So Commander Trescon, an occasional acquaintance and drinking buddy of mine, was telling me the other day about his recent encounters in the south-west sector of Chart Two. He used to be a 'Conda jockey, same as me, but after D.T.T Spaceways started building ships with a similar cargo capacity to the 'Conda that didn't move like an asthmatic ant with a full load of shopping he went over to the Dark Side(tm) and bought a D.T.T. Cyclops. Now I told him, the
Cyclops-class is a nice ship an' all, but try getting parts for it out in the obscure ends of the galaxy - whereas the ubiquitous Anaconda can be repaired by practically anyone with a sledge-hammer and a stack of deck plates... but I digress.
Anyway. Trescon was doing a cargo run out of Onatzala, taking a full load of various luxuries, computers and other high-tech goods to Zaxerice.
Pouakai dropped into the Zaxerice system without initial incident, and Trescon set course for the Zaxerice station, deciding that while being mass-locked by a Cobra MkIII off to his port side about he'd take the opportunity to do some test-firings of his forward guns. But the next thing he knows, the Cobra starts screaming "
Here! You're not worth wasting money on…" out over the wideband, and promptly starts dumping cargo containers!
To say that Trescon was surprised was an understatement. I mean, he wasn't even firing in the general direction of
The Raga, let alone having a target lock. Good grief, a D.T.T Cyclops isn't
that threatening! But within a couple of minutes Trescon saw was was
really giving the Cobra pilot grief: a wolf-pack of at least half-a-dozen raiders bearing down on him. So naturally he decided to assist, locking onto a renegade Mamba Escort at long range and blasting through its shields before finding himself in a full-on furball with ships flying every which way. He managed to get missile lock on another ship, but Trescon then said the funniest thing happened: as soon as
Pouakai fired the missile all the 'marauders' broke off their attacks and tried to pretend nothing was happening ("
Who? Me? I was just lurking, nothing to see here...")! Of
The Raga though, Trescon reckoned he never saw it again...
Now cleared of mass-lock, Trescon engaged torus drive and resumed the journey to Zaxerice station. But a few minutes later
Pouakai was again mass-locked by a ship at long range - which turned out to be the fugitive Fer-de-Lance
Terrible Abomination with a 77CR bounty. "Right, I'll be having that!" Trescon declared, and once again locked onto his target at long range and pounding its shields with his military laser - forgetting that
Pouakai still had her main drive running full-throttle. As a result, it wasn't long before both
Pouakai and
Terrible Abomination were within knife-fighting range, with both captains trying to swerve their ships into optimum firing position. At one point, the Ferdie was so close that nearly filled
Pouakai's view-screen, and when the missile alarm went off Trescon thought he'd had it - but suddenly there was a violent BANG! and shudder throughout the ship, and all but one of the Cyclop's energy banks suddenly drained to zero. And when Trescon checked the scanner, all he could see was a missile (which bounced off what was left of his shields) and a rapidly expanding scattering of debris of what used to be the
Terrible Abomination.
"Ramming always works", indeed!
Practice, gammawolf, practice ... and welcome aboard!