"Obliteration or just cripple them?" David's voice rang out as the computer found a firing solution on the ship that thought it could flee.
"Cripple it, kill the engines" Eirik commanded and watched the screens in front of him as the battle started in earnest. With all his weapon powered up, his shields would only have half strength, but he hoped the overwhelming firepower combined with boarding parties would tip the battle in his favor. He didn't expect the turncoat pirates to actually help him in the battle, but he saw them moving into position to provide supporting fire from behind.
"David, keep a watch on rear-facing shields. I don't like the position they are taking up, boxing us in like this." Eirik said as he returned focus to the here and now. "Take evasive action once the boarding torpedos have been fired, we need to stay mobile in this battle."
Pressing a few buttons, he called the pirate ship that he was in contact with before. The ridiculously dressed man from before popped up on the screen with a simple "What?"
"Move to box in your former comrades instead of providing me with fire support. I do not plan on holding my ground. in this battle."
"As you wish, boss" The pirate replied and cut off the call. The ships moved to prevent the 2 pirate ships from fleeing with the boarding crews on board.
"FIRING!" David shouted as he pressed the button to fire all weapons. The entire ship shook as the laws of physics exerted themselves when the railguns fired. The railgun rounds hurtled towards the pirate ship at a fraction of lightspeed causing the shield to shimmer into existence at the moment of impact, shortly before the missiles and torpedoes reached it. The already strained shield overloaded under the barrage and the engines exploded a second later in a blinding explosion that left the poor ship slowly spinning in space. Without help, they would be doomed to suffer the agonizing death of suffocation when their life-support eventually failed. If they were lucky, they froze to death first.
It was a gentle way of dying, freezing to death. You start in pain, as the nerves of the body react to the cold, but go numb with time. Eventually, you become tired and sit or lay down to rest and then you never wake up again.
"Make sure we don't pass in front of their guns!" Eirik called out. Crippled as they were, their weapons were still powered. No reason to give them a free shot. "What about those boarding torpedos?!?" Eirik was desperate for them to get a move on, the pirate ships finally having shaken themselves out of the stupor they had entered as his ship more than doubled its firepower.
"10 more seconds until we reach optimal firing trajectory!" David shouted back as the shield of the *Void Wolf* flared to life under the less powerful, but far more rapid-firing laser batteries of the pirate ships.
"Prepare a covering salvo!!" Eirik yelled as the seconds ticked down. The salvo was fired a split second before the boarding torpedos left with their deadly cargo, the tungsten rounds from the railguns and the wall of missiles and torpedoes following in their wake took care of almost all the enemy fire that would have shredded the boarding torpedos long before they could reach their targets.
As it was, only a stray shot managed to get through to the torpedos, where the armor shrugged off the slight damage. Eirik had put Jesper in charge of 1 assault group and Bjørn in charge of the other. Both groups had been reinforced with experienced boarders from Eirik's crew and he had hinted to them that whoever managed to clear their ship first would get the full price of the ship paid out as a bonus, a great incentive to see how Bjørn performed under multiple forms of stress.
As the torpedos slammed home and lodged themselves unto the pirate ships, their guns fell silent almost immediately.
"Smart choice" Eirik mused to himself. Have the crew focus on internal defense, trusting in the enemy commander to not fire on them while his troops were trying to board the vessel. From the helmet cameras of the boarding soldiers, he could tell they were going for the tried and true method of taking control of the bridge and engine room. From there, you could close the blast doors to the bridge and engine room, flush the ship to the void, and leave with your prize. As soon as they succeeded, the enemy crew would surrender.
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Under normal circumstances, any ships other than those crewed by Terrans were fairly easy to board. But when facing a ship with multiple races onboard aside from Terrans, you were facing all the ingenuity of a Terran combined with the specialty of whatever races were with them at the time The Ymsaar on board the pirate vessels were as divided as the rest of the pirates, but it was generally understood that the survivors would join forces with the winners.
Most ship boarding attacks took place with low caliber, low-velocity weapons that could not present a danger of making holes in the hull unless you made a committed effort to do so. Either that or energy weapons. This also meant that a lot of melee fighting took place, but the Terrans on board the pirate ships were not trained in hand-to-hand combat the same way Eirik's soldiers were and as a result, those fights were extremely one-sided.
The Plyxii, Kloxna, and Ymsaar had relied on their Terran crewmates being able to take care of the melees, so it was a massive blow to morale to see them get annihilated in front of them. Sure, they engaged violently in the combat and got good hits in, but nothing that downed their opponents, and they were quickly swarmed and beaten down. Sometimes they got stabbed, other times they had their skulls caved in under the heel of one of the boarding party soldiers. On rare occasions, they were merely knocked out and left to be taken as a prisoner.
The Ymsaar, quickly reaching the consensus that they had lost, threw down their weapons and surrendered in the hopes of getting spared. As they were simply hurled behind the attacking soldiers and taken into custody by more soldiers following behind, the rest of their race surrounded, knowing they would be spared. The Plyxii soldiers became frustrated and enraged at this, but could do nothing as they were busy trying to fend off the now emboldened boarders.
The Kloxna pirates screeched in rage at the betrayal and threw themselves, claws first, at the invading Terrans but were quickly knocked down with the soldiers' rifle butts. They advanced in a triangle formation, taking great care to not cross each other's firing lines, they moved at a crouch so those behind them had a clear shot. despite this, they moved swiftly and silently. Orders were given through hand signals and the only noise they made was the occasional shotgun fire or a shouted warning.
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Eirik watched all of this through the helmet camera display and smiled to himself. Fast, brutal, and efficient. Just the way he wanted them trained. Now they just needed the experience and pirates such as these were the perfect targets of opportunity. Sure, the pirates were just as brutal, but they lacked the proper training and squad cohesion, making them horrendously easy to deal with.
After the boardings were successful, Eirik turned his attention to the drifting ship. offering a simple choice between staying on the drifting ship until he could send people to salvage it, and taking a place in the ship as prisoners, Unsurprisingly, the pirates chose to become prisoners.
Splitting the commando group and his own offensive soldiers into small groups and augmenting them with the non-essential crew from his own ship, he was capable of getting all his 5 captured ships moving along with his own towards the smuggler station. They had finished 8 hours before the deadline he had set, but he was not about to take any risks. Each saved minute was a minute they could use to arrive earlier, with the assistance of the besieged soldiers.
He started writing messages the moment he was underway. Lasse had yet to send a message confirming the ready status of the 500 men, so Eirik sent a message asking him directly. He also sent a message to the commanding officer of the defenders, informing him of the 8 hours gained on the timeline. Might as well commit the time before selfish reasons saw them wasted.
After this, he swung by the armory where the soldiers were getting out of their armor and depositing their weapons in the various lockers and shelves. "Meet me in the soundproofed room in 3 hours. Bjørn, I expect the after-action report to be on my desk before this. And now for the thing, I know you have all been waiting for." The tired soldiers' faces turned eager and attentive once more, "Since you got me all 6 ships, you will earn all 100% of the commission from the assignment." As they started cheering, Eirik lifted his hand to stop them, signaling he was not done speaking.
"However, there is also the little matter of who took over their enemy ship first," Eirik spoke in a low and serious tone, hinting at them not winning the bet. They looked at him slightly disappointed but still in good spirits. Bjørn spoke up. "As long as we get the agreed-upon commission, I am happy as long as no more of my soldiers are lost." The rest of the soldiers around him nodded solemnly. They had all lost a friend this day.
"You won. By a mere 23 seconds. I have not seen Jesper this annoyed in years. Consider the party expenses on me, just for that."
"Wait, what party?" Bjørn exclaimed over the cheers of the men around him, but Eirik was already on his way out of the armory. "3 HOURS!!!" He shouted over his shoulder as the door closed behind him.