FOR THE HOMEWORLD

- Chapter One -

"The Bentusi, I think, I think they knew where it was all headed when they first encountered our mothership." - Karan Har-il S'Jet - 'On Exile, Home and Kiith Vol I Chapter III'

The blue hologram of the tactical display hummed gently in the quiet stillness of the bridge of the Battlecruiser, Ka-Laggann of the Hiigaran Navy. The ship's master and commander, Captain Leeta Yii-Lal Naabal observed the pirate vessel desperately pulling every ounce of acceleration away from the far more powerful Battlecruiser and her consorts on it, represented as silent crimson light points compared her the Ka-Laggann's own green dot in the tactical display centre.

The Captain glanced at the tactical readouts that adorned the holographic display, they, the Ka-Laggann, would overhaul the pirate cruiser in less than fifteen minutes and they were already within weapons range.

"Comm." Leeta said without turning from the display. "Signal Tango-4 - He is to heave to and prepare to be bordered, failure to comply will result in his destruction." she finished as she turned to her command chair and made a few steps towards it. "Tactical, lock him up, and let them know it."

A pair of affirmatives broke the silence of the bridge crew as the Captain took her seat. From where she sat, on a raised dais in the centre of the bridge, she was surrounded by her department's staffs, capable of overseeing them with but a turn of her head.

Leeta laid a gloved hand on the terminal laid into her arm rest and pressed the key to signal her consorts' captains. A moment later a series of small holo-displays flickered to life about her like a sort of orange-hued halo, and she was looking at the faces of the captains of the heavy and light cruisers of her combined squadron.

Leeta glanced to the communication station, catching Lieutenant Kreel Naabal's eye. The Communication Officer shook his head, no response from the pirate cruiser. So, destruction it is. Leeta thought to herself as she turned back to the five other faces.

"It seems that the little Vaygr doesn't want to talk, so we're back in business." she said and she was answered without comment but a few cold smiles - Leeta held her own cheeks for the moment as she tapped a fast command into the navigational plot interface beside her. "Laggann will move to intercept, we're already building delta-v on him so we'll finish up - Reeger" she glanced to her most senior of subordinates. "You and the others will take care of the cripples and watch those merchant ships - I want to talk to this convoy's skipper before they vanish."

Reeger nodded silently, his worn, well-tanned face and dark eyes betraying nothing of his own thoughts.

"Otherwise, this is another day at the office." Leeta continued "Seize the Vaygr ships, detain the crews if possible, but I don't think anyone will miss them if they choose to resist." she let a quick smirk flash for only an instant before she forced neutrality on her face once again. "Ka-Laggann - out."

She hit another key and the bridge once again fell into dimmed lights and silence.

Leeta leaned back into the command chair, looking up into the great blue tactical display once again.

...

The Ka-Laggann slid like a knife through the infinite vacuum of space, a powerful and relatively new Escarii-class Battlecruiser, an updated design to the venerable LiirHra-class that saw service during the Vaygr War, nearly sixty years ago.

She had angled her prow towards the fleeing pirate, and Ion, Laser and Gauss turrets kept a steady lock of the ship. The chase missile launchers kept their birds on standby as tactical fed them more targeting data and the FTL-sensors and lightspeed information filtered in from the enemy Light Cruiser.

Even at a little over 310,000 kilometres, a little over a light second from the pirate, the Ka-Laggann and her electronic warfare suites could defeat the admittedly good pirate vessel's ECM and other trickery so her weapons had near-perfect target locks whereas the pirate would only be able to achieve partial locks in return.

The larger, more powerful battlecruiser was closing that distance with each passing moment, and the Vaygr pirates knew it. The lighter cruiser poured everything they had into their engines as they tried to spin up their hyperdrives, only to find that it was impossible within the effect-field of the Hiigaran's Interdictor generator, causing the unprotected drives to auto-fail every time they tried.

In the total silence two of the six forward laser cannons of the battlecruiser fired. There was no light or sound to indicate such a weapon in the total lack of atmosphere, but after the near-instant it took the beams of coherent light to cross the short distance between the two vessels, the Vaygr crew became suddenly very aware of the existence of those lasers.

The smaller ship suddenly bucked as their shields failed to stop the lasers and the rear of the ship lost hundreds of tonnes of armour in brilliant flashes of detonation. Alloy armour took the brunt of the hit but the capital-class weaponry was more than enough to penetrate the skin of the light cruiser. Atmosphere bled from the holes like blood from a wound. For a moment the control and power links to the main engines flickered as the discharge ran through the interior of the ship but the crew wrestled control back once again.

Desperately the pirate returned fire with it's own cannons. Lasers flashed back toward the pursuer, cloaked as she was underneath her electronic warfare systems and target-baffler drones.

Out of their impromptu barrage, the Vaygr scored one hit on the reinforced prow shields of the Ka-Laggann, resulting in only a momentary fluctuation in the array and nothing more.

Another volley from the prow-weapons answered and only a sharp twist from the pirate's helm saved them from destruction, instead of plunging deep into their hull, the laser scraped across the surface of her port side, ripping away two missile tubes and a gauss cannon along with large nasty chunks of armour before the remaining energy disappeared into the endless night.

The Ka-Laggann followed up with one of its Ion cannons. This time there was visible evidence of the weapon's discharge. A spear of brilliant blue-white flew toward the bleeding enemy and this shot landed home after just over the second the near-lightspeed projectile took to cross the distance.

The round hit it's mark on the starboard flank of the cruiser, burrowing through the shields and sending the arrays powering them into auto-shutdown and reset as they tried to handle the energy load. The remainder of the Ion bolt crashed into the armoured hull, again tearing nasty chunks of armour away and ripping a new vicious wound across the cruiser.

To their credit, the Vaygr continued to return fire. Invisible bolts of light flashed back towards the Ka-Laggann, crashing against the shields a few more times as the Vaygr fire control operators narrowed down the incoming fire from the background haze.

The front, triple layered shield arrays shuddered and flashed as again it stood against the barrage. By ease borne of training and experience, the shield-tech assigned to the bow defence cycled the shields to keep the arrays steady while under the duress of enemy fire.

Another ion lance slammed into the rear of the Light Cruiser, blowing another hideous wound in the already battered vessel. The pirate shuddered and shivered as she launched a brace of missiles as her engines faltered and her acceleration started to slow.

...

"Missile launch - count, twelve." a sensor-tech called out calmly, "Estimated time to impact, thirty-two seconds."

Leeta watched as the tactical display began to track the incoming warheads and the counter-missile firing solutions began to calculate. The bridge of the Battlecruiser shivered as a flurry of small, agile missiles flew to meet the incoming attack. The captain nor the executive officer needed to order the launch, they could rely on the capabilities of the tactical officer to make those calls under these sorts of situations.

"Counter-missile intercept in twelve seconds, set point-defence clusters to automatic." The tactical officer, Lieutenant Commander Liara Somtaaw ordered to her section in a cool tone laced with the accent of the homeworld's upper regions, where Kiith Somtaaw had taken root in the years after the Vaygr war. A gentle soprano and carefully crafted words echoed across the bridge that had broken silence into a low hum of combat chatter.

The tactical display showed the scores of light-points speed towards the dozen blood red points as they hurtled through space toward her command. The tactical repeater, an orange edged hologram beside the captain's command chair, appeared and with it the firing calculations for the anti-missile point defence laser clusters dotted across her ship as they swiveled to face the incoming bogeys. With the speed and efficiency that the well-trained crewmen brought to their actions, soon each missile was facing two clusters of lasers if they should somehow survive the score of counter-missiles.

The light-points collided. The on-board targeting of the counter-missiles guiding them straight into the incoming hostile missiles. Six of the attackers were destroyed instantly, two more were damaged in the explosions and flew off course as their own targeting systems failed and they lost lock. The last few were saved by the actions of one of their number, as it suddenly lit up with ECM and other electronic witchcraft, blinding the counter-missiles away from their true enemy and harmlessly into space before they detonated uselessly.

However, the three remaining attackers now faced the combined fire of the defence clusters. A brief flurry of laser fire followed the counter-missiles and the remaining three were blotted from existence as they entered arcs of the clusters.

Captain Leeta glanced back to her communications section. "Comm, raise the pirate - see if they are willing to obey our orders now before they end up dust."

"Aye aye ma'am"

Leeta turned back to her tactical display as her Tact-Officer returned fire with the same two laser cannons. Her targeting solutions seemed to be aimed at the engineering section, or at least where any Hiigaran shipbuilder would put an engineering section, perhaps not a Vaygr Engineer of old, but a lot of the current designs used by the Vaygr were derivatives of Hiigaran and Taiidani designs so it was possible Liara was on to something.

The lasers sliced through tortured armour, blowing apart compartments and through interior hulls. A series of detonations rippled inside the Light Cruiser, blowing apart the aft section and killing their acceleration completely as their primary engines were vaporised.

Leeta rubbed her chin as she saw the pirate enter an uncontrolled tumble. She glanced to the Tact-Officer and raised an eyebrow. Liara looked over her console and saw the expression on the face of her Captain through the low lighting of the bridge.

"I suppose we didn't need another prize bounty." Leeta remarked to which Liara suddenly looked very guilty. The Captain smirked for a second before waving the Tactical Officer's sudden expression away. "No matter Lieutenant Commander, we have the rest of his consorts." The Captain turned to face the display again. "Tactical - hold fire, Comm - any response?"

"None ma'am" The Lieutenant returned sharply. "All I'm getting is silence."

"Shame." Leeta muttered as she turned her command chair to face her ship's helm section. "Helm, bring us to boarding distance." The helmsman confirmed the order as the Captain turned again, this time back to Liara. "See if you can-"

"Missile launch - count, fifteen, no, eighteen, no, twenty!" the tech called out again, "Impact, fifteen seconds."

Leeta snapped her head to the tactical display again as the blood red stars erupted from the dying ship and ploughed through the blackness towards her own green star icon.

"Launch countermeasures!" Liara called to her section as her head snapped back down to her console.

The ship shivered again as counter-missiles were snap launched and already the point defences were tracking incoming targets. Against the incoming birds, the Ka-Laggann sent only fifteen counter-missiles and the timings would be close.

The tactical officer didn't have time to call out the time to impact before it already happened. The light points exploded against one another in the holo display as more penetration aids flared up from the enemy birds, despite the rushed nature of their launch, ten of the counter missiles found their mark but a combination of pen-aids and not enough CMs meant the other ten flew past.

The point defence clusters rose and fired almost as one, spitting out bolts of coherent light as they switched to rapid fire.

Leeta watched silently as the countdown closed to impact. She gave no outward sign of tension, save balling her fists ever so slightly.

One after another the point defence laser clusters swatted an attacker from space, but even the Hiigaran-built weapons had their limits. Nine of the ten missiles were destroyed in as few seconds. The final bird however made it to it's terminal attack distance and armed it's warhead.

The missile split, the main engine that had crossed those thousands of kilometres was blown apart as the fresh, smaller engines of the six warheads fired up and they sped forwards. The point defence clusters managed to clip two of the warheads and destroy them and a third lost it's target under a haze of ECM from Ka-Laggann itself. The remaining three drove towards the Hiigaran Battlecruiser and her crew heard the tone sound to prepare for impact.

The shields, powerful defensive tools they were stopped the first warhead dead, however it also detonated its payload, a several hundred kiloton nuclear warhead. The resulting, brilliant flash caught the second warhead and it too detonated, creating a second star burst. The resulting radiation, gamma rays and sheer power of the explosions played havoc with the Ka-Laggann's prow shields, one array went into emergency shutdown and the other two took a heavy hit in their own right. The third warhead, due to this managed slip through the sudden tears in the shields and roar the last few kilometres towards the heavily armoured hull of the battlecruiser.

Leeta knew from long experience and training that a single cruiser-launchable warhead would not destroy her ship, infact, the Ka-Laggann had taken far worse hits in her many years and survived. This mere-kiloton range nuke would hurt yes, but the ship would survive, and with virtually all hands if both the Captain and the Ka-Laggann was very, very lucky.

Leeta heard a quiet prayer to Sajuuk muttered behind her but she didn't even flinch from her staring match with the tactical display.

The nuke flashed into life, a searing white star born in glory if only for an instant before it's death. The battlecruiser bucked under the attack and damage alarms wailed, Leeta snapped her eyes to the part of the display that listed the damages.

Leeta blinked. The nuclear warhead had detonated yes, but according to the tactical display, which was driven by the CIC and the ship's sensors, the warhead had detonated nearly twenty kilometres short of the ship itself. The hull was still damaged from the radiation, EMP and the heat had battered the armour but had not breached it.

A sigh of relief went around the bridge and Leeta looked to her tactical section to see the tactical officer smiling.

"Gotcha'" Lieutenant Commander Liara sighed as she smirked. Leeta looked to her own tactical readouts next to her command chair. According to the main weapons list, one of the forward laser cannons had fired at the same instant the warhead had detonated. Leeta looked back to the Lieutenant Commander.

"Nice shooting guns'" The Captain smiled to the younger woman and said woman returned it.

Captain Leeta looked back to the main holographic display and saw the hostile vessel as it continued its long end-over-end tumble through space - any attempts to keep up the fight seemingly gone with that last explosion - then again, the resulting nuclear explosions were playing havoc with Ka-Laggann's own sensors, infact the prow sensors were blind for the moment and so the pirate was probably still waiting for the haze of interference to clear.

"Tactical," Leeta called out as she looked at the distorted picture of the Vaygr ship. To think, the Vaygr Empire reduced to pirates and raiders - Maakan would be less than impressed to see what his war machine had become Leeta pondered for a moment. Maakan, the Vaygr Warrior-Lord, the false prophet who had brought war to Hiigara nearly sixty years ago. She glanced to the damage codes, by all rights she could return fire and kill the crippled ship that just tried to nuke her own command. "Hit them up with every fire control emission you can. If they even look like they are going to fire - be faster."

Liara acknowledged the order but as she did Leeta was already looking to the helmsman. "Helm - continue with last order."

"Aye aye Ma'am" Senior Chief Petty Officer Kal LiirHra returned as he entered the order to bring the ship to about a thirty thousand kilometres from the damaged pirate.

Leeta looked again to her communications section. The lieutenant looked up toward the Captain as he shook his head - nothing from the pirate. "Keep hailing them - they will be boarded shortly - any resistance will result in their destruction." the lieutenant nodded and began once again trying to raise the not-very-talkative Vaygr. Strange, they seemed talkative enough when they tried to pillage the convoy about an hour ago.

The Captain pressed a combination into her command chair and a new holo-screen flashed into life with the face of Major Harold Manaan, commander of Ka-Laggann's contingent of marines.

"Battalion CP - Major Harold speaking." the surprising soft tones of the broad shouldered Marine came from the holo-screen.

Leeta nodded to the Major. "Battalion CP, Bridge - We have a disabled Vaygr pirate in need of a house call. Maybe you have a few willing souls to help a fellow traveller?" Leeta's eyes narrowed and a wintery half-smile grew across her lips.

The marine major returned the expression to his old friend and his lips pursed for a low whistle. "I think I can find a few good gaalseins amongst my companies - in fact, I think they're already ready to provide assistance ma'am."

"Excellent." Captain Leeta allowed a full smile to grow for a moment before she glanced back to the tactical display. "It shouldn't be long now Major, current intercept with Tango-4 in a little under seven minutes." to which the marine nodded and had a few glances to something that Leeta couldn't see. "Bridge out." Leeta said as she cut the circuit and returned her full attention to the large hologram.

"Any reaction from them?" she asked allowed glancing to tactical and communications in turn. Kreel again shook his head and was joined by Liara a moment later.

"No targeting emissions of any kind?" the Captain asked toward her tactical officer and Liara shook her head.

"Nothing Captain - but she's got every targeting system I have pinging her constantly. So perhaps they've got the message." the tact-officer continued.

Leeta rubbed her chin for a moment before she glanced at the tumbling vessel. "Or we knocked out their inertial compensator and they're little more than paste." she mused aloud, more to herself than anyone else.

Liara pursed her lips as she thought it over. "Maybe. The missile launch could have been simply the last command entered into their fire control."

The Captain hummed in agreement. If the Inertial Compensator on any modern ship failed, death would be near-instantaneous if the ship was moving with anything above reaction thrusters, any ion-based or Grav drive would produce enough G's of force to crush a normal human even at extremely low acceleration.

Typically most sensible nations built their ships with this tidbit in mind and therefore included both extremely rugged compensators and usually back-ups if internal space allowed. But even the most rugged compensator had difficulty operating when hit with a capital-class laser cannon or an exploding section of ship so it wasn't beyond the bounds of possibility that was exactly what happened.

Leeta looked back towards her tactical officer again, a finger and thumb rubbing her chin as she thought it over. "Liara, just in case, have a shell of rescue drones launched and send them out to stabilise Tango-4."

"Aye aye ma'am" she responded and her head dropped back to her console.

...

The alpha company of Ka-Laggann's marine compliment landed on the hull of the lamed cruiser after nearly an hour after the captain expected - sadly correcting the pirate's attitude and bringing their velocity to zero relative to the system's primary had taken longer due to the remaining Vaygr crewmen attempting to do the same, however their efforts hindered the Hiigaran's effort and the Marines eventually had to cripple the reaction thrusters to get the Vaygr to stop. This had the secondary effect of informing the Hiigarans of the Vaygr's survival.

Leeta watched the marines from the vantage point of the battlecruiser's tactical sensors, the holographic display reconfigured to show a high-resolution image of the boarding action. Ringing the display was a series of smaller windows, each displaying the marine's POV helmet displays. The observed marines rotated through in a slow progression, allowing the crewmen and primarily their own commanders to assess any situation from as many angles as they had marines in action.

Liara wasn't watching the boarding action, she and her section had their noses to their own consoles as they watched for the slightest resistance from the pirate vessel. She had several fire plans already locked in and a big red button that would send the order to the marines to evacuate the vessel as fast as their powered combat armour would allow.

To the Captain's left was her Executive Officer, Commander Gail S'jet, freshly arrived from the secondary command deck now the fighting was over for the most part.

The tall woman had her arms crossed as she studied the detail of each of the helmet POVs, mentally assessing and criticizing the marines and the pirates in equal measure. The captain glanced to the patches on the shoulder of the XO's vac-suit, among the many identifier codes the the Ka-Laggann's coat of arms was the crossed rifles and dagger of the Hiigaran Naval Marines, and as a former marine, the XO was well within her rights to assess and criticise as she pleased. Captain Leeta for her part had been Navy since enlisting and had been for the most part shepherded towards the tactical courses and then command paths of the Kevan Soban Naval Academy and had managed to miss the recruitment lines for the Marines at the start of her career.

Gail had made the switch from the Marines to the Navy proper after nearly a decade of service at what could be favourably described as the sharp end of the most recent marine deployments.

Leeta turned to face the XO fully after a moment extra of watching the first squads enter the cruiser without issue. "How long do you think it'll take to clear this cruiser?" she asked.

Gail turned to face her captain and seemed to ponder the question for a moment. "I'd say an hour, depending on damage."

"An hour?" Leeta repeated with a raised eyebrow. "You think they'll face much resistance?"

Gail made a noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a harsh barking laugh, what Leeta and the crew had quickly began to call as the XO's 'evil' chuckle. The tall woman looked to the display again, looking pointedly towards the symbol painted on the side of the hull, the symbol of Maakan, the icon of the Vaygr. "I hope so." she uttered quietly to herself and the captain.

...

Hiigarans had no love for the Vaygr. None what-so-ever. The Vaygr war had started with the destruction of Hiigaran colonies and the siege of Hiigara itself. A siege which saw the use of Atmospheric-Deprivation Planet-Killer weapons, the same weapons that had scoured all life from Kharak, once-home of the many Kiith-clans and the Kushan people over a century ago. Only the timely and miraculous arrival of the ancient warship Sajuuk at Hiigara and the death of Maakan at the Battle of Balcora had saved the fragile world from the same fate.

The Vaygr had always been raiders and pirates, but under the Warrior-Lords they were somewhat self contained and spent much of their time fighting each other and the other neighbouring star nations, far away from Hiigaran space. But after the death of the Taiidani Emperor and the Taiidani Empires subsequent fracturing into the Imperial Remnants and the Taiidani Republics, later becoming the Taiidani Confederation, the Vaygr now found themselves without a major force to disrupt them. Under the influence of Maakan - became a galactic power and they burned their way through Republic and Imperial sectors alike in their warpath. Only Hiigara managed to halt their main advance - and the Vaygr had made them pay for it.

The death toll in Hiigara was sobering, even more when you took into account the relative size of the entire Hiigaran population, out of the then-325 million Hiigarans, nearly 27 million, civilian and military died under Vaygr aggression - it was enough to give pause to any Hiigaran and stir a deep sense of anger in most serving military personnel, almost to the point of cruelness, almost.

After the defeat at Hiigara and the death of their leader - the Vaygr fractured, returning to the disparate leaders that had fallen into line under a single flag, all claiming to continue Makaan's legacy - and they did, for a few years before the Taiidani and Hiigarans were able to strike back and push the unstable pirate-nation into complete disarray, scattering them again across space.

Now the once great 'Silver Horde' that sent millions, if not billions to their deaths and came close to wiping out the Hiigarans were once again little more then isolated pirate bands, simply biding time before the navies of the great star-nations they once plundered got around to finishing them off, once and for all.