Thoughts and Experiences of Lucius Hopkins

[Armageddon]

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Kicking in the burn.

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The smoke burned my throat as the ship bucked and swayed. The automatic control computers trying to keep the bird straight and level. The noise of weapons fire hitting the hull dulled as the auto-depressurisation system kicked in, reducing the sound to a dull clatter. I feel the hits more through the vibrations of the ships hull now than hear them.

Status displays open rapidly in front of my eyes on my helmets HUD.

Shields down
Hull 70%
Breaches detected
Auto-Depress positive
RCS control quadrants 1, 7 and 12 offline
Weapons disconnect 1, 3

These and many more messages flit in front of my eyes. The messages immediately fade to almost ghostly grey as I look at the target.

ID – SABRE
Shields 35%
Hull 100%

I jab at the controls and ram the thruster to max, at the same time switching off the guided engine fire system putting the ship into ‘EK mode’. While in ‘EK mode’ the ship would let you play a little fast and loose with the flight envelope. Ya had to pay close attention to the hull stress though, many a rookie pilot had ripped a ship plain in two by demanding too much from a damaged bird.

I jam the ship into a hard right turn trying to keep the enemy vessel in the kill box. No joy, the ships RCS thrusters scream at the power demand, quickly switching tactic I ram the throttle to reverse sacrificing speed for turn rate. Slowly the target reticule lined up with my gun sights.

I fire, superheated plasma bursts from the ships guns impacting the shields. SABRE turns upwards to throw my shots off target. Its done its job though.

ID – SABRE
Shields 0%
Hull 95%

Suddenly, the ship drew my attention to a new ‘MASTER’ alarm I allowed the neural net to bring the alert to prominence.

Fuel Leak – Estimate 90s till bingo fuel
Reactor leak, effective weapons bank power reduced to 40%

I felt the ‘taste’ of the air change, it suddenly became more difficult to breathe. One final alert, the one I hated to see the most.

Life support failure, suit internal supplies only

If I wanted to win this one I’d need to pull a fast one. I brought the guns to bear again, weapons fire lancing towards the target and keeping their shields disrupted.

ID – SABRE
Shields 0%
Hull 65%

I only had one shot at this. As the enemy ship passed in front of me I hit the mine dropper and then jabbed the thruster to get clear. A quick roll later and a missile from the cruise disruption system detonated the mine and won the fight.

All of a sudden everything went black….

Simulation – SABRE Intermediate
Result Success
Rate 60/100
Retry Y/N?

Without giving myself a chance to recover I reboot the simulator again for another run. Sometimes the only way to learn is through trial and error and trust me.
You don’t want to be the first time you kick in the burn to be against an enemy in the real. The simulator is your friend… Even if its a little painful.