I rushed to the cockpit and started up my ship's engines even before I sat down.
As the consoles around me booted up, I felt the entire battleship shake as an explosion rocked through it.
Looking at the screen that showed my ship's external cameras, I could see several of the pirates either fallen on the ground or otherwise trying to ascertain what caused the explosion.
That was when one of the doors that had been sealed off suddenly blew open, revealing the entire corridor behind it being engulfed in an inferno of flames.
Some of the pirates below started running towards their ship, most likely figuring out that they needed to get out of here as well.
I pushed the throttle lever and my engines hummed, initiating the take off sequence.
My ship slowly lifted off the docking bay, one of the pirates still trying to shoot at my ship with his blaster but my shield shrugged off the small arms fire like it was nothing.
In response, I turned my ship around just as I saw the notification that my weapon systems were fully charged.
I lined my ship up to be perpendicular to the pirate ships and let loose my photon laser.
The beam of energy pierced through the side of the first ship before continuing to melt through the side of the second ship as well, rendering both vessels unusable.
The pirates that were left below stood with their mouths opened wide, realising their fates even as alarms rang through their base.
Sorry, but I can't take any chances.
Another explosion rocked through the ship and parts of the ceiling started to fall. One of the metal beams even fell right on top of a rather unfortunate pirate, squashing him under its weight.
I quickly redirected my ship towards the hangar exit just as an explosion blew out the atmospheric shield generator that protected the hangar from the void of space.
The air inside the hangar started getting sucked out and everything that wasn't nailed down started flying out of the hole, my ship included.
I felt my ship spin out of control as it was pulled out into space with a whole bunch of other objects, my hands fighting to keep a hold of the flight sticks to try and bring my ship back under my control.
I looked out the cockpit just in time to see a metal box tumble towards me and I barely managed to tilt my ship to the side before the box crashed into my ship's nose, causing the entire fighter to start spinning in a clockwise direction while being flung out into space.
I activated the auxiliary thrusters to slow down the spinning while I engaged the afterburners in an attempt to get myself further away from the debris that had became improvised projectiles being launched out of the hangar
At the corner of my eye, I even managed to catch sight of a pirate flying past my ship, the poor dude flailing his arms around comically towards a quite horrible fate.
I managed to regain control over my ship and maintained a heading that led me away from the deathtrap, narrowly avoiding a metal plate that flew past my wing.
At this point, I could see the flashes of light coming from the pirate base as parts of it continued to explode from the overloading generator.
Chancing a look at my rear cameras, I saw the battleship engulfed in a series of small explosions all around its surface.
Just as I thought I was safe, the entire ship blew up and various pieces of debris started rocketing towards me.
I cursed under my breath and engaged the afterburners again, the G force pushing me against my seat as my ship sped forward while trying to get me out of the danger zone.
My finger hovered over the console that would set my ship to boost ahead to travel speeds, but a broken off turret flying at me from behind forced me to change direction to avoid it.
Unfortunately, that also put me in the zone where various pieces of metal and rock were being hurtled out into space and I focused my attention to avoiding them instead.
I flipped, spun and cockscrewed my ship past the hail of debris, avoiding several close calls with death.
It felt like an eternity but I finally managed to get out of it, floating myself out into empty space.
I finally let myself relax and sunk into my seat, letting out a sigh of relief.
Well…. All things considered, at least it wasn't as bad as some of the raids I had to do in the game… There were even more intense encounters there as compared to this.
Just in case, I double checked the scanners to make sure there weren't any more pirate ships that might show up out of the blue and, once I saw it was empty, I opened a comms channel to the Keyes Orbital Mining Station.
It took a while before my call connected and a familiar gruff voice came from the other side.
"Keyes Orbital Mining Station, station master Marten speaking. Identify yourself."
"Hey Marten… You can relax now," I chuckled.
There was a pause, "Tera?"
"Yeah, who else has such a charming voice like mine?"
"No way… If you're saying that… Then does that mean…"
"Yep, one pirate base completely destroyed. I'll even send you a commemorative pic of it to hang it up in your office or something."
I tapped on my screen and did just that, giving him a picture of the blown up battleship that was nothing more than floating scrap now.
Another moment of silence before Marten's voice came through again, "Holy shit… You actually did it… You really blew up their base?"
"Fuck yeah, so now I hope you can hold up to your end of the bargain. I almost died for this, you know?"
"God damn, I will, Tera. You know what? I'll even see if I can get that bastard that left us to dry to write you a letter of recommendation too. Also, whenever you find yourself here, I'll make sure you get to resupply for free, no questions asked."
"Damn, that's really generous of you, Marten."
"You risked your neck for us and in my opinion, you did what would require several Mercs to accomplish on your own. If you don't get properly compensated for it, I would not be able to live with myself."
I chuckled, "Well, in that case I suppose I have no choice but to accept your generosity, don't I?"
"You're goddamn right about that. I take it you're already on your way back?"
I repositioned my ship to point it in the direction of the mining station, engaging my thrusters to increase my speed.
"Almost. I'll be engaging my travel drives soon so yeah, probably be there in about a day or so."
"Great, I'll wait for your return before I let everyone know what you've done, wouldn't want to give them another reason to slack off since I know they would be throwing a party for you the moment they know about this."
I grinned, "Of course. Anything else I should know about before I get back? I don't need to take pictures of all the pirates I killed right?"
"What? Of course not. Your ship should have a log that shows any other ship you might have shot down in your vicinity. So you should have a log of the pirate ships that you have destroyed. Although… I highly doubt any of those pirates have a bounty anyway, but if you were aiming to cash in on personal bounties… You would need to bring at least some proof of their defeat…"
I raised an eyebrow, "There's different bounties?"
"Yeah, personal bounties are tied to the person themselves and it might not always be pirates who have them. Then there's ship bounties that are tied to the ship which you can get as long as your log shows that you destroyed them. Most of the time these are given to ships where they don't know who the pilot is, but you can cash in on both the ship and personal bounties in the event both of them happen to be present."
Cool, I guess that's another way to make money for me.
I suppose that's what that pirate was saying when she said that she didn't have a bounty on her, though whether that was true or not I have yet to check.
If I remember correctly, her body was still stowed away with the rest of her crew in the pirate ship I had left back at the mining station. Maybe I'll ask Marten to help me check if any of them had a bounty.
My console pinged, telling me that I had reached the appropriate speed to engage my travel drive.
"Alright, I'm engaging travel mode so I'll see you soon, Marten."
"Safe travels, Tera. I'll be waiting for your triumphant return."
I shut off the comms and pushed the button, the hum of my engines turning into a low whine as the stars outside my cockpit turned into streaks of light.
Not bad for a day's work I would say.