August 12th 3303. Five Hutton truckers are relaxing in a bar, gorging themselves on real food and sipping cool beer. In other words doing what truckers do when not running commodities across the galaxy and dodging pirates. The conversation turns to experiences of combat and soon it is my turn to share the story of the day I lived to tell the tale…..
It was just another day of shipping products from one port to another a few systems away. I had a low yield cargo aboard and really shouldn’t have attracted the attention of the curious or greedy. Just the same the flight deck was soon swamped with klaxons warning of interdiction by one craft from a wing of three ships, as I watch three solid markers edge closer to my position on the ship’s scanner. My Asp Explorer makes for a great little blockade runner but three onto one is a high stakes game that I have no interest playing that day.
I twist and turn the controls of the ship to wrangle out of the grasp of the Frame Shift Drive Interdictor and head towards a nearby planet, knowing that in the past the greedy fingers of pirates do not want to run through the dust that covers the surface. It’s an evasion protocol that has served me well in the past but today is a different day. My pursuers follow me into the planet’s gravity well as I attempt to keep the descent rate of the ship out of the critical zone and avoid slamming into the planet’s surface. I drop out of supercruise and start my orbital glide at break neck speed, hurtling towards the ground in the same way that sperm whales generally don’t.
The flight suite strains to offset the g-force that my flight path is exerting on my seemingly fragile body and I juggle between tracking the other ships, keeping my ship off the deck and finding some geographic structure that would even the odds. My mind takes this opportunity to wander, because now is the perfect opportunity to expand the scope of the tasks at hand, and recalls a combat flight school or entertainment video (it get’s blurry around the edges of fact or fiction) recommending using ground cover. I glance a natural trench formation off to the port side and turn the ship harshly in a hope to put some rock between my Asp and the persistent foe.
Exiting the glide the afterburners are engaged and a chaotic ballet ensues as I steer the Asp through random weaving maneuvers, grasping madly for the shelter of the trench. Suddenly the ground beneath me drops away as if indicating a readiness to eat my ship and I whole. Cover awaits and my pursuers realize my strategy and let loose beams which burn bright blue where they intersect with my shields. Maintaining power to systems and engines I plunge into the canyon, hugging the surface when concentration allows and avoiding outright crashing when it doesn’t.
Adrenalin pumps around my body as I dart around corners hoping to circumnavigate the planet in the shelter of the canyon. But it’s not to be and my luck runs out about the same time as the canyon wall comes to an abrupt end, and I’m hurled onto the target range that is the open surface of the planet. My ship whirls wildly as I attempt to keep the weakened shields from impacting with the ground and for a short period I am presented with a fortuitous event where one of my pursuers is directly in my targets with a heavily depleted shield, which I guess is a result of not so successfully navigating the high cliffs of the canyon. I let a volley fire go forth from the ship’s multi-cannons and a sidewinder explodes before me.
There is little time to celebrate as I still have two other craft to deal with. My only hope is to boost and outrun my opponents. Open combat will likely see me thrust into an escape pod and waking up in a nearby starport. I must evade and escape the mass lock of the planet’s surface but each time I try to jump my shields and hull are pounded. As if all this wasn’t enough the communications panel is flashing messages from friends asking why I was not sinking cold ones with them at the bar. I curse them for not getting a pilot’s federation license and being here to help in my defense.
Little by little I am able to edge away from my pursuers thanks to some engineered thrusters and some weight modifications. Time passes and eventually the signals on the scanner reach towards the outer range markers. Now is my time to escape. I find a nearby system that I can plot a high wake route to that is in line of sight of this side of the planet. Escaping the mass lock my shields begin to glow as my ever present peddlers of fear attempt to intercept my escape vector. My hull begins to register hits but it’s too late and the ship is enveloped by the distortions of light that signal the transition into hyperspace.
The ship needs a bit of work and I need a shower. Three hours have passed since the start of the evasive descent to the planets surface. My flight suit reeks of adrenaline infused perspiration and a trip to cubicle 3 is definitely required. The day has not ended in an escape pod and the Asp has another tale to tell.
