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Ghost Outrider in the Sky: Part 2

Published on 17. Sep, 2009 ... written by Casiella Truza, Tags: Articles

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.

Tags: factional, militia, warfare