The Pirate Wars
Imperator Pax
Talon Master
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The Pirate Wars
The trip out from the Federated Suns had been one thing, they were taking a different route out than they had done coming in... which he hadn't expected to be an issue. Moving away from the Terran corridor meant a drop off, and then a pretty substantive shift in tone in News coverage. He hadn't made anything of it at first... but a month out from the periphery border well that had changed, but even that had been a gross understatement.The near earth traffic barely covered the periphery. He could understand that. The MRB data package as they got closer though painted a very different picture... but the news remained painfully curated... and then they had gotten to the border and they'd started getting chatter from the other side. By the point they had gotten that close the Precentor New Avalon had bought up a mess of air time, in terms of both advertising, and pressuring the notionally independent but comstar supported MRB to encourage mercenaries to please kindly kill that pirate bastard.
The Precentor for New Avalon had already approached them in his capacity as being the senior tech priest for the entirety of the Fed Suns, and for good reason Black Jack, presumably sortieing from somewhere out of the Tortuga domains had jumped the border with the Fed Suns last year and carried on with the burning and maiming and reaving of usual pirates, but also had burned down one of the HPG stations that was the prerogative of Vandal's position. They had already known that... it was just that from the sound of the last few months, what the periphery side news were calling the 'Pirate Wars' he'd been getting worse. That was to be the situation they had to enter the scene stage right.
Gene looked at the simulator reports from across the fleet. Seventeen jumps then over they were over the border... and they'd jumped over the border in Taurian space... jumping to Vandeburg. They'd stayed at the Nadir Jump point to charge their drives, and that was really when things had ended up going off. The traffic closer to the periphery had been one thing... watching it happen was another.
"I don't see what we could have done different," He remarked finally to the combined air staff, "am I missing something?"
There was a pause a dozen ASF pilots started scrambling to get a word in edge wise.
Pasha cleared his throat. "No commander, we had no indication that we needed to have pilots on alert status especially after the journey. It would have made the Taurians more uncomfortable than they were."
He nodded. The truth was it had caught him by surprise. He'd been anxious to get away from New Vandenburg too... and they hadn't been on alert. A mistake. He'd been going stir crazy from the sixteen previous jumps, simulator time and pull ups on the grav deck's gym didn't scratch the itch, and we'd barely been able to stir the week they'd been in Taurian space... so he'd been glad when they'd cleared for jump, and made it to what was Aurigan space...
... and then it had turned.
They had made the jump from New Vandenburg to the Aurigan world of Aea, the bull's claims not withstanding. The jump over the border into Aurigan space should have been uneventful except that the tiny little world of Aea had been savaged by Black Jack's pirates earlier in the month... and one thing had lead to another. It wasn't Black Jack's first raid into the reach, the Aurgians had been having pirate problems the same as everyone else the last couple of years but relative to overall population the Aea's damage was extreme... and had involved hordes of captives apparently being crammed into cargo holds at gunpoint by Black Jack's pirates.
That had been about when they had showed up, after most of the cutting was done. The pirates had been at a non standard point, and it had taken entirely too long to get the air wing up and active there were just too many birds needing to be launched.
"Alright what do we do we do better next time?" He asked.
"It would be feasible to have pilots on alert, but it does not change that launching them safely would require the detaching of the DropShips, and it would be unsafe to have the fighters in the launch." He paused, 'ah yes, the other safety risk in munitions we would want energy weapons only for the first launch, that limits our options." No one disagreed with the senior most JumpShip captain, and pasha flipped through to another sheet. "Our Altair," The Azami Eagle variant, "The Rapiers carrying only the particle projector cannons, but not many other options I am afraid."
"How many jumps do we have?" There was nothing they could do here after all. Black Jack's people had made a mess of things, and then gotten the hell out of dodge before the birds could launch but what a mess it was.
"Four," Pasha replied, "We will finish charging the drives, we will jump to Katinka, on to Gangtok then Guldra and finally we will reach the capital of the Aurigan reach," The coalition had not existed during the Star League. "You will like Cormodir VI it is a nice world."
--
"All hands General Quarters, General Quarters this is not a drill, all hands battle stations." Those were the words echoing through the speakers of the DropShip, and presumably through the mass of other ships... the majority of which were carrying civilian refugees
Gene pushed onto the CIC, "Get us detached, launch Eisenhower, Hedwig and Braunfelds as well, we need air cover. Do we have a picture yet?"
"Not presently, they have limited air cover, but they're not moving to intercept us."
Septim pushed up the ladder and landed on the deck zipping up and SLDF pattern jumpsuit, "We'll have time boss."
"Yeah, the fighter jocks are raring to get at 'em."
But as they had identified they needed to prep. "Give me battle line."
It took a minute for the network connect. The holographic display activated as the mobile ai core housing the Northwind native AI parsed connections, "Connection stabilized,"
"This is Colonel Gene Shepherd, we have entered the system during an ongoing pirate raid the aerospace assets are to deploy as previously planned, we're unclear on the situation you should expect electronic intelligence packages to identify priority targets but our immediate objective is for the 588th to defend the civilian fleet. Task Force 1 will move to secure a landing on the planet's surface," Coromodir VI the planet currently being attacked and the site of the system's HPG uplink that was under attack.
He handed off to Dante, a separate channel connected him to Pasha, and then also to the ground leadership staff... which meant Bardiche, and Claymore's officers, and the armor and infantry forces... and given what Aea had looked like when Black Jack was done the medical staff. They needed to secure a ground position to bring in the field hospital about the Triumph that had been left under Northwind.