I had been wandering idly around my hangar when I heard a call from Heyna about a radar signature in Goinard. Ended up bringing out the Rose again to help handle the guards in the complex once she had pinpointed it, then once that was done I headed back to the station to grab the Misuzu to assist in salvage operations and cleanup.
As we were finishing up, Heyna and I saw a Thrasher on scan, somewhere in the system. I switched to the Katana, and we narrowed it down to an asteroid belt near the second planet, and engaged. A Hawk and a Thorax are a little more than a match for a destroyer, and so it went down quickly. An Exequror was also in system, and warped to the belt at range as we were finishing up -- Heyna grabbed what she could out of the remains of the Thrasher, then we decided to attempt to catch the Exequror. We eventually caught it at the fourth planet and engaged.
Unfortunately, we saw spike in local transponders too late, and what we had commented just might be bait... turned out to be exactly that. Heyna's Hawk was unable to escape when the fleet landed and tackled her despite the call to disengage and retreat just as they started landing; when the Pilchard went down, I became the next target... but for some reason, I managed to get out just as the Katana's hull integrity was reaching about three percent. I don't know exactly what happened; my best guess is that everyone who had jammed the Katana's warp drive had disengaged their disruptors (and they were using disruptors instead of scramblers, as I know I managed to burn out of range of one of the larger ships with the Katana's microwarpdrive) in an attempt to catch my pod, but miscalculated in their timing, allowing me to escape, just narrowly.
I feel silly, having forgotten that what smells like a trap, almost always is a trap... it cost Heyna an expensive ship, and a number of crew on the Katana -- about seventy in total -- whose families need to be notified and compensated, and... well, replaced, I suppose is the only proper word. Thankfully I have Suzie to help with that, but... really, if there's a part of being a capsuleer I genuinely hate it is that: having to deal with the loss of my crew, even just one of them.
Later that evening while the Katana was in for repairs, I heard a call from Deckhard and Leo about a Rupture in a belt, so I wired into the Ananta and headed over. I managed to arrive just as the Rupture exploded, and would have simply left to allow Deckhard and Leo to handle the rest, but Leo's Curse suddenly performed an emergency warp, so I helped Deckhard by keeping a point on the Rupture pilot's pod while he continued the ransom negotiations.
A neutral Vagabond pilot entered the system and landed some distance away from us in the belt scant minutes later. Deckhard and I both panicked; he cut comms with the Rupture pilot and destroyed his pod, and I slipped out to sit at Hekhalot. Deckhard, unfortunately, was unable to escape as I had, and was under attack. I turned around and headed back to the belt to assist; I arrived seconds too late as Deckhard's Ishkur fell apart around him and the Vagabond pilot turned to me. I managed to keep distance from the pilot, sending drones after him, but even with a full flight of drones, I couldn't do much to break his shields until Inara showed up in her Curse.
At that point I was able to move in close and apply brute force with the Ananta's blasters; with Inara sapping the Vagabond's capacitor dry and disrupting the tracking on his autocannons, his shields soon collapsed and his armor and hull soon after. We quickly salvaged what we could from the area before any more trouble arrived. Hopefully what we recovered will help pay for his ship; it would be a shame otherwise.
Progress on the Kagami is proceeding as scheduled, so that should be something nice to look forward to this week... frankly, this has been a rather poor month to end the year with. I can only hope the new year is better.
God, I miss her so much...
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