Subject: spacecraft pilot Boba Drowner
ID card: bounty hunter
Skill level: to be proven
Ship class: capital
Ship size: gunship<gunboat<(this ship)<cruiser/destroyer<battleship<dreadnought/juggernaut/battlestar
...on the way back, every ship i am passing by turns around and after a scan, i hear only one thing each time on my comms: "What is that and where did you get it?". I realized, my ship is unique, the minute i bought it. Its the beginning of my first, official day of work as a member of the Hunters Guild. And its the end of the sleepless nights of mine, since the day i signed up at this job. I dont like to keep a diary...i even think its weird for the people who do. But i will make an exception this time...here is my story, how i got this ship.
...this has to be another night i cant get any sleep, always thinking about my ambition...though i have joined the bounty hunters only recently, i still miss an important document - my ship registration. The CORE of the guild wants my ship registered by the end of the week, "If you dont register soon, you will be expelled! Hurry up about it!" - they said. This is my dream-job...it gives me the freedom i need, the money come easy, the girls like hunters (at least the type i am interested of) and - it is still legal! The perfect job, the job of my dreams...but now i stand at the ship catalogue, starring at the ships and the ships ONLY...the prices dont concern me...i have plenty of millions to spare. This is what i see:
-=Basic Fighters (basic skills required)=-
1.)Piranha
2.)Barracuda
-=Advanced Fighters (not for rookies)=-
1.)Hammerhead
2.)Manta
3.)Sea Serpent
-=Bombers (for the aces and the aces only)=-
1.)BHG_Bomber
-=Flagships (approval-documentation needed to buy and fly)=-
1.)BHG_Gunship
2.)BHG_Orca
3.)BHG_Destroyer
4.)BHG_Battlecruiser
5.)BHG_Battleship
I dont like what i see...and i dont like what i hear either. And i hear it in my mind over and over again:
"You say you want a ship - here is the catalogue! But there is only one restriction - you, as a rookie, are to choose from the Basic ships line ONLY. You see, your Pilot License says, that you are a class B+ fighter pilot and a class AB heavy and capital vessel pilot. However, untill you have proven yourself, we are unable to comply for your request for a BHG_Destroyer. And - dont you think you have to improve your fighter skills a bit more? Class B is good, your B+ class is better, BUT - you are nothing, compared to our elites with class A+ licenses!! You think you are all that!? Then prove it, hunter!! OR..(the Core member beginns to laugh)..if YOU think you are smart enough to build your own ship, hehe - then i suggest you start it right now and be sure have it finished by the end of the week....Hahaha...NOW MOVE OUT OF THIS ROOM, ROOKIE, AND SELL THAT PIECE OF SCRAP YOU ARE FLYING NOW!!"
I cant stop thinking about this - how am i going to work with a small ship from the basic line? Really - i have millions to spare, this is humiliating! Even my Armored Transport i am flying now is better than any Piranha or Barracuda! True - it has no Cruise Disruptor, any criminal could escape without even the need to engage...that could ruin my reputation...i would get fired! But its a comfortable ship - much space in a small size, partial gravity, easy to fly...the firepower and shield are majorly tricked out...by me, of course. As i was sitting in my cockpit listening to my stereo, a friend of mine called me on the comm:
"Hey Boba, guess what - i am going to Borholm Depot in 5 minutes...and you are coming with me! We are going to drink beer as much as nature has never seen, and you are going to fix that mood you are in right now! Get that wreck of yours moving to the docks and launch...dont make me come back there and drag you out! You cant stay in Rostok for days, its not a holiday station, you know..."
..."Bounty Hunter, number 0359/900310, you are clear for departure at dock 1, good luck out there!"...
After a minute, my friend and me linked in formation and set the course to Borholm Depot...as always, he was flying that Collector he bought about 2 months ago. Our trip went nice and smooth, my friend was telling me about some project going on at Borholm:
"Just a month ago, i found something big, nearly 18k away from a corsair base in the Omega 5 system...it took about 1 hour of scanning to get a clear picture of the piece of scrap i found there...i have never seen such thing! Its weight was about 200 tons, built from large ship hull panels...i called some friends of mine, they arranged a large transport to come and help deliver this piece of scrap to Borholm Depot. It was a dream come true - the cash i got for selling it is enough to buy me drinks for the rest of my life! Of course, it was not easy to transport that thing...we had some problems with the Corsairs, you know...from what they said, this was the front deck of some big cruiser, flown by hessians...and it got destroyed, as they said "in the most brutal of ways", thanks to their well-armed gunboat contact team. We had to pay 5 million for a clearance to leave the system, carrying this piece of scrap out of the corsair territory. But it's worth it. It is now 1 month since i discovered it and brought it to Borholm. Since then - our engineers had been repairing this thing...and we even intend...to make it fly!"
As we entered the docks on Borholm, many many people started looking at me, not too friendly...as we walked out of our ships, the guards wanted to see my ID...and the head of the guards (as my friend told me) was ex-criminal of some foreign faction, there was no place for a bounty hunter there..."He is with me! Back off, Bart!" said my friend. We continued to talk about that piece of ship my friend had found:
"Before we enter the bar, come and see this thing...its breath-taking!"
...we enter the engineering deck of the Borholm Depot...and there it is - this big, pointy hull of what was once a hessian cruiser...
"We contacted the Red Hessians and asked for schematics of their cruiser-class ships...they gave us only a simple plan of their current and only model they have. We were stunned - this part we found didnt look like any of the main parts of a red hessian cruiser! This thing we found was part of some different model of a cruiser! We searched all our records abroad Sirius, for all ship-parts, that may come close to this...we found only one record. It was very old, the ship on it was a Rheinand Military Capital Ship, built more than two hundred years ago, and by what we saw - it didnt match complete with our part we found! Amazing...but we couldnt ask for more information. If the Hessians found out, that we have something, that belongs to them - they would erase every proof that our base here even existed! A old veteran in the bar told us, that maybe this was a part of a Rheinland cruiser of old modification, probably a few of them were ever built. And probably - this one was liberated by hessian pilots from the very docks it was build on, and maybe.....maybe it was reinforced and repaired by outcast engineers. It truely is - UNIQUE!! For a month now, we repaired it and as you see - we are putting the titanium brace on it, that holds the new engines! This ship is ready for someone to buy it and we are only waiting for the client's preferences on the interior and the equipment! For its size and hull strenght - it could easily become a gunboat-class vessel! Or even better...(my friend stopped talking and we both set our eyes on the robot-engineers, who placed the new engines where they were planned to be, the noise there was unbearable.)
We went to the bar, we drank beer silently, listening to the rumors around us...i couldnt stop thinking about that ship. After a while, i asked my friend:
"Could that thing be ready in...say, one week? With everything working, from engines and weapon systems to the smallest lever on the control pult?"
My friend smiled for a while, then he said:
"Damn, i knew i had to drag you down here earlier! You said you needed a ship for your...eh....job. You said you needed something...big. Well, my old friend - you found it right here! Your....hmm...employer...doesent want to let you have this destroyer that easy, does he? Well, he wont laugh that much when he sees you, having built up a unique and brand new ship for the rest of this very week! Damn, man! Buy that thing right away! You dont need any itsy-bitsy pilot ID's to get it....but....however, you may need to strenghten your ranks here....i mean....people start asking uncomfortable questions when you buy things....that could easily be solved. Buy a beer for everyone in this bar and noone will care who you work for! See that old gas-bag over there? That's our old barman...you may need to....sort of...bribe him, to give you a good chance of buying that ship...you are not the only person here, who wants to buy it...and belive me - there are people here, who would offer twice as much you have to buy it! Sign up for the auction and talk to that old man, i guarantee you - by the end of this evening you will have that ship with all...legal documends you need! Go now!"
After a few minutes chatting with the barman and 2 hours of waiting for the tonight's auction for the sale of this unfinished ship, the auction began. In quick words - i bought it. It was hard...there was some freelancer H. Stern, who had the cash to buy any Battleship he wanted, he didnt make the auction easy. But - the bartender, true to his words, helped me out. When the freelancer offered a 100 million in cash, the bartender dragged him aside and told him something...then the freelancer withrewed from the auction, i bought the ship for the sum of 70 million credits.
Later that evening, me and my friend found ourselves sitting inside the unique spacecraft. There were wires and unfinished board systems everywhere, only the lighting there was finished and working. The chief engineer-robot ERN-397 was ready to compute with my orders of the ship's interiour and exteriour. First thing to choose - the powerplant. Not easy - i still had no idea what kind of ship this could turn out to be. I wanted something heavy, that could compete with the BHG_Destroyer. I wanted it to be tricked out with the best systems available to the Junkers. I ordered a strong powerplant model, built in rheinland by the popular Kim Somtaaw corporation, which builds mainly exotic fighter-class vessels. "The power would be more than enough to supply destroyer and cruiser turrets!" said my friend. The engines - we thought to use different parts from many origins to build them. The goal was - agility, equal or better than the BHG_Destroyer, fitting to the weight of my new spacecraft. The last important thing to decide - the mounting points for the external equipment...including, turrets. The turrets have to be stable all the time, they have to be as many as possible and - they have to fire in as many angles as possible. Finally, ERN-397 came up with a hollographic plan of the whole finished ship - it looked small and agile, the size of an BHG_Orca gunboat, with 9 turrets, which is 1 more than the BHG_Destroyer! I couldnt ask for more - the perfect ship for Bounty Hunter Boba Drowner!
Six days have passed since i bought this new space vessel, which in the end turned out to be a small-sized and very well-armed cruiser. Since it doesent have a model assigned to it - i named it "RPC-Drowner". The name comes from "Rheinland Pirate Cruiser" with my family name as the current model. Its ready now...all systems on-line, cruiser class molecular shield is up and working, navigation systems and engines are running nice and smooth. I have outfitted it with 8 basic cruiser turrets, and the 9-th is a basic missle turret. Thats all i could get at Borholm, that is legal to the BHGuild. I sold what was left of my armored transport, all my previous equipment is transferred to this new cruiser of mine, even the truster and my Universal Armor Upgrade mk.8, which could turn even a starflyer more powerful than a heavy fighter of the Defender class. The test flights i did yesterday. And now - on the 6-th day i bought the RPC-Drowner, i am taking off...to Rostok. My cash is almost spent now. I barely had enough to fuel the ship and equip it with full load of nanobots and batteries. I need a bounty....and i need it soon. Else, i wont have enough credits to buy the needed fuel for it...its a mixture of Deuterium and Plutonium, and these things are far from cheap in the omega 15 system. My friend and I took off to Rostok.
So here is my story, at the beginning...
...on the way back, every ship i am passing by turns around and after a scan, i hear only one thing each time on my comms: "What is that and where did you get it?". I realized, my ship is unique, the minute i bought it. Its the beginning of my first, official day of work as a member of the Hunters Guild. And its the end of the sleepless nights of mine, since the day i signed up at this job. I have a assigment now...some Hunters called at Rostok that i was coming, and i found a job very fast...someone wants me to destroy some weapon platforms, run by hessians...
..........lets see what that baby of mine can do! Shield Up, Weapons On-line!
***********INCOMMING TRANSMISSION*************
Adressed to: Capetown station, omega 56
Subject: pilot Boba Drowner, rank - newcommer
Ship: class - unknown, model - unknown, identity - RPC-Drowner
Alignment: Bounty Hunter, tracker
Recepients: members and representatives of the Bounty Hunters Guild Core
This is the Rostok mission comission, we have just confirmed the success
of the mission, number 462-654/02, carried out by bounty hunter tracker rookie
Boba Drowner, who was directly in charge of the mission. All our escort wings
we sent to aid Drowner are alive and unharmed and are on their way back
to Rostok. The bounty is 870,000 credits in cash, estimated mission worth
and importance for the Guild is 2 million credits, received from Border
Worlds Exports Inc. as promised. Requesting a new and updated rank of the
newcommer Guild member Boba Drowner, for the great success of this mission
and for keeping alive all hunters involved from the escort wing.
Rostok mission comission out.
************************************************************************
--- 1 year later, after many battles, the ship of the tracker pilot Boba Drowner has been destroyed after a great battle with unidentified ships in the recently discovered Omega 55 system. Weapons with unmatched power were penetrating the ship's hull, shield generator was vaporized by a concentrated missle fire on the lower deck, where the generator was based. Appearently, these unknown hostiles have had experience with ships of the aged Rheinland Military technology, they knew the weaknesses of the RPC-Drowner as well. With a hull breach in the cargo hold (the rear deck, near the engines), and with 5 of 9 turrets rendered disfunctional, the RPC-Drowner was at its critical point. The pilot knew the ship was beyond repair. He left the ship in the only available escape pod, remaining undetected by the hostile fighter partoll. Boba watched as the RPC-Drowner was flying on, keeping the course to an unknown planet on Auto-Pilot. The ship was slowly dissolved by the unknown hostiles, his 4 remaining turrets were still firing on Automatic Defense System mode...only 2 of 3 engines were keeping it on course. Burning all-over with many holes in the hull and with the last drops of fuel in the engines, the proud ship entered the planet's atmosphere where it eventually exploded and the remains probably crashed on the planet's surface.
A PILOT's BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL
--- Sitting in the escape pod, he could only wait and hope to be found by an un-hostile spaceship, before the 1-week supplies of food, power, wated and oxygen were depleted. The distress signals ot the escape pod were too weak to lure anyone above a 50,000km radius. After 8 days flying towards an unidentified jumphole, the power reserves and oxygen supplies were almost depleted. The pilot, starring at the vastness of space in the small window, remained still and silent, watching at the same direction his ship was following, untill it collided with the unknown planet. After the first computer warning, that the power was on the critical 5% level, Boba shut down all systems aboard the escape pod, leaving only the radio online. He could still hear the last transmission of his crippled capital ship: "....Rostok, do you copy..~~~...this is the RPC-Drowner...****...under heavy fire...~~*--...ship is burning up.....to all patrolls in the om...~~...5 system...i require immediate..***~~~***.....the jumphole coordinates are...///\/\\/\\\...(signal is failing...)
---After falling unconscious by the lack of oxygen density, the pilot's escape pod was picked up by a Zoner exploration vessel, wich had tracked the signals of both the fallen capital ship and the escape pod, calculating the course and position of the pod and then beaming it onboard. The pilot received medical attention, later he was transported to Freeport 5 in the omega 41 system. The story of tracker pilot Boba Drowner became famous on almost every zoner bar abroad the omega and omicron sectors. Followed reaction by the filming industry was to make a film about it, wich had the incredible success of becoming one of the greatest action films in every house system, except for Kusari. The money for selling the story to the film-makers was more than 300 millions in cash for the pilot Boba Drowner, and over 100 million for the zoners, who rescued him.
THE ONGOING LIFE OF BOBA DROWNER
---Now, having returned to duty at the Bounty Hunter Headquarters at omega 56, Capetown station, the now famous pilot had just received his documents for his Capital Ship of Battlecruiser class, specially built for him with the most recent equipment available and the name "Drowner II" carved in its hull with niobium components. The vessel will be delivered from the docks of Rostok to Capetown every minute now. Already, there is a mission assigned from a rich trader, meeting is at the New Berlin Planet. With the Guild's highest members wishing him "best of luck", pilot Boba Drowner is on his way to the docks, ready to depart with his battlecruiser in open space...
