M.J. Markgraf
patreon
BSE Chapter 3-22
🕑 Added 2024-12-12 13:00:14 +0000 UTC“So all of them were indentured corporate slaves?” Vitor asked.
“It appears so,” Captain Bloomright replied.
“Stars above. Just when you think the corporations can’t sink any lower, they prove you wrong. Has anyone broached the subject of their families?” Vitor would have preferred to keep these people in stasis but they needed intel on their target and any intel was better than none. The problem was that none of these people's stories matched up. Either some of the people were lying, they were told lies, or they all had completely different experiences at the station.
“Not, yet… The Hawks have a few people who are certified grief counselors. They are speaking to the people, but they haven’t brought up the subject of their missing loved ones yet. Some of the prisoners were pretty malnourished and the doctors want them to recover for a few days before introducing any more shocks to their mental wellbeing.”
That was another confusing piece of the puzzle. Some of the prisoners were damn near starved to death while others looked perfectly fine. There was no rhyme or reason that they could find other than the whims of the pirates, which very well might be the reason.
“At least we have the correct system now,” he said in irritation. One of the engineers had gotten a much better look at the starfield outside the station, along with the star or stars that the structure orbited around. He was also able to confirm that the station was orbiting a large moon that was orbiting a gas giant.
Vitor may not have learned any intel on what to expect once inside the system, but they had detailed records of surveys done long in the past so they were able to pin down the exact planet and system. Only one of the three targets matched the binary system the man described.
He learned a few other things by watching the recorded debriefs. A few of the people said the pirates didn’t look to be going hungry. That meant that they were either hoarding food for themselves or there was never a shortage of food in the first place and they just lied to get the people to agree to be put in stasis without a fuss. He could see the pirates doing both of those things so he couldn’t be certain which was true, but he was leaning toward the latter. It was the only thing that made any sense considering the information they had gathered.
None of the survivors knew the date when they were stuck in stasis either, which made it impossible to determine a timeline for when this treatment started.
He did get a pretty good idea of how far along the ships were based on the type of engineers they recovered thought. It didn’t sound like any of the ships were fully complete, but they did sound like they were functional enough to hold air and have life-support working. That was better than the alternative of having all the ships fully functional and the pirates somehow figuring out how to bypass the security on the fusion reactors.
Vitor also now had a rough floorplan for the station and a general idea of how many pirates to expect. That number was anywhere from a dozen to a few hundred, but it was better than nothing. It seemed the number fluctuated over time. The one thing he wished he had more information on was the number of active pirate ships to expect. None of the prisoners knew that since the pirates kept them well away from any working ships.
A few hundred pirates could be enough to crew two dozen corvettes, as many as ten frigates, hundreds of gunboats, or any combination of the three.
They wouldn’t know for certain until they jumped in. Those were not odds he was happy with, but now that they knew the general location of the station, they could plan better.
After a two-hour strategy session with the other captains, Vitor had a plan of attack. He made sure everyone was topped off on ammunition, and even had additional reserves brought over and stored in open bunks. He did not want to have their ships run out mid-fight.
Once all of the ships declared their readiness status, the fleet jumped to their destination.
Four days later they dropped out of FTL and immediately began scanning their surroundings with passive sensors. Eden’s Might wasn’t the first to arrive this time, that distinction went to Fury this time around.
Nothing showed up on scanners except the massive jovian in the background that they had jumped in behind. A full two minutes later, Talon appeared. This wasn’t a mistake on their part, he had told Captain Bloomright to delay her jump a bit in case they came into immediate contact with enemy forces.
Once they determined the immediate space was pirate-free, he was able to relax slightly. Jumping into a system was always the most dangerous part of any combat operation. From here he could decide if they should continue with the operation or move to the closest emergency jump point to get away.
The fleet quickly formed up and started moving toward their goal. The station orbited the other gas giant in the system but he wanted as much time as possible to gather information before he gave this mission the green light. They would cut their engines before coming around the planet and coast as far as possible before they were spotted. And they would be spotted. You couldn’t hide a ship as large as the Talon for long, but he couldn’t simply leave it behind this time.
The fleet started accelerating and Vitor grunted as he was pushed back into his seat by the forces. Combat acceleration was not something he enjoyed experiencing, but they needed as much speed as they could get before coming out of the shadow of the planet.
The forces on his body soon eased and then stopped altogether. Vitor breathed a sigh of relief. “System report,” he said as he adjusted his position in the seat.
“We have a system fault on turret three, sir.”
He cursed under his breath and contacted the reactor room. “Parson, we have a fault on turret three, you have thirty minutes to try and fix it. Use the bot if you need to but get it done. We need all of our guns.”
“I’m on it, Captain,” the man replied before quickly cutting the comm connection and getting to work.
The system map kept updating as the large planet fell away to their right, giving them their first clear visual of the station.
It was larger than he expected it to be. There were also far more than five ships docked at it. It took a few more minutes to clear up the passive visuals and get an accurate count of the ships that were docked. He was not happy with what he saw. Two ships could be cruisers, another two were large enough to be destroyers, and he counted an additional ten frigates, five corvettes, and another five gunboats. There was also a smattering of haulers, mining ships, and other smaller craft moving back and forth from the station to the nearby asteroid field.
Vitor almost pulled the plug on this mission then and there, but he held himself back. They had two hours before the fleet entered the other gas giant’s gravity well and wouldn’t be able to jump without adjusting their course. He might as well wait and see what he could see.
An hour later, he was glad he hadn’t jumped the gun. As the visual fidelity increased, he could see that the cruisers and destroyers were both still under construction. Small sparks of light erupted across their surface as people welded armor into place. Alexander had told them to expect at least one destroyer based on the image he saw. It appears there was far more than just a single destroyer being built out here.
As for the frigates, half of them were missing parts and entire sections of hull and armor. It looks like they had been scavenged for parts for the other ships. That still left five frigates and the gunboats as well as the other pirate ships in the system to deal with if they were operational. He didn’t forget the station either. He was sure it had weapons as well.
It was clear their fleet had been spotted. Soon four of the five frigates quickly moved away from the station and started heading their way, these were quickly joined by the gunboats and some of the smaller ships that happened to be nearby. Vitor hadn’t factored the civilian vessels in, he should have known better.
“Alert the rest of the fleet to switch to combat operations.” Vitor pressed the all-hands alert button and double-checked his straps. Parson had managed to clear the gun fault so he had all his weapons available again.
Unlike the attack on the two ships from before, Vitor had his small fleet form a triangle slightly ahead of the Talon, leaving the large ship a clear line of fire. The two gunboats took up flanking positions on either side in the space between the frigates and the Assault ship.
He had no concern that the massive ship couldn’t take care of itself, it had the heaviest armor out of any of them, but it made a big target. Their job was to keep any missiles from getting to the ship.
His tactical overlay started pinging as the pirate fleet entered his maximum range of one light second. Neither ship with lasers fired though. They already knew it was difficult to hit targets at that range. So they waited.
The enemy ships outnumbered them, but not so bad that Krieger was concerned. With Alexander’s railguns, Resolve and Might had the combined firepower of almost four normal frigates. They also held the range advantage with Fury’s lasers as well as his single one.
The enemy ships started firing missiles as soon as they could. The enemy was attempting to overwhelm their point-defense weapons. They would quickly learn that wasn’t as easy as they hoped. The tactical plot updated with the new contacts and he watched his weapons officer furiously tagging the devices before activating the PDLs. The point defense lasers flicked out and the pirate missiles quickly vanished off the tactical display.
This must have surprised the pirates because some of them broke and tried to run for it. Unfortunately, they were well inside both the Fury’s and the Might’s laser range. Deadly beams flickered invisibly through space, carving into the fleeing ships with impunity.
The rest of the pirate ships roared ahead, undaunted by the challenge.
They soon entered Resolve’s weapon’s range and Vitor opened up with his railguns as well. Soon after the Talon and its gunships opened up on the pirates with their weapons. They didn’t need to worry about misses hitting the station as they had angled their approach so any missed shot would fall toward the gas giant.
Despite the withering fire the enemy was experiencing, they plowed into range and started firing their autocannons as well as a few more missiles they must have kept in reserve.
One of the missiles got dangerously close to hitting Fury. It blew up short of its target, but a hail of shrapnel peppered the frigate.
It was still in the fight, but it looked to have taken significant damage to the side facing Vitor’s ship.
As the two groups of ships closed with one another, Vitor saw what the pirates planned to do. He quickly contacted Captain Bloomright. “Change your trajectory, they are going to pass between us and try to ram your ship.”
“Just noticed that as well, already adjusting course. That won’t stop them from adjusting to match my new heading though, we need to disable them quicker.”
“Working on it,” he grunted out as the ship shook from an impact.
“Tell the other BSE Captains that they are free to fire their missiles.” Alex had warned him that the missiles were mostly untested and to only use them in case of emergency. This seemed like an appropriate time.
The three ships launched ten missiles each, the weapons streaked away as they were launched from the ship before lighting off their drives. The Talon’s sensors momentarily fuzzed as the enemy activated their ECM. When that didn’t work, they filled the space with PDC fire to try and take down the weapons.
That was more effective, but it also allowed Fury to pinpoint those defensive systems and pick them off with its PDLs. Surprised by the use of a defensive weapon for offensive purposes, Vitor was slow to follow suit, but he did. And the Resovle was not far behind.
Even with the lasers helping to disable the enemy’s defensive cannons, they were able to take down most of the missiles before they got within range. Too bad they only needed one good hit per ship.
Two of the pirate frigates were blasted sideways as a pair of missiles slammed into their forward armor. Another missile barely missed the ship it was aiming for, but still triggered its proximity fuse, rocking the third pirate frigate hard.
It wasn’t enough to knock any of the ships out of the fight, but it did prevent them from going after the Talon. It also gave the BSE frigates a clear shot at their aft sections.
Lasers flickered out, lighting up the rear sections of the enemy frigates and leaving long lines of molten metal.
While Fury was doing its best to disable those ships, Resolve and Might had their hands full trying to fill the enemy gunships full of holes.
Two of the five gunships had fled, along with the other frigate, all of which were now drifting toward the large gas giant, their engine sections destroyed by Fury’s weapons. That still left three of the small attack craft and the other ships that had joined the impromptu pirate fleet.
More missiles filled space as those ships weighed in on this conflict. ECM went to work to counter them as PDLs were quickly reoriented on the new threat.
Fury took another close call from a missile but was still in the fight. It was clear the enemy had picked up that Eden’s Fury was the most dangerous ship here, not due to sheer firepower, but because it had the most range. Vitor could argue that his railguns were far more damaging than lasers, but this wasn’t a competition to see whose ship hit hardest.
Eden’s Might skewed sideways as something slammed into it. “What the hell was that?!”
“Railgun round from the station, sir. We have a minor hull breach.”
He cursed under his breath.
“Increase our evasive maneuvers,” he ordered, transmitting the same orders to the rest of the fleet.
He knew the station had defenses, but he had hoped they wouldn’t deploy them until they took care of the ships first. It seems like whoever was in control of that facility didn’t feel like waiting.
Comments
Darkest Dot
Aw shit they ran out of bubblegum.
IdolTrust
Epic space battle and this station has a ton of ships. If they can take it and acquire the ships. The BSE fleet grows again.
Zachary Patterson
Thank you for the chapter!
Merlin's Fan
Awesome description of the flight, and the thoughts of the crew and leaders helped paint a great scene
BookwormLich
Space battles!
