Escapes don't get much more narrow than this.

[Cantankerous]

Hi all. The following piece of fiction comes almost directly from my game. Presently I'm playing a custom game, using the X2 universe and the original 1.4 game engine. I've taken some liberties with timing and the like, to make it seem less artificial, but the story is essentially point on.

I hope you enjoy reading it. Feedback is appreciated.

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Three hundred seuzas can be an eternity. Just about eight and a half minutes, old Earth standard time, if he remembered the conversion that Noah had taught him correctly. Not long at all really, but way too long when one of your ships, with a crew that trusted you, was in trouble and it would take that long to close on the scene. Three hundred seuzras!

“It’s my own damned fault. I should have had Bris and Tlan bring a J-drive from Terra Corp HQ to install on this bird before I left the shipyards. It’s going to be hard to get used to the slower speed too. Ahh, she’s a downright dog compared to the Lancer3 speed wise. Now Maria and Gen and Dise are going to pay with their lives for my oversight. … Recorder off.” A deep sigh followed the self damning words. The hyper telemetry feeds showed that the shields were almost gone … again, the third time now. The hull of the Bandasere was barely more than sixty percent intact now…and Jak knew all too well how fast the Khaak larger Beta Kyon Emitters could chew through even the massive shields of his flagship transporter.

A haze of light, a burst of brilliance in a dozen nameless colors, like a jump tunnel opening in reverse, simply appeared on his left, no more than three km off. The battle tactical computer starting going nuts at the same time and Jak Gardna, smiled grimly and wrote off his flagship, his hands dancing across the contols, slowing the Predator, his bandbox new Nova, and turning it towards what the computer was telling him was a full Khaak cluster…but one not yet deployed.

Flipping the big, power guzzling new Beta HEPs online for the first time, Jak’s smile grew to a rictus like grin. “Recorder on… Let’s see what this baby can do.” Reaching forward to flip a different toggle, the strains of an ancient instrumental song from Earth itself, so Noah avered, filled the cockpit as he opened communications to the Khaak cluster’s M3 central ship. Not a word did he speak, but less than a sezura before the first of the high energy plasma pulses starting smashing at it’s shields, Jak knew that the pulse hammering rhythm of the “Ride of the Valkyries” would be echoing through the ships own cockpit.

It worked just like it had with several non-human pirates in the past…as the ships shields buckled, the pilot, or something, ejected… and the rest of the cluster broke apart.

Fingers dancing over the boards Jak sent a worm burst over the open communicator line and the abandoned ship headed obediently towards the very Cloubase SouthEast shipyard that he himself had left less than two stazuras earlier, it’s computers unable to differentiate between the worms commands and it’s own programming.. Then it was chaos as his single ship matched itself against a half dozen Khaak M5s.

Chaos didn’t describe it. It was more like a nightmare, played on a loop, in slow motion. The immensely fast Khaak M5s danced and jabbed with their own less powerful, but still terrifyingly potent Alpha Kyon Emmiters. It was terrifying, especially with just two of the three big 25 MW shields the ship could have contained onboard. The other was just too expensive at present and it’s slot was held by a much smaller 5MW shield from his old ‘Buzzard’.
Still, what the Nova lacked in speed it surely made up for in maneuverability. It made the captured Orinoco he had briefly flown seem clumsy by comparison. And the back turret, while only equipped with a Gamma IRE at present, was a massive advantage. It certainly kept any of the fast M5s from getting comfortable in his rear. Three down, but four more had joined the fight.

Five more down, missiles all expended and energy terminally low, it continued, and continued. A Khaak M4 joined the fray and then was gone. Jak smiled grimly and juked and slipped from another dual attack.

The dance continued … and continued … and continued. His absorbent undersuit of Teladi Myrcloth was soaked inside his flightsuit and his muscles ached from the tension and from the slamming around inside the seat straps that the inertial dampers couldn’t quite keep up with even in this sophisticated, front line fighter. Another Khaak M3, from the original cluster no doubt, joined the fray and things quickly went from nightmarish to just plain deadly. H fought, and hard, even taking the Khaak’s shields down himself before it was over. Then his shields crumpled under the relentless pounding of the Kyon beams and just before the reactor overloaded, Jak Gardna ejected into an environment alive with death. And as he privately tallied the death count he had inflicted on the Khaak as he waited for his own end.

But it didn’t come. Instead, the Khaak M3, that was even then looping towards him suddenly veered and crashed into the shield of a hurtling avenger…one of the two massive Argon Centaurs that regularly patrolled the system. The already shredded shields crumpled totally and the Khaak ship itself came apart… a very big bug hitting a very big windshield.


Consciousness was slow in returning. There had been a fault in his EVA suit and before the Centaur that had saved him had brought him aboard he had lost consciousness. As he swam into consciousness again he found himself in a tiny medbay with a petite young officer bending over him.

“I’m Captain-Lieutenant Phrane Danna. Welcome aboard the Argon Syrim Defense. That was quite a show you put on Captain Gardna. Eight M5s, a pair of M4s and an M3 that my sources tell me is going to more than pay for the loss of your Nova…if you don’t just refit it and use it.” As Jak struggled to sit up, staring, the pretty, if bald headed, Captain of his rescue vessel grinned at him.

“I’ve got a cousin in the docking tower of the Federal Shipyards and she said that since it was a Khaak ship, even if it was broadcasting an Argon docking signal, they scanned it. It has a full compliment of Kyon Bs and two weird something or the others that the Docking Master guesses are probably the Khaak version of heavy missiles…and a shield generator that while sputtering, can probably be fixed. I’ve been told that if you just want to sell… the Yard Master will offer you more than five million. Congratulations. You can buy me dinner when we dock. There’s a new Noddle Mania on C Deck that my cousin swears is the best in the system.”

Jak Gardna managed a single wan smile and an, “I’d be honored.”, before slipping again into oblivion. Maybe, just maybe, the Bandasere had been lucky too. With the kind of luck he’d just had it seemed not impossible.

[Khaak_Hammer]

LOL



10/10

[Cantankerous]

Thank you muchly.

I don't know if it would be interesting to anyone, but ol' Captain Jak has had a colorful career just in game... it'd be easy to expand on him for further fiction.


Isshia

[Cantankerous]

Twenty jazuras old today, Jak felt even older though. That equaled just over twenty seven standard Earth years, or so Noah assured him. That was time enough to leave a mark, to make a reputation, to make mistakes and have regrets. Ohh, those regrets.

The Bandasere was no more. The ship that had started it all, his old Argon Mercury, and more than the ship, her brave crew, were atomized when the power generator spectacularly failed when the shields had crumpled under heavy fire from the Khaak Kyon ray emitters. The half a mil plus that the ship had had poured into it was a huge loss, but nothing compared to the loss of Maria and Gen Po and Dise Hardy. They’d been with him almost as long as the Bandasere and were more than just employees. They’d become friends as well. Regrets started with responsibility and he had been responsible to them, if not for them.

But his twentieth birthday had brought him a gift as well. Word had come back from Paranid Prime that the strange Khaak M3s power couplings were enough like the Paranid ones in his still dry docked Demeter that he was going to be able to swap out the two big 25MW generators in it for the two insubstantial 5MW ones in it now after all. With the one they'd been able to fix that had already been aboard the captured ship that would give him maximum shields and the Paranid mechanics definitely had the Kyon’s energy drawing problems worked out just fine. Say what you would about the paranoid Paranid, they were technologically gifted as hell.

The strange “flying pyramid” was not a horribly fast ship, like the Mamba was supposed to be and if not as maneuverable as his short lived Nova, the Predator, had been, but his new Khaak M3, the Predator II, was going to be a true beast of a ship. Much faster than the Nova, while being heavily shielded and with the nastiest weaponry you could stick in a M3 classed ship. Those heavy Kyon emitters were tremendously accurate and horrificly powerful. This was going to be interesting indeed.

Jak hoped it would prove as effective against the Khaak as it’s bretheren had been against him.

A lot of shifting of assets and the self admission that two of the Silicon Mines in Ore Belt were just going to have to be run understaffed for a while, while he built back up from the nearly four million credits in losses he had taken since the Khaak had shown up meant that his “financial empire” was simply going to have to be less Imperial for a bit. Atleast until he went “recruiting” ships among the Pirate sectors.

The Captain-Lieutenant stirred against his side, nuzzled him lightly and dropped back off to sleep. Phrane was a sweetheart in more ways than one, but Jak wasn’t about to let himself get too close to her. She was normally a Nova jockey herself and only briefly brevetted to the big M6 she was commanding now and couldn’t wait to get back to her Nova. With these Khaak being the way they were it simply was too dangerous to get emotionally attatched to a fighter pilot…no matter how good they were, or in what ways.

Jak slipped from the bed, quietly left a voice message on the room’s commo terminal for her and stiffly climbed into his flight suit. The auto piloted Mandalay he had sent for from his Cloudbase SouthWest Solar Power Plant should arrive within half a stazura. With luck he’d be on his way to Paranid Prime and his new “recruiter ship” before Phrane even woke up.

Just over a stazura from the time he left his rescuer to wake up alone the Madalay Jak was piloting was arrowing for the ‘southern’ jump gate and the next leg of his journey to Paranid Prime. He felt like a heel, but then, he thought, “I should".




Isshia