Pharris walks into the bar, looking around. The Crew have taken their usual corner, and have proceeded to order up a storm, swamping the server droid with orders. It will only be a few more rounds before the drunken brawl. Pharris walks to the bar, and pulls a stool across from Cicion.
"Scotch on the rocks, one of the single malts please."
"Sure"
Cicion pulls out a twelve year aged single malt wiskey and pours three fingers over two ice cubes.
"So how was the cruise? looks successful, mind if I ask what was in those freighters?"
"Not at all. They contain three Salrillian arms factories, everything you need to make salrillian missile systems from scratch, minus some labor and expertise. One is a computer guidance manufacturing center, one is a warhead manufacturing plant, and one makes the bodies and completes the final assembly. There's no fuel refinery in there, but I digress.
As I was saying, we heard that the slugs were changeing their manufacturing nfastructure, and a client from the guild is paying us to slow things down. This was the first convoy that we knew was moving, so we dropped on it and went to work. The escort was surprisingly light, cruisers and the carrier. We dropped in on the carrier and were actually able to knock it out before it could launch more than half its fighters. The key, you see is to use penetrating weapons. Explosives are dandy for breaking systems, but if you want salvage, the way to go is to vent as much of the interior to space as possible, espescially if you manage to catch them before they go to battle stations; we managed to vent a large portion of the ship just because they hadn't sealed bulkheads yet.
Of course, Salrillians are not too vulnerable to vacuum, but explosive decompression can still kill them, so the carrier was down to about 50% crew in the first few minutes, which put a crimp on their ability to go to action stations. We then disengaged to drop marines on the frieghters and secure them. The cruisers were on us, but the Barbarrossa carries much more powerful point defence weaponry than the standard human gunship, so we managed to catch them unawares as well. Then we went back and took out the carrier. Of course, that was a much harder fight. We lost pressure early on, but my men are all wearing pressure suits when we go to action stations, and the Barbarrossa's pressure hull isn't a significant structural element the way it is on most ships. We took them down with good old fasioned hard fighting, and a boarding team through one of the missile holes. That's the key. Get marines aboard, then its just a matter of keeping alive until they get the job done, espescially with slugs; slugs see suicide as a dishonorable waste, even if it hurts the enemy. The sals like to see others do their dying for them, so even nowadays, since the cultural revolution, if the captain and bridge crew have no easy way off the ship, they'll surrender. More importantly, the oracular net still gives surrender the best odds of survival. I like to keep it that way, so the crew were in their escape pods, and we were gone. Not bad for a few weeks hunting, if you ask me.
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NEW NAME FOR THE DREADNOUGHT
The Hard-Boiled Egg
Why?
Because she cant be beaten!
