YC 17.09.112
0010 Hours
Hianmar sat on the Jump bridge, prepared to jump in to the next system on his route, waiting for the "all clear" from the those who were already in system. He pinged the intel channel.
"MT9Q-S Status?"
No response. This had him worried. He pinged it again.
"MT9Q-S Status? Anyone?"
Again, no response. Was the system so dead or uninhabited that no one would respond to a simple request for whether or not it was safe to jump in? He entered the command to approach the jump bridge, and the engines in his Drake, a battle-cruiser class vessel, rumbled to life. As he approached, he checked intel one last time.
"MT9Q-S Status?"
Still no response.
"Stupid intel" Hianmar grumbled and accessed the jump bridges navigation network. "Here we go" he thought, while simultaneously entering the password and confirming that he wished to jump. The jump bridge cast an isolated wormhole that would send him who knows how many light years away and his sensors went dark. The next thing he knew, before he could even relaunch his camera drone, he was bombarded by five or six different notifications at once.
"*********** has started trying to warp scramble you","******* has started trying to warp scramble you", and so on. As his camera drone finally made it out of the launch bay, he saw five or six stealth bombers, all with points on him, and a few recons and an interdictor. It was the fact that they were all hostile that got his attention.
"Oh fuck" Cursed Hianmar. He quickly located the POS and turned his ship in its direction, activated the micro-warp drive, and entered the force field password. As this was going on, his overview and point defence systems were screaming at him. He checked, and noticed that there were five or six bombs about to hit him head on.
He watched as the bombs hit him, and noticed they were doing a lot more damage than they should have. His shields absorbed the blow well, but he still dropped to 80% capacity. Checking his systems, he noticed that his shield hardeners, which make up about half of his defense, along with his damage control unit were lying dormant. He quickly turned them on with the amount of thought it takes to move a finger.
It had now been about 10 seconds, but it had seemed more like 5 minutes. Another wave of bombs was incoming, and having seen that their initial volley hadn't worked, they started to fire torpedoes in Hianmar's direction. With 15km still to go, at 1.2km/s, it was going to be close. If they breached his shield, his drake would crumple like paper, as they are notorious for. Whether he was going to make it or not, he needed to warn others in the intel so they wouldn't make the same mistake.
"MT9Q-S IS HOT! DO NOT JUMP IN, STEALTH BOMBERS ON JB's. 10 REDS IN LOCAL. REPEAT, DO NOT JUMP!"
As he continued on towards the POS, he realized he might actually make it. Though he was taking damage, and his low shield warning was blaring in his ears, his ship was still around 30% shields, and he had only another 5km to go. Though he was being bombarded by bombs and torpedoes and peppered with artillery fire, at the rate of damage he could easily make that last sprint.
With one final push, he overheated his micro-warp drive. Hoping to beat the last wave of bombs headed towards him. As he entered the safety of the POS's shields, he decided to run a damage diagnostic of his ship. Despite taking numerous torpedo and bomb hits, his ship had managed to come out of it without a scratch. Well, minus the fact that he had only 13% shields left.
Doing a quick sweep of the surroundings, the bombers had left his scanners completely, either cloaked up or had warped off, he noticed the 7 wrecks littered around the jump bridge along with numerous corpses. 2 Elite Frigates, 1 Elite Destroyer, 1 Frigate and 2 Elite Cruisers and 1 Battlecruiser wreck. Hianmar quickly lost his feeling of confidence at having survived that camp was replaced with his relief at not ending up as another corpse or wreck out in the freezing cold.
Sometimes you get lucky.
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