Cold War
by Warringer
Chapter Thirteen
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The Soviet Convoy en route to Kotok was relatively small. Six Megaton Korolev class freighters and three Delfins, NATO codename Hyperion. This was the pray for the Francis Drake. Captain McMichaels had practically invented the piracy raids in jumpspace, so the raid directly while the convoy was on its way top Kotok was something normal to this merry band of pirates.
Soviet cloaking devices worked even in jumpspace and so the three Delfins didn't know what hit them when the Drake decloaked right above the convoy and fired several Soviet R-39 anti-cap ship missiles at them, resulting in the three ships detonating in several Megatons of thermonuclear death.
The rest was a textbook raid, just with one difference. The Drake didn't just take the freight as loot, since they didn't have any freight capability for several megatons of military hardware. Knowing that the Soviet freighters had a small crew, McMichaels opted to just take the ships and the loot. The small crews were put into bring on the Drake and than the ships slaved into one of the freighters computer system and than send towards Sector One with a small crew of pirates.
Back on Blackbeard Base, the loot would be used to fortify the asteroid itself, while the freighters were taken apart. Maybe it was possible to use the parts of the freighters to build a whole new pirate ship from scratch? The engines were designed to push several megatons of freight, the reactors to power the engines and the framework of the ships to take the stress of the engines.
Maybe it was possible to make one overpowered pocket battle ship from six megaton freighters and some of the loot?
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Von Bülow narrowed his eyes as he looked at the report in front of him. The tachyon receivers of Tau Ceti Station had picked up a transmission, directed to Von Bülow personally.
"McMichaels," he said with a sigh as he looked at it.
He knew McMichaels. That man had been at Westpoint and may have been able to make career in the fleet, but he had dropped out became a Raider, correction, a pirate. A very good one at that.
Von Bülows eyes scanned the transmission and than cursed. So the Soviets had really attacked Narn space. They even had the guts to tell the Narn there that they were coming to 'free their Narn comrades from the oppressive Narn Regime'.
Further down was a small encoded file that could only be decrypted with a standard NATO encryption. The file than was packed and consisted of sensory data from McMichaels ship and another text file.
Von Bülow's glance went over the data files for a moment, before he turned to the text file.
"That sneaky little..."
Von Bülow had to chuckle at the proposal of McMichaels. He would stop attacking NATO freighters and only attack Soviet ships. Just like back in the days of Francis Drake, when nations payed pirates to do their dirty work for them.
The Admiral thought for a few moments. Maybe it was the right idea at the right time. He'd have to send the data to the Pentagon through...
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Franklin stared up at the canopy that was created by the branches of the giant trees of the Great Forrest. It was like straight out of a fantasy movie. The lowest branch of the trees was in a hundred meters hight and over fifty meters above the upper hull of the Sanchez.
Light fell through small opeing in the branches, lighting the mossy and grassy earth beneath. Here and there were shrubberies stranding near the giant tree trunks, which were standing several hundred meters apart from each other wide enough for the Sanchez to fly through.
Hell, Aquilia had flown the Sanchez more than ten miles underneath the canopy of the trees after diving beneath them in a large enough clearing. It was surreal.
So the Sanchez was now standing beneath and between the giant trees with space to spare. The problem now were the Narn they had taken with them. The couldn't all live in the ships cargo hold and the Sanchez didn't have enough stuff to make the right quarters for about a thousand Narn.
Another problem was food. They would have to find some animals that could be eaten by the Narn. Water wasn't a problem as there was a rather large stream near the ship and the water was cleaner than any water Franklin had seen on Earth.
And than there was something else. Some of the Narn that had been scouting out the area around the landing place, were reporting that they felt as if someone was watching them. Others had reported strange stones sitting here and there between the trees. Some of the stones were processed in some way, some spotting inscriptions, pictures and glyphes.
"-HOLY SHIT!-" he suddenly heard a very loud voice over the wire less connection of his cybrain and flinched.
It was that loud that he had to clean his ears with his fingers.
"-What is it, Norim?-" Ichiko asked back, also over the wifi connection between them.
She was currently busy to try and find a way to make some sort of quarters.
"-Ehm,-" the Hauri ehmed back,"- I guess you should take a look at this.-"
With that he send an image over the wifi connection and everyone of the Sanchez' crew could see what the Hauri saw about there kilometers north in search of some sot of food source.
Franklin couldn't help it as his yaw followed pull of gravity and he gaped. Norim was standing or laying on a hill looking down at a depression in the ground between some of the giant trees.
In the center of the deporession was something that looked like a Maya pyramid with six sides, surrounded by solid stone buildings of a honest to goddess small city. And that city was alive.
Than Norim's point of view changed as his head jerked around.
"-Guys, I guess we are not alone,-" he commented as he looked down a rather primitive musket held by a being that looked very much like a small Wlatschide with pale brown fur, clothes in several shades of green fabric and backed up by four more riflemen.
"-I just hope they are friendly...-"