Community Replay A Big Success

Personal Log, 2654.110, 1830hrs We jumped into Enyo today, and I was assigned to patrol duty in a Hornet. The colonel put me in charge of Alpha Wing, with Spirit alongside. Frankly, I was surprised. A rookie like me, flying lead with someone with the reputation of Spirit? I guess the colonel figured I could use the training and confidence boost. We had three nav points to hit, with a couple of asteroid fields scattered about.

We launched and headed out to Nav 1. Ran into three Dralthi before we got there. I told Spirit to break and attack, and we went after the kats. The Dralthis swung around, and we went head to head. During training, it was hammered into our heads that the greatest number of kills happen in head-to-head situations. Well, no kills for anyone this time. I did, however, manage to damage one of the Dralthis, in exchange for some light shield damage. While my shields recharged, I banked around, and spotted the Dralthi I’d just shot up. It was easy enough to ID, what with the sparks pouring out of its engines. Spirit fired at the other two Kilrathi, so I afterburned past them to the damaged fighter, and fired a few laser bursts into his engines. They exploded, taking the Dralthi with them.

Feeling somewhat elated with my first kill, I turned around, to find Spirit duking it out with one of the remaining Dralthi, while the other came straight at me. I settled my gunsight over him, and sent a few laser shots his way. Didn’t do too much damage. As the Dralthi flashed past my Hornet, I cut left as hard as I could, intending to get on his tail. Unfortunately, the Kilrathi pilot picked that moment to break right, and our ships collided. I was lucky – my shields had been at full strength prior to the collision, and we hit at a glancing angle. The shields took the impact, and started to recharge.

Shaken up, I maneuvered my way back onto the tail of the Dralthi. I don’t know if the pilot was injured in the collision, or if his ship had taken some kind of damage my targeting system couldn’t pick up. All I know is he made one very slight evasive maneuver, and then flew in a straight line. At first, part of me felt bad for vaping a foe that obviously couldn’t fight back. Then my mind flashed back to the story I’d read of one Lt. Dibbles. For all I knew, this Dralthi pilot was faking the damage…my target VDU still showed his fighter as fully functional. Giving my 6 o’clock a quick check to make sure this wasn’t a similar ambush, I tightened up on the trigger, and destroyed the damaged Dralthi.