2 Flanking Maneuvers

When your previous occupation was punching through ship hulls and lighting everyone in it with lead you don't appreciate the mechanics of the ship your breaking into. Now however I was absolutely fascinated with them. How to modify weapons for an increased fire rate, or how to make my engine 3.74% more efficient and save me about 100 silver in chemfuel costs per jump. How to make it so the air conditioneing dosen't have a delay of 3 days because believe it or not ship companys sabotage those to increase profits. But one thing was certain these improvements have gotten me through things most trade ships wouldn't dream of. Hell most of our weapons and armour were modified by myself.

But there was one thing in particular I was working on at this moment in among my dozens of in progress projects. An enhanced AI persona core.

See I traded this puppy with a tribe who somehow got a hold of an orbital trade beacon. They saw the thing as just a glowy lantern, thank goodness they didn't worship it, as if they saw it as something more I'd kill everyone there just to get it. I basically stole it as they had wanted 200 units of Pemmican for the thing. The only way I even found out they had it was when I went down to stretch my legs because I was getting couped up in the ship. So I went out under the guise of doing some personal negotiations. That was until I stopped mid negotiations, and fixed my eyes on an AI Persona core on a fucking stick. After that I imediately shifted to getting it.

That also happened to be the day that the crew mutineed but I'm sure the persona core had nothing to do with it. Besides the nav computer had a persona core, to allow autopilot and increased manueverability, there was nothing this high tech in the ship. Yeah I had plans for all these advanced bionics and my old military ones on hand, but there was a problem. I didn't want to put my military bionics back on as they had a biolock that activates a vitals moniter on it which would clue the Empire into knowing I was alive. With me being a desserter I would probably be made an example, and I had too much stuff to do for that to happen.

Back to the persona core I to my navigation crewmembers chagrin took the persona core from the navigation computer. Lazy bastard now had to actually drive the ship instead of just sitting there doing nothing.

And so I took it to my workshop where I placed the one I bought, and noticed something. It seemed to glow brighter then the one I took from the Nav computer. Freaking out for a second and getting ready to inject myself with as many anti radiation syringes I had. Apprehensively I took a Geiger Counter Mk72, and thankfully found out I wouldn't have to use my 1,000 silver each anti radiation needles.

However luck didn't seem to be on my side as alarms started blaring. Shoving the things in my pockets incase I needed to put them in the Navigation computer to assist in some maneuvers. Upon reaching the bridge I was face to face with a V.O.I.D. destroyer. My Shipcracker senses told me to rush to the hanger and jump at it, but I easilly clamped that urge down as I wasn't drugged. Taking a persona core I slammed it into the Navigation computer shoved the shocked Dave, the lazy bastard, off the control engaged FTL travel and started trying to prevent us from getting shot down by commiting to some very unusual maneuvers.

Crag, man I love the bastard, arrived first and the first thing that came out of his mouth was. "Can I smash it." Pointing at the ship that was now firing plasma at us I said. "Wish you could." Crag visibly deflated at not being able to rip a mans head off. "Crag go tell Kane to prepare for contingency grounded." See I only cared about a few people on this ship Kane, Crag, me, myself and I. With contingency grounded being whenenver I believed there was a good chance of us crashlanding. I knew my ship she had excellent shields and good weapons, but was mainly meant to combat pirates. This was V.O.I.D. purple bastards probably had 5 times the shielding, and my weapons if they could even get through them would only leave a foot wide gouge from the ships main cannon.

Setting the nav computer to keep us alive as long as possible before entering FTL I ran to my workshop and rushed all my projects into three heavily cushioned suitcases left specifically for this moment. After carefully shoving all my blueprints, projects and expensive items into them I started ripping out all the power cells and components that I could from the machines around me. Normally I wouldn't do this, but I didn't think we were making it out without a crashlanding. Crag came in during the middle of my scavenging, and picking up what I was doing started ripping components and powercells with me. Once we sufficiently cleared the room I told Crag. "Lock down the armoury get me my gear grab any heavy weapons and turrets you can and load them up in pod #23."

Going to the bridge I observed how our shields were at 5%, but thankfully FTL was a go in 30 seconds. This would allow us to escape though not without some devastating blows. I wondered if I overdid it, but then came to the conclusion that there's nothing wrong with being too prepared. And following that sentiment I started looting the bridge. Pilot lazy ass left to go alarm the others which meant I would be able to grab some extra stuff without alerting anyone to me plan to abandone them all. I got any and all components I could find and nabbed the AI persona core within the nav computer as our jump was already locked in.

With 5 seconds left on the FTL our shields broke though that was expected. What was not expected however was them getting an honestly miraculous shot on our FTL engines. Fortunetly for us I had seen the weakness with the FTL drive being so exposed and had reinforced it myself with a few extra layers of plasteel. What was unfortunate however was that they were critically damaged and with the jump locked in we were going into FTL travel with a barely holding drive.

Knowing what was to come I pulled out a century old "pager", as the natives called it, and sent a signal to Kane and Crag about their imediate need to get their shit in an escape pod and be ready to make planetfall. After signaling them I took everything I had on me ripped the AI Persona core from the nav computer before hustling to my workshop to get as much of the expensive, yet sturdy, machines in there. See when an FTL drive is critically damaged you don't know where you end up. There have been century old shuttles found orbiting planets or crashlanded on moons. So the nav computer would automatically stop the jump in the face of this. I removed this feature as I found it stupid and I would rather be in a random system then dead or enslaved.

However that didn't mean I was going to take this lightly. I got a machining table along with the bionics that were still in prototype phase. As I was moving this to my escape pod I heard it.

Crack

The hull was starting to split apart. No one needed to tell me I've heard that he noise enough times. Redoubling my efforts and giving instructions to Kane and Crag to drop what they were doing and get to their escape pods I rushed to mine as fast as I could with a machine table and bionics slowing me down. As I got to my pod I closed the door opened a panel and inserted my eye against a scanner. After authorizing me I immediately put in a tracking order to keep hold of its signal. As I was doing this I heard banging and screams coming from outside.Unlucky sons of bitches couldn't get to a pod in time. That was until the poor bastards voice left in a trailing scream followed by the depresserizing of the bridge.

Not my problem.

After finishing I anchored everything I had with me with some straps inside of the 4 person pod. Going over all systems and finding them more then operational due to my tinkering I checked the stash of 5,000 silver I kept in the walls. And was satisfied to find it untampered. Deciding to check in on Crag and Kane I was pleasantly surprised to hear the Kane had gotten a bunch of crewmembers to help him load his escape pod with his research, plants, rare materials and research equitment. Afterwards he was executed them all.

Crag however was retelling his story of giving the wimps in the armoury a good wallop for not allowing him to practically disarm the ship. They after a few punches had gotten back their reasoning. This was in no small part of Crag taking hold of one of the guards legs and swinging him around as a flail while he was still alive. He then made getting all the equitment into the escape pod a challenge by saying whoever was last would have all their limbs crushed one by one. They were so scared they hadn't thought of why they were doing this. Upon finishing they seemed confused when Crag and the pod jettisoned, but swiftly found the answer when a crack on the hull expanded.

I would've loved to continue talking to Crag, but unfortunately I lost connection due to the jump becoming more turbulent signaling entry. However thanks to me signal boosting the receivers I could still track the escape pods. So I sat there waiting and eventually decided to start fiddling with my gas mask to improve the filter and protection in the case of us landing on an inhospitable tomb world.