Pirates!
Captain Astarte Maidens-daughter was pissed. The precinct had given up far too quickly for her to be comfortable and when she talked with Heizer she learned why.
“They kept asking us about the ships business. Where do we go? What do we deliver? Who do we talk to? God, they didn’t let us sleep for three days. Just endless questions. They only stopped when I collapsed. Something like that should be illegal” said the beleaguered engineer.
“It’s not, the Union either never thought to or purposely left out something like a 48-hour time limit. And humans used a tactic of endless questions as a means of humanly breaking the victim as well. What did you tell him Heizer?” Astarte asked
“Jack and shit,” he spat.
“Did they see your marks?”
“No, its why we all stayed in our dress clothes the whole time, now if you don’t mind Captain, I smell ripe as hell. I need to go change.” He said standing up without waiting for her response. Heizer must have been in a really foul mood.
“How, so ye can put ‘em greasy stained rags on instead, Snipe” Highland interjected, obviously not able to read the Chief engineers mood. The Bosun and Hiezer were the ships odd couple, Highland was neat and loud, while Heizer was a slob who didn’t talk much. They would often get into fights in public and would insult each other for hours on end, but despite that it was apparent that both men enjoyed their aggressive banter. For them it was all just foreplay.
But toady was obviously not the day to push his buttons like normal. Without giving the Bosun a second glance Heizer turned and left the bridge, aghast Highland followed the chief engineer out, all the while trying to pick a fight.
“That’s strange” Karega said as he watched them leave. “Five days apart and they would have been bickering like cats and dogs.” Their helmsman and local human variant turned and gave Karega a glare, Kathrine was human, but her ancestors had spliced themselves with cat DNA as a fashion statement as now she was left with fully functioning cat ears and a tail. Ever since Karega found out she was in a long-term relationship with Kavic, a gray Lycanoid, he took every opportunity to compare cats and dogs.
“Highland didn’t realize his own partner was locked up for five days, I expected the cold shoulder” Aster said softly so that only her lieutenant could hear “that’s not what’s important anyway. Chief Kera’keck obviously has had his suspicions about us for a while, but he never acted on it, what’s changed?”
“There shouldn’t be anything, we’ve only been hitting cartel freighters lately, and they’re not likely to tell.”
“Do we have a leak?” she asked, her voice dipping low.a
“Not likely either Union law states that anyone involved in our work gets life in prison, no plea deals. We go done, they go down” He started rubbing his chin “maybe its not us, Kat pull up Femeri’s recent news feed, give me articles related to chief Kera’keck and the governor.”
Kathrine’s tail twitched and she began pulling up articles, the room dimmed and the froward facing window changed to display the feed.
“It seems like they have been making a lot of press releases about piracy lately” Kat reported.
“That could explain it” Aster said. “Our records are squeaky clean, but a heavily armed Hellworlder cruiser is always suspicious.”
“Yeah but why now, we’ve been operating successfully in Orion for seven years now. And with the rest of the fleet gone they should be less wary of us, not more.” Karega wondered.
Aster looked out the port window to the still docked Coiled strike, “That’s our answer. core world clans have seen our successful rise over the years and now they want in. They think Orion is easy pickings, they hit any target they think they can take. They’re not careful of their attacks like we are.”
Karega growled “Sometimes I hate the code, if it were up to me I’d kill all those core world interlopers and be done with it”
“We joined the confederacy for a reason, their code has protected us so far” Astarte said falling deep into thought.
Karega joined at the window “What are you thinking?”
“That the next time we make port of Femeri I’m going to take as much of the crew out for a nice night at the Polished Plate. We also need to visit are law offices in Parox, this incident cannot slide, but I can’t waste the horseman on a petty grudge”
“Your spite knows no bounds” he chuckled.
“At least its constructive, second I’m thinking of gifting some of my fine liquor to those ten officers, it’s a shame we don’t have medals”
“Scotch or rum?”
“Scotch, the Lunar vintage.”
“I can contribute half”
“Thank you, third I’m thinking we need to leave port, tomorrow. Speak with the contact and see if he has any cargo that needs to go the Parox, it will serve as an alibi for when we hit that mining station. If we can hit and run within an hour then we can escape most suspicion, no one really knows how fast the Astaroth can go.”
“It will still look suspicious, a Terran ship leaves and then a mining station is hit.”
“Can’t be helped, signal Tartarus.” She said, referring to the modified freighter that would accompany them on big jobs like this. “They are to move to a point ten light years from the mining station and enter stealth mode, find asteroids to hide their signal.” She ordered as she fiddled with her PA and called Doc Brown “Change of plans Doc, I need you to break out your panacea, anyone who is a little groggy gets a hit, I need all the crew ready by 1100 tomorrow. Save an emergency reserve but everything else gets used if you have to.”
“Yes Sir” the doctor said before signing off, blunt as always.
“Karega bring us to condition two, and make a visit to engineering, any projects not essential to condition two and beyond is to be tabled.”
The ship operated in several conditions, zero was in port with down time, one was general condition, or normal operations, two was prepare for combat, with three being imminent contact and battle stations. Four was in the fray, and the dreaded five was critical damage and withdrawal. They never had to use five. Some crewman referred to sunk and dead as condition six, a sailors grim humor.
“Yes sir”
“Helmsman Fager” she called to Kathrine “begin charting the course we discussed”
“Already done Sir, we need to hit the lane runner at 1330 and move on the station within three minutes at point epsilon.”
“Epsilon was our furthest possible intersection point, can we hit any closer?”
“Not tomorrow Sir, if I had three days then we could make the intercept at Beta”
“Not acceptable, Femeri tower needs to see and log us leaving the other way, can we make it?”
“If we push the redline and waste no time then yes”
“Karega, be sure to also inform engineering that we will be pushing the red line for the next 24 hours”
“Understood, anything else Sir?” he asked before he left.
“No, I’ll rouse the marines and inform them of loadout and the missions goals personally. We know what needs to be done, don’t make any mistakes and everything will be smooth sailing”
Alwen woke at 0130 and heard the ship in a state of flurry. Boots rushed past her door at regular intervals and crewman shouted incoherent phrases to each other. Ships never really slept, especially in space. Evening, morning, and noon were all relative terms while in space, especially with different species. Her world had ten-hour days, whereas the Terrans had an archaic twenty-four hour system with each hour broken down into sixty minutes, and each minute into sixty seconds. If it weren’t for all the digital clocks everywhere and the file on Terran customs Karega sent over she would always be late. Fortunately the Terran days were comparable to Torweni days, give our take ten Torweni minutes, so she didn’t feel too groggy on a Terran schedual .
But this much foot traffic at 0100 meant something was up, or so she thought at least. Maybe the Bosun was making the crew jog around the ship.
A message from Bachir was blinking on her PA. ‘Bring caffeine, long day ahead of us’ it said. Confirming her suspicions. Alwen considered the large silver canister of tea leaves and resolved to take the whole thing with her.
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She dressed in the garb of lady Ashrenda’s healers, a tight azure blouse and a black ankle length skirt that flowed around her feet. She finished dressing and realized that she would stand out against all the robes the Terrans wore, she could ask for a set of clothes like theirs but a part of her felt like she would be giving up a piece of herself and her home. She began to feel slightly homesick, a shout from outside her door brought her attention back to the busy day ahead of her and she hurried out of her cabin in a brisk walk. Eventually she was urged to jog to not slow the rushing crew around, which was why she barely noticed Adela pushing a ladened cart around a corner, and tripped other her own feet. The tea canister flew from her hands as Alwen went face down.
“Woah there Bones, you alright?” Adela asked.
“Just fine.” She grumbled from the floor. Alwen pushed her self up a gingerly felt up her arms and face for any bruises, but despite the shock of the fall she seemed mostly okay.
“That’s good, hey what’s in this” Adela said as she reached for the tea tin that had rolled next to her. She popped the lid open and sniffed the contents before making a face “Awe tea, maybe we can’t hook up, I’m a coffee gal till I die. Hey are you heading to medical?”
“Um, yes” Alwen said, taking her tea back and digesting the other part of what Adela said. She was actually starting to like the flirting; it gave her ego one hell of a boost, even if it made her feel a little confused.
“Good, take this to ‘Doc then. Olympian black, extra strong, just like he always gets.” She said pulling a heavy thermos off the cart, checking the strange marks on the side. The weight of it nearly pulled Alwen off her feet. “Love to keep flirting but I have to deliver these to every station and the Bosun stole all the apes I would have used for this errand.” She said before pushing her lighter cart along.
Now burdened with what felt like a boulder Alwen made her way to the med-bay arrived in the med bay at 0210 according to the clock on the wall. “Sorry I’m late, Adela had me bring the Uq’ot” she said as an apology to the tired looking Bachir.
“We call it zeenoh’joh here luv, wish we carried tea though. I sure called use a good cuppa. Hey ‘Doc mind if I get a sip before I jet.” Said the sailor who had been all but incapacitated early. He was somewhat tall with sand colored hair, and what seemed to be a permanent shit eating grin plastered to his face.
“Help yourself ‘Limey” Doctor Bachir answered without turning “Doctor Djani set the thermos on the table with a water mark”
She found the table he meant; a brown circular stain marked where the thermos usually went. Right next to a clean protective mat covered that could have presumably been the proper place for the thermos if it wasn’t covered in ceramic mugs. “Um, could I get a hand?” she asked desperately, her arms were too tired to lift the heavy thermos and were shaky badly as she tried to lift it.
“I’ll get’chu luv” the sailor, Limey, said as he heaved it up without a single grunt. “But I expect you to join us maareens for some conditioning, we’ll turn you into a regular Joan of arc; leading the native keltss against the rohmahnz” he said with a wink.
“You’re thinking of Boudica” Doctor Bachir grumbled, now turning to face Limey with an exasperated look on his fuzzy face.
“Nah, that was totally Joan of arc, her and Hardrada fought off Hannibal in 1066” he said with a big grin as he left.
Doctor Bachir continued to glare at his back “don’t ever believe what he says about Human history, he’s always wrong, crazy Brit” he mumbled.
“I wouldn’t know either way”
“Neither did half the crew until the lieutenant held a series of seminars explaining how wrong he was, now everyone is educated enough to when Limey’s wrong.” He sighed. “That’s not important right now, ships in condition two, we’re leaving port at 0700 and the captain wants everyone on their feet by 1100. Which means I’ve been ordered to break out panacea, a drug I invented some years ago. I gave it a proper name back then but none of the crew can pronounce it, and even I forgot how to spell it, but panacea works just fine. It’s an old name that means cure all, which isn’t too far from my own creation. It’s an easily programed bacteria that can preform a wide amount of tasks, from organ regeneration to fighting viral infections. It only struggles with highly mutagenic diseases like the common cold because they change faster than the drug can handle. The major issue with it is I have to specifically program it for each patient, and its incredibly expensive to buy the base formula. I will work on programing the medicine while you will have to administer it intravenously, keep an eye on patient vitals. It likes to go ‘wild’ sometimes, and you’ll have to administer the antidote if that happens. I would have like to spend a little more time with you and show you all the toys my lab has to offer, but I don’t have the time.” He said as he gestured to all the strange machinery behind a lockable glass door where all the actual lab equipment and pharmaceuticals were stored.
Alwen wasted little time in washing up and working her way through the patients, she lost herself in her work and she began to wonder. Dolling out miracle drugs for drunk sailors didn’t make much sense, she also noticed that Doctor Bachir wasn’t stepping off to rest like he was supposed to. Instead he was downing inky black cup after inky black cup of zeenoh’joh. She was beginning to wonder what made today so special?
“All stations report manned and ready” the bridge talker called.
“Good, release mooring clamps and signal the tower, tell Tartarus to leave thirty minutes after us.” Astarte said as she took another sip of coffee, real coffee. She always bought a full bags of it for herself whenever they visited Sol. And Butch could really work wonders with proper beans. Aster was glad to have snagged her off Mars, Butch’s parents couldn’t stand a hellion like Butch and didn’t value her culinary pursuits. All the better for Aster, for the first two years she and the crew lived of standard ration bars, and they were never going back. Hot sauce and ketchup could only go so far, and getting the Union to permit them to carry that much hot sauce had been more trouble than it was worth. Deathworlds weren’t just host to dangerous intelligent life, by their very nature every plant and animal were deadly in one way or another. Chili peppers contained capsaicin, something the Union considered to be a very painful poison. They had to file a lot of special request forms just to carry normal spices like cinnamon or cayenne pepper.
Those first years had been rough, too many hard lessons learned far too late. Most of it came done to discipline and procedure. A big ship and large crew could not be managed like a rabble or a gang. At Karega’s insistence she had brought the Astaroth back to Mars and studied naval history at Olympus Mons University for three months, slowly weeding out the crew unfit for the new structure and building a real chain of command. She had eventually settled on modeling her command after the American navy since they had been the most success in the twentieth to twenty second centuries, and were the last country to fully disband wartime naval funding after years of peace and the Union’s promises.
While on Mars she had befriended the British naval history professor named Elizabeth Finch, and had enticed her to come aboard as her lieutenant while Karega stayed on Mars to earn his masters. Elizabeth had loved being on a real space ship so much she had one of her own built just like the Astaroth and Lucifer. And funded the construction and training of crew by draining her very large inheritance. Elizebeth based her ship’s hull and lines off the British Hood and carried some of Astaroth’s quirks with her, like the larger than necessary halls and sliding door sounds. Then, following the trend set by Astarte and Lucile she legally changed her name to Bell and christened the third Archdevil class cruiser, Beelzebub, for service in the Hellworlder fleet.
It seemed that it had now become tradition for Archdevil captains to change their names to fit with their ships, as the fourth and newest Archdevil captain had renamed himself Modius after the newly built Asmodeus.
Those years were well behind them, her crew were as professional as any old-world navy despite their antics. And whatever navy traditions they forgot or ignored were soon covered by the ship’s own home-grown traditions and legacies. They had gone through the flames of a crucible and came out stronger and better for it.
And now it was time to start expanding that crew to include the Torweni.
While the ship needed more doctors and maybe a few nurses, that wasn’t the real reason she had brought on a young fresh-faced alien girl whose planet only recently learned they weren’t alone. Modius had reached out to Astarte and told her about Alwen’s desire to go to space and had mentioned her excellent grades in med school. Hiring Alwen may have been a matter of nepotism, but after meeting the girl Astarte found that she would be a very good fit for her crew, much like a young Martian scholar had been good for her. And in the same vein of thought the ship could be good for Alwen too, according to Modius she was the least of many siblings, and had little prospects for own life besides standing in her siblings shadow. She had the position and heritage to carve out a name for herself but felt to overshadowed to even try. Life with the Hellworlders would whip that out of her.
Speaking of which. She flipped on her PA and drafted a small message to the young violet skinned physician ‘finish up and come to the bridge in a hour’.
“We have the go ahead from the tower, and Tartarus received and verified your orders”
“Engineering says we’re hot and ready”
“Marines are loaded into the shuttles, squad leaders have reported as ready, Incubus and Succubus are spooling up and ready to go.” Karega called.
“Good, what was that old Athenian silver mine called?” Astarte asked, as the ship began to maneuver out of Femeri’s internal docking bays.
“Lavio, but Sunio is close and a little more important” He answered, ever the historian.
“Log this job as Sunio then” she said sitting back into her command chair, a slightly uncomfortable experience in armor but not an unfamiliar one. Her own personal paranoia dictating that she be always ready for the worst, and it was rare sight whenever she went around unarmored.
She let the bridge crew do their jobs without her raptors gaze making them nervous, something a little hard for her personally. She watched the sight of the few super freighters attached to the station’s three octagonal arms dwarfing the Astaroth through the starboard window as she finished off her first cup. Freighters like that were too wide to come through the warp gates, they had to travel through the interstellar void between Orion and the Sagittarius sectors to reach Femeri. One of the super freighters she knew carried a massive regular shipment of standard rations, Union funded and protected by two or three Union destroyers. The others were private vessels that carried goods from Balter and Kaydo, two major centers of Orion’s industry and class ten deathworlds. Terra used to get super freighters until the Terran Terrors terrorist attacks shut down most mass manufacturing on Earth. Now her own shipping companies moved goods back and forth.
She now controlled most cargo and passenger ships that made the Sol runs from out of system, it had taken many hit and runs to finally scare off all the other interlopers and fully seize control of that trade lane. And from their she had only grown stronger and bolder, snagging other lucrative trade lanes by harassing rival companies with her pirate fleet.
They got the go ahead from Femeri tower and entered warp, leaving the binary star system of Femeri at a respectable one-thousand-two-hundred times the speed of light, or 1.2 kilolights, It was the expected speed for vessels as large as the Astaroth, and was the speed they allowed the station control towers to see. They traveled on the space lane that lead to the Parox system for roughly fifteen minutes until they were out of the Femeri station’s large sensor range and maneuvered into uncleared space at the ship’s real max speed of 7.6 kilolights. The engine room would be swelteringly hot, and the cooling system would be working at max capacity to keep the reactors from over loading.
The reactors they relied on were incredibly compact for their power output, and could produce much more energy if the ship had better cooling. But the ten 100-meter folded heat radiators were impractical for the Astaroth to use when they were moving this fast, so until something better came along 7.6 kilolights was the best she had. Still 2.2 kilolights faster than Union lane runners.
At 1304 they arrived at point epsilon and deployed the radiating foils to give the engineers a break and ready the ship for their next sprint and assault. Energy filled the weapon’s capacitor bank, and the weapon cooling systems kicked into gear with a soft hum. Missiles were loaded and the CIC began to buzz with activity below her as data techs readied their equipment.
At 1326 the violet doctor emerged at the door, an outstretched arm from Karega holding her back. “You need to ask permission”
“But she called me” Alwen protested.
“Doesn’t matter its standard procedure, the request goes your name and then permission to enter captain” he explained, his normal easy smile gone, robbed by the tension on the bridge.
“Um alright, Doctor Alwen Djani, permission to enter?”
“Granted Bones, I know it seems a little strange since I called you here, but very important custom none the less, look in your manual for the proper way to do it.” Aster said.
The doctor looked a little haggard from the morning energy as she stepped through, part of Astarte wanted to send the girl back a spare her from the surprise revelation Aster had planned. But another slightly sadistic side of her looked forward to the shock and horror on the girls face when she finally learned the truth.
“You called captain?” She said nervously.
“Yes I did, I thought I should give you a firsthand view of how missions like this usually go. Normally we give the crew an orientation video to give them an idea of how all the divisions work together to make this ship a success. I have a feeling though, that there has been a slight misunderstanding on your part and it needs to be corrected.” Aster explained, personally reveling in the girls confusion. The anticipation put a devilish smile on her face despite the fact of how crestfallen Alwen would be.
“A mis-“ Alwen began before the sensor tech interrupted her
“Contact!” he yelled.
“Move to condition three.” Karega ordered
A claxon sounded through the command deck and the rest of the ships, Aster grabbed the microphone from her chair and pushed down “Battle-stations! Battle-stations!”
All were silent as the claxons rang their call, the incoming ships readout displayed itself on the forward window next to a rapidly decreasing distance. 3,2,1, and zero. There was a moment that felt like a full minute, but that was probably just the adrenaline now hitting their systems, before the Union lane runner hit the ships anti-warp gravitational field, or grav-spike. Folded space suddenly expanded as the lane runner was shunted back into relativistic speeds, drifting slightly off balance.
A nano second later the Astaroth’s electronic warfare systems hit the Union ship at full blast and blinded the ships sensors. Without a proper counter frequency to cushion the effects they were completely helpless to stop it. A millisecond after that the ship tilted -13.345° on its axis and weapons locked on several points on the unsuspecting ship. An overwhelming burst of shield breaking lasers blasted out of all three of Astaroth’s triple mounted pulse cannons, and the twin mounted rail gun emplacements along the midship fired armor piercing rounds at the enemy sensors and weapons. Only the enemy’s two pulse cannons survived, likely due to a sub shield system. It was pointless though; they couldn’t produce enough energy to pierce their shields. Five precision bodkin missiles launch themselves along magnetic launchers before kicking over to chemical propulsion drive and drove into the enemy engines, wavecom array, sensor computers, and both warp emitters.
Within seconds the proud Union lane runner was crippled and dead in the water. Lesser pirates would dream and salivate over a capable ship like the model 102S lane runner, but to the Astaroth it was hopelessly out matched and not worth their desire. A thorough scan confirmed it as inert and without a second care Astaroth turned her bow away from the smaller warship and left for their real quarry.
Captain Astarte felt a moment of relief before she steeled herself and turned to the stunned doctor. “Doctor Djani, we will be attacking a heavily armed mining station in less than three minutes, and intend to raid and rob them. You will be needed in the med bay in case any of my marines are gravely injured. You better start running now, or else you won’t make it in time.”