The pirate ship was a narrow, black dagger shape that sliced through the void between Hyperspace Nodes.

It had been resting in this part of space for several weeks, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. Many vessels had come and gone, the large, lumbering bulk cargo haulers that were the natural prey of the Pirate vessel, held at bay only by the larger, shark-like forms of Navy escorts. The Humans were at war, again, facing off against one of the ancient, core-ward races that had dominated the Galaxy for millions of years.

In theory this should have made it easy for the Pirates, the Navy was distracted on the front, but commerce was the life-blood of any civilization and so, the cargo haulers travelled in convoys, the Navy sent light cruisers and destroyers to defend them from the opportunistic parasites that crept in the shadows between stars.

However even Humans made mistakes, and the bumbling hauler that popped out of Hyper at one of the Node points was exactly what the Pirates had been waiting for.

The Leader waited for several hours while the slow, heavy vessel straightened out and started on the week long journey towards the next Node. When it became quite clear that the vessel was travelling alone, either having left its escorts and convoy-mates behind, or else a straggler from the last group, he gave the order to close on the Prey.

Throughout the black ship, a multitude of feet drummed, shaking the very frame of the vessel as crew of dozens of species, disenfranchised, criminals, the simply born wicked climbed into power armour, or assisted those getting into the armour, prepared weapons, checked cutting tools, and armed the pirate ships arrays of weaponry. 

So the Pirate cruiser closed the distance with arrogant ease, launching a single kinetic projectile across the bows of the hauler as warning, a knife-range weapon due to the ease with which a kinetic shot could be evaded, but it made its point. The huge vessel shut down its thrusters, coasting on momentum alone.

A dozen guttural languages echoed through the pirate hull as the Leader gave final instructions, relayed by the computer, and the ships meet with a *crunch* as the pirate runs out a heavy proboscis, puncturing the thin hull of the merchant ship, and welding itself in place to create a tight seal.

Airlock doors hissed open, pressures equalized, and battle armoured troops poured into the narrow corridors, weapons raised and safeties off. They were murderers, pirates, killers all, but Humans were not a species anyone sane took lightly. The powered armour soaked up the brunt of the crushing gravity inside the hauler, although several of the pirates were forced to crawl back to the safety of the airlock as they overestimated their own strength. They would join the second wave, once the boarders had taken the ship and set the gravity to something more comfortable.

The narrow spaces meant the marauders were forced to split into two spears, one headed for engineering, the other towards the bridge. There is little in the way of resistance until the leader of the Bridge group reached an open area, easily recognizable as a mess-hall. 

Two humans, the biggest living thing that the aliens had ever seen with their own eyes came charging from behind an overturned table, yelling incoherently, the on-board translators of the alien battle armour unable to decipher the language, despite being loaded with the latest version of the ‘common’ human language. 

They opened fire on the pair before they were halfway across the room, making one stumble to its knees, and the other to scream louder and speed up. It swung its fists, crushing the helmet of the spearhead leader, and the skull within. The rest of the group poured fire into the maddened human, and three more of them died under thunderous impacts before the human goes down, stunned into unconsciousness, and then death as hundreds of blaster shots slam into its prone body. The kneeling human was back on its feet once more, clearly hurting but not out of the fight yet, and the boarders open fire once more.

The pirates pause, even these hardened killers awed by the sheer power of these monsters. Each pirate carried a blaster weapon that, while harmless to starship hulls, should have been utterly lethal at this range. Somehow the humans could sustain injuries from these weapons that barely slowed them down unless dozens struck the same spot over and over. Yet they are assured, they have the power armour, the armed warship, the heavy weapons, the numbers. And yes, each pirate knew that any of them could die supressing the insane humans, but as long as it was someone ELSE that paid the price, they were content that each of them would get paid just a little more.

Once they had regrouped, and picked up dropped weapons, they continued on through the ship. 

They stormed the bridge, weapons firing as they entered. Had they wished to capture the merchanter as a prize, they might have shown restraint, in this case however, a simple smash and grab, they were unconcerned about destroying delicate consoles and equipment. 

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

The Captain of the merchant ship opened fire on them as they entered, some sort of small handheld slugthrower, itself bigger than any weapon in the pirate arsenal, and the copper jacketed slugs punched neat little round holes in the armour – powered and unpowered – of the pirates with contemptuous ease. He emptied the weapon, and was reloading it when he was struck by half a dozen blaster shots. He yelled, somehow still alive, and fell to his knees. Several more shots struck him but by then he had reloaded and more pirates died. 

More replaced them. Pirate ships were always overcrewed, for those times they did take prizes, and for times like this. They laid in their fire as the Captains gun once more went silent and this time they did not cease firing until he was battered into a red pulp on the deck.

With the bridge taken, the risk of the ship sending any distress calls was gone, as well as any chance of retaliatory action such as opening airlocks.

They turned, after ensuring that there was nothing useful left on the bridge, and began filtering back towards the messhall.

Meanwhile, the engineering spaces had been similarly subdued. Only the Captain it seemed had possessed an actual weapon, but engineers, and especially human engineers, were a resourceful bunch, and a number of boarders had fallen to high voltage flooring, frankly terrifying single-shot particle accelerator cannons made from scrapped hyperdrive parts, and in one case a corridor in which the gravity went from the human standard, to twenty times that, while full of pirates. 

The traps and improvised weapons were far from enough, of course, and in due course the engine room was taken. Despite the level of resistance met though, the pirates met far too few humans to account for the entire crew. A ship the size of this one would need at least two dozen crewmen, the pirates had accounted for six humans so far. 

Reasonably enough, they concluded the missing humans were probably hiding in the cargo hold, perhaps less willing than their crewmates to fight to the death. A lifetime of slavery often awaited captives, but at least they would live. 

Sixteen humans huddled in the hold, grouped around several crates, conversing in low tones. Next to them, a large cage. As the sealed bulkhead door began to glow cherry red, they nodded to each other. One removed a key on a string around his neck. 

“Hyperspace makes him anxious, he’s going to be… angry.” Stated one. 

“That is why he was in his cage, Maksim, but what choice do we have now? He is soldier, the xenos are armed, he will know what do.” 

They nodded at each other again, and the first turned to the cage, and unlocked it.

The bulkhead door, now sagging, abruptly exploded in a cloud of vapour and shrapnel, as someone on the other side sprayed it with liquid nitrogen. 

Pirates charged through, now fully regrouped, the strongest and most heavily armoured at the front, yelling on their loudspeakers in Human Common for any humans to kneel and prepare to be restrained. 

The only human they could see was just climbing from some sort of, cage? It was big, taller than any human they had seen yet, and hairy, which was a remarkable feat considering how hairy the first few humans had been. 

It roared, another incomprehensible human dialect, although this one sounded much more bestial than they had heard before. 

“Kneel and submit!” they screamed at the human.

“Brooaaarrggh!” the human screamed back.

“Open fire” calmly stated the Leader over the comms.

“Brooaaarrggh!!!” Said the Human as dozens of blaster shots slammed into it. Like the other humans the blasters mostly seemed to just make it angry, but unlike the others, this one did not fall to its knees in pain, but instead charged the pirate beachhead. 

It tore into the massed group with frightening ease, slaughtering the strongest pirates as if they were completely helpless.

Then it killed the weaker boarders standing behind the strongest ones, massive arms swinging to and fro, the pirates suddenly realising them human was completely naked and armed only with its huge hands. 

As the pirates now retreated, a few of the brighter ones wondered why the human was randomly dropping to all fours to run at them, and since when did humans have SUCH massive fangs? 

The Leader monitored everything through his links to the boarders, and hurriedly began to sever his vessels link to the human vessel. How this single unarmed human was capable of cutting through his best soldiers was a terrifying mystery, his only thought being that perhaps one of the crew was a human soldier, still equipped with its combat modifications.

Which meant this expedition was over and it was time to cut losses, and empty a few shots into the merchant ship on the way out. 

The force-dock began closing its doors, a handful of surviving boarders flowing through the narrowing gap, the human on their heels. 

One glanced back, he’d left some skin on the edges of the doors along the way. He could see the massive hairy mitts of the human wrap around the nearly-closed doors. He stopped, relieved that he was on the safe side, in a moment the doors would close all the way severing those digits. Except that didn’t happen, instead the doors began to open again. 

“Brooaaarrggh!!!” said the human once more, and as the pirate began to run, the doors shuddered and gave up, crumpling as the human tore them apart and stormed into the pirate vessel.

The crew of the Terran Navy vessel that dropped out of hyper a few days later, tardy thanks to a malfunction in previously battle damaged systems, found the merchant hull it was supposed to have been escorting still drifting with the captured pirate vessel attached. They approached, docking on the opposite side of the huge cargo vessel from the pirate boat, and carefully made their way inside. They found the remaining crew, drunk as lords on vodka apparently brewed up using spare parts from the engine room and ships stores, in company with a large, jovial bear, specifically, Ivan, official mascot of the Terran Marines Eastern Europe Alliance Division. 

He was also drunk.