049-1107 – Acrid Highport
We now go back in time by ten days or so, to Acrid the day before the Shinkiro and Mercifuge jumped to Pandora. In his rooms at the GeDeCo-run Acrid highport, Torsa held a conference of the senior officers of the Imperium and Drinaxian naval officers. This was not by Captain Torsa’s choice: although he was commodore of the small, Imperium flotilla, he wished to press on with his journey to Tyokh uninterrupted. However, Captains Burghof and James, of the two Gazelle-class craft, had prevailed.
Torsa, his left eyelid spasming repeatedly, stressed his duty to deliver the contents of the Martin II to its Aslan recipients. Captain Burghof insisted that an opportunity – perhaps not to be repeated – offered itself to rid the Reach of one of its three most notorious pirate leaders – Hroal Irontooth – who might still be waiting in Exe at a remote location that was known precisely, thanks to the work of Rosa Perre.
Torsa stressed that two close escorts, a barely-repair ship, a freighter and a “rabble of near-piratical Drinaxian auxiliaries” was no math for the Meatgrinder and Sasquatch: some 2000 tons of ships with a pair of 50-ton bay particle beams at their disposal. Burghof and James each leapt to their feet to protest this statement, but were waved away by the senior captain.
Timaeus, his air of noblesse oblige allowing him to shrug off the intolerable slight, flattered Torsa, subtly pointing out the career advantages of leading a flotilla in victory against the odds. Between them, the assembled flotilla would have around a hundred marines, and five particle barbettes: they just had to get under the guns of the Meatgrinder and board her. Torsa, both eyelids now twitching furiously, gave in.
The highly capable Commander Mari Jagad was able to brief those present on the weaponry of each side, warning the Drinaxians that the Meatgrinder had redundant, advanced sensor systems and that she was likely to detect the So Much For Subtlety as soon as she moved, if not before. The assembled leaders decided that attrition was unlikely to succeed in the face of the Meatgrinder’s dozen turrets and bays, and so they decided to distribute the marines across several ships and go straight at the Meatgrinder, hoping to force a boarding.
050-1107 – Acrid High Orbital Space
The next day, the Drinaxian marines, soldiers and droids loaded aboard the fleet, the flotilla jumped to Exe. As secretly planned by the Drinaxians, however, the Martin II jumped to Pandora, instead. This meant that the joint Imperium-Drinaxian fleet was some 2,000 tons – and 14 turrets – lighter than the Imperium officers had counted on. The fleet jumped out with a common jump solution.
058-1107 – Near Exe System’s Inner Gas Giant
After a long, isolated week in which each ship was alone in its jump-space bubble, the warning klaxons for imminent jump emergence sounded aboard each ship, as normal, around four hours before they were expected to come out of jump-space. On this occasion, they were fairly accurate due to a correction by one of the So Much For Subtlety’s robots to the jump drive programming.
Thus, when the flotilla emerged simultaneously, they were at action stations and prepared for the fight. Finding themselves scattered between 1,500 and 50,000km from the Meatgrinder, they immediately engaged.
On one side was the 1,200 ton Meatgrinder pocket warship and her 800-ton companion, the Sasquatch. On the other were the Gazelle-Class Arshad and Komodo (each 400 tons); the 400-ton repair ship the Henry T. Ford; the Drinaxian flagship the So Much For Subtlety (240 tons); the Phlebotomist (a 300 ton Jump Cutter); The Never Talk To Strangers(260 tons) and the Grey Area (200 tons), each pirates converted from traders.
On paper, it was an almost perfect match, but the pirate ship had vastly heavier firepower, as she would rapidly demonstrate. Her sleek, massive sides bristled with guns The Sasquatch seemed to possess the bulk of a skyscraper.
With surprise on their side, the flotilla attacked at once, particle beams lancing out from the Arshad, Komodo and So Much For Subtlety, the latter meaning that she was instantly detected. The vulnerable Phlebotomist began to withdraw; the Grey Area advanced cautiously and the rest of the ships dove straight for the Meatgrinder, which suffered hits to her weapons and hull.
After a few minutes, the Meatgrinder and Sasquatch reached action stations, and began to reply. Although the Meatgrinder took further hits – particularly from Erik’s accurate work on the particle accelerator – stripping away her armour with a devastating series of hits, in return the Grey Area only survived a hit from a 50-ton bay at the cost of losing all of her deflector shields in a single blow. Her amour softened the remaining energy but she still lot about 10% of her hull from the remaining explosions, and saw some of her cargo of droid marines explode in a hit on her cargo bay. The Henry T Ford was instantly crippled, left a drifting hulk by blows from the other particle bay.
The So Much For Subtlety, which had landed at medium range, took beam laser hits as she cautiously advanced towards the pirate warship, and only Penelope’ evasive action saved them from being crippled by further fire. At this point, the first salvos of missiles leapt from each side. The Komodo was targetted by a volley of eighteen missiles from the Meatgrinder, and despite ECM from her own and the SMFS’s systems, several got through to heavily damage her computer and maneuvre drives, while the Never Talk To Strangers was pounded by one of the Meatgrinder’s particle bays, suffering heavy damage to her power plant, maneuvre drives and jump drive and taking her out of the fight. The pirates’ laser turrets were distracted by point defence duties against the return missile fire from the joint task force.
By now, the Meatgrinder had been stripped of her armour, several of her turrets, some manuevre capabilities, and her main sensors. The Sasquatch, sensing which way the fight was going, started to spool up her drives for an emergency jump. Hroal Irontooth, seeing this, reacted furiously, launching a full volley of eighteen missiles against her, many of which hit just before she disappeared into jump space.
He also fired upon the flotilla, destroying the Komodo and narrowly failing to destroy the SMFS, managing to inflict hull damage upon her. With three ships out of the fight, one crippled and one out of range, only the Komodo and the So Much For Subtlety remained. Things looked like they were going the way of Hroal Irontooth, but the SMFS was now in called-shot range, and took out his remaining sensors and his power plant. Although he retained emergency power, his hull was now heavily damaged by multiple heavy, critical hits, and the runaway effect of this shot almost lead to the pirate ship being destroyed.
At last, she was unable to inflict damage on her attackers, and the SMFS boarded her, launching not just half a dozen marines but also some forty droids into the charnel house which was the burning Meatgrinder. The pirates had taken crew losses, and were outnumbered and out-equipped by the heavily-armed Drinaxian troops, and most of the ship was taken within a few minutes, leading to a confrontation between Hroal – wielding a plasma gun – and Timaeus on the bridge, with the latter dispatching the pirate leader with a blow from his arc-field sword.
The day was theirs, and the Drinaxian-Imperium fleet was able to launch emergency repairs and tend to their many wounded aboard their heavily damaged ships, and attempt rescues from the shattered hulks of the Henry T Ford and the Komodo. One of Hroal’s iron teeth was removed, to be sent to Petyr Baelish on Theev.
Happily, Hroal and his crew had heavy bounties on their heads after years of piracy, and some 28 million credits of cash would, at least, make a dent in the expensive repairs faced by the Drinaxians.
In addition, while the disappearance of the martin II – a ship the Drinaxians had been working on – caused some suspicion and a two-point drop in their standings with the Imperium, the joint battle against Hroal caused their Imperium standing to rise to 25; their Aslan standings to 20, an even a single point increase in their Florian standings (to 8).
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