Chapter #6Space Is An Ocean, And The Oceans Had Pirates by: infinity421   BOOM
You can't help but grin.
"You lot! Stay down if you don't want to end up like this sorry bastard!"
You give the reptilian corpse a kick, keeping your pistol trained on the alien scum opposite you.
"Alright, men! Grab their cargo and wipe their computers' records!"
---
There were many words to describe you in the myriad languages of the cosmos.
Pirate; privateer; corsair; rogue.
And judging by the contents of literature you'd pilfered from the last ship raid, romantic archetype.
Still, it comes with the job, right?
Officially, you don't exist. Officially, your kind doesn't exist. But when Humanity is at war, as it is now, you and people like you are called in to serve.
Brave patriots, risking all to sabotage vital enemy supply lines, preventing the enemy's weapons, ammunition, armour and more, from ever reaching him.
Yes, war had been declared once again. Tensions between humanity and the vorox - a race of bipedal reptilians with a strong caste society - had finally erupted into war. Guns blazed, feet marched in time, engines roared and belched smoke into the skies.
And the rest of the galaxy averted their gazes, quietly forming pacts, enforcing sanctions, attempting to unite against humanity and generally being rather slow about it - such was the nature of politics, after all.
Growling happily and quietly, you lean back in your chair, enjoying your surroundings. Your ship, The Theremin as it was currently known, was essentially a civilian cruise ship converted into a warship. That meant lots of space. Space that could be used to store 'liberated' cargo. Space that could be used to give each crewmember their own cabin. Space that could be used to hide guns and missile launchers until the right moment, when they would emerge from their hiding places on your ship and unleash a broadside, or a salvo, or whatever firing pattern you wanted.
Your cabin - the captain's cabin - looked like the inside of a twenty first century hotel room; the economic use of space, the pleasing colours, the simple and subtle elegance that many seem to miss.
Fiddling with your datapad, you check the estimated time it would take to travel back to Terra; you were still several hours out. Still, you'd had an excellent catch with the last raid. Intercepting enemy gun-runners was always profitable, especially when they were supporting the vorox, and especially when the Solar League was at war. You'd crippled the ship while in the gravity well of a large garden planet, managing to destroy the engines. Quickly ordering the crew to their bidding pods, you'd made quick estimates on the ship's remaining time in orbit before joining them, travelling across in your own pod as the pods already attached were slowly winched back, pulling the enemy ship closer and closer to your own.
It had been pretty easy to subdue to vorox gun-runners. Only one had attempted to resist, aiming a pistol at one of your crewmen before you'd shot him dead, right between the eye-ridges. After that, the Theremin's crew had grabbed any valuable cargo and re-entered the Theremin through the boarding pods, which had been secured back into the Theremin by the winch system.
You'd allowed the gun-runners to make a distress call before forcing them to evacuate to the planning below in an escape pod. You had allowed them to take some of the food that your men hadn't raided. After all, the vorox would be there shortly to pick them back up, and they'd most likely be able to eat anything on the planet once their supplies ran out.
After that, you'd sent the distress call - making sure that their computers were completely wiped except for the distress called - and then re-entered the Theremin before jettisoning the gun-runners' ship. It would probably disintegrate in the atmosphere by the time you got back to Terra.
Ah, well. That's what happens when you declare war on humanity and the Solar League, after all!   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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