Lord Tegrin Joral bowed deeply as he entered the Emperor's working office. "Your majesty, I return with some small news of your daughter, Weiss."
"Not significant news?" The Emperor frowned. "I take it the Corsairs are being difficult?"
"Yes, your majesty, they are. Whoever contracted the kidnapping did so via a sealed contract; they refuse to divulge any details about the contract, such as who the contracting party was, or where they delivered her to. After a bit of convincing, I did get the captain of the vessel to pass a message to the contracting party, and they have sent a response."
"You mean the Corsairs offered to pass a message to get you to go away, and you took the token they handed back without an argument." Prince Whitley turned from the window, regarding Joral with a penetrating glare. "I still say I should have gone, Father. A heartfelt plea for news of my beloved older sister, how could the Corsairs refuse?"
Emperor Jacques Schnee shook his head, his habitual frown etched on his face. "Too risky. With Winter outright disappeared and Weiss kidnapped, you're the only remaining heir to the throne, regardless of the fact that you are heir primus. I can't, I won't risk you now."
"Perhaps this captain could be persuaded to meet me somewhere relatively safe, then? An Imperial Navy Anchorage, perhaps? The Corsairs do use them to transfer prisoners."
"Perhaps," Jacques muttered, considering it carefully. "We shall have to consider the matter carefully. It depends on what the kidnappers have sent, and how long it takes them to make any demands. So what did they send, Lord Joral?"
"The captain said it was a video of Weiss recently taken. I did not take the liberty of viewing it myself; I wanted you to be the first."
The video began to play, Weiss was sitting on a couch, a scroll on the low table in front of her. She cleared her throat and began to speak. "Hello, Father. Today is January Twelfth, and I hope this message finds you well. Apparently, the Event Horizons hyperball team has managed to win their division but lose a finals slot, with an ending rating of 7-12-3. I've never understood hyperball; I think you need a degree in hyperspace math or several neuroses to really understand how the scoring works." Weiss leaned back on the couch. "I've been told not to discuss where I've been, or where I am now. I will say that I've been reasonably well treated, and comfortably housed, if in somewhat plain surroundings. Lately, I've even been allowed to mingle with the local populace, within reason of course. They're friendly, but you have to earn their respect. I'm working on that."
Weiss looked up and to the left. "That's all the time I'm allowed for now. Please give my love to Whitley and my mother; I'm sure they must be worried about me. Corandar, Father."
Whitley cleared his throat as the clip ended. "Not much to go on, is it? Though I do follow hyperball, Father. The Event Horizons did do as she said, about three days before you sent us word you'd gotten a response."
"I sent word the same day I was handed that datachip. That means she has to be within three days' flight of Valiant Anchorage! We have a search area!"
"Not necessarily." Whitley's face was thoughtful as he ran the clip back. "We'll have to run analysis, of course, but I think she was on a ship. The wall behind her looks like it might be a bulkhead. And it would explain the indirect communications you mentioned the captain had to use. And it could just be that the clip was transmitted to somewhere within three days of the anchorage, then carried by ship to the anchorage. I can't imagine someone this careful would have just transmitted this clip directly to this Corsair captain, ah, what did you say her name was? Crimson Blossom, that was it."
"Good points, Whitley. Admiral Adel, what do we know about this Captain Crimson Blossom?" the Emperor asked as he nodded at the Fleet Admiral.
"I've pulled what we know about her, but it isn't much before the events in the Peltier system. She was a fighter pilot with a Corsair task force that was contracted to suppress piracy in Peltier. They were betrayed and ambushed, and she was one of the survivors that were taken prisoner. About a month after being captured, the prisoners engineered an escape and took over the pirate base they were being held at, plus a few ships. She ended up in command—how is unclear—and proceeded to raise hell and kick pirate ass until more Corsairs showed up looking for them. Her ship, the Crescent Rose, is one of the pirate ships she captured in Peltier. She's the youngest Corsair captain ever, by all accounts, and rather skilled at ship-to-ship combat, if currently lacking experience. From what I've learned of the events in Peltier and her combat actions since she shows signs of being a formidable opponent."
"Damned Corsairs," the Emperor muttered. "Just what does it take to get people like that in a proper Navy uniform?" He shook his head. "Alright, keep digging There's got to be something we can use against her. And no idea who she was before she became outcast?"
"We're still working on that, but Corsairs are very close-mouthed about that, even more so than most outcast. I'm told they don't think she's been outcast for long, a few years at most. Peltier may even have been her first combat action."
Jacques frowned. "And they let her keep that ship?"
"It's highly unusual, even for Corsairs, but they take a looser approach to such things. She may have simply said, 'I'm keeping this one, you can have the rest.' The politics of the Corsair fleet and their Captain's Council are opaque at best to outsiders. Her executive officer, Stalward Ironwood, is very well known to us, however. Three decades as a Corsair, and we know he was Imperial Navy before that."
"So that's where he is now, interesting," the Emperor mused under his breath, just at the edge of hearing. "My apologies, Valiant Ironwood is a name that has come to Our attention before. I've heard that sometimes Corsairs will assign a more experienced executive officer to a promising young officer, to mentor them. If they've assigned Ironwood to this Crimson Blossom, they must think she warrants watching, one way or another. Keep me informed, Admiral. I will speak with you later, Admiral, Lord Joral."
After they had left, the Emperor propped his chin on his hands, lost in thought. "So we've got a firecracker young captain who came out of nowhere, captured a ship they let her keep, and got assigned a veteran executive officer. What do you make of that, Whitley?"
"I think she's likely very capable in combat, but I wonder how well she handles the other responsibilities of command, Father. Taking the contract to kidnap Weiss, for example, shows questionable judgment." Whitley sat in a chair next to the one the Admiral had vacated, a pensive expression on his own face. "She or the Captain's Council might be having second thoughts about the contract at this point, given the trouble we're causing them over this. We may be able to exploit that to find out who had Weiss taken. But I would suggest a more subtle approach than Lord Joral tends to employ. He likes quick, easy, solutions, blustering at everyone until they give him what he wants."
"Any specific ideas?"
"Let me study this Captain Blossom; I have an idea or two that I'd like to explore. Maybe I can build a rapport with her if a long-distance one. Get her to open up to us."
"Good. I think it might be time to... curtail the Corsairs in some way, put them back in their proper place. The stubbornness they're showing about the kidnapping of Weiss, on top of the fact that they were willing to kidnap her in the first place shows a disrespect towards the Empire that we cannot tolerate."
"Dammit! Dammit, dammit, dammit!" Roman Torchwick slammed his fist down on the top of his desk repeatedly. "Oh, you're going to love this, Neo. Our friend Captain Byron, you remember him, don't you? The charming man with the Katana-class battlecruiser he converted into a carrier?" Neo nodded, smiling. Captain Byron was fairly professional, as pirates went. He honored surrenders and made sure his crew got a fair share of loot. Not that he wasn't a merciless son-of-a-bitch when called to be, but at least he wasn't an asshole about it. "Well, Captain Byron bit off more than he can chew. The Brightstar mining platform should have been a ripe plum, easy pickings. The local manager skimped on weapons as a cost-saving measure. Easy money, right? Wrong! Captain Byron manage to hit the place while there was a Corsair cruiser in the system. Still not a problem, right? Wrong!"
He lashed out with an arm, sending printouts flying from his desk. "Apparently our little friend from Peltier, you remember her, right?" Again Neo nodded, smiling, then made a throat-slitting motion. "That's right, the little bitch we really need to deal with, sooner or later. Well, it seems she managed to pound Byron's battlecruiser into scrap with light damage to her vessel, the, um, Crescent Rose, silly name for a ship, who names a ship that? Anyway, Byron's battlecruiser is only fit for scrap now, unfortunately.
"And to top it all off, our little schoolgirl captain has a new playmate. She picked up a hotshot pilot who managed to kill Byron's battlecruiser with two missiles. Two! Fighter missiles, even! The shipyard that converted Byron's ship into a carrier did a crap job if the Navy report I've 'acquired' can be believed, and she managed to exploit that. So we have another new face for the shooting gallery."
Torchwick stabbed at his desk, and a face flashed up on the screen. A white-haired young woman, wearing an outcast's mask, naturally, arm-in-arm with the black-and-red-haired captain of the Crescent Rose. Neo studied the white-haired woman's face for a few moments, then grimaced, making throat-slitting motions with both hands at the same time. Roman laughed, rubbing the top of Neo's head affectionately. "That's right, Neo. We're going to have to kill both of them. Now how to arrange this, I wonder?"
The man studied the Corsairs coming and going from the shipyard, cursing himself for ever taking this job. Running things in and out of Corsair space was dangerous enough as it was, but this was pushing it. He was never taking a job like this again, no matter how much he was paid.
He sighted his marks as they stepped from the transit tube onto the concourse. Two lovely young ladies that he was pretty sure were from the ship he needed. Pity they were Corsairs; under other circumstances, he might have enjoyed their company either short- or long-term, but Corsair women were like snuggling up to a tiger. You never knew when the claws were going to come out.
Dragon and Heron were laughing as they strode down the concourse The bounty money and insurance payoff from the Brightstar job had finally paid out, and Heron had decided, in true Corsair fashion, to spend it on those most essential of accessories for a Corsair lady, weapons. Blossom had offered to buy them for her, which Heron appreciated but politely declined, saying that she wanted to take care of it herself. There were limits to how much of the 'captain's woman' she wanted to be, after all.
So Heron was now several thousand Lien poorer and richer by two plasma pistols, matching shoulder holsters, and a multi-action Dust Corsair's blade. She'd almost decided against the blade, thinking it a bit extravagant, but Blake had convinced her. "One thing Corsairs respect is being able to look after yourself. Good weapons are part of that, and if you've got the training to use Dust and your Aura, you need a weapon that can handle that. Spend the Lien. Or I'll tell Blossom, and it'll be sitting on your pillow when you get home." Heron idly wondered where she could find somewhere to test it out, really cut loose and brush up on her Aura training.
A man stepped off the escalator, and immediately Heron stiffened. He was trying too hard to be casual, play it off as if he was running into them by accident, but being around a lot people who hid their faces—or at least their eyes— with masks had sharpened Heron's ability to read body language. Add in the fact that he wasn't wearing a mask and he might as well have had his intentions tattooed on his face. "Dragon," she whispered.
"I see him," Dragon murmured back, covering it with a laugh. "Let's see how this plays out, but I've got your back. Sis would never forgive me if I didn't."
"Excuse me, ladies, but... I'm in a bit of a bind," the man began, spreading his arms wide. "You're off the Crescent Rose, aren't you? See, I've been hired to carry a package to the captain of the Crescent Rose, but she hasn't left the ship since I've been here, and, well, they won't let me onto the dock. Restricted area, they say. So I was wondering, would you tell her I've got a package for her? Or maybe you'd carry it to her yourselves?" The man reached into a pocket, making both women flinch, but what he slowly and carefully pulled out and showed them was a small case for datachips. "See? Nothing to worry about, just some datachips."
"What's on the datachips?" Dragon rumbled, turning her head slightly to see if he had backup.
"Honestly? I don't know. All I was paid to do was be the courier. So what do you say? I'll even make it worth your while. Five hundred Lien, up front, if you tell your captain I've got a package for her. Carry it yourselves, and that's worth a thousand."
"I think..." Heron's grip on the hilt of her blade tightened, "that you should have picked a different pair of marks." The man gaped as a white glyph formed under his feet catapulting him into the overhead. He slammed back down, only to be pinned there by a black glyph, groaning.
Dragon looked around to see if anyone looked likely to back up their new friend, then leaned down. "See, dumbass, if you're trying to pull one over on the captain of the Crescent Rose, you really shouldn't pick her sister and her girlfriend as patsies, got it? Now let's see what's in the little case, shall we?
"It's a trap, it has to be."
"Of course it's a trap," Blossom snapped at Dragon as she paced in the offices of Corsair intelligence. They might not have the resources the Navy had, but Corsairs kept a very close watch on the pirates, among other things.
Heron sat in a chair next to Blake, trying to comfort her. The first thing they'd seen when they opened the case had been a chip with Blake's name written on it, loaded with a video that made Blake break down in tears. It showed a cat Faunus woman, and a tall, powerfully built man standing next to her. The woman began to speak. "Blake, if you're seeing this, we're alive.
"We've been held captive by one of the pirate clans for about two years at this point. We're okay, or at least as okay as we can be, I guess. We've been told that included with this video will be a bunch of other intel on pirate operations. Some of it will be old, but some of it will be newer and more useful, even talking about upcoming plans. In any case, this is the deal being offered: The person sending this message is willing to make a trade: Our lives, in exchange for the destruction of Night's Haven Anchorage, which is where we are. Included on the chip is everything you should need to take out the Anchorage, location, layout, schematics of the defenses, everything."
It was the man's turn to speak. "Blake, I don't know if you're ever going to see this, but I wanted to say I'm proud of you. I've heard you left the pirates, become a Corsair. I'd rather have you back home, safe, but if you have to be out here, among the stars, I think I'd rather you be a Corsair than a pirate."
Blake had collapsed against the screen, sobbing, Dragon wrapping an arm around her to comfort her. Blossom had explained softly to Heron that Blake had run away from the mining colony her parents had led to become a pirate and hadn't spoken with them since. She'd heard that they'd gone missing in a pirate raid, and assumed they were dead. To see them alive again...
"Ugh, how long is this going to take?" Dragon slammed a fist into a bulkhead. "I want to know what's going on, now!"
"Relax, Dragon, let's give intel a chance to look at some of it. I know we're all Corsairs, brave and strong and true, but that doesn't mean we need to rush headlong into danger." Heron stood and, with a martial arts move Dragon couldn't have duplicated on a bet, tossed Dragon over the back of the couch Blake was sitting on to land upside-down next to her. "Now sit. Blake needs you right now and you're wearing out the deck."
"Sorry, Blake," Dragon muttered as she squirmed upright, "I guess I got a little worked up, you know?" Blake smiled, sadly, taking Dragon's hand in hers.
"If I may interrupt..." Ebon Toad, the intelligence officer they'd handed the datachips over to had returned. "We've taken a look at some of the data from the case. The historical data we've cross-checked is accurate, and some of the rest sheds new light on past events. And the intel on current pirate activities means good hunting for us in the near future." A wicked smile crept on Blossom's face at this; Crescent Rose would be out of dockyard hands inside a week, plus juicy tips on where to find pirate prey? Life was good. "But that's not the best part, of course. Behold, Night's Haven Anchorage."
The holotank in the middle came to life, showing a smallish planetoid, a ring-shaped structure around it. The image of the asteroid spun in place, highlighting docking bays, defense batteries, missile launchers fighter bays, power plants. Blake groaned. "We'll never take that place, it's a fortress. Rescuing my parents is impossible."
"Blake, I haven't been a Corsair long, but I'm pretty sure saying something is 'impossible' to one is a sure-fire way to make sure they do it or die trying." Heron laid a hand on the Faunus's shoulder. "We'll find a way. We've got a whole navy to smash the place flat with."
"Well, at least now we know why we never found the place," Dragon said finally, looking up to find the others staring at her with blank, puzzled expressions. "Oh come on, I know history was my jam in school, not Heron's or Blossom's, but don't tell me you don't see it?" She jabbed into the hologram with her prosthetic hand. "That ring around it? It looks like a first-generation hyperdrive, the kind they used on the first colony ships, that carried, what, fifty thousand people at a shot. The drive itself is huge, just like this, but it's also insanely efficient. If they've got the capacitor bank charged up, it wouldn't take much more than a dreadnaught's power plants to get this thing flying."
Toad nodded. "Good thinking; I'll pass that on to our analysis team. On another note, the courier's a dead end, at least for our purposes. He was paid a half million Lien for the job, in Imperial Bank bearer bonds, completely untraceable, and picked up the package from a blind drop. Upside is, he's wanted by five different governments that all want him dead. Bounty for him goes to you, White Heron."
Blossom paled. "Somebody paid him half a million Lien to hand me that box? I smell a rat." Blake, Heron, and Dragon all nodded agreement. "Okay, I guess it's time for me to go tell the Captain's Council about this. But if this pans out and they decide to go for it, I think it's going to be open season on pirates for a while. Let's get ready to bag our limit, everyone."
