Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ptolemy" data-source="post: 9364454" data-attributes="member: 1412">Gorram 332-1080Gorram was the first sector in which I have ever seen an actual fight between ships. On a standard patrol we picked up a weak signal from the subsidised merchant Philip’s Imp. It was poor because an attempt was being made to jam it. The Imp was under attack! Gorram occasionally has a corvette in system for these kind of situations but it didn’t at the moment. Almost immediately after we had changed course to intercept Gabe hailed us with a message from Derisson. We were to try and rescue the Imp without putting the GR1 in any danger. How we could intervene in a shooting situation without risking being hit we had no idea. Gabe realised the ridiculousness of his order but he was in an awkward position. We accelerated.The pirates would obviously be monitoring us as much as they could but I don’t think they expected the GR1 to be as fast as it was, or to respond as quickly as we did. We all took our combat positions with Hurgen and Lilly on pulse turrets, myself at the sensors station, Helena on comms and the rest of us in engineering. We all clambered into our vacc. suits and again strapped snubbies to our sides. We didn’t intend to be boarded without a fight, bastards.Peter judged the distance and movement of our quarry well and put in a hard deceleration as we came into extreme weapons range. The Imp had capitulated and was in the process of dumping cargo. We spotted two Type S scouts, both with upgraded turrets boasting triple beam lasers. We managed to approach quite close before they respond and one turned towards us. I guessed that they were too intent on their prey to notice us earlier. I put a lock on that one and our turrets opened up. Helena was running some ancient Terran classical music through the comms in such as way east to try and disrupt their communications. Raxacora targeted a missile from her station in engineering - we had no intention of firing missiles, those things cost a fortune, but they didn’t know that. S-types are pretty tough and it didn’t seem to care about our fire, Hurgen being particularly accurate. Their pilot seemed good but their gunner not so much. Their plan appeared to be to slow us down long enough to pick up enough dumped cargo to make it worth their while and then make a run for it. While they had the superior armour we outclassed them in every other way. Every time they locked their targeting systems on us I broke the lock, Peter pushed himself to his limit and the gang in engineering did better than expected dragging the most out of the reactor and the engines. Despite this, by the time we immobilised the S-type fighting us the other had picked up the cargo the Imp had dropped (they didn’t drop a lot as they stopped dumping when we arrived) and was already turning away. It was too late, as the GR1 had a considerable advantage over the S-type in terms of speed and manoeuvrability. They were determined, though, as piracy carries the death penalty and these guys didn’t look like they had the influence to call on top level barristers if they ended up in court. We later found out that they had been drifting with systems powered down so as to appear like space debris. The Imp had run for it as soon as they saw the S-types power up so the actual fighting occurred too close to a gravity well for the S-type to jump straight from where we were. It wouldn’t take long for them to reach a safe distance and be able to jump. As we pursued the first S-type suddenly exploded. We must have done more damage than we realised. I assume they were trying to stabilise their power plant when it went critical. Laser fire came from our right and we heard Ven’s voice from one of the station fighters. Ben and Uti had launched from the station at the same time as we had received the distress beacon but had had a greater distance to travel.The remaining S-type surrendered with the arrival of our reinforcements. Sensors suggested that its jump drive was out and that power was fluctuating. We told them to either turn their ship around or abandon ship and we would pick them up. We were unwilling to board their ship and risk ourselves. The elected to fly, under escort of the fighters, to the station. We moved to investigate the Imp.She was still able to move unaided and while her captain requested repairs at the station she thought they could still move and even jump. We escorted them to the station keeping a close eye on their reactor readings and standing ready to help at short notice. In the end we weren’t needed during the trip. We disembarked and set to work on repairing our ship with help from the engineering team on station.Gorram 339-1080In the following week we worked on the GR1 apart from a brief excursion that Peter and I took to repair a beacon orbiting Weisen in a shuttle. I was pretty shaken by the fight. I couldn’t quite shack the sense of danger inherent in a situation where people were trying to do exactly the opposite of our usual goal - keeping safe in space. It felt like a complete inversion of sense and reality. I built up a dislike for pirates at this point and I wasn’t alone. Spacers should be mutually supporting in the face of common dangers, not trying to kill each other for a bunch of credits. I know this is a naïve position but still, it galled that people had come into the system in which we spend most of our time trying to keep people safe and tried to kill the ones we worked to protect.Funnily enough, Derisson didn’t even visit us with a “well done, team”. He really doesn’t have any friends. The rest of the station was great. We had more than enough drinks bought for us in the aftermath of the Imp rescue. About 10 days after the fight we received notification from Derisson that we were expected to meet a Corvette and then, after it had stopped at the station, escort her on a tour of the system. We couldn’t all join the crew of the corvette as we would need to be able to respond to any crisis in the GR1 which is a specialised S&R ship and has capabilities that corvettes don’t share.Gorram 344-1080We waited a day in the designated jump “box” the Arbellatra was due to arrive in. Helena exchanged greetings with them as our only crew member to be have served in the navy as an officer. They docked and their crew was given some R&R leave while we met with Captain Wright and first officer Lieutenant Lim. It was agreed that Lim would travel on the GR1 and Helena would be our liaison on the bridge of the Arbellatra. Helena had once commanded a T-type corvette and was pleased to be back on one. The captain met us once and then was swept off to be wined and dined by Derisson.Gorram 349-1080Having familiarised Lt. Lim with the GR1 our tour began. The GR1 and the Arbellatra are both fast ships and we both tried to impress the other. A day and a half out we received a distress call. We had picked up a jump into an area not specifically designated as a jump box. The ship hadn’t responded to our hail although when pinged its transponder identified it as a yacht named Iridescent. They had come out of jump near to our position and at high speed. That speed had dropped off and the Iridescent was just slowly tumbling as far as we could see. We set off to investigate with the Arbellatra close behind.The Iridescent turned out to be exactly what we feared it would be - a ship full of entitled rich kids who didn’t know how to run a ship safely. They were rude and demanding, ordering us to come aboard and fix them “We pay your wages so get over here”. They completely ignored the Arbellatra, which, to be fair, didn’t hail them as this was a civilian operation and they were mainly interested in watching us at work. We declined and asked for a remote link to be set up so we could run diagnostics from the GR1. They couldn’t even do that. We didn’t think they could manage to keep a stable position so Adhza and I suited up and we used the thruster packs on our suits to get to their airlock. The “crew” consisted of four snobs and a long suffering valet who was serving as steward. There was nothing wrong with their ship other than they had crashed an engineering system which had triggered an emergency shut down of non-vital systems. I had a huge row with them as I ordered a suspension of the “pilot’s” licence (which was only provisional) which effectively strand them in system. I heard a lot of “do you know who I am” from one of them who was the son of some knight of the Third Imperium. Some semi-habitat rock which the family never visited and just politicked at the local counts court. I did the kids a favour by taking the helm and flying them to the station. I have only had a handful of lessons from Peter, but I knew enough to keep her straight and level. At the station I handed control over to the automatic docking computer and left it to Sar to deal with. I re-joined the GR1 and we carried on with our patrol.</blockquote>

Verification