Chapter 7
Rainbow Dash left the station in her Stabber-class cruiser, ready to take on anything. A cruiser of Minmatar design, the Stabber was sleek and slender with very powerful engines for a ship of its size. It was perfect for Rainbow Dash.
The Blue Monsoon was hers. It was fitted with rapid-fire two-hundred and twenty millimeter autocannons and numerous other modules and advanced components ideal for the operation of a sleek and efficient war machine. Each of these were improved beyond the performance of their standard-built counterparts through ingenuity and many hours of trial and error.
Karita waited outside with her Tengu. In all forms it was superior to the Blue Monsoon, but Rainbow Dash was intimately familiar with this particular cruiser. In fights between capsuleers, she who was most familiar with her ship wins the day.
“Ready to go?” Karita transmitted. “Take us to Villasen.”
The warp to the Ohbochi System was uneventful even after yesterday's incident, but it was not the only system they were bound to deal with.
“So, what exactly does Lai Dai want with Villasen?” Rainbow Dash asked, banking her cruiser toward the Raihbaka stargate after arriving in the Ohbochi system. “Don’t you already have a station there?”
“The executives want to search for another place to set up a station." Karita spoke as they warped across the system. "Since most of them are too afraid to take any real risks, they started with Villasen. Where we already have another station.” Karita’s words dripped with disapproval. It was clear that the Protection Services representative did not like any of the griffons on the board of directors, and also disapproved of their decisions.
They made the jump into Raihbaka Upon exiting the stargate Rainbow Dash activated her directional scanner, searching for anything in a three-hundred and sixty degree radius around her for several million kilometers. The only objects that she was able to detect were Karita’s Tengu and the stargate itself.
“We have to be careful around here. There are lots of pirates that like to hang around here,” Rainbow Dash warned Karita. This system, as well as the other systems of the Urpiken Constellation, were low-security systems which were the home and hunting ground of notorious pirate groups. She was hoping they avoided encounters with any substantial pirate fleets.
“What? A veteran of the Hikkonen Ambush afraid of a few pirates?” Karita spoke with a teasing tone.
“First off, it wasn’t a few pirates in Hikkonen,” Rainbow Dash shot back with rising temper, “it was a Pandora Legion fleet! More than a hundred mixed ships versus two dozen! We lost more than half of our ships in that ambush!”
“And you flew away with fifty-seven confirmed kills,” Karita replied, ignoring the tone of Rainbow Dash’s outburst. “Oddly enough, you didn’t score a single podkill. That honor went to your wingmare, who almost matched your ship kill total in capsules alone.”
That observation left a pall in Rainbow Dash’s gut. The Hikkonen Ambush as a whole was a fiasco that Rainbow Dash did not enjoy talking about, nor did she seek to reenact it anywhere else.
The two of them made the jumps through the Iralaja and Martoh systems in silence, until Rainbow Dash broke it with a question.
“Why did you want me to come along? I mean, that Tengu looks like it could take on anything.”
“I would prefer being led through pirate-infested low-security space by someone who knows the way there,” Karita replied. “Plus, it’s a lot easier to get carried away in a Tengu than you think.”
They finally made the jump into Villasen. The first thing that Rainbow Dash noticed was an abundance of activity on the local communication channels. That was not a good sign for her.
“Alright, we’re here,” Karita spoke. “Let me lead you to the station itself. It’s not too far.”
The two of them aligned to a planet and warped away.
“It’s not so much a station more than an outpost,” she continued. “They wanted to start cheap instead of actually trying.”
They landed from warp to find what would have been an outpost had they arrived half an hour earlier. Clouds of debris floated lifelessly where there had once been defensive installations. The outpost’s control tower had been blown in half, its upper half burning uncontrollably. Several structures had been blown apart, their contents scattered about.
More than a dozen pirate vessels darted about, attempting to loot whatever they could from the wreckage.
“What,” Karita barked over the local channel, “in Tartarus are you rats doing to my outpost?”
Rainbow Dash’s and Karita’s overlays lit up with yellow squares. Their camera drones showed ships turning in their direction, their weapons extending from their compartments and pointing directly at them.
“I think we have an answer, Karita,” Rainbow Dash replied, revving her autocannons and diverting capacitor energy to her microwarpdrive. “You take the cruisers, I’ll handle the small fry.”
The pirates before them were mostly frigates and a few destroyers. In particular, a Thorax-class and an Omen-class cruiser flew among them.
Karita could care less about the makeup of the pirate fleet; she was already locking targets. Energy was being siphoned to her Tengu’s shield modules, and she channeled hydrazine fuel into her afterburners. Automated loading systems filled her missile launchers with fresh Scourge-type heavy missiles, and held onto the load which would follow.
“Sounds like a plan.”
Both cruisers rocketed off toward the pirate vessels. Rainbow Dash’s Stabber left Karita’s Tengu in her microwarpdrive-enhanced engine wash, but their enemies were well within the effective range of Karita’s missiles.
Karita fired the first shots, launching an opening salvo of missiles toward the Thorax. Scourge missiles relied on physical kinetic impact to destroy whatever they hit. While this would be highly effective against other warships, Gallente vessels such as the Thorax specifically calibrated their shield and armor systems to ward off kinetic impact weapons.
The thunderous impacts of Karita’s Scourge missiles were absorbed by the Thorax’s shields. The small cluster of missiles earned the attention of the Thorax, who turned to face Karita at close range and activated its own afterburners.
Karita’s sensor systems detected new incoming contacts: drones, and plenty of them. Hammerhead-type drones were drones of intermediate size, intended for use against cruiser-sized targets such as her Tengu or Rainbow Dash’s Blue Monsoon. While Rainbow Dash may have been able to outrun the Hammerheads with her microwarpdrive, Karita’s Tengu was limited to an afterburner system. The drones caught up to her in moments, and began their deadly dance around her cruiser, launching blast after blast of charged plasma from their blaster cannons.
The attacks of the drones had little effect, splashing harmlessly against her Tengu’s shimmering shields. Caldari warships were not designed to be particularly fast or well-armored. They were designed to do two things: to possess an unyielding shield defense system, and to launch missile after missile into anything in their way with little pause between barrages.
Karita launched another salvo of missiles at the advancing Thorax, followed by another, and another. The void between the two warships was filled with Scourge missiles, creating a dazzling display of lights and violent impacts. The Thorax’s shields failed in a flash, and its armor began to take the full force of Karita’s onslaught.
The Thorax’s engines burned brightly as the pirate cruiser desperately attempted to close the distance between it and Karita and bring her Tengu into its weapons' effective range. Its efforts were in vain as Karita easily outpaced the Thorax with her Tengu’s afterburners, keeping it well within the range of her Scourge missiles while remaining outside of the reach of the Thorax’s weapons.
After a few more salvoes of kinetic-based hell, the Thorax’s armor failed, and its superstructure was destroyed by a final swarm of Scourge missiles. The Thorax exploded brilliantly, leaving behind a cloud of twisted wreckage and a capsule.
Karita quickly completed a target lock on the capsule. Despite her job in a corporate role, she had committed the basics of capsuleer combat to memory, and had locked the small green spheroid and brought about her missile launchers, ready to launch a finishing blow.
“Rainbow Dash,” Karita called, “should I get the pod?”
“Leave it!” Rainbow Dash commanded. “There’s more where that came from!”
Kartia spent a scant few seconds on considering Rainbow Dash’s reasons for sparing the capsule. One reason might be a sense of honor preventing her from destroying the capsule of a defeated capsuleer; Karita, as well as many other capsuleers in New Equestria, saw this as a weakness which could be exploited. The other reason might be a sense of urgency, that those ships capable of using weapons were greater threats than capsules.
Physically shrugging, she deselected the capsule as a target and selected one of the pirate frigates, a Merlin-class. Her missile launchers rotated, and already she was igniting one of her Scourge missiles.
Rainbow Dash’s Blue Monsoon punched right through the formation of pirate frigates, her autocannons spinning madly as they readied to fire. Stabbers excelled up close, where their autocannons could tear a target into shreds.
Her autocannons roared with a blazing fire, torrents of Navy-grade plasma shells pummeling the ships around her, exploding against their shields in green fire before tearing into their armor.
One of the frigates she poured fire into, a Breacher-class frigate, was blown to pieces as plasma shells breached its hull and destroyed its power core. A Merlin-class frigate was subjected to her fury and its hull was breached. Its engines were disabled, leaving the crippled pirate vessel drifting and burning.
Her Stabber suddenly lurched as its speed was brought to a standstill. Klaxons sounded loudly, and warp scramble and webifier alarms blinked to life in her overlays. Tritanium girders and metal plates of the Blue Monsoon groaned painfully from the stress of sudden deceleration.
Railgun charges punched hard into her shields and plasma blasts burned with greater precision as her enemies’ weapons suddenly became far more accurate than they were a few seconds ago.
“Karita, I’m being webbed!” Rainbow Dash transmitted. “I need some help here!”
“Which one?” Karita replied.
Rainbow Dash cycled through her sensors and overviews, panning her camera drones in search of the offending ship. There were already a half-dozen frigates circling around her, and in the heat of combat she almost missed it.
“That one!" Rainbow Dash shouted,"the Executioner!”
Karita locked the Executioner-class frigate, an Amarrian ship with a double-hull and huge engines. She cycled her missile launchers to unload its current payload of missiles and replaced them with “Precision” Scourge missiles. The Precision type of missiles had a shorter overall range and smaller warhead, but their enhanced guiding and maneuvering systems allowed for attacks against smaller ships, such as frigates.
As soon as her overlays indicated her launchers as ready to fire, missiles were streaking away, covering the distance between her Tengu and the Executioner in seconds. The impacts of her missiles were simultaneous, and the Executioner was smashed into pieces in a spectacular fireball.
Rainbow Dash felt the webifier lift as her Stabber surged ahead. She locked a Cormorant-class destroyer and readied her autocannons against it. Her guns made the Stabber vibrate as plasma shells flayed the destroyer’s armor from its superstructure.
Something, more like a whole swarm of somethings, hit the Blue Monsoon. Hard.
The simultaneous impacts collapsed through her shields as if they were never there. They punched straight through her armor and breached her hull in more places than she cared to have. Alarms and klaxons rang out as her capacitor suddenly drained to zero, and her ship’s speed hemorrhaged quickly.
Alerts filled her vision. There were six hull breaches in the Blue Monsoon, two of which were caused by the same impact. Multiple synaptic pathways, her link between her capsule and the Stabber, were destroyed. Her capacitor had been destroyed, and her engine systems had been smashed. The systems controlling life support were destroyed, and she was thankful that she did not bring a crew with her ship.
Her camera drones were operating on their own backup power as she panned them around her ship to look for whatever it was that ambushed her.
A Naga-class battlecruiser appeared in her overlay.
Her ship was a sitting duck drifting through the void. The frigates which surrounded her peeled off of her Stabber and moved off to a more threatening target—Karita’s Tengu.
Several more frigates warped into the battlefield, surrounding Karita like a hungry pack of wolves. Their weapons began to pick away at her strategic cruiser’s shields, but they failed to make a serious dent as her own active shield systems turned away their attacks. Karita lashed out against them in kind, smiting them with salvo after salvo of high-velocity kinetic missiles.
Her shield boosters flashed with intensity, bolstering her shields with enhanced strength as they replenished her battered shields. They held fast for a few moments more before they were battered again by the Naga's railguns.
The frigates around Karita held down her Tengu with webifiers and warp scramblers, removing her speed advantage while the Manticore bombers and the Naga wore down her shields. It was a losing battle and both she and Rainbow Dash knew it.
"Do you have any more ideas?" Karita transmitted to Rainbow Dash.
One of the frigates exploded in a flash of colored light. Another was torn asunder by what Karita was quick enough to perceive as blaster bolts.
They followed the incoming fire back to its source: a small group of familiar assault ships.
"Silent Storm told us that something was up around here. Naturally, we came to check it out," spoke Duster, his Harpy's blaster cannons rotating to rain charged particles onto more targets.
"But we come here to find, what?" Goldie transmitted, his Retribution's laser cannons glowing with energy. "Our friends getting dog piled by a gaggle of worthless pirates? That's not something we will tolerate at all. Oh, and a Naga? I'm shaking in my gold-shod hooves now! What do you say, boss?"
A familiar Raptor-class interceptor and a Hookbill-class frigate loomed between the two assault ships. Numerous rocket launchers on the latter loaded full payloads as it turned to attack.
"Do it," sounded a grim, coarse order from the Hookbill's pilot.
"My good gentlecolt," transmitted Goldie as he rolled his Retribution into an attack dive, "I thought you would never ask."
Three frigates dove to attack the pirates surrounding Karita. The fourth frigate, the Raptor, instead made a beeline for the Naga at full burn.
Duster's Harpy moved somewhat ponderously for a frigate, but that did not make it any less lethal against the pirate frigates around him. His blaster cannons laid onto a target as one, violently discharging gouts of antimatter at one particular vessel. The beating it received was horrendous, its shields collapsing and armor peeling away in the same salvo.
Goldie dove directly into the fight, his pulse lasers lashing out at everything around him at once. He was suddenly the most dangerous target in the fight, and the pirates redirected their fire onto him. His frigate's shields dropped quickly, but Goldie had planned for that, and welcomed the opportunity to put his ship's armor to test.
He engaged his armor repair modules, and armies of nanomachines swarmed to the scars and holes in his armor, repairing any damage that the pirates could dole out. Goldie's armor was also heavily reinforced, and shrugged off most of the pirate vessels' impacts.
The Hookbill weaved through the action, its afterburner module providing needed speed to out-turn and out-maneuver the pirates' weapons. As the Hookbill made graceful but erratic maneuvers, balls of flame spat from it launchers as unguided rockets leapt from them with great frequency.
Small-caliber rockets did not have the punch that larger missiles could bring, which is why they were launched in vast swarms.
Rocket after rocket shot from the Hookbill's rocket launchers, and all that the pilot needed was for his prey's shields to drop before launching withering salvos guided into the critical areas of a vessel: engine couplings, weapon systems, even the bridge itself.
The Raptor had largely avoided the extreme action of its companions and flew directly toward a bigger target: the Naga.
Its Microwarpdrive hummed at full capacity as it propelled the interceptor through kilometers of space every second. The Microwarpdrive itself radiated immense amounts of radiation, registering on the scanners of the Naga as a large target.
A frigate charging a Naga at full speed was far from an easy fight. The battlecruiser turned its cannons to the Raptor and opened fire.
Four-hundred and twenty-five millimeters of antimatter charge crossed space in less than a heartbeat, passing through the point where the Raptor had been a heartbeat before. The Raptor wove and rolled, skillfully evading the Naga's fire as it aimed to take advantage of the Naga's weaknesses at close range.
The Raptor buzzed past the battlecruiser, its own railguns firing provocatively as if to taunt. Railgun charges far smaller than the Naga's flashed harmlessly against the large battlecruiser's shields.
The railguns of the Naga were slow to track the Raptor, having been designed to be used against larger, slower targets.
The Raptor kept flying in a straight line away from the Naga, executing a lazy roll as a parting taunt as the Naga's railguns lined up for a killing shot.
"Rose Red just broke two hundred! Warp to Rose! Warp to Rose!" commanded the Hookbill's pilot.
The Hookbill, Harpy and Retribution turned toward the Naga and zipped off in rapid succession as their warp engines fired to full speed. They landed mere thousands of meters from the Naga.
In seconds it had been targeted, warp scrambled and webified. Rose Red's Raptor had turned around, and the four ships tightly orbited the Naga, putting as much concentrated fire as they could while flying too fast for the battlecruiser to keep up.
Their weapons nipped at the defensive shields of the Naga, a ship designed to put out as much damage as possible but not designed to take it.
It would have been exceptionally bad news for the Naga that Kurita had shaken off her assailants, and there was a salvo of Heavy Scourge missiles rapidly burning to rendezvous with it, physically.
In short order the Naga had been stripped of its shields, exposing its weak armor to the punishing blows of the assault ships' weapons.
The railguns of Rose Red's Raptor punched neat holes into the Naga while Duster's blaster cannons left messy scars where charged antimatter washed against tritanium plating. Goldie's laser cannons sliced away the dying battlecruiser's armor plating with beams of burning light as a chef would fillet a fish. The Hookbill dove past the Naga, strafing it as it unleashed a typhoon of armor-piercing rockets into the finished warship.
The Naga could take no more abuse, and with a muffled crump its starboard nacelle came apart from the main hull to disappear seconds later in a raging conflagration as antimatter charges chain-reacted to release their volatile payload. The shockwave of the violent eruption battered against the shields of the assault ships and smashed apart what was left of the Naga.
A capsule lept from the twisted wreck, testament to the resilience of capsuleer systems. The small ovoid warped away before anyone could react, leaving the remaining pilots in a state of tenses alert. They finally relaxed as no other ships warped into the battlefield.
What lay before them was a drifting scrapyard. A score of what used to be starships rested silently, blasted apart by a now-extinguished conflict. Vestiges of what were one Lai Dai and pirate vessels still desperately clung to their respective owners in the form of blasted-away paint jobs. The Blue Monsoon was intact, barely, and had just enough power to connect its camera drones to the ship's capsule systems.
"Is everypony alright?" asked the pilot of the Hookbill. "Rainbow Dash? Are you okay in there?"
She stirred slightly in her capsule. She was not okay; her Stabber had been halfway blown to bits by a pirate battlecruiser. She felt railgun charges pierce her hull in more ways than she wanted to, and felt them as if her own body had been pierced by high-velocity projectiles.
"Yeah, I'm okay," Rainbow Dash spoke despite the circumstances. The Caldari Navy had beaten into her that if she can breathe and feel her own heartbeat, she was okay enough to pilot a ship. "My Stabber is kind of scrapped, though. Let's see what Fluttershy can do to fix it."
She opened a channel to Fluttershy.
"Hey Fluttershy, can you give me a hoof?" she asked as soon as Fluttershy opened the channel.
"Oh, ok. Um...what happened?" Fluttershy asked quietly.
"Karita and I went to Villasen to see the new station," Rainbow Dash spoke," and when we got to the station it kind of wasn't there, and now I'm kind of wrecked so can you please bring the Basilisk to help me out here?"
"Oh, I'll see what I can do," Fluttershy spoke quietly.
"And can you get Appkejack over here with the Noctis? There's a lot of wrecked ships out here. Bring Rarity and Twilight out here too, we could use some protection.”
“Um, sure,” Fluttershy answered, and the channel closed.
“I’ve heard about you,” Karita transmitted, “but I wasn’t expecting to be rescued by Silent Storm himself.”
The Hookbill made a close pass by Karita’s Tengu. Their camera drones scanned across the other’s ship; one was the pinnacle of warship design, the other an icon of Caldari frigate designs.
“We received a concerned request from Pinkie Pie to render our services,” Silent Storm replied stoically. “She gave us a jump in exchange for a cynosural field. A few dozen or so pirates are nothing compared to a small group of seasoned capsuleers.”
The still-smoldering wreckage of the Naga was evidence of that. Silent Storm and his aptly-named corporation had seen a combined century of capsuleer experience, which lead to a very impressive combat record. The pilots he had brought with him today were only three of many; if he wanted to, he could bring to bear more firepower than a dozen fleets of any empire, combined.
“So, you got her to give you a jump?” Karita asked with suspicion.
“Well,” Pinkie Pie spoke energetically, “who else would be fast enough to go from Uesuro to Daras, get all of Silent Storm’s friends in one place, load them all into a Chimera, jump them to Ohboch, jump them again to Villasen, drop them off here and still have time to plan a party?”
The Party Boat warped directly into their midst, the multi-hued pink Chimera creating an imposing image among the remaining warships. “The cynos are still burning, so I can have Applejack and Fluttershy and everypony else here in ten seconds flat!”
“Hey!” Rainbow Dash protested. “That’s my line! You can’t use my line!”
•••
Fluttershy's scan of the Blue Monsoon did not tell her nice things about Rainbow Dash's Stabber. She had hoped that the stricken cruiser could be repaired, but bringing her Basilisk-class logistics ship was turning out to be a waste of time.
"Well, Fluttershy? How bad is it?" asked Rainbow Dash.
Fluttershy sighed, and looked away from the crippled warship. Her camera drones turned to Applejack's Noctis as the large salvager vessel pulled wrecked ships toward it. Thin white beams of light reached out at the wreckage as salvaging lasers separated still useful components from the wreck before they were pulled into the Noctis' cargo bay by tractor beams.
"I can't fix your ship, Rainbow Dash," she spoke meekly.
"What? What do you mean ‘you can't fix my ship’?" Rainbow Dash protested.
Fluttershy sighed again.
“There are six breeches in your hull. Forty percent of your armor is gone. Your Stabber’s CPU terminal is destroyed. Critical power couplings have been smashed to pieces. Your overdrive injectors are locked up from the impact, and if we feed any power at all to your microwarpdrive, it might explode. If we turn on your power core, it might explode. Half of your critical systems, if turned on, might explode. Two of your autocannons are missing, and right now if we try to use nanopaste on your remaining weapons they might explode too.”
Every item that Fluttershy listed deflated Rainbow Dash little by little, and she began to give up hope that the Blue Monsoon was salvageable at all.
"...I'm sorry, Rainbow Dash," Fluttershy apologized timidly.
Rainbow Dash felt defeated by her cruiser being all but destroyed. She had been involved in many encounters with pirates and rogue drones, and had travelled to many star systems in her Blue Monsoon, but sadly it seemed that this could be her cruiser's last flight.
"I might as well just eject and let Applejack salvage what is left of my cruiser," she said dejectedly.
"Now hang on a minute there, sugarcube," Applejack transmitted. "Ah know that yer Stabber there's been pounded on harder than a hoofball player in the Sugar Bowl, an' that it can't fly on its own, but that there is still a working warship! Pinkie Pie can pick it up and send it over to the repair ponies in Isie. An' ah know how ya don't like flyin' around in just yer capsule, so..."
The titanic hangar doors of the Chimera opened dramatically, and from within its confines a familiar frigate drifted into the void.
"I brought your Rifter!" Pinkie Pie happily announced in a sing-song tone.
Rainbow Dash smiled gleefully as she ejected her capsule from her crippled Stabber and made as fast of a beeline as her capsule could take her. She flew a tight ring around her Rifter to inspect it, and was very happy with what she saw. Her Blue Thunderbolt had been damaged quite harshly in the previous fight with a Hurricane, but it had been repaired to perfect condition. It was even painted sky-blue, and the wing had her rainbow paintjob.
"Those griffons at Isie know exactly what it is they're supposed to be doin'," Applejack transmitted. "There's little to nothing they can't put back together once they get their claws on it!"
Rainbow Dash nestled her capsule into her Rifter, and the connection with her frigate felt like snuggling into a favorite cloud. It was comfortable and clean, and its control systems had the tightness and intensity that she preferred in a frigate. Pinkie Pie deftly maneuvered her Chimera over the stricken Stabber an scooped it into her hangar bay.
“Well, ah still need some time to pick up what’s left of this fight. You ponies went to town on those pirates! Karita, do you want me to pack up the starbase parts as well?” Applejack asked as she pulled more wrecked ships toward her, leaving a cloud of scattered debris around her.
“Yeah, take everything left as compensation. This base is a total loss as is. Can Pinkie Pie carry it all?” Karita asked.
“Absolutely! But don’t go away just yet! We’re holding a party in Fluttershy’s honor in Daras and everypony is invited!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed.
After a few moments of silence, the Lai Dai Protection Services representative broke it.
“I’ll come as long as I get to meet Silent Storm in person.”
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3969103
I do apologize for taking so long to get these chapters onto the website. I'll be doing the best that I can to keep them rolling!
I think the biggest question the readers are asking is "Can I bring my Drake?"