Hometown Upgrade

One good thing was that the helmets were destined for Eyron. I would be able to check out the new scientific base that I forked out for. Hopefully they feel gracious enough to upgrade my ship a level or two.

Unfortunately it was me that upgraded THEIR ship .. err, base. One of the reasons to put a new base in this sector is to prevent Dominator attacks as well as having a close point to drop off both Dominator equipment (to the science centre) and nodes (to the ranger base). They didn't seem to have any weapons to defend themselves, so since I still had money to burn I helped upgrade their defenses with a couple of Lezkas from the trade quarter. Why didn't they just commandeer them? *shrug*


Word reached us that an attack was planned on the Mencar system, leaving in 30 days from here at Eyron. Too short a time to make a trade jump, so I tooled around hunting asteroids for pleasure.

We jumped as one to the occupied Mencar system. 10 ships in all with me as the only Ranger. We managed to down a couple with my personal tally increasing by 2, but as the urguats game way to capital ships the table had turned. I managed to down another tiny one, but the static on the airwaves indicated I was the last man standing. I made it to the waypoint for a hasty exit leaving a trail of angry hornets buzzing in displeasure at our "poking the nest".


I'd picked up about 50 nodes, but no alien equipment to proffer to the Science Centre. We lacked firepower and may have blown our aggressive stance for the time being, so I looked once again to delivery quests to advance my budget and experience.

Clean Up the Galaxy

The chancellors of Planet Rahalito had a different request than norrmal. A pirate ship has been terrorizing the Sol System, but it's not the piratic activity that has caused them grief, but that the ship is using old Chinese technology that is leaving a toxic chemical trail wherever he goes. They want him taken out to stop the pollution. I just need the money and a Ranger Centre to cash in my collected nodes, of which Oldy will do nicely.


The trip out through Minnaver to the Sun was relatively uneventful with the usual opportunist mining and trading. I dropped off the spoils at Oldy as well as locking in the nodes. The pirate was easy to find. Follow the smoking trail. Why a pirate would use a leaking ship is beyond me, but I didn't feel the need to ask him, just relied on laser talk.


With the kill confirmed, I hunted around for another task to take me back in the direction of Hese to collect my fee. Some rare artifacts to Regulus fit the bill, but I didn't press the negotiations on price as I wanted to check out how the scientific probes had gone.

Previously I had dropped off probes in Betelgeize and Tallot systems, so I plotted an arcing course through those systems to check on their progress. Both had just turned up some minor goods, but nothing of real value. One of the probes had finished so I packed it up for a fix and relocation to somewhere in Hese. The other still needed to cover some mountainous terrain, so it may as well stay to complete the survey.

The Regulus run garnered more reputation and an injection of capital, but nothing like the reward on offer back at Hese for the removal of the toxic ship. Once that circuit had been completed I was back to a free state with no obligations.

Battle for Hese

Klaxxons rang as the warning spread through Ranger Station Agate, "Dominators invading Hese!". With the new engine upgrade, Hese was within a single jump, so I responded to the call to assemble for the defense.

A scan of the battlefield on exit into the Hese system revealed we may have the upper hand. 13 system defense battleships still remained, with 5 other rangers rushing in to help against a meagre 2 urguants and a smattering of smaller ships. The battle was over before I got there, and the remnants of alien technology were being scooped up by an increasing number of rangers. I managed to claim 38 tonne of nodes and 2 intact devices as the flotilla of scavangers, now numbering over 10, headed back to the scientific base for compensation.

Eyron

Even before leaving Sol I hit some combat action I was itching for. A pirate had been a nuisance while I was bouncing between planets, and he'd tagged as I plotted out my jump coordinates.

Lezkas lept into life as he closed in and although he still outgunned me, the repair droids tipped the race in my favour. He bailed with 1/4 of his hull remaining to my 1/2, but he wasn't getting far with the rethone reigning him in. A few shots more and he'd trouble no-one again.


The Lezkas don't seem to be as effective as I'd thought. I'll need to watch the battle damage reports a little closer next time to see what's happening. I'm confident overall in my ship though, the droids are gold. Not much of worth in the pirate wreckage.


The diversion had taken its toll on my delivery schedule though, and I barely made it to "Little Arthur" with 5 days to go. The secret documents sounded very private indeed:


Our offensive at Mencar had finally pushed through and eradicated the Dominators from the system so the Little Arthur was in party mode. Personally blame the pirate for keeping me behind schedule. Maybe I'd have joined in for the spoils and a moment of glory up on the dais with the many other rangers who participated if I'd made it here in normal time. Antares is still under Dominator control, so maybe there's a push onward to there in the coming weeks.

Battle for Antares

I dumped the luxuries from my hold. 2cr loss per unit, but they'll only slow me down in battle. We dashed to the hangar, refuelled and jumped into the Antaren battlefront.

From the hyperspace exit nothing looked amiss. No ships at all were coming up on the scanner, only a deserted planet sweeping nearby called "Hell". Nice touch. We plotted course for Eif, the Faeyan controlled planet that controlled the sector.

Approaching Eif, the remnants of battle were strewn though space. Dominator ships were now visible attacking a pirate base in the sector, and only 2 system-bound battleships remained. The pirate base lasted a heartbeat longer before imploding with torpedo fire. The Dominators now turned their attention back to the planets .. and us!

With a larger fleet, a faster fleet, and a more deadly fleet, now was probably the time for retreat. It would be nice to drop one though, I'm pumped for some action.


Omallor and I headed back toward the jump point. Only one has us locked on, so maybe it will be a more even dogfight. Who knows, maybe we can give them the runaround until more support arrives?

The battleships retreated planetside to leave us the only ships in the dominators path. Luckily the Neutron star was between us and the main fleet as we tried to outrun the torpedoes.


Omallor was copping the brunt of the attack, so I ordered him back to "Glove", the human colony of Antares. I tried to make it to some debris of a previous battle to grab at least some spoils of war.

It looked like Omallor would make it, but a final shot on entering "Glove" breached the hull and sent him blazing into the atmosphere. The automatic messaging system confirmed my guilt:


A couple more rangers had hyperjumped in, and a repaired battleship re-entered the fight to take some of the heat off me. I'd managed to hoover up some nodes that the research station wanted (energy source for the Dominators or something?), and found myself with only one to contend with. A big one though:


With a faster ship and the Rethone working to slow it down even more, I had the scrim under control, but another Dominator joined the fight to make things interesting. Unfortunately my scanners can't penetrate his shields to figure out how much I'm damaging him, but the repair droids are going flat out and keeping me stable with half my hull gone.

A few torpedoes got through from the original larger ship to slowly knock more of my hull away to 1/3, but luckily a trader gated in close by and drew away his attention. I'm way out past the gate points now, but it's only me and the one designated as "Menok Netset -16-" out here. It must be getting damaged as there's visible signs of damage in the rear view mirror and it's been leaking nodes for a while. Might be a tight race.


Got'im yes! Got down to 63 hull remaining, but the repair droids won the battle. I'd turned around to get a head start on picking up the nodes it was jettisoning. Lucky too, as the Rangers holding the main fleet's attention had vanished (no messages on their demise, so I'm guessing they are repairing on planet). A different variant with torpedoes led the pack and had caught up to me by the time I'd repaired 1/2 my hull back. With the rest of the fleet hot on my tail it's probably a good time to jump out of here. I've got my kill, but it wasn't worth losing a wingman for.

Astaron

Hyperjumps were a piece of cake. Point & click on the starmap and everything else is autopilot. I was expecting stars warping and my body being strecthed to infinity, but it's not that bad at all. Inside hyperspace it's like a glowing tunnel; hard to describe really.

We flew from our exit point on the edge of the solar system to Astaron with only minor diversions to fill my hold with rock. Astaron is another Human colony with an orbit close to Earth's, but the surface looks more like Mars.

Digging through the spare parts on offer I found a lightweight Trasion Scanner to further increase my default carrying capacity. The trader let me in on a little secret though, the more expensive the item the more expensive the repair bill. With this scanner being double the price I could expect to fork over double the money in repairs too. Maybe the expensive lightweight Radar wasn't best option?

The chancellor made sure I had refuelled after my first jump before giving another task to shoot down a moving target. Whoah! Space combat! Awrighty!


You're on IP-4.. err .. robot.


Nearly got ya! (and so did the Asteroid!)


And there he goes. Piece of cake!

Tagging along is another pilot called Orollin. He's a wannabe Ranger, but didn't have the credits to get started (thanks again, Dad). He was so impressed that I shot down the droid that he offered to follow me around for a year to 'learn from a real Ranger'. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was only a training mission.