NationStates Jolt Archive

Bursts of energy scattered and flared against the Morningstar's shields, and although the interlocking energy barriers did not fail, Captain Tormont could not suppress a shudder. His hands gripped the control sticks hard enough to turn his knuckles white, and a cold sweat trickled uncomfortably across his forehead. He sat hunched forwards in his command chair, eyes shining with combat enhancers as he watched his screens. He tugged the left-hand control stick, causing the warship to roll sharply to one side, out of the line of fire, but even as he did he knew that he had mere seconds before the withering hail was once again rattling against his defences.

The light cruiser Morningstar was Tormont's first command, a small but rugged ship that had been in service with the Hekatean Imperial Fleet for over twenty years, and had spent eighteen of those years in the Otranic System, running down contraband shipments, battling pirates, and halting Idrian migrations. The ship was not battlescarred; Hekatean military engineers were both well trained and rigorous in repair work; but command of the ship had become a reasonably prestigious post for young captains. However, Tormont was by no means as battle hardened as his vessel. He had left training two years ago, and those two years had been spent in a minor command position on a superbattleship that had not seen combat for his entire tour of duty.

A month into his command of the Morningstar he had recieved his wakeup call. He had been diverted from a patrol to defend a cargo vessel under attack by a pirate frigate. The pirate vessel had jumped away as the cruiser approached, and as a larger group of ships was nearby to rescue the damaged cargo ship, Tormont had been ordered to follow and engage the pirate vessel. However, he had come under fire almost immediately after finishing his jump.

He slammed the power lever forward, causing the cruiser to accelerate hard towards the pirate vessel.
"Fire dorsal railguns," he said into his mouthpiece, and felt his compartment shudder as the twin guns expelled their payloads at incredible speed. The pirates' shields flickered as the projectiles struck with immense force. Immediately the railguns fired again, but this time the pirate vessel was ready for it. Point defence lasers destroyed one shell as it closed in, and the other impacted harmlessly against the shields. A third volley was destroyed completely in the gap between the two vessels.

Tormont gritted his teeth. The battle thus far had seen this repeated over and over again. The pirate frigate's laser armament had been designed for carving up unshielded cargo haulers rather than battling warships: most pirate groups would simply flee if interrupted. However, they were agile enough to keep out of the areas of intersection between railgun firing areas, and although a direct hit would likely splinter their hull, their point defence could deal with two shots at a time.

Laser bursts once again raked across the cruiser's shields, and once again Tormont rolled the cruiser out of the line of fire. The beams of energy tracked the ship as it moved, although they were now striking different shield zones. The cruiser continued to close on the pirate vessel, and Tormont watched the screen as the distance decreased. He could feel time slowing to a crawl as his neural enhancements activated. The space between the ships narrowed further.

"Fire tube two."

There was a roar from below and to the left of Tormont as the missile blasted from missile tube two, accelerating to over half of light speed. At such short distance the pirate frigate's point defence systems were unable to counter it. The missile sliced through the shields as if they were not even there and struck the hull around halfway along the left flank. The energy unleashed by the force of the impact vapourised armour plating as the missile struck, shearing through the superstructure and bursting into the interior of the vessel. The kinetic penetrator punched clear through the ship, leaving a rapidly expanding cloud of superheated gas in its wake. The second stage, however, had detached from the penetrator as it entered the first void in the vessel. The second stage being a plasma warhead.

The resulting explosion destroyed the already crippled ship utterly, leaving only a flare of dissipating plasma where the ship had once been. Tormont let go of the control sticks with shaking hands, feeling both terrified and exhilarated at the same time. He was brought down sharply by the voice of his navigation officer in his earpiece.

"Not only do we have around half an hour before our jumpdrive is powered up, I have no idea where we are. We've left Hekatean space, and this isn't one of the neighbouring systems either. I can't see any signs of inhabitants in this system, but we should be on our guard until I work out how to get us home."

***Tramp freighter Hinterlight. 14:27 hours local. Helcion subsector***


Call it fate. Call it luck. Call it having the deck stacked against you. Call it what you will but the simple truth of the matter was that Morningstar’s pursuit of the pirate vessel had landed it in what was known locally as the Charybdis Cluster. The Cluster was a sparsely populated group of a hundred or so star systems. Ripe for the picking, it was a constant source of amusement to the inhabitants of the Cluster that nobody had moved in to “pacify” the area.

Captain Eomund Breitenbach of the tramp freighter Hinterlight was anything but amused at the moment however. The Hinterlight had been plying these trade lanes for the better part of twelve years and had never encountered anything remotely resembling the space battle that had just concluded roughly fourteen thousand kilometers off the port bow. Sure, pirates could be a problem and the Hinterlight had been in some tight spots before but some quick thinking by her captain coupled with some deep pockets had generally served to keep them out of the worst of it. That and the fact that the Imperial Navy took a rather dim view of piracy meant that these trade routes into and out of the Imperium of Immyr were safe, relatively speaking.

The event just witnessed by Captain Breitenbach and the crew took their carefully hoarded reserves of confidence, smashed them into tiny pieces, and then blew them out the airlock without batting an eyelash. Two starships had suddenly appeared on auspex, and had begun maneuvering for position. Weapons fire had been exchanged with one vessel suddenly ceasing to exist. Presumably, the other ship had had something to do with that.

“What’s going on now Alicia?” Breitenbach asked his auspex operator. Alicia Dahmbach didn’t even look up from the rune covered pictslate in front over her.

“The other ship appears to be in a holding pattern of some sort. They’re not doing anything really. Maybe they’ve suffered some damage,” she opined. Captain Breitenbach was inclined to agree but supposition was not what had kept his ship out of trouble for this long.

“Maybe. I don’t really care. We need to get out of here. Maybe report this to the Navy or something,” he said, although it was clear that he considered interacting with the Navy to be the lesser of two evils in this case. “Bring us around and set a course for the Chitterholm naval outpost,” he ordered. To some, it looked like the Hinterlight was tucking tail and running. Breitenbach didn’t care because that is exactly what he was doing.

"Captain, we have one contact on our scopes. Independent movement, so we can be sure its a ship. Moving towards us on a near-collision course until around ten seconds ago, and has now turned away."

"Recieved, sensors. What direction is it moving?"

"Three degrees horizontal, minus six point five vertical, sir, all relative to our orientation."

"Looks like someone didn't like us. Any identification?"

"None that I recognise, sir. Its no warship, but we have no information beyond that."

That didn't mean much, of course. Although the pirates operating in Hekatean space generally favoured light warships for speed and firepower, several had taken to using retrofitted cargo haulers. An engine modification, a pop-up turret or two, maybe even a couple of disguised missile tubes, and it could make attacks from within convoys, move past military patrols unnoticed, and use freighter docking facilities and repair bays so long as few enough questions were asked. And fleeing the scene? Very suspicious indeed.

On the other hand, he could not justifiably attack the fleeing ship based on suspicion alone. Its captain had almost certainly just witnessed the pirate ship being burnt from the face of the universe, and that would probably be enough to make any civilian pilot nervous. And firing on a civilian vessel would lose him his command and his rank. Possibly his head too, if the rumours were to be believed. Hekatea did not use the death penalty, but problematic people had been known to disappear occasionally.

"Gunnery, which missile tubes are ready to fire?"

"One and four are primed and ready, sir, and we have remaining ammunition for all four tubes."

"Excellent. Hold your fire for now, but be ready to target and fire on the contact."

Tormont switched channels, all the time keeping his eyes fixed on his screens. He pushed the power lever forward, the cruiser matching the speed of the fleeing ship, and adjusted the path to match its course.

"Communications? Open me a tightbeam channel to our contact directly ahead of us."

"Yes, captain. Channel established. You may begin at any time."

Tormont switched channels once again, this time to the fleeing ship, hoping that the signal was compatible with whatever recieving equipment they had.

"Unidentified vessel, this is the Imperial Hekatean Ship Morningstar. Power down all engines and state your identity, reason for travel, and departure and arrival points of your journey. Failure to comply with our requests will result in appropriate measures being taken against your vessel."