Chapter 22

Arion star system, outer system.

Approaching NARN gunships.

"As promised, we have shut down all power systems, drained all of our weapons' capacitors, and have evacuated our ships." Said the rebel officer on the holographic screen. Sarah felt a pang of pity as she looked at the young woman's terrified face -she could have been her daughter. Hell, she was fairly sure Seria was older than the 'NARN captain' was!-, but she firmly repressed it. That young woman had been perfectly ready to seize or destroy her ship and kill her crew minutes ago. "We have also turned off our escape pod's drives."

That last part wasn't necessary, the pitiful drives on their escape pods wouldn't have been able to generate enough velocity to turn them into a useful projectile against the Eternal Seeker's shields, and even if they had loaded some with nuclear warheads they wouldn't make it to the ship before being shot down. But it was the gesture that counted, and it hammered the point home.

"Excellent. We will begin boarding operations shortly, to verify your ships are empty and neutralize them." Formally said Sarah. "We will then proceed to escort you and our prizes to the inner system, and formally hand you over to the relevant authorities." Which in this case would be the local Dominion embassy and mercenary board office, which basically were the same on a small backwater like this. There was no way she was handing anything to the locals, especially not as she wasn't sure they were on her side to begin with. Originally Sarah had wanted to wrap up the entire 'pirate' operation before presenting the system's authorities with a fait accompli but...well, she hadn't expected to land herself with two intact mil-spec, brand new gunships. Well, 'mil-spec' by system defence fleet standards, not Dominion Navy, but still.

The rebel officer nodded grimly.

"Of course. If that is all?" Sarah nodded, and the officer terminated the connection.

"Well, that's an unhappy captain." Said Elteria as she reappeared by Sarah's side.

The captain chuckled.

"We just blew her CO to hell and forced her to surrender before she even landed a hit. I would be seriously hacked off as well in that situation."

"What do you mean 'would be'? Remember Sarvakh-9?"

Sarah winced. Sarvakh-9 had been....a disaster. At least the other side had been mainly composed of mercenaries as well, and had just let them go after making sure her ship wouldn't just shoot them in the back. It had hardly been a pleasant contract, especially as the client had blamed it all on their own mercenaries for not fighting to the death.

Which had pushed all of their current mercenary forces to switch sides, and ended up in their total defeat, but still.

"Point taken. Although I'll maintain that we could have escaped in the chaos if we'd dived for the gas giant's atmosphere."

Elteria looked dubious, but chose to not comment and swiftly changed the subject.

"Well, in any case, Hector is signaling that he and his men are ready to begin the boarding operations."

"Any abnormal energy signatures?"

"Nope. I think the few 'hints' of places they'd forgotten people or left systems online when evacuating earlier made them decide that it wasn't worth it." Sarah nodded. She was fairly sure those had been the actions of a few isolated fanatics, especially as the lifeforms that had holed up in one of the missile magazines had been dragged out noticeably dimmer -and after what looked like energy weapons fire-, but they couldn't be too cautious.

"Excellent then. Tell Hector he is clear to proceed."

"Aye aye ma'am. He says they'll be back for dinner, and...asking if money for the seizure of the gunships will go towards the victory beer fund?"

Sarah chuckled.

"Tell him it depends on if they scratch the paintjob while landing or not."

Elteria shook her head, smiling.

"Aye aye ma'am. He said they'll do their best."

"I know they will. Alright, warn me if anything comes up."

"Can do ma'am." Elteria looked at the escape pods. "Not that I truly expect trouble. Not from them anyway."

Sarah winced, but didn't retort. Her AI was, after all, completely right.

*****

"Captain, you have violated our sovereignty! There is no possible excuse for your wanton destruction and deadly interference in our glorious system's internal affairs!"

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Sarah kept her face neutral as she looked at the Arion 'minister for interstellar affairs'. The man looked so much like a stereotypical fat cat noble with a solid gold pole stuck up his ass it was almost hilarious. His heavy jowls jiggled with every one of his grand gestures, and he was starting to look so red from his tirade Elteria had started a betting pool with the other bridge officers on whether he'd have to stop, panting from exertion or outright faint.

"Minister, the excuse is simple. I was following a contract-"

"That is no-"

Sarah mentally poked Elteria, and the minister recoiled as his communicator spat out a burst of feedback, instantly cutting off his diatribe.

"As I was saying, I was following a contract, and fulfilling a Dominion bounty." Calmly finished Sarah, as if nothing had happened. "You are a Dominion Protectorate, and thus under the charter must abide by the Dominion's criminal system, including it's bounties. You have the right to protest against such bounties of course, and petition your local embassy and sector command about them....but only petition said officials. Any attempts to detain or attack licensed collectors of those bounties, be it via direct contract to the Dominion or licensed through the Dominion's mercenary board, is punishable through economic sanctions, up to and including a full scale blockade."

That seemed to stop the minister. He clearly hadn't expected her to know this much about Dominion law....or had thought he could just talk over her loudly enough to get his way. It was fascinating how many politicians thought they could get away with anything as long as they spoke loudly and fast enough.

Sarah smiled. It was not, by any metric, a nice smile, and the minister shivered involuntarily.

"So minister, you have two choices, you can either accept that we just did your pathetic excuse for a defence fleet's job for you, and be happy you have been rid of some of your problems, or you can try to detain or obstruct us, at which point the Dominion ships that have been sent to collect those gunships and question their crews will have an....interesting discussion with you."

After, of course, she had blown her way out of orbit and left their entire defense fleet in tatters, but that would hardly be polite to say.

The minister looked at her for a few seconds, then he meekly nodded.

"Your point is...well taken captain. I will refer to my fellow ministers and gather their opinions on the matter."

"Of course minister." Said Sarah, without commenting that Elteria had downloaded a fair bit of political analysis from the planet's datanet, and found out that the 'minister for interstellar affairs' was basically a front man for the prime minister. After all, the Arion system had so little to do with their neighbours there was little point to having someone of importance at that post, and it was just used as a disposable pawn to throw under the bus if something went wrong. "Goodbye then."

"Goodbye captain."

Sarah looked at Elteria as the channel was cut out, and smiled as the AI huffed and virtually flicked a dozen credits to the navigation officer, Normensk, quickly followed by the rest of the bridge officers.

"So, now that all the betting is over, Elteria, status on our gas giant friends?"

The AI nodded, and gestured at the holographic system display, zooming in on the gas giant, and the flock of stations and small ships that seemingly made up the 'New Arion Republic'.

"It looks like they are shutting down. All of their ships are docking with stations and going dark, and most of the industrial platforms appear to be going cold as well." She shrugged. "Probably would have fooled a Dominion inspection, but it's pretty useless now."

"Well they aren't exactly expecting a Near Verge gunship with sensors like ours to just arrive out of nowhere. Any signs of more warships?"

"Can't be sure without an active scan, but I think at least three more gunships, and...this."

A hologram replaced the gas giant display, and Sarah whistled softly. The hologram had the typical cylindrical shape of low cost freighters throughout the Verge...but it was covered in what looked like semi-hidden, heavily reinforced hatches, which in her experience outright screamed 'hidden weapons!'.

"That's one hell of a cargo vessel. Q-ship?"

"No, it definitely wasn't built as a warship, the hull is all wrong for that. But a refitted merchant ship, yeah. Can't tell what the heck they're packing, but there's at least 45 hatches that I can detect that aren't the right dimensions to serve for cargo transfers or shuttle landings. They're also reinforced to hell and back, so probably something they expect other people to be shooting at."

Sarah nodded slowly. If all 45 of those hatches were weapons, that would be a lot of firepower for this forgotten corner of the galaxy. They could have probably given the entire Arion system defence fleet a run for their money, even without Dominion navy systems.

"Tonnage?"

"600 meters long, 60 tall and large. That's 2.16 megatons." Or about ten times the tonnage of the gunships the NARN had thrown at them.

"So...frigate sized?"

"On the smaller end, yeah. Or a big corvette really. It's not a free trader either, too high end, probably a high priority freighter." Sarah nodded, as most merchant ships that insured regular trade between the stars were are least 1 kilometer in length, to make carrying bulk cargos reasonably profitable over such distances. Most were considerably larger of course, like the Flowers, which was a full 6 kilometers in length. "Still, that's a lot of guns. And I have a feeling it's going to have some nasty surprises."

"So do I." Sarah leaned back in her seat. "Alright then, any response from the Dominion?"

"Nope. Just told us that the rest of the bounty is still valid if we want it. I've also taken the liberty of asking Gries, and he told us he considers that part of our contract fulfilled."

"I see...How long until he has finished his cargo operations?"

Elteria smiled.

"Normally? 4 days. This place has even worse cargo handling infrastructure than Sepia. Much worse, in fact."

"That's unsurprising, Sepia had something valuable to export, they don't. Why did you say normally?"

"Because our dear surface friends are being obstructive bitches about it. Even with Gries', ahem, talents in dealing with them." Meaning screaming very loudly and threatening to shove them into a biomass recycler if they kept up the red tape, knowing the merchant captain. "It's probably going to take a full week."

"Excellent then. Well, in that case, I believe we can afford to take a bit of a detour. Tell everyone to take a good night of rest, and prepare for combat tomorrow."

"Aye aye ma'am!"

*****

"You should probably leave, Crescent." Said the grandly named 'High Admiral' of the New Arion Republic Navy. "There isn't much that you can do here, and we are shutting down everything to avoid detection."

The man on the holographic screen shrugged.

"Ma'am, with all due respect, my orders are to supply you, and that's what I will do." No need to mention that he'd also been paid in advance and that his boss' clients would be really, really pissed off if he ran off before having offloaded the cargo to their 'freedom fighters'. "Besides, as long as they don't outright stumble onto the stations, there is little risk of discovery, and the cargo handling equipment will hardly change our energy signature much, especially compared to life support."

The high admiral nodded.

"Fair enough Crescent." She smiled. "Your loyalty is appreciated, and I would be lying if I said I wouldn't be more at ease with your cargo safely aboard my naval base."

Crescent didn't comment that 'safely' was a relative term when it came to their so called 'naval base'. It was, after all, nothing more than a refitted industrial platform. Granted, its fabricators were much more impressive now, but it was hardly a hardened target...and he wouldn't trust those so called rebels -who had somehow forgot to mention their side business and revenue source as pirates to their benefactors- to not just pilfer the stores to resell what he'd come here to deliver.

After all, hyperdrives were very, very expensive.

"Of course high admiral. In any case, I will continue to oversee the proper offloading of the rest of the cargo." And careful offloading at that, hyperdrives were pretty finicky, and those were hardly military drives made to be able to pull a damaged ship out of the fire. "Once we are done, I will advise you, so that you can give us the green light to depart, and not accidentally reveal your position."

"That latter part is much appreciated Crescent."

"Part of my job ma'am."

The high admiral chuckled.

"So I see. Very well then, have a good day, and I suppose I will see you upon your departure. Goodbye Crescent."

"Goodbye high admiral."

The high admiral looked at the blank holographic screen, and sighed, pushing a single button, making the screen vanish, before slowly getting up, and walking to the massive wall spanning screen that served as her office's window.

3 more months. 3 more months and she could have just walked right over the kingdom's so called 'defence fleet', and helped liberate the entire province from their Dominion oppressor. Now....She could still do it, but the loss of 3 gunships was going to hurt her plans, force her to keep some of her new ships home for defense against potential Dominion retaliation.

Her com chirped, and the high admiral straightened her shoulders, turning back from the window...turning back from the row of yard slips filled with half completed frigates.