I give the order to prepare the ship for an anti-piracy
patrol within the system, while my corpmates does the same with his ship. We are both ready and undock at the same
time. Right outside the station, first a
Tengu undocks, one of the most fearsome missile cruisers in the cluster, and
right behind is a Thanatos class carrier.
With its bays full of both automated attack drones and manned fighters,
it is capable of great things in the hands of a skilled pilot. I begin a scan of the system looking for any
pirate activity. With most of alliance
deployed on the far side of the cluster, the pirates have become by far bolder
and we have decided to eliminate some before returning to the warzone. Our ability to jump clone back and forth is a
great advantage.
The scans come up positive for several pirate bases in the
system and I select one signature that I recognize as a primary base. I initiate the squad warp to the target
location knowing that the Tengu will land well before the carrier does but I
trust the Tengu’s capsuleer commander to hold his own against the pirate ships
for the few moments it will take me to arrive.
I come out of warp and immediately see missiles and turret
weapons fire heading toward the tengu, he has already engaged the enemy and
they are firing on him with every weapon they have. I deploy sentry drones and set them to link
with the tengu’s offensive systems. Now
whatever my corpmate fires on my deployed sentry drones will attack at the same
time. This greatly increases our
effective firepower, another little perk of being a capsuleer.
Most of the pirate fleet switches over to my carrier and my
shields begin to drop, but I am not worried as everyone knows the Thanatos
class carriers are armor heavy ships and the dozen or so battleship and cruiser
class pirate ships are no match for both a carrier and tengu. I pulse the armor repair systems when needed
to handle the incoming damage.
My corpmates tengu is firing heavy missiles effectively at
neatly a round a second hitting two enemy targets at the same time and along
with the fire of my sentry drones makes short work of the enemy ships. The enemy has called in reinforcements that
appear and begin to engage us but they split their fire between us rather than
attempting to overwhelm our defenses on either ship individually. Clearly they have never engaged in battle
against capsuleer commanded starships and don’t understand how to fight
capsuleer commanded ships. It is funny
to watch their attempt to engage us and fail to cause the even the most minor
of damage to our ships.
Eventually their reinforcements simply stop coming and we
finish littering the field with destroyed pirate hulls. Given that none of them are commanded by a
capsuleer the escape pods of their crews don’t show up on the main tactical
systems and I didn’t care enough to reconfigure the secondary systems to search
for escape pods. We were not using smart
bombs so mast of the pirate crews should have survived. Note to self to send a mail to the recruiting
agents and have them check for those crewmembers, they maybe pirate scum but
they do tend to have some very well trained people…..and well trained people
aren’t as easy to get even with the hugely expensive salaries I have to pay.
I scan the system again and select the next target that
shows the most activity and we head off again.
Over the next three hours, we attack and destroy six different pirate
bases costing untold billions in damages to the pirate organization. For each base we have attacked, nothing
remains after we are finished.
Our ships have taken no significant damage and we dock up
knowing that we have done our part to keep the system free from pirates. I give all of my crews the stand down order
and 72-hour liberty. I will be at a special
conference for the next four days and will not need them.
Even a capsuleer needs some down time now and again.
Ranger Gama
TPOG
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