DiD - Explorer to Hero TC (Prematurely Ended)

[Poseidon]

Yay, Xenon! Salvage time!

[BankruptAssasin]

Ha, you would think so wouldn't ya? your forgeting my bad luck Poseidon.

07. Build, Fight, Trade, Think

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Including a J, a few Q's, P's & PX's and a large assortment of Fighters.

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The Albatross is destroyed before my eyes before it can even react, that J just cost me 3 Million and I can't do anything about it. I sat there watching the Single NMMC Shrike and 2 bombers heading to stop the Xenon lay waste to my "Home Sector", somehow I don't think the Teladi are going to be making much profit now & I’m certainly not going to be making much either.

I watched the show for another few minutes, still in shock at my loss of millions of credits and hours of hard work, the Shrike did take out a few smaller ships and managed to take down the shields of a capital ship, but it was blew to pieces shortly after, with no defence of the sector left the Xenon proceeded to start destroying stations, first up....

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Pac Forge, and it was full of Pacs which I could have snapped up, next up looks like they are targeting the Teladi Shipyard, This is of great concern to me as this is where I have been selling my ships, where I will be buying my stations for a while, the next closest Teladi shipyard is in Inamus Zura and I won't be able to use that for this sector thanks to X-347 as neighbours, so I will be at a loss without it, I wonder do the Teladi build new shipyards if this is destroyed?

Luckily the Xenon seem to have got bored and are instead coming toward me, they must have scanned the ship and realised I’m not Teladi and I’m in fact Terran, they smell blood and they coming for it. I decide to let them get a little closer before I jump to the west gate, this gives me the chance to collect all the debris, not much of it is valuable, just a few missiles, E-cells etc, but it’s not going to help cover the 3 million I just lost, that J is marked, I will have great pleasure in taking him out once I get the chance.

I leave the Teladi to it, the military don’t seem to be too interested, so NMMC have sent 3 shrikes

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And all 3 have been utterly destroyed, I glanced at slugs book and remember how his shrike lasted so long, if what I have seen so far is to go anything by, the shrike is not as good as I thought, either that or the captains off them all have been careless.

I decide I will need to make my money up again, the area if it still exists is still short of Nostrop, I am still keen on building that complex, so I continue doing scan asteroids, Taxiing people and returning ships, plus a few shrewd buys such as a

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Pelican for just over 8k - now that’s the sort of bargain I need constantly. I have even been able to increase my Pirate rep from -4 till 0 by doing 1 lucrative mission worth over 1 million credits, not bad for a day’s work. But the pain of my life so far in Commonwealth space have returned,

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That same J, K, Q and fighters have turned up again, are they following me? Have they caught wind of a Terran and are trying to take me out?

I avoid them again, the kestrel is quite quick so it's easy enough to avoid them, but them turning up again has me a little concerned, I need to get myself some kind of capital ship soon, or come up with another plan of action, particularly when there seems to be very little Military around these days, The Xenon are having a ball of a time destroying everything it is path, and there has been very little in the way of resistance. I also need to hire some qualified fighters to the cause, and for that I will need some extra ships but more importantly, credits.

I eventually have enough for my First Complex (again), I buy the stations and have it all connected in a jiffy, due to recent events, "Blue Wing" were escort for the Albatross, although if that Xenon fleet comes back I doubt 3 Falcons and a Mamba are going to cause much trouble, perhaps the Xenon can do me out of 6 million this time?

But this time all went well, I thought I would use that soft squishy bit of muscle between my ears for this, I ordered the Albatross Captain to place my stations away from the main trade route, About 10km above the trade lane, this I hope will mean if the Xenon/Pirates decided they want to attack they will leave my station alone, or at least leave it until the end.

I decided I would sell the Vulture Miner I had kept purposely for this station and just use 2 Mercury’s, they are quicker and cheaper than what I sold the Vulture for, so a win win situation for me really and I already had 1 mercury bought second hand and fixed up, it was already sitting with its cargo bay filled with e-cells for its new Home base. These will buy and sell the goods to within a 1 sector radius, it means that I have more control over where the traders are and means I can if needs be use this to help supply Nostrop to another complex. By setting it to 1 sector, it means that Profit Centre Alpha & PTNI should be sorted for Nostrop and will start producing their own products quicker, plus in general there should not be too much trouble from Pirates due to the heavy presence of Military.

Just as the Ecell buyer is leaving my station, guess who shows up again?

Yep my old friend XM1TX-69. This is the 3rd sector since the initial attack they have turned up in while I’m here, they are definitely looking for me, just as I think my Mercury is about to get killed, it is pulling away from them, no attacks at all on it, but that’s probably due to the Teladi Phoenix & Shrike

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keeping it busy, I have decided that I need to do something about it, I think because the Capital ships are millions and millions over my kind of budget, I have 2 options, capture a capital ship or the one I’m going to try first, buy a bomber and arm it, then nuke the Xenon, I was going to take anything over 200k from the Nostrop Factory back into my account, but I will instead keep the money on station and use it to buy the bomber I need, with a little bit of luck I may even be able to buy a second hand bomber for a very good price, if not that’s a 6 mill + lay out.

Assets

4x Falcons
1x Mamba
1x Perseus
1xNova
1xBaracuda
2x Pelican "Mother" & “First Blood”

Some TS Ships
Some Kestrels for Recon/Sats

Credit: 824,358

[Poseidon]

Damn. Sounds like it's time for an M8 and some Lasertowers. What'd you do to piss them off?

I guess you could try to lure them into a Core sector or a War sector.

[BankruptAssasin]

Maybe they know im Terran. I hadn't fired a shot at anyone, im still classed as harmless and was minding my own business then this happened. Yeah Bomber time indeed, didn't think of Lasertowers.

Cheers for the feedback.

[Poseidon]

I've lost a Heavy Osprey to a cluster of 5 Lasertowers in OOS combat. I have to image they'll be even more effective if you're in sector, assisting them, especially if you can spread them out so AoE doesn't kill them all at once. Beware the 10 minute deploy timer though.

There's gotta be a way out of this. You might need to stuff all your cash in a bag and keep running.

[BankruptAssasin]

Since I'm in a good mood, heres another Chapter - No pics this time, just text.

08. Operation get me some Nukes!!!

So I spend the next load of hours getting money, a couple of very lucrative taxi and especially Scan Asteroids where I’m offered over 100k a Asteroid, things are going well. I am, able to buy another couple of second hand ships, I have even been able to create a second wing "Gold Wing", these are my Home based to my second Pelican and consist of faster fighters such as Mamba, Barracuda, Nova, I am still short a fighter but I am keeping my eyes peeled for a bargain, but all these ships go 150m/s + with one going 210 so they will act as first response until I get the chance to buy some very light fighters. I have also been gathering the Falcon Sentinels up for grabs, so far I have 2, these are rare, they have very good shielding for a fighter, but are quite slow, but due to the good shields and cargo bay, I see them as a cheap bomber squad, so I aim to get another 2 for a bomber wing, and have them firing of Hornets or bigger if I can.

I have also been getting the pelicans to jump around gathering Missiles, Weapons, Shields, I am thinking of swarm type missiles for the lighter fighters, possibly Wasps, then moving onto Tempests for the slightly heavier fighter, I have also been contemplating stocking the Hornets for their eventual use on my Falcon Bomber Squad. The main Missile I’m trying to stock is the Tomahawk; I need these to eradicate the Xenon that has been following me.

I was searching around the Paranid sectors when I came across a mission to return a Minotaur, I have no idea what that ship is and think it’s the Argon TM ship, I agree and start making my way over, glancing at the encyclopaedia I realize it’s an M7M, Now the brain starts ticking over, I don't really want to be a Pirate, I’m an explorer after all, never killed anything in my life, never stole anything in my life and here I am contemplating stealing this. Decisions Decisions

I guess that being in space alone, away from home and with my peoples enemies after me have hardened me up, I left Terran space as an innocent explorer, possibly to naive really, but situations do change I guess and it's times like these that decisions need to be made. It's at times like these that really show a man who he really is, I’ve decided I’m going to steal the ship, hide it and let the Cops come after me, but I have a plan for the Cops, and I hope I don't have to even shoot my laser.

I guess I was so overjoyed that I forgot I simply can't just jump out and claim it, I need my Marines, am I glad I got these boys? Hell yea. So I order my Pelican, the only ship with a Jump Drive over to the Marine Base, pick up 5 Marines and jump to Clarity’s end, I get in the ship an make my move, I try to launch the Marines out, nothing happens, I get message saying the Pelican can't launch marines, quick glance at the mission clock, 15 minutes left, I need to get more E-cells, transfer my marines, jump drive & E-cells to my toucan, then jump back to Clarity's end, and come across half the sector in a damaged ship that does 33 top speed, I guess my luck is up, just as I reach the marine base, I get a message saying I failed the mission - typical, I decide to turn rogue (for the benefits of the people of course and not for self gain you see) well that’s what I told myself, but lady luck would have it differently, I guess there’s always next time.

I was still a little upset that I wasn't able to get that Minotaur, I mean its 50 million credits to buy and I thought I could steal it, but as luck would have it didn't happen. I was drowning my sorrows in a pirate station when a young Split walked up to me, his name was S'hot T'Sht which I found quite amusing, he didn't, and being as I was on a station full of his fellow pirate friends I decide not to provoke him any further.

He said that he heard along the grape vine that I failed a ship recovery mission, he also said that he knew what I was really planning to do with it, something about a Pirates Initiative, off course I denied everything, but he give me some advice anyway,

"Pirate to Pirate, 5 marines would not have been enough, You would have to be very lucky to capture such a ship with just 5 Marines, instead you should try with 10 to see how it goes next time."

"Thanks for that, I will bear that in mind the next time I’m offered a chance to steal a ship"

He also mentioned that it would be a good idea in the future, that if I was to capture a live target and not an abandoned husk like before then I should keep the shields suppressed and weapons trained on something other than the Marines,

"Off course boarding ops are much easier if you have an M7M, boarding pods & enough marines” he said then laughed.

I laughed too, laughed at my bad luck, laughing at the thought of me trying to steal a ship & laughing at the fact that 2 days ago I was just an innocent explorer who hadn't left Terran space and only read about the Commonwealth races through doctored books, and now here I am sitting in a bar with a Pirate offering advice on stealing capital ships, oh how my life has changed.

S'hot T'sht then dropped the real reason for his therapy session; he wants to join ranks with me. He said he wants to take part in my adventure, I try to tell him that I’m just an explorer and don't need his expertise, but he counters that by saying that I need someone with a little fighting experience and someone who is willing to get his fingers dirty once and a while.

I consider the idea; do I need a fighter pilot? Do I lack the experience he has with boarding and all things illegal? Do I need help? Do I need an ally? And most importantly do I trust him? Strangely the answer to all these questions appears to be yes, and as I finished my last drink, I decided that S'hot T'sht would be very welcome to join me. Now it's just a little matter of what ship to give him. Being a Split and only wanting to fly split ships he has his eye on a mamba, and as luck would have it I have a Mamba as the leader of Gold wing, perfect coincidence, I just hope his name is not some kind of Omen.

[BankruptAssasin]

Work schedule has been a bit busier this week or so, i will have 2 chapters to post later on tonight i hope. Strats getting a little bit more interesting in a few chapters time and you can maybe see where im going with it, I think i have started something that may not have been done before in DiD but then again i have not read everyones - will have to wait and see.

[Poseidon]

Looking forward to it. Don't worry about being super-unique; do it anyway. If it is unique, awesome! If not, just make sure to have fun.

[BankruptAssasin]

Thanks Poseidon, i am having more fun now than i was earlier in the game, im about 5 chapters ahead of these two so will you will see where im going to from about then.

09. It's all a game of chance

With S'hot T'sht safely on board his shiny new Mamba (Little does he know that he is at least the 3rd owner) and it all kitted out, he is ready for action as leader of gold wing, to his dismay though there is no action for him to be had simply as I don't fancy starting a war while I’m still in a ship class lower than M6 thanks to my awesome firing skills, so from the pirate station he docks in the Pelican and awaits for orders, at least I’m not paying him to sit and do nothing as I think giving him a multimillion dollar ship is worth more than enough in wages.

I was given another return ship mission, I’m not overly keen on these as the time limits are usually not enough and the ships are usually miles away with little hull, this one was no different, but I accepted anyway, mainly because it was a M8 Bomber - Gladiator, these argons sure do love to tempt me with such things don't they? I got the bomber easily enough and docked it to keep it safe, I jumped to Scale Plate Green to initiate my previous plan of making the police follow through X-347 - use the Xenon to my aid for a change, but no one showed up, I waited ages and nothing, surely they would send someone?

I finally think lady luck has smiled on me today, that’s about 6 mill I have saved right there, I order the Gladiator to dock at PTNI Shipyard for repairs, shortly after I get a message, "Your Gladiator was destroyed in sector..... by Boron Police Octubus" I guess the Boron got word from the Argons about a stolen Gladiator, they wiped it out, Ha, Lady luck smiling on me, was always going to be too good to be true wasn't it? But being pessimistic there is always the chance to be pleasantly surprised.

Just after the Gladiator was destroyed, I was offered another return ship, this time a Viper M8 Bomber, this time I would stay in sector and let the Cops follow me from there. Once the Viper was safely docked I let the timer run out, and low and behold a single Octopus turns up, I can probably easily enough kill him myself, if I could shoot right but I see an opportunity I can't miss, the Khaak are in the sector, I get the Octopus to follow me toward them, they all split up and all of a sudden the octopus is getting hit with Kyon emitters, luckily I’m too fast and stay safe, so I now have a banged up Viper, but it's not all good, I can’t get him out of the sector due to the khaak problem I just created. I have no use for the Viper just yet as that Xenon Fleet that has been following me everywhere has now vanished, I wonder if they have been destroyed. Or have they finally given up? Time will tell

After the success of the Viper, even without rep loss, or at least not enough to tell me, I get another return ship mission, this time S'hot T'sht pipes up

"This is what we want, remember what I said earlier, 10 Marines will do the trick, and it won't even be shielded, this is easy pickings"

It's a Demios - How did the Paranid captain misplace this thing? It reminds me of that Earth programme Red Dwarf where they misplaces the Red Dwarf, the captain must have parked it up against a Planet and then thought

"They're all the same, those blue and green planetoids. Blue, green and planetoidy!"

Well their loss hopefully my gain. I jump the Pelican to the Marine Barracks, transfer the Jump drive, and load up the marines, they have been in training for a while now and all seem pretty decent in their respective fields, each of them have 2* in either Hacking, Engineering & Mechanical plus have at least 2* fighting, so with the marines on board, me listening to S'hot Test I reach the Deimos in short order, 20 minutes to go, this should be a cake walk.

Marines away, the music starts, the excitement of watching my marines move towards their first target gets me, me and S'hot Test grinning like big fools when yet again I am foiled, I get a message from the marines saying the Hull is to thick and I have to go pick them up, I re-launch them hoping they were unlucky when I get the same message, I look at S'hot Test and wonder why he didn't mention having marines trained to do this mission, he tries to deny that it's his fault

"I told ya what equipment was needed, the amount of marines needed, it's not my fault you hired a bunch of morons" he said

"I have zero experience of this kind of thing, as evidenced with the last ship, as you pointed out clearly I needed 10 marines, not 10 highly trained marines" I said

Before he has a chance to reply I get a message that I failed the mission, one more glance at S'hot T'sht and another up to the sky and shake my head,

"I guess it's just a game of chance"

[BankruptAssasin]

10. I grind like Tony Hawks

It's times like these that being a captain can really test you, it's all well and good getting into battles and being the hero every once and a while, going against an overwhelming number of enemies and seeing the light at the other end, but the real test for any captain is keeping the morale of his crew high when you have to grind out hours of boring Taxi & Asteroid scan missions. The only thing that seems more boring is the constant admin work once you add new ranks and weapons; the only thing that keeps us going is the prospect of eventually striking it lucky.

After a large number of missions, I decided I would explore the area a little more, you know do the thing that I was supposed to do in the first place. It turns out that S'hot T'sht is actually very good friends with the Yaki Pirates and has asked me to bring him there to meet up with a few of his friends, being as there is little to do in the areas I have found so far I agree and set course for Savage Spur - The first Yaki sector, S'hot T'sht says it's like no other sector and that I will have to wait until I arrive to see.

On the way there, I decide that I will look for missions at each of the sectors and only accept the more lucrative ones, I feel our reputation with each of the races is high enough to demand certain fees for certain missions, the only race that seems to be paying badly are those Paranids, continually paying low fees for very hard missions and calling me names even before I reject them, I think I have a nemesis now. The only real problem is that most of the sectors from Great Trench over are Paranid so I don't envision making much money.

Remember I said something earlier about being pessimistic and then getting a surprise? well I was in for one hell of a surprise, a return ship mission, this time an Ares - I was so determined that I would not be caught off guard again, I somehow had the foresight to have 3 Marine teams, 2 will be in training at all times and I will have 1 free to do these kind of missions. The ship was 2 sectors away, plenty of time left on the clock, Marines on their way to the sector now.

Well like the last chapter, it's just a game of chance. The Express turned up, I hoped over to it and made my way to the Ares, 45% Hull, not in the best shape and certainly in my current state of affairs credit wise not repairable. I send the team over, 10 Marines, off course not all can board but it's better to send extra or so S'hot T'sht says, this time the Marines get through and then all hell breaks loose. I scanned the ship beforehand, No Marines, No defence systems and nothing of value on board and yet half of the Marines are dead, despite this the marines make it to the third deck, not far to go, but then they all bail out, something about hull integrity being too unstable, A quick look at the Ares and it's down to 4%, I guess that was a bad team to send in.

I head on to Yaki Space, going though Savage Spur is a little scary in a rocket ship, a lot of roids around and one false move and it's all over, plus when the Paranids send in a Deimos and a few fighters then space is a premium, The Yaki are Blue to me, but they giving those Paranids some hell, I guess they called them unholy ones too and didn't take it too well, at least I’m not the only one will beef against the Nids.

I make it through to Senator Badlands, not much here at all other than a Shipyard, we dock and S'hot T'sht wanders off to the bar, with nothing really to do I join him. He talks to some Yaki who know him well, they seem cold to me but not hostile, not very good hosts but when you consider these are the most feared pirates in the Universe, not being killed and skinned is as good as it's going to get, but we do seem to have common ground, the Paranids. They tell me about how they regularly raid the Paranid sectors looking for anything valuable to steal, they offer me a simple mission, to scan any freight ships for anything of value and that I would get 4% of the total value. Sounds easy enough, but not much ships seem to get through Savage Spur and I don't have a license for Paranid Sectors so I turn it down.

Apparently the Yaki have been growing their numbers, they seem to have a large fleet of ships and have been planning more and more raids over the next few months to statically hit core & border sectors that are thin on sector defence, I was surprised that they were so open to me about it, but in the other hand who was I going to tell? And what could I do anyway; no-one knew when and where the Yaki would strike so by bragging to us seemed to be as safe as keeping quiet. They went on to tell me about their ships, a few if not all interested me.

The Ryu for instance, it holds a massive amount of cargo, but it can hold 12 fighters in its cargo bay, that’s like a mini carrier for half the price. Still 20m Credits though, and still way out of my reach.

The Tonbo - a quick M4, has good shields and decent cargo bay and can hold m class cargo - this sounds like an awesome chance to try something that I have been thinking for a while - a wing of fighters that have 100% missile launch but I needed quick ships and good shields which until now I didn't have - this could make my plans for the wing of Falcon Sentinels obsolete, I’m sure I can use them for something else though.

A few of their fighters like the Susanowa, Tenjin caught my eye but their Destroyer at a whopping 108.2m the Akuma made me stop and think - how the Pirates managed to acquire a Destroyer is beyond me, but I’m sure glad I’m on their side, I wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of that Destroyer or any of their fighters come to think about it.

With not much happening in the Yaki home base, we decide to head back the way we came, I was able to give a Yaki a lift to another base which increased my rep from 0-1. On our way back we took a detour towards Argon Prime, apparently there is jump drives available to buy and as I have not came across one station that stocks them, I’m going to have a look, only having 1 jump drive is a little bit of an issue, especially when trying to organise a boarding party, upon arriving in Home of light I see the rumour was true, the Terracorp Station stocks them and are willing to sell me them. As I can only hold one Jump-drive at a time, I order my Pelican to jump to us, then order Gold wing to dock and buy up 4 extra jump drives, these will be spread out across the fleet, a couple more jumps and hopefully most of the ships that I need to jump will be able to quickly. With that happening I dock at Terracorp and see what’s what.

[Poseidon]

A side thought about ship return missions, since you apepar to be turning pirate... I accidentally stumbled on a technique that served me fairly well. If you can't return the ship in time, and you're not interested in capping it, or your cap failed and you still have time... dock it at a Shipyard and sell it. May as well get some credits out of it, if they're just going to destroy it.

Good times! Looking forward to the war on the Paranid.

[Song Of Obsidian]

Or you can dock it somewhere(equipment dock preferable), take shields and a jumpdrive to it, and jump it around to places that force the pursuing police forces to travel through Xenon space Not that I've ever done that, of course...

[BankruptAssasin]

All in good time Poseidon, All in good time. To be honest these hijacking failures have been down to my laziness to get it sorted but i will get there in the end.

Obsidian - Have you somehow read my future chapters already, i need to check my Laptop for tresspassers. The Xenon can come in handy whenever it suits them. as do the Khaak.

Glad your enjoying it so far, it does get interesting shortly and ive even started sone Plots so Spoiler Alert, although im surr most people reading this have completed all thr plots etc loads of times before me anyway. i have only ever done the Terran and Final Fury but cheated my way through, this time will be different.

[Poseidon]

I may have to tune out for a bit, then. My DiD is my first time through the AP plots. I'll be certain to catch up afterwards though.

[BankruptAssasin]

mine is in TC so i dunno if tht affects ur game.

[Song Of Obsidian]

I claim innocence of all charges of foul play in regards to your laptop.

[BankruptAssasin]

[Poseidon]

mine is in TC so i dunno if tht affects ur game.

Ahh. No, I can read TC, just not AP. :-p

[BankruptAssasin]

11. Pirate Bay Rules

Not much happening in the world of Home of Light, except another return ship mission, this time it's a Peregrine Bomber, still struggling to arm and shield the Viper "Tag Ur It" I decide I want to keep this one because what’s better than having 1 nuclear chucking ship? More than 1. A quick claim and transfer of Jump drive from the Pelican and the Peregrine is safely aboard the Shipyard in Ianamus Zura beside his brother. Off course the argon are not too happy about this and report the ship stolen to the Police.

I dock in the Pelican and order him to drop me off in Two Grand, I want to start stocking Missiles and Ammo and shields when I can. I even managed to buy 2 second-hand Dolphin Haulers "Ammo Boat" & "Boom Boom" these are in a bad way, only something like 30% hull on the 2 of them, but they will be docked up the entire time at a solar power plant. Why a solar power plant of all places you ask?

Well I have my Jump drive ships jumping around the area collecting the goodies I want, then jumping back to unload them once they full, so I may as well kill 2 birds with 1 stone as they are going to run out of E-cells at some point and it may as well be when they dropping of the goods. Simples.

Another grind later and I get a Return my Heavy Centaur mission - I have spent a lot of money training up my marines, only buying good fighters as I hope to keep them for as long as possible this time after spending so much on training. I jump to the area, the Plan is to get the express as close as possible then send in 10 marines, and it goes something like this....

- Connection made
- Cutting Hull
- Fighting,
- Deck 1 cleared - 1 Marine Lost
- Deck 2 Cleared
- Deck 3 Cleared 2 Marines down

It's at this point I start to panic, 3 Marines down, 2 more to go,

- Hacking
- Ship Computer Transferred

Woohoo - My first Capital ship and my god isn't she a beauty.

I get a message - transfer ship back to Omicron Lyrae - Ha Yeah right; you’re not getting this baby back. Another Jump drive transferred along with E-cells and the Heavy Centaur is sent to PTNI shipyard to await repairs - Which is going to be quite costly - 58% Hull = too damn much to repair = too many hours grinding it out but needs must and I really need to be in a capital ship.

This is two ships I have stole in a matter of hours from the Argons, as you can expect I lost some rep and my license, but still level 8 so won’t be too long before I increase that again. I fly back to PTNI and check out the ship, it needs

- 4 x 200mj Shields - Check
- 6 x Cigs - Half Check
- PRGs for Turrets - Check
- Plus upgrades for speed etc - Can’t move from shipyard, the Rozzers are looking me
- Oh and needs its hull repaired - Not even close to a check

So all in all a great day for us so far, an extra Bomber and a good M6, plenty of jump drives, plenty of ammo, plenty of guns, but now it’s time for some more grinding so I can repair that ship and get out of this Kestrel.

Quick Tip - Honestly, if you have the money and ships, buy as much Jump drives as possible - the way I did it by using a wing docked in my Pelican saved me loads of time and effort and I was able to quickly move a Bomber and M6 to safety.

A long time later and over 10 million credits later I am sitting in my New Heavy Centaur - Completely fixed and upgraded. The Xenon helped sort out the SINGLE police discoverer for me so I’m still put down as harmless, why kill if you can get something else to do it?

It's at this time I get a message from home, I have been asked to return to Uranus and speak to a Lt. Plinther regarding some Xenon attacks, I guess they have been watching me or something and found out about the Xenon fleets following me everywhere, maybe they want to debrief me. I speak to S'hot T'sht about the message, he wanted to come along as part of my wing, but I wasn't 100% sure that the Terran Military would look to kindly at a Pirate coming into their sector, so I suggested that he look after the bombing section of our fleet and try to source some tomahawks - I haven't seen that J or his followers about anywhere for a while but I’m sure I will need these soon, it's suffice to say that he was not best pleased with being a transporter and I think he is looking to jump ship, I may have to do something to persuade him to stay but for now I’m being brought back to Uranus about the Xenon I have a bad feeling things are about to get nasty.

As it turns out, Jump drives are useless in Terran space, I think that is probably a safety issue on the part of my people but it is frustrating as hell crossing their sectors in a Heavy Centaur at 115m/s top speed, it's fast enough for my purposes in and around Commonwealth space, even coming from a Rocket ship like the Kestrel, but the Terran sectors are huge. The only thing to do now is open a bottle of whiskey and finish of Nuclear Slugs Books - I managed to Track down Vol 1 & 2 while in Yaki Space - I don't know how they got them but I can guess, and with that it's time to put the feet up and relax for a load of hours and think to myself, being a Pirate can be very rewarding.

Assets

1x Heavy Centaur
4x Falcons
1x Mamba
1x Perseus
1xNova
1xBaracuda
2x Pelican "Mother" & “First Blood”
2x Dolphin Haulers “Ammo Boat” & “Boom Boom”

Some TS Ships – For Nostrop station
Some Kestrels for Recon/Sats

[BankruptAssasin]

12. Sometimes the Little guy makes it BIG!!

Eventually I reach Uranus and speak to Plinter, he wants us to do a small patrol around here for a while, and he didn't even mention anything about my Xenon problems. As it turns out, he has got his own problems, he gets an urgent message that the Sol System is under attack from Xenon forces, I don't understand how they got in this far, especially with the amount of Terran Military from the Asteroid belt up to here, and Jump Drives are next to useless around here.

We are ordered to find, scan and destroy a Xenon jump beacon, now how that did that get there? The Heavy Centaur makes good work of mopping up the Xenon fighters and with the Beacon scanned and destroyed all seems well again, just a little more confusing. And thanks to my little battle I’m not ranked a Nuisance - Having turrets do the work for me is just what I needed.

Just as I’m congratulating myself, Plinter orders me to the Oort Cloud way out west, going full throttle and even in Seta takes a while to get there, i've to wait for some kind of message Drone, this takes a good while to happen but eventually it comes through the gate, I tag along with it to it's destinantion, but it goes 3 times my speed so I lose sight quickly, but I head in its general direction and see a familiar ship up ahead, an Argon Nova which proceeds to jump out before I can get to it. Plinter Comms me and tells me to patrol a few more sectors, a couple more Xenon attacks in Pluto & Neptune before making my way down to Saturn Research Station for debriefing, I guess they do want to know about my Xenon problems after all.

A few hours later the Terrans let me leave the Saturn research station, they were very keen to find out how I was doing in the commonwealth and how many Xenon I had run into, I proceeded to explain that the Xenon problem is worst than we first thought and that they regularly go on Migrations destroying everything in their path, including taking out my 3 million investment, and then following me everywhere I go, this did not go down to well and I was blamed for bringing the Xenon back into Terran space, luckily Plinter stepped in and vouched for my innocence and that it was me that helped eradicate the Xenon forces and the problem had started before I arrived back in Uranus.

I decide I have had enough of Terran space for a while - moving this slow in these sectors has frustrated me, I have waited all this time to get a combat capable ship only to have it be so slow, plus my funds are running very low due the amount of training my marines have been taking lately, I now have a "Elite Seal" team that have been picked due to 3* fighting and all other skills trained heavily with at least 3* in everything - after the last debacle of my marines blowing the ship to pieces I don't want to take the risk.

I start doing the long grind again and bring my funds up to a respectable level when I get another return ship mission - this time a Heavy Dragon - a quick look at the encyclopaedia tells me its somewhere around 160m/s so that’s a lot faster than my Heavy Centaur so I make the decision, with the help of S'hot T'sht as his eyes brightened up when he found out it was a Split M6, he has visions of flying a Split M6 but he has no hope, I will be taking it over and he can use the Centaur if he wishes, speed is important to me. The only problem I have is that the "Elite Seal" team is still in advanced training and will take a long time to complete; I’m going to have to use an assortment of poor and okay marines for this one.

I order the Express to jump to the Dragon, I hop in to it and set the Marines on their way, they reach the hull fairly quickly, I’m not holding out much hope for this op, and I think S'hot T'sht is hoping it goes the other way after being told it's mine, but I’m in for a little surprise as although the marines are only 1-2* in certain areas, they are at least 2* in fighting and they make it to the core quickly, I lost a few of them but they are the backup team anyway and can be replaced quickly - the only issue being the dragon is down to 14% hull and I have no money to fix it. Everything goes to plan, I send the Police through Xenon sectors and they don't come after me again, I now have two M6 but only one is usable at the minute. I think I will use the Dragon as a Mass Driver Ship and see how that goes against the bad guys.

Only one thing I can do, grind it out and hope for the best. I have been buying second hand ships constantly and making good money on them, they still in bad condition when I sell them as I don't have time to sit and mend a whole ship with one tiny spacesuit laser, but sometimes I’m making double what I paid, so money is coming in quickly. I need to source some more shields for the Dragon and have been sending out the Pelicans to gather the goodies and drop them off at my Storage Ships, I have around 10 million credits and have sent the dragon to the equipment dock to get fitted with upgrades when I come across something I can’t quite believe, and I can’t believe my luck. It’s a.........







Return a Tiger - An M7 Corvette that was made purely for the waging of war, and guess what? The "Elite Seals" have finished this round of training just in time. The Split are not going to be best pleased with this act of piracy at all but this is just too good of an opportunity to turn down and it will even keep S'hot T'ht happy as he can have that dragon all he wants now. Moving from an Kestrel M5 into a M7 Tiger in a matter of days is just unbelievable and just goes to show you that sometimes the hard working little guy do sometimes make it big - that’s if the Elite Seals are good enough to take on a Tiger, we shall wait and see.