The Small pirate cruiser came out of hyperspace and slowed to impulse speeds for its final approach to the fleet of captured equipment parked in orbit around a cold, dying star on the edge of charted Nijayais space. Immediately, three Nijayais destroyers swung in, and took stations around and behind it, dwarfing the tiny, ancinet cruiser. After pinging its transponder, they ordered the cruiser to refresh its acess codes, or be destroyed. On board, the Comm officer paged nervously through his notes nervously, then turned to the second lietenant in charge of the prize crew.

"LT, they want us to refresh our codes, we're useing the newest ones in the codebook. What do I say?"

Second Leiutenant Caroline Picker had been an officer of the watch on the Barbarossa for years, and was Pharris's most trusted watch officer. She was always placed in charge of prize crews on the most valuable captures, because she was capable of handling ships through almost any situation.

"It fits with the story, we were separated at Ferapont, and we had to land somewhere to fix our hyperspace engine before we could return. Send it."

She watched out the window, they were so close to the Destroyer that she could see the captain staring at her through the Bridge's bay windows.

She smiled and waved, he waved back. Without turning her head, she told the helmsman, who was flying leftseat, to put a little more space between the ships. She sat back in her seat, as the figure slowly shrunk out of view.

The cruiser cockpit was cramped, but was shaped much like that of a commercial airliner, with two forward facing seats for the Pilot and Copilot, and a third chair in the rear for the communications/radar officer. Further back, in the cramped engineering compartment, there were two engineers, but the ship only had bunks for four people.

The cruiser flew between the massive stardocks, the comm officer furiously snapping photographs with a camera, making a mental count of the numbers and classes of ships present. A fighter was leading the cruiser towards the landing bay on one of the larger shipbuilding facilities. The helmsman landed the ship gently, and lt. Picker took a deep breath, and got into character. She opened the hatch of the cruiser, and extended the ladder. as she was about to climb out, she shouted up to the flight deck.

"Keep those engines warm helm, I may be back real soon."

She was met by two guards, who took her gun and lead her to a lift, which took her up to a suite that had become Carm's quarters. He was sitting in a chari, sipping some strong drink from a glass. As she entered, he placed it on the table, and smiled at Picker.

"Now, please explain to me why you are so late, and why you are in command of what used to be Loran's ship?"

"Loran was a fool. He was killed on board the drydock. We were lucky to save our ship from capture. Pharris' men were well armed."

"Is that so? then why are you so late in your return?"

"Our hyperspace engine was damaged in the fight. The engineer didn't realise until we tried to leave the system, at which point it was too late. It took days for him to fix it."

Carm looked at her, trying to judge her story.

"Well thank you for returning my ship. I think it would be best if you and your crew stayed here forw while so that we can sort out this matter completely. "

He smiled, as the guards approached her from behind. Immediately, She turned and tackled one of them, knocking him to the floor. She pulled his gun and put the handle of it to his temple. He screamed, and she turned and put a shot into the second guard. She turned, only to see carm running for a phone. She put a shot through it, then made a run for the door. she crossed the hallway and jumped into the lift. she got out at her floor and reacher the ship at the same time the guards did. She ran for the ship just as her helmsman emerged from the doorway with a machine gun. He proceeded to empty several hundred rounds towards the approaching guards, as the LT strapped into the pilots seat and took off. He shut the door as the ship left the hangar bay, pursued by several dozen fighters.

------------

A million kilometers away, Captain Pharris watched the ECM screens light up.

"Well, it looks like somebody's in trouble... Helm, let's go."

"Aye aye, skip"

The Andalosa leapt forward at lightspeed, and dropped out in the middle of the fray, right on top of the cruiser. Immediately, the anfti fighter guns started shooting, filling space with thousands of bolts of energy. In the confusion, the Cruiser made a break to Hyperspace as the Andalosa tore into the ships nearby. As the repaired destroyers arrived on scene, Pharris decided to make his exit. He fired a few volleys of Missiles, and left the system, following the cruiser.

(Oh, Pharris, did you agree in "The Buildup" or not? Either you or I am going to have to edit a post.)

------------------
Error: target is violating the laws of physics
Error: target is locally exceeding c
Error: unable to determine if target exists or not
Error: target cannot be hit

Mag was at the bar, sipping his drink, when a short, stocky UNS official walked over to him and sat down opposite him in a nervous manner.

"What do you want?"

"Um, well, let's see..." the man thought for a second, then composed himself, before continuing, speaking rapidly. "Have you been checking the news recently, Mr. Steelglass?"

The holoscreen behind Mag was broadcasting news about the new Nijayias pirate fleet threat loudly to the entire bar, and probably down a few nearby corridors.

"I guess you could say that."

"Well, good. Have you heard about the Cantharan pirate that goes by the name of... 'Carm?'"

"Couldn't help but hear about him, really."

"Oh! Excellent! Let's see, where was I? Oh, yes- the United Nations of Sol would like to hire you to help them defend the Sol system, if and when it comes under attack by these pirates."

"How much?"

"We've adopted a new policy for that- you get money based on the threat posessed by the various targets you help destroy. You should get somewhere near your origional wages, if you help out. Of course, we don't know how dangerous every individual ship in this 'Carm's' fleet will be, so-" The man got distracted looking at a particularly attractive woman walking by. Mag gently kicked the man in the shin.

"Oh, sorry! Where was I?"

"You didn't know how dangerous each ship would be, so"

"Ah, yes, I remember. We'll send you the data in detail at the battle, if there is one. Meanwhile, we'll be ready to contact you."

"Very well."

"Goodbye, Mr. Steelglass." The man began walking to the door, when one of the Obiards in the bar opened fire on him with a pair of LRPK pistols. The Obiard ran out the door and down a corridor, and Mag ran after him. The Obiard lost him quickly, though, and Mag headed back to the bar.

"Did you catch him?" asked Cicion.

"No. I lost him."

"Damn." Cicion pulled out a comlink. "Security, we have a hostile Obiard loose on the station. Please track him down."

The little waiter droid was dragging the dead official's body away. A pool of blood had collected on the floor.

------------------
"You can get much further with kind words and a loaded gun than you can with kind words alone."
- Al Capone

(This message has been edited by Mag Steelglass (edited 11-25-2000).)

-deleted-

(This message has been edited by Fleet Admiral Darkk (edited 11-25-2000).)

(I agreed, but the story works anyway, I'm just scouting the territory, trying to figure out how these guys fight)

------------------

(I agreed to help, but the story works anyway, I'm just scouting the territory, trying to figure out how these guys fight)

There were at least a dozen Riaxx gunships sitting in the massive hangar, and each one was crawling with technicians, who were spot welding huge pieces of sheet metal onto the smooth sleek hulls. Pharris stood on a catwalk overlooking the bay, nodding approvingly. Just then Darkk walked in and stood next to him. He watched the technicians working, then turned to Pharris, puzzeled.

"What are you doing to my beutiful ships?"

"Camoflage. Look at the bay, which one is the Andalusa?"

Darkk looked out over the bay. Most of the ships were still being added to, but there were two or three that the welding was done on, and he couldn't see the Andalusa.

"Which one? I can't tell from here..."

"It's the far one, on pad 14, see?"

"All right, so you're making them look like the Andalusa, how does that help? They won't fight any better, and nobody knows about the Andalusa yet, except Carm."

"And he doesn't even know it was me! I was running under the original Nijayais Transponder code. Give me a few dozen different codes, use stormbreaker to ship me around real fast, and I'll build a name for the Riaxx Gunship, not just the Andalusa. These pirates are cowards, they're not being paid enough to die. If we reign terror with the Andalusa under false transponder codes, they'll be so scared of this gunship wing half of them will run rather than fight us toe to toe. Give me a few days prowling the shadier regions of Nijayais space, and people will talk about the militia's new gunship class. Send a few of these decked out ships on manoevers, clean up a few lone pirates, I'm telling you, rumors will fly. People will be afraid to touch these suckers. When a few dozen come out and confront Carm, we'll have fear on our side. If we take advantage of it, they won't stick around to see what hit em."

"Ok, not bad, but its not going to make up for their numbers..."

"That's why we never take them all head on, and never let any of them escape, unless we want them to spread news."

"You've got this "terror campaign" all planned out, havn't you..."

"Terror and pandemonium are what I live for, Darkk, now If you'll excuse me, the Andalusa is refueled and ready to go reap some more."

(This message has been edited by Captain Pharris (edited 11-26-2000).)

(You'll be there for the fight, then. Thanx. I'll work on that pardon.)

------------------
Error: target is violating the laws of physics
Error: target is locally exceeding c
Error: unable to determine if target exists or not
Error: target cannot be hit

Darkk watched on the holomap while Pharris did a quick run through of the pirates. Pharris now had a rough idea of how they fought, and so did he.

Repeated cracks of the gateship's primary message server had revieled the target to be Earth. The UNS would be too weak to repel without aid even an attack on its home system by the lost fleet.

Darkk had no intention of letting them fight without aid. Unfortunatly, Admiral Grammaticus, the humans' best commander, was "indesposed", and the head would be Admiral Toyren. Darkk would meet him for a general strategy session at Luna.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Unacceptable. I'm not going to be at the desposal of some third-rate alien has-been civilian." Toyren yelled.
Darkk sighed. He would never let Toyren have even nominal command of his forces, and Toyren was too stubborn to work under Darkk. Or maybe he just didn't think Darkk knew how to command human ships, the same way Darkk knew Toyren couldn't command the NPM effectively.

"Well," Darkk said, "let's just work independantly."
"There has to be some kind of leader."
"There isn't going to be. I don't trust you with my ships, and you don't trust me with yours."
"I don't see why you don't trust me, what with my record."
"Don't talk about records. Mine's at least as good as yours. I just don't think you know how to use NPM vessles at maximum effectiveness."
"I know you can't use human vessles."
"Fine. I'll take the pirates first, then when I fall back you can get them. Taking turns is a perfectly acceptable tactical policy."
"I guess I'll agree. Be glad we even let you bring in armed ships."

"Oh, there's one other thing," Darkk said.
"Yes?"
"Some of my men are former ... entrepeneurs."
"You mean pirates."
"My government has pardoned them, but they'll need to be pardoned by yours to work here."
"I'll see what I can do, but I'm not making any guaranties."
"Here is an encoded list, formated for your legal databanks. If they agree, I'll give you the codes and the people in the list are automaticly pardoned."
"Concealing their identities? That's..."
"I'm a head of state, under international law. You can't compel me to turn over ANYTHING."
"Fine. I'll see if I can do this."
"Be sure to mention the fate of Earth is riding on this."

------------------
Error: target is violating the laws of physics
Error: target is locally exceeding c
Error: unable to determine if target exists or not
Error: target cannot be hit

"Try it again." Ahdriadd sighed. He had to get this thing to work. Cabling was checked and double checked for the 48th time. That would make this try #49. The mechanisms were checked and double checked, and a sticking actuator was replaced.

"Commence" he shouted. A loud popping was heard, and a cheer went up. "1 system down, 1 to go," thought Ahdriadd. "Accursed release mechanism..."

With Darkk busy, Stormbreaker was helping Pharris run his terror campaign against the pirate fleets. Stormbreaker had spotted a convoy of heavy, sublight supply ships in a jumpstream, being recalled to the captured gateship. He started generating subspace interference, and brought the convoy out of the link deep in empty space.

Confused, they tried to message the Gateship, but got nothing. Before they had time to determine the cause of the disturbance, Stormbreaker had dropped the Andalusa and four disguised Riaxx gunships out right on top of them. The escorts, which were mostly retired cantharan cruisers, fell at the first few waves of fire from the Andalusa and her wingmen. There were two Nijayais Cruisers from the captured fleet, they were the only ones who could muster the speed to make a break for it. The three Riaxx gunships tore the freighters to pieces playfully, as the Andalusa chased down the runaway cruisers. Pharris managed to take one with a few missiles, but the second was still just out of range. Suddenly, comm yelled for his attention; Stormbreaker was on the line. Pharris grabbed his earpiece.

"Yeah, what's up?"

"Trouble. They're compensating for my interference, and they're trying to open a gate into the system. That gateship can generate a lot more power than I can. It's gonna open any second now. I'm standing by to pull you out if you need it."

"Grab the others as soon as they clean up the convoy. I'll deal with this guy, and call you when I'm set."

"I'm waiting"

Pharris pulled off his headset.

"Comm! get me a holo of a Nijayais Captain, hail the cruiser, Engineering, I'm gonna need a little boost on my mark, Tac, standby on the EMP missiles."

"I've got the holo up, I think he looks pretty good"

On one of Pharris's monitors, there appeared a Nijayais Officer. Pharris put the sensormask on, and waited for the Pirate to open his channel.

"This is the Nijayais Imperial Militia Gunship Polavert. I command that you stand down and prepare to be boarded, or I will order my wingmen to hunt you down like the dog you are."

the Gaitori cruiser pilot looked at the photorealistic holo of the Nijayais officer, and cursed under his breath. Suddenly, something on his control panel flashed, illuminating his face green.

"You don't have me yet, Nijayais scum!"

He cut off the transmission as a jumpgate opened. The cruiser turned hard towards it, but the Helmsman had been waiting for the opportunity, and lit the burners. He brought the cruiser within range, and Tac launched the ECM Missiles. They lanced out, and exploded in bright white flashes near the tiny ship. It stopped flying, and instead began turning lazy circles as it whizzed through space.

"He'll be so shaken up he won't know what to tell Carm, Comm, get Stormbreaker to get us out of here. There seem to be quite a few carriers coming out of that jumpgate."

Darkk slowly reviewed his plans.
While StormBreaker and Pharris were wreaking havoc with the pirates, Darkk had come up with one of his famous "onion ring" traps, so called because it unfurled into many layers that the enemy had to breach.

The plans Carm had were fairly simple. Come into Sol in full force behind Jupiter to give him some protection while "organising" (Darkk's biggest advantage was that a raw officer cadet in the NPM had more fleet command skills than that fool Carm), blaze through the defense fleet, and bomb Earth until they surrender. Direct, simple, and rather niave.

First Darkk would use the command codes to disable hyperspace and superlight, and StormBreaker and the gravity in the system to disrupt any jumpsteams, limiting the pirates to sublight.

Then he would have surrounded (done first chronogicly, but noticed by the pirates second) the area near their planned entry point with special mines, which combined the annoying properties of zerbalites with a static voltage device that basiclly acted like a light T-space bolt rod towards all enemy ships. Well away from that, the Lerekk frigates and Hieqk HVCs would unload all their HyperMissles into the medium-light ships, while StormBreaker blew holes in the medium-heavy ones. Then the Riaxxes would dive in to slam around all medium vessles.

After that, according to his agreement with the UNS, they would dive in and give Darkk's ships a chance to recharge shields and weapons. Next the UNS would fall back after giving (and recieving) significant damage. The enemy would close on Darkk's forces, where the magnetic tether would re-orient the incoming charged-particle fire back to the enemy. Then a brief close-range encounter with remote fire support, and another pullback.

At this point Darkk would knock out the gateship. This part of the plan was particularly clever, in his opinion...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Dang it, what now?" Ahdriadd had had his men working on the release clamps for the past 2 days with them not getting anywhere. The Nijayias system of building a prototype, working the kinks out, and then duplicating that exactly on assembly lines worked fine, but working on the prototype was the frustrating part.

"It's the number 44 release clamp. It's rotating too far." muttered an engineer.
"Then check it's programming!"
"I'm doing that. I sure don't see any problems."
"Then replace the circuits on its end."
"We already did."
"Check for some wierd bug."
"Here it is, a messed up pointer allocation."

"Only 347 more problems to go..." thought Ahdriadd.

------------------
Error: target is violating the laws of physics
Error: target is locally exceeding c
Error: unable to determine if target exists or not
Error: target cannot be hit

(This message has been edited by Fleet Admiral Darkk (edited 11-27-2000).)

Pharris stared at the printout in disbelief. It couldn't be true. It was better than true. He read the signature, looked at the seal. It was real, it had to be. He could go home. No false papers, no sneaking in under sensor nets, no dodgeing police at every corner, he could go home. He cheered with joy, and started danceing around the bridge, while his comm officer looked on in wonder. Finally, Pharris dropped the paper, and the comm officer managed to get a look at the encoded transmission. He saw it. A full pardon for Pharris and all of his crew, even the aliens, in UNS space. He smiled and watched as Pharris grabbed his shocked XO and swung him around the bridge. Then he grabbed the paper from the Comm officer, grabbed the intercom mic, and keyed it..

"This is the captain speaking, I have some very good news for everybody, espescially those of you from Earth, I just got a message from the secratary of State of the UNS..."

As he finished reading the message, he could hear people cheering around the ship, He smiled again, then sat down at his console to craft a reply to Darkk.

------------------

Carm stood on the bridge and admired the massing armada. It would carry him to glory. The Cantharans might even pardon him and his men for their "crimes" for recapturing Earth, maybe even give him his 2nd cousin Hek Met's old job.

This would be almost funny. The UNS, then the Nijayias, then the Ishimans. The UNS and Ishimans had not fully recovered from the Ares War, and the UGPA had crused the Nijayias under its boot heel. Even all together, the could do little against his massive fleet and perfect military skill.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ahdriadd was still sighing. The omnispace drive the Phylydions had finally cleared the NPM for wasn't integrating propperly, and the release system worked as well as a computer disk with a built in magnet.

That the shield generators wouldn't initialize wasn't making this any better. He was running out of time. Fortunatly, those 3 issues would be the last important ones.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Toyren looked at the battle plans Darkk had drawn up. He'd go along with them, letting Darkk thin the enemy for him first. He'd finally prove himself to the government by killing Carm.

His personal Carrier had had its weapons upgraded to the new, very uncomon "XC1456" standard, with turreted extra-rapid magnetos and foreward corepulses. It would do rather well against some outdated hardware from a defunct empire. The HVDs and gunships weren't half bad either, the retrofit program had even provided some of them with turreted pk beams!

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Darkk was trying very unsuccessfully to get Neric to commit some ships to this.

"You stated your navy would handle all threats to the protectorate my militia couldn't"
"This is an ... adventure!! You're going out of your way to risk assets in combat."
"I know Carm. He'll be coming after us next. I want to fight him WITH the UNS, not after he conquers them."
"You don't know that. Besides, the humans will finish those outdated ships with no trouble."
"In war and battle, you almost never 'know' and must go with your gut instinct. As for outdated, the human ships are worse in every respect except shields."
"MY gut instinct says you're a foolhardy has-been."
"Please at least send something."
"If I can find someone."
"Well, I'm signing off. I'm going to a certain bar to try to pick up some mercenaries."

The Andalusa cruised lazily alongside the minelayer. Pharris looked out the bridge window at the Fleet of heavy Freighters that were cruising along in formation, dropping out a huge net of mines across the expected entry point, as well as a smaller net closer in to Earth. There were almost a hundred Human and Nijayais ships flying the lazy patterns, dropping mines in a precise net to maximise their effectiveness. Pharris looked at the sensor readout, he could barely discern from all the mines. Trying to get anything bigger than a cruiser through would be next to impossible once the mines were under a solid jamming field. The ambush would be a good one.

Finally, the tug finished refueling, and detatched from the Andalusa. The rest of the Riaxx's had been refueled earlier, and were ready to go.

"Nav, how long to get back to Carm at hyperspace?"

"seventeen hours, more if we don't cut through the Axis."

"Too Slow. Try and raise Stormbreaker, I want to get a few more runs in on Carm before he launches."

(Spamo, Mag, are you guys gonna help save Earth? At least do you want to help me kick some pirate ass?)

------------------

Pharris: I'll help. My ships are under repair at the moment, but I have the Furies, the Voltare , the Eagle , the Surge , the Endurance and 1 operable Lightning... more coming soon...

The UNS hired me to help out.

------------------
"Oi, oi, oi, me got a hurt n here
Oi, oi, oi, me smell a ting is near
Me gonna bosh and me gonna nosh
An da hurt'll dissapear"

As the Freighters got into final position and turned about for their next pass, the one at the end of the formation suddenly was rocked as it's port side exploded, it began spinning out of control, spilling mines and debris in a tangant arc!

"What the hell is going on!?" The fleet commander screamed as he saw the freighter continue to boil in explosive fits.
"Sir! We've got incomings!"
"Lock!"
"Two pirate fighters to port!"
"Visual!"

The screen flicked to a pair of fighters darting between the freighters, dodging the offending mines. Their twin blasts took out another fighter as they impacted the freighter's feul core.

"Fire all turrets! Don't let them get to the gateship!"

The turrets rose from their protective sheathings and took aim. They spat their fire at the fighters. Narrowly missed by the shots, the fighters swung around and fired. The turrets shattered and the fighters continued towards the gateship.

It shot at them, but clumsily missed them like an elephant trying to swat flies with it's trunk. It's core generators burst into blue flame as two twin laser blasts dove into it.

Then as quickly as they had entered the scene, the fighters disappeared into deep space.

The XeD(Xekieta ea Dannues(Zay-kee-AY-ta AY-a DAH-noo-es), "Vermillion Battlegroup") an elite Kiojea squadron, flashed out of Omnispace near the trouble zone. High Captain Garrion Retoe sat on the command chair of the Crimson Dagger, principal ship. He activated the communications console.

"We have arrived, Darkk. Awaiting instructions."

"Thank you Garrion. Nice to see the Phylydions so cooperative. You can back up our long range fire group by getting closer and below and using the compression cannons. After that the gunship/HVC charge could be supplemented by your force. Transmitting detailed battle plans..."

"Darkk, these plans don't make any sense. No missle could have any effectiveness at even 1/4 that range!!" Garrion shouted upon recept of the plan.

"Those are our new missles. They use hyperkinetic energy instead of warheads, and have superlight sustainers, with the initiators in the tubes."

"Nerec might be interested in those." He had no idea Darkk had that sort of thing.

"Don't get his hopes up. The initators currently can only be manufactured at one factory, and they use Nijayias quantum-flux ratios. They'd have to be redesigned in and out to work with Phylydion ships. Oh, don't get near the minefield. It's pseaudozerbalites with static charge arrays."

"Static charge arrays? Pseaudozerbalites?"

"Static charge arryas build up static electicity, which can be discharged into ships not equally charged. The enemy won't be charged, but all mines will. The zerbalites are mineral life forms, and these are versions we engineered for specific "activation". They won't attack any ships broadcasting the special signals, but the static charge goes after anything, it's pure physics with no intervention whatsoever."

"What's with the big freighters and their shuttles?" The civilian ships doing nothing but holding position had made Garrion wonder.

"2 of the freighters and the shuttles will form deflection screens, that will reflect the pirate's fire back at them while they close after the missles run out. 3 more are swarmer carriers, which will provide limited support, and the rest are supply ships."

Darkk added one more thing: "Those fighters will report to Carm that we know he's comming. Fortunantly for us, the humans' gateship will be repaired (it has to be the humans', mine's not that clumsy), and the fighters aren't going to make it back."

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In the jumpstream:

"Dirinth, that was beautiful. Carm will give us a bonus for telling him about this."

Suddenly warning lights began to flash.

"Jumpstream inversion?!?!?!? Oh ƒ¨ç°!!"

The jumpstream suddenly changed color and the walls flew towards the fighters. When the walls came apart there was nothing but energy to come back to Carm.

Nearby in realspace, StormBreaker was laughing.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Let's go people. Party starts in 24 hours."

------------------
Error: target is violating the laws of physics
Error: target is locally exceeding c
Error: unable to determine if target exists or not
Error: target cannot be hit

StormBreaker entered the system, with Darkk at the helm. The ship had looked subtly different near the stern where the focusing array was, having been upgraded after being damaged by StarLance. Darkk could now fire his disruptor missles slightly more rapidly, instead of waiting 3 or more minutes for them. It also added ... other capabilites ...

"Sorry Pharris, but no more sorites. It's time to get together for the battle, which will occur very soon. My ship needs to rest some before then, the upgrade was rather draining. If I read the fighter's moves right, they bugged out right after they detected a Riaxx, and were going to make some more passes until they saw it. They're obviously scared enough."

(As Slug did, I reserve the right to open (and close). I'll bring in Carm late tomorrow, and give you all an idea of the capabilities of his and my ships.)

------------------
Error: target is violating the laws of physics
Error: target is locally exceeding c
Error: unable to determine if target exists or not
Error: target cannot be hit