Zombie Inferno

-2-

Heild Solar System, Tartaven Constellation, Molden Heath
August 09, YC 114
19:45 hours New Eden Standard time

The Sansha are a pain in the ass.



Not because I’ve had any particular sort of run-in with that pack of cybernetic zombies, but because thanks to their damned incursions into the low-sec constellation of Tartaven, Black Frog Logistics refuses to ship my stuff into the system.  This meant I had to fly things in manually through Bosena, or wait for them to take their… “prisoners” isn’t the right word, not for what those poor fucks are destined for.  Harvest seems better.  I decided to make a compromise, flying a pair of Rifters and my Wolf-class Assault Frigate into Heild and leaving everything else two jumps out in Teonusude.


I had recently concluded the last of my necessary business in high-security space, having sold a large stash of 80 Procurer-class Mining Barge ships for well over their value in Jita, dumping the blueprint for the same price I originally got it at, and having Red Frog ship everything closer to Teonusude to save on jump costs.  Unfortunately, managing all the logistics means I hadn't fought anything since Sizter Sinister’s shitfit ship (that rolls off the tongue really well) a week ago.  My blood was boiling for a fight, win or lose, I just wanted to shoot something.

 
Sitting in the pod of my Rifter, named Twilight Sparkle after a character in some old kid’s cartoon I enjoyed watching in my spare time, I spotted a Sebiestor pilot in local named Chigurh Friendo who seemed to enjoy combat and the pirate life, boasting a -10.0 security status and a CONCORD bounty of 30 million ISK set to his head.  Piping up in local, I offered a 1v1 frigate fight.  “I’ll meet you at the gate to the Angel Creo-Corp Mining facility in system,” came the reply.


Quickly requesting and receiving permission to undock, I hit the directional scanner and saw what my ship’s database tentatively identified as a modified Condor-class Frigate in space.  Now, normally, this wouldn't have been a problem for me, except for the events of the previous day.

 
As any citizen of New Eden who doesn't live under a rock or on some god-forsaken backwater planet in the middle of bumfuck nowhere knows, war is the driving force behind basically everything that happens in the cluster.  Each of the four Empires, and the large capsuleer alliances in the depths of lawless space, are all trapped in a constant arms race (with rumors of the Jovians being involved from time to time) as each side tries to gain an advantage over the other.  So when a group of Sebiestor engineers and shipwrights announced the beginning of an overhaul on the entire line of Minmatar-built frigates as part of their own Inferno program, the other three Empires wasted no time in doing the same.  And on August 8th, just yesterday, shipbuilders from all four Empires released revised blueprints for the newly-rechristened “Fast attack Frigates”, namely the Gallentean Atron, Amarrian Executioner, the Minmatar Slasher, and the Caldari Condor.

 
As such, I had no idea what to expect, as my database had not been updated with the newly-enhanced capabilities of the revamped ships.  Reaching the gate, I found Chigurh burning away from the gate, already 100km away.  I quickly followed him after he explained. “I don’t really want anyone dropping in on us while we’re doing this, and deadspace is finicky with warp-ins so we’d have time to get out if necessary,” he said.  I supposed it made sense, so I followed him away from the old acceleration gate.

 
After reaching a spot approximately 200 klicks off the gate, he turned his ship around and I got my first look at it.  Three pairs of rocket launchers were mounted on the hardpoints of the frigate, hatch covers opening as they prepared to unleash their deadly payload.  Rockets, I thought back to training, are usually a short-ranged weapon system, fast rate of fire but damage is on the lower end. Usually.  Making a decision, I re-loaded my guns with longer-ranged "Barrage" autocannon ammunition, and overloaded the power feeds to both my Afterburner and the Warp Scrambler, seeking to boost the speed of the former and the range of the latter.  And before I knew it, his Condor was on top of my Rifter, our ships locked in erratic orbits around each other as swarms of rockets left plumes of propellant smoke in space and bullets poured from my gun barrels.

 
Noting that the computer-established orbit kept breaking the range of the Warp Scrambler, I disabled it and instead chose to attempt manually piloting my ship.  Tasking my camera drones to fly at a range of 20 klicks off my ship, I attempted to establish a manual orbit to keep a scrambler on the other pilot, even as the barrels of my autocannons started to glow from excess power and his rockets continued to bleed energy from my shields.  It seemed to work though, as his damage tapered off, rockets unable to cover the distance while I could still keep his ship from warping.

 
Just as my tactical showed his shields about to break, damage on him seemed to stall, and my camera drones confirmed the presence of an Ancillary Shield Booster.  Another Inferno project technology, these modules combined the functions of a capacitor injector and an emergency shield booster, consuming capacitor booster charges as “fuel” to provide reinforcement to the shields.  These allowed ships to tank a decently large amount of damage without expending ship-board capacitor energy, this fact being made evident by his shields gaining strength faster than I could whittle them down.  Maybe I can outlast his cap booster supply, I thought, but to no avail, as right then my afterburner chose to shut down, the vital components melted through or vaporized from the heat.  FUCK.

As my speed bled away, Chigurh’s Condor pounced.  His rockets exploded in near-constant detonations against my shields, alarms screaming in my head as the emitters overloaded and failed.  Explosions continued to shake the ship as the armor disappeared and the structure itself warped and split, sending the twin hulls of my Rifter spiraling off in different directions.  My pod was thrown free, the disorientation and spatial distortions from my nearby exploding warp drive costing me just enough time for Chigurh to get a scram on my pod as the blue-white flash faded from my camera feeds.

 
  “Listen,” he began, “I normally pod people, but… do you want to give me a reason not to?”


I laughed.  I've never paid a ransom, only taken them, and I wasn’t going to pay him when my clone station was in the same system and my clone an implant-less one specifically because of situations like this.  “You may as well go ahead and do it then, because-“

 
Another flash of light, a vague sensation of being flung across space… “-my clone station is right here,” I finished, instinctively using my self-modified implants to access the local communications channel as I woke up in a clone vat.

        Quickly running through the checklist with the doctor and toweling off the weird goo that they keep inactive clone bodies in, I made my way back to my quarters after a quick stop at the surgery center to insert another microprocessor implant.  The loss stung a little, but I expected it, and I quickly downloaded the information on the redesigned ships into my personal database, processing the information at speeds only a capsuleer could manage.  Making a decision, I booted up a battered holocomm unit, the rusty Minmatar tech whirring and clicking as it placed a call.

       “Hey, Marra, I’ve got another order for you,” I said as soon as the call connected.

       Marrakech Olivia Minter was a recently capsule-enabled Sebiestor girl, the descendant of a family of Traders, who I had hired several days ago to take my money and multiply it by playing the market.  As a result, she spent most of her day in the Minmatar market hub of Rens, managing buy and sell orders… a position that made her perfectly placed for helping me acquire shiny new toys to play with when necessary.

      “What’ll it be this time, boss,” she asked, datapad already in hand to take down notes.

      “The Minmatar military recently upgraded the Slasher-class frigates.  Stronger shields, denser armor, more turrets hardpoints, and two additional medium-power feedlines and a second low-power feed,” I answered.  “See if you can acquire one of the revised blueprints, along with the minerals required to build 30 of them.  Send them to this hangar...” I attached an encrypted routing number and funds to pay a freight service, “...in the Republic Fleet Assembly Plant around Teonusude III Moon 1.  I’ll be in touch later with an order for fittings as well.”

       “Gotcha.  One Inferno-era Slasher blueprint original, minerals for such, delivered to your hangar in Teonusude III-1,” she rattled off.  “If that’s all, I should get back to work.  Some stupid cunt’s been undercutting me by .01 ISK on Tech 2 Cargohold Expanders, so I’ll send those along when I have time.”

         I laughed as she signed off, before settling back into the couch, contacting Teonusude III-1, and ordering a factory line set aside for an upcoming job.  I’ll win my next fight, I vowed.

Once that fucking cyber-zombie invasion is over, of course.

And the records of my loss:
Twilight Sparkle: kill
Pod: kill

-PG