AP - New Contact, Status: Unknown [DiD]

[Triaxx2]

Added to the DiD list.

[celem]

Added to the DiD list.

Cheers

------------------------

'Delta-oh-eight-niner, acknowledge'

'Delta-oh-eight-niner, standing-by'

'Proceed via South Gate, commence patrol of Circle of Labour.'

'Roger, that'

The wing of three Scimitar-class fighters leapt forward as they engaged their combat drives. Ahead of them, just off the southern gate, a Katana-class escort circled. As the fighter wing closed it slipped alongside, joining their Delta formation at point. The smaller craft throttled back to allow for their newest member and they made the jump into hostile space.

Emerging into the target area they began their standard patrol routinue, bearing first East and then due South towards the other portal in this Argon system.

All was unnaturally quiet, as they closed on the variety of Argon stations found in Circle of Labour they jinked and weaved, yet it was unnecessary, no fighter wings climbed to intercept, and no orbital weaponry raised issues with their passing.

Man, what a boring patrol. Where were the Argon hiding? This was supposed to be their space after-all, why hadn't they come to deal with the interlopers?

Wait, something on the southern edge of scanner range. Debris-clouds, still dense enough to be recent kills. Some tumbling ordinance spilled from the losers of the latest border skirmish.

But whatever had happened here, they had definately missed the party.

The wing's commlink stuttered into life as the lead fighter liaised with his escort and a holding pattern was agreed upon. The Terran light-wing began to gently orbit the Southern Gate to Omicron Lyrae. Nothing red in system, any potential targets ought to be coming from that direction.

They waited, and held. And held, and waited...

At last a gate fire! The IFFs did their thing, electronic handshakes criss-crossed the void and both incoming were swiftly designated neutral. Nothing for the warships to do here, just a light, unarmed scout and attendant Transport vessel.

The two newcomers headed out from the gate and began picking through the still expanding debris-clouds, the scout swooping down upon scattered missiles, while the Transport slowboated it's way from canister to canister, retrieving some energy cells and ore, dropped in all likelihood by the last Argon Transport to attempt to resupply the stations here in Circle of Labour.

Still no hostile contacts, whatever intel had sent this combat wing screaming South had evidently been erroneous. Or maybe someone higher up was bored, or one of the members of their little wing had upset one of said higher-ups. However it had happened, here they were, but here the Argon weren't. Just another tedious patrol.

The two salvagers finished their work, the last vestiges of useful material sucked into the cavernous hold of the Mercury-class vessel. They wheeled about and both set courses back toward the gate they had recently arrived through.

Back to Argon space eh? 'Neutral' in name alone, the war-zone would occasionally bring forth these scavengers. As a rule they based themselves from Argon territories and returned there with their booty. And yet Terran High Command had, at the very start of the war, issued standing orders that such 'civilians' were to be left unmolested. Perhaps THC hoped they would in time come to sympathize with and even join the Terran war. Fat chance, these two looked useless anyway, the scout was completely unarmed and the hauler seemed fresh off the production line, woefully under-shielded and with it's turret hardpoints devoid of anything remotely useful/threatening.

A gate fire as the scout blazed out of the system ahead of the lagging hauler, which was still plodding it's way along on a convoluted gate-approach, clearly under the governance of an unimaginative auto-pilot.

The Terran Wing banked as a single unit and began another pass across the volume around the gate.

Suddenly targetting computers began squawking in the Terran cockpits. HUDs burst into life and began tracking a hostile contact.

The warships wheeled and accelerated to combat speed, the Scimitars pulling out ahead of the slower Katana as they sought to acquire this threat.

Ahh yes, right there in the gate-mouth. An Argon hauler of the same Mercury-class as that previous scavenger. This one flagged red and designated hostile, viable target!

As the Scimitars descended upon the hapless merchant, EMPC's winding up to deliver what must surely be a lethally effective pass, the wing's commlink chattered into life. The Katana bringing up the rear was questioning the target's designation. Something about his course was wrong.

Two of the Scimitar's wheeled off, breaking the tight Delta of fighter's that had been screaming along like an arrow-head in flight. Looping back around they were buying time to query the Katana before continuing.

The third little fighter however seemed oblivious to the confusion rapidly developing within his wing and strafed the Mercury with glowing plasma shells. The charged balls smashed into the lumbering hauler and swiftly annihilated it in a blaze of hard-rads from it's imploding power-core.

The victorious fighter blew through the expanding cloud of charged patricles and pulled a wide victory-loop to rejoin his comrades. In it's cockpit the Terran was whooping and pumping his fist. First confirmed hostile kill, a big moment for any combat pilot.

'Weapons cold!, Wing disengaging!' came the comm from the Katana.
'All assets, plot for Asteroid Belt, I am washing out this patrol' came the call.

Odd really, for an escort to take it upon himself to prematurely cancel a patrol. Such orders usually came in long-range over the Military net.

'There was something altogether wrong with that, didn't anyone else notice?' The Katana pilot seemed unsettled, what might he have noticed that the fighters had not?

A general silence over the commnet indicated that his wingmates had indeed not noticed whatever it was that had brought the escort up short.

'The red, he was in the gate-mouth right? But did nobody notice his course was outbound and not inbound? He was only 50m into the system, but he was headed South, not North!'

More silence as the group of pilots struggled to understand what they were being told.

'So, like, he entered, saw us and made a bee-line back out? Happens. Red is Red. Red is Dead.' commed the pilot who had scored the kill.

'Negative', replied the Katana. 'No gate fire was detected after the departure of the civvie scout, I think we just fried his hauler.'

'But... Red...'

'Look... I really don't know. I agree, his IFF was hostile, signal transponders indicated affiliation with the Argon Military, computers designated him hostile. But nobody entered, and I never noticed the civvie leaving, the target's course holds with the civilian's last plotted course.'

The Katana pilot sounded as confused as the others, he might have noticed (just too late) what was happening, but he had no better idea of what had caused this debacle.

A chill crept down the spine of the Scimitar pilot who had so recently been looking forward to boasting of his success in the bars of Mars' Outposts.

'Did I just fry a neutral?', he wondered to himself as the patrol headed homewards.

------------------

[celem]

Asteroid Belt - Orbital Patrol Base

Incoming Transmission...
Ref:#210833
Origin System: Omicron Lyrae
Source: 'Celem' - designated neutral

Registering complaint. Unprovoked aggression against my assets in Circle of Labour. Loss of 1x Argon Mercury class hauler. Compensation and explanation requested...

Ends.

:>
:> reply #210833

:Wing Commander Danni Wheeler responding
:Incident acknowledged
:Incident under investigation
:Gunlogs confirm your asset redesignated as viable target
:Redesignation occured immediately after your own departure from system
:Believe tampering with your vessel's IFF systems
:Further contact as information becomes available
:THC regrets incident
:Ends

Saving...
Sending...Sent.

:>
:>logoff

[celem]

Yes. I forgot war-zone OOS mechanics and lost my Mercury. Just couldn't help but make it all sabotage and intrigue for story purposes Did actually go down as posted otherwise, had him following me and he got caught between me jumping the gate and him jumping behind me.

Mercury was bought with the profits of a particularly good salvage haul. Filled the disco with hammerheads (wow those things are bulky), which at 80k a piece left me for the first time sitting round the half-mil mark.

I had started to see some XL wares in freight cans after the Terrans wasted a convoy and had hoped to grab them, also most battle-sites yield far more missile volume than the disco can hold, but lost the TS on it's first flight.

These things happen (frequently since im scatterbrained), but I'l recover easily enough, just need to spectate on a few more cap ship battles from the disco and do some more missile recovering.

Assets: 50k Cr, Fully upped Disco, Healthy feeling of Foolishness

[Sabrina Bergin]

Yeah that had to hurt, but good job on using it in a mission tale.