Eyes still spinning from the brain crushing, eye watering acceleration that his Rhienland Cruise Interceptor dispensed with such ease Karl "Ignition" Wulff was approaching the Planet at maximum cruise, Just moments after violently decelerating from the nearby tradelane. The melee outside the planet was impressive as it was disorganized.
It reminded him of the Hessian raids within the scanner crippling dust fields of Dresden; complete purposefulness but completely chaotic.
As a seasoned pilot he knew that commuting to a furball like the one outside of Kyushu would end in certain death at the hands of a random missile or mine.
Nevertheless he dumped his ship out of cruise again, brain nearly flying out of his nose and took a pair of pot shots at critically damaged Outcast ship before reengaging his cruise engines and once again launching the tiny ship into massive acceleration within the blink of an eye.
Ignition was fearful that the constant abuse of the tachyon dischargers were going to quickly burn them out. Although he had good relationships with the Bretonian Navy he was almost certain that their particle collectors would be incompatible with the tachyon based technology crammed within the sleek knife-like frame of the Rhienland vessel.
Obtaining a replacement from Daumann would not be easy, or cheap considering Karl's status in Rhienland, his money, while ample from working for the BHG was no good in Rhienland anymore.
A messy and convoluted system of middlemen would be required. He thought the part would be stolen as soon as it crossed into Liberty due to the petty nature of the criminal element there.
Karl would often muse at how superior the design and engineering of his ship was compared to the other alternatives, he felt he owed his life to this and only this on more than enough occasions that he cared to remember.
Despite this, repairs were becoming increasinly difficult to carry out. Ignition feared he would eventually have to abandon this ship for something more...commercial.
He thought the Bretonian one was too big, The Liberty version had a nice shape but he felt the intake manifolds were too obvious so far up ahead of the ship.
The Kusarian version was festooned with those "damn useless fins that only served to close the distance between him and the magnetic anomaly detector a Mine".
None of that mattered though, he felt lucky that he and his ship had been in the position to simply not return to base all those years ago. The abandoned cigar collection was still a mass of grief at the bottom of his guts though.
An obnoxious tone eventually snapped him out of his daze.
Carnifex's signal was just on the other side of the planet. Ignition knew that despite the svelte design of his Interceptor entering the thick Kyushu atmosphere at cruise speed would be suicide, furthermore his cruise systems would not work within an atmosphere.
What the cruise interceptor had in agility and pursuit abilities it lacked in sub-cruise speed. Often putting him at a disadvantage against the more veteran Bounties, the rookies however fell for his traps every single time, and this brought Ignition a brief sense of elation.
However this vanished, as he went deeper and deeper into the Kyushu atmosphere the possibility of quickly bailing out of an ambush became an increasingly unlikely prospect.
The interceptor wasnt designed to brawl and was at a serious disadvantage against the what Ignition considered to be a ridiculous amount of combat interceptors being fielded recently.
This moment contemplation had allowed Ignition to cross the vast Kyushu oceans in what seemed like an instant. He made visual contact with Carnifex's ship and was quickly able to deconstruct what he was doing.
Unfortunately, The advanced electronics suite present within Ignition's interceptor precluded him from joining Carnifex in his efforts.
While he could read the serial number off a targets weapon from across the system, there was barely enough room for him to sit in the ship.
The interceptor had truly become a vehicle of trade-offs and this was one that Ignition quickly began to regret.
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