"Gizmo give me a sitrep on the P."
"Aye boss, The P is attacking wheat farm alpha along with 3 N fighers." That much I can see, get to the good part already "There is no military defences within intercept range at this time." That's it? That is all the info Gizmo has?
"Is there anything else you can tell me? Shield strength? Weapons?"
"Negitave boss, all that is classified level 8 security clearance." Frank! Why would they classify such important information? Frank it I needed a way to test us anyhow.
"Prime to all Dragons. Form on me prepare to engage a Xenon Corvette." I wasn't sure if it was the right thing to do, I wasn't even sure if we could hurt the toaster, but I did know that if I didn't do anything the men and women on that station were going to be history and THAT was not something I could have on my head.
"Red wing we got your back." Frankie replied. Figures he was up to a good fight, he was always up to a good fight. I think he would go head to head with a the Argon One if I let him.
"Blew Wing, we are ready for a fight." And of course Kar'l wouldn't even blink an eye at such a challenge. I was 90% sure that both of my wing leaders were suicidal, but then on the other hand they were just following me...
The P didn't even notice as we approached, and the approach felt like it took forever. I had been 30km out when the Station had broadcast it's SOS. Time dragged as I watched the range finder count down. 24km... 20km... 19km... 18km... 17km...
"Wing leaders, I am going to assault the P. I want your wings to engage and destroy the escorts and then join me to bring down the P. On my ma...." I never finished my sentence as Frankies voice yelled over the radio.
"Here's Frankie!!!!" His ship shooting out ahead of the rest of the squadren.
"Frankie! Frankie, come in Frankie. Can you hear me?" I asked to no reply
"Wil'hem the spirit of blood lust has him. Let his fathers be praised that such a noble spirit has graced him." Shit this was not the time for split religiuos mumbo jumbo.
"Blue two and three. I need you to support Blue one make sure he doesn't get himself killed." Two affermitives followed as the other two ships in blue wing accelerated to try and catch Frankie. Not that they had much of a chance he was already 3km a head of them and his ship's topspeed was 100k better than any other ship I had.
The inhabitants of the Station must have gotten worried about the attack. A Argon Energy Transport undocked in an attempt to abandon the station and escape from the Xenon.
SHIT! I thought as the Xenon P turned it's main guns to bear on the transport. To the transports credit its shield held up under the first several volleys from the P as it's rear guns returned fire ineffectivly. But it still was not good enough. I wanted to scream as I raced toward the transport praying that it's shileds held out long enough for me to interced and save it. But that was not to be the case. With only 5km left to go the hull and shields of the transport bucked and the Xenon blasted the transport apart.
"Damn it!" I could feel the blood surging into my eyes, white hot rage filling my soul. The P turned and resumed its attack on the station. 4km... 3.5km...
<Target in firing range>
My ship shuttered as a HEPT bolt impacted my shields from the P. In return I let loose, PAC fire rippling across the shields of P. I rolled my ship as I strafed back and forth trying to avoid fire from the Ps turrets while pouring PAC fire in return. All in all I was giving better then I was taking but unless I got some support the table would turn once my shields failed. The P tried as hard as it could trying to bring me in range of it forward guns, but with a little effort I was able to keep on it's tail. Luckily my escorts were making short work of the Ns.
"N neutralized, retargeting." Kar'l said after vaporizing the xenon. Two more to go and then I get back up.
"Yeehawww!! Die Xenon, DIE!!" I guess that meant Frankie had killed his mark too. I glanced at my shields and was suprised to see that they were still charged to 100%, guess my dodging wasn't to bad after all. The Xenon's shields were down to 80% but then it pulled far enough away from me to turn and come at me head long. Despite my best efforts to strafe it landed multiple hits with it's main cannons, though I hit back with a vengeance. The exchange left my shields at 80% and it's shields at 72% while i managed to slide my ship back into my comfort zone. Am I really soloing a P? My luck with dodging seemed to be out though, as the Hepts from the P kept leaving their mark on my shields. Slowly our shields fell almost in sink, 70%, 65%, 60%, 55%. Our numbers kept falling in perfect harmony as we exchanged fire while desperatly trying to find advantage over one another. I felt proud about how well I was doing so far but a little voice inside my head told me that if it kept going this way the tables would turn when we got into the hull.
"BOOM, goes the teraformer!" Frankie yelled as the last N fireballed.
"Finally!" I smiled as the blue swords of light began to stab at the P from all directions as both of my wings of escorts turn to attack the Xenon corvette. Now having to worry about fire coming from seemingly every where the Hepts fire at me started missing more then it was hitting, which could not be said about my pilots. The Xenon's shields fell to 50% as mine recharged to 60%. Then it's shields fell to 40%... 30%... 20% nothing the Xenon did was good enough. Frankie hooped and hollared each time he strafed the Corvette, Kar'l roared in joy as he laid down fire, and I just smiled. 10%... 5%.. finally the shields collapsed and our fire started having some real effect. The hull seemed to cave in as blast after blast tore away at it. Then, it's reacter having had enough, the tail end of the corvette vanished in a flash of light, vaperizing everything that was left.
I slumped down in my seat, letting the throttle go and bringing the ship to a stop. Adrenaline coursed through my veins as my heart pumped one hundred miles a minute. In the end the Xenon had reduced my shields to 36% and my weapons capacitor was completely dry. But we did it.
"Prime to all dragons. Good work, well done."
"SHHHIIT, we need to do that more often!" Fankie shot back
"Today we have made our ancister's proud." Kar'l inserted with pride
"Allright, allright, allright" I said as the other pilots started adding their own bit to the mix. "Both of you give me a status report."
"Blue wing, nooooo daaamage."
"Red wing, is unscathed."
Slowly I felt the adrinaline leaving my system and mental clearity returning. Checking my own ship I found my shields were mostly back in one piece, and my weapon energy was back to full.
"Gizmo, pull up the sector map, tell me how many more Xenon we have to deal with."
"Aye boss" Gizmo replied pulling the sector map up to show several groups of fighter still harasing the sector.
"Ok boys and girls form on me we still have work to do..."
(1)
---
The next day found me nursing a hangover in the hotel room I had rented after the battle the day before. After the fight we had all docked up to celebrate and one thing led to another....
A knock at the door anounced the visitor I had been expecting. Pressing the button to unlock it I let Frankie into the room shuting the door behind him. As always Frankie looked pristine, uniform freshly cleaned and ironed, he stood at a relaxed attention with a wide grin on his face. I felt like crap just looking at him.
"You wanted to see me sir?" He asked as I hobbled my way across the room and set down in a chair facing him.
"Yea Frankie I did. What was that bull out there yestorday? Leaving the rest of the squadran behind so you could get the first shot at the corvette? You could have gotten yourself killed! And even worse you left your wingmen behind and out of formation. You left them exposed while you raced off for your own glory. You could have gotten us allkilled." Each time I spoke Frankie flinched like he had been slapped. He still stood at attention but the grin was replace with a look of confliction.
"I.. I.. I'm sorry sir. I just get overwhelmed some times and I lose control. I know what I should be doing, I know what I am doing, but I can't help but... but... well sire i don't know how to describe it."
"Your a maverick, Frankie. And if you don't clean up your act and start setting an example for the rest of the pilots your going to get someone killed." I almost felt sorry for yelling at Frankie, he was a superb pilot with far more kills then any other pilot besides myself, but this kind of irresposible behaviour had to be stopped in it's tracks. "Now get on out of here. Pass the word to the other pilots, two weeks paid leave for their performance yestorday. Everyone meets back at the office in Orebelt in two weeks at 0600 sharp."
"Yessir!" Frankie replied saluting sharply before leaving the room. God that kid was such an enigma, as formal as you could be until the moment he got into a fire fight and then he just... changed... But he was really fraking effective.
"Did you have to be so hard on him, Boss?" Gizmo sprung to life from my wrist.
"I don't know. but it scares me when he does shit like that."
"But you have to admit he does get the job done."
"yes but its dangerous. Oh I had some questions for you."
"Sure boss, whats up?"
"Yestorday got me thinking. You know i have a long standing ban on missiles because they cost so much. But what if we made them? I mean we have some money in the bank, and several frieghters just sitting around. I know i had told you to refit them as traders, but i am thinking that we could use one to supply a factory where we could make missiles that we could then use or sell depending on the situation."
"That's not a bad idea Boss. What kind of missiles do you want to make?"
"I don't know. I am not a missile expert, but what is it that we keep seeing the Military use with such efficancy?"
"The missiles you used to complain about the most were wasps. The ones you called evil spirals of death. Always stealing your kills away."
"Lets start there, if they are that good then they should do perfect for us."
---
Now anyone with half a brain would have bought a couple of wasp missiles first, tried them out second, and then they would have built a factory if they liked them. Today I did not have half a brain. Since the dragons were on leave i was free to make my way down to cloudbase southeast where I purchased a wasp missile factory and had a local TL haul it over to orebelt and deploy it several KM between the gate and the solar plants. Then I fetched the Murcury that Gizmo had purchased used sometime ago but had not had the money to outfit yet. Flying over to the solar plant i purchased a full load of energy cells and then headed back to the factory, which is where I found the first problem. There was no one in the factory to unload it. Really I don't know how i didn't see this coming. What did I expect the factory to run itself? Did i think that since Gizmo was so good at running everything else he would be able to run the factories all by himself to?
"Gizmo why didn't you tell me that this factory was going to need workers."
"Well Boss, I figured you knew. It seems pretty obvious. However if i need to point out ever little detail let me start with this. The factory is going to need workers."
"Smartass." I shotback. I left the frieghter docked at the station and boarded my Nova and headed to the free trade station.
---
"You bought a station and didn't realise it would need workers!?!" Elaine asked laughing at me. "You can be really naive at times."
Elaine was pouring me a cup of tea as we sat down at the kitchen table. Valse was in bed already. When I had first arrived he had just gotten home from school and he had drilled me on everything I had done on the patrol. I had made a grand story of the battle with the Xenon and their evil corvette. He ate my story up like it was his last supper, insisting on more and more detail. Finally Elaine had saved me and sent him off to do his homework. Secretly though, I had loved it.
"I don't know what I was thinking." I said sipping on the tea, one thing I definatly loved about Elaine was her tea. Just like moma used to make it. "Now i have this huge investment and no one to run it. I don't even know where to start looking for workers."
"Look around you. Half of this station is un-employed and the other half is under-employed. And it's not because they are lasy or drunks or druggies. Well at least most of them aren't. No they are there because there just is not enough work. If you offer any pay check at all they will come to you. The problem will be finding someone to run the place. I am assuming that if you are too good to settle down here, then you are too good to settle down there?" her words stung slightly but there was truth in them. "Thats what I thought. You will need a station manager and someone you can trust. Someone who has experience in this kind of thing. And I know just the person for the job."
Turns out she was right. She did know the right person for the job, and that person was Miles Angle. Miles was a short balding argonian who had spent his entire life in factories. He had worked his way up from the very bottom all the way up to assistant manager. And then the station he had worked for got blown up durring the war with the Paranoid. Luckily he ordered the station evacuated and had managed to get everyone off the station safely. Unforchantly his boss fired him for not defending the station.... from a paranoid battle group... with no actual way to defend the station at all. I even checked on his story and had some high ranking manager rant at me for five minutes about how he had let the station be destroyed. Well some people are just dumbasses. Rule 1: Don't put valuable stations on the front line of a war and expect them to stay there. In the end I found that I really liked this Miles. He was very straight forward and told me just what to expect. So I hired him. And he hired me a workforce.
Now that that was done i went back to the station to find hundreds of people waiting to get to work.... first order of buisness unload the frieghter. I spent the next couple of days personally ferrying supplies to the station and establishing contacts in the local market. It was boring, but in the end I toured my factory and was suprised at how well everything looked. All shiny and new with cleanly uniformed workers starting to make my very first batch of missiles. I nearly giggled for joy as the first batch of missiles left the line and were loaded onto my waiting ship.
Now then its time to go test these bad boys out.
---
(1) Here is a video of the actual fight. This was really a crazy battle. I had accepted a xenon patrol from Cloudbase southeast that wound me up there, then accepted a patrol for that sector, as well as several SOS mission that all ended up being Xenon. The P came from one of the SOS missions.
But the be honest, never done it before, though.
)
