Broken dreams and low fuel

Somewhere on an outer-arm of the galaxy.

Yoater’s bomber was cloaked inside the asteroid belt of system J9-QXD. He had been on a long range scout mission when a group of six miners showed up. His fuel was almost at the point of no return, he figured that if he stayed cloaked he could go maybe another week before having to refuel.

The ship was named Catnip VIII. It was a small lightly armored vessel that packed one hell of a punch. Capable of flying through hyperspace while cloaked. However it had two massive drawbacks, it had to decloak to fire and you still saw the hyperspace window. It could however simultaneously fire multiple warheads and a large torpedo at up to five targets.

Yoater reached over and shut off the commlink to his new employer. He shuddered. The pony who had contacted him creeped him out a little. As he made his way to the command chair he thought about the critical fuel situation and the mining ships outside.

His weapons officer was looking at the command chair when he arrived. The weapons officer was a tan colored earth pony with brown hair. Yoater vaguely wondered if he had booby trapped it. "How is our ammo?"

The weapons officer saw him and backed away from the chair. "We have five torpedoes: three EMP, two Implosion. About twenty heavy Implosion missiles, maybe some of the others. I'll go check."

Yoater thought for a minute. He would have to head back to the corporation's massive mothership for ammo and he didn't like going there at all.

"While you do, load all EMP. I'm going to go ask the miners nicely for some fuel and if they refuse....I'll disable them and take it anyway."

He headed back to the bow to change out the warheads and Yoater jumped into the chair. His horn glowed blue for a second while he brought up the combat display and saw that the ore barges were still there stripping resources from the asteroids. He targeted the center barge for a torpedo strike, the two farthest ones for two missiles each and opened the global communication channel.

“Greetings! This is Lieutenant Commander Yoater. You are mining my corporations property and I wish to offer you a trade. Hand over some fuel and I’ll let you continue mining for the next.... four hours.”

He got no response.

“I’m being serious about this. I have you all targeted.” He was thinking of just leaving a note for a corp mate to deal with them, when he noticed a new ship on the scanner. Yoater watched as the transport ship’s hyperspace window dissipated. It was less than two kilometers away. He selected it as his final target and motioned for the ship to keep it at a six kilometer distance. The display showed that all the warheads were primed and ready to fire.

“Last chance.”

The response came from the transport. “Piss off, we have a deal with your ceo.” Checking their bluff Yoater opened a private conversation with his ceo.

“Quick question, did you give a group of miners permission to be in system J9-QXD?”

The griffin scoffed. “Fuck no, why?”

“No reason.” His hoof twitched.

Catnip decloaked. He motioned for it to orbit the transport and fire at the selected targets. It pulled up slightly and banked while the bomb bay doors opened to release the torpedo. At the same time, five out of six missiles launched one after the other from the bow.

One of the barges jumped into hyperspace as soon as he decloaked. The first target hit was the transport, the warhead tore through the unarmored hull and exploded inside when it made contact with the hyperdrive. The hull collapsed in on itself as the ship imploded. He was irritated.

“Damnit Jb! I wanted pulse missiles not implosion.”

Jb yelled back over the intercom “We only have implo’s left!”

Yoater facehoofed.

The torpedo exploded before it would have hit its target. Throwing out an emp blast to disable any nearby ships within a twenty kilometer radius. Three were caught in the blast and a few seconds later the two barges that were outside the radius were crushed from the implosion missiles. Yoater told the ship to approach the disabled barges and start refueling.

*** *** *** ***

As Catnip VIII was receiving fuel from one of the disabled barges a new ship dropped out of hyperspace and launched some missiles towards Yoater.

He rolled his eyes at the intruder and selected it as a target to launch a volley of missiles. That is when he noticed what kind of ship his opponent was. Two more identical ships dropped out of hyperspace. “Oh fuck!” Yoater reached for the emergency fuel cut-off and kicked at the thruster control.

Catnip released the barge. Diving down and rolling to the side as three missiles hit her shield, four more missed and one hit the barge. His opponents were Fast Destroyers. They were built with one goal: take out the smaller ships that battleships couldn’t. Going head to head with them would be suicide.

Yoater quickly selected the remaining three barges and fired one missile at each before cloaking and leaving the area. Selecting a course that avoided the core region he headed for the mothership. There was just enough fuel to make it in one jump.

*** *** *** ***

The mothership was called Osiris and it was massive. It had point defense armament consisting of flak guns and short range rockets. It also housed four wings of single seat fighters and the main cannon could destroy a dreadnaught in one shot, but it took a couple hours to recharge. It also had railguns salvaged from destroyed stations built into the sides. About forty of even the largest battleship could be docked at any one time.

The pony behind the desk looked at the request form and then at Yoater. “Thirty High-explosive missiles, twelve Implosion, twenty pluse, six high-ex cruise missiles, five pulse torpedos, seven hundred units of fuel and you are going to give us your two implosion torps as partial trade.”

“Yep.” He nodded.

The other pony looked at the display and pushed a few buttons. “Okay, with your trade it comes out to ten million credits.”

Yoater looked at his wallet. “um.”

“Something wrong?”

“I don’t have that much.” He frowned.

The other pony sighed and scribbled something down. “I’ll put it on your tab. You have a month before we collect it by force. The warheads and fuel will be loaded in a couple of hours.”

Yoater reached for the ticket as the other pony slammed his hoof down. “I heard you have combat implants in your skull.” He smiled. “They would be just as good as credits.”

That last bit annoyed him.

Yoater grabbed the receipt quickly and walked out heading for the nearest pub. Trying to avoid the attention of the crew or other pilots he had a hood on to cover his face. Something about how quickly those three destroyers arrived felt off. They had to be waiting close by, but only few knew he was actually in the area. Yoater almost made it to the pub when he bumped into a griffin while lost in thought.

The griffin was about to yell at the pony, then stopped when he recognized who it was. “Oh hey, did you get those miners?”

“Mostly, I got five barges and one transport, one barge ran off and three fast destroyers arrived.”

Jay said. “We’re deploying deeper into the arm in the morning. Want to come?”

Yoater shook his head. “No. I picked up a minor contract while I was out. When I’m done I’ll have enough to pay you for the ship.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He gave a salute. Yoater returned it and continued to the bar. He ordered a glass of sweet tea and a blueberry pie. When he was done he made his way to the armory to order some vehicles and weapons. He bought a gauss rifle, an armed transport boat, a couple shotguns, a box of stun grenades and two boxes of regular grenades, heavy body armor and various door breaching equipment. He then made his way back to Catnip VIII to sleep for a few hours while everything was being loaded.

*** *** *** ***

Yoater was sitting in his command chair while Catnip was undocking from the Osiris. Dezzy was making last minute adjustments to the hyperdrive. She was a tall crimson red unicorn with a wrench for a cutie mark, grey tail and mane with red eyes.

She finished and walked over to the intercom.  “I’ve made the adjustments, but we might burn out the hyperdrive jumping all the way across the galaxy.”

“Concern noted.” He activated the drive and a hyperspace window appeared in front of them drawing the ship in.

Destination: Equestria.