Well, seems the new recorder I installed is working, least, the little red light is on anyways.
Where to start? Uhhh... *sounds of scratching*
Well, this is my ship here, Finally has a name other than " &^$%$$# son of a ^$%&%#$..." Callin her the Gyrfalcon, after some old earth predatory bird, cause, you know... it looks bird-ish.
Bagged a pair of outcasts last night, both of em in bombers, real havoc makers if they decided to hit the stations here in orbit, but I managed to keep the fighting just outside the lagrange point. One of them, the first one, died trying to run, the second, died with guns blazing, you can guess which one i respect more.
had to do some maintenance after the fights though, Shield generator fused a coil, and some of the right side hull plating got melted when I got a little too close to the sun chasing the first bomber's escort. The work wasn't too bad though, finished it up and caught some shuteye in the quarters back of the bridge here.
Woke up, did the usual junk... and hit orbit lookin to score some cred, and voila, doesn't take long till someone calls in a kill, some two bit pirate had been terrorizing Zoners, and they wanted it to stop. Had a gut feeling and managed to find the guy on my first try, fired a few warning shots to be sporting, then opened up for keeps. Didn't take much till the ships hull buckled and his escape pod popped out... The missile from the launch bay I had installed yesterday did the rest. I tractored in the pods of the navy pilots he had been attacking, and headed back to newark, got my pay, and let the pilots off.
All in all, a good morning so far.
-End voice log-
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.Cowboy : Back to being a bounty hunter due to Liberty politics, Flies a manta.
Gyrfalcon: The bounty hunting Bretonian corvette. At least, it will be if approved, Flown by "Cowboy" also.
LNS-Patriot : The little gunboat that could.... and then someday will be a beautiful LABC.
Freebyrd.II : insane trader/geneticist who has a whole hydro lab in his ship, he designs and grows his OWN.
Sky.High.Marin : Corsair praetorian pilot, with a love for fuzzy dice.
Kane.Taggart : Mad scientist in a hacker gunship being a buccaneer of the spacelanes.
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I'm on my way towards Cali gate, and my sensors register a Liberty rogues ID'd ship off the side of the lane, so I cut the sequence and go to take a look, Sure enough, its one of their fighters, so we commence with the flashy flashy shooty shooty.
Then this pirate's comm sqwaks to life, and he starts bawlin about a "bounty hunter capital near the destroyer!" I think he was lookin to get some backup, as I'd collapsed his shields a couple times over, and put nasty dents into his hull, but the nano's were keeping him goin.
Can you guess what happens?
Thats right, a full blown CRUISER drops out of the lane and starts shooting at MY mark...
Shameful.... positively shameful.
Course, if the pirate had kept his mouth shut, the whole thing wouldnt have happened, but yeah.
I lost the kill, thanks to the "glorious" S.A.
I need a drink.
-End voice log-
==========================================================
.Cowboy : Back to being a bounty hunter due to Liberty politics, Flies a manta.
Gyrfalcon: The bounty hunting Bretonian corvette. At least, it will be if approved, Flown by "Cowboy" also.
LNS-Patriot : The little gunboat that could.... and then someday will be a beautiful LABC.
Freebyrd.II : insane trader/geneticist who has a whole hydro lab in his ship, he designs and grows his OWN.
Sky.High.Marin : Corsair praetorian pilot, with a love for fuzzy dice.
Kane.Taggart : Mad scientist in a hacker gunship being a buccaneer of the spacelanes.
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Damn those SA and LSF fools... They always muscle in on everybody's business, simply because they have "fleets" of capitals and fighters at their disposal. When it comes to handling a single pirate in a very souped up fightercraft, they're all gung-ho about their cruisers and gunboats and even supercaps... but as soon as a credible threat shows up, they're nowhere to be found.
Had two pirate gunboats escorting a pair of outcast destroyers hit the gate from Cali, and slide the lane to Manhattan lagrange.
You seriously don't think I sat around do you?
Soon as I saw the first sensor sweeps of them incoming I hit the emergency cruise charge cycle and got the hell outta dodge. Did some jerky maneuvering, and worked my way to fort bush, figured I'd hit the commweb and try to notify one of the relevant authorities, but while I was looking I wasn't watching the sensors... and the first gunboat, followed closely by the second, and then the destroyers slipped out the lane from the lagrange... Lucky me.
Got nailed with cruise disruptors from at least two of them, and then they disrupted the lane I was going to use to slide to safety...
I made it though, some salient soul in Bush's docking control literally screamed at me to hit bay seven... and I did. The outer hull is a mess, and I think I scraped the hell out of the bay floor, but I made it in, and the pirates didn't have the kind of firepower to crack an armored and shielded puppy like the fort.
I'm pretty sure they're gone now. Gonna finally stand down and check the damage to my ship.. it took one hell of a beating. Haven't heard a word from anyone else for a while, but I think that might be cause my comm array is shot to pieces, and the bay here is Z-gee with no atmo... so its not like anyone could come talk to me really, at least not without a pressure suit. Hopefully repair bills don't outstrip the bounty I earned earlier.
-End voice log-
==========================================================
.Cowboy : Back to being a bounty hunter due to Liberty politics, Flies a manta.
Gyrfalcon: The bounty hunting Bretonian corvette. At least, it will be if approved, Flown by "Cowboy" also.
LNS-Patriot : The little gunboat that could.... and then someday will be a beautiful LABC.
Freebyrd.II : insane trader/geneticist who has a whole hydro lab in his ship, he designs and grows his OWN.
Sky.High.Marin : Corsair praetorian pilot, with a love for fuzzy dice.
Kane.Taggart : Mad scientist in a hacker gunship being a buccaneer of the spacelanes.
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Well, the damage wasn't as bad as I first thought, mostly outer armor plating buckled warped or missing, and a few structural components pitted and damaged, but the techs here in the fort hooked up nanite packs to those, and used the heavy equipment I only wish I had to replace the outer plating. As to the comm array, well, it didn't get vaped, the antenna just got sheared off its housing when I hit the bay, must have clipped the door on the way in. Had a spare antenna in the crate of parts i picked up in bretonia the other day, so it was a quick job to fix it.
Ship looks like hell, and needs a new paintjob somethin fierce, but she flies good as she did before, and just in time too.
Got word of a bounty out on someone tagged "livid", seems he assaulted an SA pilot... go figure, he was around after the fight...
Spoke up along with the captain of the Lapsed pacifist, sayin we'd take it for two mil apiece, but as usual, the G-man cheaped out and would only offer 1.5 total. The pacifist backed out, but i needed some more scratch to get back up to my previous tally, so I said I'd take it. That and I was still pissed about not being able to fight earlier, and I wanted some blood.
Intel says the bastard was in an Orca, a guild ship, and was smuggling nomad's. Once I was all stocked up I headed out on his trail, but a snafu at the hamburg gate in Bering cost me the race... some idiot smalltime hauler tried to jump the gate infront of an ALG Train... it didn't end well.
I tried to make up for lost time, but just could never quite catch up, so, instead here I am... looking at the hellishly bloated shape of a red giant, surrounded by asteroid rings that used to be its planets... I'm a ridiculously over prepared tourist.
This is one of the things I signed up to fly for. Raw power and hellish beauty all smashed into a seething ball of fusion fire.
Of course, the wrecks of nearby ships that had troubles, or met with a half molten 'roid, or whose pilots had faulty shielding and cooked at the controls, yielded some interesting souveneirs. And hey, the rocks here are rich with Diamonds.
Priceless.
-End voice log-
==========================================================
.Cowboy : Back to being a bounty hunter due to Liberty politics, Flies a manta.
Gyrfalcon: The bounty hunting Bretonian corvette. At least, it will be if approved, Flown by "Cowboy" also.
LNS-Patriot : The little gunboat that could.... and then someday will be a beautiful LABC.
Freebyrd.II : insane trader/geneticist who has a whole hydro lab in his ship, he designs and grows his OWN.
Sky.High.Marin : Corsair praetorian pilot, with a love for fuzzy dice.
Kane.Taggart : Mad scientist in a hacker gunship being a buccaneer of the spacelanes.
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Well, its been a while since I last used this thing.
Lot's happened, Had real issues in manhattan lately, the SA and LSF are really getting out of hand, especially with recent lane hacker incursions, and even outcasts. they're trying to set up a system of taxes and regulations that even Rheinland doesn't have. Basically, its really pissed alot of people off, myself included. They're sayin, that you cant store weapons without a liscence, cant sell weapons without a liscence, and if you have any nomad equipment or anything even related to them... you have to have a liscence. Five mil a pop for each... its INSANE, its a protection racket, especially since they say "its to improve the navy" when the "navy" has been conspicuously absent during -ALL- recent attacks.
Makes ya think don't it.
Anyways, the Gyrfalcon is down for overhaul, the recent fights its been in have left it a mess. However, I buckled down and did some "honest work" as people call it... I won't say exactly what, but a few of the captains I associate with know.
The fruits of that labor?
I am now the proud owner of a somewhat downgraded but fully functional Rheinland cruiser. I've had the weapons loadout completely redone, and some of the internal systems I had to get aftermarket upgrades for, but hey, I got it at a surplus auction from republican shipping. I'm just glad the thing is spaceworthy.
I've taken it out here to 15, been doing some grunt labor for the guild, using the corsairs and hessians to "baptise" my new ship. Not sure yet what I'll call it. My current idea is to call it the Aerie, but, well... yeah, I haven't finalized anything yet.
Anyways, there's a protest forming for manhattan, and I figure on figuring into it rather prominently...
I have work to do.
-End voice log-
==========================================================
.Cowboy : Back to being a bounty hunter due to Liberty politics, Flies a manta.
Gyrfalcon: The bounty hunting Bretonian corvette. At least, it will be if approved, Flown by "Cowboy" also.
LNS-Patriot : The little gunboat that could.... and then someday will be a beautiful LABC.
Freebyrd.II : insane trader/geneticist who has a whole hydro lab in his ship, he designs and grows his OWN.
Sky.High.Marin : Corsair praetorian pilot, with a love for fuzzy dice.
Kane.Taggart : Mad scientist in a hacker gunship being a buccaneer of the spacelanes.
==========================================================
The Aerie is doing better than I ever expected it to. The guild ordered an incursion into nomad space, they had some questions they wanted answered, and they also wanted a sampling of their technology, sort of a cosmic, violent, doctors checkup if you will. My ship fit the bill, and after loading on some supplies it was off through the omegas and such, and even a little dash through Gamma. And voila, Omicron Kappa. i made contact with a planet of strange half men half apes, and then spent the next few hours doing battle in orbit above their planet. I'm not sure how many nomads fell before my gun batteries, but I can tell you this... they just never stopped coming. Makes you worry, if they ever decided to really invade in force... would we be able to stop them again?
I collected the necessary specimens, and had them all stored in the special armored cargo bay I had put in, with just this sort of thing in mind. All in all it's a hefty haul. Final tally at sheffield put the score at well over twenty guns, and a huge number of assorted ship controllers. i guess you could call them the actual nomads... but I think of them more as a sort of ship's nav-comp and firing computer gone crazily alive...than anything else.
Few interesting tidbits from the trip.
Met up with Victor Remond, who seems to be rather zealous when it comes to nomads and their allies the Wild. Not entirely sure what to make of the whole encounter though.
Replaced the engine housing turrets with ones of Zoner manufacture, Real pieces of work too, they charge and fire alot faster than the main guns, but are a tad less powerful. Better for fighters. Picked up something akin to the main cannon on my Corvette as well, its tagged as a "Mortar" but its basically just a modified version of the supernova cannon... aughta punch a few holes in those outcast destroyers. Finally the crown jewel of the evening... the guild retrofitted my ship with a pair of capital class nomad turrets, They fire slow, but man what a punch! I'm guessing my ship is a guinea pig for some new models, They seem to be much easier to install and interface with the targetting computer than previous nomad weaponry I've heard about.
Ah well, guess we'll see how they perform. Will probably be a nasty surprise for any pirate cap's I run across.
-End voice log-
==========================================================
.Cowboy : Back to being a bounty hunter due to Liberty politics, Flies a manta.
Gyrfalcon: The bounty hunting Bretonian corvette. At least, it will be if approved, Flown by "Cowboy" also.
LNS-Patriot : The little gunboat that could.... and then someday will be a beautiful LABC.
Freebyrd.II : insane trader/geneticist who has a whole hydro lab in his ship, he designs and grows his OWN.
Sky.High.Marin : Corsair praetorian pilot, with a love for fuzzy dice.
Kane.Taggart : Mad scientist in a hacker gunship being a buccaneer of the spacelanes.
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YEESSSSSSS!!! I've done it.... all the work I did paid off, I have my revenge!
The Alabama was yet again harassing and attacking ships in manhattan orbit.
I engaged him, and unfinished as she is, the Aerie overpowered the destroyer, and he started to run. The chase led a full orbit of the planet three times, in a running engagement, and when his ship was on fire, and starting to break up, he turned and overloaded his engines in a last ditch effort to reach the atmosphere, and escape my wrath... Stupid bastard.
My forward mortar cannon spoke, and his ship went up as the blast breached his reactor and vaporised his vessel. Whatever was left burned up in the atmosphere... good damn riddance.
Also bagged Enst Stavro Blofeld earlier, he and a gunboat were pirating traders at the california gate in cortez, I was passing through on the way back from my excusion into bretonia, and basically came in on this little tableau:
Blofeld, hovering stationary right next to the trader's hull, the trader framed by the gate he had just exited, and the gunboat with guns trained at the trader's engines.
The first salvoes ripped Blofeld's ship apart... Gues he'll learn never to hold still.
The gunboat was slippery, but eventually went down as well. Some little bastard freelancer stole the kill however, but I had a witness to the whole event. Drover, one of the pilots for KoF, was there as well, and watched, we also spoke briefly and he helped engage the gunboat.
Blofeld made some kind of comments about how "unfair" my opening up on him was... Maybe he should rethink that in light of how he and his cronies operate, especially in the past few days. I should have blasted his escape pod, but the little bastard managed to get it behind the gate where my guns couldn't reach.
-End voice log-
==========================================================
.Cowboy : Back to being a bounty hunter due to Liberty politics, Flies a manta.
Gyrfalcon: The bounty hunting Bretonian corvette. At least, it will be if approved, Flown by "Cowboy" also.
LNS-Patriot : The little gunboat that could.... and then someday will be a beautiful LABC.
Freebyrd.II : insane trader/geneticist who has a whole hydro lab in his ship, he designs and grows his OWN.
Sky.High.Marin : Corsair praetorian pilot, with a love for fuzzy dice.
Kane.Taggart : Mad scientist in a hacker gunship being a buccaneer of the spacelanes.
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Started off in new London, had gone down to visit some friends in Manchester, then did a little shopping at Southampton. Made my way back up to new york, and when i finally get to manhattan orbit... what do I spy?
An outcast destroyer, parked perfectly still dead infront of the tradelane. Weirdest thing was though, nothing was shooting at him, not even the navy patrol fleet a short ways above... like he was some kinda ghost. But that didn't stop him from opening up on me. As things usually go with these nuissance vessels... the Aerie tore his shields and hull asunder, and he pulled a runner. Chased the little cardi-head captain way way way above the ecliptic, before finally deciding i had better things to do and left his flaming hulk to keep running for whatever illusions that fool saw.
Did a bit of jawing with some other captains in orbit, then the call came in, about Suzanna of the darkwings finding two hackers and a Rogue tagged outcast destroyer at the colorado gate. Needless to say, I kicked in the overdrive, and made a beeline for her position. Engaged the Destroyer upon arrival, much to his surprise since he openly yelled he was pulling out in the system wide comm net. Yeah, like I'm letting this one go. Chased him well into the debris field towards Rochester, and after a running skirmish I cracked his hull open and got to watch the pretty-pretty of his reactor redlining and going nova... I love seeing those things go up. Ship was registered as [LR]Drax... he did a good job of running, but just not good enough to get out of the Aerie's teeth.
Had some last minute assistance on it, from Trekker with his gunboat, but Drax's hull was already venting atmo, and my sensors were reading a shielding failure on his reactor. Good show, but that one is mine.
-End voice log-
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.Cowboy : Back to being a bounty hunter due to Liberty politics, Flies a manta.
Gyrfalcon: The bounty hunting Bretonian corvette. At least, it will be if approved, Flown by "Cowboy" also.
LNS-Patriot : The little gunboat that could.... and then someday will be a beautiful LABC.
Freebyrd.II : insane trader/geneticist who has a whole hydro lab in his ship, he designs and grows his OWN.
Sky.High.Marin : Corsair praetorian pilot, with a love for fuzzy dice.
Kane.Taggart : Mad scientist in a hacker gunship being a buccaneer of the spacelanes.
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Another red letter day, Brought down yet another outcast destroyer, this one was harassing naval units... infront of manhattan... *he sighs* You think they'd learn, but no... anyways.... Like all the others it ended in another bright ball of fusion-fury as the reactor cracked.
Brought down a couple fighters as well, but not really anything to crow about there.
The real gem of the day, was that the refit work on the Gyrfalcon was complete, so I took her out for a spin. God this chair feels so good again...
Victor sent me a message, and we met up to do some hunting down in the sigma 13 area. Got paid -IN ADVANCE!- by one trader to clear the route, with the promise of more payment from another trader after the way was cleared. Total tally for that fight, was a whole lot of dead dragon fighters, a dragon gunboat, and a dragon bomber. We made one hell of a mess and blazed a flaming path of destruction. And then, to top that, after I collected our payment from the second trader, I scouted out a Corsair cruiser, manned by members of the order appearantly. The fight was suprisingly short and very violent. At first the cruiser singled me out, as my corvette was bigger than Victor's gunboat, but for some reason, switched targets a little while afterwards. Bad bad baaaaad idea. The Gyrfalcon ate that ship alive.
Victor's ship has a different loadout than mine, his is very focused on dumping a massive salvo of damage at the enemy... but lacking in sustained oomph... Mine, is a steady brawler, always hammering away... not to mention my main gun is quite a bit heavier than his, and can fire more often since my guns are more balanced and efficient.
Needless to say, the cruiser went up in a massive fireball, and neither of us suffered any real damage.
Score another one for the good guys, I hope to work with Victor more often.
-End voice log-
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.Cowboy : Back to being a bounty hunter due to Liberty politics, Flies a manta.
Gyrfalcon: The bounty hunting Bretonian corvette. At least, it will be if approved, Flown by "Cowboy" also.
LNS-Patriot : The little gunboat that could.... and then someday will be a beautiful LABC.
Freebyrd.II : insane trader/geneticist who has a whole hydro lab in his ship, he designs and grows his OWN.
Sky.High.Marin : Corsair praetorian pilot, with a love for fuzzy dice.
Kane.Taggart : Mad scientist in a hacker gunship being a buccaneer of the spacelanes.
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Well well well... big ol' ten on the recorded entries here.
Been a rollercoaster ride of a few days it has, since i last yapped into this thing. Notable accomplishments, took down a pair of Xeno bombers in the Gyrfalcon, Wasn't any money on them so, I wasn't gonna do anything but jeer at them, till they decided to put an antimatter cannon blast across my bow. I take that sorta thing personal ya see.. so, without really breaking into any of my stores, nor even getting too sweaty (for once), I got to tally two fat turkey bombers. Just last night, Victor and I met up again... Myself in the Aerie, and him, in whatever he calls that gunboat of his. Said I knew some good places to hunt nomads, among other targets of opportunity. Made our lil pilgrimage through Alaska, to Minor, to delta... Stopped at Freeport eleven to do some equipment wrangling, and managed to down some nomad cap ships.
This is where the night really took off. A pair of order manned Huntress cruisers came prowling about, For some reason, the lead ship actually let my Aerie get behind it, Bad idea. That fight got me a little sweaty, but in the end, it came out just fine, the lead ship disintegrated in a respectably spectacular way, and the second... well, I let it get away, Victor appearantly wanted it to live for some reason... but I didn't let it go without a reminder, its hull was venting atmo and barely holding together when I finally disengaged. Chalk up another win for the deadly duo. Night wasn't over though, so we headed on through delta after a while, and into kappa, where the hunting was really good. Met up with the same pilot of the corsair cruiser we had downed before together, except now he was in an IMG gunboat, you can guess how that fight ended.. BOOM. But that didn't even trip us up in our hunting. Eradicated who knows how many nomads in that little session, and made a solid bit of cred for our troubles. Cutting to the chase though... on our way back to glorious new york, we spotted a known Osiris class battleship captain (first in new york by commweb, and then in minor) named |Lee|.
We taunted him a little over the systemwide comm band when we got into Minor, and waited around the alaska jumphole, we were considering going on through when sure enough... here he comes. Now, at this point it wasn't just Victor and i anymore, we had been joined in our nomad slaying in kappa by his friend Smaltz, who had a liberty cruiser, So, Victor split left, smaltz broke right, and I went straight up. We converged on him, and from the first moment his guns were in range that bastard had a hard on for the Aerie.Eventually, I started running our ot supplies to keep the ship in one piece, so I pulled back a bit, managed to get back out of sight behind some asteroids so he'd have to switch targets, which he did. so as soon as the roid stopped shaking with fire, I lit up the engines to clear the rock, and cut loose with all batteries. From here on it was a downhill battle for him, and pretty much a foregone conclusion that he was dead. So, the osiris exploded.... and as Smaltz said afterwards... the explosion was sort of underwhelming. But hey, that's one less ship of the line for the order.
Got back into Alaska and took on some badly needed supplies and had some fast repair work done on the outer armor plating, then we proceeded back to new york, and all three of us captains had a bit to drink... Victor had a bit more than we did though. *laughs*
Pulled the Aerie into drydock to get more thorough repairs done, and warmed up the Gyrfalcon for a cruise around the system. Lo' an behold, I ran into Robert Fitzgerald, someone with a little price on their head, sucker actually tried to clamp onto Rochester, like it would save his ship. It didn't of course, and his IMG gunboat went up in a brilliant little flash.
Anyways... been one hell of a ride... I think I'm gonna go find some grub now, all this talking about combat reminded my stomach somehow that I haven't had breakfast.
-End voice log-
==========================================================
.Cowboy : Back to being a bounty hunter due to Liberty politics, Flies a manta.
Gyrfalcon: The bounty hunting Bretonian corvette. At least, it will be if approved, Flown by "Cowboy" also.
LNS-Patriot : The little gunboat that could.... and then someday will be a beautiful LABC.
Freebyrd.II : insane trader/geneticist who has a whole hydro lab in his ship, he designs and grows his OWN.
Sky.High.Marin : Corsair praetorian pilot, with a love for fuzzy dice.
Kane.Taggart : Mad scientist in a hacker gunship being a buccaneer of the spacelanes.
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