A "CareBears" Journey

My “Equalizer” had arrived. His name was Dyolf Yendor. He had been my friend for around ten months, and in that short time we knew that we could trust our lives with each other. We were a complementary pair. I focused more in Industrial and Manufacturing with a smattering of combat and drone capability, and he came out of the Caldari State War Academy. This entailed a very combat heavy skill set with some other piloting skills as well.

It was inevitable that he would end up in a Drake. His was called Mayhem, and when he entered an engagement with it, that is exactly what he caused, MAYHEM!!!

Chetin had tasked me with going out and finding Dr. Calus’ former mentor, who had been on the bleeding edge of quantum particle physics and artificial intelligence. He had disappeared recently, and though there was no indication of foul play, the payment Chetin was offering me set off alarms in my head. Which is why I called in my “Equalizer”.

Dyolf and I had undocked and had made our way to the system where Professor Delainen was reported to be. As I called up the bookmark Chetin had given me, Dyolf and I went over our plan again. I was going to warp him in to the bookmarked area first. With his monster shields and missiles, as well as his drones he was going to take out any of the smaller hostiles. I would warp to him and with Thresher’s rails and drones I would focus on the cruiser size hostiles and up. If one of us finished our primary responsibilities first, we would swap over to assist the other.

I engaged Fleet Command and flipped the switch to send Dyolf in to harm’s way. Within 30 seconds of him disappearing into warp, I heard “come on in, the waters great!!!” over comms. I despaired of ever getting him to take combat seriously.

As Thresher slid out of warp my overview lit up with hostile indicators and flashes. I was about three thousand meters off of the port, stern, level quadrant of Mayhem and had a front row seat to hybrid rounds, missiles, artillery rounds, and autocannon rounds impacting his shields. He was giving as good as he got. Heavy missiles were blossoming from his launchers in all directions and making short work of the smaller targets. Something niggled at my consciousness about them, then it dawned on me, they were rogue drones, not the mercs I had half expected.

While this was playing through my head I was unconsciously picking the larger targets out of my overview and locking them up for some personal attention. As the targeting computer completed the first locks Thresher rails thumped and her Hammerheads screamed out of their launch tubes and made a beeline for their primary target. I set Thresher on a course to close on Dyolf and Mayhem so that we could provide a more concentrated core of destruction.

In short order we had cleared up the first pocket of hostiles, moved through a gate we found there, and were wrapping up the second pocket of hostiles. We were provided the fun of having to deal with neutralizer, stasis, and sentry towers in the second pocket. What a joy.

After dispatching the last hostile we closed on Professor Delainen’s laboratory and forcibly removed him from said premises. Needless to say it was a noisy ride back to Stirht for my crew, what with the professor yelling and screaming the whole way. I would say that Dyolf and I were none to gentle with the “good” professor when we delivered him to Chetin, but that would be stating the obvious.

Having received the payment for this run, I let Chetin know that I had had enough fun for one day and would be back tomorrow. Time to go grab the “Scow” and see what salvage we could gather from that engagement. For the mission: VGO Carebears = 45, Rogue Drones = 0.

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.

“Captain Stryker….”

Huh?…….

“Captain Stryker…..can you hear me?”

what the?……ooh

I rolled over in the surrounding goo, got my hands and knees under me, and slowly rose to my feet. The amniotic fluid slithered off me as I spit it out of my mouth and wiped my eyes with the small towel that had been placed in my hand. I could not help but think that is was going to be days if not weeks before some parts of my body, those places that you don’t talk about in polite society, were going to feel as if all this gunk was finally gone. This was my first time transferring to a clone … my mouth tasted like old shoe … maybe there was some carpet nearby I could lick to get the taste out…

“….we have your new NeoCom here and…”

“Wait, hold on, I missed all of that, can you start again from the beginning?”

“…sure…Captain Stryker, you are currently in the Egbonbet VI Moon 11 station. You were transferred here to this clone at the demise of your ship, pod, and previous … uh … form. We have run a battery of diagnostic tests and there seem to have been no physical issues with the transfer. The showers…”

“Wait, hold on, you specified physical issues, I am assuming there were other issues?”

“Well, yes sir. It seems your clone had not been kept upgraded. You lost some of your training for, lets see, ahh, mining barges. You will need to run a refresher course to take care of that. Otherwise everything else looks fine. The showers are right through that door. A new flight suit has been provided as well with all the appropriate corporation insignia and is hanging alongside the shower. We have your new NeoCom here. It has synched to your accounts and has all your mail and agent information. Pend Insurance has deposited the payout on your lost ship to your account already, and your new ship is down in the hangar. Will there be anything else?”

“um…no…thanks…sorry to be such a pain.”

“Not a problem, sir. We are happy to have been of service. Fly safely, Captain.”

As the technician headed out one door, I turned to head through the door indicated as containing the showers. Wow, I was really slow right now. It hit me that the technician was female and here I had been standing there in my birthday suit having a conversation with her. Being a capsuleer, you tend to lose that self-consciousness after a while, but I had not picked up on the fact that she was anchored on my eyes in an attempt not to seem to forward. Ah well.

As the hot water washed over me, the events that brought me here rolled across in front of my mind’s eye.

Needing to upgrade my Mechanical Engineering datacore intake, I had “beat” on my NeoCom until it made a suggestion that seemed reasonable. It looked like shifting my R and D effort in this regard to Boundless Creation would be more profitable. Of course, the closest agent of a decent level was in Hagilur. Hmmm, 0.4 sec. Not my favorite place to be, but I figure I could base out of Bei, and just run into Hagilur to pick up the missions.

The crew had Thresher prepped and ready to go, and I got that old tingle in my fingers as I hit the engine start switches. Presently I got the all systems go message and we launched. The warp from the station in Bei to the Bei/Hagilur gate was uneventful, and the crew kept busy with standard maintenance tasks. Just prior to engaging the jump gate, I toggled the battle stations alarm and sent all crew to the appropriate posts. We weren’t going to attempt this in a half-assed manner.

As Thresher cleared jump, I locked the navcomp on Hagilur V Moon 8 and hit the warp button. As we were realigning, my eyes were drawn to the overview and I realized that I had a red indicator on a ship that was less than 5000 meters from Thresher. I immediately lit up Threshers armor hardners and sensor boosters and had the gun crews load and prep the guns. Man, I was definitely not on the ball. Just before we accelerated to warp, the ship marked red warped out in a different direction.

I checked local, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. That had been one of Mynxee’s Hellcats. Her ship had looked small, though I had not gotten enough of a fix on her to know what type. It wouldn’t have mattered. From what I have heard, a single Hellcat could take a newbie frigate and kick the crap out of my Myrmidon. Well, at least the Thresher with me flying it.

We slid into the docking perimeter at our target station and quickly docked. As the crew prepped Thresher to go back out, I took a stroll down to see Letreid Aunared. She had a mission for me over in Anher, dealing with the Angel Cartel. Good, I always enjoyed a good fight with them. Plus, Anher was back in high sec.

After the excitement of our initial entry into low sec, the battle with the Angels was pretty anticlimactic as Threshers tank barely got exercised. We never had to light off the second armor repper, and what her rail battery couldn’t track, her Hobgoblins could. It was good low risk practice for the drone and gun crews, and gave my electronic techs a chance to do some fine-tuning on our hardners. After downing the last Angel, we headed back through Hagilur to turn in the mission and go get the Scow, which was sitting in Bei. Time to salvage.

The crew of the Garbage Scow had been notified as we reentered the Bei system and had her powered up and ready to go when we docked the Thresher. I sprinted from dock to dock and we were back out heading to the Bei/Hagilur gate in record time. To bad I was in such a hurry.

As we came out of jump in Hagilur, Scow’s overview lit up with large swaths of red. There were at least 10 ships sitting within 20km of the gate, and they were all marked red. I was 13km off the gate. With the new salvaging rigs on the Scow, even with afterburner running, I was going to barely be able to squeak out 300m/sec. With no tank, going back to the gate was not an option. I hit the abandon ship alarm and sent the crew to their escape pods. I locked the navcomp on Hagilur V Moon 8 in preparation for attempting to warp out of this.

With one hand I hit the warp button and with the other I hit the launch button for the escape pods. I hoped everyone had made it to them. I had waited right up to the second when the gate cloak was going to drop. Even being a destroyer, the Scow took a moment to shift alignment and commence acceleration. We were target locked almost instantly, and within fractions of a second shields were gone and armor was shredding into space.

I continued to slam the warp button hoping that even if the ship got blown, my pod would still get to warp before they blew it too. Now that I think about it, I think the HUD showed the Scow starting to accelerate to warp and then being yanked down, but I got podded so fast, that I don’t know if that was real, or just a cloning dream.

As I toweled off and put my jumpsuit on, I kept hoping that all my crewmembers got clear. They definitely deserved a better capsuleer than I had proven to be. I knew of at least two errors I had made.

I had previously read something on my NeoCom posted by Mynxee about being in a situation like that. First, I should have found the celestial object closest to my current alignment. Second, upon realizing that the ship was a loss, I should have attempted to self-destruct, in hopes of catching them enough off guard that my pod would have made it into warp. Maybe that is the difference between combat pilots like Mynxee, and her ladies, and care bears like me. They think of these things in the moment, and I think of them after the fact.

Maybe I would have been better off if the Hellcat I had seen earlier had come after me. At least the Hellcats have the reputation of offering ransoms on pods and ships at times.

As I headed down to the hangar to climb into the bright, shiny new Velator I was given as recompense for this, I was already multi tasking over my NeoCom. Time to purchase a new salvager, and to figure out a better set of agents. Going back into low sec just doesn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.