Two Nexus navy ships – the only two nexus navy ships – were rapidly approaching. They probably didn't know if the Privateer's Guild ships were there, but they were heading over. The comms were encrypted – no telling on what they were saying or why. But they were incoming on a casual speed. Zack's ships were positioned so that they'd be hard to detect, but none of them had any real stealth systems. As soon as he did anything, the Nexus Navy would know he was there.
"Can I shoot now?" said Killal, on the guns.
"We need them close. Drumo's paying for us to recapture his ship, not destroy it," Zack said.
Heading back out didn't take long, and three Guild ships were in the same system as Nexus. Long range scans showed that both of the Nexus navy ships were still close to the Nexus. Tann was almost certainly trying to blockade the SNR. The Tempest usually docked inside the Nexus; it was not possible to tell whether it was present or not.
"See if we can lure the ships away from the Nexus," Zack said over the radio.
Tann had attempted to institute an information lockdown, but people still talk, so the Guild had a good idea of what was going on in the Nexus. The Nexus personnel had all sorts of skillsets, but they were not much in the way of space warfare. Tann had crewed and officered the ships with whoever he could find. Hopefully he could play on their relative inexperience and catch them off guard.
The Nexus itself could only be in one place of its star system at once. However, the system was littered with satellites of various sorts. Zack started to trigger and disable them, one by one, to draw attention to their location. With any luck, one ship would come looking for some illegal scrapper from Kadara, and get pounced on.
A radio signal went out from the Nexus Navy ships. They had taken the bait, and be within engagement range within a few hours. Zack looked at the screen, and sighed. It was time to put Tann's boys to the test.
The wait was never a particularly fun time. It was just holding still as to not spook the target. Everything was boring, until Killal starting charging the guns.
"What the fuck are you doing! We are going for surprise here!" Zack said.
"They haven't figured out we are here. I think they're surprised," Killal said.
"They'll figure out we're here when they notice you charging the guns," Zack answered.
"So… I should shoot before they engage?" Killal asked.
"This one wonders why you put the most impulsive person on the ship on the guns," Asperiter said.
Before Zack had a chance to answer, a salvo went out. Zack watched the instruments carefully. One shot missed, but the second pierced the Nexus Navy ships' cargo hold. The damage was probably superficial, although no one would be walking through that cargo hold any time soon. Zack checked the mission briefing. It wasn't Drumo's ship, so no problem there. But it was charging its guns, and that was a problem.
"Killal! Another volley! And see if you can knock the guns out!" Zack said.
Killal shrugged, and soon fired again. Zack looked back at his instrumentation. He didn't get much a chance to look before the ship exploded violently. By the look of it, no one was going to survive that. Total depressurization, and what was left of the hull was torn to shreds.
Tann is going to have a field day with this one, Zack thought. Tann wanted an enemy, and he got it. But that was a consideration for later. The consideration for now was capturing the surviving ship. Capturing a hostile ship was risky business. Between the gunfire between ships and the gunfire between infantry, there was a high chance they would capture a husk that was shot to heck.
"Drumo, if you've got a card to play, now's the time!" Zack said over the radio.
Lilianus's ship fired a salvo of EMP torpedos at the second Nexus Navy ship. Most of them either missed and did nothing or bounced off the hull, but some actually worked. The lights went out. The second Nexus Navy ship – Drumo's ship – was disabled.
"Everyone prepare to board!" Zack said.
Before everyone was ready, a message was sent. The captain had surrendered, on the condition of safe passage back to the Nexus. Zack happily accepted. A few hours later, Tann declined the offer, but Tann was not in the position to negotiate. Zack ordered a few shuttles to drop off the crew on Eos, and from there they could make their way to the Nexus. This was best case scenario: committing a few shuttles was not a problem. Drumo got back on board his ship, and started working to restore it to working order.
"Gah! What did those idiots do to my ship?" Drumo said.
"Just get the damn thing back to Lucre Station, and we'll worry about the rest later," Zack said.
The other Guild captains soon sent repair crews to get Drumo's ship online. Tann had done some redecorating, and the EMP broke a lot of the avionics. Still, the ship was mostly intact. That surrender was enormously lucky. The crews got to work fixing the ship.
It had been three days of Drumo's repairs, before Fuggla ran into the CIC. She was weirdly excited.
"Wolfe, look at this!" Fuggla said.
A news show began to play. Tann had apparently charged the crew that surrendered with treason. Tann had also given a flavorful shpiel about Zack, and Zack's sinister intentions for the Nexus. Zack chuckled. That idiot Tann would let the world burn if he whine about it in front of the cameras. Tann had also designated Zack as public enemy number one. From pathfinder to public enemy. Touching. Tann then went on and insisted that Zack should stand down, turn himself in, and face justice. Zack scoffed at this. Justice was for someone else. The Nexus Navy didn't exist anymore.
Drumo had gotten his ship back to Lucre station, and was complaining a lot about its state. The ship was basically held together with duct tape just well enough to get it to Lucre Station. However, he eventually paid up, and his ship was his problem. Drumo had the money anyway. It was time to target those Kett supply lines again.
Zack flew out a system near where the primary fleet was held. The Kett's reduced ground presence was a mixed blessing: the colonies were safer and thriving, but less Kett on the ground meant less resupply meant less pirating. This system still had a few Kett ground installations, but none of them were particularly big. Resupply would be rare. Still, it would a good place to hide out for a bit until everything was sorted out on the Nexus. Maybe they could figure out what was up with the Kett as well.
There were 8 planets in the system, two of which had small listening posts. Best the intel wing on Lucre could figure, both had less than a hundred personnel. Far too large for his crew to take, but still not needing much in the way of resupply. When a freighter came into the system, Zack was overjoyed.
Then it was followed up by a Kett cruiser. This was a big escort. Still, Zack needed some of that salvage. He decided to call up Lucre station to see if the other captains were interested. Drumo called him a lunatic and told him to go fuck himself. Lilianus laughed and said no. Honestly, they were all probably right. That cruiser was just too big for him to take.
Zack then thought for a bit. If he could kill a Kett cruiser, he might be able to break Tann's sway over the colonies. It would also yield a ton of salvage, assuming the rest of the Kett fleet let him anywhere near the wreck. Maybe if he could get Tann out of office, this whole mess would go away. This was a new mission for him, self-assigned: destroy a kett cruiser.
Zack quietly left the system, and went back to Lucre station. He had folding stub wings installed on the sides of the Vagabond, each with a lot of weapon hardpoints. His ship was too small to fight a cruiser in a head on fight, but it could wreck one in a surprise strike. At least that's what his intel people believed. The other captains said he was being a lunatic, but that's the way these things worked: it'd be lunacy until it worked. Zack expanded Lucre station, and starting having some of the extra crew manufacture loads of torpedoes. Once he had his ship loaded up, it was time to go back to the lonely system and lie and wait.
The Kett outposts were relatively silent when Zack returned, possibly abandoned. Zack was enraged at this. Why did they abandon some of their last outposts? He looked at his sensors. Suddenly, a bunch of transports and a Kett cruiser showed up. Zack's eyes lit up. It was time to secure the biggest kill in the cluster. He had Sleeze discretely move the Vagabond behind the cruiser on low power – hopefully the Kett wouldn't see them until it was too late. The transports began to land on the first outpost-they would be out of the way for his alpha strike. He brought all the crew on the bridge.
"Why does Asperiter get to be gunner this time?" Killal asked angrily.
"Because he's less trigger happy than you are," Zack answered.
"I think I should be gunner," Fuggla said.
"Why?" Zack asked. Fuggla had never expressed any interest in being the ship's gunner previously.
"Because then it would be fair. Killal gets be gunner, Asperiter gets to be gunner, and I should get to be gunner," Fuggla.
"Is this the time?" Zack asked.
"Yes. I say it's the time, so it's the time. I should be gunner more often," Fuggla said.
"Then… some other time. We can worry about this later," Zack said.
"I want to worry about it now," Fuggla said.
"Hey! I think the Kett cruiser sees us!" Sleeze shouted. Zack looked at the sensors, and the Kett cruiser's power output had spiked, and it was turning towards the Vagabond.
"Oh shit! Asperiter, launch all the torpedoes! All of them! Just send everything!" Zack said.
"This one thinks you should reconsider-" Asperiter said.
"SHOOT THE DAMN TORPEDOES!" Zack yelled. Asperiter obeyed, and fired away.
Zack ran to the cockpit area, and looked out into space. The cruiser was still facing away from them, but was slowly turning. They were completely unprepared for that enormous torpedo salvo, right? Zack looked at the sensors. Impact in thirty seconds. He looked forward again. The cruiser was still turning. Twenty seconds to impact. The cruiser was starting to power up its guns. Ten seconds to impact. Asperiter began to charge up the Vagabond's guns. Zack looked out of the cockpit. Impact.
A series of explosions covered the back end of the cruiser. Kett ship design preferences were a bit strange by Milky standards: generally more power, more guns, and less protection for the crew. Still, there were many ways to kill a ship. At least two thirds of the cruiser depressurized, and much of its crew would be dead very quickly. Its main engines were down. Several kett fighters were ejected into space, but without power. They weren't launched, they fell out of the cruiser. A secondary explosion happened within five seconds of the salvo impact – Zack didn't know what from – but the damage was substantial. Asperiter fired the Vagabond's guns at what was left of the cruiser's guns.
"What is going on, crew?" Zack shouted out.
"It looks they've lost control of the ship, and they're gonna fall and crash into the planet below in about twelve hours," Sleeze said.
"Can they fight back or call for help?" Zack asked.
"The outposts already have called for help. We best get out of here," Sleeze said.
"This one believes several of the ship's guns batteries are still active. They may engage if we move considerably," Asperiter said.
"Well then, shoot them!" Zack said.
Asperiter fired volley after volley, but couldn't get to all the cruiser's guns. What was left of the cruiser somehow still had power. If the cruiser wasn't offline soon, the help it called for might actually show up.
"Killal! Fuggla!" Zack said.
"What?" Killal asked.
"Reload the torpedo hardpoints!"
"We'd have to suit up and go outside to do that," Fuggla said.
"I know, now do it," Zack said.
"You do it, dumbass! We are in combat. Now is not the time," Killal yelled.
It was an argument, but eventually all three of them went to the cargo hold to load up the weapon hardpoints outside the ship. Asperiter continued blasting away with the ship's main guns.
"How's it going in there?" Zack yelled over the radio.
"They haven't gotten their engines back, and they are still falling into the planet," Sleeze replied.
"Many of their weapons are still online," Asperiter added.
After about half an hour of moving around outside the ship, the ship's left stub wing was fully loaded. Zack ordered everyone back intside. Hopefully this would be enough to break what was left of the cruiser. Once back in the cargo bay, the three of them headed up to the bridge.
"Asperiter, give them round 2," Zack said.
The second volley of torpedoes went out, only half the size of the first. It crashed into the front half of the ship. A few seconds passed, and the sensors changed. The cruiser had finally lost power.
"What do we do know?" Sleeze asked.
"We hide, and wait for it to crash into the planet," Zack asked. The cruiser was almost certainly dead, but best not to leave anything more to chance.
The sensors changed again. Three more Kett cruisers entered the system, and they were approaching from the area where the Vagabond needed to go to jump away.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck! I knew this plan would get us killed! Fuck you Wolfe!" Killal yelled loudly.
"Calm yourself! We got time before they are in range," Zack said.
"What do we do?" Sleeze said, desperation in his voice.
"We hide!" Zack said.
When dealing with the Kett, it was easy to hide if you knew how to hide. The Kett simply weren't that good at finding ships. However, the Vagabond was not built to hide. It was originally built to move cargo and then rebuilt to pirate. It stuck out like a sore thumb on sensors while at full power. Zack could reduce power, but that meant turning off the guns and slowing down the ship, which he really couldn't do while out in the open. Zack looked at the system charts. The next planed over had a lot of asteroids in its orbit: a perfect place to hide. But the Kett would know he was in the area. Hide and seek.
The Kett reinforcements took their time and deployed their fighters, and then closed into the ambush victim. By that time, the cruiser they'd attacked was well into its descent into the planet's atmosphere. There was no saving it now. The Vagabond had the time to be concealed in the asteroid belt. But could he save the Vagabond?
The three cruisers in pursuit split up. Two began went to the outside of the system, and the third began to close in to the asteroid field. This was clever of them: the Kett were trying to block him from getting far enough away from the star to jump away.
The Vagabond was in the asteroid field, hidden. Zack stood in the CIC. His ship didn't have enough supplies to stay away from Lucre station for more than a few weeks, and the Kett had supply lines. The almost certainly knew he was stuck in the system, and they might try to wait him out.
The Vagabond had left Lucre station with two full salvos of torpedoes. Zack had fired a salvo and a half of them at the target cruiser, and he only had a few left in his cargo hold. The first cruiser had been caught of guard, and these three were behaving in a very guarded fashion. Zack went to sleep, and found the next day they cruisers were still in the same spot. He went to the mess hall, and got a cup of coffee. Fuggla walked up to him, and stood across from him at the table.
"We are stuck! What are we going to do?" Fuggla shouted angrily.
"Um… we'll figure out something," Zack said.
"Figure it out now!" Fuggla said.
"Why do I have to figure it out now? Can't I just have my coffee?" Zack asked.
"Get us out of here so we don't die in this asteroid belt!" Fuggla shouted.
"I'm working on it," Zack said, taking a drink of his coffee.
"You look like you're just drinking your coffee," Fuggla said.
"Just… get the hell out of here and I'll be up to the CIC in a minute," Zack said.
Fuggla stormed out of the mess hall angrily. Zack waited for a moment for the door to close, and then took a drink of his coffee. He would have to deal with her later. Zack took another drink of his coffee. For all her antics, Fuggla had a point. He had no idea how to get the Vagabond out of the asteroid belt. He was outnumbered and outgunned. The only asset he really had were his torpedoes.
Then it clicked.
The torpedoes.
He could use the torpedoes to divert attention away from the Vagabond, and then run for it! He called Lucky into the mess hall. Much to his dismay, Fuggla came into the mess along with her.
"Lucky, I have a plan," Zack said.
"Is it to shoot down the rest of those cruisers?" Lucky asked.
"Uh, no. I don't think we can do that right now," Zack said.
Lucky sighed in relief.
"I want to use what torpedoes we have left to draw the Kett cruisers away from the Vagabond," Zack said.
"The torpedoes are built to be launched from the Vagabond. If we launch them, the Kett will know where we are," Lucky said.
"I knew it! He's trying to kill us all!" Fuggla shouted.
"Shut up Fuggla! I am trying to get us out of here," Zack said angrily.
"Why are you being mean to me?" Fuggla asked.
"Because you're acting like an idiot! Just… what you've been doing. Just stop. I will get us out of here, I promise. But please don't antagonize me for doing so," Zack said.
Fuggla left the mess hall. Zack turned back towards Lucky.
"You just got yourself in some trouble, Wolfe," Lucky said.
"That's a problem for another time," Zack said.
"That's your problem for another time. I want nothing to do with it," Lucky said.
"Understood. Now, about those torpedoes," Zack said.
"We can't launch them in their current state," Lucky said.
"Can we alter their current state?" Zack asked.
"Yes, but to what ends?" Lucky asked.
"I want to put them in orbit, and launch them far away from the Vagabond," Zack said.
"I think I can make that work," Lucky said.
"How much time do you need?" Zack asked.
"For all the remaining torpedoes? About a week," Lucky said.
"Do it," Zack said.
Lucky nodded, and left the mess hall. As she opened the door, Fuggla marched in to the mess hall, pulling Asperiter along with her.
"I am with Asperiter now," Fuggla announced.
"Ok. Have fun," Zack replied calmly.
"I don't think you understand. I'm not with you anymore. I am with Asperiter instead," Fuggla said.
Under some other circumstances, Zack may have took the bait, but not now. He just wanted to drink his coffee, and not deal with whatever Fuggla was up to.
"I think I understand perfectly. Have fun. I wish the best," Zack said.
"You're not angry or jealous?" Fuggla asked.
"It's your own damn business. Why would I be?" Zack asked.
"I thought I was your companion," Fuggla said.
Zack held his mug up.
"This cup of coffee is a better companion that you are. You are exhausting and infuriating," Zack said.
"It's because you're screwing Sara Ryder, isn't it?" Fuggla asked.
"You still think I'm screwing the woman who's publicly branded me as a terrorist and traitor, and drove us all out of the Nexus?" Zack asked. He was not irritated with Fuggla's insistence about Sara Ryder, mostly just tired of it.
"Who are you screwing then? Is it Lucky?" Fuggla asked angrily.
"No, I'm not screwing Lucky. Can't you just worry about yourself?" Zack asked.
"Are you gay?" Fuggla asked.
"Get out of here, Fuggla," Zack said.
"I'm going to go screw Asperiter right now, and I'm going to send you pictures," Fuggla said in a bragging tone.
"Have fun. Now get out," Zack said.
Fuggla pulled Asperiter out of the mess hall. Zack leaned back against the back rest, and took another sip of coffee.