jlehtone wrote:The war I see seems to have "advanced" to a stage where the Valhallas are hiding. There used to be some before, but not for a while. It would be most embarrasing, if my modest quest for personal fame has scared those lumbering beasts.
All praise the Almighty RNG! The tide of war has turned. Perhaps it was a simple matter of time. Perhaps RNG. Perhaps the fact that I have left the war pretty much alone and taken my extracurricular activities mainly to Neptunus.
Twice I've got a word from a relative of a victim of a Cartel that I've brought to swift justice. A word that Valhallas are on the run. Just one each time, in Asteroid Belt. Twice I've taken a Special Task Force to action. Twice many (presumably) brave Terrans died before I did reach the behemoth. Twice I've paid through nose for the Teladi for a paint job. (PTNI has that very essential beacon.)
Such victories are costly. An economic weakness has manifested itself. I have a Forge. Small one. For personal use. I had its fruits in store. Then, a while ago, I did pull that Huntington Maneuver. The mow down showdown at oh-two-three. While I prefer Pointy Photons, there were some hammering too. That alone was not a problem.
The Xenon are numerous. There were plenty. More than enough. Some did slip through my nets and ventured into blue space. I was forced to reroute the Xenon Hub to protect both parties. The thing is that the Hub had previously fused Argon Prime and Omicron Lyrae Argon clusters into single stock exchange area. Area that was suffciently abundant to fuel my Forge.
Now clusters again separate, the Cahoona sources have diminished and the Forge is starving. The "personal use" has bloated a bit.
Yes, my Build-fu and Trade-fu are weak.
Particularly in the Terran space, war or no war. Their RRF eats my missiles at alarming rate. I could, of course, reroute the Hub, but I'm not quite done yet. Not with the Xenon. Besides, of the current trespassers in my Hub one Q has already volunteered to join my fleet (at a cost of boatload of missiles and many Marines).
Commonwealth did push into Jupiter once again. Grapevine had it that ATF has Jump Beacons loaded to Odin and Woden in Jupiter. A very limited time offer that one cannot pass. But getting to Jupiter just to make an offer is not so trivial. Bring a host through Asteroid Belt and warbands will be on you. Pull them via Neptunus and the offer will expire.
What to do?
Load the last missiles and best Marines into Cobra and go solo. Sparingly. Very sparingly.
What the intel did not mention was that there were 2 Odin, 3 Woden, Tyr, couple Osaka, Tokyo, the regulatory RRF, etc, not to mention that the Commonwealth push did put some of those ships in jeopardy.
The ARNG was on nice mood and the Woden of interest was at the edge of the fleet. Nevertheless, pulling it separate was a lost cause. The best I could do was a sharp stab and teleportation of surviving Marines back to Cobra. No time to evacuate the ship. No ammo to keep it out of harn's way.
It seems that Jump Beacon is rather resilient cargo. I think it did survive on all "simulated drops". Getting more will be easier.
Time to build. Time to learn the Way of the Fleet.
