Stabilla

Unknown location

August 1, 2558

Lok had just stepped inside the mess hall, now absent of the captured crew when he felt a presence behind him. All the other pirates were in front, still confused at the disappearance. Lok raised his plasma pistol and held down the trigger. An orb of green plasma charged at the twin prongs at the front of the gun. He released the trigger, letting it fly down the hallway. Had the crew not disappeared so suddenly, he would have calmly investigated, but the vanishing sent uncontrollable electric chills up his body. It was not a very pleasant to him having the rare experience of feeling fearful. The bolt illuminated as it passed the walls, showing there was nobody and it dispersed at the end wall.

"What is it?" Tig demanded, rushing to Lok's side.

"I..I thought I saw someone." He couldn't help but stammer. Tig recoiled when Lok's intoxicated breath hit his nostrils.

He turned back to the guards. "Stay here, lock the doors and make sure nobody gets in or out until we get back. Lok and I are going to tell Hys what has happened."

All three guards nodded, shutting and locking the doors before putting their backs to it and weapons at alert. The skirmisher pirate leader had heard the pistol's discharge and rushed over, meeting Tig halfway.

"What the hell is going on?" He demanded.

"The mess hall is empty and Lok said that he saw someone in the halls!"

"What do you mean the mess is empty?"

"Not even the guards posted had opened the door. I'm just as confused as you are."

Both skirmishers met Lok and the guards. The door was locked, but Hys took his plasma pistol and shot the lock, causing it to melt right off onto the floor where it split apart into burned pieces. He flung the doors open to the mess hall.

Sitting there were all eighteen, plus Davis right where he had directed them. A few looked anxious looks on their faces.

"What was the shooting about?" The engineer asked. Hys did not respond. He turned to Lok with the angered look of an enraged jiralhanae chieftain regarding unggoy cooks about his meal. Hys grabbed the lesser skirmisher and slammed him into the wall, making sure the pressure he kept on his neck was painful but not lethal.

"Are you an idiot? You're so intoxicated right now that you can't even think straight!" He raised his other hand and slapped him across the face, sending a sticky fluid splattering on the wall.

"Hys, they were really gone! I swear!"

"I catch you drinking during a raid again and I will personally stick needles in your eyes and jettison you out into space. Understand?"

"I do."

Hys released him, snarling to himself as the drunken skirmisher gasped for breath. "Now go find the others before they shoot up what's salvageable on this rust bucket."

Lok scampered down the hallway, eager to escape his superior's wrath. Hys sighed, peering into a nearby crack in the ceiling, wondering how a ship could rot so badly and maybe if phantoms did inhabit its decks. He noticed his feathers standing on end and his finger tightening around his needle rifle's trigger.

"Lok's going to have me chasing shadows next time." He muttered to himself.

A deck below the mess hall was a room that the skirmisher pirates wouldn't have believe existed on such a derelict ship.

"Boo." Commander Trip Aegis smiled at the nervous skirmisher that the crew had identified as the leader of the bandits. He leaned back in his chair, one that stood in the center of the low-ceiling room among a semicircle of panels. Being the brains of the ship, it had the more vital stations to the center, weapons and helm while the other stations spread out. Aegis' command chair had an unobstructed view of all the bridge functions and could transfer control to the computer that was currently folded on his right side.

He had masculine features, with a strong jaw, piercing black eyes and short black hair. However there was much more to him than what met the eye. Sure it was enough to melt most women's hearts and make most men's ache with jealousy, but Aegis' service to both the UNSC and ONI was not what set him apart from their everyday infantrymen. He did not have the toughness of a fifty year UNSC veteran, although serving many battles. Nor did he have the flawless record of any ONI assassin. Instead, his aura emanated as a man who knew what he wanted out of life and made sure that he got it every day.

"You should have called off the que." Leah Roush sat in her station, as executive officer. "What if the overgrown turkeys returned when the secret door was open?"

"Then I'd be thinking of Plan B and retake the ship."

"What's Plan B?"

Trip shook his head, grinning slightly. "When I know what it is I'll tell you."

When Hys and his groups had left, the crew decided to set their nerves on edge. In reality, the crew simply moved out of sight through a back door hidden in the mess hall and holotanks displayed the tables and everything in the mess hall as if they had left without so much as a farewell note.

Like the crew, the Stillaba was not what she had seemed; in fact it wasn't her real name. With magnetic print, the crew had rearranged Stillaba from its original name Ballista. Built as a highly secretive ONI stealth frigate, she was quickly retired and bought by Aegis when he started his private contractor, the Blades. Despite the tension the pirates had to the crew, Aegis and everyone else, even the crew remained at the utmost calm.

Their operation was one of the most carefully planned in their short history, the most critical moment being the pirates coming aboard. The fact was that the pirates felt that they had everyone under their control, in reality; the crew had every single pirate under observation the whole time. Because they were unpredictable, nobody could tell from a distance of what they intended. The skirmishers would likely have turned tail and run if they found out that further in the hallway where Davis and his two engineers came from were a couple of ODSTs in separate sections that were nearly invisible in the flickering lights holding SRS-99 S5 series sniper rifles with all one and a half dozen pirates in their sights. During the skirmisher's time on the ship there were cameras that had angles into every corridor and room of the ship, making them observed at all times. Wherever they went, they were shadowed by at least two members of the Blades' sangheili division in active camo, ready to react in any situation.

Ballista was really two ships in one. On the outside, she appeared deserted or neglected that was due for the breaker yards any day. Her disgusting outside and inside were merely a façade for visitors, most recently the skirmisher pirates aboard. The weathering on the hull was applied paint, all the walls inside had peelable coating to make them look worn and the pirate manning the "bridge" actually had no control over the ship. A computer recorded the actions of the lone skirmisher manning the navigation and sent the signals to the helm station in the Ballista's ops center. The officer manning the helm would then make adjustments as necessary. Inside the hangar, where the skirmisher thought were shipments of precious resources were a trio of dropships disguised as locked containers. Two of them heavily modified pelicans and the third a Type 52 phantom. The ship's arsenal of weapons including the latest version of the MAC, multiple pods of missiles, a few miniguns and antiair batteries gave the Ballista as much firepower as a UNSC heavy destroyer. Her shields and armor could protect her from multiple barrages of plasma fire.

As for the crew accommodation, no expense had been spared. Every member had their room decorated to their liking and her interior was as luxurious as any four star hotel. Aegis knew the men and women aboard were risking their lives every day, so they might as well be as comfortable as possible.

"Now that the pirates believe that they have total control over the ship, we're now ready to move to Prith's territory."

"Hopefully there's enough shipment of explosives to invite him onboard." Leah brushed a few strands of her chocolate brown hair out of her pretty face.

"All weapons and countermeasures are green and ready to fire at a moment's notice." Weapons officer Luke Riley gave a thumbs up from his station. Dressed like an outcast with a shirt saying "I'm with stupid" and an arrow pointing to his right, he had the look of someone socially awkward. Aegis had groaned on multiple occasions when walking past his cabin and hearing horrible noises that Riley called music.

Their mission was a little out of the unusual. Most of the time, they had worked for the UNSC and its UEG allies. This time, after a difficult research into their client, they were helping the Office of Naval Intelligence bring skirmisher pirate lord Prith to justice. They were instructed to get Prith out of his territory without having any UNSC influence in the heist. With that info, Aegis and the Blades had already come up with the audacious plan in twenty four hours when everyone else would still be scratching their head for weeks.

The pirate at the helm fired the engines of the Ballista and the two connected ships both activated their slipspace drives. Normally having a slipspace jump with two attached ships was risky, but many successful attempts have been done in the past.

"Now will you guys be joining me for dinner?" Aegis stood up as the helmsman in the operations center set the navigation computer to what the pirate had calculated. "I heard the kitchen is preparing a very good baked macaroni and cheese."

The joined vessels exited slipspace two hours later, moving in parallel with each other. Hys had taken the controls, maneuvering the ships near what appeared to be a cluster of four larger ships with other structures connected by sealed gravity lifts. All of the larger ships were UEG freighters. Aegis recognized one of them, it having disappeared a month ago. The area had multiple fields where the ship could dock, yet Hys was having difficulty moving the ships. Of course, Aegis could have his helmsman Daniel Tyler perform the actions, but unfortunately he was trapped in the mess hall still playing the role of engineer Duane. Yet even in that circumstance, he did not want anyone else but himself in control of his ship, especially in a very sticky situation.

Hys had called for a full reverse, but Aegis ignored the commands from the computer and hit the accelerator thrusters. On the makeshift bridge, Hys and the helmsman shared a perplexed look before the former took the computer back, still under the belief that he had control. The ship finally entered the barrier, to the cheers of hundreds of skirmishers waiting on the platform. Male pirates holding their rifles and pistols in triumph over their heads and women surrounded by at least three or four children. Right in the center, with red armored skirmishers flanking his side was Prith.

He looked just like any other skirmisher, avian with black feathers, although not as imposing as his posse beside him. Aegis noticed bracelets and piercings that had been from precious metals, most likely victims he had previously killed. The armor he donned was quite elaborate, with gold arm and leg plating. His emotion was nonexistent and it remained whenever killing an innocent victim or regarding one of his numerous children.

Hys had their ship detach from the Ballista as he maneuvered it to a series of docking clamps. The pirate was not very good at maneuvering ships, so Aegis did it for him and made sure that the clamp was secure before powering down the engines in pulses, as if they had malfunctioned. Pirates extended bridges to the hatch.

"There's our target." Operations director Vasili Survorov pointed at the screen, it wasn't that hard to tell.

"The one with the chicken beaks on his neck?" Leah asked, normally this would have come from the absent Drew Rayson who was currently engineer Davis.

"Yeah him." Trip finished. His plan for capture was simple, once Prith had stepped aboard the ship, he was considered out of his territory. The Blades would then seal off any possible access to any more of his cronies and grab him easily.

However in the next few seconds, he watched his plans fall apart.

Prith had halted at the top before turning to his followers, hands raised in a preaching stance. He uttered a few words in his alien mouth. The rally then caused dozens of skirmishers to rush towards the opening all shouting and cackling like hyenas.

That last part's definitely a hitch in the Blades' plan! Will they still be able to pull this caper off?