Hornraiser’s Confederacy

Begyndelse Star System

TSS Pavone

Caccia wondered if this system was going to be a bust as well. Her own cruiser and two of the TriStar destroyers were off on their own escorting a lone freighter registered to their nation though some truly backwater planets. Admiral Tobin had warned the path they were taking was low risk given most of the systems they were visiting were low population and thus unable to afford to back pirates as well as low traffic enough outsiders wouldn’t travel to them to commit crimes. Part of her was very glad she didn’t have to execute pirates yet, another part of her was bored out of her mind. She understood that boring meant things were going well, but she wanted something to lighten the mood.

Her three ships had come out of hyper before the merchant some light hours outside of the usually accepted ‘edge’ of a star system so they could sneak in on a ballistic course. She’d planned the vectors herself and she was proud of the formation; the two destroyers aimed ‘low’ under the course on either side of the merchant while her own cruiser took an over watching path above the merchant, a triangle in space that should be able to intercept anything that came at them.

But with nothing happening she considered giving the order to light the engines and assume a more conventional formation so they wouldn’t coast all the way into Begyndelse’s orbit.

“Lieutenant.” She turned to her coms officer. “Tell everyone we are dropping the ruse here in a minute. The destroyers will pull in as front guard, I’ll keep Pavone as back high guard.” She was going to offer the merchant ship captain a meal as thanks for acting as bait but not until they were completely safe in orbit. She watched as the two smaller warships lit up space, they surged forward under power to assume their position in front of the lone merchant. As she watched, the freighter sped up a little to fall into perfect alignment. She definitely owed that woman a good meal and beer.

Caccia was content to enjoy the moment, knowing that some of the other ships they had come out with weren’t going to be as lucky as she was.

“Ma’am!”

She snapped out of her woolgathering and focused on her data. A tiny ship, an old frigate, was making a beeline straight for the freighter. A small but tiny threat, a definite warship, even if an outdated one. As she watched, she felt a slight pang of panic which she ruthlessly shoved aside; this ship was barely a threat to her destroyers, let alone her cruiser. This was not Uno, and these scum were not attacking her home but they were attacking her freighter.

The two destroyers peeled off before she could give orders, vectoring to intercept the tiny pirate. The pirate continued to close for longer than necessary, more bravado than sense perhaps, before it turned and began to run. Caccia shook her head, that had been an extraordinarily bad move on the pirates' part, perhaps they had thought the crews weren’t paying attention or had been some other type of civilian shipping. Whatever they had thought, it was going to be the last mistake they ever made. As she watched the destroyers were piling on speed to overtake the frigate. The smaller ship didn’t have the engine size and power to escape.

Something about that made her frown. Why had the frigate attacked? Unless that ship was older than it looked, it should have sensed the power readings coming off her ships, hell the simple fact that they had been stealthed up until recently should have made it clear that they were not to be trifled with. The memory of that one exercise, where she had been too focused on her opponent to see the big picture. Her ship was under threat from a bigger opponent while she focused on the small fry.

She hit the general quarters alarm before activating a command override of the coms system to both of her destroyers. “Both of you reverse course immediately! There’s a bigger threat coming!”

As soon as Caccia finished speaking, no less than three contacts lit off their drives and surged forward.

“Give me details!” She snapped.

“Looks like what the Novu Navy would call a light cruiser, a destroyer and another one of those frigates.” Tactical reeled off immediately. “All older ships, probably more lightly armed than modern vessels but combined could be dangerous.”

She had stumbled into a well-laid trap. And now she was going to have to match her cruiser against these three pirates while her destroyers desperately tried to get back to support her.

“Com, tell our merchant she is to accelerate as fast as she can towards the planet. I know it's not fast but if she can pull out of range then she’ll be safe in orbit.” Caccia took a deep breath, sat up straight in her command chair. “Now helm, I want you to ram us straight down their throats. tactical, we are going to be launching missiles and following them in as fast we can, adjust your missile spread for that and we better take out their cruiser on the first pass, you understand?”

“Yes Ma’am.” The tactical officer responded as Pavone twisted in space and began to accelerate towards the pirate cruiser. Caccia watched the range drop, she trusted her tactical officer to launch at the right time, though she had an itching need to launch now, attack now even if doing so wouldn’t result in anything of substance. “Launching now!” They called and four missiles separated from her ship to race towards the pirates. She couldn’t help a check of their target, but was relieved to see they were all targeted on the pirate cruiser.

Then the missiles exploded. Caccia didn’t even have to time ask what had happened because those missiles had been no where close to their target when an ear shattering alarm made her instinctively clap her hands over her ears; Pavone’s course slewing wildly as the computers sensed that something was too close to the ship and attempted to compensate much faster than most humans could react. When the alarm died down she looked over to the helm officer and he looked as pale as a ghost. In fact he was shaking as he turned to look at her. “We barely avoided collision with a ship coming out of hyper.”

“What ship!?” Caccia asked incredulously as she looked at the contact in her holograms. “Aren’t we too far in for that?”

“It looks like a Novu Navy Atmosphere-class.” Tactical reeled off instantly. “I don’t believe it's any of the ones that came out with us or else our system would have identified it immediately.”

“But, Admiral Tobin told us there wasn’t anything heavier than a Novu light cruiser out here. There's no way they misplaced an entire battlecruiser.” Caccia watched as the battlecruiser twisted in a turn so tight the crew had to be feeling sick from it, the pirates trying to turn tail and run. “It has to be one of,”

The new battlecruiser turned the blood red of an enemy contact, a label popped up beside the battlecruiser as it slung much heavier missiles into the pirates.

Ionosphere.

“Ma’am what are we going to do?” Tactical asked. “Do we target… Do we target the battlecruiser?”

Caccia shook her head, ignored the fear that clawed at her throat, and surveyed the battle space. The pirate ships were clustered tightly together, much closer than most sane people or untrained helmsmen would try in order to kill the missiles Ionosphere was pelting them with. Her destroyers were double-timing it back to the merchant, who was, like she was told, pushing her drive all out, the strain on the civilian equipment obvious as she adjusted vectors to stay well away from the battlecruiser now in their mist. Her ship was still headed towards the pirates but not doing anything.

“Helm, swing us opposite of Ionosphere. We are going to pin those pirates between us and destroy them.” She turned to face the tactical officer. “You make sure nothing more of ours hits that battlecruiser, am I clear?” When the officer began to protest she cut them off “Am I Clear Lieutenant?” She snapped.

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Good, now vector us in and fire our energy mounts once in range.” Caccia watched as Pavone moved, vectoring out to cut the pirates off from being able to engage their hyperdrives without challenge. She watched as Ionosphere began to push in and under the pirates, which herded them right towards her ship. The range dropped, the numbers turned green, and then “Fire!”

Pavone’s energy mounts, two powerful laser cannons mounted in her forward nose, fired, the first target was the frigate, the tiny ship vaporized from the energy, it's weak shields no match for modern energy weapons at even extreme range. A second passed then another shot hit home on the cruiser. The pirate cruiser was tougher, the shields degrading with the hits but not falling. On her displays she watched as a bright fireball marked the death of the destroyer that had been tucked away on the other side of the cruiser.

Whoever was commanding over there was no slouch, as they vectored their ship in a way that would bring them in to close with Pavone while keeping their engines out of danger from Ionosphere. It was not a perfect path, but if he could survive a pass from Pavone they might just be able to hyper out. How did she stop that from happening? Her destroyers were still too far away, the pirate cruiser’s point defense and ECM was on point, and Ionosphere wasn’t in quite the right place to get a clean hit on the engines. Caccia knew relying on Ionosphere to stay friendly was a bad idea but how did one call up a psychopath in the middle of a battle to plead for their help? The rogue battlecruiser hadn’t once fired on her cruiser or made any move to hurt her so she assumed for the moment they were on the same side. If she gave Ionosphere the chance, she would take the shot.

“Helm,” She said, an evil grin grew on her face, “I want you to run away, show the pirate our engines, make it seem like we’re scared of them.”

“Commander?” The man glanced over his shoulder at her. “That puts our ship at significant risk…”

“At significant risk of damage and possible death yes I know, thank you for the reminder and note for the log. I fully understand that turning tail to run is a bad idea.” Caccia gave a short chuckle. “The pirate is desperate to escape alive. They thought they had us until that battlecruiser decided to jump in and join the fight. It probably looked like a well-timed trap. We stand in the way of them escaping so if we can bait them into trying to kill us for ‘fooling’ them. Well,” she paused and looked at the helm. “We flip the ship.”

He cringed at that but nodded. “Vectoring away from the oncoming pirate, how long until we flip?”

Caccia held up a hand as she watched her data, the pirate cruiser shifted its course slightly, missiles lept from it's tubes as it began to chase her ship. Point defense easily shot them down, bright fireballs licked at her heels as she ran. She did some mental calculations as she watched, her maneuver had barely taken her out of energy range, so she needed to balance this very carefully. Her eyes flicked over to the status of the inertial dampeners, all green. If she fucked this up her people would be dead for real.

“Now!” She snapped and Caccia was instantly pressed back into her chair, her lungs screamed as what felt like a giant hand pressed down on every inch of her body as her ship flipped end over end to face the pirate, the engines lit and the pressure got worse but the flip did it's job and lined up her nose on the pirate cruiser. Her two laser cannons fired, splashing against the shields of the cruiser.

“We didn’t do any damage, shields only mildly degraded.” The tactical officer said, as she tried her best to not sound terrified.

“We don’t need to.” Caccia replied.

The pirate had not truly understood why Pavone had done what she had. Whatever shields the pirate had installed on their ship were tough and it was obvious that Pavone would have been outclassed by her alone, let alone the two companions they had kept with them. Her end for end flip was just as unused out here as anywhere else as you did not want to break a dampener and her energy mounts would need much more time to burn away the shield.

Pavone needed the pirate to flinch. Flinch they did, a helmsman too frazzled by the battle and unexpected move they had briefly checked their acceleration before resuming their forward charge.

It was all that was needed. Ionosphere blazed in from behind, her own energy weapons shredding the shields to blast open the engines like a used tin can as the battlecruiser shot past the cruiser. Even as she watched the cruiser spat out a few pitiful escape pods, the pirate’s energy signature went dark as they shut down the reactor in an attempt to fix it. But with their engines destroyed, they could not go into hyper. She looked over the space around her again. Her destroyers had settled in behind the merchant, covering the civilian from the only threat left, which was Ionosphere. The frigate that had started this whole debacle was nowhere to be seen, so she assumed it had jumped away for their own safety.

Caccia watched the Ionosphere pull a wide lazy arc in space so it could come to rest relative to Pavone.

“We are getting a com request from the Ionosphere. It's addressed to ‘Commanding Officer, unknown cruiser.’” The com officer said. She took a moment to gather her nerves.

“Put it here,” she pointed to one of her screens around her chair and it immediately lit up. A pale woman with an angry red scar under one eye sat in a Novu style command chair, the black skinsuit unmarked with the usual rank markings. Her helmet was off and she lounged back confidently in her chair, a small smirk on her face. “This is Commander Aminta Caccia of the TSS Pavone, how may I help you Admiral.”

The smirk grew a little. “Ah you’re a TriStar ship! I thought with those Novu destroyers you might have been a new design for the Solarians.”

She swallowed nervously. “No Ma’am, those are Zenzero and Timo.”

The Admiral nodded, “Good to see smaller nations growing their navies, even if it is with Novu tech. I have to admit to being impressed with your skills. A little squeaky around the edges I assume as last time I had info on your nation you didn’t have cruisers, but that flip maneuver took some guts to pull off. Not many ship handlers have it in them to do that, tell your helm officer that.”

“I will Admiral.”

“Oh and before I go Commander.” The Admiral’s smile widened. “Next time you need to sneak in-system to try and lay a trap, make sure your equipment is properly locked down. Your destroyer COs were chatting too much and I easily picked up the transmissions from one of my sensor drones out here. The pirates seeded the system with a drone system of their own so they knew exactly where you were and what you were doing long before they attacked. It was no accident that the first frigate pulled off your destroyers in the way it did.”

Caccia was confused, why was Desson wasting time using this like a teachable moment? From all reports and warnings, Desson should have blasted them out of the sky with the pirates she just helped her kill. She wasn’t, however, going to ask why she had been spared. “Thank you Admiral, I will keep that in mind.”

“Good! Now be careful, next time I have to save you I will charge you enough credits to bankrupt you.”

Hornraiser’s Confederacy

Zenith Star System

NSW Liberty

Admiral Dimitry Tobin sat back in his office as the recording finished it's play through.

“How did she do that?” His flag captain, Captain Alicia Motoro glared at the recording. “I used to be a pretty good ship handler back when I was young but the math for that sort of emergence from hyper should have killed her when she smacked straight into Pavone!”

“Captain Motoro has a point.” Captain William Becker, Tobin’s chief of staff, said. “Even with her own drones in position to feed her data, one wrong twitch by Caccia or a misplaced decimal in the hyper jump calculations and both of them would of been dust. Never mind the fact she rammed straight into Pavone’s missiles!"

“And with no apparent damage. TriStar cruisers use our heavy cruiser missile designs so that should have made a dent in even her shields!” Tobin sat up and quickly summoned the stats and layout of an average Atmosphere-class battlecruiser. He then brought the Ionosphere beside that hologram, power readings on the shields, weapons, missiles, everything that Pavone had picked up while the two ships had fought the pirates together. His gaze flicked between the two and waited for someone else to draw the conclusion.

“That… is strange.” Motoro said slowly. “More powerful shields, stronger energy mounts and sensors accurate enough to let her jump in from hyper literally a meter away from a ship without dying? Those are some massive improvements on the Atmosphere design. Even the Event-class battlecruisers aren’t that good and that design just got deployed out of the testing yard last year!”

“And Callisas might be good, hell,” Becker made a throwaway motion, “I’ll even admit their ships could probably match our own quality wise, but they are not better. There’s no way Desson got those improvements from Callisas.”

“Then who can she be getting the improvements from?” Motoro turned to Becker, “Those Freedom lunatics have always had worse shields than us, the Treos Clusters are about two generations behind even Callisas, and the Confeds?” She laughed harshly, “absolutely not them, as they can’t even hold together long enough to agree on technology standards before someone is trying to cede again.”

Tobin shook his head. “We’ll have to ask if we can capture her." He waved away the representations of the battlecruisers and smiled. “Good thing Commander Caccia did not tell Desson we were here. Alicia,” he turned his attention to Motoro, “I want you to prepare the ship for a jump back to the end of the Free-Confederacy Trade Route, but plan the jump as if we were sneaking up on it, if too many arrivals see us, they will spread the word of our arrival too fast.”

“Is this a single ship jump or a fleet?”

“Fleet. We are bringing all the ships still with us in system on this little trap.”

Motoro nodded and Tobin looked at his chief of staff. “I want you to get I touch with the Zenith Government Authority and warn them we are leaving them to their own devices for a while, but put our departure time at 2300 hours tomorrow,”

“Are we really going to be taking that long to get ready Sir?” Becker questioned.

“No, I want us out of here at 2000 hours, enough time that it will give any spies or sources time to report the wrong departure time, but not enough time to correct it.” Tobin shrugged. “I trust the Zenith people, they have always been good to Novu Sol, but sometimes sacrifices must be made. Now get going.” Tobin clapped his hands together. “We have a traitor to catch!”