Disclaimer: This is only semi-canon, as it's set in my larger 30th Century Crystal Tokyo canon. This also appeared in altered form as a chapter in Magical Atoner Lyrical Alicia.
Bodacious Space Pirates
Just another job...
Marika Kato awoke from a deep slumber, the morning sun shining in through the open apartment windows. The twenty-something young woman winced, covering her eyes a moment as she shifted in bed, her long, red-brown hair flowing down her back.
"Grbplmnx," the woman laying beside her made an incoherent noise and rolled over. Chiaki Kurihara was naked under the sheets, and clearly was still sleepy after the long night before.
Quietly as possible Marika slipped out of the bed, deciding to let her sleep in peace. Grabbing some clothes Marika got dressed in the living room, took a moment to brush her hair, then headed out to grab a coffee.
"Marika!" Mami Endo beamed, the manager of the Lamp Cafe smiling as Marika entered. Marika had been a part timer there when she was younger, and now came there often for coffee.
"Morning," Marika smiled back warmly as she sat down at a table.
"Or should I say 'Captain Kato' instead?" Mami teased impishly.
"Please no. I get enough of that from the crew," Marika sighed.
"They just want to show you they respect you," Mami shrugged cheerfully.
"Yeah, yeah," Marika smiled. They chatted as she finished her coffee, then she got ready to go. "Can I get a cup for Chiaki, too?" she asked.
"Shouldn't it be a sundae?" Mami suggested as she made up a cup.
Marika laughed, "Even for her, this is too early."
Back at the apartment, Chiaki smiled as Marika entered. "Welcome home," she smiled, having tossed on a t-shirt.
"Aww, I wanted to wake you," Marika passed her the cup.
Chiaki noted it was from the nearby Lamp Cafe and pouted. "No sundae?" she asked.
"Chiaki!" Marika laughed.
Chiaki sipped her coffee and sighed happily, "Thank you."
Marika leaned against the counter, "Jenny called. We may have another job..."
"She'll make us do a meeting to discuss it, I bet," Chiaki rolled her eyes.
Marika chuckled, "Don't pretend, we both know you like meetings." Marika sighed, "How did I end up with two detail obsessed over-achievers as business partners?"
Chiaki kissed her cheek, "Just lucky I guess."
Marika laughed.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
The pirate squadron was based around Marika's homeworld of Morningstar, though they stopped using the commercial orbital station and set up their own space dock in system. That way if anyone succeeded in chasing the pirates 'home' the planet's leaders could claim the 'evil pirates' were just camping out in their system...
They also maintained a 'office' on planet, both to organize the non-ship based business aspects as well as a place for the crews to meet before jobs. Marika and Chiaki arrived before the planned meeting, going into the small, three story office building they had purchased.
"Good morning Marika-sama, Chiaki-sama," Kara smiled. The junior trainee was manning the front desk, in addition to her pilot training.
"Morning," Marika smiled as Chiaki waved. "Is Jenny here already?" Marika asked.
"She and Lynn are both in, ma'am." Kara added.
In the upstairs meeting room, Jenny Dolittle smiled warmly as they entered, her lover Lynn Lambretta-Dolittle beside her. "Morning," Jenny waved.
"How was the honeymoon?" Chiaki teased.
Lynn blushed while Jenny just grinned. After Jenny's uncle tried marrying her off AGAIN, she and Lynn had formally tied to knot to head off any more such attempts. Plus, they were madly in love anyway so neither minded.
"It was very... restful," Jenny joked.
Marika laughed aloud.
"And when are you making Chiaki a honest woman?" Lynn teased back.
Marika blushed but Chiaki shrugged, "We'll get to it."
Changing the subject Marika asked, "There's a new job?"
Jenny looked amused by the obvious diversion, but let it go. "We were contacted by Show, yes," she referred to their contact, "it's an unusual job, but they're willing to pay in advance."
"Oh really?" Chiaki looked dubious.
"It's also more of a raid than anything," Lynn noted, and with that the three captains began to discuss the job...
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Asgard and Valhalla were two worlds out past the League of Non-Aligned Worlds and nearer to Jurai, roughly. Both had little or no strategic value, other than possibly being useful as jumping off points for military ventures.
But now, shockingly, Asgard was under attack.
"All right! Hold the landing zone, then we move out!" Marika Kato called as she lead her pirates out from the run down space port.
"Aye, ma'am," the bulky cyborg Schnitzer declared, manning a gun turret the group had erected near where the Bentenmaru's shuttle was sitting.
"All right, form up on me," Marika ordered her band of pirates. "The mission is to destroy the storehouse for the Belkan Devices, as well as the repair and maintanance facilities."
"Otherwise we can raid at will, yes?" Kane McDougal asked eagerly.
"Go get 'em!" Marika agreed cheerfully.
The group followed Marika into the city, blasters firing as the locals tried to attack with sword and other 'blade' designed devices. They got chopped up pretty badly, clearly not having considered fighting enemies at long range.
"I don't like taking anonymous jobs," Chiaki Kurihara complained, the black haired woman running alongside her lover.
"They paid in full, and in advance," Marika noted as the twenty-something woman shot a guy attacking with a chain-sword.
"Still!" Chiaki scowled.
"Besides, it's probably Jurai," Marika added confidently.
"Oh?" Chiaki drawled.
"They're probably tired of having an ambitious military power near their border," Marika noted, "and decided to take steps."
(In fact they had been hired by Venus on Earth, but she had taken steps to keep that a secret. Paying the pirates to attack Asgard gave her plausable deniability. Plus, the pirates would 'owe' her for the profitable raid, and it was always nice to have pawns in your debt.)
"Maybe," Chiaki frowned. In her experience, jobs that looked too good to be true often WERE too good to be true...
They reached the central headquarters with minimal resistance. "Okay, did anyone bring explosives?" Marika askjed as she tapped the heavy doors.
"Here!" Misa Grandwood smiled, the pretty blonde walking up to them.
"Why does the medic have explosives?" Chiaki had to ask.
"Don't get hung up on details," Misa scolded her gently as she passed the modules to Marika.
With some help from Chiaki, they got the explosives planted. Everyone took cover as Marika called, "FIRE IN THE HOLE."
The explosion rattled the whole building, and as they peeked around the corner Misa noted, "We MAY have overdone that."
The armored doors were gone. As well, a good chunk of the surrounding wall was too, and the roof now looked awfully wobbly.
"Ooops," Marika sighed.
Chiaki rolled her eyes, "Ooops?"
"All right," Marika said, "destroy the devices, parts and equipment!"
There was a moment where they were tempted to swipe the devices. The weapons would sell, no question. But they had taken the job. So the group opened fire with blasters, blowing up racks of devices, parts and all the rest. In moments it was all scrap.
"Mission accomplished," Marika nodded. Addressing the group she continued, "We have a hour or so to raid the city. Remember we need to be away from here after that... the Barbarossa can't delay the Asgard patrol ships too long."
"Aye!" the pirates cheered then scattered.
"Are we joining in the raid, or heading back to the ship?" Chiaki asked.
"Well, Coorie back at the Bentenmaru is hacking the planet's financial systems. Unless these warmongering idiots have bankrupted the planet, we should do all right," Marika told her. "Though if there's some trinket you want, we can go get it," she offered gallantly.
"My hero," Chiaki smiled. "Back to the ship... remember, we have to be ready to help the Barbarossa cripple the Asgard fleet too. It's part of the contract."
"As their 'fleet' is ships that would be declared scrap anywhere else, I'm not THAT worried," Marika shrugged.
"Don't get cocky," Chiaki scolded gently.
"Yes dear...," Marika replied.
An hour later, laiden with booty, the attack shuttle raced back up to orbit with the crew all aboard, mostly unharmed. "I can't BELIEVE you got hurt, Kane," Misa complained cheerfully as she tended his bleeding arm.
"I got careless," Kane admitted ruefully.
"Contact the Barbarossa and the Odette II. Is everything going as planned?" Chiaki ordered as they swiftly ascended into orbit.
Jenny Dolittle, dressed in full pirate gear, smiled at them cheerfully from the bridge of the Odette II. "We're mopping up the attack ships now," she informed them as they fired off another burst from the ion cannons that now were attacked to the solar sailor, "the only question is, do we leave them any space capacity at all?"
"We'll hook up with our ships and back you up," Marika said. "Any enemy ships willing to surrender and disarm, we'll leave intact. Otherwise, well... we'll do what we must."
"Aye aye," Jenny saluted.
As planned, they reached orbit and hooked up with their respective ships. The Bentenmaru, the Barbarossa and the Odette II quickly mopped up the remaining forces, then the three ships jumped to hyperspace and escaped.
"Another successful mission!" Captain Marika said cheerfully.
"Don't say that until we're home," Chiaki said from the Barbarossa bridge.
"You'll jinx us," Jenny agreed friom the Odette II.
And in fact they DID run into trouble on the way home... but that's a story for another time.
End...?
Notes: As I said, this is not exactly canon, as it's part of my other fanfic 'universe.' You can basically assume most of what happened in Bodacious Space Pirates happened, it just happened off in a chunk of space called 'The League of Non-Aligned Worlds.'
Re: the Odette II. It always struck me as slightly weird that the Yacht Club would keep a former pirate/warship, especially as it still has all the programming to run weapons and so on. I mean, it's just not safe... so I'm assuming Jenny traded a non-warship to the school in exchange for the Odette II, and refitted it to be a pirate again.