Unknown Heroes - Chapter 19 (Complete)

[Warenwolf]

This is the penultimate chapter in the first part of UH. In the next chapter I will try myself for the first time on describing larger space battle. We'll see how that goes but for now enjoy the chapter 19!

Edit01: Mailo pointed out a mistake.


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Links to other chapters:

Chaoter 18: Soldiers and Pirates
Chapter 17: Shades of Grey
Chapter 16: Pieces of Chessboard
Chapter 15: Machinations
Chapter 14: Sins revealed
Chapter 13: Cargo to die for
Chapter 12: Demons in Paradise
Chapter 11: The Elysium
Chapter 10: The Khaak
Chapter 9: New Player
Chapter 8: The Hunt Begins
Chapter 7: Among the Rogues
Chapter 6: Anger of the Giants
Chapter 5: Awakening of the storm
Chapter 4: Trade run to Hell
Chapter 3: Old connections
Chapter 2: Means for revenge
Chapter 1: First kill



The glossary of Unknown Heroes
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Anger of Split




The famous, or infamous as its opponents would quickly be to correct one, AP5* station, Navy’s huge installation orbiting the homeworld of the Argon people, the blue planet Argon Prime, was a source of both wonder and speculation. Its ancient motto – “To Serve And Protect” was prominent above the docking tubes, illuminated by ghostlike green light. It had been source for inspiration in countless Argon spy books, action and thriller movies. Not to mention the countless conspiratorial theories. It was a station that was known to every Argon in the Federation, despite the fact that many people have never seen it and those that have had done so from 20 km.
If they had tried to approach any closer they would have found out that the Navy had no tolerance for unwelcome visitors. Unauthorized breach of the security zone and refusal to remove oneself within 15 sezura resulted in massive fire from the impressive four weapon platforms that orbited the AP5 as small deadly moons. And of course the Navy had stationed a fairly sized fleet of fighters, gun barges and corvettes to further discourage and if necessary repel anyone with bad intentions.
What most people did not realize was that reality often exceeded the fantasy, Colonel Forsyth thought as he was sitting in his favorite place, panoramic section as it was called. Conspiracy fantasts often thought too small when conjuring their conspiracies. In his tradecraft he often found that enemies in reality never did try to storm the gates of the “fortress” AP5 - instead they often be found inside, scheming and plotting. His section was usually spared political machinations until recently and Forsyth thought longingly on the times with Split and Paranid infiltrations and operations. Those times seemed so simple now. How can one fight the people who have all the aces up in their sleeve, the Colonel asked himself as he watched through the window the planet below. It always calmed him down to watch the blue planet. He did not know why. Perhaps it was because it seemed so serene, clean and undisturbed. Even in his office, the Colonel had arranged for video feed of the planet to be linked to his large screen covering the wall behind his chair.
“Still blue?” voice beside him asked.
“Eh?”
“The planet,” Jane Freedman explained.
“Yeah”
“We got verification of the information my informers have provided”
“Erich Campbell is the new leader of Black Gang”
“Positive. Otto Dahl is his right hand. We don’t know if the Split and Boron play any significant role or are they simply sidekicks”
“Doesn’t really matter. It is Erich Campbell that is important”
“We got him where we wanted. Do you want me to squeeze him?”
The plan that Jane had purposed to Colonel Forsyth was to offer through intermediaries to Erich something he couldn’t refuse – leadership of the Black Gang pirate clan. Then the plan was to put Erich in a position where he would be force to cooperate with agency. The tricky part was that everything had to be done outside the official channels, far out of the eyes of the Senator McCarthy Senior.
“I was wondering if we haven’t simply created further headaches,” Colonel said.
Now it was Jane’s turn to looking questioningly at the Colonel.
“You heard about the operation “Interceptor”? It was mentioned in the memo you received last wozura”
“Yes, operation aimed at interrupting Split supply runs to the pirate clans in Federation and the Boron Kingdom”
“We were supposed to intercept in Danna’s Chance system a convoy of weapons to the smuggler base somewhere in Atreus Clouds. The plan was then to sell the weapons to smugglers running operations in Paranid space”
“To further undermine Split- Paranid relations…”
“Exactly. We know that Paranids are fully aware that Split had been shopping weapons from Teladi and the ever paranoid Priest Dukes would quickly suspect Split who true to their nature would refuse to even talk about the matter”
“What happened?”
“Erich Campbell happened. The convoy was obliterated. Trondheim Station reported a short battle. Survivors that reached the Trondheim had contradictory claims. The guys at weapon section believe that weapon platforms were used, being towed in place by Pirates beforehand”
“That’s bad…”
“Very bad…Guess where The Master, as Mr. Campbell calls himself nowdays, is selling the captured weapons?”
“Kingdom space?”
“Exactly. Boron are confused by the fact that we had not held our promises of no more weapons to pirates, Split are angry for loosing entire convoy, entire intel community is soul-searching itself thinking how the situation could fail and only Paranid are chuckling. Teladi have once again offered top notch, very cheap, pirate busting weapons only produced in Teladi Company factories.”
“Now I am happy that our little plan never reached archives”
“Me too. Otherwise our heads would be rolling, “ Colonel said and then smiled, ” Well, yours would… Mine would have been presented on silver platter to certain esteemed senator”
Jane Freedman did not chuckle.





“Teladium paneling was sold without problems!” Ni Lan happily announced busting into the office. The last wozura had seen three successful raids bringing on more goods to the station than entire last six mazuras. The halls, rooms and every corridor aboard the small station were filled with captured stuff. Even in the office two boxes containing four Hornet missiles were stored.
The rumors of the Black Gang’s successes spread like wildfire in the dry grass and pirates that had left the clan came back in droves along with few new faces. Erich had Professor on the screening duty – the Boron did not allow any known friends of Douglas aboard. Douglas and his men complained but there was little they could do. The Master’s rule was absolute. Using the core made of the seven pilots that had joined them at their very first raid they recruited further men deemed loyal to the new masters of the Black Gang. Soon every corridor, docking bay and section was under careful guard of the men loyal to the Master. Erich equipped them with SLRs, making sure that everybody knew that they had orders to fire to kill. Some men were disgruntled by the new order imposed – they preferred old chaotic conditions. But the moment they could overthrow the new leadership had passed. Of the pirate population of sixty men, Professor assured Erich that forty backed him up completely.
“At least that would clear some space up in docks,” Erich said.
“Needlessly to say let us suspend the raids until we offload the stuff we got,” Otto commented.
“Agreed. This station is cramped already as it is”
“It wouldn’t be so if we could force Douglas and his scum through airlocks,” Ha’nt hopefully suggested.
“Not yet, time is not right,” Otto rejected Split’s idea.
“At least you are thinking about it,” Ha’nt said satisfied that humans were seeing the reason at last.
“We need cannonfodder,” Otto pointed out.
A sound announcing someone outside the door sounded. Professor entered the room carrying number of PDAs.
“I apologize for disturbing you Argons, Split and fellow Boron. I bring news to the Master. I have convinced around twelve pilots to change their ships to the Bayamon ships”
“Excellent, good work Professor,” Erich said. The problem of the reserve parts still remained and another reason for stopping further raids was the fact that most fighters used by Black Gang was ancient designs that were falling apart. Erich offered to trade in their spacecrafts into newer types, mostly Elysium produced Bayamons. But pilots showed a counterproductive affection to their ships, many of them refusing Erich’s offer. Still Professor had maid some progress. The twelve pilots, all of them heavily in favor of Erich’s new style of leadership would be equipped with newest type of Bayamon, equipped with excellent cockpits and sensor kits. The Bayamon was a ship that offered more fire power than contemporary medium fighters, especially the new variant with improved recharge power plants of same type used in Otto’s and Erich’s own Bayamons. But the main reason for the new ships was the ease on logistics. Using same type of ships allowed Engar Danton to buy new parts for the ships cheaper since he could place large orders at Elysium.
“I just came to inform you about this and now I will leave you in peace,” Professor said bowing and leaving the room. Behind him Otto, Erich, Ha’nt and Ni Lan continued making plans for the future.

Professor walked away from the office through the corridor leading to the docks, greeting couple of pirates on the way that he knew well. Before taking stares down to the docks, he turned to deserted corridor leading to the escape pods. He carefully observed whether anyone followed him before proceeding further.
He entered the room containing the escape pods, removed one box of Bofu that was standing in the way and then started to remove on of the wall panels. After using few mizuras on his task, the panel fell away, revealing a number of message drones. He selected one of the drones and put the panel back in its original place. Professor listened once again to be sure that he was alone. He quickly loaded the content of a memory disk into the drone’s memory and opened one hatch. The small room where escape pod should have been was empty. He placed the message drone in there and closed the hatch. Checking if it had closed correctly he then pressed the button that would open the outer hatch. The air being sucked out also pulled the message drone out in the space. Professor closed the outer hatch again and pressed a button on his PDA that would activate message drones engines.

The message drone was produced specially for black ops missions. Its engines remained inactive while a compartment opened conserving compressed air. Using the expansion of the air as propellant, message drone navigated through asteroid belt away from the station. Once its passive sensors no longer detected emissions from active scans, it fully powered up and set course for Elisa’s Elysium.





Two Zmajl Split corvettes, codenamed Dragon by Argon, entered the Hatikvah’s Faith’s North Gate, setting their speed immediately to max, ignoring the safety rules.
One of the corvettes almost clipped a Paranid freighter in two, who only narrowly avoided destruction.
The Strike Leader Korttal t’Mrkt* gave a hand sign of disproval to the captain of the corvette. He was not concerned about wellbeing of a creature such as a Paranid captain. But that of his corvette was another matter. He did not want to take a damaged ship into battles that would follow.
The Strike Leader came from a family that was clients to the Patriarch’s own family Rhonkar. He had much to live up to. All of his ancestors had managed to achieve the coveted positions among the elite unit “Patriarch’s Own” and so far Korttal had managed to make great strides in that direction. This mission was one more step on that path.
The Council of All Families* had sent him on this most glorious mission and saw it fitting to give him the command of the newest variant of Zmajls, the third iteration in the corvette’s development.
Korttal felt proud as he watched on the screen the two corvettes and their Mamba fighter escort. They split in traditional blade configuration, intended to offer least targeting opportunity for potential attacker from group’s 12 o’clock while simultaneously providing to all Split ships opportunity to fire simultaneously at the attacker.
Bloodshed and Bloodfeud could both easily destroy a medium sized station and wisely used, could cripple a destroyer. Their firepower had been further enhanced by addition of medium torpedo tubes each carrying torpedoes capable of destroying a destroyer or a carrier. But it was the torpedoes that were the real innovations in the design – they were stealthy for 15 sezuras after launch, using technology stolen from Paranid by brave Split infiltrators.
The two ships were fitting tools for the coming tasks, Korttal thought. His orders were two fold and he remembered his father’s face, old Battlemaster beaming with pride, when he himself had given his son order. It was a face of pride.
Korttal was to enter the Independent sectors in search for the mercenaries that had been supposed to guard a Split convoy. They had failed in their task and it fell upon Korttal to show how Split dealt with failures. No one was to survive. His second task was to search out the pirates that had ambushed the convoy and thereby humiliated the Patriarch’s Intelligence Service. Their punishment was to be a slow death as slaves after Intelligence Service had dealt with them.
Korttal leaned towards the communication consol, “Attention! This is Strike Leader speaking!”
“What is your bidding, our Strike Leader?” the cry sounded throughout the ship. Korttal knew that similar cries thundered throughout the other ships.
“We face combat against those that have insulted all Split. Every family has seen it necessary to see this insult washed away with insulters’ blood! And the task of doing so has fallen upon us! From now on every free moment is to be spent on training and excising of one’s prowess and spirit! Obey or die!”
“We will obey!” thunderous response resounded throughout the ship.
Korttal looked forward to his tasks, eager to prove his worth to the family and the Patriarch.





Jane’s favorite part of the job was traveling alone in her Discoverer, getting her hands “dirty” as Colonel Forsyth was fond of saying. Well she wasn’t entirely alone. Stella kept her company, whether Jane wanted it or not.
“You are keeping something from me,” A.I accused Jane.
“No, I am not”
“Remember that I am much smarter than you are, almost 1.8 times smarter. I KNOW you are keeping something from me”
“Do you want me to issue the shut up command,” Jane threatened.
“OK. Be that way. But I will figure it out, you know…”
“Last warning…”
“Alright, alright. I will be good girl”
“We’ll see,” Jane said doubtingly. “Shouldn’t we be at rendezvous place by now?” she asked the A.I.
“Yes, I have flown the ship to exact coordinate you provided. No ship spotted… Human error, I would say”
“Keep your opinion for yourself”
“Whatever pleases you, my boss”
Just as Jane was about to retort, the A.I reported, “Contact! 123 degrees at horizontal, vertical 0, unregistered Pegasus, direction 303 at speed of 560”
“ETA?”
“24 sezura”
The unknown Pegasus was on course that would place it within fifteen meters from Jane’s Discoverer for one tenth of sezura. Any other pilot would have changed course so that there would be more distance between himself and other spacecraft but not this one. He or she had to be Jane’s contact.
The Pegasus never slowed down. Fifty meters away from the Discoverer, the small ship lowered shields and dropped a container, never slowing down. Once the Pegasus passed Jane’s ship it accelerated to its maximum stable speed and half mizura later it disappeared from Discoverer’s sensors.
The container appeared to be equipped with small rockets designed to slow it down and eventually stop it. It came to zero speed few hundred meters from Jane’s position.
“Pick up the container Stella”
“Aye, aye Captain”
Few mizuras later, Jane pried open the cold container and retrieved a DSD from it. She then linked a DSD reader to her PDA and started to decode its contents.
“Well since you are using your PDA and not ship’s computers I am assuming that you are trying to keep the contents of DSD secret to me”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You are getting paranoid by each tazura. I am going to have you checked by support guys back at base when we return”
“Yeah right, I am the paranoid one… Well if you are going to keep that secret form me at least turn off the PDA’s comlink. Who knows, I might be able to hack myself inside your precious PDA”
Jane didn’t bother responding to Stella’s tantrum but she did turn off the comlink.
A.I is knowing more than it is showing, Jane thought. She read the messages from her contact on Elysium station. Most of it was the usual stuff that she would file in Navy’s archives. And then there was stuff that would never reach a Navy database. Not unless Colonel Forsyth decided so.
Apparently Erich and his gang had been shopping large amounts of weapons and ships on base, enough to equip large squadron of ships. This was good, Jane thought. At least one thing worked as Colonel had predicted. Jane wondered what Colonels ultimate plan was. Why would Colonel, a man whose job was to eliminate piracy, go long way in creating another pirate?





Zumdahl Peterhansen, better known as Pete among the Black Gang, boringly stared at sensors that showed nothing. He tightened his flight jacket around himself. The temperature was falling quickly in the ship, too quickly for his liking. It was the unpleasant part of any pirate scout’s job – long, powered down ballistic flights with just enough juice to run passive sensors. In this sector it also meant that ship would cool down eventually. The powered down state was necessary for the scout to remain undetected – since every pirate used ships that weren’t registered in the police databases, ships would be branded hostile by freighters’ sensors, thereby alerting the convoy or lonely freighter to the fact that they were followed. The trick was to remain powered down just long enough to prevent frost damaging the avionics and then power up all systems and heat them as quickly as possible before powered down ballistic flight was resumed again.
Damn recon flights, Pete thought as his ship flew parallel to a trade route that apparently every freighter and convoy today gave wide berth. It was always him that ended with those jobs because the old Wolf* was all he could afford, Pete thought. Too slow for recon in combat and too lightly armored for recon in force, he was delegated to scouting the trade lines for targets. Of course that meant that he was only getting crumbles from the raids which made any dream about new ship a distant dream indeed.
The frost began forming on his cockpit window. Pete cursed. It wasn’t supposed to do that. He had to talk to Engar when he returned to station. He cursed again. Another thousand Credits down the drain for this old bucket. Pete was sure that eventually it wouldn’t be missile or laser beam that would kill him. No, it would be the structure of the old Wolf caving in...
“Time to heat up this baby,” Pete thought. He switched on the switch that he had tied up to ship’s various systems startup procedures. Soon every system would be active but to Pete only the heating elements mattered right now. Once warm enough, he decided to allow himself luxury of heat one more mizura. He glanced at the sensors and seeing nothing decided to turn on the active sensors. Might as well be more aggressive in scanning. He turned on the active scanners and slowly turned towards the display. And froze.
A stream of curses was pouring out of his mouth.
Large Orca TL was coming straight towards him. And he knew her. It was Bastal’s Mercenary company’s headquarter ship. The same mercenary group that guarded the convoy that boss’s right hand, Otto himself raided. Pete heard from men that were with Otto that no mercenaries survived the attack. As every mercenary company out there, Bastal used TL class ship to quickly transport them to the places where jobs were to be find and if necessary, getting themselves out if locals decided that they had overstayed their welcome. And now Bastal’s Orca was heading towards him.
Pete quickly focused and extended the range on scanned area in order to localize the pursuing fighters. But there was none. And once Pete checked the status of the Orca, he could see that her shields were low and dropping fast.
“What the…” Pete said. Then a group of ships entered scanner’s range. Two Dragons and group of Mamba heavy fighters were attacking the fleeing Orca. Orca’s shields were dropping fast and her fighter escort seemed gone. Probably destroyed by Split or whoever that was, Pete speculated.
Then next moment Orca’s shields were gone and few shots from Dragon corvettes ate their way through her hull. Two Mambas fired simultaneously two missiles at her engines. Missiles found their target and Orca was now flying on inertia only, incapable of maneuvering. Her attackers continued firing, shredding Orca into pieces not larger that hooverbikes. Not single escape pod was spared.
But Pete never saw this. He was flying on maximum speed back home, powered down, full stealth. This time ignoring the cold.





The Black Gang’s station bustled with everyone preparing for the Split attack that everyone “knew” to be imminent. The rumors started in docks, with a nervous scout spilling out his story the moment he docked. They then spread to the bar and from there to anyone on the station.
Soon someone remembered reading about some Paranid protests to the Split Patriarch. Apparently some Split military ships nearly clipped a Paranid freighter in two when they entered Hatikvah’s Faith. Newsfeeds from MIN were searched for reports on Split movements in Independent space. Two corvettes and their escorts were cruising around the sector, stopping and searching ships and asking questions. Local government, always keen to underline their independence (as long as major powers’ navies were not present), were keeping quiet. Apparently the latest junta of Hatikvah’s Federation decided that Split military wasn’t really trespassing their territory…
With those signs, even the densest among the pirates concluded that Split were after blood and it was easy to deduce whose…
Since the average pirate wasn’t exactly among the bravest of Known Universe’s pilots, half stazura after the news of Split taskforce spread, over half the men were packing their things, ready to leave the station. The corridors were crowded with people moving their belongings to the docks. Here and there people were beaten up as the crowd perceived them to be slowing everyone else down.
In his office, Erich was holding war council with Otto, Ha’nt, Ni Lan and Professor.
“Rats are about to leave the ship,” Otto pronounced, rather unnecessarily as everyone in the room could view the images from surveillance cameras.
“Lets point some weapons their way and convince them otherwise,” Ha’nt said with his hand reaching instinctively towards his laspistol.
“I have to warn you Master that such action would be most unwise,” Professor said with calm but insistent voice.
“Hah! Typical of Boron to be cowards,” Ha’nt snorted. He took out his laspistol and started checking it, convinced that it would be in use very soon.
“They would rise against us if we tried to stop them. And there is more of them than us,” Otto cautioned.
“We can’t just give up this station. We invested good part of our capital in this station,” Erich commented. He was switching through the feeds from security cameras, watching the pirates packing their things.
“So what would you do? Fight?” Otto asked.
“Those Q-ships handled with ease any opposition so far…”
“Yeah, thanks to the element of surprise. What do you think Split will do when they arrive here and see two freighters? They will assume, correctly, that the ships are ours and will attack them. Those shields won’t stand long against two corvettes.”
“If we could just move the station somewhere else…”
“I checked,” Ni Lan said, “this station was once a Rhino class ship but there isn’t much left of the engines. Rudimentary navigational and sensor equipment is still in the command bridge but without engines…” The Boron shook all of his tentacles in an attempt to imitate the human shrug.
Everyone was silent as they continued to watch the people leaving the docks. Then Erich snapped his fingers and smile appeared on his face, “How about a Crab?”
“Like those new Boron station reposition ships?” Otto asked skeptically, “aren’t those kind of rare?”
“But we know where one of those is. You know that Crab that evacuated people from Presidents End when Khaak decided to pay the sector a visit?”
“Sorry, I didn’t see a thing. My life was passing in front of my eyes. Must have been those Khaak things crawling throughout the station we were trying to escape,” Otto answered dryly drawing smiles from everyone else.
“Anyway, I was reading about it two tazuras ago. The same ship is to have demonstration in front of Omicron Lyrae Sector Senator somewhere next week. I say we take the Crab, Ni Lan tweaks the jumpdrive so they can’t follow us and then we jump here”
“Ehh…Old friend, this plan of yours has few weaknesses,” again Otto commented.
“What weaknesses?”
“Well first you have to take over a ship that is larger than a TL type ship with men that only show bravery when it comes to trying out new narcotics. We are talking about men that are totally undisciplined and unskilled.” He pointed to the screen showing people fighting to reach the docks, “ Look. Even the rumor of two Split corvettes is enough to make all of them run for their lives. You are going to take THEM into a commando raid?”
Erich was about to say something but Otto wouldn’t let him, having worked himself up “Please I am not finished. Secondly, the Split are NOT going to wait for you to bring here the Crab ship, unless entire race have rejected their old ways and replaced them with Boron culture while I was gone?”
Ha’nt’s contemptuous snort was the answer for Otto’s rhetorical question.
“And thirdly, how are you going to stop all these men,” Otto pointed to the screen, “all these brave men you are supposed to take on your commando raid, how are you supposed to stop them from running away?”
“I will hold an inspirational speech”
“Good luck with that…”
Erich walked over to the speaker system and turned it on, “Men! This is you clan’s Master speaking. As you already know, we are facing a formidable adversary. I know that many of you think of retreat and escape but I guarantee you that we can defeat this enemy with proper planning”
He watched on the screen reaction of pirates. It appeared as if activity continued as before with cargo being loaded into ships and stream of people walking towards the dock carrying their belongings. Otto shook his head.
“If any of you has doubt in my abilities, let me inform you that defense batteries computers have been instructed to shoot on any departing ship. Any uprising will result in atmosphere being emptied in all sections except this one.”
The last sentence was bluff but only Erich knew that. On screen he could see how everyone stopped immediately. Erich turned triumphantly towards Otto who had arched his eyebrows upwards. Both Ha’nt and two Borons were just as shocked as rest of the pirates.
“This will happen: Two teams will be formed. One is to be trained in close quarters combat by myself. The other is to give Split a nasty surprise. My team will in two tazuras time take over a Crab type ship that will give this station mobility. We will simply jump out of trouble. Anyone having trouble with this may take a walk through the airlock. Master, over and out.”





“Two freighters coming towards us, Strike Leader!”
Strike Leader Korttal leaned towards the scanner display, studying the two dots that represented the two freighters. They were unescorted, bit unusual for this sector. He toyed with idea of giving his fighter escort some extra target practice but eventually he dismissed entire thing. The experience of destroying slow moving targets was infinitely small, definitely not justifying the delay it would cause. After all, he was to rendezvous with a contact in Hatikvah’s Faith system that was to provide them with coordinates with this Black Gang group that have insulted all of Split.
It was fortunate that other races possessed no warrior spirit and therefore was easily seduced by few Credits. Yet another evidence of Split superiority, Korttal thought. Without this information, Korttal would have been forced to spend mazuras combing sectors for Black Gang’s base. Only stazura after he posted notice on local infonets about reward for info of whereabouts of the Black Gang members he got twelve responses including the contact who he was about to meet, which promised Korttal exact position of the pirate clan’s HQ.

The two freighters continued on their course for while and then departed from each other, each taking a different course, thirty degrees from the point of divergence. Each was to pass on the Split ships left and right but no one aboard the corvettes and their escorting fighters gave any thought to the two freighters’ courses. They also didn’t react when the two ships changed their courses to the one parallel to each other with Split corvettes in the middle.

Korttal eyes again wandered to scanner screen. Scanners showed nothing of interest beside the two freighters. They were behaving strange, Korttal thought. What were they doing?
“Missile launch! Inbound!” the tactical officer yelled and battle alarms started.

The Mosquito missiles, modified by Otto to Mosquito 2 version, flew towards the two corvettes then changed their courses to the one that would place them below their targets. They shut down their engines and continued flying on inertia only.

“I want those freighters destroyed! Send the fighters to deal with them!” Korttal sneered at his tactical officer.
“Missiles identified as counter missile type. Harmless to us, Strike Leader”
“What!?”
“They have changed course and turned off their engines. They will pass below us, without harming us, Strike Leader”
“Why would they do that?” Korttal asked aloud. Some trickery was about, Korttal thought. Then he remembered old tale about a battle in war against Boron-Argon alliance. He cursed aloud, startling his tactical officer.
“Call back the fighters! Call back the fighters!” Korttal screamed.

Just as the recall command was reaching the fighters, the first mine activated. It had been lying dormant, disguised as space junk. It contained a directional blast device shaped as cone. The front of the cone was filled with tungsten balls. Once the target had been identified, the mine turned the cone towards it and activated the device. The explosion accelerated tungsten balls to high speeds and the target was showered with swarm of fragments that no shields could stop. Something many of Split pilots brutally found out the next few sezuras.

Korttal watched as one by one the Split fighters disappeared from the tactical display. All was not bad – half of the fighters had managed to turn back in time.
“Missiles are reigniting their engines and are turning towards us, Strike Leader!”

Two swarms of missiles moved towards the two corvettes, accelerating to their maximum speed. The distance between Mosquitoes and their target were less than 550 meters. The missiles traveled that distance in less than half mizura after their engines were started again.

“Hull breach in center section! We lost cannon 1 and port battery!”
“Send out the repair crews. I want counter fire now!” Korttal was shouting his orders. The laser batteries had started firing on their own and that had saved the ship, Korttal thought. He would commend the gunners. Most of the hits had been in the only section of the ship that had double hull. Sealant foam would quickly stop any leaks and after few stazuras of repairs “Bloodfeud” would be good as new.
“Bloodshed” did not fare as well from what Korttal could see on scanner displays. Her shields were gone and one engine was gone. She was also venting atmosphere.
Korttal had to admire his adversary. The two freighters launched these modified missiles under prepared minefields, enticing Korttal into his initial reaction. Fighters took shortest course to their targets – straight into the minefields. It was old tactic, used only twice in the history. Missiles were surprise too. Modified to look like light Mosquito missiles to corvettes’ scanners. He wondered how they managed that. As he watched hostile freighters accelerating rapidly with help of rocket boosters, he wondered how they knew where he would pass. Then it hit him. The contact he was supposed to meet… He never existed. Korttal smiled, despite the heavy damages his ships suffered. His foe was a worthy one. So what if he had suffered defeat now? The coming battles will be good and that warmed the heart of the Strike Leader.





The situation on the station calmed considerably once the news of the victory spread. The crews of two Q-ships were hailed as heroes and were offered free bear in station’s bar – which indeed showed how rest of the clan felt about the latest development.
The stazuras between Q-ships departure and arrival had been tense. Armed with a PMD, Erich held increasingly angry crowd at bay. Ni Lan and Professor were monitoring surveillance cameras while Otto and Ni Lan set up a defense post at the docks. Douglas and his cronies did their best to work the mob into frenzy and they almost succeeded when flight control announced return of “Highway robber” and “Cutpurse”.
“The station would have been a war zone if the Q-ships had returned later,” Otto said to Erich. Once situation calmed, two of them moved to privacy of the office.
“Yeah. It made me also realize that using the pirates in the command raid is out of the question”
“How so?”
“You saw them. Two tazuras ago I felt that the clan was loyal to us. But today everyone was for themselves… Only by threatening their lives did they stay – otherwise this would have been a ghost station by now”
“That is what pirates are. They are hardly efficient against unarmored freighters – once faced by determined opposition they simply desert. The clans are formed by the fact that everyone needs a station to do sell their goods and sleep. This doesn’t really leads to tightly knitted groups, exception being few pirate clans”
“Yeah… And using such people in commando raid is out of the question. We’ll have to relay on only crews of the Q-ships and four of us”
Of all pirates on the station, only Q-ships crews seemed to be loyal beyond question. Perhaps it was due to the fact that they could see efficiency of the new leadership of the clan firsthand.
“You think that Q-ship crews would make decent infantry?”
“I don’t intend to use them in the initial raid. They will be used as prize crew just as in original plan we had discussed.”
“So how do you plan on taking over the Crab? Only you are capable for CQC, I am decent pilot but no elite soldier, Ha’nt is still crippled in his arm and Ni Lan couldn’t hit wall with laspistol half meter away…”
“I know. We have to bluff,” Erich said looking at the screens. Big party was being organized in the bar. People that just half stazura ago were hatching plans to fight their way through Erich, Otto and Ha’nt, so they could escape the station, were now celebrating the Q-ships easy victory over the Split. Once again their new leadership brought them victory. They were happy and loyal. For now…
Otto waited for his friend to continue, saying nothing.
Erich turned his attention to Otto and began explaining, “There was this TH movie I watched while we were on Elysium…”



Continue to the next chapter

[Captain Chris sTc]

A strike on a ship based on a movie. Sounds intresting, and i like the way that the splits arrogance luled them in to a rather violent trap. I guess their not gonna fall for a trick like that again. can't wait to see what happens.

[Mailo]

Just finished reading all chapters.

Very interesting story, really kept me on the edge of my seat, and I'm looking forward to reading more (the trilogy?)

The only criticism I have is that you often omit "the" or "a", though it has gotten less in later chapters.

For example here:

If they had tried to approach any closer they would have found out that Navy had no tolerance for unwelcome visitors

I guess "that the Navy" instead of "that Navy" would be better.

[Warenwolf]

@Mailo

On the triology. I wanted to write totally another story where you would follow two threads, one set now (as in X3 now) and another seemingly unrelated set seven jazuras ago. The link between those two would be Jane Freedman investigating a high profile assassination of industrial leader (Max Rudel). Initially the UH would start with ch2 with reader guessing that Tony was meeting with an assassin (Erich Campbell's name would not have been mentioned).

But then I realized 3 things:
- No way I could make that complex story packed into 2000-3000 words.
- My skills as writer are too limited to be able to pull off something like mentioned above.
- Most readers are not used to such way of story telling (going between two stories set appart by seven jazuras) and would get confused.

Therefore I decided to make Erich main character and take a more linear approuch with him starting as assassin, developing into a pirate clan leader and so on.

About me omiting writing "the" or "a". The thing is that english is not my first or even my second language. I suspect (and hope) that those kind of mistakes will go away with time.

[Mailo]

About me omiting writing "the" or "a". The thing is that english is not my first or even my second language. I suspect (and hope) that those kind of mistakes will go away with time.

I know, I read that somewhere. English isn't my first language either, but since I married a language teacher, correcting mistakes has rubbed off on me a bit. Sorry As I said, in later chapters it's much less noticeable than in the first ones, so you're on the right track

[KiwiNZ]

Great chapter! Very nice battle. Well, it will still be quite a fight if they can't jump out in time. Since not all Mambas were destroyed and only one Dragon partly crippled, it'd be still quite some venture.

Looking forward to the next part!

[Warenwolf]

Great chapter! Very nice battle. Well, it will still be quite a fight if they can't jump out in time. Since not all Mambas were destroyed and only one Dragon partly crippled, it'd be still quite some venture.

Looking forward to the next part!

The next chapter is already out . I added a link to it now.