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As mentioned in the hangout I should be available this Monday so I will see you in TeamSpeak at 6 p.m.

ISA / Intelligence Support Activity Our Initiative has just begun, join us and change the history for yourself, the ISA and all Humanity. JOIN US NOW: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/orgs/CORPORATE JOIN US ON DISCORD: https://discord.gg/fHqA7du VISIT US ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChCR3qasEMcPSWR-I9SleTQ CHECK OUT OUR MAGAZINE: https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/59885905/magazine-v30 // Recruitment-Phase Since we just started recruiting for the Org., you have the privilege to become a high ranked member (Colonel) of the ISA. The only condition to be able to keep this rank on a permanent basis is to be a competent CO. Submit your preferred Rank if you have a specific wish. (Recruit, Soldier, Commander, Colonel is available) Additional to the Rank you get your Rank-Patch what is part of a Perk-System. // The Fleet The ISA provides a big number of Ships. Every single Ship is open to everyone. CO/Captain Ranks on a Ship apply only to ISA-Property. Commanding Officers of all Ships will cycle, so everyone gets the chance to Command his/her favorite Ship (as for example the ISA´s Idris-M or Polaris) in our Lineup. We are glad if Members share the Command of they’re own Vessels but the owner will, of course, remain in supreme command of his/her property. // Our Mission-Set We aim to be active in all areas and don't want to restrict our Org. before the initial release of Star Citizen. JOIN US NOW! Without Intelligence, there is no victory!

Rudder control became stiff and unresponsive. The stubborn assault of gravity relaxed; here, the imposition of Newton’s favorite force ended. The lieutenant activated RCS thrusters and smiled when he regained control of the Gladius. This was his first contact patrol outside of the simulators. Thus far, he’d performed flawlessly. There’d been an incident during atmospheric entry: the flight leader had insisted he unbuckle his harness. “Don’t worry,” the captain said. “You won’t need the harness to hold you still after you enter the planet’s gravity well.” It was an age-old trick for the rookies (obviously) but Heath hadn’t known that. Previous generations of atmospheric pilots would have laughed ruthlessly as his Gladius bucked him into the canopy. It nearly broke his neck. For a pilot who’d never flown outside of zero-G, the captain’s joke seemed believable. Any veteran could tell you a harness was as useful on the tarmac as it was in low orbit. “Don’t be sour, then,” the flight leader said. “Happened to every one of us. Welcome to the fold, lieutenant.” Paco and Playboy giggled and hooted over the comms. Dixie—the flight leader, and Heath’s captain—told them to hush up. Heath hadn’t received a call sign yet. They simply addressed him as Rook over the net. “Look sharp, Rook,” Paco said. Paco and Playboy had the front of the flight, but apparently one or both of them spent most of their time looking in the rear-cam instead of at their sectors. “Small debris field, eleven o’clock.” They waited for instructions. “I’m hungry, fellas,” Dixie finally answered. “Leave it out of the log. Trajectory will carry it out of the next patrol’s route.” “Where’d it come from?” Heath asked. “Who the hell cares?” Playboy sounded impatient. “Looks pretty fresh,” Paco said. “I think we should give this a once-over, skipper.” Skipper, of course, being a nickname for their flight leader. “Dixie while we’re working, Playboy,” the captain answered. Then, hesitation. Heath watched the debris field pass. It was nothing but ragged glitter in the distance of space. Heath could hear himself breathe. “Alright. Paco, Playboy, you stay back and keep long security ‘round this wreck. I’ll check it out with my rookie.” “Aye, sir,” Paco answered. “It’s Rook, sir,” Heath risked. He wanted to be one of the guys. “While we’re working, I mean.” “Shut the hell up, Rook, or you go back to refueling space tugs.” Paco and Playboy guffawed again. The captain relinquished a giggle. Then he eased up. “Just kidding, Rook. You ain’t bad.” The two closed in on the debris field. Paco’s element kept its distance. Heath craned his head as they made their closest pass. None of the flotsam was recognizable, although he did see a few pieces of torn hull-plating with worn paint. It didn’t look fresh enough to warrant concern. Gravitation and chance seemed to have created the debris field here, five hundred kilometers above the planet’s surface. “Garbage,” Dixie said. Heath agreed wordlessly. Playboy suddenly interjected. “Skipper, we have threshers coming up on our six,” “Work, Playboy. How many?” “A handful. A big handful. Five. Two of ‘em are trailing three klicks.” “They just powered up,” Paco added. “Passive sensors missed them. Permission to engage?” “Negative,” Dixie answered. Heath had never heard the captain speak so crisply over the net. “Link up with me and Rook at our next checkpoint. Let them have whatever it is they’re after here.” Heath saw Paco’s and Playboy’s afterburners swell in the distance as they powered along the planet’s orbit. Were it not for the continental backdrop behind them they would have looked like tiny little supernovas. A glint of light in Heath’s peripheral vision distracted his attention. His head swiveled back toward the debris field. Three more threshers were powering up. Heath had to alert the rest of the flight. The captain was quicker. “Paco, new plan.” His speech was a growl. “Send it, skipper” “Weapons free.” “Copy,” Paco replied. He practically whispered. No sooner had Paco spoken then Playboy fired his first missile. “Fox two,” he said. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. “Fox two,” Paco added. “Effects?” Dixie asked. Heath abruptly twisted his stick and pulled it gently toward himself, cruising behind the captain as they turned to meet the threshers hiding in the debris field. “Splash,” Playboy said. “I said effects!” Dixie roared. “Splatter, I mean,” Playboy said. “Sorry, skip.” “Vanduul soup today,” Paco said. “Splatter.” “Good boys,” Dixie replied. “If I find out you two RTB, and you’re not winchester, you’re both fired.” “Aye-aye,” Paco answered. Then, once more: “Fox two.” There was silence on the comms as Dixie straightened out his course. Heath could barely make out the threshers visually, but their radar signatures burned brightly and distinctly against the background noise of the debris field. He activated his repeaters and started fishing for a target lock. He listened to his power plant as it hummed to life. “Nice,” he whispered. “Hot mic, Rook,” Dixie said. The threshers got the first shots. Whenever he thought about it later in life, Heath was always angry that the threshers got the first shot. It was hard to tell in retrospect, but he was sure that he had achieved a target lock just before those shots crossed his bow. Heath always wished he’d fired first. Several of the energy bolts must have scorched Dixie’s shields. The captain would have adjusted his shield facings instantaneously, continuing to zero in on his mark. Heath wasn’t really sure what the captain ended up doing, because as soon as the thresher’s shots crossed his bow, he began evasive maneuvers. There was cursing on the comms but Heath wasn’t listening. He knew he’d fucked up. It’d started as a muscle twitch and finished as a spasmodic jerk: certainly a habit borne from the simulations. For a few precious moments, Dixie was flying solo. None of the threshers tailed Heath after he bugged out. He decoupled his thrust from his momentum and rotated tightly toward his original facing. Dixie was struggling. The threshers had seen their advantage and pressed it. A glowing trail erupted from one of Dixie’s hard points. Despite having shot off a missile, it was clear that he was desperately trying to shake his pursuers—with no terrain to speak of. The missile seemed like a ribbon of light, making two tight spins before fizzling out and hurtling beyond, into the planet’s atmosphere. Heath realized Paco was speaking to him over the net. “That’s our last Fox, Rook. It’s time to pay your bills.” The veteran pilot was strangely calm. Heath regained his senses and achieved multiple locks on each of the three threshers pursuing Dixie. He opened his mouth, ready to shout out the fire notification, but caught his breath when the missiles failed to launch. In his excitement before the patrol, the lieutenant had become strangely fixated on the integrity of his maneuvering thrusters. He spent three hours going over the fuel lines with his mechanics the night before, starting as soon as the Gladius returned from its other pilot’s post. He even devoted most of the time allotted for pre-combat checks toward making sure his thruster-nozzles were clean and fit for duty (and of course, they were). He spent no time syncing his control profile with the Gladius, which at the moment contained the craft’s other pilot’s control profile. Heath had grown complacent from simulator flights, which admittedly made it much easier to transfer and save control profiles. Thus, the thumb-switch which Heath normally used for missile launch was actually assigned to play music over the ship’s internal audio TACNET. Perhaps fittingly, the music was none other than Mozart’s Requiem. “Shit,” he whispered. He could play with the buttons on the stick, but he would be damned if he ejected from his Gladius after that last gaff. “That doesn’t sound good, Rook,” he heard Paco say. “We’re cleaning up here—we’ll be there in a jiffy,” That wouldn’t do. One of Dixie’s aerofoils had been sheered off by Vanduul fire. A speck of convulsing light in the distance of the eternal night revealed that the captain’s power plant was venting plasma. This was the worst possible indication of a reactor compromise, short of a brief computer notification and a fireball party immediately following. A quick glance at the radar display on the HUD told Heath that Paco and Playboy were still dealing with two threshers. The nose-mounted repeater on his patrol craft barked out a stream of red light. The previous pilot had given primary fire control the same assignment which Heath normally used. He spent a precious moment boosting his acceleration. He lined his HUD’s lag PIP with the closest thresher at 1200 meters, cutting his speed thereafter. Playboy was saying something over the net, but Heath wasn’t listening. All of his attention was focused on the sight. “Guns,” he coughed hoarsely into the microphone. A half-pound of force on his stick’s trigger commanded 1500 bolts per minute from the repeater. The thresher must have been surprised that Heath had reengaged—his craft wobbled violently from the force of the blast (or indecision?). A gout of flame separated the Vanduul’s ram from its fuselage just before a well-aimed series of shots tore through the hull plating covering its power plant. A shockwave erupted outward through space; its focal point was the location of Heath’s now-disappeared target. The other two threshers played it smartly. One remained on Dixie’s tail, forcing him to maneuver, while the other peeled outward, seeking positional advantage over Heath. “He’s taking your six, Heath,” Paco said. “We’re en route to your pos.” “Copy,” Heath said. Heath watched the blip on his HUD fall in trace of him. “Split off, rookie!” Playboy screamed, angrily. And then, Lieutenant Jonathan D. L. Heath decided to pull off what was largely considered the most irritating dogfight maneuver possible in zero-G combat. He decoupled his thrust from his momentum, swiveling his craft around while maintaining its original heading. Zeroing his PIP over the thresher would be slow—much slower than it would take the Vanduul pilot to do the same. He directed all shields to the nose of the craft, holding his breath as the thresher’s impacts shook the Gladius. As soon as the PIP hovered over the thresher’s cockpit, Heath let the repeater do its business. A miasma of orange energy materialized over the thresher’s hull; its shields withered under Heath’s barrage. He afforded himself a smile. The Vanduul attempted to break off its pursuit moments before its infrared signature disappeared from the HUD’s targeting display. Inertia slung his immobilized target on an orbital trajectory, out and away from the dogfight. Heath risked a look in his rear-cam before turning around. No sight of the thresher, but he saw Dixie beginning to maneuver in a wide circle, slowing his speed. Coming to a halt, he cut his power plant, likely to prevent a catastrophic meltdown. Still no sign of the last thresher on the HUD. Heath spun several times, scanning the distance for any evidence of what happened. He saw Paco and Playboy approaching in neat order. “We let him go,” Paco said. “We don’t pay rookies’ bills,” Playboy added, more calmly than before. It took some time for a recovery flight to retrieve Dixie’s craft—much longer than the hungry captain could have liked. It took almost six hours from the end of the dogfight before they were checked back in on their patrol frigate. As they dismounted, there were some hoots and cheers from the deck ranks, all directed toward Heath. He thought they might all be teasing him. Soon enough, he realized the cheers were in earnest. Even the captain seemed pleased with his performance. The flight members saved their words until the debrief and after-action review. A second recovery flight was still performing an in-depth analysis of the debris field that the patrol had found. It seemed unlikely any critical information worth withholding from the Vanduul would be discovered. Intelligence surmised that the threshers had simply been scavenging the flotsam and jetsam, and were scared into action by the arrival of a UEE patrol. “So they died for nothing?” Playboy asked the intel representative. The short, tidy officer nodded his head. “Good,” Playboy replied, grinning. He winked at Heath. During the after-action review, the captain was quick to criticize Heath’s initial response to incoming fire. “Too much sim-training, I bet,” he said. “We’ll work on that.” But, much to Heath’s pleasure, the whole flight praised his maneuvers afterward. “You just might have saved my life, rookie,” the captain said. “Even though you probably put me in danger in the first place.” They left the conference room closer than before. Heath felt like he was one of the guys. The captain called him over before they adjourned for the night. “You need a new callsign, lieutenant,” he said thoughtfully. “We’ll call you Drifter, Heath. Because of all your sweet moves.” Heath smiled. “Thank you, sir.” “Don’t thank me,” the captain returned smartly. “It was Newton who helped you with the moves.”