Hear hear, the tale of my ranking up from midshipman to petty officer !
So I had to kill Davies, an imperial General. I search for him in USS when suddenly, a Federal Dropship pops out. What would an Imperial do in such a lousy bulk ?
Anyway, I begin scanning him (because bounties !) when he yells over my comms "have at him, boys !" and starts shooting at me. Lasers abound, kinetic ammo flies all around me.
Scan being finished I do some maneuvering to get out of his line of fire and end up on his tail (I don't know how). I target his left thrusters sub-system and start vaporizing his shield with my all burst setup. Soon he does some maneuvering of his own and we are face to face, 150-200 meters from one another.
A volley of leads ends up cracking my canopy and I start panicking. He's at 74% hull, his shields are coming online any second now and mines are dropping faster than my guts.
I hit boost and get some distance between us, my shields drop, I am down to 86% hull. I hit boost a second time and start regrouping.
That's when I pick up two new red signatures on my radar. Oh oh... What happened, we were alone just a second ago ! (turns out I forgot to disable agression notification to the authorities).
A little worried, I watch as my local bounty goes up to 600. Why ? Oh that's right, my target was rated "clean" before my messy attempt at murder.
The two authority are somewhat far away so I decide to resume pounding of dropship's shield, but they soon catch up to me (because there's a Viper and an Eagle) and I see my shields lowering faster than before. Good news is, Davies' are down.
I finally manage to kill his left thruster, but he still has 38% hull while mine is 52% and... and dropping ! I hit boost and flee for a bit.
Shields return and start dropping again because of the authorities tailing my sorry ass, but then I hear something far more worrying.
"Frameshift Charge Detected". What what wait oh no you don't ! I have a 6k bounty now and it won't be for naught ! I brake, full 180° and see him limping (as much as spaceship can limp) away with full shields.
So I boost to the heart of fire, unloading all my rage (+1,5% heat damage) unto him. At this point I don't care about sub-systems, I just want his hull wrecked.
Incoming fire messes up my displays so I don't know exactly what is happening, except that my hull goes to 21% and I hear "left thruster malfunction". I start spiralling out of control. Oh no. Now he's going to escape and I won't be able to do so myself.
But Fortune favors the Bolds ! Shields resume and I somehow get a grip on my directional thrusters so once again I'm sitting on Davies' ass. And suddenly he slows down. Not enough push for Frameshifting, eh ?
That's when I went from Bold to Brazen. My fire still falling on him, I put 4 pips to shields and align with his midsection. I then boost.
"Mission Accomplished" says the HUD.
Also something about a 9k bounty on my head.
Somehow, with a cracked windshield, 21% hull and limping on one less thruster I manage to get enough distance to Supercruise without too much lead on my ass.
Then, I don't know why, I look at comms. "have at him, boys !" is there. He must have shouted to his crew just before I broke him in two.
I then realize, the federation made me kill an allegedly imperial general that could have been any federal officer they did not want anymore.
The "secret" part of the mission might just have been to cover up with a pirate attack or something, furthering the plans of the magnates.
To homeland security responding my distress call, I must have seemed like a stupid pirate attacking a clean ship. Who attacks people and asks for help when he's countered ?
I bribed off my bounties and went on to kill pirates federal dropship in the anarchy next door, sailing on the adrenaline rush.
But man, was that awesome.
