NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: This RP is pretty much closed. If you wish to join, post here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=13505134#post13505134).

The Order of the Silver Hand was as ancient as orders go. From a powerful fleet of 500 intimidating ships, the Order had at some point in older history virtually vanished. It was only 50 years ago, when the Furian Realm had extended itself into this galaxy for the first time, that the Order gradually revived from it's long hibernation and resumed it's practices. This new galaxy was far more densely populated than the original Furian home, and soon the Order started to grow and thrive, until the present day, where 50 hips now roamed the galaxy, proudly displaying the outline of a silver hand emblazoned on their black hulls. Although the Order was known for it's succession of brilliant commanders and supreme shipbuilding they were none the less considered as "extremists" by the main Furian government, who didn't share their somewhat puritan doctrine. However, many a statesman, and even the supreme ruler himself it was rumoured, gladly aided their cause unofficially whenever the opportunity arose.

Some may have confused the Order of the Silver Hand for an order of privateers during the initial days of their career in this galaxy, but this reputation had long subsided, replaced by the tales of many a grateful merchant, and many a terrified pirate. They were, in other words, an Order of crime-fighters, warriors who dedicated their lives to fighting injustice in the form of pirates, criminal cartells, and recently, the Galactic Empire. A group of individuals who sustained themselves by robbing the robbers, pirating from the pirates, oppressing the oppressors, and lately antagonising the biggest antagonist of all, the Galactic Empire and it's dark lords.


Present day, aboard the Black Dagger (http://wittswallpapers.com/Ships/ships281.jpg)

Captain Truxtun sat in his quarters, behind his desk, contemplating his career. During his years of service in the Silver Hand Fleet he had experienced a restless life, being the hunted and the hunter at the same time. Together with his team mate, Cpt. Sheperd, he retained the highest count of destroyed enemy ships in the whole Silver Hand Fleet. Both their ships, his Black Dagger and Sheperd's Invisible Dutchman, were close to legendary among pirates and merchants. He had fought a good deal of battles, against pirates, bonty-hunters, and recently several attacks on Imperial supply-ships and trade routes. The Galactic Empire was wide-stretched, as was the net of organised crime which sustained the piracy he fought so boldly. Perhaps it was only a pin prick in an elephant's hide, but it was Truxtun's duty to go on pricking, until either his career should end in a superdense fireball - or an Imperial prison - or until the enemy was pestered into acknowledging everyone's right to freedom and safety. It was not a very dignified part to play in a galaxy convulsed in the current titanic struggles between alliances and financial interests, but it was the part which Providence had alotted him, along with other seemingly trivial and yet solidly satisfactory duties like keeping track of ship's stores.

Truxtun had been at work on this very matter when the next brake in his routine duties came. A buzzing sound interrupted the silence and his 1st lieutenant's voice filled the room. "Sir, we're detecting activity originating from somewhere just outside the perimetre of the sensor net we put up... looks like the ambush location our informants gave us wasn't as detailed as we had expected..." - "Right, I'll be with you in a minute." Truxtun replied, slipping into his armoured uniform and hurrying out the door. "Why does my 1st lieutenant always have to be such a pessimist..." he thought to himself, half awar that the man's inability to be surprised or taken off guard due to his lack of positive expecations, was one of the reasons he had been given the job in the first place. If the informants could be trusted, Cpt. Sheperd and himself might be facing a major battle before the end of the day...

“Yarr! 'Ave at them, Mister Cody! Avast ye, landlubbers!”

“Will you stop talking like that, damn it?!” Cody growled. “And take off that damned hat!”

Dave Henry looked somewhat forlorn that his singular wit was not appreciated by his captain, and slowly reached up to remove the feathered, tri-corner hat that he'd had specially replicated for the joke. He placed it down on the console next to him and gave it a longing look, just before he found his arm almost wrenched from his socket as Cody grabbed him roughly and sat him down at the tactical console. As the ship lurched violently to one side, the tall, well-dressed man simply decided that his joke was poorly timed, given as they were in the middle of a firefight. He never could pick a good time for his jokes, despite his regular attempts.

“Fire the damned weapons already!” Cody shouted. He was a tall man, sporting a great deal of stubble and some unkempt grey hair on his head. A couple of scars dotted his grim face but he was otherwise in remarkable health for someone in his line of work. For years, he had been a Commander in Starfleet, a well-respected man well on his way to his own starship command. It was in fact, good intentions, which spurred his change of career, after witnessing the poor conditions people endured on the border worlds of the Federation. For a time, he was something akin to Robin Hood, raiding merchant ships and smuggling the spoils to the border worlds. It didn't take long for him to get involved with more nefarious people, however, and greed took hold of him. He was something of an isolated man, though, rarely speaking with his crew about anything of that nature, and so remained a mystery to most of them.

“Aye aye, skipper!” Henry retorted.

The Murky Maelstrom, this ship, had evaded Federation patrols for months now during its operations in their space. Some called them pirates, some buccaneers, but they preferred to think of themselves as 'extra-legal import/exporters', and indeed those who had benefited from their unique brand of services thought highly of their efficiency. They had only a crew of thirty-two, but they always accomplished their goals, and did so quickly.

The Murky Maelstrom herself was an odd-looking thing, giving the appearance of something with no apparent design ethos. Instead, it had been cobbled together by her various crews over the years, and now represented an amalgamation of technologies pilfered and illegally acquired from the starships of numerous civilisations since her ill-begotten cruise across the stars first began. Any well-travelled engineer might notice the turbolaser canons affixed to her amidships, which they had forcibly removed from a crippled Star Destroyer. A more astute technical expert might see the two sets of impulse engines which appeared to have originated from a Constitution-class starship, while the warp nacelles mounted roughly to her dorsal side were clearly taken from a Constellation-class too. Several phaser emitter ball turrets had been carelessly wedged into several of her crevices, and there were even a few particle blaster turrets which had presumably begun life aboard a Bretonian warship. Deeper within her irregular hull, an ancient hypermatter annihilation plant beat like a heart, powering all of their mismatched systems and, unfortunately, requiring constant maintenance due to its age. As one of the few pirate ships in the sector mounting actual military-grade weaponry, she was feared by all merchant ships who had the misfortune to get in her way.

In her present circumstances, however, she found herself challenged by the Federation Starship USS Exeter, an Excelsior-class starship whose captain, one Romulan woman named Devor, had been doggedly tracking them for almost three months now. The Maelstrom had stopped near one of the Federation border worlds to salvage some valuable pulse phaser technology (and, hopefully, an intact matter/antimatter reactor) from a derelict Miranda-class starship, only to find that this unscheduled stop had given the Exeter sufficient time to catch up to them. The first photon torpedo hit had surprised them before they had chance to raise their shields, and took out their hyperdrive systems in one fell swoop. The subsequent phaser impacts had managed to punch through her shields and damage her acquainted warp nacelles. Before they even knew what had hit them, they had been left stranded in deep space, until their somewhat incompetent engineer could repair one of their two FTL drives.

The Maelstrom might have been a formidable pirate vessel, but she was no dedicated military vessel unlike the Exeter, and they had no notion to go toe-to-toe with her for very long. After all, the Exeter could go home and get her battle damage repaired in a starbase. The Maelstrom had no such luxury – at least not cheaply.

Captain Jacob Cody, their 'skipper', was cursing himself every few seconds. Never before had the Maelstrom been caught. They could cripple, board, and empty a civilian cargo ship without even attracting notice, yet now they were caught whilst ripping parts from a derelict craft. It would almost be embarrassing, if the circumstances were not so dire. The bridge had already needed to be extinguished once, and bos'un Kavak was pretty badly burned. Things didn't look to be getting much better at this rate.

“Skipper, the Exeter is comin' about for another pass!” yelled Henry anxiously. “She's loadin' more torps!”

“Damn it Henry, return fire!” Cody growled, stumbling over his chair as he moved towards the com panel on the wall just as a phaser impact rattled his teeth. “Chief! Where are our damn engines?!”

“I'm workin' on it skip!” came an anguished female voice through the tinny speaker. Jess Marshal, an attractive woman if one was into grubby brunettes, but she was a hopeless engineer. She had sweet-talked her way onto the Maelstrom, and had been lucky not to get thrown off afterwards. If she had been a great engineer, then perhaps Cody could have tolerated her smart mouth and lack of enthusiasm, but as it was... he was struggling to find a reason to keep her aboard. “We've got battle damage down here!”

“Of course you've got battle damage you moron, we're in battle!” Cody yelled angrily. First chance he got, he was hiring a better engineer. Preferably not a woman, so that he could hit him if he screwed up. “If you don't get hyperdrive online soon we're all dead! Try repairing the ship then!”

“Yeah yeah, I'm workin' on it!” came the laboured reply. Before Cody had a chance to extol the virtues of haste in a particularly rude manner, he was angered even further when he heard the channel being cut.

“Our dorsal shields are weakening skipper,” Henry announced, pointing at one of the monitors. All of the shields were taking heat, but the dorsal shields flashed red ominously. The Maelstrom was taking a little more than she could handle.

“Full impulse,” Cody said. “Take us around the derelict. Draw them closer to it.”

“Skip?” Henry asked, perplexed.

“I left them a little surprise,” Cody said with a grin.



In the distance, the Exeter was slowly arcing around for another pass, occasionally firing her lateral phaser banks at the pirate vessel. The Maelstrom's engines burned blood red as they propelled her forwards at the highest speed she could presently muster, coming dangerously close to the derelict Miranda-class starship that lay a few hundred metres away. A photon torpedo just scraped her shields as the Exeter brought her tubes to bear, but the Maelstrom disappeared behind the derelict just in the nick of time. Seemingly angered, the large Federation vessel clumsily completed her manoeuvre and steamed ahead at full impulse. Her much more powerful sublight engines belied her significant mass, and she accelerated much faster than the Maelstrom.



“The Federation ship is approaching the derelict sir,” Henry said with a shrug. “She's coming about to manoeuvre past it now.”

“Wait for it...” Cody said. He was literally on the edge of his seat, staring at the fuzzy viewscreen on the arm of his chair in anticipation of whatever he had planned. “Now!” He vigorously slapped one of the buttons on his chair arm.



The Exeter slowed to one third, moving to circle the derelict and continue her chase. Neither she nor her crew sensed the tricobalt device hidden in the wreck until it was too late, however. With a silent display of ferocious power, the wreck suddenly ballooned in size as her hull panels were stretched and torn away by an enormous ball of blue flame. The explosion immediately hit the Exeter which was hurled sideways by the shockwave, her engines failing to anticipate the sudden jolt.

By the time the fireball had subsided, the [i]Exeter was adrift, her pristine white hull charred badly on the starboard side and various lights flickering as though it pained them to stay on. The Maelstrom came about and moved closer to their opponent, as though gloating over their victory.



“Enemy ship has lost main power,” Henry announced with a smile. “Her shields, weapons and propulsion systems are all offline! We did it!”

“I did it, you mean,” Cody grunted. “Engineering, get our hyperdrive back online. Henry, while we wait I want you to beam over any valuable items from the Exeter while their shields are down. We may as well get some spoils for our trouble. First Mate, plot a course to New Carson City as soon as our hyperdrive is back online. And for God's sake, someone take Kavak to the surgeon!”



For half an hour, the Maelstrom loomed over the larger, but helpless, Exeter, using her transporter beams to grab hold of supplies, equipment and fuel pods, until finally she accelerated forwards and disappeared into a hazy blue cloud of energy and into hyperspace.

***

Several days of travel passed, as the crew helped effect some emergency repairs to the Maelstrom. She was their home, part of the family, and their protector, and everybody always got their hands dirty when it came to giving her some first aid. To them, she was like their mother, and so they always hated to see her hurt. Still, they needed to get some repairs done in a starbase, preferably sooner rather than later.

Cody spent much of the time locked away in his quarters, though. Nobody was sure what he was doing, but just before they arrived at their destination, he emerged with a fresh haircut, a shave, and a smart black suit, which was a fairly unusual sight to see on the otherwise scruffy man.

They dropped out of hyperspace near New Carson City. It wasn't so much a city on a planet in the traditional sense, but rather a massive space station carved out of the centre of a large planetoid. The irregular rock in space now had various pods, windows and superstructures poking out of her brown, crater-littered face, and hundreds of ships of various sizes and types zoomed past her as they went about their business. Comm channels were busy, very busy, like listening in to the cellphone conversations of an entire city full of people, but they never exited the shielded area to prevent the city from being discovered by people who they would prefer to avoid.

The Maelstrom signalled for permission to dock in one of the refit bays, and was promptly guided in by a pair of rickety old fighters. Once aboard, the crew stepped out into the bizarre hangar area, a cross between a metal box and a cave, and immediately were harassed by various tramps and beggars before they even left the room. Cody pulled out his chrome-plated disrupter pistol and promptly scattered the troublemakers with a single pulse shot into the air, though received irritated glances from the dock personnel for his trouble.

“Captain Cody, I presume?” a gruff voice said. Cody looked over his shoulder as a man approached their party. He was tall, and his shoulders were almost as wide, and his biceps looked to be thicker than most people's legs. Cody knew who this was almost immediately, despite never having met the man before.

“You're one of Rodriguez's goons, eh?” Cody said plainly.

“Yes Captain,” the man nodded. “You will come with me. Now.”

“I'll go when I'm good and ready, thanks,” Cody said, turning his back on the man. “I've got business to take care of.”

“You will see Rodriguez now,” the man grunted. He paced over and placed his enormous, hairy hand on Cody's padded shoulder firmly.

“Alright,” Cody said after a long pause, where he contemplated shooting the man. He ultimately decided that the price for saving face in front of his crew wouldn't be worth the trouble that Rodriguez would bring down on him for shooting one of his minions, even if it was a worthless ape of a minion. “Dave, Jess – you know what cargo we need to keep and what cargo we need to sell. Get some cash scraped together, and get the Maelstrom fixed up as soon as you can. I won't be long.”

“Aye Skipper,” Henry nodded, waving jovially. “Have fun!”

“Yeah, thanks,” Cody grumbled as the unnamed gentleman led him off out of the hangar area and into the city proper.



The turbolift took them through a glass shaft on a journey that seemed to last for hours, when in actuality on a few minutes had passed. From their perspective they could see across the whole of New Carson, with its sprawling buildings constructed within a cavernous space deep inside the otherwise unremarkable planetoid. It was quite impressive, particularly as this was not the work of any nation or corporation – just a band of criminal misfits looking for a safehaven to conduct business.

Eventually the turbolift stopped, and Cody and his escort made their way down a surprisingly posh corridor, decorated with red floral wallpaper, mahogany panelling and a series of priceless paintings and sculptures taken from civilisations all over the galaxy. They reached the end of the corridor, where Cody was pushed rather roughly through a metal archway, which immediately started to whine loudly as he passed underneath it. His escort roughly grabbed his shoulder and reached into his jacket, pulling out his disrupter with a disapproving glance.

“I'm going to want that back when I come out,” Cody said with a scowl. Somehow he felt less intimidating compared to this overgrown monkey without his sidearm, but he had to keep up the pretence regardless.

“Yeah,” the man grunted simply, pointing at a set of double wooden doors ahead of him. Cody sighed and walked towards them, pressing on the panel next to them to sound a chime. The doors swooshed open automatically, and he passed through them cautiously.

The room presented to him was like something out of a 19th century mansion, with elegant furnishings, a high, gold-embossed ceiling, and lush burgundy wallpaper. The thick red carpet beneath his feet felt thick enough to hide in. He had been in this office many times in the past, but it never failed to strike awe into him – especially considering the sparse metal quarters he was used to aboard the Maelstrom. He walked towards the glossy desk at the front of the room, which sat in front of windows that looked out upon the starscape beyond the walls. Sitting in the high-backed chair was Rodriguez. He was smaller than most people expected, with a ridiculous moustache beneath his nose and pale skin that signified that he hadn't left this office for a while. The man ran his hand through his slick black hair and smiled as Cody stood beside his desk, an impatient expression on his face.

“Ah, Captain Cody!” Rodriguez said, almost joyously, in his Spanish accent. “It is most good to see you again, no? Life is treating you good, yes?”

“It was,” Cody remarked. “I see that you're still as flamboyant as ever. Next time one of your goons puts his greasy hands on my suit again I'll shoot him, you know.”

“Ah, haha, as ill-tempered as ever,” Rodriguez smiled. “Please, try not to shoot my employees. It takes me so long to train the new recruits. Take a seat, Captain.”

Cody glared at him for a few moments, and begrudgingly sat down opposite him.

“I have job for you, yes?” Rodriguez said, pulling out a PADD and tossing it across the desk to him. “Most important, I trust only you with its completion, Captain. If successful, I pay you a great deal.”

Cody looked down at the PADD for a moment, scanning through the lengthy text as he tried to ascertain what the maniacal crimelord wanted him to do this time. He was beginning to think that his reputation was a bad thing – it seemed like half of the crimelords in this quadrant were trying to recruit him for one thing or another, and even though he never actually made enough money from their jobs to break-even, he couldn't exactly say no to most of them. Rodriguez was one of those people you didn't say no to.

“You want me to intercept a single merchant ship?” he asked inquisitively. “Why?”

“It is carrying a most important and precious cargo,” Rodriguez said with a smile, sitting back in his chair and slipping a cigar between his lips. “You must acquire it and return it to me, here. Without being followed.”

“Presumably you have its flightplan,” Cody said. “I ain't trawling the whole galaxy looking for this ship. And how the heck do you expect me to stop a ship travelling through hyperspace?”

“Ah, so many questions,” Rodriguez said, the smile fading a little. “Answers in PADD, but I tell you them anyway. Yes, we have acquired their flightplan from a most trustworthy and anonymous source. He tell us exact route that this ship to take. As for how to stop it... well.”

He span the flat panel monitor on his desk around to face Cody, and Cody looked at it curiously. He saw the Murky Maelstrom in his hangar, the crew all milling around outside looking at it. As the security camera footage panned around, he noticed dozens of workmen effecting repairs to the ship, and one of them was carrying a large device on an anti-grav sled through the main cargo doors.

“We fix your ship for you,” Rodriguez said, his irritating smile returning. “As well, we install a gravity well generator and a better power source. Your shields improved as well. All this for free, as my gift to you.”

“A gravity well generator, eh?” Cody said thoughtfully. “Those things ain't cheap you know. You really want this cargo badly huh? What is it?”

“You will find out when you get it,” Rodriguez said. His smile suddenly turned from a merry smile into a vicious glare. “If you do not get it, you do not return. This is understood?”

“Perfectly,” Cody said, outwardly unimpressed by Rodriguez's dramatics, but inwardly all too aware of what would happen. “It looks like you've signed me up to this mission without giving me the chance to say no, Rodriguez.”

“Ah, but of course you will not say no,” Rodriguez smiled. “You are the best, and we are friends, no? We help each other.”

“I wouldn't go that far,” Cody snorted, much to the amusement of the crime lord. “But OK, I'll do it. When do we leave?”

“Immediately,” Rodriguez smiled. “Mister Johnson out there will hand to you your weapons and will escort you back to your ship. I will see you in a few weeks, yes?”

“I was hoping for some shore leave for myself and my crew first...”

“You will leave immediately,” Rodriguez repeated, somewhat louder this time. The smile never left his face, though. “It has been, good to see you again. Good fortunes to you and your gallant crew, Captain Cody.”

Cody nodded with a sigh, taking that as his cue to leave. He marched out of the office and was escorted back to the turbolift by the goon he had nicknamed 'Bigfoot'.



Soon after, the Maelstrom departed the hangar bay of New Carson City, now fixed up and improved, and pressed forwards with her impulse engines before disappearing into hyperspace. Towards the coordinates Rodriguez had given. Towards their fate.

The Soyokaze was fairly typical of Republic of Earth merchant vessels. It was huge, for one thing, being nearly five kilometers in length, and, for a merchant vessel, quite well armed. Its hull was nothing fancy, being of the traditional 'giant slab' construction employed by merchant vessels across the galaxy, designed to maximize internal space. Its bridge was a tiny pimple at the front of the vessel, a small viewing dome allowing the crew some relief from the rather dull box-scape that was the inner hull.
The main difference between the Soyokaze and more traditional merchant vessels was its armament, which was military grade and had not been skimped on at all. The Republic only had so many merchant ships, and trans-galactic trade was its primary source of food right now. The loss of even a single merchant ship could well lead to more riots and more famine across the globe.
A dozen RX-5 hardsuits, three Cosmo Attack Fighters, the very newest models, so kindly donated by the Russian provincial government, and two dozen Republic marines were, at present, happily cozied up within the ships hull. These were backed up by an impressive array of lasers and three military-grade photon torpedo launchers, which the ships captain had spent most of the profits of the last run installing. Each car-sized torpedo packed enough power to level a good sized island.
Republic ships employed a fairly primitive but quite effective laser system. Though large and somewhat unwieldy, each lense was set directly into the hull. Using a few tricks of physics, the beam could be 'bent' more than one hundred and eighty degrees, allowing it to be set off in any direction. Each lense was protected by a large armored cover which retracted into the hull when the projector was not in use.
Numerous smaller lenses dotted the hull at intervals, most of them the typical tri-lense 'light' version of the heavy weapons mounted broadsides. They functioned in essentially the same fashion, but the mounting enabled rapid fire and granted a significant accuracy improvement against high speed targets.
The hold of the vessel was packed to the brim with boxes, crates, shipping containers, self-contained livestock environments, and a small passenger compartment for the twenty or so mimes being imported by some planetary ruler or other, who apparently had some strange tastes.

The small crew area was somewhat luxurious for a standard trade vessel, but the Soyokaze was in on one of the more profitable trade routes in the galaxy, and its captain could afford a bit of pampering for himself and the crew. He'd had a viewscreen built by some alien manufacturer instlalled, gotten rid of the regular tactical display and huge bridge viewports, and even scrounged up a decent replicator, something nobody on Earth had even heard off outside of science fiction.
The ship was quiet, the degeneracy reactor at the other end of the vessel made no noise, because if it WAS making noise that meant that it wasnt in a perfect vacuume anymore and that everybody was, very shortly, going to get to know each other VERY well in a terminal sort of way. Namely by being incorporated into the singularity of a short-lived black hole.
Apparently the chances of something like that happening were roughly one in fifty seven point two nonbillion or something, though, so no worries.

The ship cruised on through subspace, making its run from Earth to a distant galaxy, its crew mainly spending their time enjoying a nice game of cards. It was really amazing how good you could get at poker, pazaak, Cripple Mr. Onion, Sabaac and any number of other card games played across the universe, when you had several months of spare time.

The infinite array of space held amazing great wonders neubula, Stars going Nova, neturon stars. Amazing array of life beyond any contemplation, plants, animals of varrying degree of sentinence. The unverse was aghast with wonder for those that would just look. From the quantum level to the galactic.

And there there was the stuff that no one talks about, yep the waste, the ugly result, stuff that just makes people want to vomit.. which includes vomit itself in an ironic twist of fate. Most nations deal with it because they have to... however there is a group of people who take it and process it because that's all they do, and are happy about it, or at least pretend to.

These people, are known as The Garbage Men, the people that with everyone elses rubbish who go out of the way to present a happy image, and yet it's something that is furtherest from the truth.

One of their ships a trade delegation to the Republic of Earth, a member of the ITF, the trade alliance which their CEO had seemed wise to join. It apparently was made just that much slightly more difficult than it should have been, a throw away line had caused some ruffled feathers but as both had ratified the first pillar of the treaty they were obliged to do so, but then again they did manage to smooth the feathers as well. If there was anything they were good at, it was speaking out their rear end.

"Well, that went well." said Johanne, the Lead Marketing Officer, lounging in a chair in one of the many meeting rooms in the ship. Each had their own different style. One was purely down to business, a stylish crystall table with comfortable yet slightly un-ergonomic to ensure no one gets too comfortable. Another just oozed a relaxed friendly environment, it almost seemed...a neutral venue. And then there was another one. It was decked out with a lot of minor touches, ones that just made it feel like it was someones home. A friendl comfortable place but yet, you knew that the owner was in charge. There were more of these too each with their own setting and style. It was amazing what the right place could achieve in results.

Of course the ship was defended and had a number of weapons at their disposal however they weren't obvious and with the weapons currently uncharged you could almost think it was an easy picking.

"Yes, it did." replied one of Johanna's surb-ordinates who was getting himself a drink.

"We're comming up upon a ship, Identification tells me that it's a republic of earth transport ship." the public address system said, it was the captain, however he wasn't incharge of the ship. She was.

She pressed a button on a device located on her right hip... "Continue current course..."

"Continue Current Course, Aye, Aye."

And so the ship continued on it's course

Captain Truxtun looked at the sensor readings. The "sensor net" which he employed could briefly be described as a large number of sensors placed at intervalls, supervised by a computer (spider) which redirected information back to the Black Dagger, thus enabling it's crew to supervise an enormous target area. The particular area of interest had been put under supervision due to an interesting piece of information retrieved from an informant at New Carson City. It would appear that a certain Mr Rodriguez was interested in aquiring a particular object of value. The informant had not been able to define exactly what, but the information at hand was quite enough for Truxtun to decide on a course of action. Well, maybe not immediate action, more like "wait and see what happens" action. He had aquired the flightpath of the target ship, and had decided to focus his attention upon a particular stretch of space. It was located in a minor starsystem, uninhabited as it was, and by experience he knew that it was exactly what an experienced pirate would use for this job. Pulling the victim out of hyperspace, the pirate would hide among the asteroids and confront the victim once it had been scanned and evaluated as a minor threat. Call it an educated guess, seeing that various pirates utilized various tactics, but it was as good a theory as any. Currently one lone ship was approaching the spot, presumably the pirate who was going to set up the trap. Truxtun would have preferred to jump right in and start blowing things up, but he knew better. The ship might turn out to be an innocent merchant. That, and Truxtun prefferred catching the pirates red handed. If he ran across the pirate while no one else was present, he would be obliged to cripple the enemy and bring him in to justice, which around these parts usually meant a long trial, a large amount of paper work, and an eventual death sentence (if the pirate didn't manage to escape by then). However, if the offender was caught in the act of attacking a merchant, Truxtun would be justified in immediately applying the death sentence. That was the law of the sea, and he intended to put it to good use.

Although Truxtun was rather young at an age of 29 years, he had swiftly risen in the ranks and commended the respect of his senior collegues and superiours. He was known to get the job done, and although not much was known of his past, he was always relied upon in matters of importance. Unknown to most, he had grown up aboard a territorial border-guard ship belonging to a backwater trade-planet. A self-proclaimed orphan, he had escaped a family of drunkards, Furian outcasts which had settled on another planet among humans of another creed. He had found a home aboard the ship of war and it's disciplined ranks, and when he later rejoined his homeland, it was only natural that he join the Furian Fleet. He was soon recruited by the Order of the Silver Hand, and had spent these last years combating the forces of crime. He was popular among his subordinates, but still much of a mystery to anyone who encountered him. He was not the usual Furian. He lacked that muscular outline which every Furian had. Instead he was rather tall, and if you paid attention to him you'd notice that he was actually quite good-looking, despite his somewhat hawk-like nose and the sceptical scowl his face usually wore under his two-day beard. Currently he was sitting in the commander's seat, patiently waiting, like a falcon observing it's prey before the pounce.

“We’re approaching the co-ordinates now skip,” came a female voice. Deloris Verstachi, first mate. Something of a femme-fetale, but no-one would dare call her such a thing to her face. Cody saw past the attractive exterior, with her long brunette hair and shapely form, and was privy to the efficient, cold person that lay beneath. Verstachi probably had a higher body count than anyone else on his crew, being as she was raised in this particular lifestyle from birth. Indeed, the first casualty of her wrath witnessed her brutal disregard for sentient life when she was only eleven years of age, and nothing had changed since that date.

“How long ‘till our target has the misfortune of passing by?” Cody asked. He sat, surprisingly calmly, on his rickety command chair with his legs crossed and his arms folded. Waiting. Longing to get this crap over with before Rodriguez decided to call up and ask what was going on, ergo blowing their cover and exposing their position. After all, even merchant ships in hyperspace could pick up communiqués.

“Not long,” Henry announced somewhat casually.

“Not long?” Cody repeated. Agitation was evident within his voice. He hated inefficiency. Perhaps that was a sign of his militaristic history. Perhaps it was why he liked Verstachi so much, given her almost Vulcan-like efficiency. Regardless of the reason, he hated it all the same.

“About... five minutes, ten minutes, I guess,” Henry clarified. Vaguely.

“Make your damn mind up Dave,” Cody snapped.

“Ten minutes!” Henry replied quickly.

“That wasn’t so damned hard was it?” Cody said with a sigh. “Are we in position?”

“We’re hidden from sensors in the asteroid field sir,” Verstachi told him. “Even if we were detected, they are more likely to hit asteroids than us. If they’re foolish enough to shoot, that is.”

“Good,” Cody said. He reached down and pressed on his intercom panel. “Chief, are you there?”

“Aye skipper,” came Jess’ tinny response.

“We’re at the coordinates now,” Cody told her. “Suppose you can pull your finger out and get that gravity well generator working?”

“Probably,” she responded.

“Probably?” Cody was beginning to get tired of repeating himself. This wasn’t some quick job they’d picked up at random. They were here on the explicit request of Rodriguez himself, and he really didn’t want any screw-ups.

“Aye,” she said. Her lip was going to get her kicked off the ship someday, or worse. Cody’s temper was legendary, although he had something of a reputation for going easy on the fairer gender members of his crew. Space was lonely, after all.

“Could you please elaborate, Chief?”

“I guess,” a sigh accompanied her response, which forced Cody to clench his fists. “This ship weren’t designed for half the crap we’ve tacked onto it. Whaddya thing a gravity well generator does? It screws things up.”

“Rodriguez’s own men fixed the damn thing to the ship, all you’ve got to do is power it up,” Cody snapped.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jess said. Her own temper wasn’t exactly unheard of either, although she had a habit of directing it at people she really shouldn’t. “Get Dave to push the button and it’ll go on as planned. Just give us a few minutes down here to stop the ship from ‘splodin’ when you do. This is proper high-powered military tech we’re talkin’ about here, not the sort of thing you can just plug and play, y’know?”

“You’ve got five minutes Chief, no more, no less,” Cody said. “But when Henry presses that button, you’d better hope to God that shit happens or else you won’t be looking for another job, you’ll be looking for a casket. Are we understanding each other?”

“Aye skip, it’ll work,” Jess responded after a brief pause, and then cut the channel from her end.

“Great,” Cody sighed. “Dave, power up all weapons. As soon as our target drops out of hyperspace, or subspace, or the Warp, or whatever the hell they’re travelling through, I want a full barrage to hit them before they know what hit them. We need those shields down so that we can beam over a strike team. Get me?”

“Got you,” Henry nodded. “Turbolasers, phasers, photon torpedoes, megatronic multiplonic duratechnic plasmatrons - you name it, I’ll shoot it.”

“Good,” Cody nodded. “Assuming we can even stop them...”

“You know what assumptions make,” Henry grinned.

“Dead men, if you finish that sentence,” Cody snapped.

“Dead men if the Chief don’t finish her job...” Henry sighed. As if Cody needed reminding. The last thing that the Maelstrom needed was a bounty hunter setting on them from Rodriguez. He paid well, recruited the best, and Cody had never heard of anybody escaping his wrath.

“Dave, inform the armoury that we need a strike team ready to transport within a moment’s notice,” Cody said. “Make sure Grissom is on it too.” Grissom had started out life in the Federation, much like Cody, but in the Colonial Peacekeepers instead of Starfleet. He’d excelled in his job and made it to the Commandoes, but then defected to a mercenary shortly thereafter for reasons that were entirely his own. He made Verstachi look like an amateur, and Cody had promised him a higher cut than any of his crew just to get him on side – though he never mentioned such, of course. He preferred to wield a Peacekeeper pulse pistol as opposed to the Federation phaser rifles that most of his boarding parties carried, but he put it to very good use. There was a reason that it was called the best light arm in the uncharted territories, after all.

“Gotcha,” Henry nodded.

“Good,” Cody nodded. “Power up the gravity well generator. Let’s see if we can’t catch us a fish...”

Captain Ikuras was sweating slightly. The current situation was somewhat...intense.
The fleets lined up under his command, bristling with weaponry, were confronted by an equally beweaponed horde of enemy ships. Each vessel carried enough firepower to lay waste to an entire star system, protected by the most advanced shields, sheathed in the finest armor, powered by the fastest engines.
It was, truely, a wonderful sight.
The calm before the battle was one of his favorite moments, when all the ships were in neat little lines, awaiting the order to move in and begin the bloody work of destroying the enemy.
Suddenly, a flash of light from behind his lines caught his attention.
Enemy ships were pouring out of a sub-space portal, directly into his home system.
In the moment of indescision, the main enemy fleet surged forward, taking the captains ship by suprise.
The four day long game ended in a matter of minutes.
"Damn subspace gates are broken! Bastards need to put out a bloody patch to fix that damned thing!" Ikuras growled, shoving his chair back in disgust, "Its been broken since the first day this stupid game came out! I cant believe I sprang for an ultra-long-range modem just so I could play against a bunch of wankers in the next room." The litany of complaints went on for some time.
"Well, sir, maybe you should'nt play against the marines. They seem to have this aversion to losing..." The cargomaster was leaning over Ikuras' shoulder, looking at the post-game statistics, "And theyre good at teamwork."
"And being wankers!"
"...Quite, sir."
"Whatever. At least the graphics are nice." The captain patted a black cylinder next to him, which had a pattern of stylized flames around its base, "Say what you will about aliens, theyre damn good with computers. If they had quantum...bio...thingy processors like this back on Earth, we'd be better off, I think."
"We do, captain. Its just that the military has all of them." The cargomaster glared at the processing unit. The captain had a bad habit of spending significant amounts of money on 'crew recreation', which usually meant the latest toys.
Soyokaze drifted on, riding the ether waves on its constant between-galaxy voyages.

“Got you,” Henry nodded. “Turbolasers, phasers, photon torpedoes, megatronic multiplonic duratechnic plasmatrons - you name it, I’ll shoot it.”
OOC: Roflmao...:D
I cant believe I sprang for an ultra-long-range modem just so I could play against a bunch of wankers in the next room." The litany of complaints went on for some time.
"Well, sir, maybe you should'nt play against the marines. They seem to have this aversion to losing..." The cargomaster was leaning over Ikuras' shoulder, looking at the post-game statistics, "And theyre good at teamwork."
"And being wankers!"
"...Quite, sir."
"Whatever. At least the graphics are nice." The captain patted a black cylinder next to him, which had a pattern of stylized flames around its base, "Say what you will about aliens, theyre damn good with computers. If they had quantum...bio...thingy processors like this back on Earth, we'd be better off, I think."
"We do, captain. Its just that the military has all of them." The cargomaster glared at the processing unit. The captain had a bad habit of spending significant amounts of money on 'crew recreation', which usually meant the latest toys.
OOC: :D


Aboard the Black Dagger (http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/718/daggermo9.jpg)

Truxtun stood facing the tactical holographic display, hands clasped behind his back, an expression of silent contemplation on his face. "Sir, the sensor net is detecting an increasing gravitational signature around the pirate ship." - "It has begun, then..." he thought to himself, acknowledging the sensor officer with a nod. He turned to the helmsman, who sat comfortably at his post surrounded by a globe-like structure that emanated energy which psionically linked the Furian to his warship. "When the trader enters the system, immediately plot a course that will bring us between the victim and the aggressor..." - "Aye, sir..." Truxtun smiled at the silent efficiency of his crew as he looked back at the Tactical Holographic Display. Calmly he started giving out orders. "Mr Jones, call the crew to battlestations if you please. Mr Atwell, draw the shot from the portside and starboard Gauss Carronades and replace with Transphasic shot. The Gauss Carronades fire at my orders only, and are to be locked on the enemy's shield generators at all times. Load and secure all weapons, put shields on standby. Mr Hubbard, take charge of the boarding party and make sure those teleportation gates are ready to lock on as soon as the enemy's shields come down. Your primary goal is the enemy engine room, then you will work your way up towards the bridge. I might be joining you eventually... Helm, prepare the FTL inhibitor field... I don't want anyone escaping once we enter that system..."

.

Being suddenly wrenched into real space is never a pleasant experience. The combined factors of sudden deceleration from faster than lightspeed, the sudden overload on the ships sub-space shields (the equivalent to a car griding its gears), the lightshow as the ship wavers between there and here, and the swearing as the captain is thrown against a bulkhead and spills hot coffee on his crotch.
"Blyadinya! Son of a cheap a'kth'st whore that BURNS! What the HELL is going on!?" Ikuras listened to the ominous groaning of the ship. The rear half had come out of subspace AFTER the front half, which probably meant that the whole thing was misaligned by a fraction of an inch. That meant that the front half of the ship was running on emergency generators. That ALSO meant that he was going to have to foot a bill the size of a small national budget in order to get his ship re-aligned.
"We've been knocked out of subspace, somehow, captain!" The helm officer was scrambling to brush the crushed potato chips off his display screen, "Some sort of...I dont know! The computer says we're in a gravity well or something!"
"Damn! Bloody pirates! All weapons to full power! Blast anything that comes within range and keep the sensors looking! No suprises!" Ikuras was quite a presence when he get serious, despite the unfourtunate stains on his pants, he managed to retain his captainly authority, "Tell the marines to expect boarders at any moment. And get the pilots to their stations!"
In a matter of moments the ships crew, ill-disciplined as they were, had got the defensive systems functioning. Pilots had scrambled to their hardsuits and CAF's, awaiting the order to launch.
The ships massive laser lenses were primed and ready, and could, at a moments notice, unleash horrible burning-ness on anything that even looked like it was considering the possibility of a chance of taking a run at piracy.

"Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly,

"This is weird, the sensors must be down."

"What?"

"The Republic...." the sentence was cut short as the Trade delegation got caught in the same gravity well; which shoved everyone around mightly. People got thrown around with the sudden de-celeration.

""WHAT THE ****, THE INERTIAL DAMPENERS SHOUlD HAVE TAKEN CARE OF THAT! ARM WEAPONS I WANT WHO EVER DID THIS TO DIE!!!!"

The captainly colourfully exclaimed as he was laying on his back on the floor of his own bridge. The rest of the crew were scrambling to their feet while he stayed there. "Hurry up, I want you to fire on them now!"

The captain however was seemingly fine laying on his back barking orders, the fact that he could properly see the displays was seemingly insignificant. Soon the weapons were charged but no one had any idea what to shoot out, there was some suggestion that it was because of the Republic ship that they were in this mess, they being the ones responsible, but that idea was soon shouted down by the Captain, still laying on the floor.

The Black Dagger had hyperspaced into the system (outside the gravity well's area of effect) the very moment the traders were ensnared in the gravity well. Under full cloak the ship now made for the traders at full speed, invisible to sensors and eyesight. Truxtun stood on the bridge, hands clasped behind back, and supervised the whole proceedings. There wasn't much he could do at the moment, except wait. A fighter had been earlier dispatched to approach the pirates under full cloak, in order to coordinate certain tactical attacks that would take place in the battle to come. For now, he would have to hope that the merchants could defend temselves...

OOC: Ok, I'll be off the internet for the weekend, so until Monday you'll be on your own... I'll post something when I get back.

“Looks like we caught summit skip,” Henry called out excitedly. He pointed at the monitor like a child who’d just discovered his Christmas presents, and Cody glanced over towards it and smiled.

“Tactical analysis, Dave,” Cody requested.

“She’s a bit bigger than I thought she’d be,” Henry said, reading his monitor intently. “Kinda like a space whale with lasers attached.”

“Lasers?” Cody scoffed.

“Aye, lasers,” Henry nodded. “They’re big ‘uns though. Whoever these guys are like to build things big. Might pose a threat.”

“In that case, battle stations,” Cody grinned. “Verstachi, have us come about, bearing two-five-seven mark thirty-two, three-quarters impulse until we clear the asteroids. Engineering, shut down the gravity well generator and divert all remaining power to shields and weapons.”

“Already done sir!” Jess’ response came through sharply. “Thing short-circuited a few secs after we caught our whale. Damn near took my hands off when it went.”

“For crying out loud...” Cody groaned. “Thanks Chief. Make sure nothing else explodes, eh?”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do, but...”

Cody cut the channel before she had time to finish it. Now really wasn’t the time for her to explain why she might accidentally blow everybody to bits – not that there was ‘ever’ a time for such a piece of information, of course. Cody glared at the small viewscreen as they rapidly accelerated through the dense field of iron boulders, dodging them almost gracefully. It would have been gracefully, if the Maelstrom didn’t look like a dozen different ships welded together haphazardly.

“Hey look at that,” Henry called out. “We caught us another fish! Smaller than the other one. Can’t tell if it’s armed.”

“What?” Cody growled, jumping down from his chair with a clang and marching over to Henry’s station. “God damn it. Which one is our target?”

“Buggered if I know,” Henry shrugged. “But I have a saying – if in doubt, shoot the big one first.”

“Interesting saying, Dave...” Cody said, giving him a perplexed look. Something about the way Henry had said it made him wonder exactly what circumstances had led to him having such a saying. But this wasn’t the time to psychoanalyse his least sane crewmember. “Let’s shoot the big one first, then. Dave, fire a half-dozen photon torpedoes into the outermost asteroids... those big, dense ones. Let’s throw some shrapnel at our prey. Once we’re clear, launch a dozen attack drones to keep that other ship busy while we cripple our target. Remember - target shields, weapons and engines only. We need them alive.”

“Gotcha skip,” Henry nodded, somewhat disappointed.

Before the Maelstrom was clear of its hiding place, six powerful torpedoes streaked out from various crevices on its hull, impacting with six of the larger iron asteroids at the edge of the belt. Immediately and silently, shockwaves and fireballs tore them to shreds like polystyrene, sending boulders and shrapnel of various sizes rocketing out into the space ahead of them. Shortly afterwards the Maelstrom burst out from its cover and accelerated to full impulse. A dozen small objects, spherical in shape and only a few metres across in size, but armed with low-power phasers and lightly shielded, emerged from within her hull and immediately steamed towards the smaller civilian ship, dodging and weaving rapidly as they covered the distance as if they were insects, and angrily lashing out with their phaser beams.

In the meantime, the Maelstrom fired off a couple more photon torpedoes at the dorsal side of their primary primary target, and filled in the lull between loading times with persistent quantities of phaser and turbolaser blasts.

"What the bloody hell are those things? They look like insects..." exclaimed the captain

"Actually sir, they look like spherical objects of approximately 2m diameter firing phasers at us, low powered ones. They seem to be doing minimal damage."

"Yes, thank you Mr. Pendant, now help me up!"

"Yes, sir." The Captain extended his arm from his comfortable position (that is, lying on the ground) and his 2nd In Charge reached down grabbed his arm and using a number of basic principles of physics including leverage The captain was now fully upstanding.

"Good, now let's give them something to think about, prepare to... no, wait... do we still have those old GE codes?"

"For Authenticating us as members of the Galactic Empire?"

"No, the ones we use to broadcast a message that the GE sucks to all, and quickly get us and the corp blown to smithereens, what else is there, of course it's those codes, idiot."

"Just Clarifying there..."

"Anyway, use those codes and broadcast a message to the pirates... I think there pirates anyway, they're acting like pirates."

"Codes installed..."

Pirate Scum, this is the Eudora, a trade ship of a member state of the Galactic Imperium headed by the Unified Sith on Coruscant, We have already identified your ship and have sent a highly advanced encrypted burst communique to security officers of the Imperium. Shortly an Imperial Star Destroyer will be here to deal with you and your crew. Do as we recommend cease fire, and leave now, and your lives will be spared. It is only a matter of time.

We await to hear your annoucenment of ceasefire.


"huh, let's see how the respond to that, and if they still persist we've got our own guns."

((Whoops, missed IP's post there >_>
Also, the smaller ship is Garbage Men's, right? Just for clarification.))

"CHRIST ON A CAROUSEL WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!?" Ikuras hurtled across the bridge to the sensor screen, trying to get some vauge idea of what was going on.
"Its some sort of ship, captain! Its hard to tell with all the explosio-" The sensor operator was cut off as the ship was suddenly pelted with asteroid fragments, producing a horrible combination of screeching and pounding, not unlike being in a room with a tin roof while somebody scratced a chalkboard with a nail in a hailstorm.
"Prime the lasers and blast them! And get a couple of torpedos out there!" The captain paused, "But aim first! Those things are expensive!"
The Soyokaze began a rather ponderous turn, bringing its own weaponry in line with the pirate vessel. Most Republic ships had adopted technology that allowed them to 'bend' the beams of laser cannons, but most captains prefered to leave this as a suprise.
"Lenses one through ten primed...initiating first firing sequence. .5 seconds between firing..."
"Photon torpedo tube one, ready to fire."
"Hangers one and two report ready to launch."
"Lenses one and two, preparing to fire...now!"

For all its bulk and general ungainlyness, Soyokaze put on an impressive show. Beams of red light, each packing enough power to put good sized nuclear weapon to shame, shot across space in what would have been a picture perfect Verizon commercial if such a company happened to exist in this particular universe.
The ships hardsuit compliment quickly fanned out on the surface of the ship, taking positions to assist the lighter lasers in taking out the larger meteor fragments currently zipping around the ship. Armed with railguns in addition to the traditional mellee weapons typically used by hardsuits, they were quite formidable, despite being rather outdated.

OOC: Remember to RP damage folks, Dontgonearthere, I'm looking at you... IP I hope u don't mind me RPing the make of your shielding...=)

Pirate Scum, this is the Eudora, a trade ship of a member state of the Galactic Imperium headed by the Unified Sith on Coruscant, We have already identified your ship and have sent a highly advanced encrypted burst communique to security officers of the Imperium. Shortly an Imperial Star Destroyer will be here to deal with you and your crew. Do as we recommend cease fire, and leave now, and your lives will be spared. It is only a matter of time.

We await to hear your annoucenment of ceasefire.

A smile slowly spread over Truxtun's face. "Wonderful. We'll blow the pirate scum to smithereens, and then the Imperial scum will show up and we'll have them as a bonus dessert, along with the nice prospect of disrupting Imperial trade..." he said, ominously looking at the Eudora. Truxtun was a fighting man, he hated the long weeks he spent furtively prowling around space like a jackal, instead of challenging battle like the man of war he was. But now, he would make up for all that. "Have the seismic charges been placed by the cloaked bird?" - "Aye sir, primed and ready." - "Good. Remote detonate them if you please Mr Atwell." Immediately after, just as the Maelstrom was about to reach the outer rim of the asteroid belt, three shockwaves rippled out, finetuned as they were, they easily transformed the large asteroids into an avalanche of shrapnel more effectively than any other kind of weaponry could ever hope to do.

As the pirates were engulfed in the wave of debries Truxtun unconsciously noted that the largest trader ship had opened fire. He glanced at the tactical display. Large laser guns, nothing too fancy considering that his scans of the Maelstrom had reveiled it to be equipped with some sort of souped up shield system which redirected incoming energy hits into the ship's systems and vented the excess energy (a crude version of the advanced shields which the Black Dagger herself was equipped with and rather expensive for being used by a pirate, so that Truxtun made a mental note to examine this if he ever got the chance) but together with the asteroid debries the lasers would contribute to drain the shields and thus he would be able to neutralize the outgunned pirates with one single broadside, he hoped. Due to the fact that the gravity well no longer was in place, the Black Dagger could easily spacefold to wherever it pleased. Thus, as the Maelstrom emerged from the asteroid belt, the Black Dagger spacefolded to a location that would bring it just beside/parallell to the enemy ship and just outside the range of oncoming debries. With the cloak deactivated, the ship was now visible to everyone in the system, it's enormous sleek black hull and threatening gunports, the ominous silver hand emblazoned on the hull, and the aft exhaust vents that glowed a cold blue. On the bridge Cpt. Truxtun activated one of the many songs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX8_j34I7_I) he played during combat, before calmly starting to give orders. "Helm, activate the FTL inhibitor field. Mr Atwell, fire at will."

Just a few seconds after the Black Dagger (http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/718/daggermo9.jpg) became visible, countless flares of light came into existence as the the ship's full broadside errupted in the silence of space. The powerful Flayer Cannons did their best to disintegrate the enemy's armor (thus the name), while Quantum Pulse Cannons fired away their deadly pulses of energy that would cause roughly five times the damage of heavy turbolasers, accompanied by Polaron Beams, Cutter Beams that could cut through armor like butter, Gauss Cannon that fired photon munitions, as well as the vicious AHEN cannons*. As the deadly broadsides rung out, Truxtun ordered one of the starboard Gauss Carronades to fire it's transphasic slug, which would easily by-pass shields and armor, detonating inside the ship, just where sensors estimated the enemy's shield generators to be. He stood unwavering on the bridge, despite the heavy blows that his adversary was presumably dealing in it's last deathrows, and calmly keyed the comm button on his badge. "Mr Hubbard, is that boarding party ready?"


*The AHEN cannon (Advanced High-Energy Neutron Cannon ) utilizes a miniature cyclotron to accelerate neutrons to relativistic speeds and then launch them in a tight beam at the desired target. The cyclotrons consist of two D-shaped magnets placed back to back with a small distance between them. The alternating polarity of the magnets gives the neutrons the energy needed to accelerate them to the high velocities. Upon impact with the hull of a ship, the neutrons cause a fission chain reaction, cutting a hole clear through the target. The neutrons are stored in magazines that are pre-charged with beta radiation on Furian worlds.

.

One of the dancing balls fired again...

"?Okay this getting annoying... Get these things out of the sky... NOW!"

"Well, we can fling condensates at c-frac at them"

"Assuming we can know where they'll be when we fire."

"Oh, hey, I got an idea... I'm going to try and hack them... see if I can't control them or at least fry them. I need to have manual control of the comms system."

"These should basically be the same as the drones that controlled that minefield back about 20 episodes... I mean 5 months ago."

"Okay see what you can do, ou have permission."

"Hmm.. interesting the Pirates are seeming to be already in quite a bad position, hopefully they'll just turn their tale and run."

Umm.. did you say tale or tail sir?"

"Tail of course, what do you think I am? bad with grammar? hahaha"

The communications officer, who was going to be the one who would attempt to hack the bots, started trying to weasel his way into accessing the system data. Trying to either take of the programming or neutralise it and blow it up.

"Where the hell do all these ships come from..." Cody grumbled miserably as yet another ship appeared on his tactical monitor. The ship rumbled slightly as their prey attempted to fight back some, their red beams disappearing into the perilously maxed-out shield grid, draining them somewhat. "Some kind of goddamn party we've got going on here. Dave! Damage inflicted on target?"

"God knows," Henry shrugged. "They don't seem to have any shields, their armour's tough enough for a merchant vessel though. Can't tell what kind of damage we've done. Hopefully some..."

"Keep firing, all weapons arcs," Cody barked. "Target engines and weapons only. Don't want them blowing up before we nab our booty, eh?"

"Gotcha," Henry nodded.

"The smaller vessel has hailed us," Verstachi said calmly as she gripped her panel to say upright. "Something about imperial siths... whatever that means."

"Ignore them," Cody sighed. "Ain't got no time for hauling two loads of cargo now. Set several of the drones onto kamikaze runs, and Dave, fire off a couple of torpedoes at them to warn them off. Should keep 'em busy."

The larger ship, obviously a military vessel of some kind, appeared to be maneuvering for some manner of archaic broadside tactic which Cody hadn't seen performed in quite some time. They hadn't hailed them, nor made any effort to demand a surrender, so he figured they still had time to beam off whatever they were after and scarper before causing any more trouble. Still, he made a mental note to keep an eye on it.

"Dave, have you located our cargo yet?" Cody asked, as the Maelstrom launched two more torpedoes at the smaller vessel before arcing around to target their prey again.

"I'm scanning now," Henry barked at him. "You really need to hire another guy to help me out here you know!"

"Yeah yeah," Cody sighed. "Shut up and do your job."

"Ah shit, that big 'un's priming to fire," Henry panicked. "Plenty of guns lockin' onto us man!"

"All ahead full," Cody roared. He hadn't built this old ship up to its present state for some upstart captain looking for an extra medal to blow chunks of it away. "Position us between them and our target - hopefully they'll think twice."

"We ain't gonna make it, they're..."

The bridge rattled sufficiently hard for most of its occupants to fall from their seats. As the shields groaned and drained rapidly under the torrent of fire, systems everywhere seemed to overload and blast from within their casings. The lights went out, the darkness only held at bay by the sparks and the light show outside until the ominous red emergency lights kicked into action. Cody felt himself winded as he was slammed into the back of his chair before being thrown forwards. Several yells could be heard above the calamity of their attack, though one stood out as particularly loud and sharp - Henry's, from the sound of it.

Just as the nerve-shattering rattle began to subside and the noise dimmed, Cody heard a gut-wrenching creak, the sound of metal bending and breaking, followed by a loud clang and a horrifying scream. And then silence prevailed again.

Cody managed to drag himself to his feet, pulling a flashlight from an alcove in the side of his chair and flicking it on to survey the surroundings. Verstachi had blood dripping from a gash on her forehead, blood caking her ordinarily slick brunette hair. She'd need a dermal regenerator on that, or probably just stitches knowing this ship. She noticed him staring at her forehead and touched it with her fingertips, wincing as she found blood. Though she seemed less perturbed by it than Cody, as she simply tore a strap from her shirt and wrapped it around her head like a makeshift bandage. Most others seemed unharmed, though somewhat shaken, but it didn't take long to find the source of the creaking metal.

Cody immediately spotted Henry lying beside his console, blood trickling from his mouth, as he was stuck beneath a rather large duranium support strut that had been torn from its place of honour in the ceiling. The heavy metal girder had landed right across his lower torso, crushing his pelvis and part of his right leg. As well, shrapnel had torn nasty holes across his right cheek, giving him a bloody mottled pattern on his face.

"Get our sorry excuse for a surgeon up here!" Cody yelled at one of the crewmen as he ducked to avoid some sparks. He reached over to the wall and pressed down on a comms panel, surprised by the fact that it worked. "Chief! What works?!"

"Not a lot!" came a delayed response, accompanied by some panting and the occasional yell. Jess seemed to be unhurt from the sound of her voice, though she definitely seemed frazzled. "Main power is offline, else shit'll blow up. We're running on auxiliaries. Life support is..."

"How about the essentials first?" Cody snapped. "Weapons? Shields? Engines?"

"Aye sir, god forbid we breathe," Jess muttered. "As you may have just felt, we've got partial shields. They hit us on our starboard and dorsal quarters mostly, those shields are shot, but we took some collateral damage on all sides. Port side's your best bet. We ain't got enough juice for phasers or TBs, but I can give you forward torps. And we've got about 60% impulse engine thrust left. All FTL is shot. You want more, you come down here and pedal, cap'n."

"Thank you, Chief, your pleasant manner continues to endear you towards another pay rise," Cody said sarcastically. "What about hull integrity?"

"Well I hope no-one was sleepin' through this sir, 'cause all quarters are exposed to space," Jess told him. "Didn't have anything valuable in your room did you, sir? Oh, and we've got a few hull breaches in the cargo bays and the auxiliary shuttlebay. I'd reckon 35% of the ship is uninhabitable without either an EVA or a pair of really strong lungs. We've got those areas sealed off with forcefields and bulkheads for now though."

"How are our transporter systems?" Cody asked.

"They're undamaged," Jess said after a confused pause. "I'll need to reroute power from other systems to get 'em online, but they work. We ain't got no cargo bays left to beam stuff into though."

"I'm not thinking of beaming things aboard this ship, Chief," Cody said. "Divert power from everything except weapons, shields and engines, just get them working."

"O...K..." Jess said. "Even life support?"

"Even life support, if you have to," Cody said.

"I'll get right on it," she sighed.

"Great," Cody sighed, snapping off the channel without even saying goodbye. "Damn it, messing up my ship. Don't these pricks know how expensive these things are to maintain?!"

"Captain, Dave's losing consciousness," Verstachi said, from her position kneeling down at his side. The makeshift bandage around her head had already turned red at the front, with some blood seeping out around her brow. That was nothing compared to the state of Henry, though, who had gone pale and was covered with sweat, as if the blood wasn't a bad enough look for him. Verstachi had tried to stabilise him with some hyposrays from the medikit, but it certainly wasn't enough.

"Where the hell is that surgeon?!" Cody roared.

"Can't get at him, skip!" called out a crew member. "Last anyone heard, he was... erm... he was in one of the exposed sections."

"Fuck!" Cody shouted, slumping back in his chair. "OK. Full axis rotation to port, bring our surviving shields to the forefront, buy us some time. Verstachi, get Dave's terminal working, and arm every torpedo we have left. Don't fire them."

OOC: Remember to RP damage folks, Dontgonearthere, I'm looking at you... IP I hope u don't mind me RPing the make of your shielding...=)



A smile slowly spread over Truxtun's face. "Wonderful. We'll blow the pirate scum to smithereens, and then the Imperial scum will show up and we'll have them as a bonus dessert, along with the nice prospect of disrupting Imperial trade..." he said, ominously looking at the Eudora. Truxtun was a fighting man, he hated the long weeks he spent furtively prowling around space like a jackal, instead of challenging battle like the man of war he was. But now, he would make up for all that. "Have the seismic charges been placed by the cloaked bird?" - "Aye sir, primed and ready." - "Good. Remote detonate them if you please Mr Atwell." Immediately after, just as the Maelstrom was about to reach the outer rim of the asteroid belt, three shockwaves rippled out, finetuned as they were, they easily transformed the large asteroids into an avalanche of shrapnel more effectively than any other kind of weaponry could ever hope to do.

As the pirates were engulfed in the wave of debries Truxtun unconsciously noted that the largest trader ship had opened fire. He glanced at the tactical display. Large laser guns, nothing too fancy considering that his scans of the Maelstrom had reveiled it to be equipped with some sort of souped up shield system which redirected incoming energy hits into the ship's systems and vented the excess energy (a crude version of the advanced shields which the Black Dagger herself was equipped with and rather expensive for being used by a pirate, so that Truxtun made a mental note to examine this if he ever got the chance) but together with the asteroid debries the lasers would contribute to drain the shields and thus he would be able to neutralize the outgunned pirates with one single broadside, he hoped. Due to the fact that the gravity well no longer was in place, the Black Dagger could easily spacefold to wherever it pleased. Thus, as the Maelstrom emerged from the asteroid belt, the Black Dagger spacefolded to a location that would bring it just beside/parallell to the enemy ship and just outside the range of oncoming debries. With the cloak deactivated, the ship was now visible to everyone in the system, it's enormous sleek black hull and threatening gunports, the ominous silver hand emblazoned on the hull, and the aft exhaust vents that glowed a cold blue. On the bridge Cpt. Truxtun activated one of the many songs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX8_j34I7_I) he played during combat, before calmly starting to give orders. "Helm, activate the FTL inhibitor field. Mr Atwell, fire at will."

Just a few seconds after the Black Dagger (http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/718/daggermo9.jpg) became visible, countless flares of light came into existence as the the ship's full broadside errupted in the silence of space. The powerful Flayer Cannons did their best to disintegrate the enemy's armor (thus the name), while Quantum Pulse Cannons fired away their deadly pulses of energy that would cause roughly five times the damage of heavy turbolasers, accompanied by Polaron Beams, Cutter Beams that could cut through armor like butter, Gauss Cannon that fired photon munitions, as well as the vicious AHEN cannons*. As the deadly broadsides rung out, Truxtun ordered one of the starboard Gauss Carronades to fire it's transphasic slug, which would easily by-pass shields and armor, detonating inside the ship, just where sensors estimated the enemy's shield generators to be. He stood unwavering on the bridge, despite the heavy blows that his adversary was presumably dealing in it's last deathrows, and calmly keyed the comm button on his badge. "Mr Hubbard, is that boarding party ready?"


*The AHEN cannon (Advanced High-Energy Neutron Cannon ) utilizes a miniature cyclotron to accelerate neutrons to relativistic speeds and then launch them in a tight beam at the desired target. The cyclotrons consist of two D-shaped magnets placed back to back with a small distance between them. The alternating polarity of the magnets gives the neutrons the energy needed to accelerate them to the high velocities. Upon impact with the hull of a ship, the neutrons cause a fission chain reaction, cutting a hole clear through the target. The neutrons are stored in magazines that are pre-charged with beta radiation on Furian worlds.

"Aye sir, boarding party is locked and loaded." "Good. Stand by for orders." Truxtun turned towards the tactical displays. The pirate ship was turning to expose it's surviving shields, and was arming a certain amount of weapons. Needless to say, they had been badly mauled. "Open comms." "Aye sir, comms open." Truxtun turned to face the enemy. This is Captain Truxtun of the Black Dagger, of the Silver Hand Fleet. You have been caught in the act of piracy and will be brought to justice. Power down your shields and weapons and you will be spared much strife. If you do not do this... well, let's just say your pirating days are pretty much over, either way.
Meanwhile, tractor beams locked unto the pirate ships, and all the ship's weaponry was reloaded and brought to bear on the enemy, should they show any sign of opening fire.

"Have you disabled those blasted things yet?!" the captain annoyingly grunted "Umm.. Just about, I'm just trying to create phantom sensor data that fools the thing into thinking it's already destroyed its target. I have just created a ..."

"yeah, I don't want to know how it's done I just want to know that it is done! Is it?"

The communications officer pressed a single button on her control panel before replying "Yes, yes it is."

The annoying little buzzards stopped and soon would do whatever they were programmed to do when/if there had been a "kill" of it's primary target meanwhile the captain had another task for the communications officer.

"I want to jam their communications right up their own behinds. I don't want them to even to able to speak to the person next to them. What are you waiting for get going!"

"yes sir." she replied.

First she would open a wide range of connections to the pirate ship, using her own manipulations of standard communication protocols, she attempted to lock all the communications. If they were anywhere decent at this sort of stuff they would be able to find and resolve this issue but not when an extremely high-pitched screaming that once the connection was accepted would burrow into the ships internal communications broadcasting itself throughout ever speaker in the entire ship. The quickest and easiest way to defeat this would require a whole restart of the entire communication network within the ship. Even if they didn't die it would make conditions inside unberable.

Soon the plan was enacted, once the connection was accepted ten it would cascade down through the communications system. They waited on how the pirates would respond.

OOC: Just an added incentive... now if this works the pirate ship can't surrender