The Black Swan voyage

[Elhazzared]

This is a captain log for the ship The Black swan using the normal FTL game and running on normal difficulty.

The ship: Rock cruiser type B.

The Crew:

Ryla - Captain and helmsman of The Black Swan. A young brilliant officer with a pre-disposition to violence and questionable morales, she'd probably never get to fly a ship so early with her behavior however the threads of fate dictated otherwise. Known offenses include seducing other female officers and cadets. Beating a superior officer and 2 lancers for a remark over her sexual inlinations. Trying to put "a good spin" on piracy... She probably would have abandoned the federation and became a pirate had she been expelled from the academy and that was very close to happen. Her background is mostly a mistery, her home planet was evacuated during a natural disaster which ended up with the destruction of the planet. Severel billion lives were claimed along with her whole family and Ryla was known to keep to herself about her past so anything from the point she entered the academy back is unknown.

Crow - Weapon's officer and chief of security of The Black Swan. A very young cadet who joined the federation academy at the age of 5. Obviously she only attended what was the academy school which was much like a military school. The responsible for such an early entry was her mother, a well known captain in the federation. By the age of 13 she managed to excel in both the art of fighting and weapon's targeting systems. She still had at least 3 years ahead before getting into any spaceship however events turned out differently than expected. Despite a very young age she is even more pre-disposed to violence than Ryla is and being 9 years youner than Ryla didn't meant much as she was as able of a fighter as Ryla was. This lead to many fights between them however despite their rivalry they are as good friends as one could find. Other than that she was a very promissing student with no disciplinary concerns. If anything could be said about her was that she was overly cute and friendly to everyone despite loving to fight anything that so much as showed the slightest inclination to fight her.

Thea - Chief Engineer and Navigation officer of The Black Swan. Another young and promissing Engineer in the federation with a slight inclination to violence however having developed a self abusive personally. She is cute and strong, always fixing something or breaking something, it really is hard to get that pipe wrench off her hands and you'd likelly have to fight for it. Never intended to get on a ship but rather being trained to become a ship and weapon's developer for the federation before shit hit the fan... Despite having a huge natural talent and being often described as a geek girl she is actually very outgoing and friendly. The way she got to meet with Ryla was actually when she accidentaly developed a new gun which got Ryla's attention who asked her to make modifications to her own gun. While Thea initially refused Ryla managed to convince her and while she wasn't caught doing it, Ryla was eventually caught with a non standard weapon and it was fairly obvious who did the modifications however Ryla never admited to it having been Thea so she wouldn't get punished for it. From there on a link of friendship and trust was created.

Vice - Medical officer and Shield emission system's officer. The only one in the crew who actually got 2 different officer titles but really, no one, not even Ryla is really an officer or a captain, situation just dictated that Ryla had a ship and positions available and she awarded positions as she saw fit. Vice is certainly the less inclined to violence on the ship even however she can fight if needed be. She loves peace and is a friend to everyone. Not much is known of her past, only that she has a huge respect for life and a great sense of caring, this made her a lot of friends, especially Ryla who of course got injured a lot and had been keeping her eye on the newest and most beautiful nurse... It is hard to tell who actually seduced who but she was caught in the act with Ryla and Ryla had to step in more than just a few times to keep both Vice's honour intact as well as her own.

The setting:

The federation was under attack by rebels. They came from nowhere and hit the federation everywhere leaving no trace of thei passage. The academy Where Ryla and everyone else were was actually a big space station and not even that with it's powerful weapon systems and shield could withstand the power of the rebel's fleet. Ryla and her friends were off duty at an infamous bar just having a drink and being the center of attentions when the rebel fleet arrived from out of the blue. Suddenly the shields were inoperative due to internal sabotage and when the first voley of missiles and citadel torpedoes hit the ship, panic spread. Some ships managed to undock and engage the rebel fleet but they were nothing more than a small distraction. It wasn't too long before all the docks were smoldering wrecks and unable to provide any escape... People runned everywhere and died in explosions as Ryla gathered everyone up and lead them to an armory. She took guns and high yield explosives before leaving to the closest hangar knowing that she was on burrowed time, she could hear the screams and moans of the metal telling that the structural integrity was severely compromised. She looked around and found a shuttle still intact in the middle of all of that mess but there was no way out of the dock, especially with it just being presurised. She told everyone to get to the shuttle and wait for her while she planted explosives along a wall. When she got back to the shuttle she blew up a whole in the wall, depresurising the whole hangar and probably killing a few survivors in there as they were sucked out with the atmosphere. Once the hangar depressurised Ryla piloted the shuttle out and managed to slip past the fighters down to the planet bellow. It was in fact more luck than anything that allowed her escape since the rebels weren't expecting anyone to be able to leave the docks at this point and the space station was almost destroyed.

The landing on the planet surface was far from pleasant as the shuttle caught the tail of the blast wave of the space station explosion, damaging the thrusters but not enough to make the landing impossible... Still they were stranded on the planet surface with nowhere to go and the rebels would surely be in hot pursuit soon so their fate was already sealed but Ryla was nothing if not persistent so she made her way into the city with her friends in tow and then down into bad parts of the city. With the four of them it was easy to kick the ass out of anyone thinking of robbing them or with other less tasteful ideas. Anyone they beat they promised to let them live if they could point out where pirates were known to hang out.
Finaly they came to a bar of dubious reputation and they imediatly became the center of attentions. $ young pretty girls in that place was only going to attract the worst possible attentions but through Ryla's quick wit they managed to find a pirate who had a ship hidden in the outskirts of town and were just spending the money they recently got. Ryla arranged to join the crew of the ship in exchange for working whatever was needed in it and keeping the men satisfied, a promise she wasn't intending to keep for once they got on board Ryla sugested that they celebrated getting off that godaweful rock in the best possible way and once she was taken to bed as well as her crew they would kill them in the middle of it and take the ship for themselves.

The ship wasn't in a great shape but it would fly. It was decently armed and able to take on a few weaker vessels and once they were in orbit she was sure Thea would get everything running properly. Luckly the exist beacon of the sector was closeby and Ryla managed to slip through without taking damage even if she got the whole rebel's fleet attention. In the process she saw what she hadn't before, te huge mothership which was making this whole rebelion a success... She now had 2 choices, a pirate's life which meant she was free to do whatever she wanted or returning to the federation home worlds and spread the message of what was going on. Ryla struggled with finding the answer but eventually she decided to warn the federation... She could always become a pirate after that but the bigest problem now was if the rebelion changed things for the worse and of course, they were being chased by the rebels and they wouldn't ever stop until they were there so they needed someone to fight that war.
With the decision made the ship was renamed to The Black Swan and they made haste to the federation homeworlds, the voyage would be perilous and the ship would need supplies so Ryla decided that she'd do hatever necessary to strenghten the ship, even piracy as the federation wouldn't know much about it and even if they did they would at least assume it would have been for a noble cause.

Ship's log stardate 15023666 first entry - I've arrived at the civilian sector safe and sound, Thea has been working on the engines and assures me they should run optimally now however Crow says that the weapon's need to be upgraded or we'd never be able to turn both the heavy piercing laser and the fire bomb however thea assures me this problem is not the worst of our problems but in fact the sensors are not that great and without a way to see into the enemy ship, the fire bomb will be of very low value. Other than that Vice has been cleaning the medbay and running the cleaning bots like crazy to get the ship clean... Without enough scrap to meet our needs I have to jump somewhere and out of the 2 nearby planets one of them shows as having a space dock. Since i don't have the fees to dock or buy anything useful I chose the second and further away planet.

A few hours later I arive at my destiny and it seams that here is also a smaller space station here and several ships are docked or in orbit of it. Through the comms I hear chatter about someone needing to take over a ship intact...
After a conversation with the crew we decide to be of assistence and offer our services for a fee...
One of the ship came closer and scanned us to make sure we could do the job and upon detecting our fire bomb teleportation system they accepted the help saying that a bandit has run off with important cargo... I don't know if that is true or not but I need the scrap and I couldn't care less whether they are just trying to steal a ship or have their ship back so I accept the request and they sent me the coordinates for the ship in the system. They'll be coming after us, always a jump behind as we find a safe route or just clear the path for them.

[Elhazzared]

Ship's log stardate 16023666 entry number 2 - It took us a day to get into position for the next jump, fortunatly it seams that the ship we need to get isn't too far away, only 2 jumps but what Thea said had me slightly concerned. We really need better sensors to make a good use of the firebomb which means we'll probably have to delay and scavenge enough for that. I am hopeful that the next jump will bring us enough scrap to make sure we can upgrade our sensors but Crow isn't too happy about me prioritising the sensors over having both weapons running at the same time... Well, beggars can't be chosers I guess.

As we jump off to the next system we are dropped off near a sun... Thea is already crying and moaning about how fire is going to ruin our systems and give her more unnecessary work and Vice is bitching about more cleaning job for her and how she is not my cleaning employee (note to self, better not sigh near them when they throw a bitchfit or it will only get worse). At least the bitchng managed to calm down when the situation suddenly scaled and a rebel automated scout ship zeroed in on us. Why would they put a scout near a sun baffles my mind however they hit the nail squared in the head for here we are, having to fight solar flares and the ship... Our preliminary scans indicates the ship is not shielded though our weapons are able to penetrate shields, still this sure makes things easier but the weapons do get me more concerned, they have a missile system and an ion cannon. the ion cannon isn't much of a concern but the missile system will surlly make short work of the ship if we give it the time so I tell Crow to prioritise blowing up their weapon systems.

As the scout moved off to intercept we managed to fail to noticed a very important aspect, the scout had a cloaking device and as we got close it cloaked and left us looking for it until it finally fired. The damage was minimal as the ion cannon took out the shields which would be close to useless in this fight and the missile hit a non vital part of the ship doing minimal armor damage. on the other hand Crow hit the mark and the enemy was left defenseless. Luck turns out not to run in our favor for so long as a solar flare sets the weapon's cntrol system on fire and Crow has to start fighting the fire leaving the automated system to do the targeting while she is busy... Meanwhile I detect more fire spreading through the ship, I send Thea to deal with the fire near the life support systems and med bay as well as Vice to take care of the one in the lower end of the ship. I'd tend to the other fire myself but I'll have to let it burn, I need to keep charging the FTL drive or we'll burn to death while we are in here.

The automated systems take care of the buisness from here on in with minimal assistence from Crow. We hit the command center of the ship and it blows to bits, with everyone fully focusing on the fire I pull the ship closer to the wreck and manage to salve a few parts from it as well as a missile and some fuel that didnt burned up in the explosion while the FTL drive charges up. With me fully on the cloak over the FTL drive I also keep an eye out for more solar flares. Crow had put the fire in the weapon's system room out and both Thea and Vice put the other 2 rooms out of fire. Both of them move to the last fire out of control in a small room.

Finaly the FTL drive charges up just as another flare is coming towards us. I manage to make the jump at the last second just as the flare was about to hit us but unfortunatly we are in a less than optimal location to make the jump and as such it seams that it will take us a full day to get to our destination... Oh well, I guess that gives us time to put out the fire and upgrade our sensors... Ah yes, not everything was bad news, the scrap was just about enough for that upgrade however it will take a calmer place to make the upgrades so we have to delay the jump towards the ship we are aiming to capture. Still I have sent a communication to our employers saying the exit beacon is close to a sun and it would be advised to take a secondary jump. As our employers want to keep a close eye on us as we head into the coordinates (coughbastardsdon'ttrustuscough) we agree to meet in a nearby planet before the final jump.

[Elhazzared]

Ship's log stardate 17023666 entry number 3 - We finally reached the agreed meeting point and ahead of our employers, not to be surprised since we did were quite a bit ahead of them. Still it comes to us as a surprise that just as we get to the jump beacon we are "greeted" by a mantis ship. of course the greeting was in one of the usual mantis way, by warming up weapons... Quickly I wake up Thea and Vice to get to their combat stations, Crow was already ahead of me and warming up our weapons however what creatures are driving that pirate ship? Normaly mantis try to board enemy ships with crew teleporters but this ship doesn't seams to be equiped with it... Good, as much as I like to fight and I would fight a mantis any day of the week, it would be very bad to have to fight the ship as well as boarders.

Whatever the helmsman is on that mantis ship, he is a skilled son of a gun to be able to dodge Crow's shop aimed at their weapon systems which seams to consist of a heavy laser and a mark 2 burst laser. Still as good of a helmsman he is to dodge a shot, I am good enough to dodge 3 of them and the last of them is nullified by our shields. Of course it's not all thanks to me, Thea is making those engines run top notch and Vice is working the shields to keep the recharging quicker. I just hope Crow hits the next shot or things might start getting complicated.

With the time for subtleties past I run straight towards them not caring to try to dodge the heavy laser's shot, the sheilds could take it and I'm sure Vice is competent enough to have them recharge before the burst laser can fire. My hope is to give Crow a better chance at hitting by moving in closer, the weapon should be carged any second now... There, it's a hit, now the burstlaser is disabled. i take a gamble and tell Crow to charge the bomb teleporter and target their weapon system. If they have no engi slaves on board the fire alone will take care of the vessel... Pity the sensors aren't upgraded yet but we can upgrade it while we wait for our employers after we've dealt with this ship.

The bomb goes in before they could fire again but the repairs seamed to be somewhat faster. The heavy laser deactivated as they activated the burst laser so I was guessing that they had an engi on board and as the teleportation of the bomb goes in my fears are revealed. They had an Engi running repairs. I couldn't see much but as the distortion of the teleportation created a hole for our sensors to pick it up we did saw it and the effectivness of the bomb was hit too as half the room was engulfed in flames and the engi likely to be severely hurt. I am not sure whehter or not the Engi can or not take care of the fire before he dies however I'm ordering Crow to look to no expenditures and drop another bomb as soon as possible in that room.

The heavy laser came back online but soon went offline as the fire was probably destroying the systems faster than the engi could take care of them. I was working my ass on dodging that burst laser which was going to fire soon and I managed to dodge one of the shots but this time we were rather close so evasive manovers were only going to be so successful. Still the shield took another hit and the last shot barely scratched the armor, nothing to worry about so far... As the second bomb went in the distortion showed that the fire was just put out but the explosion of the second bomb severly hurt the engi that literaly went down and I swear I could see him crawl towards the door as a new fire started to rage inside the room engulfing a good portion of it. Interestingly enough a mantis was in the room this time as well helping with the repairs but from what I heard they were really bad with that... I'm sure the bomb hurt him wuite a bit and being as clumsy as they are with delicate operations I'm fairly sure that he can't handle the fire so we'll wait and see. Our sensor can pick up system being damaged or repairs. I told Crow to keep the weapon warm as we wit the fires to cook them for us but if we see signs of repairs we'll drop another bomb. Meanwhile I hope the fire can deal with the burstlaser before it fires again but I'm not taking any chances, I'm putting more range between us and the mantis ship just in case.

I cannot explain what happened but for some reason the enemy's burst laser charged up faster than usual and tehy unleashed a volley as I was putting some distance off. I couldn't use any evasive manovers and while the shields ate a shot, the otehr two went in putting the medbay out of comission as well as damaging our life support system and starting a fire there... Normaly I'd send Thea to deal with it and start repairs but I need Thea to keep running extra power to the engines just in case so I tell Vice to go instead and have Thea run her over the repair proccess over the comms... Still Vice should know a little bit of tecnical stuff so it shouldn't prove too hard for her to repair the stuff and Thea can help if the fires take out their weapon systems.

Finaly the weapons go down and Thea assists Vice in the repairs as the fires had been put out. Now it was a case of waiting but as our sensors detect movement going in the direction of the weapon's room I panic and tell Crow to send another fire bomb in there. To my surprise I notice how much of a waste it was as the room was already engulfed in flames and nothing was alive in there. I can only imagine that the mantis ordered the salve to put out the fires or die trying but still. What a waste! Then the fires hit the bridge of the ship and very soon spread in the otehr direction too, towards the life support. With both down it's only a matter of time till that mantis scumbag roasts... With the repairs well under way I can just enjoy watching the ship burn... Well I would if I could see it actually burning but I do get this warm fuzzy feeling inside and that's what counts!

It doesn't tanks too long until I start seeying doors opening as the mantis fleed from the shield emission room to the last place where there was no fire, the engine room but he dies when he gets close. The ship is still roasting but I don't care, I pull close and salvage as much materials from it, starting with the fuel to prevent an explosion. The results are a ton of scrap and fuel enough for another 6 jumps. A pretty good haul I'd say, now we just have to wait for our employeers to get here and we can get on the way. Meanwhile I ask Thea to fnish upgrading our sensors much to her delight. Crow tried her best to convince me to upgrade the weapon's system instead and as she failed she pouted and locked herself up in the weapon's room... I did tried to get her to be reasonable and promissed her that the very next thing I spend our srap on would be in upgrading the weapon's system but she was taking none of it so I just let her be there to steam off. She'll come to her senses but I better remember to keep that promisse or there will be hell to pay for... Then again I'm pretty sure she'll hold me to it and remind me more often than needed.

9 hours later our employeers arrive in the system and see the carcasse of the mantis ship. At first they powered up weapons but as we explained the situation and their sensors took the data of the enemy ship being nothing but a complete wreck, devoid of life, hull severely weakned by fires to the point that it barely was intect and all the systems completly fried they belived our story... That and we did had a little bit of combat damage but I assured them that this was just a few scratches and our mission was still a go as our ship wasn't compromised in the slightest.
We made for the jump beacon that lead to our destination and soon we were in mid jump. This was a long jump so it would take several hours. Our employeers would be only 2 minutes behind us, enough to ensure we got the full attention of the ship so that they could jump in and move into a safe distance with their cloacking systems as we did our part... Now it was only a matter of hours but with the 4 of us in the ship, there never is a dull moment.

[Elhazzared]

Ship's log stardate 18023666 entry number 4 - We reach our destination and the ship we encounter is a rock scout class cruiser. To my dismay the ship has a human and a rock on board. While the improved sensors surely work perfectly I wonder just how stupid our employeers are. Fire bombs are going to be far from effective now that we know a rock is on board... Still, firebombs are never the less bombs and I'm sure 3 or 4 bombs can kill the rock with the explosion alone but this is going to be far from an efficient trade in fire. They also seam to have an ion cannon and a heavy laser which spells problems for our shields.

As we had our teleporter charging the enemy fires firest but they are apparently relying on the computer to take care of the weapon's system which meant it shoots the weapons as soon as they are charged. This ended up in the heavy laser being fired before the ion cannon which allowed our shields to take the hit, however just as they recharged the ion cannon took them out and put them temporarely out of comission. Still our firebomb was teleported to the weapons room and it was efficient in putting the room on fire, so efficient in fact that both the human and the rock started making their move in order to put it out. Still it was too early to celebrate as the heavy laser fired again and hit us. The damage was significant but we could still take a few more hits, maybe I should have fired our laser first to take out the weapon system's but we'll see if we can manage with just bombs.
Vice dropped her post and soon I saw why, I had failed to notice a fire going on in our ship. Those bastards got really lucky with the hit but at least they didn't damaged anything vital.

The fire is working really well. The heavy laser depowered and the ion cannon fired just as we recovered our shields. This means that it can't do anything else than depower our shields and the fire is still taking care of the enemy ship's weapons just perfectly. I teleported a second bomb as soon as possible to try and damage the enemy crew as much as possible. The human should be getting extra crispy and the rock... Well I'm sure the explosions are hurting him... It's only a matter of time now.

The human fleed to the helm as the Rock is still trying to put out the fire. Being a rock he is effective but the fire is really well on it's way. As a prevention measure I teleported a bomb into their life support system, if the fire won't kill them, I'll choke them out.

Another bomb was teleported into the shield's room to buy us time. The rock went right for it after the fire on the weapon's room was put out butthe life support is destroyed and fire spread again into the weapon's room from the support room. From here on in there are defenseless and I hope I won't need to waste any more bombs. indeed after the fires took out the shields the rock managed to put it out and both him and the human went to repair it... I don't really care for it since my weapon can penetrate their shields anyway. Instead I just monitorised the situation holding off fire. At least I bought enough time for the fires to consume the oxygen to the weapon's room, life support and the hallway leading to it. I see the rockman going for the life support now but is is choking out just to try and get it repaired so I'm sure it will workout just fine. Meanwhile I told Crow to charge up the heavy laser just in case we need to take out the life support very quickly again.

Time won out, the rock can't handle the task before he is nearly choking to death and leaves the room in panic but by noew only the engine's room and the bridge are a safe place... But safe for how long? The air supply on the ship is incredibly low by now. They can't last much longer... I suppose it's a better death than dying to fire though, I've been told it's kinda like being put to sleep.

Finaly the task is completed and our employeers which had already arrived in the middle of the battle contact us congratulating us for the battle and pay is a heafty amount of scrap as well as offering us a pegasus missile system. Crow is of course giggling like a child at the prospect of a new gun nd also reminds me that I owned her a bit more work into the weapon's system. I ask Thea to do it and she seams to agree that is is a good idea. Of course I warn Crow that the weapon's system now will have to stay like that for a while though she insists that we should further upgrade it so that she can always have two weapons active, even if she has to switch to the missles but I just tell her that it can't be done so soon, our reactor is barely being able to put up with both weapons together and I had to shut off power to the medbay as well as lowering power to our thrusters. Vice was less than happy to have the medbay depowered but i assured her I could go in between systems as needed but for now she'd have to deal with it, besides there was no injuries so no one needed it at the moment... Course I didn't tell that to her face least my trip became less pleasant.

With everything taken care of and saying goodbye to our employeers which asked secrecy on the matter we set towards a jump point somewhere else in the system. I decide it is yet too early to leave and head to the federation, there are probably still some scrap to be made around here so I want to get as much as possible before the rebel fleet catches up to us.

[Elhazzared]

Ship's log stardate 19023666 entry number 5 - We jumped into the next planet and our improved sensors immediatly picked up a ship in the vicinity trying to get to the jump beacon we just came through. A quick scan told us that it was a rebel transport ship, no doubt bringing much needed supplies to fuel the war machine. Nothing really wrong with that of course but it was an enemy ship and a fat juicy target which probably didn't had much in the way of defenses. I told Crow to warm up the weapons as I ploted an interception course.

As we approuched I opened up comms and demanded the surrender or their goods which of course the rebels were not about to do. I am unsure at this time whether this cargo ship already knew that we were the enemy who was fleeying the fleet or if we were just taken by pirates but they seam to want to avoid the confrontation and try to flee. The FTL drive is charging so I need to do something about that. Fortunatly we are not going to take any damage in this fight, apparently they have a beam drone and a beam gun on the ship and neither will be able to go through our sheilds... That said they have a repair drone and a medbay which will make the capture of the ship incredibly difficult. I'll give it a try but odds are I'll just have to blow it up and salvage whatever's left.

The initial voley goes well. Crow manages to hit the drone control room with the heavy laser and the firebomb but it is insuficient and then the enemy pilot is actually very skilled as he manages to avoid 2 more laser shots and a bomb. I have to take out the bridge now if I am to stop them from fleeying but this is not looking too good. if they flee not only will I have wasted bombs, but the enemy fleet will surely be alerted to our last known position.

Crow manages to get a masterful shot which smashes straight through he window of the bridge and creates a breach, not only damaging the helm to the point where it's inoperable but also gaining us a few extra precious seconds as they need to fix the breach before they can actually try to repair the helm however the enemy's FTL drive is already well on it's way to being charged. I cannot let the helm repair however that drone is still a problem so Crow had to drop a fire bomb in the drone control room to buy us more time. Hopefully we'll have another bomb ready to teleport before the enemy can repair the helm as the fire will prevent it from bein repaired... It is my hope I can solve the situation on bombs alone at this point but i'm not too confident and the enemy ship already took significant damage. If I have to take another shot at the enemy ship it will compromise the hull integrity which could become a problem as fire consumes their systems.

Things didn't fully went my way, but they didn't went awefully bad either. I was forced to ask crow to plant another bomb in the drone control room after she successfuly droped one on the bridge. Unfortunatly the pilot had retreated back to the medbay after having been severely hurt trying to fight the fire and failing but the healing could just go on forever and he could go back to fighting the fire and eventually put it out. However as luck would have it, the fire spread into the med bay and while the healing would have allowed him to put the fire out safely I ordered Crow to fire the laser into the med bay. This compromised the hull integrity of the ship which was what I was trying to avoid but all the crew members are now severely hurt so it's only a matter of expending more bombs. Indeed that will be the only way to kill them before the fires set off secondary explosions and blow up the ship.

A couple bombs later everyone in the ship is dead but they managed to repair the drone control systems and the automated drone eventually puts out the fires before the ship could blow up. Indeed the ship was left intact and we were able to board it and secure the cargo which happened to be military grade drone blueprints. We secured them earning us an anti-ship drone mark 1. Then we scavanged all we could earning us a decent amount of scrap... On our way out I tell crow to unless a voley into the ship, destroying it and leaving no evidence behind. Now we just have to make it out of here because surely some rebels are bound to come by looking for the missing supplies.

Crow wanted to celebrate this victory and I agreeded because hey, the crew needs a party to keep the moral up... Well that and of course the parties always end up in the same place so I guess that is a good thing, however I don't feel there is much of a reason to celebrate, we are down to 5 bombs now, the missile we found early was converted into another firebomb by Thea which is just another testament of how good she is... With the autopilot taking care of the jump I join the party which was already starting, the jump will still take many hours so we can have the party and then sleep it off.

[Elhazzared]

Ship's log stardate 20023666 entry number 6 - We've reached the next beacon after quite a few good hours of having fun and actually little sleep unlike what was planned but at least this beacon was relatively safe. There was a planet closeby but neither the space nor the planete registered any life signs so I ploted a course for the next beacon. This one is much closer than the last and I expect things to get a bit more interesting. I guess I'll get back to bed and get some sleep, the computer will wake me before we finish the jump.

5 hours later we arrive at the next beacon and everything was quiet so I set out for the next beacon though the long range scanner detected a faint bleep just close to a moon. While I had hopes this was nothing but some sort of high powered satelite I did woke up everyone just in case.

Turns out I did the right thing, not 30 minutes after I woke everyone up and after we had just passed the moon the power levels of that signature quickly rose to that of a ship and it came on an interception course. It was a mantis cruiser. From Thea's initial sensor sweeps we know there are only a mantis and an engi on board. Weapons wise they seam to have a small beam weapon and a burst laser mark 2 which could be dangerous. I order crow to fire everything into the weapon's room and hope that we can keep them down without taking too much damage.

For the first time everything turned out to go almost as perfectly as possible... There is still room for improvement but this will do too. The laser shot managed to not only take out one weapon but also set the room on fire and as both of them ran into the room I teleported a fire bomb inside to further hurt the enemy's crew. the fires just took out the weapons before they could even shoot so we didn't took any damage... Still they were managing to take care of the fire and even managed to put it out so before they could repair the weapons and betting they were severely hurt by now I told crow to fire another shoot into the weapon's room hoping it would be enough to kill them though it would compromise hull stabillity of their ship.
The shot landed right on the mark killing the mantis and leaving only the engi slave barely alive. It also managed to punch through the hull more effectively than I anticipated and so the slave had to start repairing it... I had to order a last fire bomb teleported into the ship to kill the engi which was about the only bad thing about it but now the ship is ours and we salvage what we can.

The results are a heafty amount of salvage, a little bit of fuel and some drone parts but unfortunatly nothing we can resupply our ordenace and that has me limited to 3 fire bombs. I guess Crow and the rest finally started to see the problem that we are facing, at this rate we'll run out of bombs pretty soon and then all we'll have it's the heavy piercing laser... Granted it's not a bad weapon but if a ship with better shields shows up we won't be able to take it... I can only hope that the amount of salvage will be of any use anytime soon. Crow says we should further upgrade the weapon's system although I already told her no before, the reactor is kind of a priority just as resupplying on ordenace. if we can find a shop we can maybe buy some if it isn't too expensive. We can also sell our drone schematic and maybe the missile system. Nice as it is we don't have anything to make use of it anyway though I get the feeling that if I do that Crow might go on a murderous rampage... That or throw a fit and I'm not looking forward to any of those. Thea and Vice are at least more reasonable and would probably agree this is a good idea.
Still our long range sensors indicate no space stations nearby so I guess we'll have to make due with what we have for now, the rebel fleet is closing in on us but I already have a ploted course through the nearby jump beacons which should keep us ahead of them and out of the sector before they can catch up to us... If anything we can be thankful for all the fuel we are getting, I'd hate to be stuck in space with nowhere to go and the rebel fleet on our tail.

[Elhazzared]

Ship's log stardate 21023666 entry number 7 - Been a few days since we set out of the academy to warn the federation of the rebel fleet which is advancing through the sector and taking everything down in it's passage and things are turning out for the better, at least better than I had hoped for. When I fleed the academy I thought there was no way I could get out of the planet but I thought we could lay low if no one came after us. But they came however we got this ship and ran away... Now we're ahead, just barelly even though we are running out of ordenance to fight. I can only hope to get lucky.

The next jump beacon brought me up to a mercenary who offered his services for a small fee. I don't have anything against him and in fact any help coming my way could be good however I don't have that much scrap to spare and worse yet our lack of ordenance. I'm afraid the mercenary just ran out of luck when he ran into us, especially when our sensors picked up the missile system, with any luck we'll be able to replenish some ordenace... At his expense of course.. Still we'll need to waste some in order to bring the ship down. Let's hope for the best.

The start of the battle was worse than I had hoped for, The enemy's weapons charged up faster than ours. The laser shot was easly absorved by the shield however the missile hit us hard taking out our shields, fortunatly Vice wasn't hurt. Damage is not really extensive in and of itself but bits of damage from several battles are starting to acumulate and at this rate I'll have to spend a heafty amount of scrap in repairs at the nearest station I find. Still Crow struck home a heavy laser shot right into their weapon systems, followed by a fire bomb, the crewman there fleed after being severely hurted but there is still 2 more... I hope I don't need to fire any more firebombs but we're likelly still going to take another shot before their weapons are down.

I must admit that bastard knows what he's doing but then agan, I guess he do is a mercenary so he is supposed to be good. The last shot before the systems went down managed to damage our weapon's system and shut down our ordenance teleporter. Crow had to re-route power from the heavy laser into the teleporter as we watched the enemy's weapon system burn. Still as luck would have it they managed to put out the fire which meant spending yet another fire bomb but as the fire was put out the previously infured member came back to help everyone with the repairs and the result of the second bomb Crow teleported in, aside setting the room on fire was that the injured crew member died and the other 2 are now severly injured so I think this will be it. Now to watch them burn as we repair our own ship.

I am impressed and severely annoyed at how efficient those mercenaries are. They managed to put out the fire again and are repairing the weapon's system however they are badly hurt so I ordered Crow to just put a shot into the room since the hull of the enemy's ship wasn't compromised yet.
Both of them died of course and we could take whatever we wanted from their ship, some drone parts, a missile and a good amount of salvage... It's almost a pitty that they had to die, we could use people like that to help with repairs and maintenance however given our limited supplies I suppose this is for the best. Still we are not looking so hot about our ordenance. Thea can turn the missile into a bomb but that still leaves us with one less bomb than before though it is fair to say that we have a decent amount of scrap to upgrade our ship.

I set the auto-pilot to the exit beacon and help everyone repairing the damage. Indeed the ship was looking far past it's prime but then again it's not like it was is such a great condition when we got our hands on it. Vice asked me that we prioritise our shields, while ineffective against bombs or missiles it will at least make us a lot stronger against any laser weaponry. Crow... Well surprisingly enough she agrees though Thea says we should take care of the damage first and think of the shields later. There is also the problem of needing to upgrade our reactor since shields will not help if we don't have the power to run them first.

No real conclusion could come out of that so instea i'm keeping all the salvage untouched. Before we get to a shop we can't repair or buy anything, neither can we sell. On the other hand we cannot upgrade the shields and just upgrading the reactor while good, will not be beneficial enough before we either repair or have the necessary parts to also upgrade the shields. I guess all there is left to do is head on to the next beacon and hope for some luck coming our way.

[Elhazzared]

Ship's log stardate 22023666 entry number 8 - We've jumped to another beacon only to find an automated sentry patroling a long range scanner station. I called everyone in to get their opinion on the matter. We could ignore it and go on our merry ways since the station isn't very likelly to have anything of interest since we are close to leaving the sector but destroying the sentry could provide us with some extra scrap, the risk of course was taking more damage than it was worth... In the end we all agreed to engage it after deaming the risk was worth the reward and so we moved in to intercept.

After we moved in closer the sentry attacked us which was somewhat unexpected since we were still far enough not to pose any threat and we had our weapons not charged. Apparently this might be under the control of the rebel fleet but that's not really a problem, if anything it's another setback on the rebels which helps us but it appears the sentry is better armed than I anticipated. An Ion cannon, a single shot laser and a beam drone. The drone isn't a problem in and of itself if we can take out it's weapons quickly so I told Crow to prioritise that though it seams she already knew what to do even before I told her to.

Things went out just as planed, the beam drone managed not to do anything thanks to our shields but the ion cannon took out our shield and the laser put a shot straight into the engineering. Thea says she's alright but I'll have Vice looking her over after the battle. At least not everything is bad news, Crow landed the shot into the weapon's system and took it down, next we take out the drone and we'll be safe from taking any more damage. Let's hope this is worth the trouble but at least I'm not spending any firebombs, these automated ships are nearly immune to them anyway.

It took our shields too long to recover and the drone did manage to put some damage in after all, it hit the weapons room and some other room. The damage was minimal and Crow said it didn't hit her... After this I think Vice will have to be checking us all and I think she'll just love to do it anyway.
Still Crow put a shot through the enemy's drone control system after our shields came back up so now the enemy ship is compeltly at our mercy... Mercy, yeah right, that thing is going to the scrap pile, it did way more damage than it had any right to. It's only a matter of time till it's blown to bits.

This was barely worth the efforth after all. The scrap we managed to make off the salvaging barely covers the damage we took and of course, the data we got from the station was useless as I knew it would turn out to be. I guess the medical exams were atleast a little bit better. All of us with the exception of me were in need of a few bandages, nothing major but of course, with the 4 of us on the ship there was only one way things would turn out in the medbay... Sufice to say that the examinations were rather deep and took roughly a couple of hours before Vice was satisfied. Anyway I've ploted our course to the next jump beacon and we should be there in 16 hours.

[Elhazzared]

Ship's log stardate 23023666 entry number 9 - Finaly a jump which was less stressful, as we left the jump beacon we noticed a lot of civilian trafic going around and lots of chatter in the comms. We thought to take our day off and relax for a while, let the faster than light drive charge, maybe even have Thea run over the ship and go over the damage and see if there is anything to repair, in fact we could all give her a hand but before i went to her I heard an offer of someone in need of fuel and offering a rather generous amount of ordenance back in the planet so I took Thea with me down to the surface in a shuttle while Crow and Vice are left up there to take care of the ship, I just hope they actually do a good job guarding it rather than just trying to have fun without us.

The planet is an industrial planet, filled with polution from several factories and it seams most of the labor is not very well paid too judging by the clothes and smell of people around her. Normally this place wouldn't be where two pretty girls like myself and Thea would want to go through, especially when we are new to these parts however both me and Thea are more than capable of handling twice our numbers unarmed, let alone with guns... I suppose ultimatly it was the guns that let us go through unmolested and find this shady store which was making the offer.

the man behind the counter was actually rather well looking, probably Thea wouldn't mind doing him though he doesn't really brings that particular interest on me. What was even more out of place was that despite the store outside appearence which was much like the filth filled streets, inside it was rather clean and looked like a respectable place to make deals.
I inquired about the offer I had heard and he told me that there was a ship in dire need of fuel and he had just ran out, however he couldn't say no to a long standing customer so that why he was actually taking a small loss on that. Still I never thrust in the good heart of others, especially others I don't know anything about so I requested that the ordenance pieces were fire bombs which seamed to please the emrchant to no end as he never really got to sell many of those around here and his stock of those had been sitting in a corner. I asked Thea to check it out, make sure everything was alright with them and once she gave me a thumbs up I agreeded to the exchange.

the merchant had a small transport car with a crane and he had an employee load it with our bombs and rive us back to the shuttle. Once at the shuttle he checked out our fuel and after he was satisfied with the simple tests to make sure we weren't screwing him over he proeeded to load our shuttle with the bombs and unload the fuel. After that he left with the good and all we had to do was go back. It took us an hour or so to get clearence for take off but eventually we managed to make our way back to the ship, now all that was needed was to get these bombs in place so i called everyone out over the comms but no one answered. I took the blaster out and so did Thea as we sweept the ship for possible intruders but what we found was Crow sleeping in Vice's bed... Well, both of them sleeping there to be more precise. Although I felt the urge to just wake them up and ask them if this was how they guarded a ship I just ended up sighing and let them sleep, they'd probably be too tired to be of any help so it was up to me and Thea to unload all the bombs and get them into the Bomb teleporter's storage.

Took us longer than we expected but after that we got a shower and went to bed. We decided we deserved some fun too, more so than a couple lazy people so we decided to share the bed however we were so tired that we just fell asleep before we could have any fun.
Later we would be woken up by Crow who said we probably should be on our way before the rebel fleet could catch up. I got up and didn't even bothered to dress, i knew the jump would take a while so I went to the bridge and start setting up the jump to the exit beacon of the sector but then I noticed a nebula just within jump distance. The nebula in and of itself was not interesting but since we had got to that sensor station we knew there was a ship there so we could make some scrap there, however just because we could do that was it worth the risk? The problem was the Ion storm going in that nebula which meant that most of our systems would be powered down by it.

Vice was straight against it, she didn't wanted us to be at such underwelming odds. Crow Of course wanted to go in, all we needed was the shields and one operational weapon and we could do it, also the enemy ship would be adversly affected by the ion storm as we are. Thea was a bit more level headed saying that while both points had merit the disadvantage for us would be indeed too big and that if some ship was in an ion storm than there was 2 possibillities. Either it was a ship in need of help or it was pirates waiting in ambush and if it's the later then they wouldn't have such a massive disadvantage because they knew the nebula had an ion storm all along and probably had a heavly upgraded reactor... Still, there as more than enough scrap to upgrade our own which would reduce our disadvantage but the problem is that we would waste more scrap than we'd probably get from that fight though we were already needing to upgrade our reactor anyway... It was a tough choice but I did ended up agreeying with going after Thea made some upgrades to our reactor.

[Elhazzared]

Ship's log stardate 24023666 entry number 10 - We jumped into the ion storm nebula and quickly found the ship... Or should I say, it quickly found us? Hardly matters but Thea managed to actually get wrong. Certainly wasn't anyone needing help but it wasn't a pirate either. It was a rebel ship waiting in ambush for us, it seams that they even sent those into the nebula to try and find us but as luck would have it they were not prepared for the nebula and we... Well we were still being affected by it but not as bad since we prepared for it.

Aparently they have only a burst laser active and we have a shield, power to the engines and our pierce laser active. Unfortunatly we have our fire bomb deactivated at the moment and to be honest it doesn't matters as much since the nebula clouds our sensors. The problem is that we have life support deactivated since the power still isn't enough for everything. Still our oxygen supply should last longer than the battle is going to drag out and once the enemy is without weapons I can depower the engines or the shields to get life support back on... We're on the clock here.

At least the beggining of the combat was good, our weapons charged up faster than theirs and Crow hit the weapon's ssytem before it could shot. One of the weapons deactivated, but they still had enough to get a single shot laser working. The shield will be able to handle that! Now it's time to drop in the firebomb and start burning the hell out of these rebels.

The first fire bomb did the job, the explosion still managed to reveal the weapon's system and it was manned, when it went in the crewman was severely hurt and the fires took out the otehr weapon but they managed to put it out and start repairs. A second bomb was sent in killing a crew member and severely hurting the other two. I think this will be all for the firebombs and the ship should now burn down... Either that or tey manage to put out the fire but then I am fairly confident that a shop into the weapon's room will kill everyone, so now we wait but first, I will take down the power of the engines to the life support, it's starting to get hard to breath here and I need Crow in top shape should we need to put a shot into the weapon's system.

The fires seam to have gone out but I know everyone had left the room, we could see the doors opening. I think one of them went back into the bridge and the other to the shields. Then once the fire was out, probably due to the lack of oxygen in the room the other guy darted back in and starting doing repairs... I couldn't do that so I told crow to shoot it and from there on there has been no more atempts to repair it. My guess is that the rooms that give access to the weapon's room are burning effectively cutting the ship off and the guy who atempted to repair it is now dead... I know there is at least a fire going in the engine room so I'll just keep waiting it out but meanwhile I told Vice to deactivate the shields and give power back to the engines so we could charge our faster than light drive, the enemy is not going to shoot anymore.

Finaly the enemy hailed us and begged for mercy. He offered a bit of fuel, some drone parts and even a bit of scrap but I told him there was no way I was letting him get away with such a triffle offer. It was the last I was to hear from him as he run into the weapon's room to try to repair the weapons. Crow immediatly put another shot through the ship, it compromised structural integrity but it was the last surviving member dying so it wasn't a problem. After that we took what we could, the haul was much better, we got even more fuel than we had been offered, drone parts as well and much more scrap. Now we head to the exit beacon with a fuzzy arm feeling that coming here was the right thing to do, we didn't even took any damage!