Lonetrek region – Okela constellation
Nourvukaiken system
3 March YC 127
“Look what we’ve got here,” I said, having finished scanning Nourvukaiken system. “There are two sites which I have never seen before. Which one shall we visit first?”
The probe scanner revealed Local Guristas Production Installation and Rogue Drone Asteroid Infestation.
“Since we are flying a Buzzard, I would suggest to go to the Guristas place first,” replied Aura.
I looked at Aura with surprise, “Don’t good manners, to say nothing about common sense, dictate that one should fly a combat ship when visiting a den of pirates?”
“Nah, those production installations are unguarded. Also, they contain some information facilities which may be looted if one has a data analyser – a module which is not typically found on destroyers.”
“Ah,” I said raising my eyebrows, “then let’s go and rob the robbers.”
I warped to the location of the Guristas site where I found a coral-like asteroid surrounded by three Info Shards and a Com Tower. Hacking was a breeze and soon I became a new owner of a handful of decryptors, filaments and other bric-a-brac.
“Hmm…” said Aura, “No datacores?”
“Nope,” I shook my head.
“Why do you think we don’t find datacores in Guristas hi-sec communication facilities? Or, for that matter, why don’t we find more such facilities? It’s the first one we have discovered since December despite your regular patrols.”
“I can’t answer your first question, but as to the second one, I think this is due to the busy nature of this constellation. A lot of traffic passes through Okela systems, including explorers. If any Guristas base starts leaking emissions, it is quickly discovered and looted.”
Aura looked at me hopefully, “Can we move our operations to a quieter constellation?”
“In principle, I don’t care where we fight the pirates, but here I am finally getting some traction with the security agent. Given how much effort it takes to build a good working relationship, I wouldn’t like to start over. But why? What do you have on your mind?”
“Nothing,” replied Aura absent-mindedly, looking in the distance. “Hmm…”
I shrugged my shoulders and headed back to the station in Tsuguwa.
“Merimetso or Kaukokärki?” I asked Aura when my pod was extracted from Nosuri.
“Merimetso will do,” said Aura. “All you can expect at that Asteroid Infestation is frigates and baby drones.”
“Baby drones,” I chuckled remembering Aura’s drone evolution theory.
Having boarded Merimetso, I returned to Nourvukaiken and warped to the Infestation site. All I found there was an acceleration gate and three baby drones guarding it.
“You shouldn’t wander alone in this cold dark void, kids,” I muttered and started orbiting the gate.
Two Incubus Apis drones needed just one volley each before they exploded.
“Where is the third one?” I asked.
I could see it on the overview but not on the cameras.
“It’s running circles around you,” giggled Aura.
Indeed, the distance between the remaining Scorpionfly Apis and me was steady 2,000 metres.
“Geez, this thing is fast!” I exclaimed. “It’s the first hostile of any persuasion which can keep pace with me. Let’s see if I can hit it.”
Despite orbiting me like crazy, the drone could not outrun my railguns.
“Good thing we chose Merimetso with one-twenty-fives,” I mused when the Scorpionfly exploded. “If we flew Kaukokärki with one-fifties, they could be too slow for this insect.”
“But then you would have an MWD instead of the afterburner, and could just fly away from it reducing its angular speed,” objected Aura.
“True,” I nodded, and activated the acceleration gate.
The second pocket contained 12 baby drones and 7 frigates, split in four groups none of which paid any attention to me.
“Ha! These drones have no manners,” complained I. “Where is the welcoming committee?”
“Maybe they want you to say ‘hello’ first?” said Aura, smiling and pointing at the weapon icons on the HUD.
“Happy to oblige,” I said brightly, willing Merimetso into a 45-km orbit around a Rogue Drone Container.
That fleet did not have Scorpionflies which could reach me, so all the baby drones supervised by three adults, sorry, frigates gave a spirited but fruitless chase. Easily keeping my distance from the pursuing machines, I was totally absorbed in a select-target-shoot cycle which had to be repeated for each railgun as soon as its previous target exploded. Soon, the deadspace pocket was littered with debris from the destroyed drones.
“Now this place really lives up to its name – deadspace,” I quipped looking at the wrecks with satisfaction.
“Hey, there are still living beings here!” objected Aura.
“There won’t be any soon, darling. Just let me check the contents of those two containers.”
I approached a box labelled ‘Rogue Drone Container’ and looked inside. It contained one piece of Lucent Compound.
“What’s this?” I asked scratching my head.
“Some stuff that can be refined into other stuff… I guess,” said Aura.
“Let’s take it. I’ll give to Yakub as a birthday present,” I chuckled.
Next was a Black Drone Container which held 5th Tier Overseer’s Personal Effects. There was nothing else to do there and I jumped to the next pocket.
“Wow!” I gasped as we arrived. “What is this place?”
The last room of the deadspace complex was dominated by a large human-built station. It was nested between two asteroids and was surrounded by a complex net of traffic lanes.
“Currently, it’s just a nest of drones,” answered Aura, “but if you are interested in what this place was, I can tell you that once it was owned by a mining corporation. The pocket contained such a large number of mineral-rich asteroids that the company even invested in building a permanent station here. Unfortunately, at some point, the gate control system was infested with a mysterious virus which drained the power coils to such a degree that they couldn’t move industrial haulers between the pockets. Only smaller vessels like ours could use the gates.”
“And the drones.”
“And the drones,” nodded Aura. “Soon after the gate malfunction those pests appeared en masse and made further operations all but impossible. The corporation had to evacuate its personnel and abandon the site.”
“What a sad story,” I sighed. “We can’t do much about the gates, but at least we can exterminate the vermin.”
With that, I turned my attention to the aforementioned pests. Altogether there were 8 baby drones and 12 frigates, all within my firing range. As in the previous room, they weren’t paying any attention to me, just buzzing around the ‘roids and minding their own business. Lulled by such indifferent attitude, I simply targeted the seven closest rogue drones and started firing. That was a mistake – the whole swarm immediately aggressed me. Although it didn’t take me long to kill individual enemies, I couldn’t do it fast enough before I was overrun by angry insectoids. My damage indicator started crawling across the HUD and my rails stopped hitting the hostiles which were orbiting too fast around me. Willy-nilly I was forced to resort to my regular tactic of orbiting a stationary object. Once I’ve done it and built a bit of distance between Merimetso and the pursuing machines, the nascent SNAFU was reduced just to SN. Two minutes later the grid was clear.
“Is that it?” I asked, looking for another acceleration gate.
“No,” replied Aura.
Panicking, I inspected the overview window but didn’t see any live drones there.
“Why not?”
“Because you have not looted all those juicy containers yet,” explained Aura with an endless patience of a teacher talking to a particularly dense pupil.
“Phew,” I exhaled. “I thought there were other hostiles in the area.”
Aura rolled her eyes and said nothing.
The juiciness of the containers was greatly exaggerated. All I found inside was a small amount of minerals and 7th Tier Overseer’s Personal Effects, the latter being the most valuable trophy but still rather cheap by my standards.
Seeing my disappointment, Aura said brightly, “By the way, do you know that some researchers believe that Overseer’s Personal Effects found in drone-infested places are, in fact, Overseers themselves? I mean, a Drone Overseer is not a ship but the thing that you have found in the container.”
“I’ll remember it for trivia,” I grumbled and warped to Tsuguwa stargate.