In the year 2015, a fine, young lad named Raul (that’s me, nice to meet you ^_^) started sharing his gaming stories. That start is now. Hello and welcome to “Well, That Just Happened #1” the first in what, I hope, will be a long series of small stories of adventures and happenings that I go through while gaming. Without further ado, let’s get into today’s story. I was playing Elite: Dangerous and well, this just happened…
My career as a freelance pilot in this wild galaxy had just started. I was fresh off the benches of the Training Missions. They weren’t as much lesson or tutorial kind of things, as they were figure everything out yourself in a safe simulation kind of thing. And figure things out I did. That is, I figured out, in the only mission I couldn’t complete, the “Survive 10 enemy waves” mission, that I’m not exactly the genius combat expert I expected, or hoped, to be. But, I can’t really complain either. I did beat 6 waves out of those 10, which, if the forums are to be believed, is not too shabby.
So I start my adventure, like any other pilot before me, in my trusty little Sidewinder. I’m doing some transport missions for various people near the systems Eravate, Yakabugai, LHS 3447, etc. Some transports more legal than others. Nothing too risky, just a quicker way to a few more credits. I’m thinking I’ll buy a better ship and some new gear for it. I eventually settle for the Adder, slightly bigger cargo hold and about the same mobility as my Sidewinder. I’m outfitting it with slightly better burst lasers, a small shields boost and start doing a slightly more exciting bounty mission. I’m in the LHS 3447 system, looking for some guy involved in some fight with my client over asteroid-field mining, don’t remember his name, didn’t really matter, he was as good as dead anyway. I activate my frameshift drive and it doesn’t take long to find him, the only problem is I don’t know how to catch him. I’m thinking I have to wait for him to drop out of warp speed or figure out his destination, but of course it doesn’t work. I wouldn’t even know how I would manage to drop out of frameshift mode at the same time and location as him. I had to do some homework.
After researching a bit I find out that I can install an FSD Interdictor with which I can hijack people’s frameshift drives. I set out again to find my target, but he is nowhere to be found. I had already looked for him throughout the whole of LHS 3447 for over an hour when I gave up. I was just wandering aimlessly now. A Vulture ship catches my attention as I scan random ships throughout the system. It has a bounty worth way more than what my client was going to give me for my current mission, but the pilot has an expert combat rank. I went for it, I mean come on, I beat 6/10 waves in training. How good can he be?
I interdict him pretty easily as I had a pretty good interdictor (It cost as much as my ship), we drop out of frameshift drive and I approach him. I open fire and I manage to stay behind him but his shields are pretty strong. Finally, after a good minute and a half of shooting, I get his last of the three layers of shields to maybe 20-25%. A couple more hits and he’s going down. Or so I thought. He starts boosting to gain some distance and I follow with a boost too. I’m closing in. He stops. Almost a dead stop in space. I’m outmaneuvered. I whizz by as I’m unable to stop or turn in time. He does the craziest 180 I’ve ever seen and he opens fire. My shields are just melting. I try to reroute power to them and to the engines in hopes of getting away, but it’s too late.
The hull is breached, my ship is going down. A last crack in the screen and then nothing. Silence. I guess it’s true: in space nobody can hear you scream.
