Incoming Press Report, Zero Light Years Away (Escuardo System Network Relay, Union Controlled).

[ERROR—ERROR—ERROR—ERROR—ERROR—ERROR—ERROR—COMM RESTART—FAILED—IDENTIFIED EW JAMMING—NO TRANSMISSION].

- SYS NETWORK SERVICE

+++ Lord Preussen +++

Escuardo System

ISS der Ruhm

Bourgeois bastards…

My blood seeped with nothing but boiling hatred for this bunch of locusts. Mercenaries…capitalists…slavers. These bunch were the scum of the Sector. The scum that we had never managed to stamp out, even three centuries after the Great Revolution.

Scums that even managed to do their own “revolution”. How disgusting. How depraved. How…unsightly. Killing all of them earlier had been nothing but a satisfaction for my heart, for this scum deserved nothing less than a bullet to the head. Nay, I, Lord Preussen, as I styled myself didn’t simply create this fleet out of boundless greed for idiotic green stacks of SCs.

To be a pirate was a freeman’s duty. A duty of those free to resist, to resist the system of greed. To be bound with the void, of true human spirit, one that called for freedom from the chains of the corrupted order. That woman. That…man…Juliett, and Jonathan. Both of them…I wanted to crush them under my boots.

Especially her. She oozed nothing but self-righteousness out of false virtue. An aristocrat most likely. Her ship…it was strong. It was autonomous. And it could swipe my brethren’s vessels with a disgusting amount of ease. Those mercenaries I had captured and almost executed was a taste of sweet reprisal against their evil, but this woman…

There was no way she wasn’t one of them. Those that wantonly exploited the free people of the Sector. Whether the FEG, the Union, or the now corrupt “Vanguard Party” in Avantia, the elites, she must be the daughter of one. And that meant she was my target. And it was precisely why all of us were here. To end them. To disrupt their trade. To murder their supporters…

And to murder them. How foolish of her, to be with this group of ragtag mercenaries herself outside the comforts of whatever colonial backwater her wealthy family must have been ruling. Killing her would be most satisfying. To punish these elites for their transgressions would be oh-so-satisfying. The Der Ruhm may be weaker, older, less technologically advanced, and outdated…but we outnumber them.

And by force of will, the spirit of freemen was behind us. The guiding light to our crusade against the mercenaries, the aristocrats, the fat capitalists, and their supporting employees. All of them. Traitors to the Great Cause. Had I expected this, I would have called my fellow communard brethren for this engagement.

I knew it when they broke our honorable agreement. Their two leaders and the foolish civilians who bootlicked their masters in exchange for our imprisoned fellows. Yet they had interpreted it as something more than that. And then that stupid Kincaid had the gall to even betray me…how absolutely disgusting. I had been lenient! Almost merciful! Yet this was how they would repay me?

I would thus conclude this as nothing but a testament to the rotten human spirit. This group of mercenaries…I would crush them where they stood.

“Get the Freiheit, Der Freche, and our ship firing at that fool! I want that fancy ship gone within minutes!” I shouted over the CIC’s staff, all of whom were desperately scrambling to man the various systems of this old, aging ship. “Teach them a lesson! Teach her a lesson!”

+++

+++ Jonathan Jones +++

Escuardo System

ISS Jukebox

They’re getting angry. I thought, as their shots finally began to converge straight to the Radiant. They probably thought that the Radiant was our flagship, and they were starting to get even more and more reckless. They were charging in closer and closer to us, closing the range protection it afforded them from the Radiant’s deadly Particle Lance. I would have to capitalize on their developing blunder. That Lord Preussen is probably getting twitchy at losing those ships. He will make a blunder…any minute now.

Or at least, until I realized that my munitions were running low. Dangerously low. Only fifteen percent of the original magazines that the Jukebox held were left. And thus, the death knell of this ship—and why I originally refused the idea of placing any coilgun mounts on the bow turrets of this corvette, this ship simply wouldn’t last in any long engagement.

And no, you couldn’t just “conserve” the firing of your ballistic weaponry. You had to drive their reactor capacities to their limits by overwhelming them with coilgun or railgun slugs. And that could only be done through volume and power. And I now lacked the volume.

“This is the Jukebox, my magazine stores are low,” I declared over the comms. “I’m going to be limited to my remaining missile pods and the Photon Sub Lance for the duration of this fight. You all would have to pick up the slack on the anti-shield capabilities.”

“Copy that,” Juliett said. “They’re trying to focus on me. I’m starting to consider using my phase capabilities, but… there are civilians in my ship.”

“Juliett, can your shields hold?” I pulled the controls momentarily, as the next Gallant-Class in front of my ship fired multiple slugs again at my face. Then, they opened up their normal chemical weaponry, old-fashioned heavy artillery that fired at high rates. They were less effective at putting down my shields, but I could see the reactor heat capacity climbing up. “If it’s necessary—”

“No, I can hold. The Radiant will hold. Continue on our attack run. We have to punch through them. I’m firing on that Gallant-Class.”

Two shots from her heavier coilguns slammed straight into the Gallant-Class suppressing my ship, completely cracking its shields dead. The enemy ship must have been overheated, its reactors completely shut down from the sudden force from Juliett’s coilgun slugs, but the ship already began drifting back, its thrusters firing off to retreat itself.

“Harold, let’s try shitting on that bastard! It’s down! Its shields are down!”

“Careful, the enemy Vanguard-Class is firing at you! Back off, Jonathan!” Multiple railgun slugs slammed into the Jukebox’s shields, and with this blunder, I immediately pulled back. SYS began shouting in the intercom about the alerts, with the reactor now barely holding. A barrage of missiles appeared from the pods of the enemy Gallant-Class after it had vented itself, and I retreated further, already sweating at the blunder that I had made.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

But then…

“This unit will take care of it,” it was a voice that I didn’t recognize. Again, it was a woman, and she sounded extremely young. The VSS Shine dashed in front of my ship, her point defense lasers going haywire at shooting down the upcoming missiles that were burning straight for my moronic arse. “Please vent. This unit will cover you.”

I immediately contacted Juliett’s ship in a direct, private comm link.

“Wait, Juliett, she can speak?!”

“Who told you that they can’t? They’re ship AIs like me. Of course, they can.”

“Then why have they been mute since I met you.”

“They didn’t trust you.”

Oh…well, I guess a shady nutjob like me wasn’t the most trustable human being on this side of the Sector. That made sense. Still, that was a big surprise. I shook my head off those distracting thoughts, calling out on SYS to finally begin deploying the emergency coolants. Within seconds, every subsystem including the reactor was cooled down, and the Jukebox began venting out the coolant gasses extremely quickly. I sighed to myself, looking back at the battle map to reassess the situation.

This is bad, I thought to myself, as the Electra and the Luminance were still under heavy pressure while they retreated. The Der Vaug was now being shot at, their shields and reactor heat capacity being driven up as they tried to rush and support Juliett’s drone frigates. The Radiant was now being shot at as if it was the juiciest target in our group (yet somehow, it seemed that she was relatively unaffected). On our front, my ship, the Jukebox, was lagging behind our main spearhead, the Rearguard, the Amperes, and the Shine, all of them trying their best to gang up on the enemy Gallant-Class and Vanguard-Class that blocked us.

On the enemy side, their Olympia-Class and Forlorn-Class definitely had a special hatred against the Radiant or something. Everything, every damned weapon and missile they had were being shot at the Radiant. They were practically ignoring the Der Vaug, the Electra, and the Luminance that formed the rest of our left flank, leaving the rest of their escorts as the ones placing pressure on our smaller ships.

I suppose it makes sense. They’re going to focus on our sole capital ship, I thought, taking a deep analysis of our predicament. We were outnumbered in terms of capital ships, with the Radiant against their three cruisers. Escort ship-wise, we were also badly outnumbered, as most of our ships were Juliett’s drone frigates, which, while powerful in their own terms, wouldn’t usually really hold up against the enemy’s destroyers.

Of course, they were stupid. And it seemed that our ECM capabilities were taking a toll on their more outdated software and guidance systems. Their targeting solutions were pretty shit unlike us, as they were missing more than half of their shots. But again, they had more volume. Already, our anti-shield ballistics, the slugs we used as ammunition for our coilguns and railguns, were dwindling rapidly.

And they certainly would have so much more slugs to throw at us. We were losing the quantity game fast, even if we were hitting them better and we were killing their ships individually better, time wasn’t on our side. Once we run out of ballistics like my own ship, we would be royally screwed.

I had to make a bullshit strategy now.

“Alright, everyone!”

“Yes?” Juliett asked. “What now? They’re about to overwhelm us.”

“Exactly. Which means screw it. Let’s ignore our left flank. Defeat them in detail.”

“You are either a madman, a genius, or totally stupid,” Harold remarked. “Let’s do it.”

“Exactly, everyone, ignore their Olympia-Class and Forlorn-Class. That Vanguard-Class and that Gallant-Class is our priority. They’re trying to back off, all while the rest of them are trying to link up to fully block us. But the Forlorn-Class and Olympia-Class are slow. Juliett, Captain Kincaid, and Harold, we burn forward at full power, and murder that Vanguard-Class. Nothing else. We’ll do it at point blank even. We’re breaking through their lines, ladies and gentlemen.”

“Alright, let’s move in,” Harold said, and I pushed the Jukebox forward. One after another, our rear thrusters opened up at full power. The Radiant itself began speeding up at almost a third of the speed of a frigate. The damned thing was almost terrifying with that. And I could see it in the actions of the enemy ships. Their turrets struggled to choose which target to pick. They are pissing their pants.

One after another, the Rearguard, the Shine, and the Amperes focused fire on the enemy Gallant-Class. Then, the Radiant, the Der Vaug, and even the Electra and the Luminance (who, with whatever massive balls their shipboard AIs had, were showing their rear and broadsides at the enemy on our left flank), were firing at the enemy Vanguard-Class.

The two enemy ships in front of us were understandably overwhelmed, as they tried to keep their shields up under the immense pressure of our coilguns and railguns. Even the Jukebox, with my ship’s nearly non-existent ammunition stores, was taking potshots at them. The first one to completely die was the already half-disabled Gallant-Class, its shields finally failing as the Shine’s Photon Lance sliced through it amidship, all while the Rearguard’s missiles popped it completely dead.

ISS Der Hardy destroyed!

And then, Juliett’s ship, the Radiant, suddenly sped up in an intense burst of speed, closing the distance between it and the enemy Vanguard-Class, in a nearly point-blank range of two hundred kilometers. I remembered the words of that drunken Union ship captain back in Lucynthia, as she unleashed her true terror. Pink bolts, massive bolts of whatever concentrated energy it was, were launched from two of her glowing turrets amidship, and it was almost as if it was a machine gun. A gigantic machine gun if I had ever seen one. And an energy weapon at that. Indeed, that ship captain was right. She was a horror to behold.

The enemy Vanguard-Class’ shields died within seconds, and then all of those bolts burned through its armor and hull like a butter knife through butter. The enemy ship didn’t stand a chance, merely taking a few seconds before it went nuclear, dying in a violent AM fuel explosion in the middle of the cold dead void.

ISS Der Freche destroyed!

“...Christ almighty,” was all I could mutter, and I could tell that everyone in our motley fleet was stunned dead silent. There were no words from Harold and his crew, nor from Captain Kincaid. Nothing. Only the dead silence, that even we could feel terror from Juliett’s capabilities.

“Everyone!” Juliett spoke in the fleet com as if nothing happened. “The hole is open. Let’s get the hell out of here, now!”

I shook myself out of my stupor. “Right, everyone! Follow the Radiant’s lead. All of you, get to the damned jump-point!”