Your every day highwayman

[Yerland]

5 days later.
Bridge of the Essex
Enrout to Cassini.
About to enter the Alamosa field, Colorado
11 pm Buffalo time

"Captian how the hell did we get stuck with the night shift today?" complained Jack again "I mean I could of plotted a course and the ship could have gotten it self back to Terre Haute." Nate sighed "Since they could only fit two cabins into this ship even if I let you off duty you would have the choice of snuggling up beside Matt, which I'm sure you would enjoy, or you could try and sneak into Dita's cabin." Jack smiled "You saying you wouldn't stop me from trying to sneak into Dita's cabin?" Nate grinned back "Well, I really wouldn't mind except it would really be a shame to have the dead body of my navigator stinking up the ship till we got to our destination." Jack's face got a little paler as he realised that his captian meant it. "Then again if you were really unlucky she might let you live... I think she may have even found out how to monitor the bridge from her cabin." Jack froze and turned white as a sheet. Nate laughed "Dont worry I'm only joking with you I'm sure she doesn't have the codes to watch the bridge, on a less scary note how far are we from the jumphole?" Jack swore under his breath then answered "Really had me going there for a sec, we will enter the jumphole in about 5 minutes and estimated jumptime is 1 hour, all jump systems show green, looks like we are good to go." Nate leaned back in his chair "Well I'm gonna get some shut eye wake me when we exit jump or something exciting happens, and seriously, stay out of Dita's cabin I really dont want to find a new navigator."

The Reppu cloud, Galileo

"Hey captian wake up, we will be coming out of jump into the Reppu cloud in 1 minute." Nate stirred "Huh whats going on?" "We will be there soon, but our shift doesn't end for anouther 6 hours" Nate blinked away the last bits of sleep "There will be a few ships waiting to greet us, get the comms ready to transfer our codes" Jack yawned as he got to work "Right, coming out of jump in 5 seconds." As they came out of jump the main viewscreen changed to the darkness of the Reppu cloud and suddenly space seems alot less friendly. Jack worked at a consol for a few moments before speaking "Sir, I cant find any of the ships that are suppost to be here, sensors are dead thanks to the cloud but we should be able to hail them." Nate brought up a 360 view on a few monitors trying to see somthing, somthing drifted close and deflected off the shields causeing one of the monitors to brighten for a moment, Nate zoomed in and as he realised that it was a piece of a rogue fighter Jack yelled "OH S***, Orca GB closeing five o'clock high!" Nate hit the panic button, It was an acual button he had installed in his chair that automaticly performed multiple functions. Alarms sounded thoughout ship and the Essex leapt forward and started manuvering through the cloud as the first salvo from the bounty hunters missed. Weapons came online as well and a tactical visor lowered over his vision. Not 15 seconds after the alarms first rang out Dita ran onto the bridge, Nate was manuvering the ship but Jack's face turned bright red when he noticed she was only wearing underwear and a shirt. Dita shot him a glare that could kill at 20 paces before starting to target the guns and yelling over the still ringing alarms "What we fighting?" Jack locked his eyes on his station and answered "So far only 1 Orca class bounty hunter gunboat, opened fire shortly after we came out of jump, looks like it is armed with 4 Cerberus turrets, two pulses, and it's forward gun, without sensors I cant tell you how much armor it has but hit it with a few razor's and i will be able to make a good guess." Matt ran into the bridge with a few more articals of clothing than Dita and manned his station as Nate said to Dita "How do you want me to manuver today, close and personal or you want to rain death from afar?" Dita thought for a few seconds before answering "Try to encourage a joust but if they try to get us to follow them from more than 700 i'd advise getting us out of here, I should be able to deal out more damage than they."
The fight went as most fights go, but in this case it looked like the Essex would prevale, Dita was able to use their three pulses to remove the Orca's shields and Nate's piloting skills only let a few hits land on their own. While it turned out that the Orca had heavier armor than the Essex they could not sustain enough fire to even drop the Essex's shields. The Bounty Hunters on the Orca realised that they were outmached to late and could not escape.
Dita smiled as she fired 3 final bursts of antimatter at the bounty hunters, the antimatter flew into the engines of the fleeing ship and without warning the Orca exploded into a spectacular fireball. Dita shouted in victory "That'll teach you to wake me up in the middle of the night!" She then stated that her shift didn't start for five and a half hours and left the bridge. Nate had caught himself stareing at her right after he had lifted the tactical visor and then locked his eyes on a view screen on the other side of the bridge till she left. Nate coughed "Ahem, well if either of you find any pods from that gunboat make sure you dont tell Dita about them... we wouldn't want them to be killed before we even got back to base."

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Be quick,
Be efficient,
Be powerful,
The correct way to pirate