chapter 78
POV: Pirate Commander of the 87 Combined Pillager Fleet
I was tired of waiting. We have been on standby for almost a month now. We were a 96 strong fleet with almost all of us frigates that could dominate many engagements, yet my Pirate Lord Virory Shi was hesitant to use us just because most of the fleet was made up of new recruits.
It irked me that I understood his logic. Unfortunately, someone needed to keep an eye on these recruits, as some of them had started questioning the wise decisions of our leader.
They think I can’t hear them as they whisper behind my back. So we have had some defeats in this war against that other Pirate Lord, may he rot, but that’s just how war goes. We also have our own successes, yet they don’t speak of those because they lack the discipline to understand.
That’s the trouble with fresh pirates: they expect to win every engagement, as pirates normally do. But they fail to take into account the simple reason for that. We only attack targets when we are certain of the outcome. War is different, and it’s hard to make them understand that.
“We have gotten reports of an engagement close by. Should we offer assistance?” one of my sub-commanders asked, as most of us were gathered on the flagship. This one, in particular, had been getting on my nerves.
“Do you just blurt out whatever comes to mind? Because if you’ve actually thought about your words, then that’s an even scarier proposition. Tell me, in your wisdom, what can we do to help? And let’s say we even had permission to go, as we are actually supposed to hold this location?”
He almost started to say something, but then snapped his mouth shut. I found the idea of mouths interesting, but I preferred the fact that I didn’t have one. I could almost imagine steam coming from his head. No, wait, is that actually happening?
“I apologize. This waiting around is making me a bit too eager to get out there. The engagement is too far away and too small for us to do anything but see what has happened.”
Hmm. Well, that’s a bit of an improvement.
“We’re not waiting around. We’re holding this position.” I reminded everyone.
“There’s nothing to hold here,” I barely heard someone whisper. My body started to unravel. It was time I started to properly discipline everyone here.
“Commander, I think we should send the special skill stones away,” another one spoke up. She had been on about that for a while. It made me want to lash out, but to have such fortitude to continue bringing this up even now…
“Explain. This is your only chance.”
“A few actions of our enemies have not made sense to me. Mostly, their engagements and ship movements go the way I expect them to, with a few surprises of course, but those also make sense after the fact. What doesn’t make sense is the hunting of some of the new recruits, seemingly at random.”
“Make it fast.” I should’ve said that before. She had a way of endlessly talking.
“Yes, of course. The point being: I think the special skills, the ones we were ordered to put aside after their nature was revealed. I believe all those attacks that seem random are to hunt down these skills.”
She then showed me the data, and I did have to agree. It did look like that.
“And what do you want me to do with this? Just send it up the command line as usual?”
“Yes, I’ve done that already. But I’m asking permission to take my ship and bring these skills to one of our strongholds. That way, if they want them, they’d actually need to spend a lot of forces breaking through. It seems these are quite special to them, considering they’re putting so many resources into finding them.”
I unraveled instantly, pulling seven of my roots together, forming a spear. One by one, I triggered the proper skills: hardening myself, making my movements faster, changing the tips of my roots into material stronger than blue steel, and finally, I activated Pierce.
Before she understood what was happening, I had thrust through her chest, lifted her up, and brought her toward me.
“Do you think I am a fool? Someone you can just take advantage of like that? Stay awake! You aren’t that weak to die so fast, are you?”
The life left her eyes even before I finished speaking. “Pathetic.”
I threw her against the wall. Everyone was watching, horrified. None of them even came close to my rank, yet they seemed to have forgotten that. Getting such brazen ideas of treason…
“She thinks that I would have just let her go carrying tens of billions of wealth without any way to know that she would actually go to that fortification she didn’t even name, just said ‘close by.’ Any of you get such stupid ideas, please say them out loud.”
That silenced everyone, and for once, we were able to conduct our weekly meeting without any stupid interruptions.
The next week was quite nice. Everyone was acting like they should, but already I was getting hints of things going back to the way they were. It always amazes me how fast people forget and start doing the same stupid things.
All of a sudden, one of the sub-commanders stood up, yelling.
“Come in, come in, can you hear me? What happened?”
“What is happening? Explain yourself!” I demanded.
He clutched his head and fell to the ground, barely keeping himself on one knee. A moment later, he managed to look up, and I could see emptiness and deep sadness in his eyes.
“My ship, it’s gone.”
“You’re not making any sense. What do you mean it’s gone?”
The emergency line was activated.
“Commander, a ship has been destroyed. We are getting reports that it was a railgun shot, but we can’t confirm.”
“What do you mean you can’t confirm?”
“The aftermath looks like it, but we aren’t detecting any ships nearby.”
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“Everyone, go into emergency maneuvers!”
Immediately as I finished saying that, the ships’ small thrusters adjusted our relative position, so that if someone had shot at us, they would have a harder time hitting, especially if they were so far away we couldn’t detect them yet.
“Another ship just exploded. It once again seems like a railgun shot. We’re trying to ascertain the direction.”
“Everyone, get back to your ships!” I ordered as I started to move to the bridge. It would take time to get back to using shuttles, but we had no other option. Better to get them off my ship than hear them complaining when their ships get destroyed. As I was certain we were going to lose a few more before we could locate our enemies.
On my way to the bridge, I got an update that made me relax a bit.
“We managed to detect two more shots; they missed.”
“Good. What’s their location?”
“The shots are coming from below starboard.”
A perfect position for an ambush. But if they were so far away, it seemed stupid to reveal themselves and to have such a low volume of attack. Something didn’t make sense.
As I got to the bridge, I saw on the display that another ship had been destroyed.
“Have they increased the volume of fire?”
“No, still only one shot every second or two.”
That made me stop for a moment. That was really bad.
“Stop searching so far away. Concentrate on that direction, but at more normal engagement distances.”
“But, Commander, we haven’t seen anything there. They must be further away.”
“You idiot, they’re obviously hiding themselves. So do what I say. Patch me through to all ships.”
A moment later, I heard the click; now every ship in the fleet could hear me.
“We are under assault from a high-rank ship. We are sending you each an approximate location. I want every missile you have flying toward that location. Everyone, focus your sensors there, and if you have scout drones, send them that way immediately. Everyone, move into defensive formation A-1C.”
I gave the signal to cut myself off. “What’s the estimate for the formation?”
“Some of the ships are still waiting for their captains, at least 10 minutes.”
“Rotting hardwood, this is bad. Estimate the losses.”
“Twenty percent, if not more.”
“Why the hell would ships of that calibre be here? They should be on a more important battlefield.”
That made me remember the words of a sub-commander just a week ago. Well, damn it.
There were already ships behind us. My ship was strong enough to take even battleship railgun shots, but if we didn’t find the enemy, we couldn’t return fire.
“Contact!” someone finally yelled. I looked at the display, confused.
It seemed that some of the missiles had gotten close enough to detect something, but that didn’t make sense. Yes, they were going at max acceleration, but they didn’t have enough time to put proper distance between us and our enemies.
Then more and more red dots appeared. Soon there were hundreds.
“Their missiles, sir,” someone unhelpfully pointed out, as if it wasn’t obvious.
“Everyone disperse!” I ordered, and it was relayed to every ship. If we stayed so bunched up, the point defenses couldn’t work properly, ships would block each other, and so many of the enemy missiles would hit, devastating our fleet.
“Move our ship forward! Those missiles, while bothersome, we can survive many of them. Let’s take as much heat as possible!”
There was a lurch as the main engines pushed us forward to meet the nearly 800 missiles. They must have had impressive stealth capabilities to get so close to us. Minutes passed as the missile swarms crossed paths, and soon they would be hitting us.
The first explosion made everything rattle inside the ship, but this ship’s design was the one that had saved my homeworld from multiple invasions. It was a lot tougher than most other ships, and the shields were showing only minimal heat buildup.
There were a few more explosions, but there should have been a lot more.
“What is going on?”
“Our sensors are currently overwhelmed. It will take a few moments before we can get more information.”
Just a second later, another crew member in charge of the communication lines spoke up.
“Others are reporting that the missiles are ignoring our ship and heading straight towards them. They’re still a bit too bunched up, but a lot of them have broken away, giving more clearance for their point defense to work.”
“Good.”
I could see our own defenses working, trying to intercept as many missiles as possible that came close enough. Then another green dot disappeared. Of course, the enemy once again fired their railguns, picking off the weakest of us.
“Find me the ships, now!” I yelled.
“Weak contact. I believe it’s the ship we’re looking for.”
“Only one ship? That makes little sense. Get me a visual!”
I could feel it, as I was connected to the ship. It itches so badly when we are hit with electronic warfare. Our sensor systems barely managed to survive the barrage.
“Start countermeasures. Send the weak contact location to the others. Begin electronic warfare in that direction, and get me that visual, even if we ourselves can’t see it!”
My crew members were good. Yet, I could only watch as more and more railgun shots destroyed ships. Then in the span of just a few seconds, 30 ships disappeared as the missiles hit. They probably just wasted more credits on those missiles than the ships they destroyed were worth.
“Are any open communication lines still functioning?”
“No, we can only communicate through secure lines.”
“Get one open communication line functioning, and do it fast!”
The commotion stopped for a moment. They didn’t say anything as they looked at me, but they only needed that moment before returning to their duties, unlike the sub-commanders, who were still not contributing anything to this fight except being target practice.
Yet some seemed to have their wits about them, because we were finally sent a visual of the ship we were up against. The approximate size was only 250 meters, although it was difficult to tell.
It seemed to only be a frigate, but then I recognized that silhouette. That was the Crimson Falcon. A true terror of a ship, infamous for its destructive capabilities.
“Do we have communication lines?” I asked once again, only to get another negative in return. Damn it.
“When we have the location, I want every railgun shooting at that ship!”
It took far too long for us to get proper coordinates, and more and more of our ships were destroyed, although they were now heading back underneath our shadow, protected from the railgun shots as they slowly popped out and returned fire.
Our missiles were getting close now, but then the display updated. Instead of one enemy ship, there were now three more. From what I remembered about the Crimson Falcon, it didn’t have the best point defense, since so much of its space was focused on that brilliant railgun.
I had hoped the missiles would help take down the shields so that the railgun shots could start doing proper damage, but the space between our missiles and their targets lit up with hundreds of lasers.
Nearly 3,000 missiles had been heading toward the Crimson Falcon. Within minutes, all of them were gone—never even reaching their target—and those other ships disappeared once again into her shadow.
There was no escaping this fight. And while we were now landing railgun hits on the Crimson Falcon, its shields were impressive, and it continued its barrage, firing a devastating, well-aimed railgun shot every second or so.
It took the rest of our ships nearly five minutes to get back behind our shadow, with only 32 of us left. There were still too many for them to approach, yet now, we would be that ship’s target.
The first shot came as a shock. None of us were quite ready for it just yet. Our shields were strong; defensively we might be a match for the Crimson Falcon, but we didn’t have the offensive capability, and the railguns we did have were sideways, where our shields weren’t as strong.
If we were to turn, they would win that fight in the end. If we didn’t turn, we would also lose, but it would take longer. We did have one advantage, and that was the other ships, as they could still continue firing. But that would mean they would need to reveal themselves.
“Everyone, get into shadow strike formation 1A. Don’t expose yourselves for too long.”
That was all I could do. The Crimson Falcon responded to our actions a few moments later as it also started to take continuous fire from our side. Of course it decided to get closer. It would be more dangerous for her, but from closer range her railgun could shoot down the ships that popped out with more regularity.
“Get me those lines, we might have a chance at surviving if we can contact that ship.”
Time went by as this long slugging match continued.
The ship was heating up; most of the crew members were sweating. It was nearly twenty minutes of this firefight. We had lost another twelve ships. We could now see sparks underneath the shields of the Crimson Falcon as it tried to handle its own heat problems.
Perhaps there was a chance we would outlast them, but from the stories I’ve heard, it was a small chance. Another ten minutes went by, we lost another two ships. Most of the others were now too scared to continue with the current tactic, as they didn’t want to get destroyed as well.
“We have an open communication line back up.”
“Finally, broadcast openly.”
As I heard the click, I started to speak. “Crimson Falcon, this is the Twisted Root. We have the skill stones you’re looking for, and we’ll send them over if you stop firing and withdraw from this space. If not, we will destroy the stones.”
I felt three more shots before all we could hear were the ship’s systems desperately trying to manage the heat that had built up.
“Incoming communication,” one of my officers said, and then we heard a woman’s voice.
“Took you long enough, Twisted Root. That ship of yours is impressively tough. There are too many things you could try to get an upper hand in this battle. We will allow the other ships to leave and enter FTL. We will then continue this conversation.”
What is she up to? Aa yes, I could see how we could do some nasty things. Did she want a face-to-face meeting? I would certainly not like to meet the captain of that ship.
“Tell the other ships that they can leave.” Yet even before any of my officers could relay that order, the other ships were already accelerating away. As soon as they heard that message, it seems they chose to abandon their posts. This recruitment drive really has been a failure.
We watched as all of them accelerated away. It would take them a while to get to FTL speed, but they should all get away.
My roots went dry as once again the Crimson Falcon opened fire. All of the ships that were escaping had their backsides exposed. They were moving too fast and were too far away to do anything.
“Turn to our side and open fire on the Crimson Falcon.” The ship immediately lurched as it started to turn. Our five railguns shot out in unison as they acquired the Crimson Falcon. Yet even before our shots hit, we were also struck with a railgun shot.
“Continue firing!” That was our only option. But they had outplayed us, they were hoping that we would turn, exposing our weaker side.
We could only fire every 12 seconds, and that time would expand fast as the ship was already too hot. Only two of our volleys later, our side shields were cracking.
“Turn us, max acceleration towards the Crimson Falcon.” Before anyone could execute my command, the ship screeched.
The shields had been penetrated, and the armor hit. We had started turning; the next shot came in just a bit later than usual. I didn’t have to wonder why, as all the lights went out for a moment.
As everything turned back on, the ship diagnostics managed to show that the main reactor had been hit.
“Brace!” I was doing so myself as the secondary explosions rocked everything.
Everything flickered once again. Why was everything so hazy? I saw that people had died from the concussion. Another railgun hit, this time everything went dark. Smaller secondary explosions knocked me out, and when I came to, only a few things still produced light.
From somewhere, I heard yelling. “They are boarding!” That snapped me out of it. I was going to take as many of those rotten pieces of moving flesh with me as possible.