(Desolace Gateway, Desolace System)

There were eighteen Gateways in Known Space, now that the Black Star Company had released the locations of the Amazon and Nuevo Edo Gateways to the galaxy. Three were located in the Terran Empire, four in the Confederation of Allied Planets, two in the Free Worlds Alliance, three in the Gauz Consortium, two in the Ihm Imperium, and three in independent systems (the Amazon system, Nuevo Edo, and the Shadowgate System, which had severed all ties with the rest of the galaxy very forcefully after one of the wars, to the point where they somehow found a way to block access to their gate). Such a scarcity across the five main groups that made up the governments of Known Space (not counting the little independent systems like Nuevo Edo) ought to make any of the gateways a prime hub of starship traffic, and guarded to make sure that enemies couldn’t slip a fleet past the border patrols.

The truth, however, was that certain gateways were not worth more than a token effort to watch them, given their remoteness or other factors. Still, of the eighteen Gateways, only two were left in what could be called an ‘unguarded’ state. Even the Mabara Gateway in the Gauz Consortium rated a fleet base, despite the fact that the local primary had long gone nova in the past, wiping out most everything in the system except for the gateway itself. The trade routes leading from Mabara to several resource and production worlds were too important not to have a guard there. The Amazon system had by now been clearly marked as a death trap for anyone trying to go down to the planet, thanks to Greenwave, and the Black Star Company was openly rumored to keep eyes on the system and patrol it regularly, to keep anyone from setting up facilities there, despite the dangers of the only inhabitable planet.

This made the Desolace system all the more unusual. Nestled in an odd corner of Confederate space, there were other gateways that were generally more useful for shipping people and cargo through, and the system itself, with its copious debris fields and little else, was no use to anyone. The Confederate Navy only kept a few spy drones in the system, to keep watch on the pirates and other types, and to let them know if a fleet entered the system by that gateway. Of course, they had to replace the spy drones regularly, either from debris impacts or because the pirates would hunt and kill them to keep their safe haven. Except that, recently, the pirates in Confederate Space had been suffering many setbacks, thanks to the Black Star Navy.

It was also known by now that the Black Stars preferred using the Desolace Gate, likely for the same reasons that the pirates used it, which led to many more spy drones getting posted around the gate, not just by the Confederate Navy, but also by independent groups, including more than a couple Nomads who wanted to keep an eye on the Black Stars. Those spy satellites also seemed to get damaged or destroyed on a regular basis. Oh sure, the Confederate satellites were usually damaged and knocked off course by uncharted debris, but it had become quietly known that ships of the Black Star Navy routinely conducted ‘training exercises’ in the empty area around the Desolace Gate, and somehow during those exercises the Nomad satellites, in particular, would often suffer ‘accidents’, and be destroyed during live-fire exercises.

All of this was to explain why a Gateway was left almost completely unguarded so close to the center of Confederate space. When the Gateway opened, the number of observers there to see it could be counted on one hand. Just the way the Black Stars liked it.

(Pirate Vessel Blind Serpent, Desolace System)

“Captain, the Gateway just opened! Address is the Amazon system.”

Captain ‘Butcher’ Nottley smiled as he leaned forward in his chair. “All right, boys, keep it nice and quiet, now, but send word to the other ships, let Captain Sarkas know we got ships incoming. Either we’ll have ourselves a score, or there will be Black Stars, and we’ll get to have some revenge for Booty Bay!”

“The other ships are prepping to jump in now. The base is going dark to keep anyone from finding out about it.”

Captain Nottley smiled. That had been a coup, and no mistake, managing to get Night Station set up and running without the Confeds or Black Stars seeing anything. The system was so full of debris that no one had ever mapped it all. But pirates looking for a safe harbor will look in the most unlikely places. Which is how Night Station came to be. Cobbled together out of a group of asteroids, the whole thing was on the opposite side of the star from the Gateway, so far out of the way that no one bothered even sending probes that way anymore.

The destruction of Booty Bay by the Black Stars had left the pirates in this sector without a base, and most of them were dead. The only two clans with any power left were the Sarkas and the Fenrora, and the Fenrora had been too stupid to run or hide. They’d talked, LOUDLY, about becoming the new Pirate Kings of the sector, and the Black Stars and Confeds had taken turns hunting them down and killing them. The remaining ships had fled to the outer sectors of the Confederacy, where things weren’t as controlled.

Sarkas, on the other hand, played it smart. Even before Booty Bay had been destroyed, he’d started building up Night Station. The former ‘Pirate Queen’, Temptation, had proven that she was too hot-headed for the job, even before she got the Black Star’s attention. Sarkas also wasn’t JUST a pirate. With the Black Stars and the Navy cracking down on pirates, all his ships had been quietly renamed and turned into smugglers. Wasn’t the thrill of the hunt, like you had with raiding, but the money was good, so the crews didn’t complain, especially when the captains were able to squeeze in a raid here or there. Piracy in the central systems might be down to levels not seen in decades, but that didn’t mean there weren’t ships that ‘went missing’. But they were smart, and kept from going after ships that belonged to (or were guarded by) Black Star.

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Still, there were some of the boys who were all too eager to try and take a swing at the Black Stars. Sarkas didn’t keep stupid captains around, so no one got stupid, but still, pirates were pirates. Which is why he had ordered one ship to keep watch on the gate on rotation, just in case something tasty came through. The Blind Serpent wasn’t exactly a stealth ship, but she was damned hard to spot when she was lying in wait, making like another chunk of debris.

Plan was simple. If a lone freighter looking to get around certain regulations at different Gateways came through, or one with just one warship as an escort, then they’d spring the trap. More escorts came through, or the escort was one of the bigger ships, then they’d stay quiet and let things pass. It was up to Nottley and his Blind Serpent to make the call on whether the strike would go through. If they were discovered? Well, there were plans for that, too.

“Multiple ships exiting the Gateway! They’re Black Star ships, for certain—Wait one. One freighter, reading as the BSS Starlight Raven, and two Assassins, the BSN Shadowdancer and the… CNS Luvon Gilrie. Captain, we have a Confed Navy crew on a Black Star designed ship here!”

Nottley shook his head. Sarkas would have his head if he ordered the strike with that kind of opposition. The Shadowdancer and Starlight Raven were infamous. That meant the owner of Black Star was out there, with some of his crack crews, and they had Confeds with them. No way was he going to order that strike.

“Send the info along quiet-like to Sarkas. No raid today, boys. We don’t want to be the next Temptation, yeah? But hurry up and see if Sarkas has any extra instructions, before they jump out of here.”

(BSS Starlight Raven, Desolace System)

I frowned as I looked at the empty plot, with no contacts listed on the screen. “You’re sure we have someone out there, watching us?”

Raven nodded from her chair, and said, “Affirmative, Captain. The stealth satellites we placed in the system lost track of a ship near a major debris field in the vicinity of the Gateway. They also detected a pulse transmission when the Gateway opened, and another just after we transitioned through.”

I looked to the screen where the captains of the Shadowdancer and Luvon Gilrie were conferenced in, so we could go over these readings. “Thoughts, ladies?”

Nyna shook her head, and said, “Probably pirates, Master. We’ve kicked them around plenty since Shadowdancer left Jagloth, but we can’t have gotten all of them. The stupid ones are dead, and the smart ones either ran, or are hiding. Desolace is remote enough that anyone who went ‘missing’ in the area wouldn’t be important enough or connected enough to matter.”

Captain Zylna frowned. “True. We haven’t had any reports of missing ships or pirate actions in this system in the last six months. Piracy as a whole is down to levels where you could say it is practically nonexistent. But Intelligence said there was at least one pirate clan that may still be in the area, if only because they haven’t been confirmed dead or spotted elsewhere. The Sarkas clan was one of those believed to have been based at Booty Bay, but they were not caught in the base’s destruction or the aftermath.”

I nodded slowly. “In that case, they probably have been watching the gate, picking out or marking independent traders or other vulnerable ships to attack. The satellites are all focused on the Gateway, and you have to maneuver some before you can jump to lightspeed because of the debris fields. So the first pulse was a warning, letting their friends know that a potential snack was coming through the Gateway. The second pulse was probably warning them off, saying they didn’t want this fight.”

Captain Zylna looked to the side, and then back at the screen. “Analysts agree with you, Captain. But how are these pirates hiding from our scans? They don’t have stealth technology, do they?”

I glanced at Raven, and she shook her head. Taking a breath, I said, “Most likely not. Or not anything that couldn’t be found commercially. But Assassins are designed to do the equivalent of disappearing from sight in the middle of an empty stage with spotlights on them. That’s a far cry from people missing you on a dark night because you crouched down in the bushes next to the road.”

Captain Zylna nodded. “Fair enough. I had not considered the environmental means of hiding from sensors.”

Raven looked up, and said, “Captain, we’re receiving a burst transmission from a relay satellite one light-minute above the ecliptic from the Gateway. Text only.”

Nyna checked her screens, and said, “Captain, that satellite is nothing more than a retransmitter. The actual transmission had to come from somewhere in the system.”

“Probably from the command ship for our sneaky friend here. Likely kicked the decision to someone else, so they could make a call. Raven, what’s the message say?”

Raven cleared her throat (unnecessary since she was in an android body, but a good way to ‘humanize’ her body and move it out of the uncanny valley), and began to read. “Captain Mollen: The Sarkas Independent Trading Company wishes to advise you that there are unscrupulous sorts who are charging for ‘protection fees’ and ‘roaming tariffs’ running from Tietera to Vulsore and the adjacent border regions. As Independent Traders, we thought we would pass that information along to you and your new associate. Those interested in avoiding said ‘bad actors’ would be advised to avoid the Madrigal system at this time. Message ends.”

I clicked my tongue at that. “Cheeky bastard.”

Captain Zylna frowned, looking more than a little upset. “Did the last remaining pirate clan in the area really just ask us to go away and bother someone else?”

I nodded slightly. “More than that, I believe. ‘Independent Trader’ means ‘smuggler’ in this case. I’d guess that Sarkas decided to wait out the crackdown on piracy in this sector by shifting his crews into smuggling. Which is why we haven’t noticed him until now. So he is trying to refocus our attention on pirates in the border regions, where things are getting slightly out of control. And probably taking out rivals while he is at it.”

Nyna nodded. “What will we do, Master?”

“Send this, directional broadcast aimed at the satellite and the approximate location of the hidden ship: Sarkas Co., we register transmission. May your new venture prove fruitful. Regulations in place for your previous field will remain, but may avoid intense scrutiny provided the situation remains controlled. Advise self-regulation to prevent government inspectors. Message ends.”

Raven smiled, and sent the message, but Captain Zylna was obviously confused, so I said, “I told him I knew he was a pirate, I knew he had a ship watching the gate, but so long as he plays smuggler and keeps others from stepping out of line, then I will allow him to exist unless something happens that forces visibility on the situation. In other words, become a syndicate instead of a band of crazies that have to be hunted down. Whether he’ll get the hint or not I don’t know.”