Starpoint Gemini 2, Session 4: In and Out, a fanfic! Demiboy vs. Backlog, Game #2

In this blog series, I play randomly selected video games from my backlog, writing about them as I go! The last couple days I haven't had a lot of play time available, so here's a fanfic based on an earlier session. Previous posts about Starpoint Gemini 2 can be found here, here, and here.

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Adrian Faulkner scowled¹ at the financials readout. He was making progress, but not enough, not nearly enough. Every month that passed risked the data cores slipping beyond his grasp, lost or corrupted or destroyed, and without them he would never know why his father had died. He needed to be aggressive, build a fleet faster than any starfarer ever had.²

"TAURUS. What's on the freelance channels?"

A list of jobs spilled into view on his command console. So much junk. Taxi a VIP from Trinity to Laguardia for 15k. Bring in a Syndicate pirate, or proof of their ship's destruction, for 20. Tasks like that would keep Faulkner ahead of his expenses, but catapult him to admiralty? Unlikely.

"Narrow search parameters to requests offering 65k credits or more."³

The ship's computer obliged. A thin smile graced Faulkner's lips. "Contact HoloCom and signal our acceptance of posting #13482."

A response came while Faulkner laid in a course to the lower Aethera wormhole in sector 167. "Running to the District Delta in a gunship? You're a nutter, Faulkner. We'll etch your name in right next to your father's."

"Do I have the job or not?"

"Damn thing won't get any more broken from you adding one more derelict to the sector. We see that relay sat come back online with your tag, money's yours."

"I'll bring you back a postcard. Faulkner out."

The beige clouds of the Aethera nebula closed in around the TAURUS, accompanied by the thin buzz of radiation alarms. Hull integrity readings started to fall, the gases of the nebula so hot and unstable that the TAURUS's armor had begun to boil off into space. Faulkner narrowed his eyes. "TAURUS, activate Defender protocol⁴ once hull integrity reaches 80%. I want us in top shape coming out the other side." The gunship's shields rippled and whorled, focusing their strength on hotspots, while repair nanomachines stitched reinforcing plates into place between the bulkheads.

Ahead, a funnel cloud of nebula gas spiraling away into space revealed the aperture of the wormhole. Faulkner made a few minute course corrections and watched his readouts closely. There should be just enough auxiliary power available to sustain Defender through the trip--

The TAURUS plunged into the vortex. The forward viewer showed an indistinct mess of swirling brown fog, and Faulkner's stomach lurched as g forces pulled in several different, seemingly random directions. The chaos only lasted a few seconds, though⁵, after which the haze of the nebula quickly gave way to an unfamiliar starfield and the tumbling blots of asteroids.

"TAURUS, deploy a Unity swarm to check our hull over and patch things up. I'm taking us over to that relay satellite."⁶

The damage to the relay was obvious even to visual inspection. One of the pylons, studded with communication equipment, had snapped off close to its base. Possibly a rogue chunk of asteroid had struck it by freak chance, or some Anarchist joyrider had rammed it in a middle-finger gesture to all top-down control systems. The relay's stabilizers, intact and fueled, had kept it from spiraling off into the void after the impact, but its functionality would be seriously impaired until an enterprising freelancer stopped by to reassemble the pylon.⁷ Faulkner brought the TAURUS in close and engaged the repair beam: a projected version of its own shielding and repair systems, bolstered by the grapple beam otherwise used for towing derelicts and uncooperative bounties.⁸

"Captain.⁹ A hostile craft has entered the vicinity."

Faulkner looked at the tactical sphere and swore. This, not the radiation of the Aethera, was the sort of thing that had the HoloCom rep so skeptical of his chances: an Empire cruiser. It was bearing down on him fast, weapons hot, without even a taunt over the radio. The TAURUS was barely a blip in the sector by comparison, not so much the Empire's prey as an annoying moth that had been drawn into its light, soon to be scorched.

"TAURUS, how long before we get that pylon glued back on?"

"Sixty seconds."

A beam weapon raked across the TAURUS's upper hull, burning the shields there down to half strength in an instant. Faulkner gritted his teeth and rolled the ship over, presenting the as-yet-undamaged lower shields to the next barrage, all the while opening up the throttle and banking away. "Weapons free!" The TAURUS's turret began spitting balls of plasma in return fire. Not that Faulkner expected to do any serious damage, but a lucky hit might disrupt the beam enough to give a moment's reprieve--

Then an idea struck him. The repair beam was still engaged, forcing him to stay close to the relay satellite. Stationed as it was this close to the nebula, the satellite likely had better energy shielding than the TAURUS had! Another blast stripped the TAURUS's aft shielding down to nothing, cutting into the hull armor above the engines. But Faulkner angled the TAURUS in still closer to the relay, close enough to spit on, and swung behind one of the enormous communication dishes attached to a good pylon. The beam fire cut off, interrupted by the intervening cover!

¹⁰

"Thirty seconds."

Faulkner relished the remaining time, frustrating the cruiser's captain by constantly weaving through and behind the relay's components, never exposed for more than an instant. Being goddamned small was the gunship's only advantage in this unfair matchup, so he'd have to play it hard!

The wayward pylon snapped back into place. "Set course back to the wormhole, all power to engines! Give me Defender protocol, Piloting protocol, burn an acceleration booster, give it all we've got!"

The TAURUS rushed forth from the relay's protective arms like a torpedo from its tube, streaming fire from a ruptured compartment aft starboard. The cruiser, for all its might, had no chance of bringing its much greater tonnage up to sufficient speed for a pursuit. The gunship dove back into the wormhole, and with a shudder from stem to stern, reemerged. The raging heat of the nebula was a comfort by comparison.

"Captain, 96,000 credits have been transferred to your account courtesy of HoloCom Inc."

"Hell yes." Faulkner took a deep, relieved breath. "Lay us in for Laguardia to get patched up. And while we're on our way, bring those freelance lists back up for me. Let's see if we can find a 100k next."

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1. All spacebros scowl, constantly. It is mandatory. If they display emotion other than rage or steely determination, they're stripped of rank and become janitors in point-and-click adventures.
2. He had to be the very best. The best there ever was. Ahem.
3. This is not a feature in the game. Fan fiction: a chance to imagine the greatness that might have been.
4. mumble Commander class ability cooldown F3 mumble mumble
5. The wormhole animation is a loading screen, so it's RELATIVISTICALLY INSTANTANEOUS
6. It's called a "satellite" and all, but damned if I could tell you what it's orbiting. It's just sort of... out there.
7. HoloCom itself does not employ bad enough dudes to rescue the satellite. Well, OK, they obviously do, given the "IMPOSSIBLE" threat rating ships with their IFF that swoop in to kill pirates I'm trying to nonlethally capture, but I guess they can't be arsed to go do something so dull as repair an interstellar communications network.
8. It is powered by the purest crystalline handwavium.
9. My rank is only Petty Officer, but if it makes you happy to call me Captain, computer, go ahead.
10. Yeah, the cruiser's using plasma, not a beam, and I don't have a repair action running... I'd have to savescum all night to recreate the exact scene :p