Nerrone's Rangers IC

"Aside from the limitations on ammunition, you may have a point there," Kwa replied, "personally I wouldn't bet on either of these weapons being able to take down the Sword on their own — strike cruiser, bigger than a frigate but smaller than a battleship — but if we wanted to get away from something like that, an EMP would be our best option."

At that moment she remembered something, and turned away to speak into the comms:

"Rhak, what's your status? We shan't be hanging around here for more than a few minutes longer."

"I'm currently outside of the building."
Rhak said through the radio. He looked at Aleon.
"Are you familiar with a Mr Faw?"

Kwa frowned.

Do I? The name sounded vaguely familiar. Or perhaps she was mistaken.

More pertinently, should I?

"I'm coming up," she replied before lowering her comlink and turning briefly back to the room at large: "I'll leave this one down to you; Veld knows more about ship upgrades than I. Meet me in the foyer by the entrance when you're done here. Dcotor: Put me down for an Endurance Phys, I'll be back later to pick it up."


Less than a minute later she stepped outside into the sun, where Aleon Faw and Rhak were waiting. The sound of sirens wailed in the distance and the breeze carried a whiff of smoke, but it was as good a place as any to meet.

She gave the newcomer her typical level, businesslike greeting: "Mister Faw, I presume. What brings you to Ariid?"

"This will do quite nicely, thank you." Grey responded kindly, it wasn't usually his style, but considering this guy was handing out military tech for free, he figured he would be nice for once. He picked up the device, he liked the weight and feel of the ion cutter, it would fit on his wrist with no problem. Grey nodded to the doctor and walked to the terminal and scanned through the upgrades, the medical bay seemed useless to him considering that he was basically a walking med bay himself. The others seemed keen on weaponry, but Grey had a different idea. He walked over to the terminal and chose the engine boost module.

"You people seriously thinking that taking on a ship of any size is a good idea? It would be a lot smarter if we just ran away from our aggressors rather than risking our lives against a much larger ship."

While Rhak nodded towards Kwa, while Faw gave Kwa a mirrored response. If not colder.

"That's strictly between me and... Rhak. I can however say that I'll be accompany you for the time being."

The zeenor raised his curved neck like a snake and watched the smoke in silence before continueing.

"The... problems here have made it quite difficult to exit the system through legal means. I will also stay until Rhak and my affair is done. If he wishes to speak about it, then it is up to him."

Aleon Faw said while staring into Kwa's eyes, his reptile pupils thin lines of infinity dark color.
Rhak came in, the mallium had earned his trust or at least some information.

"While I was at Las Thaddas, I came over some information that lead to an old friend of mine... Amsora. I need to eliminate him."

Kwa turned to Rhak, frowning.

"I'm listening." Hopefully Rhak would be more co-operative than this new arrival — she had spoken with Faw for all of a few seconds, and had already resolved that he was untrustworthy.

Flank couldn't answer Kwa. The thought of her looking over his shoulder at what he was doing was a disquieting one. Once she left, though, he was free to address Bor:

"We won't have to go up against a capital ship with this weapon, I feel it's more for smaller targets. There are simple manoeuvres to use a lance cannon against another ship, because all you really need to do is face it for a few seconds. Ya' swoop in, fire the cannon, and immediately curve away. Next thing you know you've carved a nice neat perforated line on the enemy's flank, and they'll snap apart like a biscuit.

"Even if we do go up against a capital ship, we don't have to tear it apart per se; all we really need to do is get behind it and start carving up its thrusters. Kwa also has a point with ammo. Once we run out of EMPs, we're done. The lance cannon won't get that."

Grey listened to Bor and Flank argue about what sort of weapon system the Lacuna should have been outfitted with, he found it entertaining to watch the two bicker about it. Ultimately it was Kwa who decided what the ship would be getting outfitted with, but Grey figured he would kill some time and jump into the argument.

"Flank, you don't seem to realize is that carrying around a big ol' lance cannon on a small ship is a great way to attract negative attention. If a cruiser see's that, they're not going to bother sending out fighters to try and take us down without too much effort, they're just going to open fire on us knowing that we're a major threat. If we were driving around a strike cruiser of our own, I'd be more than happy to take the Lance cannon, but we're not. We're pretty damn small and easy to take down already, we don't need to give our future adversary's an excuse to not take any risks and use the biggest guns at their disposal to take us down."

Grey then turned to Bor,

"Though the EMP torpedoes would be useful, they share the same problem with the Lance cannon to a lesser degree, plus it has the added disadvantage that we have a limited number of them and they're no doubt expensive as all hell. And even if we did disarm a ship's weapons for a while, what's stopping them from just waiting it out and blowing us out of the sky once their weapons regain power? Honestly, it'd be safer to just destroy the ship in question entirely."

"Really guys, I think it'd be a lot safer in the long run to just outrun anything that tries to attack us rather than risking our necks in a long term engagement."

"That exactly why we should take the EMPs," Bor shot back. "If - god forbid - we get into a one-on-one battle with a cruiser, the Lance would be handy but it's safer if we just shoot off an EMP and then run like hell while they're trying to restore power."

"And to your other point: I'm sure it'd be easier to mask the signatures of a couple of missiles from sensors than a giant laser beam strapped to the front of the ship."

"With the technology being put to use today, they'll have our exact location before the torpedoes even make contact. No matter what we do, a well-equiped ship will be able to find and track our location. Firing EMPs at them will just piss them off, we could get away a lot faster without throwing ourselves into combat if we had the speed the engine boost would provide us." Grey casually replied.

"I'm not saying we should use them to cover an escape; I'm saying we could use them to disable a ship's weapons or engines just long enough to get away. Even thirty seconds or so would be a nice head start. The engine boost would be useless if we were, say, caught in a tractor beam."

"Sure," Flank agreed, "providing the cannon is as big as the two of you make it out to be, then it won't be that great. But have you seen it at all? I'm sure the engineers are smart enough not to stick a giant weapon on a ship that's too small to hold it; this is rocket science, after all."
He shrugged his right shoulder. "I speak from experience."

He gestured to Grey. "If you're right, and both weapons are equally useless against a strike cruiser, then it doesn't matter what weapon we have if we come face to face with one: we're screwed either way unless we just high-tail it. So there's no point considering what would happen if we came across a strike cruiser. Besides, out of a hundred ships we encounter, more than ninety of them wouldn't be strike cruisers; they're not as common as you think. So really, we only have to consider what we do when we come across something that isn't a strike cruiser."

Oddly enough Bianca knew Flank is correct. They couldn't just waste an all powerful thing like the Lance Canon on a strike cruiser. They were not common like endangerd species. They would have to find some other way of dealing with them and save the weapon for something far worse.
----
Chalen only heard the words Lance Canon, Strike Cruiser, Far worse and something about rocket science. He was still engrossed with his new chute armor.

Delta wrote:

Kwa turned to Rhak, frowning.

"I'm listening." Hopefully Rhak would be more co-operative than this new arrival — she had spoken with Faw for all of a few seconds, and had already resolved that he was untrustworthy.

Rhak shrugged.
"That's all I can say for now. If the rest of the Rangers are willing to help me take him down, I might give some more information"

Kwa was not impressed.

"I doubt any of them will agree to assist in an assassination without knowing the target first. Certainly I will not."

"It's my job to look out for the Rangers' best interests, and if you want my co-operation — if you even want me to ferry you both around for this — I need details." She folded her arms and gave Rhak a moment to consider the offer.

Rhak looked at Kwa, then to Aleon. The zeenot showed little interest in the two mercs and had lit a cigarette which he smoked with pleasure.
"Alright then. Amsora is or was a high ranking officer during the acheen civil war. A war in which I took part in. Amsora was my commanding officer. During an extraction of a negotiation target, one of the rebel leaders that wanted a peacefull solution, he gave an order to shot the extraction shuttle. I sacrificed myself to hold off hunting animals. That's why I survived. Amsora later manipulated our military and I had to flee my own homeworld. I have been a gun for hire ever since. I even tought I've served with Dagon before, but I'm not sure. Many Arthinnil was in the battle."

Rhak now leaned forward, trying to scan the face of the mallium. He continued.

"What's important is that, he have been court-martial after a liberation of the homeworld. He was successfull in a coup some years ago. He is now an aftersought warlord with connections deep in the criminal world. He used Las Thaddas as an outpost on Arrid. He have smuggled som zirthinnit, is that how you say it? However, I want revenge. The Rangers might need the bounty, it is a lot. And the galaxy is getting rid of a parasite."

Rhak leaned back again.

"Now you know my charming story. Again, I will tell you more information once the rest of the Rangers is gathered. I want everyones opinion on this."

Kwa retained an expression of detached interest as Rhak told his story, watching Faw from the corner of her eye for any reaction on his part.

"...Alright Rhak," she replied, "I'll bite. With any luck, the Lacuna will be space-worthy tomorrow morning and we can ship out at 0900. Mister Faw can have Quark's cabin for the duration of his stay with us, and we can all discuss this matter further in the privacy of interstellar space."

"Well you caught me, I'm secretly a strike cruiser enthusiast, it's the only ship I can think about." Grey said sarcastically, he took a step back and crossed his arms.

"Now, you seem to have forgotten that it's quite easy for other ships these days to know exactly what we're carrying, they don't even need to see it, they'll know if they have any fairly new sensors or scanning equipment. No matter how small that thing is it'll still stick out like a sore thumb. Sure it may have its uses against other ships of the same or lesser size, but can you give me one example where it would be wiser to get in a fight with another ship rather than just boosting away?"

"First of all," Bor replied, "as I've stated three times now, these EMP things would even more effective in an escape than just a simple speed boost. The enemy ship would lose power, which would buy us time. Again, the speed boost is useless if the Lacuna were caught in a tractor beam or some other 'holding' device.

"Second of all, I can think of such a situation: if we were trying to capture somebody aboard an enemy ship. In that case, an EMP missile would knock out its shields which would let us transport aboard."

"Have you been watching too many vintage sci-fi vids lately? Most tractor beams have a fairly limited range. We could easily skim around its effective range, and even if we did get caught in a beam, I'd rather have the lance to blow the tractor beam to hell, and I think you're underplaying that engine boost, it's not a tiny burst of speed, the ones I've seen allow the ship using it outrun almost everything out in space, we could easily dodge anything that came our way, or even be way outside the effective range of an aggressive ship before it even has a chance to make a lock on us."

"But you got me there on there on your second point, but that seems to be a bit too specific, and we could get the same result if we used the Lance cannon to knock out their engines. To be completely honest, we're too damn small to be in any sort of interstellar combat anyway, if we had a stronger ship and more people, I'd be picking a weapon in a heartbeat, but I think it's just too risky with our current ride and group."

Grey looked around the room, and became aware that they may be wearing out their welcome. They had to make up their minds soon.

"We may need another opinion." Grey shrugged, he found Doctor Veld and motioned for him to come over to the three Rangers

"Hey Doc, we seem to be having a little argument of ship upgrades here, do you mind if you give us your personal opinion?"

((Hopefully I'm not stepping over any boundaries here, I just want to get out of here :/ ))

Doctor Veld had been watching the exchange,and mulling it over in his own head. After a moment's hesitation, he answered:

"Hmm... Hans gave me a run-down of the specs for this vessel of yours, the Lacuna. Bit of an odd size: larger than any short-range fighter, but nowhere near frigate-scale. If you are looking to avoid confrontations, it is my opinion that a speed boost would serve you well: in such a case, your escape would be made easier no matter whether you were running from capital ships or little interceptors that the EMP torpedoes would be hard pressed to hit. In the vacuum of space, of course, you would keep the speed of the ten-second boost so long as you continued in a straight line and didn't hit anything. Bit of a double edged sword, that one."

"If, on the other hand, your priority is anything except evading hostiles, naturally an offensive weapon would be more in your favour. The EMP torpedoes, I feel, are something of a compromise between defensive and offensive capabilities — a good way to stun a larger enemy vessel long enough for you to make an escape or close in, but of limited ammunition compared to, say, the lancer."

"So that, put simply, is how I see it at the moment," Veld concluded, "The lance cannon for offence, the speed boost for defence or the EMP torpedoes for a bit of both, given the right situation."

((Is that helpful? ))

"Thanks for the imput," Bor replied. "I think the EMP things are still a good choice, since they work both ways and we already have a sort of anti-fighter weapon."

Grey glared at Bor, and then turned to Doctor Veld again.

"Well, considering we all have differing opinions, which one would you pick? I think that's the only way we're going to make a decision."

Veld was quiet for a moment as he weighed up the options. It was Governor Dier who broke the silence: "Veld, they do have what looks like some sort of separate combat fighter clamped to the hull. Would that...?"

The doctor blinked, "Yes of course, hm! I can only wonder why this fact has been neglected thus far, hahah. Yes, hmm, well... That would certainly compensate for a lack of firepower to turn on any smaller ships, if you chose a heavier weapon like the torpedoes or lance? If, I suppose, you had three people — one piloting each ship and another gunning — you would be fairly covered as far as enemy fighter-craft are concerned. In such a case, that would make the EMP a more versatile choice, yes?

Grey paused for a moment to make sure he understood what the doctor was saying, he recommended the EMP torpedoes. It wasn't something he would pick, but Grey realized that the Veld probably knew the technology a lot better than he did.

"Thanks for your input Doctor, I think that's all we need for now." Grey replied, and then turned to Bor and Flank.

"Well, that's two votes for the EMP torpedoes, unless anyone else wants to choose an upgrade it looks like we're stuck with those." Grey said, before turning to Bor.

"Just know that you're paying for the torpedoes once we run out, wiseguy."