The Gaians hunt for nomads

[Scumbag]

Countless Missions

05:30 First mission was a patroll in the Palau cloud. Several nomad fighters downed, Tim barely made it, his ship lost a turret and needed a shield replacement.
20:30 Another mission, patroll to the Kappa jump hole. Nomads, corsairs and a lost wingman.
The next day patrolls again

Day after day of countless patrolls and nomad ecounters, time seemed to stop, it took a toll on the body and especially the mind. His wingmen seemed to not care about anything except the mission, there was no emotion left. And this was not unusual, apart from guildmaster Daniels you could rarely see a smile. This worried Tim and he decided he needed a change.

File Classified

Tim requested a transfer to the engineering department but the only thing he got was computer maintenace in Capetown. It was good enough, he did have the know how, his parents were scientists after all. Routine kicked in after months of monitoring transmissions, repairing damaged fighter and station computers. An itch for danger needed scratching.
So he started reading classified files. Hacking them was not easy, and most of them were uninteligeble, with crazy stories that could not possibly be true. This is how Tim found out about the Iota system, and about a huge nomad complex in a strange cloud.

A Ghost From The Past

One day when work was slow he hopped in the Fish and set a course for the a part of Zeta he's never been before. When he was close something different appeared on his scanner, nomad weapon platforms, huge, intimidating hulks that guarded a jump hole to indentified as leading to Omicron Iota. On the other side, another pair of platforms waited, leaving the Fish with almost half it's nanobots and batteries. Tim started the cruise drive and headed for the dark blue cloud that the file talked about. Soon he found a minefield, comparable in size to the one had seen in Newcastle, there was no entrance visible and just when he was about to turn back and leave disappointed, scanners showed another curiosity. It was a trade lane, not like the ones in the houses but still, a tradelane, a nomad one.

*Let's see where this takes me*

And there it was, the Nomad complex, heavy fortified, weapon platforms all around it, it's shield glimmering in silence. Tim remembered to breath and started orbiting at a safe distance away from it. It did look a lot like what he had seen in the distance in Newcastle. Another nomad tradelane lit the scanner and Tim took another chance. And this one was the motherload, a human shipyard, but with nomad architecture all around it, and huge nomad ships in the docks. And something, something...

*The black gunboats..*

The abomination that destroyed his Claymore and killed his friends. Rage peeked it's hugly head and Tim could not contain it so he fired a shot at some storage depots nearby. That's when all hell broke lose, nomads awoke from their slumber and started swarming everywhere. Bigger ones too, one after the other they spread and looked for the one responsible for the transgression. Too slow though, Tim was already cruising at the best posible speed cursing his temper as blue streaks of energy flew behind him.
When he cleared the mine field he thought we was out of the thick of it but the worst was yet to come. The scanner showed a big ship behind him, unidentified class. Tim turned the ship to the right and looked behind to see what's after him.

*A what? Bloody hell? That can't be... it means that the stories were true!*

.................................................................................................................................................................................

Back in Capetown the battered Hammerhead almost crashed inside the dock. Tim was pale, and could barely walk.

*Hey you must have had a hell of a fight man. Are you alright, you look like you had seen a ghost?*

The dock operator said.

*A ghost from the past*

The words escaped his mouth, inaudible to anyone else.

Run For Your Soul

First thing he did was delete all logs of the flight. After that he began to work. It took him weeks to find it, always watching his back, and a gun loaded at his waist, encription layer after encription layer, slowly closer to the truth. And after what he read, the descision was easy.

*I must leave this place NOW! They were right*