Tyler flicks back to the internal flight communications channel. "Alright ladies, let's fence in and get ready for a fight. Cassie, you got the course?"

"Should be on your HUD. Flashing it to Gaucha."

"Got it. Let's throttle these birds up and get over there before they space whoever's in the lighter."

The kilometers click by fast as they blaze through space, searching for positive contact with the spacecraft their SWACS and data link tell them is out there.

"Tally five, right where the sensors say they should be boss."

"Confirm, I have them locked in on our sensors. Looks like Uglies. Probably pirates."

"Alright, ready to roll in. My kill tally can always use a few more marks." Masha's enthusiasm is apparent through the comm unit, she's clearly practically drooling with anticipation. She's in her element, and it shows.

"Hold your horses, we need to give them an opportunity to surrender first. Cassie, give me as wide a broadcast option as we can get. I want to make sure they hear it."

Cassie grunts acknowledgement, fingers flying across her controls as she works the communications part of her job in addition to bringing the Huscarl to full combat status. "You're live."

"Attention unknown craft, you're within an interdiction zone established by an Undaunted warship, and engaging in a dog fight in that space. Power down your weapons and surrender or you will be fired on."

Dead silence answers them as a pair of enemy fighters bank to meet them, lasers blazing away with fast long range shots. The pair still attacking the lighter dive back in, weapons glowing in the cold black of space for the amount of heat they're generating. The concentrated bursts of coherent light and furious starstuff buffet the small craft and finally crack its shields. The remaining energy slams into the ship's engines, leaving the craft dead in space, tumbling through the void.

"Shit! Raven, bandits are engaging us and they just shot out the lighter's engines. Two, get the ones trying to intercept us. I've got the more long range firepower so I can hit the two attacking the lighter faster."

"Copy, Geirr 1-2 engaging. Tally ho!"

The two ships break off and Tyler slams the throttle forward, Cassie splashing some shots on the closer fighters shields just to keep them busy using the Huscarl's double turret. With their attention divided the would-be pirates didn't quite have the focus required to respond to an impromptu pincer attack, and Masha is on them like a hawk on a field mouse.

Pulse lasers flicker in the dark void and plasma flares with all the burning energy of the system's sun, hammering home into the first of the two enemy fighters and laying open its defenses. It had nothing to protect it from the torpedo that Masha sent it's way, briefly turning the enemy warship into a miniature sun.

"Splash one. Coming around for the second. Then I'll help you with the other two, Leader."

Cassie chuckles.

"Oh we can't have that. She'll never let us live it down if Gaucha steals our two kills darling."

"I'm a fighter pilot too, no way in hell am I letting her have a clean sweep in our first space combat as a squadron." Tyler resets his grip on his controls, flexing his fingers before cuing up a super phoenix sensor guided missile, quickly locking on the trailing member of the pair of fighters that were now prowling around the lighter, checking for signs of life maybe?

"Looks like they might have used a tractor beam to stabilize the lighter's spin." Cassie remarks in his ear as the sharp tone of weapon lock pierces the cockpit.

"Geirr 1-1, Fox 3!"

The Super Phoenix drops out of the Huscarl's belly ordinance bay and immediately roars to life, accelerating well past mere concepts like hypersonic speed and hitting half the speed of light with its ridiculous excuse for an engine. Its warhead immediately reports sensor lock on its target after launch, unsurprisingly, this was practically point blank range after all.

Tyler tags his radio and dutifully reports the lock. "Geirr 1-1, pit bull."

Designed for longer range engagements, the missle was technically designed to be faster, but at 5000 klicks away, it didn't have the distance required to hit its full acceleration, the smart warhead instead keeping its speed lower to ensure it had the maneuverability to kill its prey.

The missile races in and strikes true, landing perfectly amidships with a violent kinetic force. The unique warhead was in fact a three stage weapon. The first stage was a high end, shaped plasma charge under a trytite tip, which would shred the craft's shield, or at least weaken it for the second stage. The kinetic penetrator was the unholy child of a Hellfire missile and a tank's "silver bullet" round, a mix of burning hot copper and a tungsten core which ripped through hulls like butter... all to deliver the third stage, an axiom warhead in the tail of the penetrator that would detonate as soon as it sensed it was somewhere appropriate... such as the sensitive guts of an enemy starfighter.

The new weapon works magnificently, rending the small craft open from the inside with a horrendous looking burning that makes the smaller craft’s skin bubble with heat. Then blown to tiny chunks by violent explosive decompression that left the wreck scattered across a few square kilometers as its own internal systems added to the fury of the detonation.

"Splash one for lead."

"Splash two for deuce!"

"Nice work 2, form back up let's- shit! Bandit just lit off a booster!"

The last of the enemy flight closed in fast, weapons blazing at it merged with Tyler and Cassie's Huscarl. Merged in the stellar combat was still miles of separation, but the enemy fighter seemed determined to get up close and personal.

"Typical pirate, Lead, they love to brawl."

"Maybe they think they can board us?" Cassie sounded a bit incredulous, clearly surprised by the pirate’s choice of “tactics”.

"Not today they can't, gorgeous. Light 'em up with the turret to keep' em dancing, switching to guns."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Tyler begins to throw the Huscarl through a series of increasingly more violent maneuvers, some of the Gs and jolts managing to momentarily pierce the comfort of the inertial dampening system that let the Huscarl, and most other stellar craft, perform as well as they did. Laser and plasma fire dances between the two combatants as Tyler weaves through the void, turning a neat set of loops that dropped him neatly on his enemy's tail, locking himself into that position as he moved in for the kill.

"All gear, no skill, and shit gear at that! Guns guns guns!"

Tyler and Cassie can't hear the Huscarl's cannon firing, but they can feel the mighty electric engine rev up as it dispenses it's high velocity 40mm cannon shells in a swarm of heavy caliber slugs that tear through the fighter's shields like tissue paper, performing exactly like they did in the simulation.

The spread of rounds penetrate the ship's hull like a hot knife through butter and detonate their axiom enhanced charges. The big 40mm cannon was for gun runs on armored warships and ground support, the enemy fighter didn't have a chance.

The remaining rounds continue their flight through space as Tyler begins making his report to the Tear...

"Lead, we have gunships jumping in system! They're already right on top of us! Mad women! They have to be insane to jump this deep into a gravity well!"

"Shit! Deuce can you see the remaining rounds I fired?"

"Can't see'em on visual lead, nothing on sensors, too much clutter in the area."

"Shit. Anything on the new arrivals Cassie?"

"Four gunships of various marks, No IFFs, just like the fighters, they're powering weapons. Hull markings indicate a pirate clan, probably the parent organization of those fighters. I- another wave just jumped in, make that six pirate gunships, and two drop ships in system. Raven, Geirr flight requesting immediate support."

A bright flash of light punctuates Cassie’s sentence. At that very moment, the salvo of rounds Tyler had just fired slams into one of the newly arrived gunships, shredding its cockpit and leaving it drifting through space without power like a broken toy.

"Heh, splash three for Leader. Even if it was just random chance."

“Still counts! Plenty of kills to go around today Gaucha.”

"Geirr flight, Raven, stand by for in system jump, we're coming to you."

Eyes wide with shock, Tyler looks back over his shoulder at Cassie.

"They're going to what!? Has the Skipper lost his..."

The bulk of the Crimson Tear comes out of light speed, looming above pirate gunships which were desperately getting their shields up and trying to understand the situation. Before even Tyler, Cassie and Masha can react, a docking bay smoothly opens and draws the stricken lighter inside, the armored doors sealing almost immediately. Whoever managed that recovery was an absolute master with the appropriate tools, that much was for sure.

"Attention all pirate vessels, we have you under our guns. Power down and surrender and you won't be harmed."

The broadcast from the Tear comes along loud and clear, and Cassie's EWAR board lights up like a Christmas tree.

"Goddess's wings they're certainly talking a lot to each other. They're running some form of encryption, so I can't listen in. Considering we just splashed five of them, I don't want to devote computer resources to code breaking."

"That's fine Angel, Gaucha, let's orbit and keep out of the kill box... but be ready to chase down anything that tries to run."

"Think they're going to surrender, Lead?"

"Maybe, they just got a lot of naval grade weapons pointed at them. So for pirates I'd assume they're either gonna scram or surrender. The only thing that might stop them is if..."

A corvette jumps into the system, following the gunships in, immediately opening fire and Tyler lets out a groan.

"...If they have back up! Geirr flight, break! Go defensive, get out of the way so the Tear can send that corvette to Hel and let's pop the rest of these damn gunships!"

Tyler dives hard relative to the galactic plane and throws the accelerator to full military power, the axiom afterburners kicking the Huscarl forward as capital scale energy weapons lash out from the Tear, buffeting the newly arrived pirate vessel who clearly was getting far more of a fight than they'd bargained for.

Tyler watches out of the corner of his vision as the corvette tries to launch a spread of boarding torpedoes, only for the point defense guns to utterly shred them with the same type of high velocity cannon shells the Huscarls used.

For a moment, he wondered why Wichen, or whoever was running weapons on the bridge right now, had elected to use the kinetics instead of the slightly faster lasers... and answers his own question as the wall of lead continues onwards through the black and shreds any enemy gunship that had been taking up position to escort the boarding torpedoes.

The bulk of the remaining rounds pepper the hull of the corvette like Satan's buckshot, small explosions rending what armor plating the corvette had, or penetrating deeper to start chewing up sensitive things. At this close of a range, the kinetics from the cannons were going to hit something, and that something had decent odds of not being a friendly if everyone minded their positioning and their screens.

"Geirr flight, Raven, alert five is launching as Geirr 1-3 and Geirr 1-4, none of the other Huscarls are combat ready yet."

"Much obliged Raven. Geirr 1-1 to Geirr 1-3 and Geirr 1-4, form up on me. Deuce will fly top cover while we proceed to show these rude strangers exactly how the Undaunted teach people manners."

"Acknowledged, Lead."

The flight of aerospace craft quickly sort themselves out, taking a wide, graceful arc clear of the immediate fighting to line themselves up on a vector that allows the gunships to take a few missile shots from range even as they start to plunge back in.

"Leader, Two, what happened to those two drop ships? I lost track of them in all the excitement."

"Angel?"

Tyler asks his Wizzo, suddenly concerned that two ships full of freebooter troops were possibly missing.

"There's too much clutter on the scope... wait one... I think I've got them. They're using some sort of low emission stealth system to hide in the noise of the fight. I can barely detect them. They might be hacking into the Tear too, it could potentially produce a similar effect... looks like they're going for a docking bay."

"Shit. Alright. Let's get in there and take out those drop ships, people. I..."

"Attention, another corvette and escorts have just jumped in system, same colors as the first."

‘What you can see of its colors.’ Tyler muttered to himself.

The first corvette had buckled under the Tear's concentrated firepower. It had gotten a few glancing hits in, but even hundreds of light weapons weren't much of a match for shields rated to take hits from serious weaponry. A corvette like that was hell on freighters, and a nightmare to light combat craft, but to the Tear? Or the Dauntless? Or full on military only ships that didn't multitask like the fledgling Undaunted Navy’s pair of large vessels? There was a chance, but not without any room to maneuver and land boarding torpedoes.

The first corvette hadn't had the traditional defenses of a pirate corvette, or any corvette really. They relied on speed and maneuverability, and the Tear making an in system jump had denied them their one pair of advantages, then pulverized whatever they had left. As the scrap heap that was once a pirate corvette begins to crumble, escape pods jettison across its surface. While escaping certain death was good, barring a significant miracle every single woman in one of those pods was as good as captured.

Tyler reassesses the battle space, donating a long range missile to a newly arrived fighter.

"Deuce, Leader... How do you feel about dancing by yourself a bit? With all these bad guys around I need all the firepower I can get, but someone needs to interdict those drop ships."

Tyler can practically hear Masha grinning like a mad woman as she responds.

"I've got it covered, boss, then I'll loop around and join back up."

"Sounds like a plan. Execute."