| These are the voyages of the USS Texas YEEHAW

...and her crew, Batma, Ntheride, and Chuck Norris.

Stardate 10.51. We are on a diplomatic mission to Alderan the Federation Fleet HQ to deliver secret plans.

We decide to pass up the chance to ditch our hasty pursuers by going through the closest nebula and instead set course for the path around. Hopefully we may run into some out-of-the-way salvage or settlements that will allow us to take on new crew and improve our modest spacecraft, the USS Texas YEEHAW.

10.54: Our first stop is a planet with six-legged animal-like lifeforms that we have never encountered before. All attempts at communicating with them as sentient beings fail, so we return to the ship and move on.

10.56: Unfortunately, we miscalculated our navigation and are unable to avoid the southern tip of the nebula. Looks like we're going in.

A pirate ship has followed us into the nebula and has closed the distance to engagement range. We cannot escape, time to turn and fight. We begin to power up forward missile bays and bring the Burst Lasers online. This pirate has a shield system active, so the missile will be targeted to take that down and the Lasers timed to hit their weapon systems after we take down their shields.

Confounded weapons system on this bucket are too slow, the pirate ship has launched an attack drone which is pelting our shield with a constant stream of laser fire, and they have managed to get a missile off the rails and it has impacted into our rear quarter, detonating directly in our Oxygen Generator compartment.

Sgt. Chuck Norris and Pvt. N'theride are dispatched to check out the damage and get our Oxygen back online. We won't have to worry about returning fire if we can't breathe.

As Chuck and N'theride leap out of their chairs and begin sprinting aft with repair kits and fire extinguishers, the combat computer's female voice, aka "Bitching Betty" calmly reports that our Artemis Missile is away and streaking towards its assigned target. A second later, a similar affirmative report confirmed by the whine-thump-whine-thump of the burst laser springing to life. Just seconds before impact, their pilot spots our inbound missile, streaking through space, and manages to slide his ship out of the performance envelope of our Artemis Missile, which explodes harmlessly just 200m off her aft. His maneuvering, however, has provided a large silhouette and the burst laser has hit home! One bounced harmlessly off their still-active shields, one fired just wide of the ship but the third shot went scorching through their shield and ripped into their weapons bay with satisfying eruption of fire and sparks. What luck! This should hopefully buy us the time we need to repair our Oxygen system and power up our next volley.

11.05: Lt. Chuck and Pvt. N'theride arrive at the aft deck and are pleasantly surprised that there are no breaches in the hull and no fires to extinguish, which could be especially deadly with explosive Oxygen gas spilling into the compartment. They begin work on repairing our life support systems. If they are unable to do so in the next few minutes, all is lost.

11.11: For the pilot, Lt. Batma, seconds are minutes and minutes are lifetimes as he monitors the ship's systems, nervously tapping on the readout on the ship's oxygen levels that is down to 84% and falling faster and faster. The ship is still being peppered by laser fire from the pirate ship's attack drone orbiting the USS Texas YEEHAW. Lt. Batma checks the sensors, which still show the enemy's ship's weapon systems as offline. Betty interrupts his near panicked train of thought with her sullen "Weapon Ready" report. He mashes the authorization to launch button and another missile is off the rails with their shield system targeted. As before, the burst laser is synced with this launch so the laser fire impacts just after the shield generator is brought offline. This time, he selects their attack drone control tower in hopes of getting that gnat silenced for a bit.

11.18: Chuck and N'theride report in to Lt. Batma over the radio that they have successfully repaired life support and oxygen levels are climbing back up into the high 80%'s. At the same time, the enemy pilot has again swerved hard to avoid the powerful Artemis Missile and left himself open to take his chances with the burst laser. Not his lucky day. The burst laser scorches through their shield system again and impacts directly into their control tower, sending sheets of sparks and flame into the surrounding space.

11.24: N'theride has been ordered to man the weapons bay and see if he can calibrate the next missile launch for better accuracy. Chuck has been sent to the sensor bay to try and improve on the quality of our view of the enemy ship, which is being disrupted by the nebula we are flying through. All weapon systems are now trained on their shield system to try and cripple the pirate craft. Sensors are reporting that the enemy craft's weapon system and drone control towers are both completely offline. While we can't see their crew on sensors because of the nebula interference, we can still track their movements somewhat by the frequency and number of internal airlocks opening and closing. Scurrying around the ship trying to keep her in one piece, it is readily apparent that the pirate scum are in serious trouble.

11.25: Nearly simultaneously, as Betty reports all weapons ready, Batma mashes the launch-auth button and the third volley is on its way. There is no evasive maneuver this time and the Artemis Missile strikes dead center into the craft's shield generator, detonating and nearly ripping the entire craft apart. Just as the missile impacts, Betty reports that the enemy ship is attempting to make an emergency jump to light speed and escape, followed in a blink of an eye by her follow up report that the threat from the enemy ship has been terminated by the follow-up volley of laser fire. She has broken into several pieces and gone dark, except for the scorch marks left by our weapons.

11.32: We send out a shuttle to see what salvage we can quickly recover from the wreckage. In addition to finding quite a haul of usable general-materials, we are pleasantly surprised that a powerful weapon, a Halberd Beam, has been recovered mostly intact! It appears this ship was transporting a large shipment of weaponry in its bays. Our crew sets out to install the new weapon on the USS Texas YEEHAW for ad-hoc use in our flight across this star system. We will need to improve our reactor's output if we are to properly utilize this new weapon as it alone requires as much energy as our entire current weapons bay. We use most of the remaining materials we salvaged to double our shield's strength in anticipation of the battles to come, but like the newly acquired weapon, will need to make substantial improvements to our reactor in order to fully utilize it.

11.36: Set course to exit the nebula and be underway towards the Fleet HQ once more.