I began to fly towards the bounties last known location, and shocker, it was an asteroid belt. I kept my ships speed down to about 0.2c, the standard max speed of most ships... but God was I a lot faster than that...
As I drew near their little asteroid base, I saw that they had used a tug to pull 4 Asteroids fairly close together, attaching them, with multiple support beams to avoid them crashing into each other, or separating. multiple railgun turrets scattered here and there to stop any external asteroids from having a collision course with their base. on top of that the railgun turrets could also be used to deter any larger ships from getting too close.
Once I was in range of the Machine Gun turrets and Missile Turrets they locked onto me, leading my ship but not firing on me just yet. I opened up my comms channels and switched to the universal public channel.
"Rogue 6 to any one on this channel over..."
I waited for a few moments before finally, a response.
"Oi! this be Jackson! Who Be you ehh?"
'Wow... a true Swashbuckler accent... so corny...' I flipped the switch to transmit on again. "I am Rogue 6. I am looking for someone."
"Yee be looking for a maiden to warm yer bed then?"
"No, I'm looking for an old friend of sorts..." I lied to them. If I could get to the target in person then things would go well... all I had to do was get close to this Max Rogers... then it was a matter of hand-to-hand combat, and with my experience in multiple forms of martial arts, mostly just old videos on the Holo-net when I wasn't re-building my ship, it would be a cake walk.
"Name?"
"Max Rogers." I kept my voice cool, very monotone and bland to avoid giving away my blatant lie, and identity... a voice modulator in my suit was very helpful in the last bit as well...
"Heh... lookin for Max be yee? yee be just friends? and not after the big price on me mate's head?"
"That would be correct..."
"Too bad he ain't got no friends. Pirates ain't never 'ave friends. Open fire bois!"
With that comment, 8 fighters appeared from the nooks and crannies of the asteroid base. time for battle now, seems this wouldn't be as easy as I had hoped...
I bumped up the speed on my ship and primed my gatling cannons, they spooled to life as I took manual control over the weapon systems and flight systems. at first my flying was very clunky. and after some time, tracking, leading and shooting, I was less clunky but still very bad. I managed to avoid getting hit for 30 minutes and took out 4 of the pirates but as I moved to attack another, more and more pirates began spilling out of the base. The more I shot down, the more piled out of the base and soon enough even the best of luck runs out as my two engines became riddled with a well-placed burst of fire from a pirate.
"Warning, engines malfunction, throttle control no longer viable... engine speed increasing... temperatures rising to dangerous levels... Maintenace required..."
I was under prepared for this fight... I scanned the black boxes floating in space for who I took out. 14 in total. all of them low level bounties, ranging from 1500 creds to no more than 5000 credits, at least that's what the data download I did at Jupiter on my Holo-Watch said. Overall, I would claim 33,100 credits when I returned to Jupiter. No, if I returned. my thrusters were locked to either on or off, and my speed was steadily increasing. I might be able to make an emergency landing on Proxima, and I would easily out pace them all but that's when my missile lock went off.
Based of the scans, it was a newer missile model, able to reach speeds of 0.6c before instability would cause premature detonation... I was only going 0.4c and while I was increasing speed, so too was the missile, and it was gaining on my rapidly. it would reach its 0.6c before I reached 0.5c... i waited till it was close enough for chaff and flares to work and launched my countermeasures... and that's when the next two malfunctions happened, one bad, the other very much worse while also being beneficial in this moment.
"Error, electrical signals not sending to countermeasure systems, wires melted... Error, fuel control system damaged from extreme temperatures, purging excess fuel in lines to engine 1 for safety."
A large spout of flame spat out the back of my left engine as it sputtered and died out. the flames saved me though, as the intense heat melted the warhead, causing it to detonate just outside of range for critical damage, and that boosted my speed up to 0.7c from the shockwave and sudden burst of propulsion. I was going to live. for a little while at least. the temps were rising on engine two and would soon be critical soon causing a malfunction in the propulsion, so I turned off all thrust. Letting my ship coast towards the Planet of Proxima, I wouldn't be able to engage thrust until I was close to crashing onto the surface to make it a controlled crash landing.
As my ship coasted through space, my anxiety rising causing an increased heart rate and rapid breathing I tried to steel my nerves. manual control over the aerobrakes and controls would be a near death sentence, but most the electronic systems were shut off when I turned off all power to the engines. i would need to fix that when i got the chance.
I initially aimed to land near the only settlement on Proxima, placed on the equator of the planet, due to the ease of atmosphere entry and exit, but I didn't calculate my speed properly and soon shot over the city. I coasted down, the metal wings of my ship quickly glowing red from the heat, a few panels flying off from the intense strain.
As I glided down, eventually I slowed down enough for the ships airframe to begin cooling down. The land scape below me changed rapidly, from Forests, to grasslands, then to a mountain range, and I was going to fly through them. the valley was wide enough to allow me to drift through, but I would need to be on my A-game here. I flew in, twitching the controls back and forth, banking and gliding through, going off what I thought I needed to do. every movement was pure instinct, until I reacted a little too late. as I was making the last bank before flying over another grassland biome, my ship bounced off one of the cliffs, the bottom becoming severely dented and scrapped, a large gouge in the metal as well...
I coasted down, extended the wheeled landing gears for descents like this and came down hard on the grassy field. 3 long trails dug into the field as I slid to a stop. some smoke spilling up into the air from the smoldering damaged engines, and steam rising from the metal of my ship as the moister in the atmosphere from the morning fog in this area tried to collect on the hot metal... I checked the map, i was about 700 miles from the settlement... I was stranded on this planet essentially as the last of my ship's electronics fried. the heat of retry melting any good wires, let alone the fact that my antenna also snapped off at some point. no coms, no power, no easy way of getting to the settlement. I would have to wait for them to send help... if any of them even realize I crashed. most of them were probably too stoned to even care or notice given the planets psychedelic flora...
With no power, I had no lights inside. my main goal right now was still to survive... I stumbled to the back of the ship and reached blindly for the hand crank to force the door open to get a lay of my surroundings...