Chapter 21

Hyperspace.

Approaching the Arion system.

"Hyperspace emergence in 5...4...2...1...Emergence!"

"Take evasive action, Elteria what's our status?" Calmly said Sarah as the ship emerged into the Arion star system.

"We're in our jump zone, 150 kilometers off of our target point, but that's it. Scanning near space, and it doesn't seem like there's anything in laser range. Well, except for the beacon of course. It looks like we're alone ma'am." The AI answered.

"Excellent. Alright, charge everything to maximum combat readiness. I don't think we're going to get jumped before the Flowers arrived, but we can never be too cautious."

"Aye aye ma'am. We have the shields, missile launchers and point defence guns fully online. Battle laser in 3 minutes, full backup capacitor charge in 15."

Sarah nodded. They were able to get those systems online immediately after a hyperspace jump only thanks to the ship's main capacitors array. Technically, they could keep every weapon active with their ready capacitors, but....well, those ready capacitors traded higher energy discharges for energy capacity....and stability. It was generally not considered a good idea to execute a hyperspace jump or emergence with them loaded, to say the least. There was a reason fleets tried to jump far in the outer system if they intended to fight, to allow them to recharge everything and not court a massive capacitor failure that would leave the ships vulnerable in an assault hyperspace jump. Assault warships were equipped with special, highly expensive capacitors that allowed them to pull it off more safely, but even they had a noticeable risk of just having their weapons blow up when jumping in. There was a reason assault ship crews were paid better after all, outside of the obvious 'you're going to jump directly in the middle of an enemy fleet/fortress cluster'.

"Alright. If our surroundings are clear, start a full system scan. Passives only for now, I want to keep our friends in the dark, and see if we can lure some of them out to play."

"Aye aye ma'am. Beginning full system scan."

Sarah waited for a few minutes, checking the scanners and their patrol pattern -the pattern was more for show than anything else really, anything short of a stealth ship or a full shut down system like the satellite in the previous system would have been discovered by now-, before nodding to Elteria.

"Alright, stand everyone down from battlestations, we're going to need our energy for later. Warn me if you find anything, and get everyone back to their battle stations, let's say...10 minutes before the Flowers is scheduled to arrive."

"Aye aye ma'am."

*****

Sarah blinked as she received Elteria's ping, quickly checked her implants' internal clock for the time, and authorized the AI to enter her office. It was too early for the Flowers to have arrived, which meant that the AI had found something.

"Captain." Said the AI as she materialized in front of Sarah's desk.

"Yes Elteria? Find anything?"

"You could say that ma'am." The AI walked forward and took a seat on Sarah's desk. "It's...Interesting, to say the least."

"Show me."

Elteria gestured, and a hologram appeared on top of the desk, showing one of the outer system gas giants.

"Here."

Sarah looked at the hologram for a few second, before frowning.

"I wasn't aware Arion had industry around their gas giants." According to the files she'd seen, most of the system's industry -which was far from inconsequential, although not at Calver's level- was concentrated on Arion Prime itself, and the system's innermost planet, a desolate ball of molten rock that would have made old Mercury look like a cold paradise.

"That's the thing, they don't."

Sarah froze, opened her mouth, then closed it.

"You're joking, right? That's....That's the pirates?"

Elteria shrugged.

"Can't tell from here, but either they raid these people or it's indeed them."

"But...how could the system government have missed them?" She shook her head as she looked at the hologram. A Dominion refueling base, hidden with the support of the system government, she could understand. Hidden asteroid bases with shipyards she could see as being definitely possible. But there was a full sized industrial platform out there, and at least half a dozen smaller space stations. Hidden in a gas giant's rings, yes, but still!

"According to what little I've been able to glean on the system, they stopped surveying the outer system a decade ago due to lack of funding. Without anything to take a closer look, their scanners are such crap they might not even register the stations as an anomaly. Hell, I'm not even sure a Dominion warship in transit would see them without going straight towards the gas giant, and how much do you want to bet that they shut down everything and go dark when someone comes close?"

Sarah nodded grudgingly. She'd been too used to working in more civilized systems, where the governments at least tried to keep tabs on their own planets.

"Alright, fair enough." Sarah sighed. "Well, at least we have a target. Anything else?"

"Yep. These." The hologram shifted, and 3 icons appeared. "Three ships, running at low power, exactly on the right orbit to intercept everyone coming from the beacon."

"Size estimate?"

"They're pretty good at emission control, so only a rough one, but somewhere in our tonnage. Definitely bigger than a cutter but smaller than a corvette."

"Gunships."

"Yep."

"Alright, prepare a small briefing package for our good friend captain Gries, and spread the information around. Oh, and tell Hector to get his marines ready, it looks like we're going to have to board some platforms."

Elteria winced, and Sarah joined her. Boarding space habitats and platform was never a clean affair. Those looked fairly small, but even small stations like this could have hundreds, if not thousands of people onboard. They'd never be able to take control of them with just their forces, and her instincts were telling her that calling in the local government for it probably wouldn't be a good idea. If nothing else, she wasn't even sure they'd be capable of doing anything about it...and even if they could, no system would have in system pirates like this without someone supporting them from inside the government.

"Aye aye ma'am. Hopefully this will go smoothly."

Sarah chuckled.

"Want to put money on it?"

The AI didn't even answer before disappearing.

"Thought so." Sarah looked at the hologram of the platforms, and began to look through her options. Just because she didn't believe nothing would go wrong didn't mean she wouldn't try her damnedest to make it so.

*****

"Captain Gries." Greeted Sarah as her com officer opened a channel to the Flowers's bridge.

"Captain Sarah! I've been advised that you have found our....'friends'?"

"Indeed I have. They are currently waiting for us halfway through the outer system."

"So I've seen in the report you've sent me. Well, in that case, I believe it's time for me to look arrogant and overconfident enough to have hired a mere gunship as my escort." Gries smiled, showing that he was joking. "Hopefully they'll think you're no match for them and come right to us."

"Indeed." Although really, if they waited long enough whether went in to intercept them or not wouldn't matter, with the Eternal Seeker's acceleration they just wouldn't be able to avoid a missile engagement with them past a certain point. "We'll sweep in front of you. Just make sure to break off when the missile start flying."

"Of course captain. Already then, let's do this!"

*****

"Status change!" Said Elteria as the hologram of the star system flickered and updated.

"Our friends are finally making their move?" Said Sarah, immediately perking up. The last few hours had been....boring, to say the least. Due to how star systems and hyperspace limits worked, most of their trip had just been accelerating through a whole lot of nothing towards Arion prime.

"Not yet, but their ships are going hot. I'm reading increased temperatures and- there, capacitor signatures. They're charging their weapons and prepping to move out."

Sarah straightened a bit. Finally, things were going to get interesting. Honestly she'd started to worry the pirates wouldn't try to intercept them, although to be fair they'd probably confirmed their identity with their own sensors. After all, despite their transponders broadcasting their identity to the whole system, any ship could just hijack their identities, and many pirates had jumped a 'lightly escorted freighter' only to encounter a frigate with a gunship transponder.

"Alright then. Look alive people! It looks like our prey is coming to us after all."

Her people on the bridge straightened up, and Sarah watched the plot carefully. Finally, after barely a quarter of an hour, the pirate's ships lit up their grav drives, and set on an intercept course.

"Not bad." Elteria said, and Sarah nodded. For a Low Verge ship, 15 minutes from minimum power to what she presumed to be combat ready wasn't bad at all.

"Acceleration?"

"75 gs, but that's probably only their cruise acceleration. I'd say....100 gs combat acceleration?"

Sarah nodded. Lower tech drives, and especially grav drives, had a smaller difference between their cruise acceleration and their combat acceleration than Near Verge dimensional interference drives did.

"Good. Very well then. What's our status?"

"Shields at 100%, capacitors fully charged. All weapons charged and ready to fire. Hyperdrive is still cycling, but..."

"I wouldn't want to jump this far in."

"I wouldn't expect you to captain. The ship is combat ready."

"Excellent. Very well, signal everyone for imminent engagement, and begin loading targeting solutions. Any more precision on those ships?"

Elteria nodded.

"Yeah. Definitely gunships. 60 meters long, 120 across and 30 tall, so about 216 kilotons." A hologram, showing what looked like nothing more than a large triangle appeared on the screen. 216 kilotons wasn't bad, but the Eternal Seeker itself was 375 kilotons. To the pirates, an almost 2 to 1 advantage in tonnage must have looked fairly comfortable, especially against mercenaries that weren't paid to die gloriously...but they weren't ordinary mercenaries. "Their geometry isn't optimized for broadside combat, I'd say all of their guns are made to fire forward or backward. Can't tell what weapons they have exactly without going active, but there are 5 concentrated weapon capacitor signatures that I can see, can't tell the precise power of the weapons though."

"So 5 guns each." That...wasn't a lot. That meant a few relatively powerful weapons, and probably some point defence guns to go with it. Most gunships were either built around a giant gun, like the Eternal Seeker, pure missile boats meant to fire and shoot down missiles, or interceptors meant to kill the other two types of gunships. "I'd say missile boats, what about you?"

"Same. I don't see a large enough difference in the capacitor clusters to account for a spinal weapon anyway."

"Good. Then prepare for a missile engagements." Sarah hesitated, then shrugged. "Keep the launchers loaded with standard missiles, but be ready to load them with counter missiles if necessary. I doubt they're going to be able to threaten us, but we can't take the risk. Besides, if they come close enough..."

"The battle laser will take care of them." Said Elteria with a wolfish smile, and Sarah rolled her eyes. Her AI really liked her big guns.

"Indeed." Sarah turned towards the com officer. "Get ready to handle our missiles if necessary, but look out for transmission from the pirates, or Gries, and prepare to send a message to these pirates." She wouldn't expect them to try to contact them before they were within missile range and could actually be fired upon, but some pirates were more nervous -or courteous- than others.

"Aye aye ma'am!"

Elteria looked at Sarah, and the captain shrugged.

"We want them to get close, but they'll get very suspicious if we don't at least hail them when they get too close. Just warn me when they're within...9 million kilometers."

"Aye aye ma'am!"

9 million kilometers was well within their own missile range -the Artemis Mid Verge missiles that filled most of their magazine had a powered range of 30 million kilometers-, but the Low Verge missiles common in the Protectorate only had around 6 million kilometers of range at best, with even the Dominion's precious Raptor missile could only last up to 7 million kilometers.

And, well, their battle laser could hit something up to 6 million kilometers. It wouldn't be the most powerful hit it could create, especially as the beam would be too dispersed to punch through shields, but....they were fighting gunships, not frigates here.

Sarah waited, giving curt orders and receiving reports from time to time, as well as having a short conversation with Gries. The civilian captain was remarkably calm all things considered, although he was still nervous. But he knew he was about to be caught in the middle of a space battle, so the opposite would have been more surprising.

"The enemy has crossed the 9 million kilometers line captain." Said Elteria.

"Excellent! Connie? Prepare a message for transmission for our friends. Normensk? Take us between them and the Flowers, and start an evasion pattern."

"Aye aye ma'am!"

Both officers went back to their consoles, and after a few seconds the coms officer, Connie, looked back up.

"Ready to record for transmission ma'am."

"Excellent." Sarah looked straight ahead, and put her most martial expression on. "Unidentified ships, this is captain Ciel-étoilé aboard the mercenary gunship Eternal Seeker. You are currently not running any transponders and are on an intercept course with my ship and my client's. Break off immediately or identify yourself, or we will be forced to open fire." Sarah gestured at Connie, who cut the recording, carefully reviewed and edited it, before nodding and lifting her head up to meet Sarah's gaze.

"We're good ma'am."

"Then send it."

"Aye aye! Recording sent."

For a few seconds, nothing happened....then Connie looked back up.

"We've got a communication channel request from one of the gunships."

"Put them through."

A holographic screen replaced the system's hologram...and Alexandra almost blinked. If she hadn't been persuaded these were pirates, she'd have taken the man on the screen for a naval officer. He was dressed in an impeccable ship suit, with the universal golden rocket insigna of a ship captain, that even Sarah sported, and although the suit was clearly more meant to be functional than decorative, it had clearly been arranged in something closely resembling a uniform.

"Eternal Seeker, this is captain Oran aboard the New Arion Republic Navy gunship Freedom. You are intruding upon the sovereign territory of the New Arion Republic without permission. Cut your acceleration and pay your passage fee, or we will be forced to engage."

Sarah blinked. New Arion Republic? Arion was supposed to be a monarchy, how...

Oh. OH.

You sneaky son of a bitch, thought Sarah. The Dominion officer that had arranged the contract hadn't thrown them at pirates....he'd thrown them at rebels!

"Captain Oran, as far as I am aware, there is no New Arion Republic, and thus no Navy belonging to it. According to my databases, the legal government of the Arion system is the Kingdom of Arion, under King Torchenko the Fifth."

Oran's face twisted, not quite forming a snarl. Whatever he was, he wasn't a professional officer. Or didn't have a good editing team, Sarah knew Elteria had all transmissions on a small delay so she could adjust or cut out parts if her captain lost her cool, or let slip something she shouldn't have.

"The Kingdom of Arion is nothing but a congregation of corrupt politicians and officials that have been bleeding our system dry for generations! Our Republic is here to liberate our system from their depredations, and that of their Dominion masters. But it does not matter captain C...Ciel...Mercenary! This space is ours, pay the fee, or we will be forced to detain you."

Sarah hid a chuckle as the rebel captain struggled with her family name, before leaning forward, her face deadly serious.

"Captain, in the absence of a proper writ of authority from the Protectorate, you have no power here. Your ships will break off and leave, or I will send you to your ancestors in small clouds of vapor."

The rebel captain's face went blank.

"I see...well, hopefully your client will prove more...amenable." And without another word, he cut the transmission.

Sarah leaned back in her seat, and Elteria's hologram reappeared on the bridge.

"That was kind of mean captain."

Sarah chuckled.

"Hey, might as well have some fun while we're at it. Besides, what I said was absolutely true."

"Right. What do you think captain Gries will tell them?"

"From what I've seen of him? To take their demands and shove them so far up their asses they'll end up behind their eyes."

The AI chuckled.

"He will, won't he?" Elteria shook her head. "Anyway, our pirate friends aren't breaking up their approach. Missile range for them in 1 minute. For their missiles anyway. Should I go active?"

Sarah nodded.

"Yes, but keep it low power." If nothing else, their sensors at full power outputted so much energy, anyone would be able to figure out things were very, very wrong.

"Aye aye ma'am. Low power sweeps coming right up." Elteria paused, and nodded. "Only got preliminary scans, but those are definitely missile boats. 3 launchers apiece and two lasers of some kind and...uh, that's odd."

"What is?" Said Sarah, straightening up.

"They're....identical. They don't just have the same armaments, they're all the same class, factory specs. Can't tell for certain, but I'd say Dominion schematics, Vancouver class gunships? 3 missile launchers and 2 point defence lasers, same as what I'm seeing." Elteria shook her head. "Minimal variation, they haven't even been modified. That means..."

"That means they aren't cobbled together duplicates." That was...concerning. That meant the industrial platform they'd seen hadn't put up some kind of duplicata of true warships, they were actually assembling them from complete schematics....or someone had gone through the trouble of transporting 3 military grade gunships to this backwater at least.

That still wasn't even remotely enough to tip the balance, but it did mean they were facing far more than normal rebels and corsairs.

"Alright." Continued Sarah. "Target the ship that sent us the transmission with the battle laser. It's probably not the command ship, but we have to start somewhere." Sarah looked at the hologram of the system, and winced. "And load normal anti ship missiles. Even if they have Mid Verge missiles, somehow, we can put the battle laser in point defence mode and shred them while we take them out with the missiles." That got her an odd look from Elteria, and Sarah shrugged. "After the SLF's little surprises, I'm not taking any risks."

The AI nodded, her expression thoughtful. After all, they'd thought the SLF had been 'just' another backwater rebellion with some rich backers.

"Of course." She blinked. "Vampire! Missile launch! 6 000 gs acceleration, grav drive propulsion, impact in 11 minutes!" Elteria blinked. "Single missile." She turned towards Sarah. "It's heading towards us, but probably a warning shot."

Sarah nodded.

"Probably. Still, get our ECM up, just enough to get them guessing. And target it for point defence, but don't fire unless it heads straight for us or the Flowers." Sarah looked at the distances on the hologram. "They're still 30 seconds out of missile range. I'm guessing it won't have the range?"

Elteria nodded as she gestured, and the hologram of the seemingly featureless cylinder of a modern space going missile appeared.

"Can't get a precise type, but it looks like a Leopard-5 copy." Sarah nodded. The leopards, or copies of them, were by far the most common missiles throughout the Protectorate, and the leopard-6 was the most advanced missile the Dominion sold schematics for to Protectorate systems. The 5 wasn't as heavily restricted, but it was still a solid missile...by Low Verge standards.

"That would fit with the gunships at least."

"Indeed."

They waited in silence as the missile accelerated towards them. Given it's trajectory, it seems to be heading between the Eternal Seeker and the Flowers, although it could still adjust to target one of them, but Sarah doubted it would. Then, 10 minutes after launch, the missile's drive petered out.

"Vampire has gone ballistic." Formally reported Elteria. "It's course will still take it halfway between us and the Flowers. Too far to be any threat."

Sarah nodded. In theory, missiles had a more or less infinite range, and could just serve as glorified railgun slugs to reach anywhere on a ballistic course. The problem was that ships could just...be somewhere else, and thus rendered such ballistic attacks useless, except against a very, very unaware foe. That reason, coupled with the fact that if you shut down the modified, one use overcharged drives used for missiles you simply wouldn't be able to turn them back on, as they basically destroyed themselves to propel the missile, meant that missiles were limited in effective range by how long they could maintain their acceleration.

They waited patiently, and a minute afterwards...

"Missile has detonated. Precisely between us and the Flowers, 5 megaton warhead." Elteria chuckled. "A firecracker basically."

Sarah smiled, chuckling along with her bridge officers.

"Indeed. Was it shaped?"

"Negative. But they might have disabled it."

"Right. Very well then. I expect that they'll hail us short-" Connie held up her hand, and Sarah nodded at her. "Speak of the devil. Put them through!"

The holographic screen reappeared, and this time Oran looked significantly more angry. Gries had probably been....less than polite.

"Mercenary, this is your final warning. Either pay the fee, or shut down your drive and prepare to be boarded."

Sarah smiled, and Oran visibly recoiled at her wolfish expression.

"Captain Oran, I made my position clear, I believe. Fuck.The.Hell.Off. Or I will turn you and the pathetic pieces of scrap you and your lackeys call ships into fucking debris fields. We will not pay your fee, and we sure as hell will not power down for your pirate henchmen to take us prisoner and grab my ship."

This time the rebel captain did snarl.

"Very well, so be it, mercenary."

And the communication channel cut off.

"Elteria?" Asked Sarah.

"Nothing...Wait! They've gone to a hundred gs, still on the same intercept course. They'll be in range for the missile they launched....now."

Right on cue, 9 new icons appeared on the hologram.

"Vampire! Missile launch! 9 missiles, 6 000 gs, impact in 5 minutes! Ma'am, your orders?"

Sarah smiled wolfishly once more.

"It seems our friends think us easy prey. Weapon status?"

"Missile launchers and battle laser locked on and ready to fire. Point defence guns on stand by."

"Excellent. Open fire with the battle laser."

"Aye aye! Firing...now."

For a split second, nothing happened...Then the ship physically shook as the battle laser fired. Fusion fuel was injected into a special, carefully built chamber, and massively powerful lasers and gravity generators activated, causing the fuel to be compressed and heated to such a point as to undergo nuclear fusion. The equivalent of a 1 gigaton thermonuclear bomb went off inside the battle laser, and all of the massive amount of energy stored in the weapon's capacitor vanished as the containment fields redirected it towards the laser converters. The containment fields weren't perfect however, and the ships shook like it had just been hit as the cataclysmic detonation was converted into an equally cataclysmic beam.

And that beam was concentrated on a single gunship.

The Dominion's monitor schematics weren't bad. They weren't as good as proper Dominion warships of course, but the Dominion had truly done its best to give the systems under its protection the capacity to defend themselves.

But they weren't even close to being able to take that kind of firepower and survive. The gunship didn't break apart, it didn't explode into a thousand shards, it was just gone, the detonation of it's power core finishing off whatever was left in a flash of nuclear annihilation.

"Target destroyed." Simply said Elteria. "Battle laser will be recharged for another full power shot in 3 minutes."

Sarah smiled.

"I think that won't be necessary, reduce it to....30% power."

Elteria nodded.

"Aye aye ma'am, 1 minute to the next shot. Should we launch missiles?"

Sarah shook her head.

"No, I doubt it will be necessary. Any status changes?"

"The Flowers has broken off, and is pulling away at 50 gs. No reaction from the enemy vessels yet...Scratch that, the enemy is breaking off, 100 gs of acceleration."

Sarah smiled.

"It won't save them." At that rate, with the momentum they'd already attained, it would take them a good 5 minutes to get out of battle laser range...if the Eternal Seeker kept it's 50 gs of acceleration. "Take us to 400 gs of acceleration, let them realize how pointless this is."

"Aye aye ma'am, upping acceleration to 400 gs." Elteria blinked. "Vampires have...vanished? Confirming 9 times 5 megaton detonations!"

"Ma'am?" Said Connie as she looked up from her console. "We're being hailed. They...want to surrender."