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'In Dark Places'
Makura Rising - Season 2, Episode 2
Starport C59-8,
Wazta
The plan had been simple.
'In Dark Places'
Makura Rising - Season 2, Episode 2
Starport C59-8,
Wazta
The plan had been simple.
Roll into the Wazta sector, drop by Koda Station to rearm and resupply, and then set up an outpost before heading to Cuthbern. Datamining and a bit of probing into galaxy-wide security databases hadn't revealed anything worrisome in the area. Insofar as anyone was concerned, the Wazta sector was as boring a backwater as it'd been a thousand years ago.
Unfortunately, those concerned happened to be dead wrong. The planet Wazta reported that a pirate vessel was in-system and busily stealing supplies from poor townships on the surface. That was a problem. A big one - if they were going to establish a waystation on Koda Station, or get any supplies from Wazta, they'd have to mop up the pirate presence and secure the system. That meant expending precious ammunition, which they yet did not have a means of replenishing.
They slipped from hyperspace a light-second from Wazta. A blood-painted vessel greatly resembling a Gladiator-class Star Destroyer hung in low orbit over the world. A skull, boldly emblazoned on each side of the prow, plainly indicated that it was a pirate vessel. Whether it was resupplying or conducting raids was irrelevant; it powered up its shields and weapons the moment it detected the White Revenant and Solace of Fire exit hyperspace. A mishmash of fighters flocked from its hangar deck and went hurtling at the Commonwealth vessels, while the Gladiator attempted to break free of Wazta's gravity well.
Delun Aldatan, playing Captain of the Solace of Fire due to his knowledge of the galaxy and the weapons and ships within it, ordered the pirate vessel to stand down. He was polite and to the point - if they packed up and left, they wouldn't receive any trouble and they wouldn't be reported to the authorities. He received a litany of profanity and unprintables for his trouble, which served to instantly annihilate whatever patience he might've otherwise had for the pirate vessel and its 'jolly' crew.
Solace of Fire and her sister ship spooled up their tactical hyperdrives and made a second jump, closing from a light-second to some 150 kilometers in the blink of an eye. Their shields flashed into existence - the Pirate warship spun to face them, presenting its dorsal surface to both vessels in the process. Solace unleashed a salvo of accelerator cannon slugs. Two hellish white bolts streaked across the abyss; the leading round smashed into the Gladiator's shields and caused them to glow a brilliant azure. The second slug struck and they flashed out of existence. The massive projectile fractured the hull armor protecting the ship's spine. Atomized metal and atmosphere billowed out in an explosively-expanding debris-choked cloud. The two hundred and ninety-tonne slug's jacket fragmented, creating an ever-expanding cone of destruction that decimated the warship's interior decks while the main uranium penetrator drilled clean through her hull and emerged from the belly in a glittering blast of armor melted by the heat and ferocity of the blow.
The wounded Gladiator returned fire; the barriers of the Revenant flared under a salvo of turbolaser fire. The Solace ventral chemical emergency thrusters exploded in puffs of white, propelling the ship violently upwards to narrowly dodge several bolts of hellish energy. Revenant fired; a pair of white-hot slugs connected with the thickest section of the Gladiator's hull, gutting the ship and spewing molten metal and atmosphere into space. The pirate ship's stern lurched abruptly upwards, the vessel shuddered, then vented plasma as her reactors gave out. She fell into a lethargic tumble far above the surface of Wazta. The slugs, having overpenetrated the warship's hull, carried on into deep space.
As for the pirate fighters, it had taken seconds for missiles and railgun fire to reduce them to silent fireballs.
The White Revenant moved to the ruined, smoldering hulk, while the Solace of Fire scanned the system for additional activity. Nothing - not even a freighter. They slipped into the same orbit occupied by the Gladiator and turned their targeting sensors onto the surface. There were several light freighters planetside in a starport-turned-township and a lot of repulsortruck caravans moving in, but no signs of military equipment or anything threatening.
Del tapped his command console thoughtfully. Neither ship in the force had taken any damage. They'd expended a grand total of four rounds of ammunition, and in doing so had utterly destroyed the first ship to ever stand in their way. Not a bad start, but not something he cared to repeat. The next warship might actually be ready for a fight, and he'd a feeling that ancient Gladiator wasn't in the best of repair to begin with.
He depressed the activation stud for his comms. "Sergeant Mohatu, this is Captain Alda. Stars look safe. Go poke around planetside. Let's find out what our friends were up to down there."
Two bursts of static answered him - a silent confirmation. He manipulated his personal holotank to show the side of his vessel; a pair of squat, ugly light dropships slipped from the hangar, each one flanked by a pair of Claymore heavy fighters bristling with missiles and torpedoes.
Jamall Mohatu and Collin Graves were on the lead Kingfisher dropship. Collin had been insistent on that posting - and Jamall made sure he got it. Apparently Graves was getting tired of double standard gravity and fur. He couldn't blame him.
The dropships made it planetside without incident. Wazta's gravity far less than that of the Kushari homeworld, and so the Makuran vessels' immensely powerful engines and heavy armored hulls handled the descent without any issue whatsoever. The starport was full up, and so they touched down in the middle of what approximated a town square - albeit built atop some sort of armored ceramic-ferrocrete slab that was once part of a massive landing pad for heavy transports.
The second Kingfisher, containing another squad of heavily armored Marines and whomever wanted to explore a human station, settled in a short distance from Mohatu's dropship. The fighters hovered overhead, their chin guns twisting and swiveling wildly as they searched for threats.
A crowd gathered around the alien dropships. Most were farmhands; bored kids and young folk waiting about the starport for the next transport offworld. All were interested in seeing whom such unusual vessels belonged to; they did not lose interest when they saw the first armored figure slip out of the hold, but they did give the hulking power armor-clad Kushari a wide berth.
A few more moments of awed staring and the locals began to move again, idly shuffling past the parked dropships on their way to whatever terminal they were destined for. Jamall tapped Collin's shoulder. "Ve should find a bar." He jerked his thumb in the direction of three repulsortrucks, parked nose-to-tail on one edge of the square. Each one carried a cargo container bearing the same red paint scheme and skull emblem of the ship the Solace and Revenant had laid waste to in orbit. Each truck appeared abandoned - hastily so, as the doors were wide open on the cabs. "Figure out where the pirates decided to hide. I vill... Er. I'll send a squad to secure ze trucks." He grinned slightly behind his helmet - at least he'd finally used a contraction. Maybe he'd be lucky enough to speak Basic fluently before his mane turned gray.
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