continued Next Week!
Same EVE Time, Same EVE Channel!

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The EVE Philosophy

Published on 15. Oct, 2009 ... written by Samekh Mem.

Picture credit: Wotlankor

Philosophical Foundations

EVE is unlike anything out there – it’s an incalculably unique game. To me EVE is quite like a real-world simulation of sorts – if on an infinitely small scale in comparison. It is, however, big and complicated enough to allow us to play out incredible fantasies of mass-warfare, corporate espionage and piracy. On that very important note, I urge you to start looking at EVE more as a simulation than a game – at least in some respects, which brings us to …

Anyone can start a corporation in EVE with the appropriate skills. That is not important. What’s important is understanding how to create a successful corporation. If you go to Google.com right now and do a few searches you would probably be overwhelmed with the sheer volume of information on how to, say, set up a network of jump bridges, use beacons to advertise your corporation in lowsec, etc. – the real question is, “Why would Capsuleer A, B and C choose my corp?” I am not concerned with retention here, that comes later. Neither am I concerned with resources, tax, etc. – there are other guides for that. What I am concerned with is helping your eve-mail inbox to become overwhelmed with corp applications. This can be accomplished with a firm philosophical foundation.

Foundations

What do you want to accomplish in EVE? Going back to my insistence that you start seeing EVE as a simulation rather than a game, consider about your motivations, your values, just as you would in real life. If you want to, say, start a corporation hell-bent on mining out every last gravimetric site in the unknown universe, stick with it! If you need time to decide, take it. If you need money, be patient. This is no cake walk – the core of EVE is corporation/alliance relations. Always be considerate of scale when assessing your goals. Once you’ve decided what you want to do, it’s time to study…

Philosophy

So you’ve decided to create the very best pirate corp in New Eden, how do you go about recruiting the masses of EVE into your own warm and inviting wedge of space. Well, to begin with you need to have values and aesthetics.

Values

Values? In an internet spaceship game? Yes. Values are everywhere. You, me and the Spaniard who popped your pod in his HAC last night have values. It’s important to look beyond the game [simulation] and see the person sitting behind the computer. I am not going to join a corporation without the right elements, just as I would not in the real world. If my Masonic Lodge did not contain people I liked and respected, I would find another Lodge.

Are you leadership material? In terms of hard statistics, you probably aren’t. If you’ve never been a Fleet Commander, for example, what business should you have running a corporation with possibly hundreds of people depending on you for direction? If you can answer this question without hesitation you should proceed to determining what your corporation’s values ought to be. Plainly, they really should echo your own values. If you’re an anarchist at heart in real life, running a military dictatorship would possibly be a bit of stretch.

Your first job should be to examine the values of other corps. These can be found in mission statements, codes of conduct, etc. Focus on the large and successful corporations. You will most certainly find that they all have rules or values. For example, the simplest could be said to be NRDS/NBSI. Corporations under the CVA alliance, for example, adhere to a strict NRDS policy – CVA maintains a tirelessly-updated list of KOS/Red’s and allows neutral players access to their system if standards and good behavior are met. CVA also values roleplay. if your corporation has little-to-no interest in roleplay, it would be pointless to try and attract players who are heavily invested in roleplay.

Exclusivity

Every major corporation has it. Would it be pompous of you to put your elitist foot down from the get-go? Absolutely not! If you take away one thing from this article I want you to understand that applying your values to recruitment is THE most important step in becoming successful in terms of sheer numbers. Have I lost my mind? Elitism brings people in rather than shutting them out? Read on…

Consider this. You’re a new pilot in EVE and there are only a few corporations to chose from and out of those choices only three of them are PVP-focused:

TruMENACE
Come blow stuff up with us! We take anyone – no trials. Douchebaggery is not welcome. Members all part of the Facebook Yellow Mustard fan community
Membership count: 1900
Corporation Age: 3 years.

LOLShips
Everyone is welcome. We’re kewl. LOLCats FTW!
Membership count: 3
Corporation Age: 1 month

Caduceus Mercs
Tightly-knit community of friends. 10 million skillpoint requirement, specializing in PVP. Vent interview – if we wouldn’t drink a beer with you, we don’t want you here. All of us RP – if you’re not invested in RP turn away now. 90% KB efficiency required. No liberals welcome.
Membership count: 100
Corporation Age: 6 months

The above three examples are pretty typical stereotypes for three types of EVE group: The community-based, catch-all and The clueless catch-all attempt; The specialists.

What you should aim to be is a specialist. Why? Think about it. Out of all three corps you’d probably go for Caduceus because, first and foremost, they seem to know their stuff AND they are selective. If you chose a corp that has strict requirements catered to your own tastes and values there is a very good chance that you will be flying with people like yourself. This is appealing for obvious reasons.

So at this juncture it would be important for you to consider, if you do choose to create your own corporation, that there are people out there in EVE that are very similar to yourself. You will only attract them into your ranks if you are unafraid to establish your independent values immediately and to be unafraid of separating the wheat from the chaff and so keeping your standards high.

Aesthetics

A short word on aesthetics. They’re important. how you present yourself is important. If you’re a man and have a wife you understand this better than anyone. If you’re not shaving every single day, your wife will probably complain that you look messy and not want to go out with you in public. If you walk into a club in your pajamas, they won’t let you in. And so, if you use Geocities.com to host your website and you don’t put the time into getting forums, a KB, etc. up and running you will be very un-presentable and turn people off. Get a good website up and running as soon as possible. Put time and effort into your description and consider very carefully all of the above points.

To summarize, I feel that anyone can create a successful and attractive corp with effort and creativity as long as they understand the necessity of specialization and establishing a clear set of ideals. And most importantly, no-one wants to fly with tards

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Titans … no longer a Null-Sec Toy

Published on 18. Sep, 2009 ... written by Moof.

Picture credit: EVE Online Ships

Well, well … the Titan … the majestic beast of EVE, rarely seen and feared! When one of this behemoths entered the battlefield, they would decimate whole fleets, people would run in fear … not anymore.

For those who do not know what a Titan can do, it basically has two main uses,

1. To fire a weapon (Doomsday) that causes an obsence amount of damage to an enemy fleet.
2. To open a bridge between itself and a cyno which allows ships in its fleet to use the Cyno, it can then also follow.

The Titan has now become as common as most ships. You’re less likely to see a Black Ops Battleship than you are a Titan. Nowaydays everyone and their mother has a Titan.

If you read the news from around EVE and you read of a titan kill or two, it is no longer a surprise. You may of read of how one alliance fielded 12 or 16 Titans outside of an enemy station and killed one of their own carriers with Doomsdays as a show of force.

However, this is not what this article is about. You now have Titans being used in Low-Sec as well.

“What the hell for, they cant doomsday in low-sec that’s a waste” I hear you cry. Well there are a couple of reasons for these 90bill ISK ships to be outside of Null-Sec.

Null-Sec wars are always raging all the time and there all always winners and losers. People taking space and losing space, so when an alliance loses space and retreats to another location to re-group, sometimes this will be Low-Sec and they will take their Titans with them, rather than leave them in a system they have lost.

Low-Sec Cyno Ship!

A brilliant way of moving your fleet around, or hot dropping on someone a big fleet (this is not hot dropping in the true sense, but you get my drift).

Now, I have had the hot dropping done to me a couple of times once right outside the station I am based in. It is a brilliant tactic and gives such a great element of surprise, but should Titans really be used for this and there be no come back on them? I mean these are the ships that used to strike fear into players and now they are a just a 90 Bil ISK conveyor belt, moving ships from one point to another. Hope you get my analogy there

It’s like taking the greatest boxer at the peak of their abilities, tying their hands behind their back and saying “Go ahead and fight!”, or taking the greatest sprinter and telling him “You can only walk in your races from now on!”. Titans, in my opinion, in Low-Sec are wrong.

When I started playing EVE, Titans where the sort of ships you would never see and people spoke about them in whispers. Now there are 220 known Titans in game, at the last time of counting. With the up and coming patch changes (no more grid doomsday but a focused weapon) I suspect you will definitely see more in Low-Sec. There will be players suddenly selling theirs as the use for them as an offensive weapon will be decreased. With that the price will drop on them. This means Titans will become more available to a wider player base.

Should there be a restriction on these ships or an increase in the learning to fly them, maybe not, however, the Titan is now as common place in Null-Sec as it is Low-Sec. I think it’s quite sad that these once great ships have now been reduced to the state they are in now and for me EVE has lost part of the folklore that originally attracted people in to the game.

Will CCP be creating a new role for them or will they let the biggest and most destructive ship within EVE fall away to be nothing but a 90.000.000.000 ISK conveyor belt?

I suspect the latter but hope for the former.

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Ghost Outrider in the Sky: Part 2

Published on 17. Sep, 2009 ... written by Casiella Truza.

Picture credit: Casiella Truza

I left the agent’s office with a sense of purpose. They’d tracked down a sector commander in Huola, and his guard had gotten delayed in a nearby system. While regular forces couldn’t get there fast enough or without attracting undue notice, TLF command figured a single capsuleer could do it and take him down.

For the last week, I’d taken quite a few strike missions like this. Starbase reactors, communications relay, and occasionally command staff had all fallen under my guns, and (perhaps prematurely) I’d started to contemplate a possible future joining the leadership structure.

The station staff had my pod prepared already. As I donned my flightsuit, the data conduits interfaced with the implant sockets on the back of my head, neck, and spine. If you’ve ever had that ancient dream of looking up at the stars and simply willing yourself to fly, you’ve at least glimpsed the reality of a capsuleer. In a very real sense, my Stabber and I became one fused entity: my abilities and will, realized in a weapon of war.

We undocked from the Lulm station and made our way quickly out of Heimatar. Amamake, for once, didn’t seem too busy. Preparing to cross into the Empire through Auga, we went on higher alert. I aligned the ship to the Kourmonen gate and warped us to it, only to find well over twenty Imperial Crusade ships waiting there. Calmly, I requested emergency jump access, we went through, and found no hostiles waiting for us. Without wasting a moment, we aligned to the next gate and warped. Just before we entered the warp bubble, though, sensors showed two enemy interceptors coming through the gate. We wasted no time jumping into Huola.

In the target system, no 24IC pilots appeared on Local communications. A few neutral pilots with high security status, indicating they didn’t have a recent history of starting fights in low-sec, plus a few additional TLF pilots. I double-checked the coordinates given by the agent, re-verified all ship systems and weapons, and alerted the crew that we would soon be entering a fight.

Not that this took long, though. The Sector Commander and a few attendant ships had begun inspecting a shattered mining station, probably the work of regular forces earlier. Whether they just wanted to assess damage or perhaps re-construct the facility didn’t matter to us, and we fell upon them with the channeled wrath of the seven tribes.

Our cruiser burned directly for the commander, but the proximity of the station ruins made auto-navigation tricky. Had we caught them in open space, I could have just instructed the ship to orbit the enemy at a defined distance, but in this case we would just get caught avoiding obstacles. Just before we got into range, additional enemy forces warped in a few kilometers away: probably the guard that had tarried.

Too late for them. I maneuvered the ship in close and opened up our 220mm autocannons, plus several banks of heavy assault missiles. The phased plasma ammunition and Hellfire missiles tore into his shields and armor, and just as the enemy guard reached their optimal range, his battlecruiser exploded into a rapidly expanding sphere of heat, light, and debris.

Our assignment complete, we saw no reason to engage the rest of the forces. Indeed, we probably wouldn’t have survived: the Stabber works best as a fast-attack cruiser, not in sustained engagements. Hit and run was the tactic of the day, and now that we’d hit, it was time to run.

Aligning back to Kourmonen, we entered warp drive just as their beam lasers finally started to make contact with our shields. We’d escaped the fight unscathed…

…At least, until we got back into Republic space. Militia intel had reported a large enemy fleet, including at least three Abaddon-class battleships, over a dozen cruisers and battlecruisers, and several destroyers and interceptors. I kept an eye on the directional scanner and the local communication channel.

Entering Auga, Local indicated we had found the fleet, or at least quite a few enemy pilots. The Amamake gate wasn’t in scan range, so I warped the ship directly to the gate and opened a communication channel to the controllers.

The enemy fleet detected us immediately, of course. We began requesting the jump even before we had gotten into range, trying over and over. And so when we did reach range, the gate accepted us and pulled us through. I noticed several of the interceptors jumping through together with us, likely in an attempt to pin us down in Amamake.

“All hands, prepare for maximum acceleration!” I issued the order to align, and the Stabber responded quickly. Full thrust towards the celestial object nearest our bearing. We’d need to reach 75% maximum speed for the warp drive to activate.

We counted it off. 50… 55… 60… 65… 70… 71… 72… 73…

Scrambled. An interceptor held us down and a Cormorant destroyer opened fire. Rapidly we returned fire; perhaps, if the gods willed it, the rest of the fleet would have engaged someone on the other side and we might fight our way out of this.

That didn’t happen, though. A couple of Harbingers led the rest of the fleet through the gate, and the hull quickly disintegrated. As I felt the ship coming apart around me, I began issuing the orders to get my pod into warp as soon as we had cleared the wreckage.

The smartbombs around us prevented that from occurring, and so, almost as soon as the Stabber exploded, I found myself looking back at white-clad technicians through polyglas. They peered closely, as if I looked like some sort of terribly fascinating experiment rather than a Venge Captain in the Tribal Liberation Force.

As the nutrient fluid drained away, one of them handed me a robe and I stepped out.

“Notify the hangar staff to ready one of my fastest frigates. I have a meeting in Lulm.”

“Yes, ma’am. Right away, ma’am. If you’ll step in here, we can outfit you with a new set of subprocessors and take a quick scan to prepare another clone for you.”

The Empire had won today, and my crew had paid the price for my errors. I turned and followed the technician, already considering the propitiatory sacrifices that I would have to offer so that my clan gods would favor me next time.

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Fan Fiction: Ambush

Published on 15. Sep, 2009 ... written by Jaret Kosht.

Picture credit: EVE Online Ships

In retrospect, he was a fool to think otherwise. Did he really think that no one would disturb him, while he explored this deadspace complex?

“No plan survives contact.” The dark voice inside his head told him, “You know this to be true.”

Jaret snarled his shields took another hit, buckling the entire ship’s frame so much, that even he, deep within the recess of his pod, could feel the impact through the seat of his pants. With a simple thought he simultaneously reloaded his missile launchers and swung his Hawk around. With a mental twitch he unleashed a hail of missiles towards his formerly confident attacker.

Not content with just missiles, he cycled the ship’s lone pair of railguns and let loose a burst. The electromagnetically charged rounds shot across the vast reach of space between the two ships and smashed through the enemy frigate’s armor and tore a gouge in its hull.

However, the target was not going to go down without a fight. Almost akin to a defiant roar, the enemy Retribution, unleashed a barrage of molten red lasers that sliced through both space and time to smash into his shields. The impact was immense enough, that he could almost hear his ship scream in distress as the shields already pushed to their max, struggled to handle the new barrage of electrically charged ions that now threatened to destroy the already shaky frigate.

Deciding that enough was enough, he triggered an ECM burst that for a few precious seconds blinded the enemy’s sensors to his location. Within seconds the target, a formerly confident pirate, saw his turrets report a negative lock. A heartbeat later, all the pirate was able to glimpse were two immense, magnetically charged slugs come hurtling towards his ship and smash through his shields, armor and shred his hull. If he retained consciousness a second longer he would have noticed the screaming missile that converted his ship into an explosion of components, parts and human tissue.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Jaret scanned his ship. What he saw would send most pilots into tears. His pride and joy, his baby; his Hawk was venting plasma. Shields sputtered back and forth; as the ship struggled to charge up its shields, while trying to keep its frame together. As he scanned out further he saw bits and pieces of his would be attackers.

No doubt they would now be waking up in a freshly furbished clone, their last memories being that of their target ripping their ships into pieces.

He then approached the wreckage that remained of the pirate’s formerly proud frigate. When the Hawk’s sensors picked up what he was looking for, Jaret extracted debris with a gentleness one reserved for small child, and deposited with it within his cargo hold.

With a start the onboard computer announced that four new frigates and a cruiser had entered. His mind reeled in shock, as his sensors screamed that four, very angry, pirate frigates were charging towards him.

Putting a hold on the panic that threatened to reduce him to a whimpering wreck, he shunted all immediate power he had to his warp drive. With an almost deliberate tone, the ships warp drive began to warm up as his computer started a countdown.

“Come on, Come one!” he willed his ship to make the warp jump. With a triumphant tone, the computer beeped and the Faster Than Light drive tore a hole through space and time and shot his ship through the hole.

As his ship went though the warp tunnel, almost absent-mindedly he reloaded all his weapons, in a habit that never left him since his former military days.

The welcome sight of the station, as he approached for docking, received a silent sigh of relief. Almost absent-mindedly he crooned to his frigate, The Justice, “We’re home, baby.” If one listened closely, one could almost swear that the ship warbled in response, as its engines quietly cycled down.

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