Thursday 9 August 2012

Surgical Slicer

The executioner class frigate had been buzzing round the system for a few minutes now not long staying in one place for any time, certainly not enough to be ratting, and was hanging off the gate in to neighbouring Allipes.

Coming in for a closer look Anabaric pulled the slicer up to the gate at 100km, a quick look at the frigates brand new paint, and registration number confirmed his suspicions this was the new Mark III Executioner, with the extra slots. Whilst still not realistically a threat on it's own to the Navy issue Slicer that he was flying the pilots behaviour suggested that he had a gang on the other side of the gate. Unable to start the fight under the watchful eye the concord maintained gate guns, the Slicer performed a few close fly bys to try and tempt the other pilot to aggres. Then suddenly the Executioner pilot warped out to a tactical point 200km away from the gate, but before Anabaric could burn the distance the Executioner warped back to the gate and jumped through.

"You know that's a trap don't you.." Nashh's voice slurred through the neocomm.
"Order me a rum, I'll be back in station in 20mins"
"You'll be back in your clone bay in 2 more like it"
"..whatever!"

Anabaric gained the minimum safe warp distance, then warped back to the gate, jumping on contact. On the other side of the gate a small gang was indeed waiting, the slicer would still be invisible on their sensors, it's signature still echoing from the jumpgate, he used the time to assess the situation. A Pilgrim, Talos, Oracle, were orbiting the gate at close range ready to jump through the slicer was not moving, probably sitting with it's microwarp drive overheated and primed to tackle.

If he could split them up that Executioner should die easily, but could he get them away from each other... Burning back to the gate he waited just long enough for the ships to engage, a scram warning from the Executioner and then the dreaded red box from the Pilgrim! Pressing the jump button he watched the local channel, to check he'd been followed by some of the ships, both the Talos and Oracle were now in Goinard. As the grid started to load, and systems recover from the inter-system jump, Anabaric burned back to the gate and jumped again, ignoring the warning protest from his jump engine matrix which was now dangerously overheated.
The Executioner and Pilgrim were still sitting on the gate unable to have followed into Goinard, overheating his microwarp drive he burned out away from the gate, 50km, 100km, smiling quietly as the Executioner proceeded to chase the Slicer.
As the Orcale and Talos appeared back in the system, Anabaric slammed the slicer round in a tight turn, the thin hull groaning under the g force and burned straight towards the executioner. The pilot reaslised his mistake just too late as he tried to run back to the safety of his friends, but by aggressing earlier he had combat flagged his ship in front of the gate guns and they could not save him now!
With his friends impotently watching on, the Slicer's overheated lasers cut his small ship to pieces in just a few seconds. With a quick GF! in local channel Anabaric warped back towards Goinard, and the waiting rum.