– by Simvastatin Montelukast

3 a.m. LST (local standard time) in some God-forsaken part of the universe. Stuck on watch during yet another painfully long, 23 hour mining op. As I look out the port viewing glass, I see the fleets Orca and three other Hulks. Every few minutes, I hit a couple of buttons and transfer the minerals from our hold to the Orca’s hangar. Man I wasn’t made out for this.

Three months ago, I graduated from the Republic Fleet University second in my class. I felt sure that I was going to be accepted into the Concorde Protectorate Officers Program. The interview went fantastic, or so I thought, and soon I was telling everyone that I was getting into CPOP. One night out celebrating with friends, and a drunk podding charge later, here I am. Stuck in parts of space that no one wants to be in, doing a mining op that no one wants to be a part of. Hell, I don’t even get to be part of the protection group. At least those guys get the chance of seeing some action. Running around, looking for pirates and other dangerous groups roaming through the system.

Then it happened. So fast it’s almost a blur now. Alarms started going off, and the comms channels were filled with warnings. “Warp to station”. Yells and screams. My arms raced quickly across the console as I started to align the Hulk. As the beast of a ship finally hit align, I started to punch in the warp command, my biggest fear was realized. Uncloaking 25km from me was a Taranis class Interceptor. I hit warp seconds before he was in range to scramble me. My mate Schrempf wasn’t as lucky. His hulk was the last to try to jump, but the Taranis caught him.

Over the comms channel, I kept hearing shouts and targets being called. Every couple of minutes, I would hear one of our pilots call out his loss. Our 20 man security force was down to 10 and getting overwhelmed quickly. Though the enemy had only jumped in with a 15 man recon force, you could see that they knew what they were doing.

After being swept away by the furious speed of the voices running through my headsets, I remembered Schrempf. “Sim, get your ass back here and get this guy off of me”. He yelled.

“Dude, give me 20 seconds to switch ships and I will be right there. You gonna be able to wait that long”?

Schrempf answered “Yeah, as long as this guys friends stay busy on the gate. But as soon as they warp to me, I would be better off flying a can of quafe than this target”

As we pulled up to station, I quickly spoke with Scotty about jumping into my Wolf. My personal pride and joy, it had been given to me as a graduation present from my father (one of the few things he had ever done right). Finally cleared to head out, I called out to my mate

“Man hang on a bit longer, I am running that way. How far away from you is he?”

“Dude, he is so close to my ship if he was any closer, we would have to be married for my mother to approve” he said with a snicker.

“Alright, don’t go making wedding plans just yet. Warping to you. I am going see if we can’t change that ole boys plans. Make sure you are aligned, we will need to get you warped before those gate crashers can get here”.

I jumped on scene 5 km from Schrempf and 2 km from his dance partner. He was spinning around him like a top, but I could tell that his orbit was way to close. I locked him up quick. Hitting my web and rep fleet warp scram at the same time, he slowed so fast it looked like the ‘Ranis hit a brick wall.

Clicking on my 220mm autocannons, the inty went down faster than a drunk girl on prom night.

“Alright Schrempf, get out of here quick, I am going to head to the gate and see if I can help out”

“Fly safe out there man, I will dock up this beast and pick up something more usefull. Don’t kill them all before I get there” he said.

Switching freqs to the war maneuvers channel proved to be a test of my ear drums. As I first switched over, all I could hear was Admiral McGee shouting out orders and leading the troops. Since I had last heard, the odds hadn’t gotten any worse, but several pilots were on their second and third reship. Currently the enemy was trying to take out Kryss, who also happened to be our best pilot.

McGee was directing reps from some of the ships, and pointing firepower at our opposition’s weakness. That was the hard part. These guys were skilled and well organized.

They did make one fatal flaw though. They started aggression on a gate with guns. This allowed us to make a push through their skill and organization. One by one, we were able to bring down their ships. Eventually they warped off, leaving us to lick our wounds.

Admiral McGee came over comms “Well boys, it wasn’t a win, but it wasn’t a complete loss either”.

“McGee, can I chase em down and try to get a couple of kills”? I asked.

“Sim, I have seen your stats, you’d be better off docking with the rest of us”.

And so my life continues….