Impasse

The crew of the Marauder class ship were to professional to let it show in their faces, but the distant sound of hypervelocity rounds bouncing off the admittedly seriously resilient armour was starting to worry them. It had been 15 minutes since the Angels had reacted with their typical ferocity to any incursion into their space, but this sole surviving battleship had managed to use its speed to get under the guns of the Paladin at the cost of all its fellow attackers.

The captain of the Paladin was determined to complete his mission. Equally, the captain of the Angel battleship was determined to prevent it. And so an impasse was at hand.

The guns of the battleship was not able to overcover the effectiveness of the nanite repair mechanisms enfused through the layers of gold and bronze armour plating. Similarly, the Paladin could not track fast enough with the battleship that close, moving at that speed. The catastrophically destructive energies of the laser cannons were expending themselves futilely into empty space. The attack drones launched could also not overcome the shielding on the Angel ship.

The encoded call recieved at corporation headquarters was received with a distinct lack of surprise, this being the almost the Marauder’s maiden voyage, and with the knowledge of the bull headedness of her captain. Her destructive capabilities proving themselves time after time, encouraging the siren call that overconfidence can bring. The head of the corporation cooly surveyed the report and dispatched the smallest ship available at short notice. An assault frigate. Not the granduer or firepower of a Federation Navy Battleship… a frigate. A message in form if not in fact.

As the smaller craft powered through hyperspace at a greater rate than most ships her size, much faster than any battleship could hope to achieve. Her crew taking stock of the unrepaired damage and out of date protocols since she was last flown. The fine blurred marks of repaired damage from years ago showing in almost every subsystem. Her specialised rigging dated to a time when they were not even sized by ship class. This baby was old. Old indeed, and still more than capable of handling the task to hand.

On entering the system, the Ishkur locked onto the Paladin’s signal and immediately engaged warp engines, tearing straight through space towards its target. Hull and armour reinforcements were onlined,  last minute drone attack protocols were finalised, and gun safeties removed. This was a warship, small by comparison, all to easy underestimate… fast and quite deadly. On navigating the jump gates, and once the signatures of the combatants were resolved, the Angel ship exploded in less than a minute.

The captain of the Paladin hailed the vessel his corporation sent to break the impasse, only to be meet by the cool and questioning gaze of his CEO. To his credit, his Amarrian tendency to be blustering and superior disappeared under that look. No words were exchanged or needed to be. Both needed work, the ship and her captain. He needed to understand her better, to ensure she had not only the best of equipment, but the ability to handle situations outside of her expected design parameters. When to push and when to run… and what might be more dangerous for you than it may first appear.

Impasses happen vary rarely indeed. Cherish them and understand. In this case, webbers were considered a secondary target. The downside was that even with the killing power of a Paladin, one Angel battleship got too close. The webbers should have been taken out first. And even with Hammerhead IIs it wasn’t going down. The lack of  T2 ammo, a prop mod, or possibly a webber made all the difference in the world. Paladins kill extraodinarily well if the target is in the kill zone… but all targets don’t necessarily have the grace to sit there and be shot at….

Fly Smart,

H