Someone on r/starcitizen was giving away Sabre Raven codes for short stories before they expired. He said he doesnt play the game so I went a little overboard. Figured Id share mine here. Based on an engagement between HHN and Renegade Squadron a few months back in PTU. The date is wrong, the events are dramatized etc. Enjoy! -------- August 23rd, 2948, Crusader, Stanton System It was a normal day, I cracked a beer, lit a cigarette, signed into comms and greeted the crew. I have some damn fine men on my team, and we act like brothers. Meaning we fight and drink and mess with each other just as much as we get shit done. As a mercenary group were not as up-tight as the professionals of the State, or the corporate security forces. It gives us charm that the Feds and Malls Cops don't have so we can nail the jobs that they can't. So when shit started hitting the fan that day we weren't barking orders or chirping call-signs: we were laughing our asses off. I put on my suit after smashing a six pack of Liberty's (the Terras: cause the Pikes make my farts smell like a week old dead Tevarin, and I wasn't putting a helmet on in that case), and went down to the promenade. I tapped through the ASOP terminal and got ready for the operation, and first things first, insurance claims: Vanguard was busted up from banging on Alliance last week, wings were clipped on my Sabre from a Matadors ambush, and my new Anvil Hawk wasn't going to be shipped to Crusader for about a week... I was starting to outfit my Avenger for bounty hunting when Goofy flies down the stairs: "THEY'RE HERE." The op for the day goes as follows: find a pack of Renegades, probably hanging around Yela, and round em up. They apparently had a few outstanding warrants we were set to collect. So when Goofy claimed they were at the main spaceport for the sector at prime time, at Port Olisar of all places.... "THEY'RE BOARDING A HAMMERHEAD RIGHT NOW" "You're fucking joking." I said, slurring my words a bit over the word 'fucking' as I do after a few brews. "Bro I'm dead serious we gotta move", said Goofy, his French accent made him sound more panicked than he really was. I've known this guy for years: not much outside a Vanduul Kingship can make him flinch, but I knew he was anxious to get underway. Luckily for us we were all on the same landing strut of the station. We grouped up in EVA: me, Goofy, Flanagan, Sid, Churchill and Mario. And thats when we saw it. If you're not familiar with Aegis Dynamics you'd be surprised how many weapons are strapped to a Hammerhead-class corvette gunship. Six quad-turrets, a considerable number of missiles, and space for about for a platoon of marines. A flying fortress for the age of space, and thanks to the UEE's Militia Mobilization Initiative, one we were now contracted to deal with. Luckily we had a plan. Port Olisar is not known for its security as far as docking and ATC goes. Ships disappeared all the time. Of course this one being 115 meters long meant that everyone, including the Renegades, was going to know it's missing. We stormed the ship while it was still being prepared for departure. Me and the boys went for the airlock while Sid, the sneaky bastard, went for the cargo hold. We bagged a few kills before Churchill went down, slammed with a Kastak shotgun at point blank range. His body flew back and hit the bulkhead with the full force of his weight in zero-g. Flanagan pulled out his Arrowhead rifle, the one with the golden paint job (the guy has an ego like you wouldn't believe) and plants a bolt of plasma through the perps helmet: we now have the ship, if not for a moment. We had just left the pad when another wave of Renegades showed up. Somehow in the fighting Mario forgot to close the front airlock and several Renny's piled in, followed by a Nox hoverbike. The bike flew around the hallways of the Hammerhead barely fitting between us and the walls. Flanagan got roasted by the bike's weapons and I jumped past it and into the airlock, pulling him with me. "I wasn't done with them you know?!" He said with a very grizzly laser canon wound in his chest. "You'll be free to fly as you like when we bring the boys some back up." I said firmly as I punched a Medipen into his arm and tossed him outside. Mario and Goofy met us outside, and the Hammerhead spun 180 degrees and jumped into Quantum travel. We were bruised and out of breath but we were laughing our asses off... We now had our ace in the hole. "Anaconda-dick to baby-dick." We heard over the comms. Sid was from central Europe but he loved faking this discount John Wayne accent he picked up from some western he had on a sim-pod. I opened up radio, "Sid, you a ghost in there?" "This boat has set sail, partner, and boy-howdy I can't wait for this rodeo to get buck wild!" He said, as the familiar echoes of an Aegis Dynamics bathroom suite let me know he was in position. After a short ceremony for Chruchill, which consisted of us chugging a beer and recounting the 20th century speech his call-sign is taken from, we mounted our fighters and prepared for the second act. "We will fight them on the beaches... We will fight them in the trenches..." As the old saying goes. Sid was a specialist in the sense that he won't be heard, silent but deadly (and he doesn't drink the Pikes either, more of a Cognac type). He snuck from the crew quarters, past component access, down the elevator and onto the bridge. He knocked out the pilot and sent us a beacon: the trap was set at the abandoned Celin station Kareah. We exited quantum and started our attack. As the turrets fired we slammed the shields with everything we had. My Avenger was showing signs of strain from the heat coming off the Revenant gattling gun I had fitted to it, being one size above standard. The rest were in Aegis Sabres and flying in a lopsided delta formation as they typically do when things get heated like this. My ships computer came over my headset and I felt a colt sweat... "Ammo depleted. Missiles dry. Hydrogen fuel at 25%" Shit. I went evasive as best I could but considering six-times-four is twenty-four, I had a lot of fire coming my way. The boys were also taking hits at this point, with Mario having half the wings he started with. I was starting to wonder when we should pull out when I heard a distinctly not-southern voice roar through the radio: "Yee-haw!" The Hammerhead cracked and buckled and I saw one of its hallway struts snap as the atmospheric pressure as well as the self destruct charges started pulling on the hull like a giant game of space-Jenga. In the blink of an eye the ship was spread over a kilometer wide as a field of debris, and the fires evaporated in the blackness of the void. It was done. "Scanners up boys, look for survivors and bodies so we can get our cheques. And where the hell is-" I stopped when I saw a lone escape pod on radar, and the sound of ice cubes in a glass made me start to chuckle. "Boy, them there cowboys had one helluva salloon on that chariot." Said Sid from his getaway. ----------