Evangeline Anastasia McDowell

[Bazza]

Entry#: 051
Date: 18 - 12 - 817 AS @ 09:06 SUT
Title: Hmm. x2

I sent Misaka off in control of the Alsatia to find Planet Gran Canaria. She's been in steady contact with Ouray Base using the transmission codes Jimmy sent me. Apparently the best way to get to the system is actually through Dublin, as opposed to one of the Omega worlds like I'd thought. I had originally sent her back to Omega-3 to lean on the Zoners for some information. Looks like she's in for a nice detour. Hope the Corsairs don't get any ideas.

Still need to do something about Sakura, too. The poor little thing no doubt is missing her parents now. But she'll have to wait until I've got my end sorted out first.

So for the last couple days I've been shacked up with the Xenos of Liberty. Quite an unusual bunch. I was expecting a heap of uneducated derelicts much the same as what one typically finds on a Junker base.

I was in for a pleasant surprise. Where one might usually see a cardamine addict foaming at the mouth, I found a needler rifle. Where one might usually see a slaver signing away the lives of thousands of innocents, you find a man trading in black market munitions. Where one might usually see a group of rogues gang-raping a wench, you see a collection of fair-dinkum, if somewhat rough, gentlemen. These guys aren't so bad after all.

Yesterday I put Eva's.Vengeance through her paces. Myself and Jimmy Boob, as the other lass calls him, raided Rochester base for no real reason other than I wanted some blood. I was still quite sore about the Railgun. I really liked that ship.

We rock up and find a Salvager and Recycler, both from the Congress. And we all know what was gonna happen there.

Salvager gets a couple of Nova's to the face and fills the area with scrap metal. The Recycler proved a bit more tricky. In his favour, a group of about half a dozen assorted pirates showed up. I recognised some of them as being Rogues and Outcasts that I'd worked with in the past. Drug runners. Slavers. All sorts of nasty disagreeable things.

So what was a 2-on-1 fight became a 2-on-6 fight. Myself and Jimmy struggled to wear down the stubborn Recycler. That was why I loved them so much. They aren't the fastest, or the most powerful, but they can take one helluva beating before showing any signs of fatigue.

As the fight continued, the Recycler did get worn down. But me and Jimmy were also being worn down. I was almost out of munitions, the shield generators were at their limits and the veil of protection I had was starting to falter.

In a last-ditch effort to eliminate the Recycler, I fired my very last Nova torpedo at the ship. The odds were stacked up against me, the Recycler being magnitudes more agile.

It all happened in a split second. The Nova torpedo hit a piece of scrap metal right between us. It detonated. Both myself and the enemy were within range. I instantly knew this was gonna hurt. A blinding yellow-white light filled my cockpit as the explosion tore through everything.

As quickly as it had begun, it was over. I was still alive, but the ship wasn't doing so well. Alarms and klaxon bells were echoing throughout. I shook my head and regained my senses. I had multiple air leaks, a radiator leak, a missing wing and complete power failure of the weapons grid. The ship was drifting in space now, the explosion destroying the navigation and co-ordination systems.

I was still doing better than the Recycler, of course. He was dust. The stubborn hulk had finally surrendered.

The fight had now stopped, the Nova's shockwave knocking about everything within a 500 meter radius. I knew we had lost. Using the bombers' sole functioning engine I legged it outta there before anyone had a chance to recover from the blast.

Eva's.Vengeance and The.Good.Pain both limped back to Ouray base.

One more of my 9 lives gone.... current count is now -348 lives. But I do now have the trust of these Xenos, and I drew some blood from the Congress.

What would Misaka say if she knew what I was getting up to.... that's a time bomb I'm really not looking forward to.

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