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CENN Ragnarok, Hygiea Mining and Deep Space Observation Post, Asteroid Belt
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Life aboard one of Space Force's eighty Revenge-class Corvettes was spartan and hard. It didn't ever improve much even if one found themselves in command of the cramped spaceship.
Captain Justin Mallory knew all too well the hardships of living aboard one of the Earth's front line, space-faring warships. Not only had he been stationed aboard the class off and on for years on end, but twenty years ago he had been aboard the very one that had gone all the way to the doorstep of the Empire; Mars.
His actions that day had ended a war that had murdered almost a third of the Earth's population and made him into a celebrity hero back home. Mallory had no illusions about how he had received command of the Ragnarok over other officers. The man who had caused the Empress to blink was a darling of the Confederacy media and men much more powerful than him had kept his star rising through the ranks.
Not that they exactly trusted him. No one in the Confederacy trusted each other anymore. Backstabbing and bootlicking were the order of the day in Confederate Center. But his ridiculous celebrity status had prevented him from being 'disappeared' after he had failed to fire the Ares's super laser on Mars. His reward for not being a genocidal psychopath was a long stream of duty assignments out here in the belt. Far from where he could get himself in any more trouble and out of the President's hair, Space Command had probably assumed.
The Asteroid Belt that cleaved the Sol System in two between the inner and the outer planets wasn't what Mallory would consider a glamorous or very adventurous assignment. Most of the asteroids had been picked over by the Empire long before the arrival of Earthling mining corporations. As usual the Empire left Earth its scraps. The entire belt itself had started out with a material mass of four percent of Luna and was probably half of that these days after years of mining. The result was a thin cloud of micro-asteroids that were only valuable because some of them contained heavy ore or rare Earth metals. The area provided no danger to the shielded ships of the 2nd Galactic Empire that traveled between their base on Mars and the rest of the Orion Spur, but they occasionally played havoc on the unshielded ships of the CEN's Space Force, none of which were spared the scars of meteor strikes when serving in the belt.
Truth be told, Mallory preferred the emptiness of space to life back on Earth. The endless selfie requests from admirers and fans were a strain on someone who still had nightmares about the constant explosions of Las Vegas and the flash of the Empire's blasters as they drove Mallory and his fellow soldiers from Los Angeles. Having the image of his twenty-two year old self plastered on every Confederate recruitment poster from bum-fuck Iowa to Timbuktu didn't help matters much. He smirked when he thought of the Ranger who once had faced down the Empress aboard the Ares. No amount of time in the gym had held off the ravages of age and loss of government-supplied, designer, muscle enhancers. He was still in great shape but he had noticed the wrinkles and crow's feet as he passed forty a couple of years ago. The silvering of his hair hadn't helped things but he didn't miss his old blonde color enough to refresh it with dye from a bottle.
Mallory had stayed single ever since the end of the war. There wasn't a lot of time for dating in space. Not that he spent his nights alone when he returned to Earth. While his celebratory status was generally a pain in the ass, it didn't allow for a shortage of female admirers simply thankful for his part in ending the war and willing to show their appreciation in an ancient and pleasant way.
His time in Sydney, Space Force's Command and launch center in Australia, was primarily spent in briefings and training sessions for new crewmembers of the Ragnarok. Mallory suspected the corvette was the end of the line for him. The Confederate Space Force now fielded several larger frigates stolen off Imperial designs of their Nebulon B warship. But those commands generally went to married captains and admirals willing to play the political game with Confederate Center in Colorado.
Mallory had never been tempted to marry. The only truly exciting woman he had ever met was the alien Tenel Hja, who exploded into his life in a somersault attack that had slashed the NSA asset Eritech in half before he had been able to obliterate Mars with the Ares's super weapon. The last time he had seen the Dathomir was when they had created a minor scandal together ten years ago at the Empress's wedding on Mars. Mallory recalled that weekend well as after the reception he and Tenel had locked themselves into a hotel room for two days and had only stuck their heads up again for the occasional breath of air. For some reason the CIA had jumped on him when he returned to Earth and in order to save his career in the Space Force had had to swear he would never speak of his time with Tenel to anyone.
It wouldn't do for the great Hero of the Confederacy to be screwing an alien girl. No matter how alluring and beautiful she had been back then.
The defection of that idiot ambassador at the same wedding had clamped down any personal communication between citizens of the CEN and the Empire. As a result he hadn't heard a single peep from Tenel Hja in ten years. He didn't even know if she was still alive somewhere out there.
Out there was a huge place.
And Space Force was blind to it.
For twenty years we've watched them leave Mars for parts unknown, Mallory recalled. Intelligence reported the Empire had spread down a stable hyper route they had forged called the Bloodstripe Run, for reasons that had never been quite clear to Space Force Command. The only official contact between the two societies was through the embassies on Luna and from what the Confederate diplomats had been able to dig out of careless Imperial counterparts on Earth's moon. The Empire had somewhere from sixty to a hundred colony worlds all along the Orion Spur which ended at their new capital, Palpatine Prime. A world no Earthling, except maybe that ambassador that had defected, had ever laid eyes upon.
It was a big concern that no one in the fleet seemed to want to voice. When the next war comes, Space Force was going in blind. They needed someone to show them the way.
Mallory prayed to god there wouldn't be another war in his lifetime. He hoped they'd hold off a century if they could manage it. Earth just wasn't prepared. Their biggest starships were the new Europe-class frigates and a trio of GR-75 copies named Heavy Space Transports but called shellbacks by everyone in the fleet. Those transports were solely used to supply the new tibanna and fuel depot at Venus and the colony at Mercury. Heck, Space Force didn't even man a single ship with an active shield. The Earth still hadn't figured out how to generate them and every lengthy tour came with a heavy dose of anti-radiation treatments for the fleet's sailors.
Mallory had no delusions of his ship's chances if it went toe to toe with an Imperial Star Destroyer. The Ragnarok's titanium armor could deflect a few micrometeors for a while but it would split like hot butter if hit by one of the Empire's battlewagons. Those things carried city busting turbolasers, while the Ragnarok carried a small array of rail guns, missile launchers and the newest rapid-firing beam tubes from Earth. Her top secret armament included a half dozen proton torpedoes but Mallory needed Presidential clearance to engage with those. No one wanted to tip the Earth's hand prematurely.
Before the Earth-Empire War, Mallory had never given serious thought to service in the military. Yes, his great and great, great grandfathers had served in the World Wars, and he had a pair of uncles who had served in South America during the America's War, but he always thought he'd fall into some slot as an executive in a business and spend his retirement golfing around the Midwest. But in reality he probably would have ended up working construction for the state and watching football on the weekends until he got fat and old. But the moment the Empire had seized Luna, he heard the calling of the guns. And he took to it like a fish in water. Fate or destiny were the only reasons he could think of that got him through the Battles of Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Ninety-five percent of the American defenders of Los Angeles had perished in the Empire's initial landings. Las Vegas had become the meat grinder that President Harris promised it never would. Instead, the leaders of the Confederacy had fed men by the millions into it. One of whom had been Mallory's little brother Cale Mallory, who had died in some nameless trench with his blood soaked into the superheated sand of the Nevada desert. For the same mysterious reason Fate had taken Cale, it had carried Mallory out of that Vegas hell.
South America had been a blur of training. Mallory could still feel the heavy g forces that had pressed down on him when the Revenge escaped Earth and then eventually rammed the Super Star Destroyer Ares. Everything he had done during that raid had been the result of training except for his refusal to fire the Ares's super laser. Enough blood had been spilled. Cale's had been more than he could take. He couldn't end the lives of two planets. What kind of person could live with themselves if he had pulled that trigger? It was a question he asked himself every day.
The Confederacy had grabbed a hold of him and made him out to be some kind of super hero. He had met the President and celebrities from near and far toasted him at parties from New York to Tokyo. He rose quickly through the ranks of the rapidly expanding new Space Force, he hoped by merit but knew his reputation and celebrity had a large part in it as well. He had graduated the command school in Moscow ten years ago and shortly after the Empress's wedding had served as the executive officer aboard the Europe-class frigate Australia for five years before being given his first command aboard the Ragnarok.
The Ragnarok was a more advanced model of the corvette that had launched during Operation Odysseus. They had crews of forty, fifteen of which were marines used in anti-pirating missions. They carried two space superiority fighters, though the Ragnarok's compliment were a pair of the newer X-1s rather than the older Y-1 that still formed the bulk of Space Force's Fighter Command.
The crew were the top sailors in their classes and represented nearly every race from back on Earth. Such diversity of background had not been born of ideological intentions derived from discarded progressive ideas, but as part of a larger plan to gradually erase all lingering national and cultural identities left over from before the war. There was no room in the Confederacy for Americans or Japanese or Brazilians. There could only be Confederates.
The Confederacy which had risen after the war was supposed to be a meritocracy, but had gotten sucked into a god-awful class system. You got ahead on how well you did your job and how best you served the President's vision for the Confederacy. Any adherence to the old ways got you sent to a work camp.
Mallory was still lost in his dark thoughts of Earth's and his own intertwined fates when he was interrupted by his executive officer. "Captain, we've got another tripped sensor alarm in sector November-nine. That's the third one in two hours."
Mallory looked over at the navigation readout to locate November-nine and its proximity to the two earlier alarms. "I'm calling it. We definitely have a visitor."
Commander Luca Romano, Mallory's second-in-command, had ten years on Mallory. He had served in the Italian Navy during the very battle the Ragnarok was named for and had his ship burned out from under him by an Imperial flame carpet missile. He had only survived by being picked out of the channel by a French tugboat. Allegedly, Stormtroopers were rumored to have blasted any shipwrecked sailors that had washed up on the British side of the channel during that debacle.
Luca should have been given a command of his own by now. He certainly deserved it. But he came from a minor naval command in the Confederacy. And in the new Space Force, dominated by American and Chinese officers, advancement was stifled and slow for those who came from other navies. Yet another blow to the idea of a meritocratic Confederacy. If Romano resented his lot he didn't show it. He ran the starship well and picked up the slack in areas Mallory was lacking. The two men got along rather well and in many ways Romano reminded Mallory of his wartime NCO, Sergeant Cortez.
"Sending a SitRep to Sydney to notify them we have an infiltrator." Commander Romano stated.
"Very good. Tell them we're moving to November-nine to investigate." Mallory said.
"Should we wait for back up?" The helmswoman asked.
Romano and Mallory just grinned a knowing smile at one another. The fleet wouldn't risk a frigate out in the belt. Earth was four hours away with the current level of sublight engines the fleet used and hypermatter was too expensive to waste until they got confirmation as to what they were up against out here. There were also four more corvettes on their own patrols out in the belt but the nearest one was almost six hours away.
"No. Whoever is out there will be gone by the time help arrives from Earth." Mallory said.
Commander Romano turned to the crewman manning the encrypted communication station. "Send the SitRep. If Admiral Drayson can coordinate the other patrols fast enough we might just box the bastard in."
"Aye, aye, sir." The sailor rapidly dispatched the coded signal. Signal warfare had greatly improved since the end of the war. The Empire only intercepted about a fourth of the messages the Space Force sent these days, and hardened communication gear prevented the wash-out that crippled the Earth during the war. Now equipment was rarely jammed unless under deliberate attack.
"What's the distance to November-nine?" Mallory asked the helmswoman and the navigator who were seated next to each other.
"Just over nine million kilometers, sir." The Navigator responded.
"That'll give as an ETA of forty-three minutes." Commander Romano reported.
"What's out in November-nine anyway?"
"Nothing much. Deep-space scans showed an abundance of ionized gases left over from pre-war Imperial mining." Romano said.
"Looks like it's near the supply route to the Helium-3 mine of Vesta. Those gases could hide a ship until we stumble across it." Mallory said.
"You thinking what I'm thinking, Captain?" Romano asked.
"Pirates."
"Yep."
Mallory sighed. Space Force had been chasing after these guys ever since they had arrived in the asteroid belt. Shortly after the war a pirate crew had even captured a corvette, resulting in the convoy system for ore shipments and the overloading of newer patrol vessels with every weapon under the sun. "Bring the crew up to general quarters."
"You want the flight crew to warm up the X-1s?" Romano asked.
Mallory ground his teeth as he contemplated his answer. He really did want to be the first corvette captain to capture a pirate since the loss of the Los Angeles, but when it came to risking the X-1s . . . "Have the flight crew warm 'em up. Call the pilots to the bridge."
Romano chuckled. He understood the debate going on in Mallory's mind all too well. This certainly was one of the most unique warships in the Space Force for a number of reasons. "Aye, aye, Captain."
"Ready pilots to the bridge." Sounded out through the Ragnarok's PA system.
There was the steady thump of boots on the deck, enabled by reversed repulsars bought from New Mandalore, behind Mallory as two crewmen entered the bridge.
"Reporting as ordered." The male pilot, Lieutenant Moon Nak-Yeon from United Korea, reported.
Mallory turned to the two pilots and faced Lieutenant Moon. He intentionally avoided making eye contact with his female counterpart. He didn't want to see the eagerness in her eyes nor have her see the worry in his own.
Neither of the Lieutenants, dressed in their trademark orange flight suits, had seen combat yet, as both were too young to have served in the war. Space Force pilots were rarely chosen from atmospheric fighter schools where tactics and flight skills were completely different from space combat. Both had logged thousands of hours in the simulators and peacetime patrol but there was nothing that compared to the heat of combat.
"We have a possible bogey in one of our patrol sectors. We suspect it to be an alien pirate vessel. We are heading to intercept with an intent to capture or destroy." Mallory briefed the X-1 pilots. "Any questions?"
"Will this be a free fire mission, sir?" Lieutenant Moon asked.
"According to the Mercury Accords everything inside what they call the Phasma Belt is ours to do with as we want. That being said, a lot of other crews have taken shots at these creeps but no one has brought one down in twenty years." Mallory answered. There was no hiding the fact that he hoped their crew would be the first.
"Do they have any escorts?" The female Lieutenant asked forcing Mallory to acknowledge her.
Lieutenant Emma Mallory was a hotshot pilot in her twenties and shared many of the facial features of her older brother. She had that tough look that kids got from growing up in the camps during the war and despite her refusal for help, Mallory had been tempted into using his celebrity to get her into the Space Force Academy after she had graduated from high school in Camp Detroit. Their parents had bought their own 2nd-class citizenship through money they had made with Mallory's father's city-mining company. Mallory himself had earned 1st-class citizenship through his war honors and high rank. Emma was determined to earn her 2nd-class citizenship and had signed up for the academy as soon as she was of age. It was somebody's idea of a joke back at the office of Space Force personnel that she had been assigned to his ship as soon as she had passed advanced flight school on the X-1s.
One of the greatest responsibilities of command, Mallory believed, was sending sailors and marines to their deaths. That he might one day do so with his kid sister was a nightmare that kept him up.
"None that we've detected." Mallory answered his younger sibling. "We're still too far out to spot anything with our own sensors. The intruders tripped one of our passive sensors in the sector."
"That doesn't mean anything. You two should know one of the pirate gangs that we operate against, the Gran Kajidic, have been utilizing an N-1 Starfighter as protection for some of their raids in the past few years."
Mallory turned to his XO. "Intel says our anti-aircraft batteries on the Normandy clipped it three months ago."
"They might have. There was no confirmation of the kill as no debris was ever found." Romano reported.
"That just means the asshat is still out there laughing at us." He stared down the two young pilots. "It's up to us to wipe that smile off their face."
"Pilots, return to your fighters. We will be arriving at the location of the alarm shortly." Romano ordered the pair of junior officers. The Pilots saluted their Captain, which Mallory returned, catching Emma's eye and holding back a comforting smile to calm her nerves out of concern for foolish charges of nepotism.
The two lieutenants left the bridge and returned to their idling X-1s attached to the Ragnarok's outer hull. The bridge turned quiet as the corvette closed the distance to November-nine.
"Silent running." Mallory ordered. It wasn't so much the worry of noise giving away their approach but their electronic signature. Sailors on the bridge shut down every unnecessary system aboard the Ragnarok. The lights cut out and were replaced with small red lights that preserved the crew's vision in low light. Mallory felt the magnets in his boots pull on the deck as artificial gravity cut out and felt the growing chill in the air as life support slowed to a stop. A few crewmen slipped on coats at their stations to counter the cold.
November-nine was a mid-grade ionized dust cloud of iron and mercury dust which played havoc with their own deep space radar. A pair of crewmen stood by the forward window peering out for any miniscule sign of the intruder.
"Take us in slow-ahead. Engines, I want your hand hovering over that throttle. I want everything you've got the second I say so." Mallory ordered the sailor manning the SABRE rocket/sublight engines the Ragnarok sported.
"Aye, aye, Captain."
The minutes crept by in the darkness. The small, basketball-sized asteroids out here floated by, lit on one side by the distant sun.
"There! Sir!" One of the sailors was pointing excitedly at something forward to the starboard side of the corvette.
Mallory stepped to his side. Sure enough a small flash of light betrayed a sublight engine moving within the dust. He turned to the helmswoman. "Get after it. Down and to starboard."
"I see it, Captain. Target acquired." The helmswoman replied. A hunter's glean rose in her eye.
"Full-ahead, flank speed." Mallory ordered the Engineering sailor.
"Bring up all systems. Get a lock with the radar." Commander Romano snapped at the crew.
"Activate weapons. I want the railguns charged and a firing solution for the beam tubes." Mallory told his men. They vigorously rushed to follow his commands, while concealing the eager grins on their faces.
The lights came back as the artificial gravity once again pulled at Mallory's legs. The stars ahead spun to the left as the Ragnarok climbed quickly to starboard.
The pirate ship's engines grew brighter as the starship attempted to move away from them. Commander Romano noted the movement as well. "They've spotted us."
"Let's chase them down." Mallory suggested. He thought of the two patrol corvettes coming in from galactic north. "We're between them and Mars. Perhaps we can run them towards the London and the Guatemala."
"They're ours if we can box them in." Romano hoped.
"Pull up that ship on the long range cameras." Mallory commanded. A few seconds later the image of the pirate ship loomed large on the work screens at each station. Sailors looked at the captured video for a few seconds before returning to their work. Mallory and Romano got a longer view.
"Looks like a KR-TB Doomtreader. We've seen this one before. Near Pallas last year I think." Romano observed.
"Crimson Dawn markings. She's got heavy shields but she's not that quick if I recall Intel's report." Mallory added.
"Crimson Dawn is too dumb to surrender. One of the Kajidic gangs might have had the guts to turn and try to fight it out by now."
"Brakatak the Bull pays his crews to have more balls than the CD."
"He also pays to provide them with at least an escort. I don't see any fighters aboard that ship." Romano observed.
"I concur. Helm, keep trying to get closer to the target, but whatever you do keep us between them and Mars." Mallory ordered.
"He won't jump in this dust." Romano said.
"Not if he doesn't want his ship picked apart by those small asteroids." Mallory answered.
"Countermeasures!" The radar technician shouted.
Mallory practically leaped to the forward window. He arrived just in time to see a small blue orb tumble from the back of the Doomtreader. Seismic charges laid by the Empire had blown apart the asteroid belt on their march towards Mars. "Evasive action. Hard Port!"
The helmswoman yanked the control toggles hard to the left a few seconds before the sonic mine burst. The explosion erupted like a blue supernova. Its blast wave moved away from its nucleus in a growing circles that crumpled the remains of every asteroid within range. A full minute after exploding it reached the Ragnarok, shaking the corvette like a chew toy caught in the grip of a pit bull. Mallory and Romano stayed upright by gripping tightly to handholds in the ceiling. The radar technician was pitched from his chair. As quickly as it had started the shaking stopped as the blast wave passed over.
Mallory's ears were ringing and he could feel a slight clicking in his jaw when he moved it. It felt as if the Ragnarok had her bell rung, but she was still in this fight.
"Damage report." Mallory demanded. He swore to himself about the Ragnarok's criminal lack of shields out here.
"Hull integrity is holding."
"All systems still running at full capacity." Romano reported.
"Continue pursuit." Mallory replied, confident his ship could weather anything simple pirates threw at it.
"He's turning rimward." The radar tracking station reported. The move made sense. If the pirates couldn't return to their safe haven on Mars then they would simply flee beyond the reaches of Confederate space. If he could clear the asteroid belt he could safely jump to New Ryloth, the first Imperial colony world down the Bloodstripe Run.
"Stay on him."
"Captain, we're getting a shimmy in engines one and four. Power is down twenty-five percent on those sublights." The Engineering sailor reported.
Romano bound across the bridge to confirm the sailor's report. "Divert more power into five and seven. It will give us a more trimmed central thrust. Helm can handle the stiffer controls."
Mallory grimaced. He knew he should slow the pursuit and see to the damage his engines had taken from that cowardly mine attack. But he'd be damned if he let that pirate escape.
"Passing into sector December-nine." Navigation warned of their encroachment into the outer sector of Confederate control. Mallory merely nodded in acknowledgement.
"He gets past the line he's out of our jurisdiction." Romano warned.
Mallory glared at the fleeing Doomtreader. It was no longer moving towards the trap set by the other two distant corvettes. He knew the Ragnarok was going at full speed but experience had shown time and again the Martian pirates could outrun them in a straight sprint. The Doomtreader was going to escape.
"The hell it is." Mallory whispered to himself.
"Captain?" Romano must have heard him mumble.
"Fire a full spread from the forward missile battery. Have them run independent, we're too far away for them to run off our sensors." Mallory ordered the weapon's officer.
"AA battery armed. Firing!" The officer responded.
Ahead of the Ragnarok twenty AIM-500 Force Dragon missiles raced away from Ragnarok. Based on TIE Fighter technology stolen from the Empire during the war the ion engine rockets flared away from their carrier and closed the distance with the pirate ship.
The Doomtreader saw the space-to-space missiles coming in and released countermeasures of its own. An array of sun-white ion flares shot away from the Doomtreader followed a few seconds later by puffs of carbonite chafe exploded in the pirate's wake. The chafe crackled with electric energy exploding several of the missiles suckered in by the countermeasures' ion signature.
Half the missiles fell away as their fuel ran out. The majority of the survivors, straining to reach the target at the outer limit of their range, were blown from space when the Doomtreader engaged them with its close-defense phasers.
One struggling missile closed with the pirate ship and exploded within a kilometer of its aft section. At the last millisecond it fired its payload sending thousand of tiny titanium flechettes at supersonic speed towards its query.
The Doomtreader was already banking away when the missile struck, causing the flechettes to riddle its starboard engine. Smoke and fire sparked from the pirate starship as it passed over the line marking the end of Sector December-nine.
"Engine three is shutting down, sir." The sailor manning the Engineering seat warned.
"Give me five minutes more." Mallory asked.
"I'm giving her all she's got, Captain."
"Weapons. Engage the rail guns." Mallory ordered ignoring the Engineering sailor. He could almost taste the victory.
"He's slowing down. Looks like they're bringing their shields up to full." Romano reported.
"Fool should have had them online the minute he saw us." Mallory replied.
"Should we launch the fighters?" His second-in-command asked.
Mallory thought about his sister for a second. He didn't want to go through what he had gone through with Cale again. But she was the best of the best or else she wouldn't have been sent out here. "Go ahead. Tell them we're going to attempt a capture. Get the marines up and ready as well."
"Moxxi One and Two. You are go for launch." Romano spoke into the combat channel for Ragnarok. "Objective is a search and seizure."
"Roger that, Ragnarok. We'll take down those shields for you." Emma's voice cut across the communication channel. Mallory's breath caught in his throat for a second.
There was a shudder as the two X-1s broke away from the Ragnarok. The Doomtreader was still at the maximum range for their missile batteries and well out of range for the ship's beam tubes. The rail guns peppered the fleeing Doomtreader's shields as it raced rimward out of the Phasma Belt.
The Ragnarok crossed the line, leaving Confederate space in pursuit of the pirate.
"Moxxi Flight should intercept in two minutes." Commander Romano informed Mallory. There was nothing they could do but wait now. The distance between the slower Earth vessel and the damaged pirate slowly closed.
There was a slight shimmer between the X-1s and the Doomtreader for half the length of a heartbeat before another intruder arrived on the scene.
The mammoth shape of an Imperial I Star Destroyer appeared out of hyperspace directly between the Space Force corvette and the still fleeing pirate vessel.
"All stop." Mallory called to the Engineering sailor. The Ragnarok slowed to a crawl at only a few kilometers a minute. Ahead of them the X-1s banked away from smashing into the Star Destroyer and circled back around towards the Ragnarok. The game was over.
"Captain, we're being hailed." Commander Romano reported.
"Switch it over to the combat channel." Mallory ordered.
"Aye, aye." There was a faint crackle and pop as an Imperial channel merged with a Space Force one.
"Attention, Space Force vessel. This is the Captain Yage of the Slash. You are in violation of the Mercury Accords. Turn your vessel about and return to your own territory at once."
"Captain Yage, this is Captain Mallory of the Ragnarok. We are in legal pursuit of a criminal ship that breached our borders in violation of the Mercury Accords."
There was some silence on the other side of the com channel before Captain Yage returned. "You are the Mallory?"
Mallory smirked. Evidently his reputation still held weight on the other side of the border. "The same."
"Captain Mallory, while your presence is an interesting coincidence, the vessel you were pursuing is now transmitting lawful BOSS identity signals. They are Imperial citizens and are under the protection of the Imperial Navy."
Mallory's hand curled into a fist. If he could he would have reached right through the radio and throttled the obstructive Captain of the Slash. "We demand they be remanded to our custody so that they can be tried in a Confederate court for piracy."
He could almost hear the entire crew of the Slash burst out laughing at his suggestion. The Star Destroyer held all the cards and they knew it. The Ragnarok didn't even sport anti-radiation shields yet, never mind the powerful ray and particle shields the Slash surely welded. No doubt the Slash was doing a full spectrum scan of the Ragnarok. The corvette was doing the same but she couldn't even detect the shields or weapons on the Slash while the Star Destroyer's advanced sensors were probably getting an exact count of the Ragnarok's crew and what they ate for breakfast. It frustrated Mallory beyond description how far behind the Confederacy truly was.
"Ragnarok, out of respect for your commander, you have five minutes standard to turn your ship about and cross back over the border. We have a firing solution on your vessel and are capable of atomizing it without batting an eye. Your time starts now." Captain Yage announced.
Mallory glared once more at the Slash. That bastard had been one of the warships that had wiped Earth's cities off the face of the globe twenty years ago. All without batting an eye.
"Sir?" Commander Romano asked.
"Turn us about. Space Force won't lift a damn finger for a ship caught on the wrong side of the line." Mallory ordered.
"Aye, aye, sir." Romano acknowledged the order. "Helm turn us around. Flight deck stand by to retrieve Moxxi Flight."
The crew went about their duties. They remained professional, but Mallory sensed they were not the same crew they had been fifteen minutes ago. Now their shoulders slumped like whipped dogs. The gleeful and eager smiles they once sported were replaced with grim determination. Good. Mallory thought, let them remember this embarrassment. Next time they wouldn't be caught with their pants down on the wrong side of some arbitrary border politicians had drawn up two decades ago.
Commander Romano sidled up next to Mallory. The forward monitors showed the rear camera view of the Slash flowing in their wake. Once it ensured the Space Force corvette was well on its own side of the border it hyperjumped away to parts unknown. The pirate Doomtreader was long gone.
"I hope they feel good about themselves. Protecting murderers and cutthroats." Romano watched the Star Destroyer vanish.
"How they feel about themselves is not my concern." Mallory stated.
"What's on your mind, sir?"
"They showed up pretty fast didn't they?"
"You're right. Last intel report I saw said the Slash wasn't even assigned to Mars anymore. You think they might be building up around here for something?"
Mallory shrugged. He wished there were as many answers as there were questions. "Or to hide something."
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Up next: The New Legion