A "CareBears" Journey

I felt that slight change that indicated that I was free of the docking tractor beam. With mere thoughts I brought Thresher up to her max subwarp speed on her own engines. I scanned forward and located Dyolf in his Drake, Mayhem. Thresher and Mayhem, that was what we were about to do, thresh them and cause mayhem.

I had been running missions in Metropolis out of Stirht VII – Moon 4 for Chetin Besrelo. Most of them had been some relatively simple transport mission, with the rare resource gathering mission. I had walked into the office two days ago and got another of what sounded like resource gathering for a Dr. Lamia Calus. As I was getting ready to leave the office, Chetin made the cryptic comment “pirates and mercenaries of all stripes are often found in its vicinity. Don’t go out there in a defenseless mining scow.” Hmmmm, I had already sent the orders over the NeoComm to warm up “Miner’s Dream”, my Hulk. I quickly told the crew to shut down the Hulk and fire up Thresher. I also sent an order to the Hanger Chief to quickly install a basic mining laser.

As I finished making all connections and sliding into my pod I could feel the Thresher’s power plant warming up, the gun turrets running through their warm ups, and the drone launch tubes cycling themselves to prep for action. I ran a quick diagnostic to ensure that the addition of the mining laser didn’t really throw off the cap stability. Everything was in the green and I sent in a call to station control requesting undock. I received immediate clearance and the docking tractors grabbed Thresher and added her into the undock loop.

Upon reaching the system where the Green Arisite was rumored to be, I brought up the appropriate bookmark on the NeoComm and engaged Thresher’s warp drive. Needless to say, I was surprised as Thresher slid out of warp when she reached the designated bookmark.

Aura proceeded to inform me of hostile lock-ons and politely suggested I spin up the armor hardners. With the hardners running, sensor boosters lit off, and the primary repper cycling I commenced locking up targets and prepping the drones for launch. Fortunately, I had iridium rounds loaded as the targets were all out beyond 30km. The Thresher’s 250mm Rails were thumping as I set Thresher’s course towards the center of the ship concentration.

All targets seemed to be focusing on me, which indicated it was time to let my Hobgoblins do their work. I felt the ka-chunk as they were fired out of the launch tubes and set up in orbit around me. An instants thought sent them after my primary target, as I figured that focus firing these ships would lighten the load on my tank faster. Which reminded me to check the tank.

Uh oh, the shield was gone and I was already half way through my armor. Fortunately, that was what I had fitted that second armor repper for. I kicked it into gear and hung on, swapping targets for my guns and drones as I made space trash of these mercenaries. The new “low armor” alarm the hanger chief had installed startled me but was a welcome notification, though it did slightly resemble the tolling of funeral bells.

Slowly but surely Thresher’s rails and drones got the upper hand, and the capacitor held out long enough for the dual reppers to get ahead of the incoming damage. Finally the engagement degenerated into hunting down and popping the last few hulls, mining out the Green Arisite, and planning out the salvaging of the debris. With the ore in Thresher’s hold, drones back on board, guns reloaded, and defensive systems secured, I set course for Stirht. Engagement count, Rayne Styker 36, Mercenaries 0.

Chetin looked up very tentatively, with eyes wide, when I walked into her office. It seems that word of what we encountered had beaten me here. Chetin very meekly thanked me and proceeded to transfer a very tidy sum to my account in payment for completion, more than we had agreed upon. I would have to remember to thank the hanger crew that unloaded the Thresher for being so talkative.

As I picked my NeoComm up off her desk and turned to leave she piped up with, “…uh…Captain Stryker?” I turned and just quietly looked at her. It seems she had another mission for me related to Dr. Calus. I told her I would do it, but I needed some sleep and to do some maintenance, but I would be back soon to run that one for her.

As I walked down the concourse towards my rented room I sent out a call for my “equalizer”. I knew I was going to need him if the missions were going to continue like this.