Post by him on Mar 13, 2022 4:09:25 GMT
Today, like many days, had been perfectly average for Captain Ves'oliq and his trading fleet.
It started with the same time-tested routine of warping back and forth, back and forth, hours of whipping past various nameless systems to deliver bits, bobs, and whatever they could fit on and stuff in his cargo ships to various places, usually out in the middle of nowhere. Then, he gets a digital payment, which would have been enough to cover his retirement thrice over if he wasn't legally required to disseminate it amongst his many, many, many crewmen, and then they go back to the back and forth movements. And eventually, after repeating this several hundred times over, the day ends, they dock at home base, and he goes to his dorm and plays video games or watches TV until he gets sleepy and goes to bed.
Secretly, he hated average days.
Not because he wanted more excitement-he got plenty of that on a day to day basis, having to manage his own little kingdom of cats. And it wasn't because he found them truly, mind-numbing boring; he knew what he signed up for when he applied to be an official mercantilist. No, average days always had some sort of catch, and nine times out of ten that catch was something awful.
For example, a week ago, the particulate dissimiter for the megafuser in one of the more loaded cargo corvettes blew off, and they nearly lost the ship and several around it trying to repair the sucker. Four days ago, they ran into a military training exercise, and were subsequently searched and checked over the course of nine hours, causing a docking to their payments for some spoiled food. Yesterday, the bridge display for his bridge failed, and they had to scrap a spare from their own cargo.
And today, Koa had finally graced him with a pirate ambush.
Right now, they were holding them in a stalemate, as he listened to a clan dropout giving demands like 'give us all your cargo and we'll leave you alone' or 'and also pay us $1200000 or be destroyed'. They were of near-equal numbers to his own fleet-25 of them, and 30 of his. The good news was that most of them were smaller craft-the largest among them was something that looked vaguely like a frigate, and the majority of their shoddily-made hulks were corvette/escort-sized. But the bad news was that their own forces weren't exactly up to spar; of his 30 ships, 14 were military-grade, and the biggest they could afford were a few destroyers. The rest were, like their foes, corvettes and escorts-plenty fine for deterrence and light combat, but not good for any actual combat.
From what he knew of pirate behavior, a pirate fleet this size either meant someone big was in the area, or that a small enclave had gotten particularly desperate. Last he checked, there weren't any freeboot bigshots near any of his routes, so he figured it was the latter. And if that were the case, he'd have to act very, very soon, lest the tardlet who commandeered the lead vessel find him wanting and command his fellow smoothbrains to open fire. But he couldn't just acquiesce, either-pirates were anything but fair players, and every single one he'd read about was the same give-an-inch, take-a-mile sort.
There used to be a stigma about sending distress signals, for various reasons. You weren't a real captain if you couldn't rough them up yourselves, you were wasting your fellow's time, you were a pussy, et cetera ad infinitum. But then word got out that some dumb ship captain became a famous diplomat, and then said diplomat was revealed on live TV standing to the left of their national leader, and suddenly distress signals went from last resorts to normalized and well-regarded merchant fleet protocol.
As he eyed the automated signal transponder button, he wondered how he would filibuster his way into not immediately being fired at by his 'captors'. But, as his third left eye pondered an errant sweat bead trailing down his head, he figured it'd be a moot effort-sooner or later, the shells would have to start flying, and the only question was when. Besides, not like they were as smart as the rest of the galaxy's pirates-if they were, they'd've brought an interdictor, or at least something to jam comms.
His left hand neared the button, slowly, then moved to wipe away a few nonexistent sweat drops, missing a few that definitely did exist. Then, oops, looks like he misjudged where to put his hand, and it looks like he accidentally pressed the one button the now-screaming zet at the other end didn't want him pressing. How inconvenient, how awful.
Now, as he tried to play off his 'mistake' as genuine, and a pirate captain stood on breadth's edge from ordering the destruction of his quarry, a distress signal came into existence and rushed into the deep void, addressed to whomever it may concern.
4 weeks, that's how long they'd been trapped out here now, the Admiral, one Iris Kilmire had been counting the days. She knew they'd be fine out here for a while longer, after all they were an expeditionary fleet, they had the resources to last for half a year in deep space, the only issue was they had no idea where the fuck they were.
She dreaded to think how worried her people were back in the territories, they were the second fleet ordered to go out this far, one of the few able to be loaded with the resources to accommodate it, they were a shining beacon of hope that perhaps the bulwark could still reach and grow like its predecessor in the original universe. She made it her goal to discover and seek out everything in her sight on her course, unfortunately, this also included that damned wormhole.
Probably a remnant from some old war it was a point of great interest to both her and the science ships in her fleet. The idea was that piecing together technology like this would be key to helping the empire discover more about the workings and physics of this galaxy, as well as its mostly untouched history. Her enthusiasm towards such a wonderful and possibly important find was one that she now realised clouded her judgement. She was the one who ordered a closer investigation, she was the one who deemed the wormhole stable, she was the one who ordered that the fleet should investigate the other side first, with as much force as possible, she was the one who didn't consider the consequences, she was the one who watched as the damaged station on the other side fell apart into scrap as they traversed it, she was the one who trapped them here.
As an admiral, she took full responsibility, she was prepared for whatever punishment they could lash out on her back at the ministry, this wasn't her concern, her concern now was getting her fleet home safely. Throughout the 4 weeks they'd simply been trying to find out where they were, all they knew was that they were on the southern side of the galaxy now, they could tell because everything was fucking different. Plotting the stars wasn't so helpful when that golden shining abyss in the centre of the galaxy blocked the view of the only ones they knew about, and to really kick the bucket, there wasn't a single soul down here, it's as if they landed in the perfect space for nothing to be occupying,
despite jumping system to system with utmost caution.
They had to plan each jump, finding systems and chartering the movements of stellar bodies with optics so they didn't end up merging with one. In the complete unknown this made each jump take days of analysis and safety procedure, but it was better than being killed in one of the most humiliating ways any imperial captain can be. And beside, their fleet wasn't cheap, this was a large expedition, 6 ships, 3 science, 3 military, the catch being that the lead ship, the one she was commanding from, was a Great sword-class battlecruiser, outfitted with a more modest armament in return for more scientific and exploration equipment. She was equipped to be able to send a Garrison of exploratory units to the surface of a planet and map a continent in mere weeks, such an ability was one that the bulwark had poured a large deal of resources into, so she had to bide her time to make sure the fleet could navigate without incident.
Now she was sitting, bored, as usual, tapping her fingers on the chair of her command station, waiting for the next jump report to come in, as she had 15 times already. Within the huge octagonal navigation bridge, many officers and commanders were likewise tired of all this waiting, day by day now they were simply following a routine of checks and measures. So when the 1st communications commander received reports of an unknown communication, he couldn't help but rub his eyes for a moment before his face lit up like a bulb. His station was a good ten metres from the admiral's so he used the bridge intra-com to get the message across as quick as possible.
"Admiral Kilmire!" The commander almost shouted down his headset mic, still glancing at the reports to verify what he was seeing.
The admiral responded quickly, there was obviously an urgent matter. "Yes, commander, calm down, what is it?"
"Sorry Ma'am, it's just that...well, the Jade's Dawn is picking up a...distress signal, to our presumed galactic west."
The admiral smiled, finally, civilisation. "Respond immediately, get the captain of the dawn to focus on organising a jump near their position, if you can."
"Of course, Ma'am, right on it!"
The bridge soon began getting a little more active, an early aperture jump meant quick preparations were needed, additionally there was no telling what would be on the other side so a ready state was to be issued across the fleet, this lead the staff to be chattering amongst themselves about combat readiness or deployment of emergency shuttles. Iris knew it could be gamble, but it was either this or being stuck in the void for king knows how many months, there would still be a delay either way however, she prayed whoever sent that call it could hold on for just a few minutes longer.
"-OI AIN'T DUMB! YEW DID 'AT ON PURPUSE, OI SAW WHERE YER 'AND WENT!"
"It was an accident! I didn't mean to, I swear! The button's big and I didn't see where-"
"SCHAT AHP! MY RANSUM'S CHANGED! OI WANT EVRYFINK HERE NOW, OR YER DEAD! YEW 'EAR ME?! D-E-H-D! OI SWEAR, IF YEW DON'T DEW SUMFINK ROIGHT NOW-"
The pirate captain, predictably, was rather incensed with his 'mistake'. And also predictably, he now wanted even more than just cargo and money-now he was asking for the whole fleet, and then some more. But his powers of word-no-jutsu were starting to fail, and Ves'oliq could now feel the tension mounting. He wasn't about to lose his fleet to a pack of bumbling idiots, though, and he did know some more tricks to keep them occupied. Mostly, it was appeasement.
First, money. The promise of Old Reliable usually kept the lid on for a decent amount of time, enough to flee, or get help, or in rare occasions according to lucky or naïve captains get the pirates to leave you alone. But he knew simply jettisoning some hard money wouldn't be effective filler-if they even had any. Thus, a promise of digital payment.
"Alright, shit, I'll start with money! You want money?"
"YEAH! OI WONT ALL OF IT. EVERY STROIKE, EVERY PIECE'A GOWLD, EVERY-" The pirate began counting down every currency he could think of, his face now plastered on the main bridge screen. Notably, he seemed to lack the concept of an indoor voice.
"I can pay you digitally! I-I got my pad, I have Payzen, I can get you your money!"
"-EVERY CREDIT, EVERY SEEGECK, EV-
...wot?"
"Yeah, I can do it digitally! I have money, lots of it!"
"...Whodda yew meen? I wont 'ard munny, nawt numbers on me screen."
"Uh, we're not really paid, in, uh, hard money anymore. It's all digital."
"But oi gawt me a package ov stroikes just last week! You's lyin'! Oi 'ave sum roight 'ere, even!"
He then reached into an offscreen receptacle, and pulled out a handful of strikes, showing them to the camera with a visage of annoyance.
...Except, those were plastic strikes. Given a monochrome metal spray, sure, but he could tell by some that were clearly unpainted molds.
"...Dude, that's play money."
"No it ain't! It's shoiny enuff fer it!"
"There's some unpainted molds. It's play money. You got scammed."
The pirate, after staring incredulously at the captain took a moment to confirm, before finally noticing the few unpainted ones and looking at them like they had just robbed him of all he was worth. As he cursed and threw the now-visible bowl of fake strikes somewhere offscreen, the captain made a note to get a shipment of play money set aside for the next time he had to deal with pirates.
"Den YEW'RE gonna give me reel cash! No numbers fer me! YEW BETTUR STAHRT ACTIN' NOW, YA GIT, OR OI'LL-!!"
Alas, regression. Now would come his next trick.
On the shipping manifest, there were 5 things in bulk they were supposed to deliver-food, electronics, bulk material, small arms weaponry and some personal transports like motor/hovercycles and mopeds. Of those, he figured the pirate in front of him would only care about the last two on that list, and maybe food barring any supplies of runts. Thus, he'd have to jettison those first.
"Okay, okay, I don't have that but I have guns and stuff! I'll get those sent out, just don't fire!"
And as he gave the orders for some jettisoning, in lockstep did large containers of weapons come slowly drifting out of two cargo corvettes, which in turn were yanked away by some ramshackle tugs shortly after.
"Roight, now gimme moar!"
"We, we don't really have more-"
"Schat tha' fuck up, oi can see da lines'a contayners loinin' the inside of yer ships!"
"It's all food and boring stuff, you won't want it!"
"Yeh, dey awl say that! Oi bet yew's secritly a council fleet transpowtin' cool shoite! Now gimme moar, or oi'll start shootin'! NOW!"
He couldn't afford to jettison more, at least not without guarantee of help. Now would come his last trick, and the one he really hoped would work.
"Shit, zet, I can read the whole thing out for you! It's all worthless horseshit, you wouldn't want it!"
"And why shuld oi believe yew on 'at?! Yew got gunz, sow yew got moar cool shoite!"
"That was about the only thing worth stealing! Look, I have it here, I'll read it right now-Food, video games, runt and dog toys, cutlery..."
He actually had two shipping manifests-one was what he had, and another was filled with everything pirates virtually never, ever took. And it was long, so long it could qualify as a magazine and a half. From what he heard, it worked as intended roughly 50% of the time-surprisingly, half of the time the pirates were actually patient enough to listen to every single item on that list before deciding to blow the fleet to smithereens and never look back. He hoped this would be that half, and not the other, and that help would arrive very soon as he eyed the main screen's FTL wake monitor like a nervous hawk, along with likely most, if not all of his bridge crew.
Thankfully, it wouldn't take long, the precious minutes he had bought bargaining and transferring the cargo was seemingly enough. Deep in the bowels of Iris' ship, a huge, multi-stage drive, tended to by hundreds of personnel was already being fired off. A fittingly huge bubble of space-time blew across space, as it reached a critical point of expansion, it snapped into a lightyears-long hourglass, flattened at each end by massive open rings. The lead ship was the only one which needed to do this in an emergency situation, the other ships in the fleet simply fitting through the same aperture as they proceeded onward.
The admiral was on edge as she watched the window into space open, of course she was, there was no way to know what would be going on across the other side, or by how much they'd be in the thick of it. This galaxy was huge, it could be far beyond their capabilities. The only good sign so far was that it didn't open into a rock face or the core of a star, confirmed by the green-state reports flooding into her command console, something she would have very much noticed if this were the case by now, and was also something she'd rather not think about. Instead she kept her attention on the huge triple reinforced window encircling half the massive navigation bridge. Her gaze switched to the view over the front of the ship, then to either side of it, and then back to the various consoles and screens around her station, nerves fried to a crisp at this point.
From the point of view of the Zetyans, they'd quite quickly see a spike in other monitors, but no proper FTL signatures. They didn't have to look into it for long however, the huge 3 kilometre wide, burning blue halo had already pried itself open, almost immediately between the space of the two parties, and not long after, the prow of a fittingly huge ship would begin to emerge.
The RBIV Primrose was already halfway through when it began assessing the situation around them, the tactical team making observations and scans on their surroundings and the other ships. Its monolithic armour plates were painted a faded white with red stripes to signify the expeditionary affiliation, though that would mean little to the Zetyans. Its hull was, despite its role, still bristling with various weapons, rows of broadside cannons, visible torpedo tubes inset into its inverse ramming bow, countless point defence guns, all mostly affixed to a carapace covering over vital parts of the ship, contrasting the busier lighter hull construction underneath.
More ships followed the Primrose out, 3 were much smaller, and painted in all white, barely armed but covered in odd scanning and communications equipment. The other two were about less than half the size of their 7 kilometre long leader, shaped with a rounded nose, covered in an arsenal of smaller weapons and each leaving a glowing, hot trail of orange plasma from the nozzles on their rear. They seemingly also helped the giant see and hear as a veritable assault of EM, thermal and optic scans were projected at everything in the vicinity from every vessel in the fleet, it's clear stealth wasn't their speciality.
Due to this very thorough scanning however, the command crew were able to build a picture of the situation within a couple of minutes, they'd also manage to tap into an open frequency travelling between the vessels, and decided to use it to figure out what was happening, of course using the lead ship to host these communications.
"Greetings! Can you hear me? This is 2nd communications command officer Reddick aboard the Red Bulwark Imperial Vessel Primrose. Our fleet intercepted a distress signal originating from this vicinity, though it appears we have seemingly entered a bit closer to the source than we anticipated. If you're able, please respond and brief the situation immediately so we can provide our assistance!"
By the time the communication was sent, the fleet had entirely exited into the scene, and the aperture behind them collapsed into a fray of fading sparks.
A sigh of relief came from Ves'oliq, and a scream of rage resounded from the pirate as the sudden detection of assorted monitoring devices announced the arrival of their saviors. As he saw them, he didn't quite recognize them-not that he entirely expected to, but given the region they were in he had at least some idea of who was around, and these large red-white hulks bristling with guns and greebles certainly didn't fit any appearance palette he knew of. Nevertheless, the jig was up, and as the two belligerents gave some parting insults and middle fingers, shells and missiles had already begun their journeys into the abyss, addressed to whomever it may concern as the two fleets began to trade them like cards.
From the Primrose's perspective, their damsels in distress had commenced the fireworks by the time they'd gotten the idea of the situation. The distress signal had come from what seemed to be a merchant fleet, half of which were gaudy cargo haulers and the other half a smorgasbord of various military ships, with all sharing a shit-brown color palette and a smattering of exposed interiors on their midsections. The largest among them were 3 large ships that seemed to be roughly equivalent in size to the Primrose, their prows styled like the face of an ancient creature and boasting large cannonry as their 'tongues'.
The aggressors, meanwhile, looked like those ships-if those same ships were harvested from junkyards, put together, smashed apart, and hastily put together again. While the defendants didn't exactly look top-of-the-line, these were just floating junkyards laden with weaponry that looked held together by scotch tape, toothpicks, hopes and dreams. The largest amongst them was a large ship-shaped junkyard with guns, which seemed a tad bigger than the Primrose herself, lacking armor yet no less armed. Yet, despite their frankly offensive build quality, they still had the numbers advantage over their quarry, and it would require immediate rectifying.
The pirates, being pirates, didn't have much concept of tactics. Actually, they didn't have much concept of anything beyond what piracy entailed, and for the few that did they probably just read a few naval training booklets or were naval command dropouts. And with such context, their movements weren't surprising-all guns firing, only moving forward. Like one of those cheap space opera movies, where all they had was a shoestring set, studio lighting and a bad CGI space background. While most of their guns were initially directed towards the merchants, soon enough more and more munitions began to roar outwards to the Primrose and her consorts, heedless of distance or the possibility of hitting.
The merchant fleet, meanwhile, split into two. The cargo ships now began to flee, the seemingly ponderous ships moving surprisingly fast thanks to a pair of large twin engines. Already they had sacrificed a part of their paycheck, and the captain was uninterested in finding out how much they could lose in one day. The military ships, meanwhile, formed a screen to cover the escape of their profit margin, beginning to tank some hits as slugs the size of houses and missiles that could make apartment flats blush rushed past their frames, some being blown up or destroyed by CIWS and laser-based PD mounts and others finding purchase in their hulls.
Normally, they'd be ensuing a flanking maneuver right about now. Most Zetyan pirates were notoriously bad at naval speed-chess, and easily overwhelmed by even simple tactics beyond 'go straight shoot gun win'. But they hadn't possessed the numbers for it, unless in a stroke of madness the captain had decided to use his breadwinners as meat shields.
The keyword was 'hadn't'. But these foreign red ships would suffice indeed.
The captain's response to the Primrose's transmission was rather curt, but given the circumstances it did well enough.
"We got a pirate problem! Quick, flank the shits, they don't know tactics!"
His opposition also deigned to give response to the interlopers, though all it amounted to was slurs, insults and wild gesticulation. At minimum, they at least learned some new swears for this brave new galaxy.
Radar and thermal scan operators looked on in heavy concern as the signatures of cannon fire flared up on their displays. Within a matter of seconds readings were relayed and impact warnings were sent to every major command station of every bridge of each ship. Almost immediately the science ships began to pull away, they were not designed for combat but were more than prepared to hide behind their escorts. The Admiral only had to see the projectile alerts for a mere second before she flipped back a panel on the arm of her chair and slammed her fist against the glowing red button underneath.
The sound of heavy-duty breakers rang out across all decks of the mighty vessel, followed briefly by the sounding of a warning klaxon. Everything was flooded in thick red light as the bridge windows slammed shut, massive armoured plates falling over the otherwise relatively vulnerable glass, in fact, all of the lights on the ships hull began to get stamped out one by one as heavy duty armour fell to protect the already reinforced viewports and decks across the ship structure.
The floor beneath the chairs of the more vital staff opened up, and they quickly descended, at drop-tower speed toward a combat bridge deeper in the superstructure. As they did, the admiral barked orders to the captains of her fleet.
"WE ARE AT COMBAT STATUS, REPEAT, COMBAT STATUS, ASSUME PROPER PROCEDURE. ALL CIVILIAN VESSELS TAKE COVER BEHIND THE PRIMROSE, ESCORTS ALPHA AND BETA FORM VERTICALLY AROUND LEAD. WE WILL PERFORM A BASIC FLANKING ACTION, KEEP PORT BROADSIDE TRAINED AND FIRE AT WILL."
The captain of the primrose, was of course managing things to a more focused extent
"UNDERSTOOD, ADMIRAL. APPLY HI STATUS TO SHIELD UNITS 2 AND 4, TUNE THEM TO KINETICS, ENGINES TO FLANKING SPEED, WE'LL STEER AROUND THEM."
On and on did the list of orders go even as they arrived in the combat command bridge. A huge tactical holographic display in a mostly dimly lit armoured chamber somewhere within the superstructure. across the ship, thousands of crewmembers ran to their stations, worked machinery and computers and stood by on damage control.
Obviously the pirates had gotten the first shots off, and the response from the imperial ships was a lightshow and a half. Hundreds of computer controlled and manually piloted autocannon turrets began tracking or firing at what incoming projectiles they had a sight of, a streaking wall of flak fire following its trail and detonating a good number of slugs early. As their volume of fire increased though, smaller shells would slip through and hit the imperial's hardlight shields, the resulting impact causing the sudden apparition of an individual hardlight hexagon formed to the shape of the hull, which would fade as energy dispersed through the projected structure.
And of course, not a minute later, there was the return fire. The port broadside gun commander made sure the first thing the pirates would see is a full volley. Already in a ready state from the admiral's orders, it didn't take a minute for massive cranes and mechanisms to load the sleek rocket assisted shells into the breeches of the guns. The shots shook the ship, they could feel those guns fire from the bridge, each one after the next as streaks of glowing flame erupted from the side of the ship toward any pirates unlucky enough to have to tank them.
The escort ships fired a swarm of smaller missiles, pre-armed and trained on the bulking signatures of the pirates. The fleet as a whole was already changing bearing, too in fact their whole formation was rotating it seemed, at a reasonable pace of course. Fusion torch engines lit up like cosmic firecrackers as plumes of plasma churned their way out to push the primrose and her allies to increasing speed in a large curve.
As the various cargo ships began to huddle away from the chaos, trickling over to a secluded spot as the lightshow continued, the merchant ships began to feel the burn as they covered for the last few stragglers, a few of the corvettes and escorts starting to show their wear and tear more and more, and the three destroyers now riddled with tiny pockmarks as they returned fire. They weren't anywhere near dire straits yet, but given a little more of this without any change and they'd certainly be rather close.
As he watched the Bulwark forces begin their maneuver, the captain now considered how to proceed, as he watched the various readouts now present on the bridge screen. To simply sit and tank wouldn't be an option for long, even if the pirates couldn't aim very well. But already, their attention had been split into half and half, weakening their offense just a bit. Causing more diversions would be beneficial, he supposed, lower their output more and more. And they had the wiggle room for it now-best to act while their ships were intact and their stowages were full.
An order was soon barked out to the fleet, as the waltz of shells, space and smoke continued around them.
"Group 1, split 1/3rd vanguard, Group 1a, flank opponent, Group 1b, hold position, divert incoming, divert incoming-"
Upon his orders, the fighting half split in two again, imitating the process of mitosis as the splitoff contingent began to flank to the other side of the pirates, bright orange lights muffled by trails of detritus, exhaust and fusion waste generated from their rears like a cosmic sludge trail. A destroyer and some of the smaller ships now saw the stream of fire focused on them begin to disseminate once again, as the other remainder continued to hold their position. Spinal warheads and missiles were now belted off to the foe just as they had received them, and any that were sent back as a return gift had to work through a maze of lasers and CIWS streams.
The pirates, meanwhile, now saw the fruits of their efforts as both sides began to send their hammers into their midst. Their own PD systems screamed into the void as the barrages met them, a flurry of bullet streams aimed at whatever struck their fancy and creating little fireworks as they trailed over shells or missiles that entered their midst. Despite the hail they sent out, the return fire make it's own marks in turn, as slugs of various sizes began to insert themselves into the space hulks wherever they pleased, announcing their arrival with small gouts of flame or burst of orange-reddish light.
The Bulwark response also did their numbers, as the broadside began to hammer into the largest ships like metronome, and the missile swarm finding purchase in the various ships of their line. Though they still moved and fired as if they were unaffected, no doubt soon they would begin to falter and sputter-a sponge can only absorb so much water, after all, and even the most heavily armored ship was no different.
The pirate captain soon became irritated at his opponent's movements, though mostly because he was struggling to remember the solution to it. He read up on it through some half-burnt tactics manual he'd scrimped out from a raid one time, and it mentioned something important you could do to win at stuff. He forgot what it was, though, and the name escaped his memory... something with a 'S' at the beginning and it mentioned symmetry? He mused to find another one like it, in between screaming at his crewmembers to do their thing better.
Along the sides of the leading ships, a series of five hangar blast doors began to open at varying angles and places, which began to bleed out a few swarms of spacecraft. Autonomous drones, mostly, but equipped with various anti-ship weaponry and able to follow orders well enough. They soon bunched up, and split again into two groups-one headed for the Bulwark ships, and the other headed for the Zetyans.
It raised red flags for Ves'oliq, though for now his concern wasn't much more than his combat stress. While they were likely to get shredded under the hails of PD from their escorts, and the ships were well-off enough for the moment to tank a few anti-ship craft runs, there were still a decent lot enough to burst through multiple times and make some hits, especially since they didn't seem interested in the other half currently circling around the pirates. A part of him made a reminder to look into cheap light carriers for his fleet if or when they got out of this, and another part cursed Zetyan naval doctrine for being so cookie-cutter with carriers in the first place.
The imperials seemed on course for a normal flank, the formation of ships continued on their turn, but it seems they had a decision made somewhere within their command structure, after finishing the course turn, they didn't stop, in fact for a good minute or two it seemed as if they would be turning straight toward their fleet, but then it all made sense when it was obvious they'd started to pitch "up" relative to the orientation of the pirates, and were gradually making their way overhead instead of to the side of their loose gathering of something you could hardly call a formation. Perhaps they'd begun due to noticing their allies movements, or perhaps it was of their own volition either way they were still, however, keeping their broadside oriented in their direction.
Additionally, the huge, skyscraper-sized primary turrets had finally reached their mark, and so too did those main guns join the cacophony of ongoing fire along with every smaller armament aboard that could aim. They were far outnumbered here, so expending vast ammunition would be necessary. As more shells exited however, defensive sacrifices had to be made, holes opened up in their walls of autocannon flak to allow their own shells through without damage, and sometimes an enemy projectile would sneak through, the tough-as nails military grade hard light shields held however against such crude kinetic weaponry.
The next things that were noticed were the drones, it wasn't hard to see their launch, they would spend some precious time evaluating just how many drones were present in the oncoming assault before deciding whether it would be worth launching their own interceptor craft into the fray, either way the hydraulics on the main hangar doors would remain pressurised and ready to open at a moments notice. The captains of the escorts however would already know their purpose, and missiles would be diverted more towards dealing with whatever the Primrose's PD couldn't.
It also seemed as if the massive broadside barrage would take a little while longer to reload, this didn't stop tactical officers ordering a standard procedure ultimatum, a message delivered by the communications team.
"Attention aggressors! This is the RBIV Primrose of Red Bulwark Expeditionary fleet 02! Your ships have sustained heavy damage, and your fleet will suffer further during the second broadside barrage, scheduled not long from now! Agree to cease fire and we will in turn agree to spare your ships and your lives! This is your one and only warning! Continued aggression will result in your summarary destruction or capture!"
The officer shouting these written lines might already guess the response from a bunch of lowlife pirates, but it's always better to be sure they don't lack common sense, even now as he looked out at external camera feeds he could see the occasional shell glance or blanket a hardlight section in fire, every crewmember aboard knew that it was like trying to lug pebbles at a camel...well unless one of those big shells got through, that might actually make a crack or two.
The pirate's radio response to the Imperials was predictably crude, having ceased being anything other than ad hominem after the third to fifth word, and anything resembling coherent speech after the second sentence.
Their response was also predictable in turn, as the volume of fire was only maintained on their opposition. Even as they received their own dues, and as the Bulwark forces began to arc above their fleet, they simply kept firing at just about everything that wasn't themselves heedless of any damage taken. Missiles and shells alike danced in many separated waltzes outwards as the crude munitions did their best to make impact on something beyond a wall of light or a storm of bullets. For the merchants, their goal was at least partially successful-two of the destroyers, and a few of the corvettes and escorts enjoyed another smattering of shell impacts large and small to decorate their hull with, and a missile made sure to partially cripple one of the destroyers who had remained steadfast in their position, the warhead landing a lucky hit on the spinal area even when various PD streams had severed it's engines.
Their own damages were not unnoticeable, however, as the telltale signs of battle scars and internal turmoil began to show themselves in force. By now, every ship could be considered damaged across the board, even if they still seemed outwardly adamant on absorbing shells like sponges, and roughly half of them had begun to belch gouts of flame and whorls of smoke from the holes punched in their skin, as debris began to leak from sources other than the engines and whatever loose fittings hadn't been tightened. The metronome of the Bulwark's volleys became a steady drumbeat of firepower, and the continuous flow of the merchant's own armory were dutiful in their purpose and effective in their application, both sides making more and more of the building-sized holes wherever had stricken their fancy.
The swarm of drones, meanwhile, both neared the Bulwark fleet and the merchants, divorced tides of steel and scrap making attempts to bob and weave against whatever came their way. Their anti-ship weaponry was, in comparison to the scale of weaponry being tossed around like hotcakes, comparatively small-scale; just a few anti-ship torpedoes and a sprinkling of cannons each. And the captain was indeed correct with his hypothesis of their durability-their simple dodging movements were hardly even enough to dodge the rivers of bullets now being slung their way, and soon enough their movements were more like water forcing against a flow of air.
But they were still forcing through nonetheless-in much lesser numbers than expected, to be fair, likely owing to their inherent shoddiness. But there were enough for one run-at least, for the Zetyans-and soon enough tiny explosive sticks were being gifted en masse to the merchants, landing wherever fancy and sending an explosion as deep inside as the armor they impacted would allow them. A few turrets were eliminated on a decent score of the ships, and a few lucky ones put salt on their wounds as they journeyed into already-present impact zones and causing further exacerbation of the wounds. The same generosity was also extended to the Bulwark forces, as the horde of remnants who pushed through the walls of PD and flak began their first and last attack runs, though time and fate would tell if they succeeded.
The merchants kept up their streams of fire, gouts of fire and flame popping to and fro on their large forms as both contingents gave the pirates their just desserts. The splitoff of the fleet continued their flanking maneuver, coming at the apex of the pirate's sides and beginning to circle around to their backsides. A few of their hulks had begun to turn towards them in turn, if only just to aim their largest cannons towards the odd migration.
"Small cracks found on projection 32 and 44 west, no signs of fatigue!" Shouted the shield captain, the generators were doing their job, but the sheer volume of fire was beginning to put hairline fractures through some of the more battered hardlight panels, nothing serious, it was within expectation for such a situation. The escorts were only holding in due to the 'shoot at the biggest' mentality the pirates seemed to be pushing, their weaker shields were still taking a hefty beating however, being partially cushioned by the defensive wall of explosions the Primrose was projecting, of course they were somewhat contributing to it as well, but their focus was on the drones now, guns turning to track any stragglers b-lining toward their lead ship.
"Main guns aim fire, target the holes in their armour, use the precision they don't have!" The gunnery Captain bellowed, sending the message to commanders, who would tell their individual gun officers, who would direct their weapons to fire with a bit more intent than before, an intent only backed up by the decision of the admiral in the combat bridge.
She listened rather disappointedly at the pirate's response communication. Obviously they knew common, they were just too...savage, to use it properly. She sighed, though she never had to deal with such types before, she'd heard stories of this sort of rabble, and as she listened more and more, it simply confirmed her next decision as she pushed the microphone close to her mouth, somewhat dreading the almost cliche'd order she was about to convey.
"Very well, Weapons, focus fire on their largest vessel. Judging by their demeanour I would say there's a high chance they'll destroy themselves after their ringleader is brought down."
The command went to every necessary sector of the ship, and soon enough, smaller turrets, gatling cannons, missiles and eventually the main guns would all begin focusing their trajectories toward the largest hulk in the centre of their fleet, up until the point that the imperial formation reached their own apoapsis around the top of the pirates, At that point it was hard to not hit anything else, so everything in the way was just fired at until shells started going through it to reach their real target.
Additionally, the broadside guns firing were delayed for this moment. At the moment they began passing over the relative centre of the pirate fleet, the volley of shells rained down upon them, 17 metre wide rocket-assisted projectiles. The heavy armour piercing shells would pass straight through anything with thin enough skin and keep going, still aimed for their central vessel and the cracks in its hide. Anything that was unfortunate enough to have one of these projectiles get jammed in their hull would find its fuse cooking over shortly after and causing a cone shaped explosion deeper into their vessel.
The admiral almost felt bad, but she knew she couldn't, she didn't know these people or what they were. They could have been the source of strife for the faction of their allies here for who knows how long. She moved her gaze from the tactical display holograph toward a cam feed, watching the few guns that could aim directly up at their ship still desperately trying to hit them instead of just having the ships turn to face any other direction, a torn apart shell whizzed into view, impacting the shield and bouncing off like a fish against its tank. 'To be fair, it isn't really my fault.' she reminded herself, 'They did fire first.'
The pirate captain had been rather pleased with his response to the red fellows. First they interrupt his well-to-do daily shacking, then they bang up his stuff, and now they order him to surrender? Hogwash, horseshit, the nerve to suggest such things to a zet like him! Why, he ought've said more to those assholes, talking to him like that!
Actually, what was stopping him in the first place?
Just as the Primrose hit their apex, another transmission followed, as the pirates continued on their well-trodden path of doing the same thing again and again.
"YEW KNOW WOT, YEW THINK YOU CAN FUCKIN' TALK TER ME LOIK 'AT, YEW SCHITSTAINS?! DO YEW KNOW 'O OI AM?! OI'M FU!#@$AA@#$A#%---"
But alas, his second message was not to be. A hundred thousand bullets for a hundred thousand tons, such was the Imperial answer as the Primrose's focused shots began tearing into the bulk of the ship one by one, each hit dragging the ship deeper into the deep sleep as it underwent blackout. Eventually, all that was left of the former ship was a visual gash, belching flame out of every pore as corpses and debris floated outwards from it's aching depths.
The rest of the motley scum seemed to stop for a moment. Transmissions were suddenly shot between each other like haywire, as they argued like children over what to do and who was in charge.
The admiral had been half right. Without their ringleader, they had become far more disorganized in record time, and as the pirates weren't too confident in their peers, each now began to follow their own orders, as shells now began to fire every which way and their 'formation' lost any sense of cohesion it once pretended to have. Some began attempting to chase after the cargo ships, others committed fully to their assaults on whatever they had been targeting, and one corvette even seemed to be gearing up to leave as it began to emit strange signatures and readings while moving away.
Though, their impunity in doing so was in short supply, as their now rather tired-looking hulks had to endure another assault. They now began to lose some more ships, as a few corvette-esques and escorts hit the bucket as they either were hit in just the right areas or managed to enjoy one of the Primrose's 17-meter gifts. A destroyer was cored from back to stomach by a few shells about the size of a brachiosaurus in width, eruptions of artificial nature absconding from it's undersides and expelling whatever it had in it's guts, from men to machines to everything in between. The rest, while quite evidently faring better than those unlucky few, were no less battered, as the growing number of countless pockmarks and holes on their forms could attest.
The merchants had also begun to focus their fire, their attention now resigned solely on the ones looking to harm their assets.
The pirates attempting to make pace for their shipping craft and the ones that were focusing on their other military ships now enjoyed their full attention, with each ship now being treated on a one-by-one basis, as one unlucky corvette and escort each were sent to their maker by a sudden hailstorm of slugs, and one of their two remaining destroyers now felt a hundred gazes as their foes began to fire another barrage in it's direction. The pirates did manage to make a score on the merchants, however, as one of their corvettes was struck by a spinal slug and a missile in places it wasn't meant to tank, dying soon after as whatever garishly-placed lights it had shut off across the ship, and the rest suffered more damages as they continued to tank the slowly yet steadily decreasing number of slugs headed their way.
Iris leaned back in her chair, diverting her attention on the holograph. Coloured arrows representing every known, nearby ship in 3D space trailing small dotted lines. She watched as the big arrow in the middle flashed into a dull grey, indicating its probable destruction, her reaction was blank, even as several of the officers around her in the gloomy armoured chamber cheered in victory, she'd celebrate when the battle was over, which it wasn't. She also watched as the numerous other differently sized arrows soon after began dispersing like a swarm of bees. Their biggest threat was gone and so was their command structure, and all that was left was to clean up, surely.
Her next decree was simple, the swarms of mismatched drones were, at this point, the only things really capable of circling their ship and hitting the side on which their allotted shield energy wasn't focused. This could prove problematic, as the PD would need to work very close, and thus, ineffectively to shoo them away, and it was only a matter of time before their pilots figured that out. There was an easy fix to this issue.
"Confirm previous order complete. Assign new targets, find every ship that contributed to this drone swarm, and converge fire if possible, I doubt pirates have the money for automated craft. Both escorts hold position, return fire on any ships targeting you...Also, communications, send another mercy call, perhaps some will listen this time around."
Her inferiors nodded and began enacting her orders, after listening to their rather easy to intercept internal squabbling, the same communication officer sends a new message to every ship in their broken formation.
"Attention aggressors! Your command ship has been neutralised, your captain is dead! We will be willing to give one last chance to the remaining ships of this fleet, turn yourselves in, and your lives will be spared! We are urged to inform you that bulwark jailtime programs include social and employment assistance, uh, piracy is an option, you can do better."
He said the last part as if he were reading a tacky script he'd never seen before, very likely considering the ship he's working on.
Beside this however, the Primrose's broadside volley would fall silent as new shells were being loaded in the depths of the ship. The turreted weapons were still firing plenty however, huge turret houses clanking away as they zeroed in on any ship with a hangar door, now being able to hit most of the rears of ships that didn't start turning to face them from above. In this position, many of the enemy guns were unable to return fire, and new parts of the shield were being hit at this angle, allowing battered ones to begin recuperating somewhat.
The admiral once again looked at the external camera's, this time at optics focusing on the battered, dented hulks of scrap drifting through the void through momentum alone. She was still under the impression these were humans, and she hadn't much of a reason to think otherwise, apart from how absolutely dedicated these people were. Pirates in the bulwark are crafty, sneaky, they find ways to subvert the military as getting hold of large warships is nowhere near an easy task, so where in the fiery depths did they get their hands on all of this brute force. She supposed they were fortunate that it was only the brute force that they had, if they'd of combined it with brains their ship might be a flaming hulk by now. The merchants would know, surely, their ships were similar so they must be part of the same sphere of influence, even if these pirate vessels were 90% recycled material.
Then, as she was staring closely at the debris chunking out from one of the detonating husks, the frozen, horrified expression of an unfortunate Zetyan floated into view, obscuring the camera feed.
She almost fell out of her fucking chair as everyone looked over to see why the almighty admiral just let out a shriek of horror.
As the pirates dispersed further, it seemed that now a few saner minds had been put into their fractured command-or, being more pessimistic, their stewards had been sufficiently cowed by the display. Two of the corvettes eventually ceased fire a few minutes after the mercy call, paired with an escort as both sent transmissions best summarized as 'ok we get it please stop firing we're sorry xoxo'. Another corvette, in an unrelated moment of clarity, also deigned to flee the area, heading on the tail of the one with strange signatures as it opened an FTL portal afore it's bow, proceeding to slip inside while the other now prepared to do much the same.
The rest, though, seemed adamant in their offense, continuing to fire even as they slowly lost their only advantage to the whims of their crew's morale loss and their ship's structural integrity. Notably, they had become a bit more chatty since their leader had fallen, as the destroyers each sent transmissions declaring their superiority thanks to their size, and the rest that deigned to respond either responded with insults or swears of vengeance. Even as their damages turned critical across the fleet, they still seemed determined to fight to the end-though whether now due to rage, spite or just plain foolishness was up for debate.
The drones attacking the Primrose had been lucky in their loss accrual, losing comparatively few of their number at first thanks to the initially occupied defenses of the Bulwark fleet. And, as the maiden ship and co. continued to fire on the opposition, it seemed they'd be able to let loose another attack run; perhaps on a weakened shield point as to break through, or in a different unshielded area as Iris hypothesized.
Then, without any forewarning, the swarm suddenly shut off mid flight. Turned into little more than a debris field, they now ran themselves piecemeal towards the hardlight shields of the ship. The reason was presented before the result, as their carrier-destroyers enjoyed the same treatment that had been bestowed on the frigate, earning donut holes and love bites all across their hull until they were all but miniaturized, floating replicas of the late leading hulk.
The rest of their ships had also begun to fall as well, the majority of the pirate ships now critically damaged in some form or another and beginning to lose ships faster and faster. The largest ones had been sizing up to be the first to go, being the largest targets for the lot, but the sudden change of tactics from the merchants targeting the smaller ships now ensured that slowly but surely they were being picked off en masse.
The merchants, themselves, now enjoyed a relieve as the pirates began to shift to their last legs. While still receiving their various gifts, the former barrage had now decreased in number to the point of a small hail, though one-off hits still occurred on the larger ships, meter-wide shells disappearing into thick armor to damage internals, or ricocheting off the sides of their prows. The clear turning of tables had also brought a morale boost to their crews, as what had been once a pitched battle for one side had now switched quickly and efficiently to the other in record time.
The captain stared at the scene from the lead ship's commanding bridge, watching as shells raced down from the top of his view and slugs threw themselves out from behind the cameras towards the foe. He had elected to count his blessings when the frigate had been destroyed. 'Dumb' pirates were irritatingly common in the Clanholds compared to 'smart' pirates, to the point of notoriety; every plucky Joe and Jim wanted their chance at being a plundering pioneer, but few actually had the naval and tactical expertise to lead more than a skirmish group's worth of ships, let alone a whole fleet.
He also decided to thank Koa for the arrival of help, as he eyed another camera focused soley on their saviours. Again, he found himself pondering who these people were. They said they were of the... 'Red Bulwark', but again he hadn't heard of any sort within the region. Perhaps they were a trading enclave, or based out of some sort of station or planet? There were plenty of plausible answers he could make up, but until this was over he'd have to save his theorycrafting for when his bosses grilled him about this afterwards.
Thankfully, the ordeal seemed near it's end, as he watched another pirate hulk become a fountain of flame and debris. He made a mental note to check their video-comms projection-receiver before it came time for talking again-would probably help jog his memory if they could see what species these Bulwark people were from.
The admiral stretched, still trying to shake that rather terrifying image from her head, she decided to distract herself. The battle was reaching its eclipse, guns were pointed from those surrendering and running away to those still firing back, the reduction in fire exchange bringing the wall of flak down to more of a interval of withering fire. Streaks of orange and white bolted the other way, picking on the last ships with decent precision now there was less of a rush.
The drones being disabled at such notice was also a sigh of relief for tactical, and as such Iris was comfortable in retiring full alert, letting the rest of the command crew deal with the remaining scraps.
"Damage report" She uttered into her headset, and soon enough her console was updated with the information regarding the fleet's booboo's thus far.
Science ships were unharmed, having hid behind the Primrose's silhouette the whole battle, thankfully drones being disabled before they were put in danger. The escorts had it worse off, though their shields were mostly intact, a few hardlight panels were cracked badly, and the result was a number of gashes in otherwise smooth armour. Thankfully the damage was mostly surface level and the armour did its job delightfully. The primrose itself was thankfully unharmed, sifting power to their broadside and focusing on a kinetic frequency had paid off and proved to their crew their vessel wasn't just a pansy exploration vessel. Of course there were pieces of shrapnel that had sunk through and scratched the paint, but sensors nor crew wouldn't pick up something like that.
Happy with this, she congratulated the crew over the announcement system, even as many were still at battle stations, loading shells and calibrating guns to pick off the smaller targets. And then sent an order to communicate to those ships that were smart enough to withdraw.
"Cease fire recognised, remain in proximity and await further instructions, you have made the right choice, thank you for your co-operation."
Next was to the merchants, their allies during this fight had lost a lot more than Iris' fleet had and she had the empathy to recognise that. Fortunately the expedition vessel was outfitted with a disaster and damage response unit designed for this very situation. And so a private channel was established with the ship that had contacted them initially.
"Friendly vessels, your bravery in the face of adversity has been noticed, and the determination of your crew is admirable. We are willing to send assistance, rescue and damage control to any of your damaged or non-functional vessels, rapid response is assured we will just need to be provided damage information on your fleet. After this is complete the admiral will be willing to speak with your appointed highest in chain of command, understood?"
As the fight began to finally die down in his would-be muggers, Ves'oliq now had time to focus on things beyond the fire coming his way, or the coordination of ships in his fleet. It was nice to get some calm now, and he felt himself relaxing a little as he watched another pirate hulk go up in flames on the video feeds, given a healthy acupuncture treatment from bow to stern by hails of slugs and shells.
His first thoughts went to the surrendering ships, which caught his eye in an unsavory way. Not that it was bad of them to surrender, per se, but these were pirates-for all he knew, it was a prelude to some ambush of some kind, or a sudden attack while crew was being transferred, or something tricksy that would take them by surprise when they least expected it.
...Then again, he wondered if the capitulators even possessed the foresight for such a thing. They were pirates; all things considered, this was the smartest thing they did all week.
Still, he elected to keep a wary eye or two on them, even if in the end he was just thinking pessimistic from all the other pirates he'd seen and heard of.
The fleeing ones hardly enjoyed more than a moment's thought, as he glanced over them to keep tally of who was and wasn't doing the smart thing. Two, three corvettes so far, and now an escort-or, what looked kinda like one, anyways-had decided to cut their losses. He figured they'd join some other freebooter, get cut up in a skirmish with the military or go join some other foreign enclave out in who knows where. Maybe EOTL or something, if they were lucky.
That left the ships insistent on dying fighting, who were now quickly dwindling in number as they began to hit the single digit count. A part of him felt a twinge of respect for how they continued fighting despite the odds, even if they were only doing so because of pride or arrogance or just plain spite and stupidity. Maybe in the afterlife they'd all get some 'you tried' star, and sent on their merry way.
An insistent beeping caught his eyes and ears, as a shipmap on a nearby dashboard logged a stray hit in a filler compartment by a small shell. Probably runt barracks, from the looks of things. Other flashing lights detailed more damages; as he turned it into a 3D map, he got to see every impact, how deep it went, what it affected. Decent damages were had all around, but nothing critical beyond weaponry and turretry. It'd buff out once they got to port, anyhow-whoever designed these ships thankfully made repairing them relatively cheap and easy, aside from being decent at tanking hits in important places.
After mulling over his own ship's damages, he decided to check up on his own fleet's scars, ordering a damage call as he had the main display shift to readouts and shipmaps. Their situation was much the same, with variation. Some were largely unscathed, or had surface-level damage, while others had been through hell in a handbasket. Their armor had done well from the looks of things, as he saw some of the ships having dud shells buried in their armor, or showing off many ricochet marks and non-pens. A pleasing result, given the circumstances and close distances.
The cargo ships reported all-clear as well, though the one carrying weapons crates was miffed about the whole cargo jettisoning thing. He mulled over if they'd be able to recover that container, but then he looked over the ruined and shapeless hulks and concluded their time would be wasted on finding a broken needle in a mountain-sized haystack. Atleast it had bought them time-in that way it had been more valuable than everything in his fleet combined.
The Primrose's transmission, coming in while he re-reviewed some of the heavier damages on his ship, had his attention-mostly the last part, however. They'd likely get into the nitty gritty of things like who they were and where they were from, and since they'd probably want to talk to someone more official than himthat would mean taking them to his harbormaster afterwards, which would mean going to his clan's homeworld, which would lead to them being shuttled over to To'oora for official diplomacy, and since he was the one with the most experience talking to them he'd have a high chance of being trained to be a diplomat, their diplomat, because of some stupid internal rule they made fifty decades ago.
Was he really ready to take on that stressful duty so soon, on the eve of the galaxy collapsing in on itself...?
...
..Eh, whatever. He figured it'd probably happen sooner or later.
A return transmission on the private channel soon dashed to the Primrose, along with another public one sent to the pirates who seemingly had the grace to surrender.
The private one had a map of damages that each ship had, even some of the mission-killed ones that hadn't been thrashed enough to be unrecoverable. "Understood, damage shipmaps attached, commanding officer is located on Destroyer-234-a9 "Ki'saq". Your help is much appreciated and acknowledged."
The public one, meanwhile, simply said "You're all paying for some of this."
Iris and most of the bridge crew had returned to the navigation bridge by now, armoured shutters rolling up to once again shed eyes along its spine and white armour as starlight flooded the chamber. The occasional streaking glow of multi-flak clouds could be seen to their left every to often, but it wasn't anything to be too concerned about, now was the time to act and respond, even in spite of those few remaining ships firing, yet they were practically a non-threat by now.
The primrose and her escorts redistributed their shield power to cover every panel at a bit of a lower power. It took a little while for capacitors to stabilise and breakers to switch, but soon enough they were fully insured from any stray singular shells somehow getting past a full military flak wall. They soon began to turn in formation, gravitic impulse thrusters creating waves of inertia which pushed their ships toward the small gathering of surrendered vessels. They'd begin making preparations internally; quick deploy quarantine tunnels as well as a very out of place modern medical scanning machine were wheeled into the ingress chamber, ship security would standby and get to their positions and a route was set up toward the nearest brig.
All the while the Primrose would be sending data over public channels about docking procedure, orderly conduct, remaining calm, and a reminder that the primrose is garrisoned with a small army of infantry and security. As it seems, they would be extending a tunnel outward outfitted with a specialised universal seal for ships with inoperable or, in their case, incompatible airlocks. They would then be allowed to file into the ships where they were promised a 'comforting brig experience'.
Meanwhile, the damage of their allied ships was being determined by the team trained to control damage. Damage control captain Justin was an expert at this. Even despite never seeing these ship layouts in his life, him and his team of response analysts, located somewhere between the hangar and the bridge section, were already sending out plans and recommendations to the correct officers. Determining the size of the holes and gashes, if there were still crew left in the airtight sections of more hulked ships, whether or not they were in any sudden danger of detonating, they began creating squadrons of response shuttles, some of which were scrambled quickly to assist the more dire situations, but others stuck behind to prepare more carefully, being given orders before setting out.
As for their own response, the Admiral had heard it and was pleased to hear these fellows sounded a bit politer than the pirates, a friendly voice was something comforting when they'd spent the last couple of months alone in the void. Tactical managed to find which ship was the 'Ki'saq' using the provided maps, and then communications matched a frequency to use as a private channel, one which the admiral was given an end to. No video feed was provided.
"Salutations! I am Admiral Iris Kilmire, Lord of the third expeditionary fleet. We hail from the Red Bulwark, and are pleased to make your acquaintance. I wish to speak with your fleet's superior commander, if they're present." Despite being a high and mighty admiral, and clearly an older woman, her voice was less intimidating than most would expect.
By now, any stragglers from the pirates were either dead or dying, turnt to metallic misshapen asteroids as the rest either made good on their escape or awaited the Primrose's arrival to their hulk, the ones who were connected shuttling themselves into her depths as a smorgasbord of various lowlifes intermingled with concerning amounts of... midgets, it seemed, went in a surprisingly peaceful-if somewhat rowdy at times-manner to wherever they were told to go, emptying their piteous ships one man at a time.
The merchants had begun some level of damage control on their own ships; spaceborne welders sent out en masse to plug holes/repair structure and engineering crew conducting internal repairs on their equipment had now become more and more of a commonplace sight, and at the more damaged ships the numbers of structural repair crew being sent out could be mistaken for new debris being coughed outwards, if not for the little RCS thruster lights on their suits and the various tiny lights that soon illuminated their forms as they began their work.
The arrival of the scrambled Bulwark damage control ships was thus welcomed by those present, as both sides set to work on doing what they did best.
As they engaged in repairs externally, their internals also saw the works, as the able-bodied rushed to and fro inside the depths of each ship as they began damage control on every level. Fires on decks 549 thru 547, wounded in deck 213, turret 57 has nonfunctional machines, announcements rang both through intercomms and radio beads as they began to quell their own problems, one issue at a time.
As he observed their progress on various cameras and tac-maps, the captain's attention was soon turned and caught up by the Primrose's transmission, leaving his second-ins to observe progress instead as he prepared to respond back. The lack of video feed was a little surprising, but no dealbreaker; maybe they were waiting for their own feed, or maybe they just didn't have it in the first place. Nothing worth fretting over. As he calibrated the now-lowering video transponder array, he pondered what they would look like if they weren't humans, as his eyes tracked over a calibrator program that now displayed on the main screen...
---
When they received the return transmission, they also received live video feed alongside it.
They were greeted by the sight of an alien in a modest-looking uniform, with gold interlaced service stripes on the shoulders and a dress aiguilette pinned across the breast. A cap sat slightly askew on his head, making no attempt to mask his features; 12 black dots stared soullessly outwards as his mouth contorted upwards in a slight grin. As he spoke, he stared at an angle, letting the eyes on his left side be shown more directly than those on his right. In the background, others like him could be seen, doing various tasks or giving orders to subordinates and...
...children?
Or perhaps just... midgets. Hopefully they were midgets.
"Greetings. Captain Ves'oliq Mins'tab, captain of the 567th Mercantile Formation. Zetyan Clanholds. Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Iris, your assistance is much appreciated."
His voice had a chitteriness to it, a roughness of the throat paired with it to give a sort of raspy, chittering texture to his words. He spoke somewhat fast as well, not giving much pause between his words, pauses, and periods.
The boarding Zetyans weren't met with the most friendly of entrances. UV lights, bright quarantine tunnels, men in armoured white suits with dimly glowing red eyes holding large calibre weaponry, it wasn't exactly welcoming. They were split into several channels and lead each through an individual machine. A standard procedure for new species, these would quickly analyse potential harmful pathogens or other biological dangers, being mostly a surface scanner it wasn't 100% foolproof but it was able to spot out important things to protect the crew not sealed in airtight suits.
Any brewing unruliness in the crowd would be shouted at with a voice modulator from one of the guards standing at vantage points. The prisoners were lead through the large embarkation lobby and through about 150 metres of corridor into a large holding area, a bit like a brig but at least a bit more liveable, perhaps they weren't even brigs at all. Still, however there were clearly viewports near the top ends of the room for security or observation and such. It seems they were quite prepared, too and despite the large crews of these ships, there was just enough room for most, split into different holding blocks in different parts of the ship. There was a slight overflow however, which was directed into secured empty crew cells and kept under guard.
Repair crews utilised remote controlled drones and heavy, bulky looking industrial EVA exosuits to operate. They would focus on preventing immediate threats like air or fuel leaks and also set up their own communications with repair teams. Soon a co-ordinated effort between dozens of gunship-sized vessels carrying tonnes of materials and lifesaving equipment and the Zetyan's crews went underway, the imperials perhaps trying to make a good first impression.
The admiral, meanwhile was pleased at the quick response, clearly these people weren't all as bad as their pirates. His voice reminded her of the Sylthas she had aboard a little. She noticed the Zetyan turn on their video and was a little taken aback by their appearance, however she somewhat knew what to expect now and was actually moreso excited they had found a new species to document. Out of courtesy she prodded at a screen on her console and her own video feed flickered on. It was somewhat zoomed out and showed the curved wall behind her which was only about 2 and a half metres high, giving way to more bridge behind that. The imperial crest, naval insignia and the ship name was of course emblazoned onto the sleek surface.
She was an older human woman with ashen hair, a thin face and a large cap with a golden eagle on its band, her uniform was black red and white and of course there were droves of medals across her chest. She seemed to be smiling slightly.
"It isn't an issue, captain, we are quite literally prepared for situations such as this from the getgo, we're simply fulfilling our duty. You on the other hand, as a merchant fleet, could have left the fight, and us to our probable doom at any point, so your bravery is absolutely commendable and likewise thank you for your own assistance. Now unless there are any concerns off the bat, I have subjects I would like to discuss."
As the admiral's video feed turned on, the captain now saw that any theories he had about them not being humans would have to be dashed as he took in the familiarity. He supposed they were waiting for their own feed after all.
Noting the crest, uniform design, and insignia and filing them away for future use, he did ponder the anachronistic appearance of their saviors a little while he listened to her felicitations. But his ponderings were little more than the word itself, and seeing as she was getting straight to the point he might as well stash them away for later-no need to keep a conversation waiting on theories and question marks.
"Of course, admiral. Fire away."
-
The pirates, put under medical scan, would be surprisingly...
Well, 'healthy' wouldn't be the right word for it.
Nor would 'clean'-both came with some rather strange connotations that befitted not the disheveled aliens they took into their depths. But a decent number appeared to lack any harmful diseases, instead appearing to have either physical injuries and/or evidenced drug usage side-effects, and the rest just had minor infections like the flu and common cold-or atleast, diseases of similar appearance and symptoms to their equivalents. Easy enough to quarantine or separate.
Though, as they marched into their respective holding zones, that could only give rise to another question-where could undiscovered space aliens have gotten old Earth diseases from?
-
As repairs picked up on all ends of the scale, the help of the Imperial damage control was a welcome addition to the Zetyan efforts, coordination being rather expedient to establish once the repair forces had arrived. As they began their work in droves, the problems needing to be fixed were popping off the docket more and more, those monitoring the situation being rather pleased at the speed of their work. A good first impression was indeed achieved, and as the work continued the lessened load felt like a godsend to the various crew.
Iris rose her head slightly, smiling a little that there wasn't anything in the way of their co-operation. Part of her believing she was lucky to find one so reasonable. She was still somewhat curious about the species itself, but she knew that's what the three science ships being escorted are for and so knew to keep her questions to herself, instead focusing more on their main issues.
"Very well then. I would like to begin by stating, that while it may not look like it, we are in fact stranded. We're in a rather desperate situation, in fact. Our home territory, the Red Bulwark, is on the literal other side of the galaxy to us. This would usually not be a large issue, we're stocked with enough supplies for half a year of travel, however, we ended up here due to a rather unforgiveable mistake on my behalf.
Therefore nothing this side of the galaxy is mapped, and in fact, due to this 'golden expanse', we can't even use the stars the bulwark usually uses for navigation, so we're in the dark about where in the galaxy we are. A half year of supplies will not last us the time it would take to return home at this point. I hope this is reason enough to ask for assistance."
Meanwhile, a likely bad decision is made by the science group chief aboard the RBSV Kilo, the largest science vessel of the three.
"Alright!" Chief Prof.Wesfer exclaimed to his ships captain. Technically he outranked all the crew aboard every science vessel, but definitely not most the crew aboard the military ships, this however gave him three ships with very little checks or balances to his procedure, it was something the navy didn't think about much.
"Send a request to the Primrose, I'd enjoy...maybe...60 new guests aboard." He seemed somewhat infatuated, a new species was something that always excited him. However in this case these weren't registered lended test subjects, they were filthy, good for nothing, scum of the galaxy, child murdering, planet pillaging....they were pirates, Wesfer didn't like pirates.
"And if you can, make it quick, and don't make any promises either, they'll likely think we're just trying to lighten their load."
"Uh, yes Professor." The captain replied, not really too sure as to why he was rambling, he looked over to his communications officer, who nodded.
Soon enough, small numbers of Zetyan were picked at random from the holding areas and shuffled through the ship's corridors toward some shuttles to be moved to the science vessels.
As Iris spoke, the captain's mind began to ask some more questions-by this point, it seemed to have become a running trend, though on the same token first contacts weren't exactly meant to be show-and-tells. How'd they get so far out without a map, and how did no one else supply them a map yet either? Moreover, how slow were their drives? He wasn't an expert on the matter, and neither did he expect everyone beyond his own to have drives stolen straight from the Qanis guilds, but it didn't normally take as long as half a year to go from one end to the other...
Then again, they were lost. Couldn't blame them for taking it slow if they had to.
"I see. Yes, we can offer assistance; nearest port is in... uh, sixish systems worth of travel, that's about 30 minutes FTL time, roughly. They should be able to get you restocked and supply a galaxy map, maybe some fastest routes. Should be able to get going from there..."
As he ordered his personnel to send them a routemap to the aforementioned system, he also pondered whether to pursue the drive speed question he had. After consideration, he decided to neglect biting the bullet-he wasn't sure if she'd have the answer, and he had a better question to ask them anyways.
"You need us to shadow you, provide good word? I'm guessing they don't see foreign ships very often."
-
As the pirates began to 'settle in', and the smattering selection was escorted off to the shuttlebays, more and more strange details began to emerge in their behaviour.
For one, they were very... aggressive. Brash, too, and not only to their captors-they seemed to enjoy and occasionally encourage the scuffles and conflict amongst their ranks, and already several fights between belligerents had to be aborted by loud shouts and rifle rackings. They also seemed to show an almost casual disdain for those around them, especially for the midgets; one or two had been seen being kicked around like a football, and others being yanked or bonked or generally hit on by their taller peers.
A large part seemed like it could just be chalked down to pirate '''culture''', though, and their smoothbrained reputation certainly didn't help matters.
Iris seemed to smirk slightly, the mention of actual directions finally giving a hint of genuine positive emotion on her face. She looked over to another screen for a moment and she was suddenly a little addled.
"Auuhh...Many thanks for the map, but If you can perhaps just also provide us the positions and orbital specifics on every body in these systems...not even all of them, just the last one if you have to, that will make things much easier for us and prevent any...accidents. And yes while you're at it, it would be nice to not burst into an occupied system unannounced and have guns trained on us immediately, generally bad etiquette."
As they spoke, the transfer teams were deciding what to do with these abandoned ships they were still docked to, they were massive, but clearly that's what they mostly had going for them. They decided to send the question up the line and it even ended up in the admiral's ears, to which she seemed to listen to for a second before asking input.
"Additionally, I just received a question, what's standard procedure for abandoned vessels such as these. If it's an issue, we can tow one or two toward that shipyard, perhaps salvage some materials while we're at it, or we can just leave the heaps here."
On the Kilo, meanwhile, the 'lucky' group of 60 were being transported and offloaded from two seperate shuttles onto the 1 and half kilometre long white and blue painted kilo. The interior of this ship was predictably much more cleaner and orderly than the Primrose. They'd be brought into much more fancy confinement cells with thick reinforced plexiglass doors and bright white lights which they could at least thankfully turn off. Most of them were separated into their own cells, however a few were kept together to further observe their interactions for a while. There were less armed personnel here, but it seems a small number were transported off the Primrose to keep watch here, indicated by the differently painted suits.
Her inquiry for orbital specifics was answered with an update to the map shortly after, with a relative future position calculated and sent along as well in the interest of transparency. It was a bit odd to the captain, even if it was just one more thing to add to the first contact akwardness checklist; normally Zetyan warp procedure was coming in at the near-edges of the system, then making minijumps or going on full acceleration towards the designated location. Warps close enough in to necessitate those calculations... Normally they were in event of emergencies or military actions.
They were just in a scuffle, though. After some thought, it was easy enough to chalk it up to the former.
As Iris pointed out the wrecks they left behind, a cursory analysis would've just made him figure it was more hassle than it was worth.
But then again, salvage could sell pretty well on the market.
"Oh, those? Uhhh... Yeah, swipe a few. It's up to discretion, but someone'll want 'em anyhow."
His attention was drawn to a second-in, who brought him good tidings. Their fracture drones were finished charging, course was laid in. All that was needed was to warp out. He turned back to the screen after dismissing the other.
"Right, I've been informed our drives are topped up. Unless there's anything more you need, I'd say it's time we leave."
The captain smiled, performing a small respecful nod as she turned to a console on her chair arm and begin addressing something as she spoke.
"Very well, the ministry of galactic exploration is indebted to your service, your name will be recorded so expect a payment sometime in your future lifetime...if you end up ever living that long." She chuckles, mainly to herself before turning back to the screen. "I wish you good business captain, Victoria Aut Mors."
With that, the feed was cut and the ships went about their duties, the science vessels relaxed into a travel formation and the imperial assistance teams were beginning to return to their respective motherships following the completion of major issues and a number of rescues. Shuttles were being deployed to handle the towing of the ships in such a way that they weren't immediately pulverised by wakes of plasma engines and other post-battle procedures were being followed within the ships.
It wouldn't be long before they left the system too, making their way towards the port with mostly-intact ships in tow to make hopefully proper converse with the newly found species.
It started with the same time-tested routine of warping back and forth, back and forth, hours of whipping past various nameless systems to deliver bits, bobs, and whatever they could fit on and stuff in his cargo ships to various places, usually out in the middle of nowhere. Then, he gets a digital payment, which would have been enough to cover his retirement thrice over if he wasn't legally required to disseminate it amongst his many, many, many crewmen, and then they go back to the back and forth movements. And eventually, after repeating this several hundred times over, the day ends, they dock at home base, and he goes to his dorm and plays video games or watches TV until he gets sleepy and goes to bed.
Secretly, he hated average days.
Not because he wanted more excitement-he got plenty of that on a day to day basis, having to manage his own little kingdom of cats. And it wasn't because he found them truly, mind-numbing boring; he knew what he signed up for when he applied to be an official mercantilist. No, average days always had some sort of catch, and nine times out of ten that catch was something awful.
For example, a week ago, the particulate dissimiter for the megafuser in one of the more loaded cargo corvettes blew off, and they nearly lost the ship and several around it trying to repair the sucker. Four days ago, they ran into a military training exercise, and were subsequently searched and checked over the course of nine hours, causing a docking to their payments for some spoiled food. Yesterday, the bridge display for his bridge failed, and they had to scrap a spare from their own cargo.
And today, Koa had finally graced him with a pirate ambush.
Right now, they were holding them in a stalemate, as he listened to a clan dropout giving demands like 'give us all your cargo and we'll leave you alone' or 'and also pay us $1200000 or be destroyed'. They were of near-equal numbers to his own fleet-25 of them, and 30 of his. The good news was that most of them were smaller craft-the largest among them was something that looked vaguely like a frigate, and the majority of their shoddily-made hulks were corvette/escort-sized. But the bad news was that their own forces weren't exactly up to spar; of his 30 ships, 14 were military-grade, and the biggest they could afford were a few destroyers. The rest were, like their foes, corvettes and escorts-plenty fine for deterrence and light combat, but not good for any actual combat.
From what he knew of pirate behavior, a pirate fleet this size either meant someone big was in the area, or that a small enclave had gotten particularly desperate. Last he checked, there weren't any freeboot bigshots near any of his routes, so he figured it was the latter. And if that were the case, he'd have to act very, very soon, lest the tardlet who commandeered the lead vessel find him wanting and command his fellow smoothbrains to open fire. But he couldn't just acquiesce, either-pirates were anything but fair players, and every single one he'd read about was the same give-an-inch, take-a-mile sort.
There used to be a stigma about sending distress signals, for various reasons. You weren't a real captain if you couldn't rough them up yourselves, you were wasting your fellow's time, you were a pussy, et cetera ad infinitum. But then word got out that some dumb ship captain became a famous diplomat, and then said diplomat was revealed on live TV standing to the left of their national leader, and suddenly distress signals went from last resorts to normalized and well-regarded merchant fleet protocol.
As he eyed the automated signal transponder button, he wondered how he would filibuster his way into not immediately being fired at by his 'captors'. But, as his third left eye pondered an errant sweat bead trailing down his head, he figured it'd be a moot effort-sooner or later, the shells would have to start flying, and the only question was when. Besides, not like they were as smart as the rest of the galaxy's pirates-if they were, they'd've brought an interdictor, or at least something to jam comms.
His left hand neared the button, slowly, then moved to wipe away a few nonexistent sweat drops, missing a few that definitely did exist. Then, oops, looks like he misjudged where to put his hand, and it looks like he accidentally pressed the one button the now-screaming zet at the other end didn't want him pressing. How inconvenient, how awful.
Now, as he tried to play off his 'mistake' as genuine, and a pirate captain stood on breadth's edge from ordering the destruction of his quarry, a distress signal came into existence and rushed into the deep void, addressed to whomever it may concern.
4 weeks, that's how long they'd been trapped out here now, the Admiral, one Iris Kilmire had been counting the days. She knew they'd be fine out here for a while longer, after all they were an expeditionary fleet, they had the resources to last for half a year in deep space, the only issue was they had no idea where the fuck they were.
She dreaded to think how worried her people were back in the territories, they were the second fleet ordered to go out this far, one of the few able to be loaded with the resources to accommodate it, they were a shining beacon of hope that perhaps the bulwark could still reach and grow like its predecessor in the original universe. She made it her goal to discover and seek out everything in her sight on her course, unfortunately, this also included that damned wormhole.
Probably a remnant from some old war it was a point of great interest to both her and the science ships in her fleet. The idea was that piecing together technology like this would be key to helping the empire discover more about the workings and physics of this galaxy, as well as its mostly untouched history. Her enthusiasm towards such a wonderful and possibly important find was one that she now realised clouded her judgement. She was the one who ordered a closer investigation, she was the one who deemed the wormhole stable, she was the one who ordered that the fleet should investigate the other side first, with as much force as possible, she was the one who didn't consider the consequences, she was the one who watched as the damaged station on the other side fell apart into scrap as they traversed it, she was the one who trapped them here.
As an admiral, she took full responsibility, she was prepared for whatever punishment they could lash out on her back at the ministry, this wasn't her concern, her concern now was getting her fleet home safely. Throughout the 4 weeks they'd simply been trying to find out where they were, all they knew was that they were on the southern side of the galaxy now, they could tell because everything was fucking different. Plotting the stars wasn't so helpful when that golden shining abyss in the centre of the galaxy blocked the view of the only ones they knew about, and to really kick the bucket, there wasn't a single soul down here, it's as if they landed in the perfect space for nothing to be occupying,
despite jumping system to system with utmost caution.
They had to plan each jump, finding systems and chartering the movements of stellar bodies with optics so they didn't end up merging with one. In the complete unknown this made each jump take days of analysis and safety procedure, but it was better than being killed in one of the most humiliating ways any imperial captain can be. And beside, their fleet wasn't cheap, this was a large expedition, 6 ships, 3 science, 3 military, the catch being that the lead ship, the one she was commanding from, was a Great sword-class battlecruiser, outfitted with a more modest armament in return for more scientific and exploration equipment. She was equipped to be able to send a Garrison of exploratory units to the surface of a planet and map a continent in mere weeks, such an ability was one that the bulwark had poured a large deal of resources into, so she had to bide her time to make sure the fleet could navigate without incident.
Now she was sitting, bored, as usual, tapping her fingers on the chair of her command station, waiting for the next jump report to come in, as she had 15 times already. Within the huge octagonal navigation bridge, many officers and commanders were likewise tired of all this waiting, day by day now they were simply following a routine of checks and measures. So when the 1st communications commander received reports of an unknown communication, he couldn't help but rub his eyes for a moment before his face lit up like a bulb. His station was a good ten metres from the admiral's so he used the bridge intra-com to get the message across as quick as possible.
"Admiral Kilmire!" The commander almost shouted down his headset mic, still glancing at the reports to verify what he was seeing.
The admiral responded quickly, there was obviously an urgent matter. "Yes, commander, calm down, what is it?"
"Sorry Ma'am, it's just that...well, the Jade's Dawn is picking up a...distress signal, to our presumed galactic west."
The admiral smiled, finally, civilisation. "Respond immediately, get the captain of the dawn to focus on organising a jump near their position, if you can."
"Of course, Ma'am, right on it!"
The bridge soon began getting a little more active, an early aperture jump meant quick preparations were needed, additionally there was no telling what would be on the other side so a ready state was to be issued across the fleet, this lead the staff to be chattering amongst themselves about combat readiness or deployment of emergency shuttles. Iris knew it could be gamble, but it was either this or being stuck in the void for king knows how many months, there would still be a delay either way however, she prayed whoever sent that call it could hold on for just a few minutes longer.
"-OI AIN'T DUMB! YEW DID 'AT ON PURPUSE, OI SAW WHERE YER 'AND WENT!"
"It was an accident! I didn't mean to, I swear! The button's big and I didn't see where-"
"SCHAT AHP! MY RANSUM'S CHANGED! OI WANT EVRYFINK HERE NOW, OR YER DEAD! YEW 'EAR ME?! D-E-H-D! OI SWEAR, IF YEW DON'T DEW SUMFINK ROIGHT NOW-"
The pirate captain, predictably, was rather incensed with his 'mistake'. And also predictably, he now wanted even more than just cargo and money-now he was asking for the whole fleet, and then some more. But his powers of word-no-jutsu were starting to fail, and Ves'oliq could now feel the tension mounting. He wasn't about to lose his fleet to a pack of bumbling idiots, though, and he did know some more tricks to keep them occupied. Mostly, it was appeasement.
First, money. The promise of Old Reliable usually kept the lid on for a decent amount of time, enough to flee, or get help, or in rare occasions according to lucky or naïve captains get the pirates to leave you alone. But he knew simply jettisoning some hard money wouldn't be effective filler-if they even had any. Thus, a promise of digital payment.
"Alright, shit, I'll start with money! You want money?"
"YEAH! OI WONT ALL OF IT. EVERY STROIKE, EVERY PIECE'A GOWLD, EVERY-" The pirate began counting down every currency he could think of, his face now plastered on the main bridge screen. Notably, he seemed to lack the concept of an indoor voice.
"I can pay you digitally! I-I got my pad, I have Payzen, I can get you your money!"
"-EVERY CREDIT, EVERY SEEGECK, EV-
...wot?"
"Yeah, I can do it digitally! I have money, lots of it!"
"...Whodda yew meen? I wont 'ard munny, nawt numbers on me screen."
"Uh, we're not really paid, in, uh, hard money anymore. It's all digital."
"But oi gawt me a package ov stroikes just last week! You's lyin'! Oi 'ave sum roight 'ere, even!"
He then reached into an offscreen receptacle, and pulled out a handful of strikes, showing them to the camera with a visage of annoyance.
...Except, those were plastic strikes. Given a monochrome metal spray, sure, but he could tell by some that were clearly unpainted molds.
"...Dude, that's play money."
"No it ain't! It's shoiny enuff fer it!"
"There's some unpainted molds. It's play money. You got scammed."
The pirate, after staring incredulously at the captain took a moment to confirm, before finally noticing the few unpainted ones and looking at them like they had just robbed him of all he was worth. As he cursed and threw the now-visible bowl of fake strikes somewhere offscreen, the captain made a note to get a shipment of play money set aside for the next time he had to deal with pirates.
"Den YEW'RE gonna give me reel cash! No numbers fer me! YEW BETTUR STAHRT ACTIN' NOW, YA GIT, OR OI'LL-!!"
Alas, regression. Now would come his next trick.
On the shipping manifest, there were 5 things in bulk they were supposed to deliver-food, electronics, bulk material, small arms weaponry and some personal transports like motor/hovercycles and mopeds. Of those, he figured the pirate in front of him would only care about the last two on that list, and maybe food barring any supplies of runts. Thus, he'd have to jettison those first.
"Okay, okay, I don't have that but I have guns and stuff! I'll get those sent out, just don't fire!"
And as he gave the orders for some jettisoning, in lockstep did large containers of weapons come slowly drifting out of two cargo corvettes, which in turn were yanked away by some ramshackle tugs shortly after.
"Roight, now gimme moar!"
"We, we don't really have more-"
"Schat tha' fuck up, oi can see da lines'a contayners loinin' the inside of yer ships!"
"It's all food and boring stuff, you won't want it!"
"Yeh, dey awl say that! Oi bet yew's secritly a council fleet transpowtin' cool shoite! Now gimme moar, or oi'll start shootin'! NOW!"
He couldn't afford to jettison more, at least not without guarantee of help. Now would come his last trick, and the one he really hoped would work.
"Shit, zet, I can read the whole thing out for you! It's all worthless horseshit, you wouldn't want it!"
"And why shuld oi believe yew on 'at?! Yew got gunz, sow yew got moar cool shoite!"
"That was about the only thing worth stealing! Look, I have it here, I'll read it right now-Food, video games, runt and dog toys, cutlery..."
He actually had two shipping manifests-one was what he had, and another was filled with everything pirates virtually never, ever took. And it was long, so long it could qualify as a magazine and a half. From what he heard, it worked as intended roughly 50% of the time-surprisingly, half of the time the pirates were actually patient enough to listen to every single item on that list before deciding to blow the fleet to smithereens and never look back. He hoped this would be that half, and not the other, and that help would arrive very soon as he eyed the main screen's FTL wake monitor like a nervous hawk, along with likely most, if not all of his bridge crew.
Thankfully, it wouldn't take long, the precious minutes he had bought bargaining and transferring the cargo was seemingly enough. Deep in the bowels of Iris' ship, a huge, multi-stage drive, tended to by hundreds of personnel was already being fired off. A fittingly huge bubble of space-time blew across space, as it reached a critical point of expansion, it snapped into a lightyears-long hourglass, flattened at each end by massive open rings. The lead ship was the only one which needed to do this in an emergency situation, the other ships in the fleet simply fitting through the same aperture as they proceeded onward.
The admiral was on edge as she watched the window into space open, of course she was, there was no way to know what would be going on across the other side, or by how much they'd be in the thick of it. This galaxy was huge, it could be far beyond their capabilities. The only good sign so far was that it didn't open into a rock face or the core of a star, confirmed by the green-state reports flooding into her command console, something she would have very much noticed if this were the case by now, and was also something she'd rather not think about. Instead she kept her attention on the huge triple reinforced window encircling half the massive navigation bridge. Her gaze switched to the view over the front of the ship, then to either side of it, and then back to the various consoles and screens around her station, nerves fried to a crisp at this point.
From the point of view of the Zetyans, they'd quite quickly see a spike in other monitors, but no proper FTL signatures. They didn't have to look into it for long however, the huge 3 kilometre wide, burning blue halo had already pried itself open, almost immediately between the space of the two parties, and not long after, the prow of a fittingly huge ship would begin to emerge.
The RBIV Primrose was already halfway through when it began assessing the situation around them, the tactical team making observations and scans on their surroundings and the other ships. Its monolithic armour plates were painted a faded white with red stripes to signify the expeditionary affiliation, though that would mean little to the Zetyans. Its hull was, despite its role, still bristling with various weapons, rows of broadside cannons, visible torpedo tubes inset into its inverse ramming bow, countless point defence guns, all mostly affixed to a carapace covering over vital parts of the ship, contrasting the busier lighter hull construction underneath.
More ships followed the Primrose out, 3 were much smaller, and painted in all white, barely armed but covered in odd scanning and communications equipment. The other two were about less than half the size of their 7 kilometre long leader, shaped with a rounded nose, covered in an arsenal of smaller weapons and each leaving a glowing, hot trail of orange plasma from the nozzles on their rear. They seemingly also helped the giant see and hear as a veritable assault of EM, thermal and optic scans were projected at everything in the vicinity from every vessel in the fleet, it's clear stealth wasn't their speciality.
Due to this very thorough scanning however, the command crew were able to build a picture of the situation within a couple of minutes, they'd also manage to tap into an open frequency travelling between the vessels, and decided to use it to figure out what was happening, of course using the lead ship to host these communications.
"Greetings! Can you hear me? This is 2nd communications command officer Reddick aboard the Red Bulwark Imperial Vessel Primrose. Our fleet intercepted a distress signal originating from this vicinity, though it appears we have seemingly entered a bit closer to the source than we anticipated. If you're able, please respond and brief the situation immediately so we can provide our assistance!"
By the time the communication was sent, the fleet had entirely exited into the scene, and the aperture behind them collapsed into a fray of fading sparks.
A sigh of relief came from Ves'oliq, and a scream of rage resounded from the pirate as the sudden detection of assorted monitoring devices announced the arrival of their saviors. As he saw them, he didn't quite recognize them-not that he entirely expected to, but given the region they were in he had at least some idea of who was around, and these large red-white hulks bristling with guns and greebles certainly didn't fit any appearance palette he knew of. Nevertheless, the jig was up, and as the two belligerents gave some parting insults and middle fingers, shells and missiles had already begun their journeys into the abyss, addressed to whomever it may concern as the two fleets began to trade them like cards.
From the Primrose's perspective, their damsels in distress had commenced the fireworks by the time they'd gotten the idea of the situation. The distress signal had come from what seemed to be a merchant fleet, half of which were gaudy cargo haulers and the other half a smorgasbord of various military ships, with all sharing a shit-brown color palette and a smattering of exposed interiors on their midsections. The largest among them were 3 large ships that seemed to be roughly equivalent in size to the Primrose, their prows styled like the face of an ancient creature and boasting large cannonry as their 'tongues'.
The aggressors, meanwhile, looked like those ships-if those same ships were harvested from junkyards, put together, smashed apart, and hastily put together again. While the defendants didn't exactly look top-of-the-line, these were just floating junkyards laden with weaponry that looked held together by scotch tape, toothpicks, hopes and dreams. The largest amongst them was a large ship-shaped junkyard with guns, which seemed a tad bigger than the Primrose herself, lacking armor yet no less armed. Yet, despite their frankly offensive build quality, they still had the numbers advantage over their quarry, and it would require immediate rectifying.
The pirates, being pirates, didn't have much concept of tactics. Actually, they didn't have much concept of anything beyond what piracy entailed, and for the few that did they probably just read a few naval training booklets or were naval command dropouts. And with such context, their movements weren't surprising-all guns firing, only moving forward. Like one of those cheap space opera movies, where all they had was a shoestring set, studio lighting and a bad CGI space background. While most of their guns were initially directed towards the merchants, soon enough more and more munitions began to roar outwards to the Primrose and her consorts, heedless of distance or the possibility of hitting.
The merchant fleet, meanwhile, split into two. The cargo ships now began to flee, the seemingly ponderous ships moving surprisingly fast thanks to a pair of large twin engines. Already they had sacrificed a part of their paycheck, and the captain was uninterested in finding out how much they could lose in one day. The military ships, meanwhile, formed a screen to cover the escape of their profit margin, beginning to tank some hits as slugs the size of houses and missiles that could make apartment flats blush rushed past their frames, some being blown up or destroyed by CIWS and laser-based PD mounts and others finding purchase in their hulls.
Normally, they'd be ensuing a flanking maneuver right about now. Most Zetyan pirates were notoriously bad at naval speed-chess, and easily overwhelmed by even simple tactics beyond 'go straight shoot gun win'. But they hadn't possessed the numbers for it, unless in a stroke of madness the captain had decided to use his breadwinners as meat shields.
The keyword was 'hadn't'. But these foreign red ships would suffice indeed.
The captain's response to the Primrose's transmission was rather curt, but given the circumstances it did well enough.
"We got a pirate problem! Quick, flank the shits, they don't know tactics!"
His opposition also deigned to give response to the interlopers, though all it amounted to was slurs, insults and wild gesticulation. At minimum, they at least learned some new swears for this brave new galaxy.
Radar and thermal scan operators looked on in heavy concern as the signatures of cannon fire flared up on their displays. Within a matter of seconds readings were relayed and impact warnings were sent to every major command station of every bridge of each ship. Almost immediately the science ships began to pull away, they were not designed for combat but were more than prepared to hide behind their escorts. The Admiral only had to see the projectile alerts for a mere second before she flipped back a panel on the arm of her chair and slammed her fist against the glowing red button underneath.
The sound of heavy-duty breakers rang out across all decks of the mighty vessel, followed briefly by the sounding of a warning klaxon. Everything was flooded in thick red light as the bridge windows slammed shut, massive armoured plates falling over the otherwise relatively vulnerable glass, in fact, all of the lights on the ships hull began to get stamped out one by one as heavy duty armour fell to protect the already reinforced viewports and decks across the ship structure.
The floor beneath the chairs of the more vital staff opened up, and they quickly descended, at drop-tower speed toward a combat bridge deeper in the superstructure. As they did, the admiral barked orders to the captains of her fleet.
"WE ARE AT COMBAT STATUS, REPEAT, COMBAT STATUS, ASSUME PROPER PROCEDURE. ALL CIVILIAN VESSELS TAKE COVER BEHIND THE PRIMROSE, ESCORTS ALPHA AND BETA FORM VERTICALLY AROUND LEAD. WE WILL PERFORM A BASIC FLANKING ACTION, KEEP PORT BROADSIDE TRAINED AND FIRE AT WILL."
The captain of the primrose, was of course managing things to a more focused extent
"UNDERSTOOD, ADMIRAL. APPLY HI STATUS TO SHIELD UNITS 2 AND 4, TUNE THEM TO KINETICS, ENGINES TO FLANKING SPEED, WE'LL STEER AROUND THEM."
On and on did the list of orders go even as they arrived in the combat command bridge. A huge tactical holographic display in a mostly dimly lit armoured chamber somewhere within the superstructure. across the ship, thousands of crewmembers ran to their stations, worked machinery and computers and stood by on damage control.
Obviously the pirates had gotten the first shots off, and the response from the imperial ships was a lightshow and a half. Hundreds of computer controlled and manually piloted autocannon turrets began tracking or firing at what incoming projectiles they had a sight of, a streaking wall of flak fire following its trail and detonating a good number of slugs early. As their volume of fire increased though, smaller shells would slip through and hit the imperial's hardlight shields, the resulting impact causing the sudden apparition of an individual hardlight hexagon formed to the shape of the hull, which would fade as energy dispersed through the projected structure.
And of course, not a minute later, there was the return fire. The port broadside gun commander made sure the first thing the pirates would see is a full volley. Already in a ready state from the admiral's orders, it didn't take a minute for massive cranes and mechanisms to load the sleek rocket assisted shells into the breeches of the guns. The shots shook the ship, they could feel those guns fire from the bridge, each one after the next as streaks of glowing flame erupted from the side of the ship toward any pirates unlucky enough to have to tank them.
The escort ships fired a swarm of smaller missiles, pre-armed and trained on the bulking signatures of the pirates. The fleet as a whole was already changing bearing, too in fact their whole formation was rotating it seemed, at a reasonable pace of course. Fusion torch engines lit up like cosmic firecrackers as plumes of plasma churned their way out to push the primrose and her allies to increasing speed in a large curve.
As the various cargo ships began to huddle away from the chaos, trickling over to a secluded spot as the lightshow continued, the merchant ships began to feel the burn as they covered for the last few stragglers, a few of the corvettes and escorts starting to show their wear and tear more and more, and the three destroyers now riddled with tiny pockmarks as they returned fire. They weren't anywhere near dire straits yet, but given a little more of this without any change and they'd certainly be rather close.
As he watched the Bulwark forces begin their maneuver, the captain now considered how to proceed, as he watched the various readouts now present on the bridge screen. To simply sit and tank wouldn't be an option for long, even if the pirates couldn't aim very well. But already, their attention had been split into half and half, weakening their offense just a bit. Causing more diversions would be beneficial, he supposed, lower their output more and more. And they had the wiggle room for it now-best to act while their ships were intact and their stowages were full.
An order was soon barked out to the fleet, as the waltz of shells, space and smoke continued around them.
"Group 1, split 1/3rd vanguard, Group 1a, flank opponent, Group 1b, hold position, divert incoming, divert incoming-"
Upon his orders, the fighting half split in two again, imitating the process of mitosis as the splitoff contingent began to flank to the other side of the pirates, bright orange lights muffled by trails of detritus, exhaust and fusion waste generated from their rears like a cosmic sludge trail. A destroyer and some of the smaller ships now saw the stream of fire focused on them begin to disseminate once again, as the other remainder continued to hold their position. Spinal warheads and missiles were now belted off to the foe just as they had received them, and any that were sent back as a return gift had to work through a maze of lasers and CIWS streams.
The pirates, meanwhile, now saw the fruits of their efforts as both sides began to send their hammers into their midst. Their own PD systems screamed into the void as the barrages met them, a flurry of bullet streams aimed at whatever struck their fancy and creating little fireworks as they trailed over shells or missiles that entered their midst. Despite the hail they sent out, the return fire make it's own marks in turn, as slugs of various sizes began to insert themselves into the space hulks wherever they pleased, announcing their arrival with small gouts of flame or burst of orange-reddish light.
The Bulwark response also did their numbers, as the broadside began to hammer into the largest ships like metronome, and the missile swarm finding purchase in the various ships of their line. Though they still moved and fired as if they were unaffected, no doubt soon they would begin to falter and sputter-a sponge can only absorb so much water, after all, and even the most heavily armored ship was no different.
The pirate captain soon became irritated at his opponent's movements, though mostly because he was struggling to remember the solution to it. He read up on it through some half-burnt tactics manual he'd scrimped out from a raid one time, and it mentioned something important you could do to win at stuff. He forgot what it was, though, and the name escaped his memory... something with a 'S' at the beginning and it mentioned symmetry? He mused to find another one like it, in between screaming at his crewmembers to do their thing better.
Along the sides of the leading ships, a series of five hangar blast doors began to open at varying angles and places, which began to bleed out a few swarms of spacecraft. Autonomous drones, mostly, but equipped with various anti-ship weaponry and able to follow orders well enough. They soon bunched up, and split again into two groups-one headed for the Bulwark ships, and the other headed for the Zetyans.
It raised red flags for Ves'oliq, though for now his concern wasn't much more than his combat stress. While they were likely to get shredded under the hails of PD from their escorts, and the ships were well-off enough for the moment to tank a few anti-ship craft runs, there were still a decent lot enough to burst through multiple times and make some hits, especially since they didn't seem interested in the other half currently circling around the pirates. A part of him made a reminder to look into cheap light carriers for his fleet if or when they got out of this, and another part cursed Zetyan naval doctrine for being so cookie-cutter with carriers in the first place.
The imperials seemed on course for a normal flank, the formation of ships continued on their turn, but it seems they had a decision made somewhere within their command structure, after finishing the course turn, they didn't stop, in fact for a good minute or two it seemed as if they would be turning straight toward their fleet, but then it all made sense when it was obvious they'd started to pitch "up" relative to the orientation of the pirates, and were gradually making their way overhead instead of to the side of their loose gathering of something you could hardly call a formation. Perhaps they'd begun due to noticing their allies movements, or perhaps it was of their own volition either way they were still, however, keeping their broadside oriented in their direction.
Additionally, the huge, skyscraper-sized primary turrets had finally reached their mark, and so too did those main guns join the cacophony of ongoing fire along with every smaller armament aboard that could aim. They were far outnumbered here, so expending vast ammunition would be necessary. As more shells exited however, defensive sacrifices had to be made, holes opened up in their walls of autocannon flak to allow their own shells through without damage, and sometimes an enemy projectile would sneak through, the tough-as nails military grade hard light shields held however against such crude kinetic weaponry.
The next things that were noticed were the drones, it wasn't hard to see their launch, they would spend some precious time evaluating just how many drones were present in the oncoming assault before deciding whether it would be worth launching their own interceptor craft into the fray, either way the hydraulics on the main hangar doors would remain pressurised and ready to open at a moments notice. The captains of the escorts however would already know their purpose, and missiles would be diverted more towards dealing with whatever the Primrose's PD couldn't.
It also seemed as if the massive broadside barrage would take a little while longer to reload, this didn't stop tactical officers ordering a standard procedure ultimatum, a message delivered by the communications team.
"Attention aggressors! This is the RBIV Primrose of Red Bulwark Expeditionary fleet 02! Your ships have sustained heavy damage, and your fleet will suffer further during the second broadside barrage, scheduled not long from now! Agree to cease fire and we will in turn agree to spare your ships and your lives! This is your one and only warning! Continued aggression will result in your summarary destruction or capture!"
The officer shouting these written lines might already guess the response from a bunch of lowlife pirates, but it's always better to be sure they don't lack common sense, even now as he looked out at external camera feeds he could see the occasional shell glance or blanket a hardlight section in fire, every crewmember aboard knew that it was like trying to lug pebbles at a camel...well unless one of those big shells got through, that might actually make a crack or two.
The pirate's radio response to the Imperials was predictably crude, having ceased being anything other than ad hominem after the third to fifth word, and anything resembling coherent speech after the second sentence.
Their response was also predictable in turn, as the volume of fire was only maintained on their opposition. Even as they received their own dues, and as the Bulwark forces began to arc above their fleet, they simply kept firing at just about everything that wasn't themselves heedless of any damage taken. Missiles and shells alike danced in many separated waltzes outwards as the crude munitions did their best to make impact on something beyond a wall of light or a storm of bullets. For the merchants, their goal was at least partially successful-two of the destroyers, and a few of the corvettes and escorts enjoyed another smattering of shell impacts large and small to decorate their hull with, and a missile made sure to partially cripple one of the destroyers who had remained steadfast in their position, the warhead landing a lucky hit on the spinal area even when various PD streams had severed it's engines.
Their own damages were not unnoticeable, however, as the telltale signs of battle scars and internal turmoil began to show themselves in force. By now, every ship could be considered damaged across the board, even if they still seemed outwardly adamant on absorbing shells like sponges, and roughly half of them had begun to belch gouts of flame and whorls of smoke from the holes punched in their skin, as debris began to leak from sources other than the engines and whatever loose fittings hadn't been tightened. The metronome of the Bulwark's volleys became a steady drumbeat of firepower, and the continuous flow of the merchant's own armory were dutiful in their purpose and effective in their application, both sides making more and more of the building-sized holes wherever had stricken their fancy.
The swarm of drones, meanwhile, both neared the Bulwark fleet and the merchants, divorced tides of steel and scrap making attempts to bob and weave against whatever came their way. Their anti-ship weaponry was, in comparison to the scale of weaponry being tossed around like hotcakes, comparatively small-scale; just a few anti-ship torpedoes and a sprinkling of cannons each. And the captain was indeed correct with his hypothesis of their durability-their simple dodging movements were hardly even enough to dodge the rivers of bullets now being slung their way, and soon enough their movements were more like water forcing against a flow of air.
But they were still forcing through nonetheless-in much lesser numbers than expected, to be fair, likely owing to their inherent shoddiness. But there were enough for one run-at least, for the Zetyans-and soon enough tiny explosive sticks were being gifted en masse to the merchants, landing wherever fancy and sending an explosion as deep inside as the armor they impacted would allow them. A few turrets were eliminated on a decent score of the ships, and a few lucky ones put salt on their wounds as they journeyed into already-present impact zones and causing further exacerbation of the wounds. The same generosity was also extended to the Bulwark forces, as the horde of remnants who pushed through the walls of PD and flak began their first and last attack runs, though time and fate would tell if they succeeded.
The merchants kept up their streams of fire, gouts of fire and flame popping to and fro on their large forms as both contingents gave the pirates their just desserts. The splitoff of the fleet continued their flanking maneuver, coming at the apex of the pirate's sides and beginning to circle around to their backsides. A few of their hulks had begun to turn towards them in turn, if only just to aim their largest cannons towards the odd migration.
"Small cracks found on projection 32 and 44 west, no signs of fatigue!" Shouted the shield captain, the generators were doing their job, but the sheer volume of fire was beginning to put hairline fractures through some of the more battered hardlight panels, nothing serious, it was within expectation for such a situation. The escorts were only holding in due to the 'shoot at the biggest' mentality the pirates seemed to be pushing, their weaker shields were still taking a hefty beating however, being partially cushioned by the defensive wall of explosions the Primrose was projecting, of course they were somewhat contributing to it as well, but their focus was on the drones now, guns turning to track any stragglers b-lining toward their lead ship.
"Main guns aim fire, target the holes in their armour, use the precision they don't have!" The gunnery Captain bellowed, sending the message to commanders, who would tell their individual gun officers, who would direct their weapons to fire with a bit more intent than before, an intent only backed up by the decision of the admiral in the combat bridge.
She listened rather disappointedly at the pirate's response communication. Obviously they knew common, they were just too...savage, to use it properly. She sighed, though she never had to deal with such types before, she'd heard stories of this sort of rabble, and as she listened more and more, it simply confirmed her next decision as she pushed the microphone close to her mouth, somewhat dreading the almost cliche'd order she was about to convey.
"Very well, Weapons, focus fire on their largest vessel. Judging by their demeanour I would say there's a high chance they'll destroy themselves after their ringleader is brought down."
The command went to every necessary sector of the ship, and soon enough, smaller turrets, gatling cannons, missiles and eventually the main guns would all begin focusing their trajectories toward the largest hulk in the centre of their fleet, up until the point that the imperial formation reached their own apoapsis around the top of the pirates, At that point it was hard to not hit anything else, so everything in the way was just fired at until shells started going through it to reach their real target.
Additionally, the broadside guns firing were delayed for this moment. At the moment they began passing over the relative centre of the pirate fleet, the volley of shells rained down upon them, 17 metre wide rocket-assisted projectiles. The heavy armour piercing shells would pass straight through anything with thin enough skin and keep going, still aimed for their central vessel and the cracks in its hide. Anything that was unfortunate enough to have one of these projectiles get jammed in their hull would find its fuse cooking over shortly after and causing a cone shaped explosion deeper into their vessel.
The admiral almost felt bad, but she knew she couldn't, she didn't know these people or what they were. They could have been the source of strife for the faction of their allies here for who knows how long. She moved her gaze from the tactical display holograph toward a cam feed, watching the few guns that could aim directly up at their ship still desperately trying to hit them instead of just having the ships turn to face any other direction, a torn apart shell whizzed into view, impacting the shield and bouncing off like a fish against its tank. 'To be fair, it isn't really my fault.' she reminded herself, 'They did fire first.'
The pirate captain had been rather pleased with his response to the red fellows. First they interrupt his well-to-do daily shacking, then they bang up his stuff, and now they order him to surrender? Hogwash, horseshit, the nerve to suggest such things to a zet like him! Why, he ought've said more to those assholes, talking to him like that!
Actually, what was stopping him in the first place?
Just as the Primrose hit their apex, another transmission followed, as the pirates continued on their well-trodden path of doing the same thing again and again.
"YEW KNOW WOT, YEW THINK YOU CAN FUCKIN' TALK TER ME LOIK 'AT, YEW SCHITSTAINS?! DO YEW KNOW 'O OI AM?! OI'M FU!#@$AA@#$A#%---"
But alas, his second message was not to be. A hundred thousand bullets for a hundred thousand tons, such was the Imperial answer as the Primrose's focused shots began tearing into the bulk of the ship one by one, each hit dragging the ship deeper into the deep sleep as it underwent blackout. Eventually, all that was left of the former ship was a visual gash, belching flame out of every pore as corpses and debris floated outwards from it's aching depths.
The rest of the motley scum seemed to stop for a moment. Transmissions were suddenly shot between each other like haywire, as they argued like children over what to do and who was in charge.
The admiral had been half right. Without their ringleader, they had become far more disorganized in record time, and as the pirates weren't too confident in their peers, each now began to follow their own orders, as shells now began to fire every which way and their 'formation' lost any sense of cohesion it once pretended to have. Some began attempting to chase after the cargo ships, others committed fully to their assaults on whatever they had been targeting, and one corvette even seemed to be gearing up to leave as it began to emit strange signatures and readings while moving away.
Though, their impunity in doing so was in short supply, as their now rather tired-looking hulks had to endure another assault. They now began to lose some more ships, as a few corvette-esques and escorts hit the bucket as they either were hit in just the right areas or managed to enjoy one of the Primrose's 17-meter gifts. A destroyer was cored from back to stomach by a few shells about the size of a brachiosaurus in width, eruptions of artificial nature absconding from it's undersides and expelling whatever it had in it's guts, from men to machines to everything in between. The rest, while quite evidently faring better than those unlucky few, were no less battered, as the growing number of countless pockmarks and holes on their forms could attest.
The merchants had also begun to focus their fire, their attention now resigned solely on the ones looking to harm their assets.
The pirates attempting to make pace for their shipping craft and the ones that were focusing on their other military ships now enjoyed their full attention, with each ship now being treated on a one-by-one basis, as one unlucky corvette and escort each were sent to their maker by a sudden hailstorm of slugs, and one of their two remaining destroyers now felt a hundred gazes as their foes began to fire another barrage in it's direction. The pirates did manage to make a score on the merchants, however, as one of their corvettes was struck by a spinal slug and a missile in places it wasn't meant to tank, dying soon after as whatever garishly-placed lights it had shut off across the ship, and the rest suffered more damages as they continued to tank the slowly yet steadily decreasing number of slugs headed their way.
Iris leaned back in her chair, diverting her attention on the holograph. Coloured arrows representing every known, nearby ship in 3D space trailing small dotted lines. She watched as the big arrow in the middle flashed into a dull grey, indicating its probable destruction, her reaction was blank, even as several of the officers around her in the gloomy armoured chamber cheered in victory, she'd celebrate when the battle was over, which it wasn't. She also watched as the numerous other differently sized arrows soon after began dispersing like a swarm of bees. Their biggest threat was gone and so was their command structure, and all that was left was to clean up, surely.
Her next decree was simple, the swarms of mismatched drones were, at this point, the only things really capable of circling their ship and hitting the side on which their allotted shield energy wasn't focused. This could prove problematic, as the PD would need to work very close, and thus, ineffectively to shoo them away, and it was only a matter of time before their pilots figured that out. There was an easy fix to this issue.
"Confirm previous order complete. Assign new targets, find every ship that contributed to this drone swarm, and converge fire if possible, I doubt pirates have the money for automated craft. Both escorts hold position, return fire on any ships targeting you...Also, communications, send another mercy call, perhaps some will listen this time around."
Her inferiors nodded and began enacting her orders, after listening to their rather easy to intercept internal squabbling, the same communication officer sends a new message to every ship in their broken formation.
"Attention aggressors! Your command ship has been neutralised, your captain is dead! We will be willing to give one last chance to the remaining ships of this fleet, turn yourselves in, and your lives will be spared! We are urged to inform you that bulwark jailtime programs include social and employment assistance, uh, piracy is an option, you can do better."
He said the last part as if he were reading a tacky script he'd never seen before, very likely considering the ship he's working on.
Beside this however, the Primrose's broadside volley would fall silent as new shells were being loaded in the depths of the ship. The turreted weapons were still firing plenty however, huge turret houses clanking away as they zeroed in on any ship with a hangar door, now being able to hit most of the rears of ships that didn't start turning to face them from above. In this position, many of the enemy guns were unable to return fire, and new parts of the shield were being hit at this angle, allowing battered ones to begin recuperating somewhat.
The admiral once again looked at the external camera's, this time at optics focusing on the battered, dented hulks of scrap drifting through the void through momentum alone. She was still under the impression these were humans, and she hadn't much of a reason to think otherwise, apart from how absolutely dedicated these people were. Pirates in the bulwark are crafty, sneaky, they find ways to subvert the military as getting hold of large warships is nowhere near an easy task, so where in the fiery depths did they get their hands on all of this brute force. She supposed they were fortunate that it was only the brute force that they had, if they'd of combined it with brains their ship might be a flaming hulk by now. The merchants would know, surely, their ships were similar so they must be part of the same sphere of influence, even if these pirate vessels were 90% recycled material.
Then, as she was staring closely at the debris chunking out from one of the detonating husks, the frozen, horrified expression of an unfortunate Zetyan floated into view, obscuring the camera feed.
She almost fell out of her fucking chair as everyone looked over to see why the almighty admiral just let out a shriek of horror.
As the pirates dispersed further, it seemed that now a few saner minds had been put into their fractured command-or, being more pessimistic, their stewards had been sufficiently cowed by the display. Two of the corvettes eventually ceased fire a few minutes after the mercy call, paired with an escort as both sent transmissions best summarized as 'ok we get it please stop firing we're sorry xoxo'. Another corvette, in an unrelated moment of clarity, also deigned to flee the area, heading on the tail of the one with strange signatures as it opened an FTL portal afore it's bow, proceeding to slip inside while the other now prepared to do much the same.
The rest, though, seemed adamant in their offense, continuing to fire even as they slowly lost their only advantage to the whims of their crew's morale loss and their ship's structural integrity. Notably, they had become a bit more chatty since their leader had fallen, as the destroyers each sent transmissions declaring their superiority thanks to their size, and the rest that deigned to respond either responded with insults or swears of vengeance. Even as their damages turned critical across the fleet, they still seemed determined to fight to the end-though whether now due to rage, spite or just plain foolishness was up for debate.
The drones attacking the Primrose had been lucky in their loss accrual, losing comparatively few of their number at first thanks to the initially occupied defenses of the Bulwark fleet. And, as the maiden ship and co. continued to fire on the opposition, it seemed they'd be able to let loose another attack run; perhaps on a weakened shield point as to break through, or in a different unshielded area as Iris hypothesized.
Then, without any forewarning, the swarm suddenly shut off mid flight. Turned into little more than a debris field, they now ran themselves piecemeal towards the hardlight shields of the ship. The reason was presented before the result, as their carrier-destroyers enjoyed the same treatment that had been bestowed on the frigate, earning donut holes and love bites all across their hull until they were all but miniaturized, floating replicas of the late leading hulk.
The rest of their ships had also begun to fall as well, the majority of the pirate ships now critically damaged in some form or another and beginning to lose ships faster and faster. The largest ones had been sizing up to be the first to go, being the largest targets for the lot, but the sudden change of tactics from the merchants targeting the smaller ships now ensured that slowly but surely they were being picked off en masse.
The merchants, themselves, now enjoyed a relieve as the pirates began to shift to their last legs. While still receiving their various gifts, the former barrage had now decreased in number to the point of a small hail, though one-off hits still occurred on the larger ships, meter-wide shells disappearing into thick armor to damage internals, or ricocheting off the sides of their prows. The clear turning of tables had also brought a morale boost to their crews, as what had been once a pitched battle for one side had now switched quickly and efficiently to the other in record time.
The captain stared at the scene from the lead ship's commanding bridge, watching as shells raced down from the top of his view and slugs threw themselves out from behind the cameras towards the foe. He had elected to count his blessings when the frigate had been destroyed. 'Dumb' pirates were irritatingly common in the Clanholds compared to 'smart' pirates, to the point of notoriety; every plucky Joe and Jim wanted their chance at being a plundering pioneer, but few actually had the naval and tactical expertise to lead more than a skirmish group's worth of ships, let alone a whole fleet.
He also decided to thank Koa for the arrival of help, as he eyed another camera focused soley on their saviours. Again, he found himself pondering who these people were. They said they were of the... 'Red Bulwark', but again he hadn't heard of any sort within the region. Perhaps they were a trading enclave, or based out of some sort of station or planet? There were plenty of plausible answers he could make up, but until this was over he'd have to save his theorycrafting for when his bosses grilled him about this afterwards.
Thankfully, the ordeal seemed near it's end, as he watched another pirate hulk become a fountain of flame and debris. He made a mental note to check their video-comms projection-receiver before it came time for talking again-would probably help jog his memory if they could see what species these Bulwark people were from.
The admiral stretched, still trying to shake that rather terrifying image from her head, she decided to distract herself. The battle was reaching its eclipse, guns were pointed from those surrendering and running away to those still firing back, the reduction in fire exchange bringing the wall of flak down to more of a interval of withering fire. Streaks of orange and white bolted the other way, picking on the last ships with decent precision now there was less of a rush.
The drones being disabled at such notice was also a sigh of relief for tactical, and as such Iris was comfortable in retiring full alert, letting the rest of the command crew deal with the remaining scraps.
"Damage report" She uttered into her headset, and soon enough her console was updated with the information regarding the fleet's booboo's thus far.
Science ships were unharmed, having hid behind the Primrose's silhouette the whole battle, thankfully drones being disabled before they were put in danger. The escorts had it worse off, though their shields were mostly intact, a few hardlight panels were cracked badly, and the result was a number of gashes in otherwise smooth armour. Thankfully the damage was mostly surface level and the armour did its job delightfully. The primrose itself was thankfully unharmed, sifting power to their broadside and focusing on a kinetic frequency had paid off and proved to their crew their vessel wasn't just a pansy exploration vessel. Of course there were pieces of shrapnel that had sunk through and scratched the paint, but sensors nor crew wouldn't pick up something like that.
Happy with this, she congratulated the crew over the announcement system, even as many were still at battle stations, loading shells and calibrating guns to pick off the smaller targets. And then sent an order to communicate to those ships that were smart enough to withdraw.
"Cease fire recognised, remain in proximity and await further instructions, you have made the right choice, thank you for your co-operation."
Next was to the merchants, their allies during this fight had lost a lot more than Iris' fleet had and she had the empathy to recognise that. Fortunately the expedition vessel was outfitted with a disaster and damage response unit designed for this very situation. And so a private channel was established with the ship that had contacted them initially.
"Friendly vessels, your bravery in the face of adversity has been noticed, and the determination of your crew is admirable. We are willing to send assistance, rescue and damage control to any of your damaged or non-functional vessels, rapid response is assured we will just need to be provided damage information on your fleet. After this is complete the admiral will be willing to speak with your appointed highest in chain of command, understood?"
As the fight began to finally die down in his would-be muggers, Ves'oliq now had time to focus on things beyond the fire coming his way, or the coordination of ships in his fleet. It was nice to get some calm now, and he felt himself relaxing a little as he watched another pirate hulk go up in flames on the video feeds, given a healthy acupuncture treatment from bow to stern by hails of slugs and shells.
His first thoughts went to the surrendering ships, which caught his eye in an unsavory way. Not that it was bad of them to surrender, per se, but these were pirates-for all he knew, it was a prelude to some ambush of some kind, or a sudden attack while crew was being transferred, or something tricksy that would take them by surprise when they least expected it.
...Then again, he wondered if the capitulators even possessed the foresight for such a thing. They were pirates; all things considered, this was the smartest thing they did all week.
Still, he elected to keep a wary eye or two on them, even if in the end he was just thinking pessimistic from all the other pirates he'd seen and heard of.
The fleeing ones hardly enjoyed more than a moment's thought, as he glanced over them to keep tally of who was and wasn't doing the smart thing. Two, three corvettes so far, and now an escort-or, what looked kinda like one, anyways-had decided to cut their losses. He figured they'd join some other freebooter, get cut up in a skirmish with the military or go join some other foreign enclave out in who knows where. Maybe EOTL or something, if they were lucky.
That left the ships insistent on dying fighting, who were now quickly dwindling in number as they began to hit the single digit count. A part of him felt a twinge of respect for how they continued fighting despite the odds, even if they were only doing so because of pride or arrogance or just plain spite and stupidity. Maybe in the afterlife they'd all get some 'you tried' star, and sent on their merry way.
An insistent beeping caught his eyes and ears, as a shipmap on a nearby dashboard logged a stray hit in a filler compartment by a small shell. Probably runt barracks, from the looks of things. Other flashing lights detailed more damages; as he turned it into a 3D map, he got to see every impact, how deep it went, what it affected. Decent damages were had all around, but nothing critical beyond weaponry and turretry. It'd buff out once they got to port, anyhow-whoever designed these ships thankfully made repairing them relatively cheap and easy, aside from being decent at tanking hits in important places.
After mulling over his own ship's damages, he decided to check up on his own fleet's scars, ordering a damage call as he had the main display shift to readouts and shipmaps. Their situation was much the same, with variation. Some were largely unscathed, or had surface-level damage, while others had been through hell in a handbasket. Their armor had done well from the looks of things, as he saw some of the ships having dud shells buried in their armor, or showing off many ricochet marks and non-pens. A pleasing result, given the circumstances and close distances.
The cargo ships reported all-clear as well, though the one carrying weapons crates was miffed about the whole cargo jettisoning thing. He mulled over if they'd be able to recover that container, but then he looked over the ruined and shapeless hulks and concluded their time would be wasted on finding a broken needle in a mountain-sized haystack. Atleast it had bought them time-in that way it had been more valuable than everything in his fleet combined.
The Primrose's transmission, coming in while he re-reviewed some of the heavier damages on his ship, had his attention-mostly the last part, however. They'd likely get into the nitty gritty of things like who they were and where they were from, and since they'd probably want to talk to someone more official than himthat would mean taking them to his harbormaster afterwards, which would mean going to his clan's homeworld, which would lead to them being shuttled over to To'oora for official diplomacy, and since he was the one with the most experience talking to them he'd have a high chance of being trained to be a diplomat, their diplomat, because of some stupid internal rule they made fifty decades ago.
Was he really ready to take on that stressful duty so soon, on the eve of the galaxy collapsing in on itself...?
...
..Eh, whatever. He figured it'd probably happen sooner or later.
A return transmission on the private channel soon dashed to the Primrose, along with another public one sent to the pirates who seemingly had the grace to surrender.
The private one had a map of damages that each ship had, even some of the mission-killed ones that hadn't been thrashed enough to be unrecoverable. "Understood, damage shipmaps attached, commanding officer is located on Destroyer-234-a9 "Ki'saq". Your help is much appreciated and acknowledged."
The public one, meanwhile, simply said "You're all paying for some of this."
Iris and most of the bridge crew had returned to the navigation bridge by now, armoured shutters rolling up to once again shed eyes along its spine and white armour as starlight flooded the chamber. The occasional streaking glow of multi-flak clouds could be seen to their left every to often, but it wasn't anything to be too concerned about, now was the time to act and respond, even in spite of those few remaining ships firing, yet they were practically a non-threat by now.
The primrose and her escorts redistributed their shield power to cover every panel at a bit of a lower power. It took a little while for capacitors to stabilise and breakers to switch, but soon enough they were fully insured from any stray singular shells somehow getting past a full military flak wall. They soon began to turn in formation, gravitic impulse thrusters creating waves of inertia which pushed their ships toward the small gathering of surrendered vessels. They'd begin making preparations internally; quick deploy quarantine tunnels as well as a very out of place modern medical scanning machine were wheeled into the ingress chamber, ship security would standby and get to their positions and a route was set up toward the nearest brig.
All the while the Primrose would be sending data over public channels about docking procedure, orderly conduct, remaining calm, and a reminder that the primrose is garrisoned with a small army of infantry and security. As it seems, they would be extending a tunnel outward outfitted with a specialised universal seal for ships with inoperable or, in their case, incompatible airlocks. They would then be allowed to file into the ships where they were promised a 'comforting brig experience'.
Meanwhile, the damage of their allied ships was being determined by the team trained to control damage. Damage control captain Justin was an expert at this. Even despite never seeing these ship layouts in his life, him and his team of response analysts, located somewhere between the hangar and the bridge section, were already sending out plans and recommendations to the correct officers. Determining the size of the holes and gashes, if there were still crew left in the airtight sections of more hulked ships, whether or not they were in any sudden danger of detonating, they began creating squadrons of response shuttles, some of which were scrambled quickly to assist the more dire situations, but others stuck behind to prepare more carefully, being given orders before setting out.
As for their own response, the Admiral had heard it and was pleased to hear these fellows sounded a bit politer than the pirates, a friendly voice was something comforting when they'd spent the last couple of months alone in the void. Tactical managed to find which ship was the 'Ki'saq' using the provided maps, and then communications matched a frequency to use as a private channel, one which the admiral was given an end to. No video feed was provided.
"Salutations! I am Admiral Iris Kilmire, Lord of the third expeditionary fleet. We hail from the Red Bulwark, and are pleased to make your acquaintance. I wish to speak with your fleet's superior commander, if they're present." Despite being a high and mighty admiral, and clearly an older woman, her voice was less intimidating than most would expect.
By now, any stragglers from the pirates were either dead or dying, turnt to metallic misshapen asteroids as the rest either made good on their escape or awaited the Primrose's arrival to their hulk, the ones who were connected shuttling themselves into her depths as a smorgasbord of various lowlifes intermingled with concerning amounts of... midgets, it seemed, went in a surprisingly peaceful-if somewhat rowdy at times-manner to wherever they were told to go, emptying their piteous ships one man at a time.
The merchants had begun some level of damage control on their own ships; spaceborne welders sent out en masse to plug holes/repair structure and engineering crew conducting internal repairs on their equipment had now become more and more of a commonplace sight, and at the more damaged ships the numbers of structural repair crew being sent out could be mistaken for new debris being coughed outwards, if not for the little RCS thruster lights on their suits and the various tiny lights that soon illuminated their forms as they began their work.
The arrival of the scrambled Bulwark damage control ships was thus welcomed by those present, as both sides set to work on doing what they did best.
As they engaged in repairs externally, their internals also saw the works, as the able-bodied rushed to and fro inside the depths of each ship as they began damage control on every level. Fires on decks 549 thru 547, wounded in deck 213, turret 57 has nonfunctional machines, announcements rang both through intercomms and radio beads as they began to quell their own problems, one issue at a time.
As he observed their progress on various cameras and tac-maps, the captain's attention was soon turned and caught up by the Primrose's transmission, leaving his second-ins to observe progress instead as he prepared to respond back. The lack of video feed was a little surprising, but no dealbreaker; maybe they were waiting for their own feed, or maybe they just didn't have it in the first place. Nothing worth fretting over. As he calibrated the now-lowering video transponder array, he pondered what they would look like if they weren't humans, as his eyes tracked over a calibrator program that now displayed on the main screen...
---
When they received the return transmission, they also received live video feed alongside it.
They were greeted by the sight of an alien in a modest-looking uniform, with gold interlaced service stripes on the shoulders and a dress aiguilette pinned across the breast. A cap sat slightly askew on his head, making no attempt to mask his features; 12 black dots stared soullessly outwards as his mouth contorted upwards in a slight grin. As he spoke, he stared at an angle, letting the eyes on his left side be shown more directly than those on his right. In the background, others like him could be seen, doing various tasks or giving orders to subordinates and...
...children?
Or perhaps just... midgets. Hopefully they were midgets.
"Greetings. Captain Ves'oliq Mins'tab, captain of the 567th Mercantile Formation. Zetyan Clanholds. Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Iris, your assistance is much appreciated."
His voice had a chitteriness to it, a roughness of the throat paired with it to give a sort of raspy, chittering texture to his words. He spoke somewhat fast as well, not giving much pause between his words, pauses, and periods.
The boarding Zetyans weren't met with the most friendly of entrances. UV lights, bright quarantine tunnels, men in armoured white suits with dimly glowing red eyes holding large calibre weaponry, it wasn't exactly welcoming. They were split into several channels and lead each through an individual machine. A standard procedure for new species, these would quickly analyse potential harmful pathogens or other biological dangers, being mostly a surface scanner it wasn't 100% foolproof but it was able to spot out important things to protect the crew not sealed in airtight suits.
Any brewing unruliness in the crowd would be shouted at with a voice modulator from one of the guards standing at vantage points. The prisoners were lead through the large embarkation lobby and through about 150 metres of corridor into a large holding area, a bit like a brig but at least a bit more liveable, perhaps they weren't even brigs at all. Still, however there were clearly viewports near the top ends of the room for security or observation and such. It seems they were quite prepared, too and despite the large crews of these ships, there was just enough room for most, split into different holding blocks in different parts of the ship. There was a slight overflow however, which was directed into secured empty crew cells and kept under guard.
Repair crews utilised remote controlled drones and heavy, bulky looking industrial EVA exosuits to operate. They would focus on preventing immediate threats like air or fuel leaks and also set up their own communications with repair teams. Soon a co-ordinated effort between dozens of gunship-sized vessels carrying tonnes of materials and lifesaving equipment and the Zetyan's crews went underway, the imperials perhaps trying to make a good first impression.
The admiral, meanwhile was pleased at the quick response, clearly these people weren't all as bad as their pirates. His voice reminded her of the Sylthas she had aboard a little. She noticed the Zetyan turn on their video and was a little taken aback by their appearance, however she somewhat knew what to expect now and was actually moreso excited they had found a new species to document. Out of courtesy she prodded at a screen on her console and her own video feed flickered on. It was somewhat zoomed out and showed the curved wall behind her which was only about 2 and a half metres high, giving way to more bridge behind that. The imperial crest, naval insignia and the ship name was of course emblazoned onto the sleek surface.
She was an older human woman with ashen hair, a thin face and a large cap with a golden eagle on its band, her uniform was black red and white and of course there were droves of medals across her chest. She seemed to be smiling slightly.
"It isn't an issue, captain, we are quite literally prepared for situations such as this from the getgo, we're simply fulfilling our duty. You on the other hand, as a merchant fleet, could have left the fight, and us to our probable doom at any point, so your bravery is absolutely commendable and likewise thank you for your own assistance. Now unless there are any concerns off the bat, I have subjects I would like to discuss."
As the admiral's video feed turned on, the captain now saw that any theories he had about them not being humans would have to be dashed as he took in the familiarity. He supposed they were waiting for their own feed after all.
Noting the crest, uniform design, and insignia and filing them away for future use, he did ponder the anachronistic appearance of their saviors a little while he listened to her felicitations. But his ponderings were little more than the word itself, and seeing as she was getting straight to the point he might as well stash them away for later-no need to keep a conversation waiting on theories and question marks.
"Of course, admiral. Fire away."
-
The pirates, put under medical scan, would be surprisingly...
Well, 'healthy' wouldn't be the right word for it.
Nor would 'clean'-both came with some rather strange connotations that befitted not the disheveled aliens they took into their depths. But a decent number appeared to lack any harmful diseases, instead appearing to have either physical injuries and/or evidenced drug usage side-effects, and the rest just had minor infections like the flu and common cold-or atleast, diseases of similar appearance and symptoms to their equivalents. Easy enough to quarantine or separate.
Though, as they marched into their respective holding zones, that could only give rise to another question-where could undiscovered space aliens have gotten old Earth diseases from?
-
As repairs picked up on all ends of the scale, the help of the Imperial damage control was a welcome addition to the Zetyan efforts, coordination being rather expedient to establish once the repair forces had arrived. As they began their work in droves, the problems needing to be fixed were popping off the docket more and more, those monitoring the situation being rather pleased at the speed of their work. A good first impression was indeed achieved, and as the work continued the lessened load felt like a godsend to the various crew.
Iris rose her head slightly, smiling a little that there wasn't anything in the way of their co-operation. Part of her believing she was lucky to find one so reasonable. She was still somewhat curious about the species itself, but she knew that's what the three science ships being escorted are for and so knew to keep her questions to herself, instead focusing more on their main issues.
"Very well then. I would like to begin by stating, that while it may not look like it, we are in fact stranded. We're in a rather desperate situation, in fact. Our home territory, the Red Bulwark, is on the literal other side of the galaxy to us. This would usually not be a large issue, we're stocked with enough supplies for half a year of travel, however, we ended up here due to a rather unforgiveable mistake on my behalf.
Therefore nothing this side of the galaxy is mapped, and in fact, due to this 'golden expanse', we can't even use the stars the bulwark usually uses for navigation, so we're in the dark about where in the galaxy we are. A half year of supplies will not last us the time it would take to return home at this point. I hope this is reason enough to ask for assistance."
Meanwhile, a likely bad decision is made by the science group chief aboard the RBSV Kilo, the largest science vessel of the three.
"Alright!" Chief Prof.Wesfer exclaimed to his ships captain. Technically he outranked all the crew aboard every science vessel, but definitely not most the crew aboard the military ships, this however gave him three ships with very little checks or balances to his procedure, it was something the navy didn't think about much.
"Send a request to the Primrose, I'd enjoy...maybe...60 new guests aboard." He seemed somewhat infatuated, a new species was something that always excited him. However in this case these weren't registered lended test subjects, they were filthy, good for nothing, scum of the galaxy, child murdering, planet pillaging....they were pirates, Wesfer didn't like pirates.
"And if you can, make it quick, and don't make any promises either, they'll likely think we're just trying to lighten their load."
"Uh, yes Professor." The captain replied, not really too sure as to why he was rambling, he looked over to his communications officer, who nodded.
Soon enough, small numbers of Zetyan were picked at random from the holding areas and shuffled through the ship's corridors toward some shuttles to be moved to the science vessels.
As Iris spoke, the captain's mind began to ask some more questions-by this point, it seemed to have become a running trend, though on the same token first contacts weren't exactly meant to be show-and-tells. How'd they get so far out without a map, and how did no one else supply them a map yet either? Moreover, how slow were their drives? He wasn't an expert on the matter, and neither did he expect everyone beyond his own to have drives stolen straight from the Qanis guilds, but it didn't normally take as long as half a year to go from one end to the other...
Then again, they were lost. Couldn't blame them for taking it slow if they had to.
"I see. Yes, we can offer assistance; nearest port is in... uh, sixish systems worth of travel, that's about 30 minutes FTL time, roughly. They should be able to get you restocked and supply a galaxy map, maybe some fastest routes. Should be able to get going from there..."
As he ordered his personnel to send them a routemap to the aforementioned system, he also pondered whether to pursue the drive speed question he had. After consideration, he decided to neglect biting the bullet-he wasn't sure if she'd have the answer, and he had a better question to ask them anyways.
"You need us to shadow you, provide good word? I'm guessing they don't see foreign ships very often."
-
As the pirates began to 'settle in', and the smattering selection was escorted off to the shuttlebays, more and more strange details began to emerge in their behaviour.
For one, they were very... aggressive. Brash, too, and not only to their captors-they seemed to enjoy and occasionally encourage the scuffles and conflict amongst their ranks, and already several fights between belligerents had to be aborted by loud shouts and rifle rackings. They also seemed to show an almost casual disdain for those around them, especially for the midgets; one or two had been seen being kicked around like a football, and others being yanked or bonked or generally hit on by their taller peers.
A large part seemed like it could just be chalked down to pirate '''culture''', though, and their smoothbrained reputation certainly didn't help matters.
Iris seemed to smirk slightly, the mention of actual directions finally giving a hint of genuine positive emotion on her face. She looked over to another screen for a moment and she was suddenly a little addled.
"Auuhh...Many thanks for the map, but If you can perhaps just also provide us the positions and orbital specifics on every body in these systems...not even all of them, just the last one if you have to, that will make things much easier for us and prevent any...accidents. And yes while you're at it, it would be nice to not burst into an occupied system unannounced and have guns trained on us immediately, generally bad etiquette."
As they spoke, the transfer teams were deciding what to do with these abandoned ships they were still docked to, they were massive, but clearly that's what they mostly had going for them. They decided to send the question up the line and it even ended up in the admiral's ears, to which she seemed to listen to for a second before asking input.
"Additionally, I just received a question, what's standard procedure for abandoned vessels such as these. If it's an issue, we can tow one or two toward that shipyard, perhaps salvage some materials while we're at it, or we can just leave the heaps here."
On the Kilo, meanwhile, the 'lucky' group of 60 were being transported and offloaded from two seperate shuttles onto the 1 and half kilometre long white and blue painted kilo. The interior of this ship was predictably much more cleaner and orderly than the Primrose. They'd be brought into much more fancy confinement cells with thick reinforced plexiglass doors and bright white lights which they could at least thankfully turn off. Most of them were separated into their own cells, however a few were kept together to further observe their interactions for a while. There were less armed personnel here, but it seems a small number were transported off the Primrose to keep watch here, indicated by the differently painted suits.
Her inquiry for orbital specifics was answered with an update to the map shortly after, with a relative future position calculated and sent along as well in the interest of transparency. It was a bit odd to the captain, even if it was just one more thing to add to the first contact akwardness checklist; normally Zetyan warp procedure was coming in at the near-edges of the system, then making minijumps or going on full acceleration towards the designated location. Warps close enough in to necessitate those calculations... Normally they were in event of emergencies or military actions.
They were just in a scuffle, though. After some thought, it was easy enough to chalk it up to the former.
As Iris pointed out the wrecks they left behind, a cursory analysis would've just made him figure it was more hassle than it was worth.
But then again, salvage could sell pretty well on the market.
"Oh, those? Uhhh... Yeah, swipe a few. It's up to discretion, but someone'll want 'em anyhow."
His attention was drawn to a second-in, who brought him good tidings. Their fracture drones were finished charging, course was laid in. All that was needed was to warp out. He turned back to the screen after dismissing the other.
"Right, I've been informed our drives are topped up. Unless there's anything more you need, I'd say it's time we leave."
The captain smiled, performing a small respecful nod as she turned to a console on her chair arm and begin addressing something as she spoke.
"Very well, the ministry of galactic exploration is indebted to your service, your name will be recorded so expect a payment sometime in your future lifetime...if you end up ever living that long." She chuckles, mainly to herself before turning back to the screen. "I wish you good business captain, Victoria Aut Mors."
With that, the feed was cut and the ships went about their duties, the science vessels relaxed into a travel formation and the imperial assistance teams were beginning to return to their respective motherships following the completion of major issues and a number of rescues. Shuttles were being deployed to handle the towing of the ships in such a way that they weren't immediately pulverised by wakes of plasma engines and other post-battle procedures were being followed within the ships.
It wouldn't be long before they left the system too, making their way towards the port with mostly-intact ships in tow to make hopefully proper converse with the newly found species.