《Aegis》Chapter 20: Sunsearing

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You make your decision: Ambushing this Void Pirate seems like the best option, and if it's a singleton, you want to try to take it intact. Doing so means that you will have to rely on Simo crippling the ship without killing it. You drag up the system map for Procyon system and look for any features that might give you a place to launch an attack from stealth. The obvious issue here is that anything that will make you harder to spot will also degrade your own sensors and thus make it harder for you to spot your prey. You consider hiding in orbit around Procyon Primus, but that would only work if the Pirate showed up on the other side of the planet and then went into low orbit, which would slow it down long enough for you to catch it. Shit odds of it playing out exactly that way, so that's a no-go. Option two: Hide in Procyon Secundus' Ice Rings. A mixture of an asteroid field and a gas cloud from all of the ice shards, it's only marginally better. You'd be hard to spot, and the Aegis' sensors should pick the Pirate up only once it was in-system of you. Two strikes against you are the larger chunks of ice and the unknown amount of time you would have to spend in the ice rings; Frank would eventually blunder into one, and that would hurt. the second strike is the fact that a dedicated pirate raider might have enough of a head start to just run out the far side of the system before you could get a large enough chunk of her.

Then you hit on a plan that just might work: hiding in the star. Well, not Inside the star itself, the heat would do unfortunate things to the Aegis like melting her into a puddle. But in relatively close proximity, anyone pointing sensors at the star should have to filter out the solar radiation, which would give your sensors a head start on picking them out. And you would be in the center of the system, so any approaching ship would have to be headed right towards you for quite a while before the could spot you, and they would have to shed all of their in-system velocity, generate a new vector, and then start accelerating out-system. You would have time to close the distance and get at least two or three broadsides off before they got out of range, and Simo should be able to settle the matter by then, one way or another. Satisfied, you resolve to cross-check your plans with both Simo and Frank to make sure that you are not making a fool of yourself, you order Zheeves to begin preparations for the Warp Journey to the Procyon system.

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The Warp Journey to the Porcyon system is swift and uneventful, and you settle into a parking orbit in close proximity to that system's star to wait

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

On the fourth week, you finally spot a ship. A bulk transporter going by the name of the Mavros appears and heads in-system to Procyon Alpha, the systems only inhabited planet. You are about to order a scan of her, to alleviate the boredom, in nothing else, when a second ship appears: a Vagabond class tramp freighter bearing the name Zlatna Peperuda. The Mavros piles on a little more speed, and the Zlatna Peperuda accelerates in pursuit. Something is definitely wrong here, but nobody is operating a pirate raider or combat ship. What do you decide to do?

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