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7 - Hunting Pirates

It was a bare patch of space: no stations, no stars, no resources. There weren't any nebulae, binaries, or other interesting sights nearby. It was simply a waypoint, a small collection of jumpholes used for navigation.

A tiny towship lurked in the bare patch, dark and silent. It was covered in black, scanner-absorptive paint and ran active anti-detection algorithms to distort its energy signature. It was as close to invisible as you could get without being dark matter.

Marle and Drexel manned the towship. Marle, in the captain's chair, was snoozing, and Drexel was playing a game on his scanner.

A small, intensely blue light on the console started flashing. Drexel sat up.

"Marle? Marle! We've got incoming."

He tapped his partner on the shoulder. She snorted awake and lashed out at him before she was fully conscious, her fist nearly connecting with the side of his head.

"Marle, we've got incoming."

She scowled at him, but leaned forward to start charging the ion array. It would take a few minutes to reach full charge. Everything in the towship was undersized and underpowered in an effort to suppress their energy signature, so things always took extra time.

Drexel activated the jumphole scanner. It was fitted with extra sensors to analyze the energy fluctuations from the jumphole, allowing them to accurately determine exactly when a ship was about to emerge.

"Turn that garbage off," Marle commanded.

"But why? We want to know when it shows up, right?"

She reached over and switched off the scanner.

"How many times have we done this? You think we really need to know exactly when it's going to show up? Save the energy signature."

They waited long minutes. Their view panel showed an uninteresting spray of stars. Drexel tried to look at where he thought the jumphole might be, guessing where the ship would pop in. But since jumpholes were just twisting vibrations of dark energy in the space-time continuum, they weren't visible.

When the ship finally arrived, it was anticlimactic. One moment it wasn't there, and the next it was. A small, bone-white towship appeared, trailing twelve Vylar fighters, loosely connected, like a string of beads. The automated towship was triangular and featureless. Small sprays of propellant reoriented the small ship on the next jumphole.

"Can I shoot it this time?" Drexel asked.

"We're not shooting it, it's an ion emission flasher. It-- never mind, I might as well explain to a brick. Yeah, you can hit the button. But wait until it's within 5 klicks."

Drexel eagerly watched the rangefinder tick down as the Vylar towship approached their position. 5.4... 5.3... 5.2... 5.1...

"Hit it," Marle said.

Drexel twisted the dial that activated the ion flasher.

The lights on the Vylar towship flickered and went out, and, most importantly, so did the security system.

"Okay, Drexel, suit up and get ready to go exo-vehicular."

"On it!"

He stood and scuttled off the bridge into the tiny living area to squeeze into his spacesuit. Marle activated the engines to bring them near the Vylar towship.

The stealth towship came up behind the last fighter in the string. Marle carefully navigated to line up perfectly on the fighter. She actuated a control, and dozens of thin, spiked cables whipped out of the stealth towship and slapped into the fighter, sticking to it like vines. Marle lit up her reverse thrusters, pulling against the fighter, carefully slowing the whole chain down.

"Are you ready to go EV?" she asked.

"Yep. I'm at the airlock."

"We'll hit target speed in 90 seconds. Be quick."

Drexel entered the airlock. It was the smallest style of airlock, form-fitted to the back half of his spacesuit. He backed in, his suit clicking into place as powerful magnet locked him in. He activated the airlock, and the whole assembly spun 180 degrees, rotating that section of the hull. Now Drexel was attached to the outside of the ship.

Drexel grinned with satisfaction as he was flipped to the exterior. He loved their airlock. It was small, fast, and it only lost a tiny amount of air during the cycle. Much more efficient than those Imperium ships that wasted a whole roomful of air any time anybody wanted to go EV.

Drexel grabbed the towline, detached from the ship and pushed off, floating along the line of fighters. He passed one, then the next. He activated his mag boots, which sucked him toward the third-to last fighter in the chain.

With a clunk that he could feel but not hear, he stuck to the tail of the fighter. He pulled some extra slack on the towline and walked toward the connecting towline between the two fighters. He attached their towline to the Vylar towline with a shunt connection.

"Ready to transfer," he said.

"We're nearly to target speed," Marle replied. She gave the reverse thrusters a little more juice, slowing the chain down more.

The Vylar towlines had a built-in safety feature that would not allow them to cleanly disconnect if the towing caravan was traveling over a certain speed. They could simply cut the towline, of course, but that would leave the mangled end of the towline connected to the last fighter, which would raise eyebrows even among the famously apathetic Vylar.

It was a ticklish operation, but they'd had lots of practice.

"Target speed reached," Marle said.

Drexel activated the shunt, which sent the disconnect signal to the towline. It twisted open and released the fighter in front.

"Line's disconnected," Drexel said.

"Get back inside, and I'll turn off the ion flasher."

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Drexel pushed off and drifted back to their ship, now connected to two Vylar fighters. He cycled back into the ship and started decanting from his suit.

"I'm clear," he yelled. Marle nodded and dialed back the ion flasher. The Vylar towship slowly reactivated. Lights returned and the engines reignited. It cycled up its engines, getting back to speed, and flew into the next jumphole, vanishing as unimpressively as it had arrived.

"Two new fighters, hot dog!" Drexel yelled as Marle piloted them toward a third jumphole, careful not to put too much tension on the towline as they got up to speed. "What do we get, 100,000 credits each?"

"You'd have to ask the boss," Marle replied, her focus still on her piloting. "I don't worry about the money, I just do the work."

"Yeah, but our bonus is based on the sell price." Drexel grinned hugely. "Hot dog I love my job! Making money like this is so easy it ought to be illegal!"

"It is illegal, you dumb dork."

Unfazed, Drexel imagined what he'd be doing with his bonus.

A shadow passed across Marle's face.

"Before we jump, let's deep-scan these fighters," she said. "Look for anything strange."

"Why? What's wrong?"

"I dunno. I just got a weird feeling."

Drexel shrugged. He didn't have any feeling about the fighters except that they were a payday, but Marle was the brains, so he knew to just do what she said. He activated the scanner and watched the console.

"Nothing. No emissions, no energy usage, no passive receivers, nothing."

"Hm. Okay. Well, let's get home then."

Marle, despite her misgivings, turned the ship toward the jumphole and eased the throttle forward.

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They arrived at the Stone Pirate home base. It was an asteroid, but only on average. Mostly it was a loose collection of rocks, ice, and junk, lashed together with space cabling and spare parts. Bespoke ships dotted the space around it.

Their comm screen lit up.

"State your password and purpose," a voice rang through the cabin.

"Open the dock, spaceworm," Marle said. "My password is 'I've got two Vylar fighters in tow, so shut up and let me in.'"

"Perfect password," came the laughing voice from the other end. "Welcome back."

Marle navigated toward the dock. She was so focused docking that she didn't notice one of her sensors blinking rapidly.

"Yeah, bring that money home to papa," came the voice from their comm.

"Why do you have to make it weird, captain?" Drexel asked.

"It's only weird if you make it weird. And I make it weird."

Marle, tight-lipped with concentration, shook her head and sighed in resignation.

At long last, she docked safely. She shut down her engines and stretched, her joints cracking.

"Same bonus as usual, cap?" she asked.

"Your bonus is as reliable as you are, my dear."

She rolled her eyes and stood. She prepared to power down the ship when the blinking caught her eye.

"Why are we getting a signal warning? Drexel, you scanned those ships, didn't you?"

"Yeah, of course. Full deep-scan. No energy signature at all."

"Scan them again."

He did. This time the sensor spectrum lit up like a binary collision.

"What?! There was nothing, I swear! Look, there's still no energy signature! The fighters aren't using any power at all!"

Marle stomach dropped.

"It's not a transmitter," she said. "It's a reflector."

She scrambled to activate the comm.

"Cap! Shut the base down! The fighters are bugged! They're reflecting the EM from the base to give away our location! Shut it all down now!"

Drexel tugged at her sleeve. She wheeled on him, ready to backhand his stupid face for interrupting her, but he had the look of a man staring into his own open grave. He pointed at the screen.

From their jumphole streamed ships: tens, dozens, hundreds. Imperium cruisers, frigates, destroyers, and they just kept coming. They formed an array against the asteroid, and were capped by the arrival of an Imperium flagship, long and proud and gleaming in the starlight.

The comms lit back up with a broadcast. Every screen in the base popped on.

A dark figure appeared on the screen, broad-shouldered and tall, with greying hair and piercing eyes. His face was hard with anger. At the bottom of the screen, another person was barely visible, only the top of a head. It appeared to be a lizardman of some sort.

The glowering figure spoke.

"This is Admiral Grimthorn Stonefist of the Ninth Fleet, Imperium."

After a long moment of silence the captain came online. His face was more somber than Marle had ever seen. His trademark smirk was gone now.

"This is Captain Thion of the Stone Pirates. What is your business here?"

"You have stolen from allies of the Imperium. You have supported enemies of the Imperium. And you have caused the deaths of citizens of the Imperium. Do you deny any of these charges?"

"Would you be here if I could?"

Grimthorn nodded in acknowledgement.

"I am here to bring you to justice."

"We... we surrender," Captain Thion said.

Admiral Stonefist lifted an eyebrow.

"I don't recall asking for your surrender. All ships, charge weapons."

"Sir!" said the lizardman-thing in a shocked voice.

"The Imperium protects her citizens," Admiral Stonefist said. "All hail the Imperium."

"All hail!" came the transmission from a thousand ships.

And a rain of righteous fury poured out onto the pirate base.

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Kinnit sat at her table, quivering, unspilled tears filling her eyes. The light of ten thousand blasters still stung her vision as she stared down, unseeing.

The pirate base was gone. It had to have been merciful, at least. The combined firepower of the entire Ninth Fleet had briefly been turned loose, and it had been beyond anything Kinnit could ever have imagined.

She took a deep, shaky breath. The results of the deep scan would tell them, later, how many pirates had been killed, she was sure.

Her scanner had some details pulled up, some of the known exploits of the Stone Pirates. She'd had a thought that if she knew what kinds of horrible crimes they'd committed-- crimes even beyond enabling the Insectoids to kill Imperial citizens-- she could tamp down some of the guilt raging through her. But she couldn't bring herself to look at the data.

Her fault. It had been her idea to use EM reflectors to track the pirates. And Admiral Stonefist had, as promised, brought the mighty arm of the Imperium down on the Stone Pirates.

She panted, on the verge of hyperventilating. It was one thing to know what the pirates deserved, to know that the victims of Yellow Dog sector had received a small measure of justice, to know that the three galaxies were safer now.

But it was another thing entirely to look directly into the eyes of a man as you killed him. Even if the killing was swift.

She squeezed her eyes shut, tears beginning to overflow.

And the worst part, strangely, was knowing that if she had not succeeded in her investigation, Admiral Stonefist would have turned that stony gaze and the guns of the Ninth Fleet on the innocent Vylar, with no more pity than he showed the pirates.

She felt suddenly the deep and profound responsibility of her work. And the consequences of failing to do it well.

The door to the admiral's office slid open, and the admiral himself walked in, tall and proud and cold. He paused as he walked by her, staring at her with an unreadable expression. He finally sat at his desk and began tapping at his console.

"Fetch me the Vylar data on the stolen ships," he said. "I need to prepare my after-action report."

She stood unsteadily, one hand on the table to stabilize herself.

"That's all?" she said. "That... what we did doesn't affect you? How can you be so cold?"

His hands froze on his keyboard. he appeared to struggle within himself for a moment. Then he looked deep into her eyes and his expression softened, seemingly against his will.

"I've seen enough of what pirates do," he said. "Every life of theirs saves a hundred lives in the Imperium. Everything pirates have, they take, and what they don't take, they destroy. What they don't destroy they-- they use up. And not for good, or for honor, or for glory, or even for territory. Not for their people or their cause. They take because they can. They destroy ten to get one, and then waste the one."

Kinnit stared at him, her bottom lip quivering.

"As I suspected," he said, "you are too soft for this work." And he turned to his console.

Kinnit strode over to him in a blind fury. She stood over his seated form, leaned over him, and put her finger in his face. He leaned back in shock.

"You thought I was soft when I investigated the stolen Vylar ships," she spat. "And you thought it was a waste of time." She rolled over his protest. "Well, I saved the Vylar from your vengeance. And I found those responsible. So don't you dare call me soft."

And she spun on her heel and stormed out of his office.