Kai
Retired Staff
Joint post between me (kai) Doshii, and Gallant. I play the raider, Doshii the Light freighter, and Gallant the vampire.
The SS Raider sat in standby mode, a bright green nebula off to port. The crew would occasionally glance from their windows to stare at it, before going back to their work. The tests were coming along well, though it showed more flaws in the design than Origin Industries would have liked. Oh well. The Raider-class had and would never go into production, so this could only help their future designs.
The captain, Vanhe Sturmohl, paced the bridge, his view from the panoramic bridge window magnificent. Staring at the nebula, he noticed several points of light that hadn't been there before. While not concerned, he nevertheless ordered the ship to ready mode. No sense taking chances with a lone experimental gunship. "Drop all your tests, save all your data, we're going to be moving soon" The stocky man called over the ship's speakers. Glancing at the dots again, Vanhe took comfort in the light hum that was the ship coming into it's full capacity once more.
A Geshrinari freighter dropped to sublight speeds near the Raider. It appeared unarmed, though it was painted an odd, flat black color with a green dot on each engine pylon. It offered no communication to the Raider, sitting in space like an invisible lump.
The raider's sensors registered the freighter's change from FTL to STL, and began tracking it, no information other than relative size and position were given, as the Raider had only the most basic of systems. Vanhe strained his eyes staring out the window, finally managing to notice the black lump between his ship and the nebula.
Vanhe hailed the ship, asking: "unidentified ship, state your intentions and destination, please."
Captain Talroc watched the forward scanner display.
"Captain," asked Ayla, his engineer, "They havn't sensed us yet. It's probably just out testing its engines. I doubt it would have anything worth taking. Are you sure about this?"
"Why do we care?" the voice on the other side of Talroc's seat offered. Isaac, the weapons officer, twisted around, speaking around the half-finished cigarette. They had been sitting here for hours and Talroc had allowed him to smoke. "We're getting paid for this shit, all we have to do is blast it to hell and back, right, Cap'?"
"Relax," he assued them both, "Any idea what their payload is?"
"No idea," replied Ayla. "Our allies have already engaged interferance and have drawn their attention." She paused, a hand on the headset, before looking back. "They gave us the signal."
"Well, we'll stick to plan. Red alert. Engage all weapon systems. We're goin' in."
Moving the throttle slightly, he nudged the ship forward. The hyperpulse drive hummed to life. They gained speed.
"Isaac, deploy the gun turrents and standby."
The forward view screen showed the ship growing closer. Talroc looked down at his sensor array.
"Standby," he repeated, watching the numbers tick away.
The ship's small crew held their breath. Isaac snickered.
"Fire pulse cannons!"
Before the Black ship could even return the Raider's Hail, The gunship was broadsided from the Starboard with pulse cannons, That whole half of the ship blacking out from the immense EMP that washed over it. "HARD TO STARBOARD!" Vanhe yelled, picking himself off the floor and sitting in his command chair. The Raider sluggishly turned around, A Vampire class now visible from the direction of the pulse shots. with half the ship down and shields gone, they had to do something fast. Turrets on the dorsal, ventral, and aft surfaces popped to life, firing madly at the ship, while the nose had now moved to point at the Light freighter, the two still working MPA's getting ready to fire upon the vessel.
The light freighter was already on the move, but not before responding to the hail in a bizarre fashion. Small, grenade-like objects were hurled toward the Raider's bridge, and it began emitting harsh, scrambling transmissions across all available channels. The grenade objects exploded with light the intensity of stars, pure-white circles enveloping parts of the Raider. The freighter darted down and away from the turrets.
"FUCK YES!" yelled, Isaac. "Direct hit!"
The black Vampire pulled nimbly to the side, trying to stay in view of the EMP-darkened starboard of the enemy ship. The shields, Talroc was fairly sure, could hold up to light turrent fire. But theirs, on the other hand, weren't going to have that much luck.
"Isaac. Engage all ventral turrents. Breech that hull!"
The bottom of the ship roared to life with gunfire.
The pirates didn't know what exactly they were up against. The raider had a full compliment of engineers and technicians, who had run madly to their stations at first signs of trouble. first to return were the shields, which absorbed much of the gunfire before failing again, letting the hull get peppered with fire. Soon, the thrusters and Aether generators were running again, getting the ship to it's full mobility. this didn't help much, however, with the entire bridge crew blinded. 9 of the twelve PDA's opened fire on the Vampire as the raider continued it's arc to starboard, a bit faster now. The Light freighter was being ignored for the moment, as no one could see it.
"Their shields are up again," offered Ayla. The feeling on the bridge was tense now. Isaac was literally hopping out of his seat. The sky was lit up. "As are their weapon systems. You're cutting this /damn close/, sir. I think they're still shocked but they're getting better at aiming."
"Isaac. We're coming about," barked Talroc as he pulled the vampire to port. "Focus turrent fire on the bridge if you can find it. Ready the pulse cannons again. I can't maintain a straight course for more than a couple of seconds so you be /damn/ sure you're accurate. Ayla, keep your eyes on the gravimetric power."
"Aye SIR!" they chirped in unison.
The turrents continued to blaze. He leveled out to give Isaac a clear shot.
"FIRE!"
The freighter wasn't done yet, it seemed. The Raider's computer systems were soon bombarded with service requests and dummy targets, turning targeting and radar screens into star maps full of dots.
As the Rider's bridge crew regained their sight, the dummy messages were noticed, and aggravating. "Switch it all to manual! Search for targets visually, an blow that damn vampire out of the galaxy!" vanhe ordered, rubbing the glow out of his eyes best he could. Without sensors everything would be hit or miss. Shields popped back up, thanks to the efforts of the technicians, and were now doubled to starboard at the cost of Port. Vanhe saw his opening as the Vamire came into view between the Barrels of the MPA's to fore, and Fired Two shots at the center of the pirate ship.
Talroc jerked the controls, tried to swirve aside as he saw the blasts, but it was too late. The ship took the hit and shuddered violently. "Shields gone!" reported Ayla, but she didn't have to - he already knew it. "There's hull damage and we're leaking power. It's the engines. We've lost backup."
"God /damn/ it! Get back there and patch them! We can't fight without shields!" Talroc ordered. Immediately, Ayla climbed out of her seat and began crawling back into the ship proper. "Isaac. Pulse cannons to my display, please. Thank you. Watch engineering. Focus on turrents."
He pulled the Vampire out of an attack pattern and, milking the engine for all it was worth, began an evasive pattern designed to take his ship out of effective targetting range. The Vampire's turrents were still firing, but distance was now a consideration.
Seeing the success of the MPA's Vanhe ordered the crew to find the black ship again. it had disappeared after the light grenades, and after flooding the computers with spam, could not be tracked. Continuing to fire on the damaged vampire, the Raider's shields equalized again, and Vanhe ordered the ship into a roll to check for their other enemy.
"They're still firing," offered Isaac. "They can't hit us at this range - it looks like they're shooting almost blindly. But we can't quite hit them either unless you /stop your damn weaving/, Cap'."
Talroc tripped the com. "Damage report, Ayla?"
"Capacitors have been overloaded, we won't be able to repair them while in space. We're running off direct engine power. Have Isaac redivert some of it to the shields and they should come online again, but it'll tax the system and the engine's getting kind of warm."
"Forward shields, Isaac," ordered Talroc as he turned the Vampire for another strafing run. "Bottom on standby. Take the dorsal turrents offline, they're not helping anything."
"Yes, cap'."
The black ship wasn't as hard to find as the Raider's captain thought. It was easy to find — if one looked in the right place. It was hovering behind the bridge, letting the Raider roll along its own x-axis while the freighter loaded its only weapon system — a "sticky torpedo." As the shields on the Raider weren't at full power, the torpedo would be fired at a slow speed. First, however, small plasma bombs were blasted forward into the Raider's aft shield, attempting to narrowly fail a single portion of the shield.
The black ship's plasma bombs were extremely effective, ripping holes in the shields and actually damaging part of the hull. What they hadn't realized or at least noticed was the large ventral fin on the Raider. As the ship rolled, the huge protrusion came and sammed right into the side of the light freighter, with a horrible crashing, screeching noise, and several other noises as the shields on both ships grated against one another and cancelled out at that point, leaving two large, heavy pieces of Durandium to smash into one another.
The freighter's shields were put under enormous stress; black scorch marks were left on top of the Raider's bridge as the freighter gunned its remaining good engine and looped upward, traveling away from the starship as quickly as it could.
Following the lead of the freighter, The Raider Charged it's FTL drives and pitched and yawed towards the galactic center. Several technicians had by now quarantined most of the spam into superfluous sections of the computer and gotten navigation working again. After several moments, a route was set and the ship made adjustments for it's course.
Talroc flipped the targeting retical display into a good position in front of his right eye and took aim. His thumbs brushed the controls he had designated as pulse cannon triggers.
"Coming up on them, Cap'" offered Isaac. "Engaging ventral turrents." There was a slight pause. "Shit! They're trying to get away!"
"Hit them when I pull up," said Talroc. He took aim at the rear of the enemy ship, where he assumed the engines were, and fired off the pulse cannons. After firing, he pulled up from his level attack pattern, and let Isaac send off a few rounds with the ventral turrents.
moments before the Raider jumped to FTL, several more blasts landed on the ship, this time to port. they ripped through the weakened shields and smashed onto the shield generator on it's pylon, tearing it off. Half the shields gone, Vanhe had no choice but to punch it, and the Raider winked out of existence and into FTL. All that the pirates were left with was a portion of the ventral pylon and a destroyed shield Generator array.
"Fucking hell," mumbled Isaac, violently shoving back from his control panel.
Talroc removed the targeting grid from over his eye and sat back in his chair. From beneath it, he pulled a small flask of alcohol, which he uncapped and drank from. "Ayla," he asked the com, "The engines. They're good?"
"We're not dying today, Captain, but you're hell on the power grid," she answered from behind him. He half turned to watch her crawl in from the bridge's entryway. "What did I miss?"
We fucking /lost them/" whined Isaac. "They were /right fucking there/. If Mr. 'Hand me the targeting controls' had just aimed a little faster we'd /have that ship/!"
"Relax, Isaac," he mumbled, "We're still getting paid. We did our job."
Talroc put his feet up on a blank portion of the control panel and watched their allied ship on the port display. Ayla was just settling back into the engineering panel when he nudged her with the boot. She glared. He smiled faintly.
"Tell our employer he's going to be the one paying for the capacitors."
The captain of the black freighter sighed and looked to his co-pilot. "Hell. That didn't work quite as well as we thought."
The co-pilot nodded. "We didn't expect it to spin so fast ... better luck next time?"
The captain nodded. "Next time."
The SS Raider sat in standby mode, a bright green nebula off to port. The crew would occasionally glance from their windows to stare at it, before going back to their work. The tests were coming along well, though it showed more flaws in the design than Origin Industries would have liked. Oh well. The Raider-class had and would never go into production, so this could only help their future designs.
The captain, Vanhe Sturmohl, paced the bridge, his view from the panoramic bridge window magnificent. Staring at the nebula, he noticed several points of light that hadn't been there before. While not concerned, he nevertheless ordered the ship to ready mode. No sense taking chances with a lone experimental gunship. "Drop all your tests, save all your data, we're going to be moving soon" The stocky man called over the ship's speakers. Glancing at the dots again, Vanhe took comfort in the light hum that was the ship coming into it's full capacity once more.
A Geshrinari freighter dropped to sublight speeds near the Raider. It appeared unarmed, though it was painted an odd, flat black color with a green dot on each engine pylon. It offered no communication to the Raider, sitting in space like an invisible lump.
The raider's sensors registered the freighter's change from FTL to STL, and began tracking it, no information other than relative size and position were given, as the Raider had only the most basic of systems. Vanhe strained his eyes staring out the window, finally managing to notice the black lump between his ship and the nebula.
Vanhe hailed the ship, asking: "unidentified ship, state your intentions and destination, please."
Captain Talroc watched the forward scanner display.
"Captain," asked Ayla, his engineer, "They havn't sensed us yet. It's probably just out testing its engines. I doubt it would have anything worth taking. Are you sure about this?"
"Why do we care?" the voice on the other side of Talroc's seat offered. Isaac, the weapons officer, twisted around, speaking around the half-finished cigarette. They had been sitting here for hours and Talroc had allowed him to smoke. "We're getting paid for this shit, all we have to do is blast it to hell and back, right, Cap'?"
"Relax," he assued them both, "Any idea what their payload is?"
"No idea," replied Ayla. "Our allies have already engaged interferance and have drawn their attention." She paused, a hand on the headset, before looking back. "They gave us the signal."
"Well, we'll stick to plan. Red alert. Engage all weapon systems. We're goin' in."
Moving the throttle slightly, he nudged the ship forward. The hyperpulse drive hummed to life. They gained speed.
"Isaac, deploy the gun turrents and standby."
The forward view screen showed the ship growing closer. Talroc looked down at his sensor array.
"Standby," he repeated, watching the numbers tick away.
The ship's small crew held their breath. Isaac snickered.
"Fire pulse cannons!"
Before the Black ship could even return the Raider's Hail, The gunship was broadsided from the Starboard with pulse cannons, That whole half of the ship blacking out from the immense EMP that washed over it. "HARD TO STARBOARD!" Vanhe yelled, picking himself off the floor and sitting in his command chair. The Raider sluggishly turned around, A Vampire class now visible from the direction of the pulse shots. with half the ship down and shields gone, they had to do something fast. Turrets on the dorsal, ventral, and aft surfaces popped to life, firing madly at the ship, while the nose had now moved to point at the Light freighter, the two still working MPA's getting ready to fire upon the vessel.
The light freighter was already on the move, but not before responding to the hail in a bizarre fashion. Small, grenade-like objects were hurled toward the Raider's bridge, and it began emitting harsh, scrambling transmissions across all available channels. The grenade objects exploded with light the intensity of stars, pure-white circles enveloping parts of the Raider. The freighter darted down and away from the turrets.
"FUCK YES!" yelled, Isaac. "Direct hit!"
The black Vampire pulled nimbly to the side, trying to stay in view of the EMP-darkened starboard of the enemy ship. The shields, Talroc was fairly sure, could hold up to light turrent fire. But theirs, on the other hand, weren't going to have that much luck.
"Isaac. Engage all ventral turrents. Breech that hull!"
The bottom of the ship roared to life with gunfire.
The pirates didn't know what exactly they were up against. The raider had a full compliment of engineers and technicians, who had run madly to their stations at first signs of trouble. first to return were the shields, which absorbed much of the gunfire before failing again, letting the hull get peppered with fire. Soon, the thrusters and Aether generators were running again, getting the ship to it's full mobility. this didn't help much, however, with the entire bridge crew blinded. 9 of the twelve PDA's opened fire on the Vampire as the raider continued it's arc to starboard, a bit faster now. The Light freighter was being ignored for the moment, as no one could see it.
"Their shields are up again," offered Ayla. The feeling on the bridge was tense now. Isaac was literally hopping out of his seat. The sky was lit up. "As are their weapon systems. You're cutting this /damn close/, sir. I think they're still shocked but they're getting better at aiming."
"Isaac. We're coming about," barked Talroc as he pulled the vampire to port. "Focus turrent fire on the bridge if you can find it. Ready the pulse cannons again. I can't maintain a straight course for more than a couple of seconds so you be /damn/ sure you're accurate. Ayla, keep your eyes on the gravimetric power."
"Aye SIR!" they chirped in unison.
The turrents continued to blaze. He leveled out to give Isaac a clear shot.
"FIRE!"
The freighter wasn't done yet, it seemed. The Raider's computer systems were soon bombarded with service requests and dummy targets, turning targeting and radar screens into star maps full of dots.
As the Rider's bridge crew regained their sight, the dummy messages were noticed, and aggravating. "Switch it all to manual! Search for targets visually, an blow that damn vampire out of the galaxy!" vanhe ordered, rubbing the glow out of his eyes best he could. Without sensors everything would be hit or miss. Shields popped back up, thanks to the efforts of the technicians, and were now doubled to starboard at the cost of Port. Vanhe saw his opening as the Vamire came into view between the Barrels of the MPA's to fore, and Fired Two shots at the center of the pirate ship.
Talroc jerked the controls, tried to swirve aside as he saw the blasts, but it was too late. The ship took the hit and shuddered violently. "Shields gone!" reported Ayla, but she didn't have to - he already knew it. "There's hull damage and we're leaking power. It's the engines. We've lost backup."
"God /damn/ it! Get back there and patch them! We can't fight without shields!" Talroc ordered. Immediately, Ayla climbed out of her seat and began crawling back into the ship proper. "Isaac. Pulse cannons to my display, please. Thank you. Watch engineering. Focus on turrents."
He pulled the Vampire out of an attack pattern and, milking the engine for all it was worth, began an evasive pattern designed to take his ship out of effective targetting range. The Vampire's turrents were still firing, but distance was now a consideration.
Seeing the success of the MPA's Vanhe ordered the crew to find the black ship again. it had disappeared after the light grenades, and after flooding the computers with spam, could not be tracked. Continuing to fire on the damaged vampire, the Raider's shields equalized again, and Vanhe ordered the ship into a roll to check for their other enemy.
"They're still firing," offered Isaac. "They can't hit us at this range - it looks like they're shooting almost blindly. But we can't quite hit them either unless you /stop your damn weaving/, Cap'."
Talroc tripped the com. "Damage report, Ayla?"
"Capacitors have been overloaded, we won't be able to repair them while in space. We're running off direct engine power. Have Isaac redivert some of it to the shields and they should come online again, but it'll tax the system and the engine's getting kind of warm."
"Forward shields, Isaac," ordered Talroc as he turned the Vampire for another strafing run. "Bottom on standby. Take the dorsal turrents offline, they're not helping anything."
"Yes, cap'."
The black ship wasn't as hard to find as the Raider's captain thought. It was easy to find — if one looked in the right place. It was hovering behind the bridge, letting the Raider roll along its own x-axis while the freighter loaded its only weapon system — a "sticky torpedo." As the shields on the Raider weren't at full power, the torpedo would be fired at a slow speed. First, however, small plasma bombs were blasted forward into the Raider's aft shield, attempting to narrowly fail a single portion of the shield.
The black ship's plasma bombs were extremely effective, ripping holes in the shields and actually damaging part of the hull. What they hadn't realized or at least noticed was the large ventral fin on the Raider. As the ship rolled, the huge protrusion came and sammed right into the side of the light freighter, with a horrible crashing, screeching noise, and several other noises as the shields on both ships grated against one another and cancelled out at that point, leaving two large, heavy pieces of Durandium to smash into one another.
The freighter's shields were put under enormous stress; black scorch marks were left on top of the Raider's bridge as the freighter gunned its remaining good engine and looped upward, traveling away from the starship as quickly as it could.
Following the lead of the freighter, The Raider Charged it's FTL drives and pitched and yawed towards the galactic center. Several technicians had by now quarantined most of the spam into superfluous sections of the computer and gotten navigation working again. After several moments, a route was set and the ship made adjustments for it's course.
Talroc flipped the targeting retical display into a good position in front of his right eye and took aim. His thumbs brushed the controls he had designated as pulse cannon triggers.
"Coming up on them, Cap'" offered Isaac. "Engaging ventral turrents." There was a slight pause. "Shit! They're trying to get away!"
"Hit them when I pull up," said Talroc. He took aim at the rear of the enemy ship, where he assumed the engines were, and fired off the pulse cannons. After firing, he pulled up from his level attack pattern, and let Isaac send off a few rounds with the ventral turrents.
moments before the Raider jumped to FTL, several more blasts landed on the ship, this time to port. they ripped through the weakened shields and smashed onto the shield generator on it's pylon, tearing it off. Half the shields gone, Vanhe had no choice but to punch it, and the Raider winked out of existence and into FTL. All that the pirates were left with was a portion of the ventral pylon and a destroyed shield Generator array.
"Fucking hell," mumbled Isaac, violently shoving back from his control panel.
Talroc removed the targeting grid from over his eye and sat back in his chair. From beneath it, he pulled a small flask of alcohol, which he uncapped and drank from. "Ayla," he asked the com, "The engines. They're good?"
"We're not dying today, Captain, but you're hell on the power grid," she answered from behind him. He half turned to watch her crawl in from the bridge's entryway. "What did I miss?"
We fucking /lost them/" whined Isaac. "They were /right fucking there/. If Mr. 'Hand me the targeting controls' had just aimed a little faster we'd /have that ship/!"
"Relax, Isaac," he mumbled, "We're still getting paid. We did our job."
Talroc put his feet up on a blank portion of the control panel and watched their allied ship on the port display. Ayla was just settling back into the engineering panel when he nudged her with the boot. She glared. He smiled faintly.
"Tell our employer he's going to be the one paying for the capacitors."
The captain of the black freighter sighed and looked to his co-pilot. "Hell. That didn't work quite as well as we thought."
The co-pilot nodded. "We didn't expect it to spin so fast ... better luck next time?"
The captain nodded. "Next time."
