[AgentZero]

dogscoff said:
Like the defiant pic. It looks like something that could be successfully piloted by one drunk dude, too.

Thanks. As a matter of reference, it's about the size of the Serenity, and while that means nothing to those of you who haven't seen Firefly or Serenity, tough. Watch 'em both, you won't regret it.

Now, I've got a lovely treat for you all today, more story, AND another picture. Who loves ya? BTW, the pic isn't the finished version, which will be unveiled at the appropriate time, but can anyone tell me how to get rid of those 'stripes' on the rear section of the ship?

And now, the next installment!

Kaelan O’Shea stretched comfortably in his destroyer’s control chair. A small smile teased his lips as he allowed his mind to wander back towards the delightful young midshipwoman he’d encountered on McArthur’s fine, shiny station. As his mind slithered about the memories of their time together, the warm tingle of love spread through his body, starting in his belly and slowly spreading out towards his limbs, ending with a pleasant tingle in his fingertips. Of course, he reflected as he reached behind his chair, the warm glow might have less to do with love, and more to do with the case of Guinness he’d liberated from McArthur. Those Ruskies, he decided as he cracked open a can that had changed remarkably little in over 30,000 years, had absolutely no business hoarding that much fine brew. It just wasn’t right. As he poured the can carefully into a well-used glass, his shipboard detection system began beeping quietly.
“Ye can wait,” he informed it as he gazed intently at the glass, waiting for the perfect moment to complete the two-part pour. Completely unfazed, his ship to beep, albeit slightly more insistently. “I said ye can bloody well wait!” he snapped at it. Taking no heed of the alarm’s increasing volume, he completed his pour and set it in his chair’s armrest to settle. “Now, what’s all the commotion about?” he inquired placatingly as he slid his command chair forward to the control panel. “Oh,” he said as his eyes swept the sensor readouts. “Well now that’s hardly good now is it?”

The Defiant was a decommissioned Revolution-class destroyer, one of the newer models the Empire had produced before the end of the war, and the haughty title bestowed on her class was not undeserved. The Revolution-class was markedly faster and more maneuverable, while still boasting significantly heavier weapons, shields and firepower than any of her predecessors. Of course, all of the decommissioned ships in the fleet had had their power plants, shields, armor and weapons stripped out, since the Navy was hardly going to release it’s most advanced equipment to the general public. That being said, if one knew the right people, it was quite possible to grease a few palms in the now cash-strapped Navy to have all of the above –save weapons, unfortunately- put back in. Which had been the second thing O’Shea had done after acquiring the Defiant. The first thing had been to have a Navy quartermaster sign off on the forms stating that all power plants, shields, armor and weapons had been stripped from the ship. He’d also managed to pull a few strings and have his ship fitted with the Komsa-class reconnaissance destroyer’s sensor suite. Which is why his ship was beeping at him far before any ship his size should have been able to see the light cruiser and two corvettes bearing down on him on a direct intercept course. O’Shea sat and watched the three blips moving steadily closer to him, though any ship moving on a course that direct and at that speed didn’t leave much to the imagination as to their intentions. The vast majority of the Revolution-class that had been decommissioned had found new employment as courier ships. Stripped of their weapons and magazines, they had a surprising amount of empty space to them and shipping companies had been eager to buy them up to use as high-speed transports to deliver valuable, time-critical goods across the Empire. This of course, made them a tempting target for pirates, and the three ships heading towards him seemed to be following the standard (and successful) tactics for capturing a speedy prey. Even with commercial power plants, the Revolution-class were still extremely fast ships, but even the fastest ships need time to accelerate, so the usual intercept was to use a light cruiser with a powerful sensor rig to pick targets from outside their own range, then build up enough speed before being noticed to make any attempts at evasion completely futile.

From his readouts, it was readily apparent to O’Shea that the three ships barreling towards him had already built up enough speed to overtake him well before he reached the nearest jump-node, even if the pirates hadn’t been in between him and said node. Faced with the prospects of certain death if they ran, versus only probably death if they didn’t, most pilots chose the former, hoping calm co-operation would save them from having their cockpit decorated with their own intestines. But O’Shea wasn’t worried just yet. These could just be a couple fine ordinary, entirely peaceful folks who just happened to be in an extraordinary hurry. He wouldn’t know for sure until they entered what they figured to be his maximum sensory range, which wouldn’t be for another –he consulted his readouts again- eighteen whole seconds. Kaelan O’Shea amused himself by inscribing a cloverleaf pattern into the head of his pint. The reasons for his fascination with the symbol had long been lost in the mists of time, but it always drifted into his mind when things were looking grim. Nineteen seconds later, his com-screen beeped and the words

Cut your engines and drop your shields

appeared on the screen. No voice, no visual, and completely lacking in piratiness, O’Shea reflected. No ‘Arrrr!’ and not even the essential ‘Prepare to be boarded.’ Amateurs, he decided with a snort and slipped his hands around the manual controls. The one thing O’Shea had that most commercial Revolution pilots didn’t, aside from a dangerously unstable psyche, was a gleaming new set of military grade pulse cannons that had been obtained from a heavy cruiser before it was scrapped. Their power requirements should have been a bit high for the Defiant’s reactor, but that was only if one ran the reactor at it’s ‘recommended’ output settings. O’Shea brought the guns to hot standby, transmitted a quick acknowledgment to the light cruiser, then spun his ship around and fired the engines to kill his momentum, before he spared a glance at his pint. In all likelihood, a spot of rough and tumble was about to ensue, he mused, and while there was little doubt about anything else in his mind, he didn’t much care for the drink’s odds of survival. Which only left one option. Grabbing his custom-made throttle control in one hand, and the pint in the other, he downed the whole thing in one go, tossed the glass out the cockpit door and slammed the throttle to full power. The Defiant leapt towards her pursuers, and immediately more and more severe threats began to pour across his com-screen. He let out a chuckle at one particularly virulent message which he deemed colourful enough to warrant his reply of, ‘Well, I’m definitely not gonna play nice now.’

He drew closer, accelerating all the time and making a beeline for the two corvettes, who decided they didn’t want to get any closer to a ship piloted by someone quite so suicidal and broke away from the light cruiser to set up an attack run –exactly as he’d hoped they would. A flick of a switch brought his weapons to full power, and his first salvo sliced through the cruiser’s shields to score direct hits on its sensor array. As he pealed off to set up another run, the first corvette fell victim to his cleverly hidden ventral-mounted auto-cannons, while the second was unfortunate enough to discover that, being swivel mounted, his pulse cannons could also fire backwards. The light cruiser managed to get her secondary sensors up and running and O’Shea chortled merrily as his ship flitted between interceptor bolts and point-defense beams. A single strafing run reduced the destruction being directed at him to a rather boring level. He executed a snap turn that would have made the most stringent flight instructor proud and loosed a disruptor missile (something good folk outside the military weren’t even supposed to know about). The missile struck home, and quite it’s power plants died and it’s guns spluttered out. O’Shea brought his destroyer in uncomfortably close to the light cruiser’s bridge and thumbed a com switch.
“Don’ bother tryin’ to fix it,” he said conversationally. “It ain’t ever startin’ again. Now,” he continued after a few seconds pause to let his words sink in. “Here’s what’s gonna happen…”

Within an hour, the Navy heavy cruiser Rawson arrived on the scene and took the pirate crew into custody. O’Shea was not unhappy to learn that a few of them had been daft enough to resist arrest and gotten themselves splattered all over a bulkhead or two. O’Shea shook his head ruefully as the Rawson’s extremely cute com officer relayed the news to him. Anyone who argued with an angry Marine in two and a half meters of powered battle armor had to be an amateur. He even stuck around for a few hours, but only in case the Rawson had to depart for some reason before the tug arrived to tow the damaged cruiser, and had absolutely nothing to do with the two hours he spent flirting with her com officer. Once all three ships had safely departed towards the nearest jump-node, he brought his ship back on course and continued along at cruising speed. Nine hours later, he was setting up his jump trajectory when a spike on one of his sensor displays indicated another ship was about to make transit to normal space. It was a fairly large spike, so he slowed the Defiant to give the new arrival plenty of room. Strictly speaking it wasn’t necessary, there was more than enough room at a jump-node for several dozen ships to simultaneously jump in and out, and since sensors could read into normal space from null-space, any exiting ship would have more than enough time to adjust their course in the extremely unlikely event of a collision hazard. Still, it was a courtesy that spacers extended to each other, and O’Shea waited patiently for the other ship to complete transit. Which occurred roughly ten seconds later, and O’Shea’s jaw dropped.

Pointing out his cockpit window and with the sort of indignation that could only be mustered following the consumption of a heroic amount of alcohol, he demanded, “What the hell is that?”