Red warning lights flashed on his HUD and runes blinked orange as his ship shook violently before his stomach violently lurched. He was in the warp now but something was amiss.
-Eva, report.- Tavon would sigh inwardly as he spoke directly through to the ships on board A.I. Something had happened just before he reached the warp and he didn't like it when things happened.
A gentle, yet knowledgable, voice would be the response directly through the neural uplink in his pod. -Shields are nill Captain. Armor is down to 79%.-
His armor took a hit? It had to be the Khanid police force. They must have gotten a shot off just before he hit warp. Damn the Khanid and their overzealous rookies. For the most part he enjoyed very decent relations with the authorities in the Khanid, Amarr, and Caldari empires... Behind the scenes that was. Of course in the open they had to fire at him, to keep up with their appearence. Most of the time they would suffer from "a glitch in their targetting computers" or "Tavon was just to fast to get a lock." It was always the new pilots they had that would mess him over.
Though he couldn't blame the rooks. He had been naive like that at some point. But that was years ago.
-Eva. Plot course to the nearest station.-
Eva didn't need to respond. She did her job and a course was plotted to a station in system, one hopefully that he had paid the docking supervisor off or that owed him a favor.
His ship began it's decent out of the warp as an invisble hand seemed to quite the runes that were flashing their warnings. He couldn't take long out of warp, the police forces would be on his heels at this very moment. It was the only problem he had with what he did. He followed the money and if the money told him to shoot someone and lose precious security status with those bastards at Concord, so be it. Sure enough as soon as he began the turn and acceleration to enter the warp on the ships new course, ships began emerging from the warp to his right.
Damn, he wasn't up to warp speed just yet. -Eva, red line the main engine for two seconds. We need to hit the warp before they can get a lock.-
A yellow rune popped up, warning him as always about red lining. Dismissively he closed it. He knew what the girl was capable of and what she wasn't. This wouldn't even stress the engines. Warp speed was reached after a few seconds and he went to push the ship into warp just as a stream of focused light shot past him, deflecting off the remaining shield at angle. Then the lurch and he was in the warp yet again.
That pilot was good, whoever he was. A smile traced his physical lips inside the pod as he thought about it. Almost as if on cue a white run popped up on his HUD, showing that he had new mail. He opened it and noted it was signed anonymous. Undoubtably from the commander of his hunters.
"He's new and good. He'll learn. I'll owe you a beer." Tavon chuckled softly as he made sure to erase the mail. It was probably from that Shail'as girl in the fleet. She always "owed him a beer" but never really did get around to it.
The warp was quickly receding all around him as the station began to fill his view on the screen. It wasn't long before he had been given docking clearence and his ship was safetly tucked away, falsly registered with the station as a transport ship owned by yet another nameless pilot in today's shipping business.
Keying camera drone K4D he would follow it around to check for the damage done to his ship from that shot. Sure enough he found it just below the number three engine. -Damn... going to have to replace a whole section of the plate.- The plate itself had been grotesquely melted and distorted, showing bits of circuatry and hull sectioning.
While not life threatening to him and his ole girl, it did represent an issue if he tried to enter cloaking in the systems to come. He didn't want a liability when he entered the lawless space to get to his destination. He'd be joining a friend of his to hunt out some bounties on those damned Sansha and he needed every odd in his favor that he could get to get there safely.
