“TURN OFF YOUR SYSTEMS OR BE BLASTED INTO THE VOID YOU DONGOBBLERS” A voice blasted throughout the comms.

I immediately regretted telling Mbassi to open the channel. The crew was looking at me now, expecting an answer, but I was somewhat dumbfounded.

“LCDR, do they not recognize the signatures on the ship?” I asked, wanting confirmation.

He was about to speak, but stopped midway, and did that a couple more times.

“Looks like they don’t ma’am”

The rest have the same questioning look on their faces. I mean, it’s nice to have our mission target come right at us, but… aren’t they a little too overconfident? Their ships look like they were made out of scrap metal, and our ship is quite an imposing military vessel. Might not be a top-of-its-class ship but it’s a few decades above what they have.

A question crosses through my mind, and I activate the comms device in the panel in front of me.

“Dude, do you know who you are threatening?” I ask with an overly casual tone. As an army officer I'm supposed to maintain a formal and level-headed tone, but I don't care much about it, even less if dealing with pirates.

A moment of silence before I hear that screeching voice.

“DO I LOOK LIKE I FOOKIN CARE YOU DUMB BITCH? THIS IS WHITE KRAKEN TERRITORY YOU JUST STEPPED IN YOU TWAT IF YOU WANT TO GET OUTTA HERE ALIVE YOU—” I closed the comms channel, not wanting to go through that hellish screaming once again. It seems his body mutated, as his cerebral mass went to his throat, because his screams were absolutely deafening.

“Someone is tired of living it seems” Novak said with a chuckle, apparently amused at the situation. The rest were either annoyed or still trying to figure out their intentions. Anyways, I'm not about to take a punch for free against a couple of wimps.

I press a button and connect to the firing deck “Dzhabrailov”, I say.

“Yes ma’am!” The voice of our chief gunner sounds from the other end.

“Do me a favor and blast the ship…. Wait a minute, Mbassi, which one of those were the source of the monkey noises?”

Mbassi jumps at my sudden question “T-the o-one on our left”.

“Blast the left one to oblivion please”

“With pleasure!” She answers with tangible emotion.

On the 3D hologram of the ship in front of Rovers we can see the guns being deployed on both sides of the Sleipnir. As I was informed, we are equipped with two plasma accelerators, four laser burst cannons, five kinetic machine guns and one missile launcher. On the hologram we can see that Dzhabrailov deployed the missile launcher, and half of the burst cannons and machine guns. One might think it’s overconfidence, but well, those ships are begging to be put out of their misery.

The missile launcher representation in the hologram lits up “Missile launcher module charged Commander” Says Rovers, looking at it.

Without any further command, we see how a small ball of metal rushes through the bottom of our ship and heads straight to the ship of the left, and the ship notices and tries to turn around but it’s just way too slow for that. The missile doesn’t even stop when touching the shield as it penetrates it without trouble.

When it touches one of its wings, it starts to crumble away as if invisible ants were devouring it from the inside. You can see the occasional spark of fire that almost immediately dies due to the lack of oxygen in the vacuum of space, telling us their force field is down. That goes on for at least ten seconds, until there’s just a small portion of the ship, now drifting without course.

“Mbassi, open up a channel to the other ship”

“Yes ma’am”

Shortly after, I hear the sound of ragged breathing and multiple panicked voices on the other end, and I know we can hear each other.

“Cordial greetings you sons of bitches, Commander Lilith Zsofia of the Stellar Union, aboard the Sleipnir, is talking to you… as you were kind enough to present yourselves in front of us, i assume you are to be our escort to your main base of operations, is that right?” I ask with the most afable tone I can muster.

The crew is looking at me somewhat creeped out. Yeah, I know you don’t normally hear me like this.

“You from the Union?! Y-you are crazy! We are the White Kraken crew! Our general will—”

“Oh so you have a general? A military chain of command on pirates, nice! Take me to him” I interrupt him just to give him a direct order. If he’s under a general then he should be used to it.

“No! You don’t understand! You just got here so you probably don’t know but our general—”

I interrupt him again “Chief Dzhabrailov, there seem to be some survivors in that wreck”

I hear a hearty laugh on the other side, and that laugh resonates in the entire room as I turned up the volume to the max, so the pirate asshole can hear us.

“I’m sorry Commander, I’ll fix that in a moment!” She declares. The machine guns light up in the hologram, signaling them as ready to function, and the next thing we admire is the efficiency of kinetic weaponry in shredding targets. A ship without shields is a mere target practice against them, and this piece of junk is now becoming space dust by the second.

“Now, what were you saying Mr. Pirate cunt?” I ask, while we still watch as our gunner enjoys herself.

“...You d-don’t understand, he’ll kill us! On sight!” He pleads, his voice now sounding completely desperate.

“Yeah, well, you at least have a chance to escape him, or do you want to play catch?”

A long silence ensues “...Please mercy… just follow us”

I smile at the answer, as apparently this mission is gonna be easier than expected.

“Good boy, who’s a good pirate now?”