As was her habit, Persephone Astrid drifted slowly through the Evati solar system in her Helios covops frigate. She enjoyed lurking in space while cloaked, making periodic checks of space via directional scanner and scanner probes. She liked the feeling of being an unseen predator, and the insights she gained into the comings and goings of traffic often proved valuable. It also gave her ample opportunity to think in the privacy of her capsule. This evening, her thoughts were on recruiting. As one of the recruiters for The Bastards, she helped to bring talented pirates to the corporation, and even more importantly, prevented flakes and dramatic narcissists from infecting the group.
Persephone kept tabs on who entered and left the star system via the data feed from the stargates, and she saw that Warezmy Carr had just entered the system. Persephone remembered him well. He’d been a recent recruit candidate to The Bastards, but for a number of reasons he had not been considered closely. Instead of returning to wherever it was he had come from after the nascent relationship was severed, though, he’d set up shop in the local constellation and had become something of a fixture in the local population of capsule pilots.
Why does he hang around? Persephone wondered. Maybe he’s doing that monk thing where an aspirant sleeps on the front doorstep of the master until the master takes him in and trains him. Meh.
A new contact from one of her combat scanner probes got her attention– a Loki strategic cruiser had been detected.
Oh please let that be Warezmy, she thought. Acting quickly, Persephone redeployed the other probes into the formation of a tetrahedron around the initial contact to triangulate the position of the half-billion ISK ship. After another scan to finely tune the position of the fix, she had the location down to the meter. Persephone recovered the probes and warped her frigate–still cloaked invisibly–to a landing within a few kilometers of the Loki’s location.
“Hey guys,” Persephone called out on the all-hands channel as her ship crossed the system. “I’ve got a warpable hit on a Loki, checking it out cloaked now. What have we got available?”
“Do we have the firepower to take down a Loki?” asked Naughty Spawn from his hangar.
Persephone chuckled and grinned.
“We dragged down a Loki with four frigates and a destroyer,” Persephone said, remembering a memorable encounter she’d commanded. “They’re not so bad.”
“I’ll stand by in a Vagabond,” Naughty Spawn replied with enthusiasm. In the background, the scramble klaxon was already blaring the call to arms.
“I’ll bring something,” added Raelyf, a Senior Bastard, employing his usual understated confidence. Persephone trusted that something probably meant something horribly devastating. “Let us know when you’re ready,” Raelyf continued.
“Emerging from warp in a moment,” Persephone said as her ship slowed from warp drive and re-emerged into regular space. Before her in space hung the Loki, an angular marvel of ultra-modern engineering, the secrets to its construction pried from the clutching hands of the mysterious Sleepers who inhabited wormhole space. The ship represented the pinnacle of Minmatar starship engineering. Resources had been culled from a hundred star systems and fetched from countless bloody wormhole expeditions into uncharted space to harvest the ultra-rare technology needed to produce it. Armies of researchers had pored over the ancient datacores to reverse-engineer the forgotten techniques which transmogrified ordinary ore into a starship whose peer had not been seen in this region for untold thousands of years.
Of course they had to attack it.
“Confirming the pilot’s Warezmy Carr. He’s totally sitting stationary in a safe spot in a Loki.” Even though as a capsule pilot Persephone was technically immortal, the one thing she despised was having her time wasted, as Warezmy had done when he’d half-heartedly applied to join The Bastards, then applied to a half-dozen other pirate corporations, then changed his mind about the whole mess and simply incorporated his own company.
“We’ve got to get this guy. I’m sitting ten kay-em from the Loki,” Persephone said, running through the combat checklist. Ordinarily a covert-ops frigate would not engage in direct combat, but Persephone was a pirate, and pirates were required to do the unexpected as part of their job. “Undock and warp to Persephone.”
“On my way,” replied Raelyf and Naughty Spawn as one. Raelyf’s ship–another Loki of his own–was the first to arrive, gliding into position twenty kilometers from the target.
“Got point,” Raelyf called out as his ship’s warp disruptor prevented Warezmy from immediately escaping. In the next moment the two tech-three ships were exchanging withering salvoes of autocannon fire and their light drones swarmed around each other both like angry insects, adding their own gunfire to the fracas.
Certain that Warezmy’s attention was fixed on Raelyf’s Loki, Persephone dropped her ship’s cloak and targeted the Loki, adding her own warp disruptor to Raelyf’s. Her frigate’s sole weapon, a Hobgoblin II drone, joined the swarm around their victim, taking potshots at the cruiser. It didn’t do much damage, but every little bit helped.
Warezmy angled his Loki away from Raelyf’s and activated the microwarpdrive, hoping to fly beyond the range of Raelyf’s warp disruptor and so make his escape.
“I’ve lost point,” Raelyf called out, as the sudden change of direction and burst of speed had carried the ship beyond his reach. He heeled his ship through a hard turn, setting in a pursuit course. Nearby, Naughty Spawn’s Vagabond heavy assault cruiser joined the fray and joined the chase.
“Not a problem,” Persephone replied. “I have point. It’s passively targeted so he probably doesn’t even know I’m doing it.”
“That’s pretty damn sneaky,” Raelyf laughed as he pursued Warezmy, autocannon tracer rounds leading the way. Naughty Spawn’s Vagabond, the fastest ship in the dogfight, quickly caught up and then easily overtook the target. Bright orange blooms spread across the Loki’s hull where Naughty Spawn’s autocannon raked it with explosive ammunition, shredding the armor.
“I’ve got point too,” Naughty Spawn added. “He’s going down fast.” The strategic cruiser now trailed fire in its wake and was clearly doomed.
“Cease fire,” Persephone ordered. “Let’s get a ransom.”
Naughty Spawn’s 220 mm autocannon cycled one last time before the chambers emptied, and the Loki exploded in a half-billion ISK fireball.
“Oh,” Naughty said sheepishly. “Oh damn.”
“Eh. It happens,” Persephone said dismissively, making the spoken equivalent of a shrug. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s get the loot and get out of here.” The ship had been precariously close to exploding when she’d made the order, she realized. I guess I should have said something sooner, she thought, making a mental note to do better the next time.
“Good job guys,” she said. “Let’s go celebrate.”
“Hey, wasn’t this guy a recruit?” Raelyf asked as he pointed his ship towards home.
“Yeah, we didn’t like him.” Persephone replied.
“Fair enough.”
(Bastards killboard link)