M.T. Decker

209-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the Stars

July 27th, 2552 – Complications
Scout Pilot/Pony Express Pilot/Target Kat “S-Kat” James Reporting

Like everything that looks good on paper, there are certain issues that only show up when you actually try to use the process.

I’m not sure what is happening with the Parataph and if the Ani have separated from them or if they’ve all gone bust— all I do know is that we did a trial run on the Pony express run. The pilots were Me, G-man, and Dancer. We met up in one part of space exchanged packets, Dancer was carrying Cookie’s Pipe, which she gave to G-man, I was carrying the commander’s hat which I gave to G-man and G-man was carrying Fipp’s Watch which he gave to me.

Then, so we wouldn’t interfere with each other’s jumps we headed back staggering our jumps – Dancer went first, then G-man and, as I was about to jump, space opened up around me and I was surrounded.

My nearest guess is that since they couldn’t trace where the others were heading, they could follow their back trail— to me.

The one good thing about being surrounded as I was was the fact that anyone shooting at me would be endangering his fellows since I was surrounded. The bad thing was— there was nowhere for me to go. And then they started closing in with a cutter.

My choices went from limited to almost none in three seconds and when that happens you either panic or do the unexpected. I opted for the unexpected. I disabled my regulator, shut down my gyro assist and proceeded to spin on my x, y, and z axis, and while spinning uncontrollably opened three gates into the well before falling into a fourth.

One ship managed to stay on my tail, but I was already repeating the process and made three more jumps. At some point, I lost them, but not before the pilot had managed to shoot scoring my top engine and damaging two of my maneuvering thrusters.

The worst part – I was in a Dart. If I had been in the Gumbo, I probably wouldn’t have survived the first jump, but, if I had – I’d be able to repair the ship and go home. As it is my tools and equipment are back on the Valkyrie’s View.

I reset the regulator and the gyros and headed away from my stream, just in case someone was able to trace my route. I ate a cold dinner and started working on what I could fix from inside the ship, ie not bloody much.