At Shadow's Gate

[TDLdark]

[font=Arial Black]Introduction - Part I

[font=Fixedsys]Space....beautiful pitch black space...

It was here that he felt at home. He wrapped himself in the darkness, willing it inside of him, taking warmth in it's cold embrace.

*Beep*

Stricken out of his thinking, he stared at the display panel of his ship. Two hostiles inbound? Excellent....
He checked his systems, all clear, and turned his ship, moving towards to two objects. As he moved into sight he saw them, two smugglers, one fighter escort and one pirate transport. He smiled...Outcasts were so naive. Opening up his comms panel he hailed them. The two smugglers, happy to see that it wasn't a Liberty police ship, hailed back, happy that their crates of cardamine had made it to their destination.

"Mind dropping the drugs Outcast?"

The two smugglers stared in disbelief and asked the man why a pirate would pirate another fellow pirate. At this, the man scoffed, and turned his ship around, and boosted the engines. Suddenly, he released the energy and thrusted forward quickly, opening fire with his weaponry. The escort stood no chance. Before it could even move, it's shields were down and hulls damaged by a missile. It hastily pulled up, trying to dodge it's way out of the battle...only to collide head on with a nuclear mine.

As the boom from the explosion reverberated, the mysterious man turned his ship on the transport, and in two quick passes, stripped the transport of it's shields. He then turned, firing salvo after salve into the bridge of the ship until -

"Stop! God damn you stop! I give! I give! Take the damn Cardamine!"
"I changed my mind. You're going to bring it somewhere for me."
"What? But you never asked that -"

The pulse of lasers interrupted his statement and quickly eroded away the recovering shields, blasting off a turret.

"Ok! Ok! Give me the coordinates you backstabber."

The chilling voice thundered over the comms channel, stating the coordinates. The sound of keys being pressed and the computer chirping back played softly in the background.

"Are you insane? That's Manhattan! And you didn't give the right coordinates! The docking ring is on the other side of the planet."
"Shut up and accept this data transfer."

The file quickly transferred and the tall imposing man could not resist a girlish giggle.

"I'm not opening it."

The laser salvos quickly persuaded him differently.

"What is this crap? It's just a bunch of useless files I can't use. What's the point of these files?"
"It's a virus."
"What?! Why!? You're already turning me into the authorities, now you ruin my computer system?"
"Who said I was turning you into the authorities...."
"What? What are you -"

The man let out a laugh, unable to restrain it anymore. The comms channel had went dead on the smuggler's end. From his ship, he watched as the transport powered up it's cruise engines, heading for a collision course for a weak spot of Manhattan. He smirked knowing the smuggler was probably wondering how that virus had shut off manual control and activated auto pilot. He reminded himself that he should upgrade the coding of the virus sometime so that the coordinates did not need to be manually imputed before having the virus take control.

He saw a flash from the transport and knew instinctively that the escape pod had been launched. He moved towards it, and as soon as he targeted it, he let loose a missile. Laughing once again, he turned back towards Rochester Base. He wondered to himself whether or not he would be lucky and the ship would actually crash on Manhattan, letting loose a torrent of deadly drugs. Chances were that it wouldn't, but he smiled knowing he tried. As his ship cruised towards the Junker base in the debris field, he settled back and grabbed a bag of his own cardamine, ready to replenish himself.

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TDL Dark pretty much hit the nail on the head..

Ypsilantis Family