- Joined
- Apr 1, 2011
- Messages
- 947
- Reaction score
- 0
I know how the men curse me. They grumble and glare, but they know I'm right. Outnumbered five to one, they stay in their fortifications, knowing they'll face "the bitch's" wrath if they so much as look like they're abandoning their position. If they didn't know before they know now. I do not make idle threats. In situations such as these it can be an advantage to have a reputation for being a ruthless bitch. I don't let it bother me. It's merely another tool for me to use.
Undermanned and outgunned, the pirates really had us on the ropes. The only thing that had saved us from being overrun immediately, was the interrupted warning from their ship in orbit. What had been intended as a training mission on a backwater planet had quickly escalated into something much more. Normally, pirates wouldn't attack a planet with an imperial presence, but their surprise attack on the the defenseless transport had obviously emboldened them.
The pirates were forced to make a difficult decision. They couldn't leave my men and I alone, not if they didn't want a surprise visit from us. Our drop ships would allow us to sneak up on them and cause havoc for them. If they didn't deal with us first. So they made the smart decision to take us out before ransacking the rest of the planet. The small base we had planned to stage our training exercises from had been the only thing that saved us from a bombardment. One outdated turbo laser was more than enough to make using their small pirate ship prohibitively costly.
Realizing the situation we were in, I didn't hesitate. In short order I had my men deployed in defensive positions, our aircraft grounded and hidden, and sent out a distress call. There were mutterings about taking the drop ships and trying to escape, but I put a stop to that with my usual ruthlessness. If we wanted to risk taking fire from the pirates, it was feasible that we could escape the planet, leaving the colonists to fend for themselves. I may be a ruthless bitch, but I was not abandoning a planet full of innocent people to fall prey to the depredations of pirates.
When their first mad rush ended in a bloody slaughter, they pulled back to reconsider their tactics. Which was not something I wanted them to have time for. I needed them to focus their attention on us and not the thousands of civilians on the planet. Letting them set up hardened defensive positions would effectively trap us, preventing us from coming to anyone's aid. They had the advantage in numbers, but we were well trained and motivated.
There were plenty of casualties on both sides. When it was all over I had lost one of the drop ships and over a dozen good men, but the pirates paid the larger portion of the butcher's bill. Luckily for us, we didn't have a deadline to meet. With the distress call sent out, the pirates had to deal with us before help came, or get hit by the reinforcements I'd called in. I counted on that to make them reckless, and I took every chance I could to bloody their noses.
In the end, the pirates made a fatal mistake. I can only imagine that the pirates had become so enraged at the beating they'd taken from us, that they had lost track of time, because they were still here when our rescuers arrived. Our coms had been jammed the entire duration of the siege, so we only knew our rescue had arrived when turbo lasers crippled the pirate ship and their fortifications. I didn't try to reprimand any of my men as they cheered at the sight of their enemies being brutally slaughtered. They deserved the celebration, and it was a very satisfying sight.
Last edited by a moderator:
