Chapter Thirty-Five - Initiative

Initiative was everything in space combat.

Some would say it was everything in all forms of combat, but it was especially true when people were fighting in the harsh vacuum of space.

The Sappho had initiative.

The eight torpedo tubes atop the ship opened with a stuttaco of thumps, heavy metal plates shifting aside to reveal the dark pits within where six-metre-long rods of explosive death were waiting.

Ivil, in her brand new captain's chair, punched in the target coordinates for all eight torpedoes. They'd each have their own unique target and come in from a very specific vector. Missy had primed things already, and now all she needed was to press the button to launch.

"Missy, are the point-defence guns up?"

"Looks like it," Missy replied.

Twenty-Six's head rose up from behind her console. "We're going to be shot at?" she asked.

Ivil blinked. She would have thought that it was a foregone conclusion. Shooting at people usually opened yourself up to being shot at. Retaliation was a religion, and Ivil was its head priestess. It felt strange to be working with people that didn't understand that on a fundamental level.

"Once they see us shooting at them, they'll obviously want to shoot back," Aurora said. "Uh, Miss Ville, can you give me the names of the targets?"

"The station, near the end of Arm Gamma and in the centre of Arm Helios," Ivil said. "Then a strike against the corvette parked next to the Held Together. Another against the destroyer above us, and the remaining four torpedoes are aimed at the defence emplacements around the station."

"I see. Give me a moment?"

"Certainly," Ivil replied. Her hand hovered over the launch button as she turned her attention towards Aurora.

The noble took in a deep breath, cleared her throat, then gingerly pressed a button on the communication's system. Ivil squinted. That had established a direct connection with the station. "They're in Arm Gamma! I repeat! Arm Gamma! The Arm is sealed! Hit it now!" Aurora shouted.

It was... very theatric, and incredibly, impossibly, fake. It reminded Ivil of her soaps, actually, the drama turned up to a point where it erred away from believability.

Aurora cleared her throat again. "Arm Helios! Strike at Arm Helios! Oh god, oh lord!"

"Wow," Missy said. "Are you aiming for an award?"

Aurora turned a glare at the Warmime. "I'm aiming to sow confusion," she replied before tapping the comms again. This time she broadcast across all frequencies. "Warning to all ships, the defence turrets have been compromised! The corvette... Marie Antoinette and the destroyer Joan of Arc are relaying codes to the turrets! They're betraying us! They're with the enemy!"

Ivil waited for Aurora to close the comms before she started to clap politely. "You really put your heart into that," she said.

"Why thank you," Aurora replied. She was slightly flushed, but nonetheless tilted her head back a little to display her noble nostrils.

"Will that... work?" Twenty-Six asked.

The comms panel lit up with incoming chatter, and even though she wasn't close to it, Ivil picked up snippets of panic and questions being tossed over some rather deadly accusations. "It'll muddy things a little," Ivil replied.

Then she pressed the button.

The Sappho's manoeuvring thrusters immediately fired up to counteract the downwards push caused by eight torpedoes leaping out of the ship.

Ivil closed her eyes, slowed down her perception of time, and followed their trajectory.

Without any fragile organics to worry about, the torpedoes had nothing to stop them from accelerating as hard and fast as they could, which meant that they rammed out of their hatches and immediately burned nearly all of their fuel as soon as they were lined up. Two of them were the exception, their courses requiring a number of small deviations and changes.

The pirate fleet was in a state of readiness already, but they were not at full battle readiness. Shields weren't up, and point defence guns were still offline. A few tracked the torpedoes, but they registered as allied for the moment.

At least until the first few struck, and the primitive AI in the ships around the station clued into the fact that something was terribly wrong.

The corvette and destroyer exploded spectacularly as the torpedoes rammed into them while still burning hot, then detonated just within their hulls. The explosions set off a chain reaction, catching the air within the ships on fire and lighting up munitions and fuel.

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The strikes against the station were far less spectacular. The projectiles slipped through the thin walls, then detonated themselves. There was a rush of fire as the air burned up, but bulkheads slammed shut in an instant. The conflagration was mostly debris thrown out and away from the station.

The defence platforms stationed around were both interesting and not. Ivil had a good sense for vectors and angles. It came with a number of her lesser cores. So, with that, it was simplicity itself to have the torpedoes strike the platforms at angles where the majority of the debris from their strikes would be propelled in a... useful direction.

Notably, right into other nearby platforms.

Space filled with point-defence fire about three seconds after Ivil pressed fire. Mostly, these were aimed at the largest chunks of debris now floating freely, and quickly, away from the targets she'd struck.

A few of those attacks were sensibly aimed at the Sappho.

Ivil batted them aside. Powers that allowed a person to have a shield of sorts were quite common. Powers that allowed them to place immovable, unbreakable shields wherever they damned well pleased were less common, but Ivil didn't want the paint on her brand new ship scuffed.

"Goddamn shit UI," Missy muttered as she tried to grapple with the controls for the Sappho's main batteries.

"I've got it," Ivil replied as she slipped command to her captain's chair then assigned priority targets. There were a number of defence installations left, and a few ships that were both threats, and also within the firing arc of their guns.

Their shields were up, of course, and now faint glimmers of light were appearing around other ships as well. The entire pirate fleet was rushing into a state of readiness.

It would have been so easy to ruin it all, to sweep all of the ships aside, crush them, then casually extract what few cores she could sense. But... no, her cover was holding on with barely nothing at all, but she knew that there was a difference between people suspecting that she was powerful, and people knowing who she was.

"Aurora! Get the Held Together on the line. Tell the good captain to burn out of their berth. Missy, take over one of the dorsal point-defence guns, snipe out the clamps holding them in place. Twenty-Six, are the engines hot?"

"Super!" Twenty-Six said.

"Alright. Everyone, hang on, we're going to start a light acceleration burn. Two Gs. We're leaving and we want to make it clear that we won't be around for long. Let the pirates blow each other up if that's what they want, we're leaving."

"We're running away? Can't we blow them all up?" Twenty-Six asked.

Ivil blinked. "That's blood-thirsty of you," she said.

"Well, they're pirates," Twenty-Six replied with a small, rather innocent little shrug.

"Don't get too excited," Missy said. "We're still outnumbered too-many-to-one. Get in your station's crash seat."

Twenty-Six did just that, strapping herself in quickly. The others did the same, though Aurora needed a moment to puzzle out the straps on her seat. Ivil did up her own, mostly for show, then gestured to Missy. "You've got the helm," she said.

"Aye," Missy replied. There was a lot of sarcasm in that one syllable, but she nonetheless took command of the ship, pushed up the throttle a little, then aimed it forwards and away from the station. Almost as soon as they had a heading, Missy was back to controlling the dorsal guns.

Ivil closed her eyes and felt things out. The Held Together was still in its berth, but it wouldn't be that way for long. Most of the clamps had let go already, and the ship's engines were on and lighting the station on fire with their thrust as the ship tried to pull free.

A quick burst of surprisingly accurate fire from Missy ripped apart the connection between a clamp and the station, and the ship was able to pull itself free with a wrench.

Ivil almost felt bad for it. The Held Together was only barely living up to its name before, and now it had to deal with a rather forceful extraction on top of the rest.

Still, it was free. "Ah, the captain's asking for a location to meet up in," Aurora said.

Ivil did a little mental maths, then sent some coordinates over. They were a few hour's away assuming that they only moved at a very slow, steady pace. Still, it would be outside of the average gun's calculable range.

They were, for the moment, free, leaving chaos and destruction in their wake.

***