(Pirate Vessel Death’s Shadow, Tietera System)
Naturally, one could not simply park a battlecruiser in orbit over an inhabited planet, even a border area like Tietera, and not have someone notice it. Even with space being huge, having a warship in orbit is going to be noticed. Which is why the former captain of the Death’s Shadow had taken a shuttle to Zanchul Station. The battlecruiser had been left in orbit of the sixth planet of the system, a gas giant that was unremarkable save for a few automated gas mining stations in the upper atmosphere.
The Death’s Shadow had put up a decent fight, considering that the ship had been running in a low-power state, trying to be as stealthy as she could. They had, however, been running with the shields charged and up. Normally, that kind of thing from a ship would ruin their stealth profile, but the atmosphere of the gas giant provided enough background radiation that their shields would have been lost in the mix, if we didn’t know exactly where to look. Still, when my ships dropped in right on top of the battlecruiser, all opening fire simultaneously, the pirates didn’t have a chance.
Once the ship was disabled, the Marines got their chance to play. The fighting was fast, furious, and both easier and harder than fighting the Imperial Marines or Deus’s forces that my guys had faced before. It was easier because the pirates were no Marines. They had no discipline, barely any training, and they were certainly not armed and armored like Marines. But ask anyone with experience, and they would rather face ten men with real training than one untrained idiot in a real fight. Untrained idiots are unpredictable. You don’t know when they’ll do something completely stupid that will get you all killed. Case in point, the dumbass who brought out a rocket launcher in an enclosed space, or the one who actually used white phosphorous on a starship.
Once the surviving crew was properly incapacitated, collared, and corralled like their captain was, I had my engineers start going over the ship, preparing it for what was to come. See, the not-so-good Captain Shaxidor had proven a literal wealth of information about the defenses of the pirate base. And, frankly, they were enough that it was easy to see why the local Navy didn’t try and take out this group.
Before you ever got to the base, you had to deal with the asteroid field. This was a particularly dense one, leaving only a few paths through the field unless you were in a ship as nimble (and small) as the Starlight Raven. Fighters would have a field day there, but warships would be limited to only a couple paths. Worse, there was the remains of an old minefield littering the asteroid field, making navigation even more hazardous.
Then you had the defense platforms. The pirates knew the best ways for any big ships to get through, so they had automated defenses set up in the asteroid field, ready to open up on ships that didn’t have the right passcodes. Since ships couldn’t maneuver properly in the field, that made getting through without being blasted to pieces ‘problematic’, at best. At the very least, the mix of asteroids, mines, and weapons would certainly slow any attacking force, and give the pirates plenty of warning.
Which is where you had the third big problem, the drone fighters. The pirates figured that keeping a whole bunch of wannabe fighter pilots around, and training them to fight actual fighter pilots, was too much of a headache, so they had a fleet of armed drones which controllers on the base could use to attack incoming ships. They were half the size of regular fighters, but had the engines and power plant of a full-size fighter, making them lighter, quicker, and still able to hit like a fighter. Apparently, the Pirates called them ‘Piranhas’, since they would basically swarm a target taking lots of little bites until the target died.
Then, of course, you had the station’s ACTUAL defenses. Since the station was originally designed to be a fleet base back during one of the wars, it was big, heavily armored, and armed to the teeth. And by the time a ship could maneuver to get a clear shot at it, you were already within its attack range. So anyone who survived past the mines, and the defenses, and the piranhas, got to deal with dreadnought-level weaponry at close quarters. Oh, and any pirate ships that happened to be in port, as well. If you managed to get on the station itself? Then you had thousands of pirates, all shooting at you.
In short, it was one godawful nasty place to try and take by force. In fact, the multiple layers of defense inspired a comparison to old walled cities in a siege. We couldn’t get ‘siege weapons’ to bear on the ‘walls’, so the only conventional way to deal with the base would be to do a frontal assault, eat hellacious casualties, and still probably fail to take the objective. But then, Black Star hadn’t made its name with frontal assaults. No, we were going to cheat, and the Death’s Shadow was going to help us in what I was calling ‘Operation Trojan Horse’.
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Like the ancient stratagem of myth, we would take the Death’s Shadow through the minefield, using the pirates’ own codes against them. The fleet would guard the passages out of the asteroid field, with the fighters from the Vicious Return hunting to take any of the little ships that tried to escape. The real challenge would be for those of us in the ‘Horse’, as we would have to take the base without fleet assistance.
And who was going to be the Greeks to my Odysseus? That was obviously going to be my Black Star Marines. As I’d said before, I have Marines, and I was not afraid to use them for mayhem. And frankly, this was going to be one of the jobs that they were going to love.
But first we had to get through the defenses, so the Marines could play. That was why I was now on the bridge of the Death’s Shadow, dressed in Captain Shaxidor’s clothes and wearing his face. I had to get us in to dock with the station. So far, the codes that the Captain had provided had all worked as we passed through the asteroids.
Coming into view of Madrigal Base, I whistled appreciatively. This was no little waystation. Built and designed as a fleet base, the central core was as large as a superdreadnought, with docks extending out from it in all directions, allowing room for almost a hundred ships to dock at one time, provided they were smaller ships, like frigates. There was an organized ‘graveyard’ of scrapped and wrecked derelicts off to one side, near what was obviously a full-fledged shipyard! Of course, a fleet base would need to repair damaged warships. But with this under Black Star jurisdiction…
This was looking to be a VERY profitable job, indeed.
“Captain,” the communications officer said, with as much venom and disdain as he could put into his voice, “the station is hailing us.”
Looking over at the surly human male, I activated the Stepford protocols on the man’s collar, and said, “Put it on screen, and then go outside and repeatedly punch yourself in your genitalia as hard as you can until a member of Black Star tells you to stop, and don’t make a sound doing it. Make sure you smile the entire time.” The man’s sneer turned to a wide smile, even though his eyes burned with hatred, but he turned the screen on before walking off the bridge all the same. The rest of the crew made VERY sure to be looking away from me, and not saying a word.
“Death’s Shadow, this is Madrigal Base Control. Good to see you again, Captain. Good hunting out there?”
The person on the screen was an acquaintance of Shaxidor’s. Not a friend, or even someone he knew particularly well, but there were only three people that did ‘flight control’, such as it was, for the pirate base, and Shaxidor was one of the big three in the area, and Death’s Shadow was distinctive. My ‘interview’ with Shaxidor had gone over all of this, and how the interactions between him and the controllers normally went.
“Not as much, Control. Managed to hit an arms shipment on the way back from a meet on Tietera, but had to blow the ship as there was enough company inbound that we couldn’t tow it with us. Seems there’s trouble coming this way. Let’s just say that I’m keeping my ships in for the moment.”
“Damn. Enough ‘company’ that you cut and ran, instead of fighting? Felt like it had been going too good, lately. What’s the word? Anything that needs to go on the nets?”
“Yeah, well, I’m no idiot. There were three ships to my one, and the middle one was broadcasting that it was the Shinokage. The local government has called in those Black Star assholes to ‘clean up’ the area. Wants them to do to us what they did to the pirates in the core.”
“Fuck. That’ll wrinkle a few feathers. All those newcomers have been talking up the way the Black Stars rolled up all the pirates in the core for months. Hearing they’ll be coming this way might start a panic!”
“Well, if that’s the case, why don’t you talk to the stationmaster, and get them to lock down the docking rings and the ships, so they can keep any of the rats from fleeing and spilling the beans in order to save their own skins. You know some of these newcomers will do just that.”
“Hah! With what men? You know we only got enough guys to break up the bar fights and keep a few guns on the critical systems!”
“Hah. Tell ya what. You get the stationmaster to send me the right codes, and I’ll have my boys here on the Shadow dress up in that fancy armor that we got off the transport. We’ll spread out through the station and secure everything. While you guys lock it down. My guy on Tietera told me Black Star’s been asking around about Maddy, so you can bet that they’ll be looking for rats to flip, if they haven’t already.”
“Fuck. Wait a sec, Shadow, stationmaster’s here.” There was a pause as the man looked off to the side. “All right, Shadow, stationmaster agrees with your call, but different reasons. Conference of all the captains in port scheduled for two hours from now, to go over what any response ought to be. In the meantime, if you are willing to suit your boys up and have them help secure the station, we’ll put the Shadow at Pillar 4, Dock 2.”
“Good plan, Control. Death’s Shadow out.” He hit the control to cut the transmission, and then looked to Raven, who was standing just out of sight of the viewscreen. “Bring the idiot back in, and let the Marines know to suit up, but remember that we’re supposed to be Pirates playing at being Marines. Keep it loose until it is time to go to work. Trojan Horse is a go.”
Raven smiled, and said, “Oh, I’m sure the Marines are going to be absolutely thrilled about goofing off in armor. The Major will be pissed as all hell, though. I think the only thing that will make him happy after this is getting to run roughshod over all the idiots on that station, blasting anyone who doesn’t surrender. Poor Major hates it when his Marines start doing stupid things.”
I laughed at her words as Raven went to the bridge door. It opened to reveal the crewman from earlier, collapsed in the fetal position, quietly sobbing, with tears running down his face that didn’t match the wide grin he sported, which didn’t falter in the slightest as he got one more good hit in on himself before Raven stopped him. I nodded slowly as I saw the man, and looked to the rest of the bridge crew. “Now, if I hear any more back talk, instead of just punching them, I’ll make you guys go down to the galley and slap them on the stovetop while it is on. Do I make myself clear?” A round of frightened nods came my way. “Good. Don’t fuck up, and you’ll get to live through this. Screw with my operation, and you’ll wish you were dead.”