Chapter 8: The Second Great Pirate Cleanup

Chapter 8:
The Second Great Pirate Cleanup

 

TWO DAYS AFTER Serena submitted her request, the battle arrived. We were on our own this time—no Imperial Fleet was going to back us up. That was just fine by us. Serena got her Pirate Hunting Unit prepped, pretended to head to a different system, and then hid in the Arein System in preparation for an ambush.

We’d covered our tracks well. The briefing went out on a prerecorded holo-message in case our comms got tapped. The whole unit synchronized, so we could exit FTL travel all at once and launch right into the attack.

“Hiro, it’s almost time,” Elma informed me.

“Yep. Mimi, are you ready?”

“I’m ready anytime!” Mimi said.

We were in the Krishna’s cockpit, waiting for the battle to begin. I switched the generator output from standby to travel as we cruised among our fellow mercenaries. Like them, we would be using FTL drive to head to the scene of the battle.

“This’ll be our first real battle in a while,” Elma said. “Are your skills still sharp?”

“Probably,” I said. “How are things looking over there?”

“Look, buddy. Controlling generators and subsystems is my forte. Who do you think I am?” Elma grinned at me, cocky as ever.

As for me, I might have a little rust to kick off at the start of the battle, but I’d been keeping up my training in those simulators, so I should still be sharp.

“Charging now,” Elma said. “Five, four, three, two, one… Faster-than-light drive now charged.”

A boom cracked through space, and the Krishna jolted into FTL travel. The sound always got me. How did it even occur when space was a vacuum? My research had turned up little but vague references to interference with the shields and materials of the ship.

Ah, whatever. Forget all that. I could use my phone, computer, electric range, and TV without knowing how they worked. Thus, I could move a ship without knowing how it worked too!

“Wonder how much we’ll make this time,” Elma said.

“Let’s see,” I said. “The fixed pay is 50,000 at the end of the battle, while our piecemeal pay is 5,000 per small craft, 20,000 per medium, and 100,000 per large.”

“That’s the same as before, isn’t it?” Mimi asked.

“Yeah,” Elma said. “That’s fair market price, plus we get to keep the bounties and cargo from the ships we take down. Skilled pilots get more money, so mercs are always eager to help out, especially since those pirates flee their little nest with ships full of cargo.”

Pirates knew to get out while the getting was good, but they hoarded whatever they could as they escaped. Maybe they’d be better off traveling light for maneuverability, but that meant abandoning all their treasures as well as their base—a lose-lose either way. It made sense to try to cling to their valuables while escaping, so they could eventually sell off the loot and attempt to regroup.

“It’s about time to go wild. Think Serena will be okay?” I asked.

“Probably,” Elma said. “She’s a good soldier, if nothing else.”

“Ah ha ha…” Mimi laughed wryly at Elma’s careful wording. The scene from a few days ago was still fresh in our minds.

“We’re almost at our destination,” Elma said. “Exiting FTL in five, four, three, two, one…”

Another boom snapped through the quiet of space as blurry streaks of stars settled into pinpoints. It took mere heartbeats for the Pirate Hunting Unit to launch their attack after exiting FTL. The battleship and cruisers tore through the base and any structures around it with a blitz of large-bore lasers, plasma cannons, and railguns.

“They’re flashy, aren’t they?” I mused.

“I don’t see many ships coming out,” Elma said. “The ambush definitely worked.”

“Do you think we’ll get any prey?” As much as I wanted to succeed, having all the pirates go down inside the base meant no money.

We shifted the generator to battle-ready mode and accelerated toward the pirates’ base. Other mercenaries rushed in alongside us.

“There are signals on the radar now,” Mimi reported. “The pirate ships are launching!”

“Fantastic. Looks like pirates are back on the menu, girls.”

“Putting weapon systems online now,” Elma said.

The Krishna shifted around us, deploying four weapons arms, each bearing a heavy laser cannon. Two flak cannons emerged from either side of the cockpit as well.

“Here we go, ladies!” I roared, launching the Krishna into battle.

 

***

 

“Three enemy ships at ten o’clock, at our elevation!” Mimi announced.

I locked on to the enemy ships, checking their angle and speed. They were heading this way.

“We’ll pass by them, swing around, and shoot them from behind,” I said.

I pointed the Krishna right at the enemy ships and accelerated, brushing past. A burst of lasers and multi-cannon fire pattered against the hull but did little actual damage to us.

“Brace for G-forces!” I said.

I kicked on the thrusters and banked into a 180-degree turn. It swung us around behind the enemy, but the G-forces shook the whole ship. I gritted my teeth, fighting to maintain control.

“Enemy ships ahead!” Mimi warned me.

“Let’s mow ’em down,” I said.

With us sneaking behind them, two tried to escape to the sides, but I showered them in heavy laser fire. A final ship whizzed away in a straight line. He must have been desperate, but that wasn’t enough to save him.

“That makes three.”

Fire erupted from the cannons by the cockpit as countless bits of shrapnel rained down on the pirate ship from behind. The ammunition cut through their shields like a hot knife through butter and ate through the ship’s thrusters, then its energy pipes, and finally its main generator. Instant Swiss cheese. I zipped past the three exploding ships and searched for my next mark.

Elma smiled at me. “You don’t seem rusty at all.”

“You think?”

“Three o’clock, twenty degrees upward,” Mimi said. “Six… No, seven enemy ships. Two of them are medium craft.”

“Are you gonna charge in?” Elma asked.

“You know it,” I said. “I’ll let you decide when to use the chaffs and flares.”

“Understood,” Elma replied.

I activated the thrusters and aimed for this new cluster of prey. The pirates noticed and hopped on their comms.

“Enemy approaching… Uh, the hell? Their ship’s got arms,” one pirate said.

“Arms? Let me see that. Gah, it’s that monster from before! He’s bad news! Run, run, run!”

“Run where?! There’s nowhere to run!”

“Just kill him before he can kill us!”

Six ships turned and barreled toward me at once. Two looked like transport ships repurposed for missile support.

“Let’s start with the medium craft,” I told Mimi and Elma.

“Yes, sir!”

“Gotcha, boss.”

“Fire, fire, fire!” one enemy screamed. “Give ’em all ya got!”

A warning siren blared in the cockpit: heat-seeking missiles, the pirates’ most dangerous weapon. They could follow us no matter how we dipped and dodged.

“Releasing flares!” Elma shouted. She launched the flares, hoping to confuse the missiles into seeking out these new heat sources instead of us. In the meantime, the Krishna wove through the darting missiles.

“Do it again!” a pirate roared.

“Activate point-blank defenses!”

“Stop them!”

“It’s too late, my guys,” I said with a low chuckle.

The medium craft attempted to release more missiles, but it was too late. I unleashed my flak cannons on them, slashing through their shields and plating to strike the missiles still aboard their ships.

“Waaaaargh?!”

One of the medium ships exploded in a bloom of fire. The other pirates wavered.

“O-oh, shit.”

“We gotta split!”

Elma’s gaze flicked to me. “You’re not just gonna let them go, right?”

“Absolutely not. We kill all pirate scum.”

I doused them in heavy laser fire, circled back around, and blanketed the rest in flak. Do I enjoy slaughtering people with no will to fight? Yes, I do! I get money, and I get to clean up some space trash. What could be more fun? Ahh, the sweet taste of justice.

“Heeelp!” one pirate screamed.

“No,” I said. Perhaps this was overly harsh and cruel, but letting these vermin live would only cause more suffering for someone else down the line.

“Area cleared,” Mimi said. “The next-nearest ones are at ten o’clock.”

“Let’s go.”

“Right!”

We turned the Krishna toward its next battlefield.

 

***

 

“How’s the battle going?” I asked.

“The ambush seems to have worked. There is no substantial counterattack.”

“Good. Let each captain know to continue their work calmly.”

“Yes, Lieutenant Commander!”

We overwhelmed the pirates instantly by destroying their base’s hangar in our first strike. However, that was only their largest. A few pirates still managed to launch from the other ones.

Not that it mattered. Our mercenaries were waiting and eager. They were mopping up any pirates attempting to flee the sector.

Our little experiment here could not be going much better. Usually, only one branch of the military would patrol each star system. In fact, conventional wisdom dictated that the military did not hunt pirates directly. A force like this—one designed specifically for pirate hunting—was a first in the Empire’s long history. And since we weren’t communicating with other branches of the military, we kept our plans a secret and caught the pirates completely unaware.

“Let’s see how the rewards are looking.”

I tapped the holo-display to check on the scores of the mercenaries. In first place was the Krishna, his ship. A grin pulled at my lips, but I covered my mouth to contain it. I couldn’t go gloating over a single pilot.

Besides, this battle wasn’t over yet. We still had to expect the unexpected.

 

***

 

“That about does it, huh?” I asked Mimi.

“Area cleared,” she confirmed. “I don’t see any other pirates nearby.”

The battle raged on in other sectors, but our radar was clear. The only blips appeared far away from our location.

“How many did we kill?”

“Our score is thirty-three small craft and three medium craft,” Elma said.

“So we didn’t get as much as in Tarmein, huh?” Pretty sure we did way better there. Am I rusty after all?

“If there aren’t that many ships, then there’s nothing we can do,” Elma said. “I’d say you did great.” The sector was certainly clear of pirate activity. Maybe that ambush worked a little too well.

“Fair enough,” I said. “So 5,000 per small one and 20,000 per medium. That puts us at 205,000 Ener, right?”

“Add 50,000 for our participation reward,” Elma said. “Then bounties should be counted separately.”

“I think small craft are usually around 10,000, while mediums are around 50,000. Add in the participation reward and that should be 500,000 on top of our base reward, right?”

“Just about. Sounds like our total is 700,000 or so, huh? Along with whatever we harvest from their cargo.”

“We’d better put our backs into that cargo-collecting,” I said.

We got straight to work on that, rummaging through the destroyed ships in search of Rare Metal and high-tech goods. Alcohol, drugs, and other luxury items would also be a good score. The drugs were illegal, of course, but acquiring them this way and selling them off after the battle was no crime.

I never did quite understand why the fleet paid such a high price for drugs in particular. Maybe they just didn’t want them floating around as space debris? If we didn’t recover them now, then containers of the stuff would drift around the system. That could make it easy for scavengers to scoop them up instead. They always swept in after a battle like vultures picking at a carcass. Some mercs really hated the scavengers, and I didn’t particularly care for them either, but there were worse things out there in the universe.

“I’ll keep watch. Elma, could you teach Mimi how to work the recovery drones?”

“Aye-aye, Captain. Mimi, let’s do this.”

“O-okay.”

Elma used all sorts of sensors to start searching through our prey. Meanwhile, I steered the ship to where we needed to go.