This is a story about my character in the Elite Dangerous game. A story of love and adventure, with a taste of science and beauty of space ships. A diary written by Commander Rhea, passionate fighter pilot.

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Day Six

  I open my eyes, still sleepy, but I’ve got job to do. “Kirea, any messages?” - “One new message, from Lieutenant Antoine Dubois.” - “Play the message.” Getting dressed while listening to it… that suicide ship was another Eagle, and it would seem that it had modified thrusters, just like the rest of them. Well, time to visit Felicity and talk about some business. I’m docked in one of the outside bays, I’ll take one of those trains. It’s pretty fast mag-lev transport, it would be rather long walk to the control tower otherwise.

  “Hello, I’m Rhea Ayase, I’ve sent a request for some upgrades the other day, I’m here to negotiate the deal.” I’m explaining to the front desk lady, she seems rather clueless… I wouldn’t be surprised if she was an Imperial slave. Anyway, she gestured towards the meeting room. “Hmm.. empty.” …someone’s coming. “Hello Commander Rhea, my name is Felicity Farseer, but you can call me Felicity. I heard that you are interested in rather big deal?” I messaged them that I would like 10 ships fully tuned to get this appointment. “Yes, I’m here with my private Fer deLance, so we can begin with that, and if I’m happy with the results, I would like to have 10 Eagles tuned for a tournament. I heard that you are the best engineer to talk to when it comes to these small fighters, that you can do real magic with the drives.” She sharpened her attention when I mentioned Eagles and their drives. “Oh, who told you about my Enhanced Drives?” I have to be careful and make her ask the questions, which will provide me with the right info… “I was docked in Achenar for a few days, when half of an Eagle managed to safely fly in and land, while it was missing left wing nacelle - quite a sight I’ll tell you.” She smiled, obviously proud of her work. Good, I should be able to get her brag about it a little. “Haha yes, I heard the news yesterday, that some Eagle pilots were racing close to the ground and they both crashed. I wasn’t aware that the ship was still operational?” - “Yeah I was talking to that pilot, he said that the ship was abandoned there, but still operational with but a few minutes of work he was able to fly it again. There was no sign of original owner so he just claimed it for himself.” I’m making her uneasy with this, she obviously doesn’t like the idea of that ship being in someones hands. This should provoke some action after I leave. “Anyway about my Fer deLance, can you tweak the drives a bit, to begin with? I’ve got some other business to attend to later…“ - “Okay, i’ll send the crew over right away, expect bills together with docking fees on your departure.” And so I bow the imperial way, smile, and walk away.

  “Kirea, record all channels and communications. for next 15 minutes.” It will take me a while to go through all the comms, but I bet that Felicity will contact whoever has those Eagles to tell them off for leaving the ship there. I should also tell Lieutenant about it in case she decides to verify my story. Sitting on the train back to my ship now “Kirea open comms to Lieutenant Antoine Dubois.” - “Hello?” he says. “Hello Lieutenant, this is Commander Rhea again, thank you for the message earlier. I would like to ask you now.. if anyone happens to have too many questions, you’ve recovered only one completely destroyed ship.” - “As you wish m’lady.” I love those Imperial manners…

  Back in my lovely chair, “Lets see what did we record… haha this is my own communication with Lieutenant!” This will take a while…
  …I’m starting to fall asleep listening to all kinds of messages. Some were encrypted well, so I listened to the ones with poor encryption first, while these were being munched by Kirea. “What the hell have you done!” Ahaaa this is Felicity, and very angry. Jackpot. “What are you talking about?” Rather surprised male voice. “Some random nobody recovered one of my Eagles that I sold to you, with my Enhanced Drives! You’re lucky it wasn’t the authority who got their hands on it, I would have killed you already!” I can’t help but smile, I tricked her well… “We will be moving our cargo out of this system tonight, then we are done and you can have your precious drives back for all I care.” He’s an arrogant one. And rich, since he doesn’t mind returning those ships he bought. Judging from the accent though, and the lack of manners, this one is definitely not an imperial citizen. My guess is feds, they always stick their nose into Imperial business. Anyway, I’ve got what I needed, now I just have to pay attention to the traffic. I’m looking for one Anaconda and a bunch of Eagles leaving this system anytime now. It has to be an Anaconda that will carry the cargo, since that is what I encountered the first night. It makes sense, very well armored transport with a bunch of fighter escorts.

  I’ve been waiting for three hours with my eyes peeled to the scanner now… I’m starting to think that they were talking about different system. I’m tired, it’s getting late…

  There! An Anaconda! Lets see what are those ships following it “hmm…“ Two Eagles, this fits! Lets grab the Anaconda and take out Eagles first, while they will have disabled FSD from the interdiction. “Interdiction tether established.” I hate interdiction, it’s a lot of hull stress to the ship, and it will shake all my plushies out of their rubberband holders by the bed. “Poor bunnies…“ Here comes the big punch out of the supercruise.
  Okay, now I need to get some distance from the Anaconda. “Kirea open comms to the Anaconda.” - *bleep* - “This is Commander Rhea, stand down your weapons and prepare to be scanned for that you are suspected of carrying stolen cargo.” I don’t even have a cargo scanner heh… But that’s irrelevant, they will engage in combat. They just deployed their hardpoints. “Kirea deploy hardpoints.” Two eagles appear in a flash of a light. “Divert power to engines.” Being pushed into the seat as I boost towards one of the Eagles… “Warning, under attack.” And that’s the Anaconda behind me. “Divert power to shields and weapons!” And so I gently press the primary trigger, watching the Eagles shield drain under the constant beam of my huge, modified laser. “Target shields offline,” she just said, but by the time she finished, their hull was down to 20%… I have to break off, I’m taking too much damage. Missiles off to this one, pitching up hard and boosting back with complete 180degree turn in a blink of an eye, heading directly head to head against the other Eagle, I fire my Railguns. Three quick blue flashes of my modified Imperial Hammer Railguns… “Full power to shields!” - “Warning, taking heat damage.” Those Railguns… “Deploy heatsink.” - “Impact warning!” I know my dear… I know. That’s why that full shield strength. Squeezing the stick and throttle as I hit the Eagle. It blows up in front of my canopy. “Shields offline.” Two down, fat one to go. “Kirea divert power to engines and weapons.” I need to get behind them as soon as possible, just like I did with the python the other day. “Engage silent running.” This will be much more painful than the Python fight… I have only so many heatsinks to throw out, and only so much chaff. I can neither keep silent-running for more than a brief moment, nor can I keep chaff deployed for too long. I have to show them all the tricks in the book I guess. “Let’s start with this one.” Boosting towards the Anaconda to get behind them as soon as possible, pitching up with slight forward thrust to make sure that I won’t crash into them - that would be deadly without shields. Now I’m in reverse, thanks to disabled Flight Assist. “Deploy chaff!” My eyes peeled to the scanner, waiting for what seems to be an eternity, taking damage from their weapons… It is in fact but a second or two. There, they are 700m away, that’s about a second til I’m directly below them. “Relativity!” I laugh out as I boost pitching slightly up, in order to arrest my reverse velocity and position behind them… Giant Anaconda appears right in front of me and I’m staring at their main thruster exhaust. “Disable silent running, full power to weapons,” I calmly instruct Kirea as I trigger both the beam laser and those Railguns. My opponent’s shield is flashing, pulsing with Shield Cell recharge in progress. They don’t know that my Railguns are modified to disrupt those. I’m not giggling at all, watching them try… “Target shields offline.” - “Target drives.” Missiles off to blow them up.
  “Open comms to the Anaconda.” - *bleep* - “Ceasefire!” he screams at me. “So again then, I am looking for stolen cargo canister. I believe that you remember me back on the night side of..” - “Yeah yeah take it!! This is not worth my life, or my ship.” Well well, it wasn’t that hard, other than most of my hull plating on top of my lovely ship being blown to pieces form that close pass… chaff doesn’t help much at that distance. Scooping the cargo as they manage to fix their drives, their shields are up again… must be those bi-weave ones, they were pulsing purple while they were trying to use the Shield Cell banks. “Under attack.” huh? He didn’t have enough?! I have to bail this, my shields are still down. Cargo is in, boost it is, away from them… “Damn Felicity!” They are keeping up.. “You and your modded drives.” Flight Assist off, pitch up and roll slightly, boosting mid-maneuver using both lateral and vertical thrusters… The best one-eighty turn I can pull off. Boosting right by the Anaconda. Charging FSD - by the time they turn around I’ll have a good 3-4km between us. “Byeee!” - “Shields online.” - “You’re so late my dear…“

  I finally arrived to the Trade Post in Delta Phoenicis after pulling an all-night shift in the pilots seat. I wouldn’t risk sleeping somewhere with the damn cursed cargo and almost destroyed ship… Walking down the ramp, slightly corpulent man in fancy robes is standing in front of my ship, looking at it steaming, hull plating torn apart… My heart hurts at this sight… “I’ve got your damn cargo.” I’m obviously not happy… “Don’t worry, your ship will be like new. Please get some rest in our ambassadorial suite.” The most expensive and fancy thing the Empire has to offer huh? I’ll take it. My own pool in this nice station with a few palm trees around it. But first, I’ll get some sleep.

  I wonder what was in the cargo container…

 

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