Piracy appealed to you for all sorts of reasons: money, independence… maybe stroking your ego as well. But no pirate ever came from nothing. Some origins were unremarkable, yes, but you have a story. You’re a pirate captain, but you’re also a:


>Fleet defector, one of the few who managed to shake off the subliminal conditioning of the Academy and desert. In the beginning, other pirates looked at you with suspicion and distrust, but you gradually earned your place and even managed to use your inside knowledge about Fleet to score a few victories of your own, and a huge price on your head from the Federation to boot.
[An educated officer, your skills lie mostly in deep-space operations, the essence of piracy.]

>Ex-mercenary. You’d done well with a small but professional merc company, but one raider you took a contract from decided to double-cross you and leave you for dead. You started from the bottom again, working up from obscurity until you commandeered a vessel for yourself. Now you go by Red Eye, and you haven’t been betrayed since.
[A mercenary commander, you’ve got a wealth of underworld contacts and consider yourself open for any kind of job.]

>Heavyworlder, a genetic offshoot of humanity adapted to high-gravity planets. The Federation uses your people as muscle, and though they pretend otherwise, you know that they look down on you as an inferior race. Strength is your ally, you admit, but you carry an intellect of equal utility and a burning desire to exact some measure of payback on the weakling lightweights who had abandoned your ancestors to die so many centuries ago.
[A martially minded individual, you have bad blood with the Federation and see piracy as a means to an end: bringing prosperity, dignity, and redemption to your race.]

>Corporate officer, one of many sent to frontier regions to manage assets, where you were approached by a certain party offering a place in a clandestine “trader’s guild” operating outside of FSP jurisdiction. The rest is history. You’d call yourself a gentleman pirate, if piracy still has any of the romance it used to on Old Earth. And don’t kid yourself: you never had any morals to begin with.
[Though not unfamiliar with the tougher aspects of piracy, you consider yourself more attuned to the potential profits of interstellar crime.]

>>5839836
>>Corporate officer, one of many sent to frontier regions to manage assets, where you were approached by a certain party offering a place in a clandestine “trader’s guild” operating outside of FSP jurisdiction.
"Hello, I like money."

>>5839836
>Fleet defector, one of the few who managed to shake off the subliminal conditioning of the Academy and desert. In the beginning, other pirates looked at you with suspicion and distrust, but you gradually earned your place and even managed to use your inside knowledge about Fleet to score a few victories of your own, and a huge price on your head from the Federation to boot.
Freedom.

>>5839836
>Fleet defector, one of the few who managed to shake off the subliminal conditioning of the Academy and desert. In the beginning, other pirates looked at you with suspicion and distrust, but you gradually earned your place and even managed to use your inside knowledge about Fleet to score a few victories of your own, and a huge price on your head from the Federation to boot.
They said we went mad in the Deep Black, but I say I saw the truth of this universe

>>5839835
>Fleet defector, one of the few who managed to shake off the subliminal conditioning of the Academy and desert. In the beginning, other pirates looked at you with suspicion and distrust, but you gradually earned your place and even managed to use your inside knowledge about Fleet to score a few victories of your own, and a huge price on your head from the Federation to boot.

>>5839836

>Corporate officer, one of many sent to frontier regions to manage assets, where you were approached by a certain party offering a place in a clandestine “trader’s guild” operating outside of FSP jurisdiction. The rest is history. You’d call yourself a gentleman pirate, if piracy still has any of the romance it used to on Old Earth. And don’t kid yourself: you never had any morals to begin with.

Why subsist on a salary when you can be earning REVENUES?

>>5839836
>>Ex-mercenary. You’d done well with a small but professional merc company, but one raider you took a contract from decided to double-cross you and leave you for dead. You started from the bottom again, working up from obscurity until you commandeered a vessel for yourself. Now you go by Red Eye, and you haven’t been betrayed since.

ua soldiers,,,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiLCznCxdcE

Voting is closed, Fleet defector wins

>>5839835
Are you the QM who ran The Checkpoint where the MC was called Burden Deo?

File: bridge.jpg (552 KB, 1965x1002)

552 KB JPG

Freedom. That had been your first reason.

Most sane people, once they were in Fleet, never had a reason to leave. A steady income and the protection of the Federation’s military in all aspects of life was appealing, not to mention that your bills were usually footed by someone else and you served on the best armed vessel within a few parsecs. Sure, Fleet was human-dominated, but you had good relationships with the aliens (‘allies,’ they were called in Fed service) and with your crewmates as a whole. Which made it all the more difficult to get out.

The implanted barriers of the Academy had been devious, and you hadn’t known they were there to begin with. On one occasion you had woken up near the comm unit about to punch in a call to Sector Headquarters, and then you realized that you would have to fight yourself before you even considered anything else. Even for someone exceptionally strong-willed such as yourself, it took months before you were certain that you could act on any seditious thoughts.

There had been defectors before, to be sure. The difference is that they had had the benefit of their crew’s support, something which took both time and effort. Your plan was risky, yes, but simpler: jettisoning an escape pod while the ship was in flux, with the beacon modified so that Fleet vessels couldn’t pick it up. Still, you had to spend several weeks in coldsleep before you were picked up: dreamless, instant coldsleep. From there you could find a ship to serve on.

The early years had been rough. Menial labor, proving yourself as a crewmate before you got any other duties. Take the abuse, keep walking, learn to hold down your booze and don’t talk back, not yet. Then, one day, you weren’t “oi, you” but instead “mate,” people didn’t punch you anymore if you looked them in the eye, and you started getting good sleep in the cramped bunk. Maybe it had been a fight that earned their respect, or how you had manned the torpedo tube in that one fight with a cruiser—but you earned your place, and began the long climb up the ladder from there. It took years, maybe even decades, but you became captain.

Your time in Fleet is in the past now, and while some memories are just as vivid as the day you made them (standing in front of the Academy chapel with the rest of your class at graduation), others you try to suppress. It’s an old life, you tell yourself, not the kind of thing you want to think about unless you have to.

>>5840227
The door to the bridge opens, snapping you out of your reminiscing. Your XO… every captain needed a right hand, someone you could trust in your absence. Of course, trust is a strong word; you’d never go so far as to rest easy around someone who was no doubt ambitious and eager to be captain themselves. But Fleet taught you that even in the best of situations, a ship worked better when it wasn’t just the captain. You had picked your executive officer for all sorts of reasons, and there were no shortage of options.


>Cruss, a heavyworlder. To be honest, he rubbed you the wrong way to start, especially with the way he, like all heavyworlders, had a bone to pick with anyone associated with the Federation, ex-Fleet or not. You’d warmed to him, though, and he to you (in his stoic way), and a good, working partnership had blossomed. Strong and reliable. Not the subtle type, though…

>Roche, a former member of the Federation’s Exploration and Evaluation Corps (EEC). You two became fast friends after meeting owing to mutual experiences of defection; unlike you, she came from a civilian branch. She’s kept quiet about her reasons for defecting, but you suspect it’s related to her last EEC assignment: surveying a particularly hostile uninhabited world. Her specialty within the EEC was xenobiology, but given her history as a former survey team leader she’s got plenty of experience whipping subordinates into shape. A safe pick for quite a few reasons.

>Elex, a Seti. You hadn’t had much experience with the lizard species before him (Seti were FSP member species, but didn’t send anyone to join Fleet), and he was an odd fellow. Like most Seti, Elex is obsessed with chance. It’s an odd fixation for one individual, let alone an entire species, but they all lived by what they called “Holy Luck.” Seti were obstinate, difficult to talk to, and firmly convinced of their own superiority. Tough to handle at the best of times… but on the flip side, the lizards concerned themselves a great deal with trade, and Elex was no exception. His ties to the black market and the unscrupulous nature of the entire Seti bureaucracy had saved you and your ship on more than one occasion.

>Shis’so, a Carlottan gestalt. The mound of black spiders was unnerving to many who hadn’t spent time around them, but they were more than worth it. Shis’so had started as a replacement engineer you hired last minute, but they proved more than capable at the job and deeply insightful on the maintenance of your ship (in an alien way). Of expertise, there was no question; the gestalt has virtually nothing to speak of in the way of people skills, though.

>>5840229
>Roche, a former member of the Federation’s Exploration and Evaluation Corps (EEC). You two became fast friends after meeting owing to mutual experiences of defection; unlike you, she came from a civilian branch. She’s kept quiet about her reasons for defecting, but you suspect it’s related to her last EEC assignment: surveying a particularly hostile uninhabited world. Her specialty within the EEC was xenobiology, but given her history as a former survey team leader she’s got plenty of experience whipping subordinates into shape. A safe pick for quite a few reasons.

>>5840229
>>Shis’so, a Carlottan gestalt. The mound of black spiders was unnerving to many who hadn’t spent time around them, but they were more than worth it. Shis’so had started as a replacement engineer you hired last minute, but they proved more than capable at the job and deeply insightful on the maintenance of your ship (in an alien way). Of expertise, there was no question; the gestalt has virtually nothing to speak of in the way of people skills, though.
GIANT ALIEN SPIDER(S) GF

>>5840229
>Cruss, a heavyworlder. To be honest, he rubbed you the wrong way to start, especially with the way he, like all heavyworlders, had a bone to pick with anyone associated with the Federation, ex-Fleet or not. You’d warmed to him, though, and he to you (in his stoic way), and a good, working partnership had blossomed. Strong and reliable. Not the subtle type, though…

>>5840229
>Roche, a former member of the Federation’s Exploration and Evaluation Corps (EEC). You two became fast friends after meeting owing to mutual experiences of defection; unlike you, she came from a civilian branch. She’s kept quiet about her reasons for defecting, but you suspect it’s related to her last EEC assignment: surveying a particularly hostile uninhabited world. Her specialty within the EEC was xenobiology, but given her history as a former survey team leader she’s got plenty of experience whipping subordinates into shape. A safe pick for quite a few reasons.

>>5839853
this is me
>Roche, a former member of the Federation’s Exploration and Evaluation Corps (EEC). You two became fast friends after meeting owing to mutual experiences of defection; unlike you, she came from a civilian branch. She’s kept quiet about her reasons for defecting, but you suspect it’s related to her last EEC assignment: surveying a particularly hostile uninhabited world. Her specialty within the EEC was xenobiology, but given her history as a former survey team leader she’s got plenty of experience whipping subordinates into shape. A safe pick for quite a few reasons.
if we're going classic, we're going full classic

>>5840229
>>Shis’so, a Carlottan gestalt. The mound of black spiders was unnerving to many who hadn’t spent time around them, but they were more than worth it. Shis’so had started as a replacement engineer you hired last minute, but they proved more than capable at the job and deeply insightful on the maintenance of your ship (in an alien way). Of expertise, there was no question; the gestalt has virtually nothing to speak of in the way of people skills, though.

>>5840229
>Roche, a former member of the Federation’s Exploration and Evaluation Corps (EEC). You two became fast friends after meeting owing to mutual experiences of defection; unlike you, she came from a civilian branch. She’s kept quiet about her reasons for defecting, but you suspect it’s related to her last EEC assignment: surveying a particularly hostile uninhabited world. Her specialty within the EEC was xenobiology, but given her history as a former survey team leader she’s got plenty of experience whipping subordinates into shape. A safe pick for quite a few reasons.

>>5840229

>Shis’so, a Carlottan gestalt. The mound of black spiders was unnerving to many who hadn’t spent time around them, but they were more than worth it. Shis’so had started as a replacement engineer you hired last minute, but they proved more than capable at the job and deeply insightful on the maintenance of your ship (in an alien way). Of expertise, there was no question; the gestalt has virtually nothing to speak of in the way of people skills, though.

I’m picking spiders mostly because this option freaks me out the most

>>5840229
>Shis’so, a Carlottan gestalt. The mound of black spiders was unnerving to many who hadn’t spent time around them, but they were more than worth it. Shis’so had started as a replacement engineer you hired last minute, but they proved more than capable at the job and deeply insightful on the maintenance of your ship (in an alien way). Of expertise, there was no question; the gestalt has virtually nothing to speak of in the way of people skills, though.

>>5840547
Spiders can crawl into your pants and give you a handy in secret. The exhibitionist's choice of XO.

>>5840229
>Shis’so, a Carlottan gestalt. The mound of black spiders was unnerving to many who hadn’t spent time around them, but they were more than worth it. Shis’so had started as a replacement engineer you hired last minute, but they proved more than capable at the job and deeply insightful on the maintenance of your ship (in an alien way). Of expertise, there was no question; the gestalt has virtually nothing to speak of in the way of people skills, though.

How can I not take a sentient mass of spiders?

Shis'so wins againt Roche 5-4, writing

Shis’so was what some would call good people: dependable, had good judgment, did their job but didn’t overstep. In many ways, the gestalt was all you could ask for in an XO. As it were, they had some peculiarities, not in the least their form. At times, they could try and approximate a humanoid form, but given how little help it was in assuaging the fears of non-Carlottans, Shis’so just opted for the simplest amalgamation. That was how they entered the bridge. A shifting, writhing mass of spiders about three feet in height that slid across the floor to the side of your chair.

“Everything is optimal on the lower decks.” Carlottan ‘speech’ is a kind of sibilant whisper, created by an orchestrated rubbing together of front legs in an approximation of human speech patterns. To a species which communicated with each other almost entirely with telepathy, it was no doubt tiresome to speak to anyone with vocal cords. Shis’so made the effort regardless.

The XO had their own station on the bridge, just as well equipped as yours (almost), but they always preferred to come closer to speak with you. You suspected that it was alienating to the rest of the crew, who would never enjoy such intimacy; let them be jealous. They would have to earn the privilege of speaking so closely with their captain.

“Very good. No change in engineering?”

“If you are referring to the FTL drive, we will not be achieving a lower flux margin than I previously reported.”

You expected as much, but were hoping for a bit of good news regardless. Carlottans sometimes had a way of teasing out the best from machinery—something about their ability to get into tough spaces. It was a wonder to you that the technically minded species didn’t see more employment on ships like your own… but you weren’t even sure why Shis’so became a pirate in the first place. Did the idea of piracy even exist in Carlottan culture?

>>5840745

“The crew appears excitable,” they continue. You nod, understanding exactly what the XO is referring to despite their clinical term.

“Everyone is itching to get out there. Maybe all these traders at the station reminded them of what’s waiting… or it made them anxious,” you add. Hiding among Guild ships was a good tactic, but it always ran the risk of a merchant too smart for their own good alerting Fleet. This far out from FedCentral, though, you had a good chance of escaping before a cruiser came sniffing around.

Still, it paid to be cautious. And you had been here for a while. “Right. Sound the PA, then, and let’s get underway. Helm?”

“Yessir,” the helmsman responds. Shis’so melts back down into a mound and travels to their station, piling themselves over the console until you can barely see the blinking lights underneath. There’s a momentary concentration of spiders as it depresses the button to activate the PA.

“Attention crew. We are now departing the station. Please secure stations for FTL travel in T-minus thirty minutes.”

It was a mark of your Fleet background, you reflect, that you even bother with such announcements. Some crews that you had served with didn’t bother with so much as an inspection of the ship prior to departure, let alone telling the crew what was going on. You had understood, even envied, the importance of freedom on freebooter craft, but it was your firm belief that a measure of discipline was necessary. Your crew, at least, understood that in a certain sense. A lack of discipline meant a bigger chance of failure, and failure for pirates meant torture, death, or worse: capture by Fleet. So there was an order on the ship, of a sort, and loyalty, of a sort. Certainly more than other ships.

All that said, you weren’t above mingling with the crew when it served your needs. Eating in the mess was a good way to hear what the crew was thinking about a given subject, and without the strict rank conventions of Fleet, you could usually count on hearing people’s honest opinions. The ship’s still pulling away when one of the bridge crew (Marly, the weapons officer) glances back from his station with a grin on his face.

“Hunting for more brandy, skipper?”

You let a smile cross your face. “I doubt anyone would complain if that’s the case.”

“Alcoholic beverages are an ineffectual method of nourishing the crew,” Shis’so remarks quietly. “Colonial supply vessels are an advisable target.”

“We’ll find plenty of what we need,” you say in response to both parties. During your time in port, you had assessed what intelligence you had about possible raiding targets, as well as other opportunities you had heard about through the grapevine. None of them were tasks which you couldn’t take on, not with your ship.

>>5840748

A ship is integral to a pirate’s work… no, his existence. What is yours?

>Tell Me Another, a mid-sized vessel in the same weight class as a Fleet frigate. You had acquired it from a Ryxi scrapyard, so to say it wasn’t in great condition is sugarcoating it. Nevertheless, you went to the effort of rehabilitating it, making a great looking ship out of almost nothing. Like most newer constructions, its advantage lies in how easy it is to work on and modify; you could probably swap it out for an entirely different mission profile as long as you got enough time in port. Right now it’s equipped for commerce raiding, your specialty. A perfect all-rounder, capable of going toe-to-toe with most corporate escorts, good cargo capacity, but not really build to slug it out if Fleet shows up.

>Raven’s Claw, a ship you had meticulously modified from the day you got it. It’s no bigger than a Fleet escort—that is, small—but it packs as much armament as a light cruiser, which makes it deadly in a pinch. The flipside is that it’s got barely any room for a large crew; if people aren’t actively being used, they have to stay in coldsleep, which takes time to wake them up from. Best for surprise attacks, but if you’re hanging around for more than a day or two you’ll need to do some planning. Not much room for loot either, so be prepared to actually commandeer a target ship and bring it in if you want to make maximum profit.

>Flow My Tears. Decommissioned Gourney-class transports were cheap, surprisingly so, but it took you several years before you’d built it up to the point that it was worth taking out. Heavy, slow, and easy to notice, it’s still the most comfortable ship you’ve been on (aside from certain Fleet cruisers), and it’s got plenty of room for your crew plus weapons and whatever cargo you wish to acquire. You wouldn’t call it inconspicuous, though, and it’s not built for outrunning anything. Plenty of space to build on, though.

>>5840749


You’ve got a few choice targets laid out. Pick one that catches your eye.

>Commerce raid, Courcy-DeLan route. You’d heard of a couple of Vannoy ships traveling along the route, carrying a general cargo of consumables meant for distribution to civilian space stations in the sector. Light escort, if any, and at least two hours’ FTL time away from the nearest Fleet patrol. Reportedly.

>Commerce raid, Innish-Ire approach. Nascent Federation colonies receive a massive influx of food and equipment so that they can grow as fast as possible; those commodities would look much better if they were turned into credits in your account. A great target, if you’ve got the wherewithal to manage the transports’ escort and recover their cargoes intact. Fleet tends to be more responsive about hits on colonial transports, but it’s these kind of gutsy attacks that earn you some power in pirate circles.

>Station raid, General Systems Freight Lines. Most corporate stations out here are lightly defended, automated defense platforms with possibly a single civilian-grade escort ship. General Systems doesn’t keep freight itself at this station, but a raid here could net you some hard cash and intelligence showing you some other, more juicy targets for a future raid.

>>5840749
>Flow My Tears. Decommissioned Gourney-class transports were cheap, surprisingly so, but it took you several years before you’d built it up to the point that it was worth taking out. Heavy, slow, and easy to notice, it’s still the most comfortable ship you’ve been on (aside from certain Fleet cruisers), and it’s got plenty of room for your crew plus weapons and whatever cargo you wish to acquire. You wouldn’t call it inconspicuous, though, and it’s not built for outrunning anything. Plenty of space to build on, though.

>Commerce raid, Innish-Ire approach. Nascent Federation colonies receive a massive influx of food and equipment so that they can grow as fast as possible; those commodities would look much better if they were turned into credits in your account. A great target, if you’ve got the wherewithal to manage the transports’ escort and recover their cargoes intact. Fleet tends to be more responsive about hits on colonial transports, but it’s these kind of gutsy attacks that earn you some power in pirate circles.

>>5840749
>Raven’s Claw, a ship you had meticulously modified from the day you got it. It’s no bigger than a Fleet escort—that is, small—but it packs as much armament as a light cruiser, which makes it deadly in a pinch. The flipside is that it’s got barely any room for a large crew; if people aren’t actively being used, they have to stay in coldsleep, which takes time to wake them up from. Best for surprise attacks, but if you’re hanging around for more than a day or two you’ll need to do some planning. Not much room for loot either, so be prepared to actually commandeer a target ship and bring it in if you want to make maximum profit.

>>5840750
>Commerce raid, Courcy-DeLan route. You’d heard of a couple of Vannoy ships traveling along the route, carrying a general cargo of consumables meant for distribution to civilian space stations in the sector. Light escort, if any, and at least two hours’ FTL time away from the nearest Fleet patrol. Reportedly.

>>5840750
>Flow My Tears. Decommissioned Gourney-class transports were cheap, surprisingly so, but it took you several years before you’d built it up to the point that it was worth taking out. Heavy, slow, and easy to notice, it’s still the most comfortable ship you’ve been on (aside from certain Fleet cruisers), and it’s got plenty of room for your crew plus weapons and whatever cargo you wish to acquire. You wouldn’t call it inconspicuous, though, and it’s not built for outrunning anything. Plenty of space to build on, though.

>Station raid, General Systems Freight Lines. Most corporate stations out here are lightly defended, automated defense platforms with possibly a single civilian-grade escort ship. General Systems doesn’t keep freight itself at this station, but a raid here could net you some hard cash and intelligence showing you some other, more juicy targets for a future raid.
... Say, think we could steal the entire station? Take it apart and strip it of everything valuable, grab the weapons to integrate with our own ship? Even scrap metal and electronics would be good.

>>5840749
>Flow My Tears. Decommissioned Gourney-class transports were cheap, surprisingly so, but it took you several years before you’d built it up to the point that it was worth taking out. Heavy, slow, and easy to notice, it’s still the most comfortable ship you’ve been on (aside from certain Fleet cruisers), and it’s got plenty of room for your crew plus weapons and whatever cargo you wish to acquire. You wouldn’t call it inconspicuous, though, and it’s not built for outrunning anything. Plenty of space to build on, though.
>Station raid, General Systems Freight Lines. Most corporate stations out here are lightly defended, automated defense platforms with possibly a single civilian-grade escort ship. General Systems doesn’t keep freight itself at this station, but a raid here could net you some hard cash and intelligence showing you some other, more juicy targets for a future raid.
I like how stereotypically evil we already are, with the Spiders and breaking our conditioning. The ship having a fucked up name is top tier too, if we get another ship in our fleet we should call it something like "A Cry For Mother", "A Heart's Last Beat", or "Mercy's Cry Unanswered" just real villain hours

>>5840915
>stereotypically evil
How so?

>>5840749
>Flow My Tears. Decommissioned Gourney-class transports were cheap, surprisingly so, but it took you several years before you’d built it up to the point that it was worth taking out. Heavy, slow, and easy to notice, it’s still the most comfortable ship you’ve been on (aside from certain Fleet cruisers), and it’s got plenty of room for your crew plus weapons and whatever cargo you wish to acquire. You wouldn’t call it inconspicuous, though, and it’s not built for outrunning anything. Plenty of space to build on, though.

>Station raid, General Systems Freight Lines. Most corporate stations out here are lightly defended, automated defense platforms with possibly a single civilian-grade escort ship. General Systems doesn’t keep freight itself at this station, but a raid here could net you some hard cash and intelligence showing you some other, more juicy targets for a future raid.

On the one hand I wouldnt mind Raven's Claw, but 'Flow My Tears' is just so amusing. Like some Goth pirates listening to Linkin Park. It also seems like the best fit since we went with the engineer alien spiders mass. Very comfy.

>>5840749
>>Flow My Tears. Decommissioned Gourney-class transports were cheap, surprisingly so, but it took you several years before you’d built it up to the point that it was worth taking out. Heavy, slow, and easy to notice, it’s still the most comfortable ship you’ve been on (aside from certain Fleet cruisers), and it’s got plenty of room for your crew plus weapons and whatever cargo you wish to acquire. You wouldn’t call it inconspicuous, though, and it’s not built for outrunning anything. Plenty of space to build on, though.
>Station raid, General Systems Freight Lines. Most corporate stations out here are lightly defended, automated defense platforms with possibly a single civilian-grade escort ship. General Systems doesn’t keep freight itself at this station, but a raid here could net you some hard cash and intelligence showing you some other, more juicy targets for a future raid.

Looks like Flow My Tears and raiding the station is the plan, writing

“Here’s the course, helm,” you say, handing the plastic datacard to the crewman, who slots it into his console. “Take us out when you can.”

Ponderous? Yes, that was one word you could attach to the Flow My Tears, but you preferred to liken it to a large animal in space, like one of Old Earth’s whales. Of course, it wasn’t really the same, not in shape, movement, or intelligence, but you would rather imagine it as a graceful leviathan than a cumbersome fat man as so many other pirates would characterize it.

It has its benefits, of course; when the ship is configured as it is now, with weapons ports covered, it looks much like any of the other large merchant ships at the station. A disguise that would only hold up for so long, yes, but it was certainly useful. Enough that you had refrained from modifying it to the point that such a ploy would no longer work. For now.

For whatever reason, this Guild station is close to the system’s FTL border, making it a relatively short trip on insystem drives. Helm is still busy running jump calculations through the ship’s computer when Shis’so reconfigures themself next to you again. “We know little about the target. Do you have a plan in mind for this raid?”

“Entering FTL state with a flux margin of point-one-six,” helm announces, and the ship lurches forward. You speak without looking at your XO; the courtesy of eye contact doesn’t exist with them.

“Here’s my idea…”

>Frontal approach. Corporate defenses are minimal, nothing you can’t handle. Blasting past their defenses is simple and easy. The only real risk would be if the station got a distress call off before you reached it… but Fleet moves slow out here, and if you work efficiently enough then there wouldn’t be a distress call in the first place. [Medium DC, two rolls]
>Bluff! You’ve got a ship with a similar profile as a freighter, so you could theoretically fly right in if you’re convincing enough to the traffic controller. If it doesn’t work out, then you just shoot your way in as usual. Of course, this assumes that they buy your bluff to begin with; some company employees can get real jumpy and report anything the instant it doesn’t ping back with a company IFF. [Medium DC, two rolls]
>Targeted FTL jump. It requires a little finesse, but helm could theoretically drop you out of FTL right on top of the station, catching them totally by surprise. Definitely solves the problem of the distress call, plus you might even be able to board with a minimal fight… as long as your pilot can do it. [High DC, one roll]

>>5841481
Addendum: forgot to add write-in as a choice, but that's totally on the table if you guys are feeling inventive.

>>5841481
>>Targeted FTL jump. It requires a little finesse, but helm could theoretically drop you out of FTL right on top of the station, catching them totally by surprise. Definitely solves the problem of the distress call, plus you might even be able to board with a minimal fight… as long as your pilot can do it. [High DC, one roll]

>>5841481
>Frontal approach. Corporate defenses are minimal, nothing you can’t handle. Blasting past their defenses is simple and easy. The only real risk would be if the station got a distress call off before you reached it… but Fleet moves slow out here, and if you work efficiently enough then there wouldn’t be a distress call in the first place. [Medium DC, two rolls]

>>5841481
>>Bluff! You’ve got a ship with a similar profile as a freighter, so you could theoretically fly right in if you’re convincing enough to the traffic controller. If it doesn’t work out, then you just shoot your way in as usual. Of course, this assumes that they buy your bluff to begin with; some company employees can get real jumpy and report anything the instant it doesn’t ping back with a company IFF. [Medium DC, two rolls]

>>5841481
>>Targeted FTL jump. It requires a little finesse, but helm could theoretically drop you out of FTL right on top of the station, catching them totally by surprise. Definitely solves the problem of the distress call, plus you might even be able to board with a minimal fight… as long as your pilot can do it. [High DC, one roll]

>>5841481

>Bluff! You’ve got a ship with a similar profile as a freighter, so you could theoretically fly right in if you’re convincing enough to the traffic controller. If it doesn’t work out, then you just shoot your way in as usual. Of course, this assumes that they buy your bluff to begin with; some company employees can get real jumpy and report anything the instant it doesn’t ping back with a company IFF. [Medium DC, two rolls]

Deception wins more fights than tech

>>5841481
>>Bluff! You’ve got a ship with a similar profile as a freighter, so you could theoretically fly right in if you’re convincing enough to the traffic controller. If it doesn’t work out, then you just shoot your way in as usual. Of course, this assumes that they buy your bluff to begin with; some company employees can get real jumpy and report anything the instant it doesn’t ping back with a company IFF. [Medium DC, two rolls]
No reason NOT to try lying. Say, are there any technical problems we can lie about having/fake that'll get us on the station ASAP? Broken life support, damaged reactor, etc? If they ask about the weapons we can just say "Hey, there's pirates around."

>>5841481
>Bluff! You’ve got a ship with a similar profile as a freighter, so you could theoretically fly right in if you’re convincing enough to the traffic controller. If it doesn’t work out, then you just shoot your way in as usual. Of course, this assumes that they buy your bluff to begin with; some company employees can get real jumpy and report anything the instant it doesn’t ping back with a company IFF. [Medium DC, two rolls]

Well it is an old Gourney-class. Bound to be a few problems with the wiring that might have an IFF outage or other damages.

>>5840924
Spider 2IC, we're a Traitor to the federation, the whole piracy thing

>>5842034
You fight for what you believe in. No one will force you.

Bluff wins. I need two 1d100 rolls, DC is 50.

Rolled 64 (1d100)

>>5842046

Rolled 54 (1d100)

>>5842046

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5 KB JPG

>>5842034
A traitor to the group that is indoctrinating their armed forces to the point of borderline brainwashing. Wow. How evil. Thinking for yourself is evil. Good to know.

“Bluff our way in,” you say simply. Shis’so’s silence speaks volumes.

“As you will,” the spiders reply cryptically, returning to their console. You sit back a bit, contemplating your plan in a little more depth as the ship flew silently onward.

The drop back to insystem drives comes suddenly. “Sorry, skipper,” the pilot says in his Reaches accent. “Computer gave me a warning. Looks like the station has deviated a bit from the standard platform arrangement.”

Deviated? Your momentary anger at the pilot for executing a maneuver on his own falls away as you process this new information. A deviation sensed by a computer could range from simply moving a platform’s orbit a few meters, or adding new defense systems entirely. “Scanners?”

“Working. Looks like the standard Kappa-pattern platforms, I count three. There’s another vessel, too—Churi-class, no, some kind of stripped-down ship in the same weight class,” he corrects with a shake of the head. “And the station itself.”

As he speaks, the various contacts pop up on the Tri-D display, visible as yellow pips in the vague shape of the real things. Like you had expected, the platforms would be easy to take in a fight, and while the other ship was a surprise, it didn’t appear to be much of a threat. That said, there was still the question of the possible distress call. “See if you can’t get a better scan of the station itself. I want to know weak points, the best place to board, all that.

“Aye aye.”

“Would you like a comm channel opened?” Shis’so queries. You begin to speak in the affirmative but hold your tongue for a moment.

“What are they speaking out here?”

That gives the Carlottan pause. You punch up the directory on your own console and browse through, finding the company quickly. “Business is in Standard, but there’s a preference in management for Neo-Gaesh… no problem.” Neo-Gaesh and its variants were little known within the Federation, not being standardized at all, but it was much more common out in the fringe and was apparently the birthtongue of General Systems’ oligarchs. You put out a call on the ship’s PA summoning anyone fluent in the language to the bridge, confident that you had picked up someone or other with such a skill during your recruiting periods.

Sure enough, a few humans show up. You dismiss all of them except a older fellow named Crane who worked in engineering. After you brief him on what you want, he mutters a string of things which you hope are Neo-Gaesh. The station controller responds with a mishmash of syllables which sound the exact same, only longer. Hardly a language at all, you think not a little smugly, with your own inherited language of:

>Chinese. It didn’t see much use out here, but family traditions were to be upheld.
>Standard, the language of the Federation. You never needed to know anything else.
>Harish, a common tongue. Your last tie to your childhood, since you defected.

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453 KB JPG

>>5842162
Crane looks back at you from the communications console. “They buy our history, but since the ship doesn’t have a scheduled time, they don’t want to turn on the dock.”

You purse your lips for a moment, running through a list of possible responses. “Tell them we’ve got a crewmember suffering from an acute case of, uh… Marik’s rot, and our med unit is insufficiently equipped.” Well, that much was true. “It’s in a late stage, we need him stabilized before we go any further. It’s a matter of hours.”

The crewman translates the words, and while you don’t speak the language, he seems to be a good actor by any means. The fake please is punctuated by an uncomfortable silence, then a succinct reply from the station.

“The dock is green, captain,” helm tells you. “Proceed?”

“Yes, let’s fly in. Slow and steady. Sensors, what’s the read on the station?”

“I picked up some more detail on the commsuite, docks, and habitation levels,” he replies. “As for the station’s equipment, only light shields and point defense opticals. Again, nothing serious.”

You tap the arm of your chair to get your XO’s attention. “We can play this angle as long as possible, get docked and disembark en masse. The defense platforms won’t fire at us thanks to our proximity with the station.”

“Based on our understanding of the structure of the station, an attack through more unconventional means may prove more effective, possibly an EVA-based assault.” Shis’so is a pragmatist, thinking in terms of quickly winning an engagement. But of course, there are other considerations.


Your ship is currently on approach to the General Systems station, disguised as a distressed civilian cargo hauler. How do you proceed?

>Dock with the station normally. Once a connection is made, you can board the place with your assault teams. It’s debatable how much resistance the station will give your assault teams, but this option is certainly the easiest when it comes to getting your ‘troops’ off the ship.
>Deploy assault teams beforehand. They’ll spacewalk to the station and infiltrate via suspected weak points. Though this would definitely catch the station’s crew by surprise, and the assault teams do have spacesuits, you would certainly call it risky.
>Precision strikes before boarding. You’re still within the acceptable firing area for the defense platforms, but now that you’re close to the station, you could take out the station’s communications array before it raises shields, blast the outer defenses, and then board once that’s been dealt with; essentially prioritizing space targets before boarding.

>>5842165
Okay I'm a tard and I forgot to put write-in as an option AGAIN, so again, that's on the table if anyone feels like it

>>5840157
Nope! Sorry to disappoint if you were hoping for that.

>>5842162
>Standard, the language of the Federation. You never needed to know anything else.

>>5842165
>Dock with the station normally. Once a connection is made, you can board the place with your assault teams. It’s debatable how much resistance the station will give your assault teams, but this option is certainly the easiest when it comes to getting your ‘troops’ off the ship.

Have the crewmember with the Marik’s rot go down first surrounded by one unit of our assault team disguised as medical staff. The rest can follow on our order, when our cover blown, or when they reach the medical bay and have hostages, whatever comes first.

>>5842162
>Latin

>Deploy assault teams beforehand. They’ll spacewalk to the station and infiltrate via suspected weak points. Though this would definitely catch the station’s crew by surprise, and the assault teams do have spacesuits, you would certainly call it risky.

>>5842184

This, but bring tear gas or similar with masks in the gear - we set that off when the alarm gets raised. We want to incapacitate as many of the station as possible as quick as possible. Keep things quiet till the alarm gets raised.

also, have a second unit standing by to go EVA and breach elsewhere in case we need options. If THAT isn't needed they can follow via docking tube with their suits as armor.

>>5842290
I'll support Latin if you're allowing write-ins.

>>5842294
Good thinking.

>>5842290
>>5842296
I'm gonna veto that since this isn't 40k and Latin is still a dead language. Happy to work it in as something that our MC took while at the Academy, though, but no kind of native fluency.

I'll give the vote an hour or two longer.

>>5842165
>>Standard, the language of the Federation. You never needed to know anything else.

>Precision strikes before boarding. You’re still within the acceptable firing area for the defense platforms, but now that you’re close to the station, you could take out the station’s communications array before it raises shields, blast the outer defenses, and then board once that’s been dealt with; essentially prioritizing space targets before boarding.

Stopping them calling in reinforcements is the number one priority in my book. Once thats done gassing them a bit doesn't sound too bad from what the other anons suggest. While the gas is pumping I guess we could give them our demands? A corporate target might be more willing to negotiate once they know they are pretty fucked and have no way out.

Does our favorite mass of spiders officer favor some kind of electronic warfare and hacking, or more just making sure the ship is running and compensating for the damage we inevitably take and power and heat management?

Alright, so it looks like >>5842184 is the winner, with the amendments proposed by the others. Writing

(captcha was MAYD4? Mayday? fortuitous)

Your approach is uneventful. Although the station as a whole is at least three times the mass of the Flow My Tears, the habitation section makes up only a small percentage of it, the rest being uninhabited workspaces kept in vacuum. If needed, this station could service a dozen General Systems ships, all the way up to the gargantuan Hall-Kir hulls. The nonpressurized parts of the station are where most work would be conducted in such a case. In a situation where a ship needed repairs, a quick cargo transfer, or other such large-scale operation, the work space could be pressurized and then service would commence. Not a cheap undertaking, you muse, but some companies went to a lot of effort to ensure their assets functioned well. Would that they felt the same about ensuring their assets’ safety.

Docking with the station is slow and deliberate, managed entirely by the station’s tractor field operator. Shis’so reports contact after fifteen minutes of waiting and minute movements of your ship.

Crane volunteers to continue as your Marik’s rot victim, so you swath him appropriately and detail several members of the assault team to pose as his medical escorts. You didn’t have many of the accouterments necessary to completely sell the premise—but that’s okay, since there were plenty of independent haulers who went around the galaxy with only the essentials. Your ragged crew would appear no different to the station… not that you needed to sell it for too long anyway.

The arrangement of your shipboard cameras allows you to watch the team as they step off the ship, and you can listen through their comms. Crane’s on a stretcher, almost completely covered, with the rest of the team arrayed around him.

“Is that the victim?” The station’s team is jogging towards your own, wearing the yellow-accented green uniforms of the company. So they do speak Standard. “What’s his status?”

“Major necrosis in the abdominal regions, he’s been in and out of consciousness the whole trip,” one of your crew says. The leader of the station’s team pushes past to the stretcher and starts to unwrap Crane, but before he can take the cloth off his face he’s rebuffed by the other members of the team.

“Like we said in the transmission: late stage,” he cautions. “I wouldn’t get that close until we’re in the med bay, unless you want the Central Service paying you a visit.”

>>5842997

Sufficiently deterred, the crew give your team no more trouble and they move deeper into the station. At that point, you have to follow via audio only as you begin to set everything else in motion.

“Deploy the EVA team,” you order. “Let’s see if we can find an entry point for them near the bridge. The rest of the assault teams can stack up near the airlock, masks on.”

Textbook, if there was such a thing for pirates. It seemed to you that despite the threat of pirates, which even Fleet was concerned about, people in vulnerable positions always seemed to believe that an attack would never come for them. How foolish they were to live life that way. You would be an effective awakening to reality.

“Short answer is no, then. Long answer is that we do some kind of emergency shove-off from the station we could.”

“Assault teams will try for it first, then,” you say. “EVA team: take the bridge as fast as you can, disabling the beacon is the priority. Everyone else can work at their own pace. Execute!”

The comms suddenly get very noisy as the teams moved into action. From the disguised group, the brief sounds of a struggle quickly abate as they overpower the outnumbered station med team; while several dozen more charge across the docking tube into the station. Everyone had a mix of stolen equipment—some of it third rate, some of it Federation standard—but everyone has had training, nor is this a first raid for everyone. On the station’s hull, the EVA team has positioned themselves over a wall deemed to be the thinnest part of the station skin and is deploying their repurposed mining laser.

Comm clears his throat, not quite an interruption, and you look at him. “We could try jamming our codes into their system, get computer access…”

“Negative,” Shis’so replies for you. “This station is of a new type. It has internal checks.”

Too bad you hadn’t thought of that possibility earlier, though it wouldn’t have worked anyway. But Shis’so had apparently already considered and eliminated that route! Good of them to do that. You stroke your chin thoughtfully.

Weaponsfire is heard throughout the lower decks as the teams move forward. As courageous a defense the company employees put up, they clearly have neither the will nor the training to fight your teams. Most of them just retreat, leaving swathes of the station easily occupied.

“Environmental and Data are controlled,” the main assault team responds. “I count three dead, one captured. The rest made it up the lift to Main.”

“Very good, keep moving. Gas the upper decks if necessary.”

>>5842999

The EVA team seems to be doing just that. After cutting their way in, they blazed through the hallways as fast as possibly, dropping gas canisters behind them so that the station’s crew would be too busy choking to try and follow. To their credit, the crew managed to seal the bridge in time, but the paltry locking mechanism melted away with the mining laser’s help to reveal the bridge crew. More gas had them on their knees, with only the particularly resistant ones earning a bullet or beam in their head.

“Beacon secured, skipper. Station’s ours.”

Not quite, you think, but it’s only a matter of time. “Get the regular surrender message up, broadcast it on Main.”

Most members of the assault team knew the message by heart, so it was a simple matter for the EVA team to bring the loudhailer on Main decks online and begin reading. “We advise surrender for any crew of the station who do not wish to die. If you would like to remain alive, place your weapons on the ground, get on your knees, and place your hands behind your head. Resistance will not be met with forgiveness.”

Simple and to the point. You had seen all sorts of reactions to the announcement in the past: compliance, defiance, apathy. From how the assault teams on Main deck are talking, it seems like it was fairly effective here. Still, there are odd reports from a weapon as stragglers show themselves. You thought it was fairly silly to die protecting someone else’s property… though death was considered by some to be a better alternative to capture by pirates. And for good reason, you allow, thinking about some of the other corsairs you’ve met over the years.

With the beacon safely offline and the station’s defenders neutralized, you decide that you have the time to take a walk around. Shis’so follows you, making use of a kind of hovering column that it calls home in cases of a trip off of your ship. Large enough to accommodate all of the spiders’ mass, the column has its own nutrient supply for the XO and carries them across distances they would rather not travel under their own power. So the pillar covered in spiders hovers alongside you as you cross over to the General Systems station.

Like most corporate outposts, it’s clean yet run down, the color-coded white corridors scuffed and discolored from use. The semiotic signs are still readable, of course, and everything functions, but only as required to pass inspection. Environmental and Data decks are just how you expected, and Main, the largest of them all, shows the most signs of a struggle. Dozens of scorches cover the walls, with the occasional corpse from a company man. Only one of your team members was mortally wounded, and the rest of his team had moved his corpse to the nearest airlock. A courtesy which, you noticed, had not been extended to any of the General Systems employees who had given their lives.

>>5843001

Following the red stripe on the floor leads you to the central congregation space of the deck, where the assault teams have gathered all of the survivors, wounded or not. All human, most of them seem resigned, a few others are upset, and one looks like he never meant to be captured in the first place. You step over to the defiant one and kneel down.

“Who might you be?” A question with the obvious answer, you think as you look at the special pip on his collar. The captain, or whatever the company called a captain. He says nothing in response.

“He’s the commander,” one of your men says, but you shush him with a hand.

“I know that. Only someone with the responsibility of this station would be so angry. No one else can be sued by the company for negligence… which you, unfortunately, seem to have plenty of.”

With some humor, you notice that Crane is hanging around with a weapon that he lifted from the station; you’re glad that even someone not part of the assault team could hold his own.

“Now, in a certain sense, you, your crew, and your station are my responsibility. The simple question is, what do I do with you?”

“I don’t expect much mercy from a pirate,” the commander says, deceptively calm. So much for spooking him. The rest of the crew, though, has some mixed reactions. You pace back and forth, thinking, while Shis’so looks on silently.

>Kill them all. Adults are far too old to be sold to slavers, and you’d be taking a risk inducting them into the crew.
>Leave them here. They weren’t your reason for being here anyway. You could bust open the station’s money reserve, jack the computer memory, and leave. There wouldn’t be any dealing with prisoners, that’s for sure.
>Hostages. Not a pirate’s typical move in this day and age, but possible. You have the room on your ship to keep them all there, though the question of how you get your ransom without revealing yourself is still there.
>Write-in.

>>5843002
>Write-in.
>Pressgang them on a temporary basis to grab everything important that won't compromise their life-support, then recruit anybody who seems up for it before leaving/taking hostage/killing everyone else, whatever everyone else decides. I'd prefer leaving them.
I want to take EVERYTHING we can reasonably take. Computers, space suits, spare supplies, etc. Even if the money and data is most important, I'm sure we can weasel some extra creds out if we ransack the place before we go.

>>5843002
>>Leave them here. They weren’t your reason for being here anyway. You could bust open the station’s money reserve, jack the computer memory, and leave. There wouldn’t be any dealing with prisoners, that’s for sure.

We're here for profit, trying to ransom them is a bit too risky. Wanton slaughter may earn us a reputation that leads to fierce resistance, better that our marks simply hand over their goods with as little struggle as possible.

>>5843002
>Leave them here. They weren’t your reason for being here anyway. You could bust open the station’s money reserve, jack the computer memory, and leave. There wouldn’t be any dealing with prisoners, that’s for sure.
Leave her Johnny, leave her
>>5842111
It's not "Free will" being bad, it's just being a standard villain in these sorts of settings, but I'd also consider Harlock to be a villain within his own setting

>>5843002
>>Kill them all. Adults are far too old to be sold to slavers, and you’d be taking a risk inducting them into the crew.

>>5843274
>It's ... "Free will" being bad,
You heard it here folks, local anon hates agency and self-determination.

>>5843002
>Write-in.
Ask if any want to join before having them "help" find all the goods on the station. Destroy any camera feeds, ship logs, communication history, and leave them afterwards

>>5843274
You have a kind of pride. But it's a woman's pride. A man's pride is not the same thing.

Alright, so loot and scoot while leaving any crew who aren't joining us is the plan. Writing.

“Captain,” the assault team leader says, stepping up to you. You look over at his brown eyes and worn face, hair buzzed short and helmet under his arm. As professional as pirates could get. “We’ve pulled an inventory off the station records. Quite a bit here.”

He hands you the pad and you take a look, running through the list. You have to agree: for a company waystation, it’s pretty well equipped. Possibly a long deployment one, where employees took out ten year contracts to live on the same station… a depressing prospect for someone like yourself. Space travel meant travel, not sitting lightyears away from the nearest settled planet.

Regardless, it looks like there’s plenty to loot, and you’ve got the room on your ship to carry it. The only question is how to get all of it from the station to the Flow My Tears. Your crew are happy to help as long as they get their cut at the end, of course, but there’s a more efficient way to go about it. You call Shis’so over and consult briefly with them and the assault team leader (Wilmar is his name) before stepped back in front of the captives.

“Listen up! Here is a proposition for you all. Whether you like it or not, my crew is going to take everything worth more than ten credits off of this station. Now, since you were so considerate as to keep the station intact for us, you will help us move all of these goods off. If you feel disinclined to help, then I advise you keep that sentiment to yourself. If, however, you are interested in making some money back,” here you pause for effect, “I am prepared to offer anyone a position on my crew. You will begin as any other junior crew member, in whatever job we assign you to, and with the same cut of the winnings as any other beginner crewmate. You have until our departure to decide.”

Wilmar steps forward as you step back, setting his teams to work instantly on sweeping the station for any usable items. While the essentials such as spacesuits, weaponry, and sleds are the first to go, you task some technicians with yanking all the computers save for those necessary to keep the station running. You restock your supply of food from the station’s hydroponics bay (Prohibition-compliant, so no meat), replenish fresh air although that wasn’t strictly necessary so soon after your respite at the Guild station, and of course, raid the station’s cash reserve. Several hundred thousand credits, on top of whatever you would make from pawning off the stolen items. A great payout.

Walking back through the station, you see your crew watching over the conscripted crew. With pirates watching them, they work efficiently enough, diligently dismantling their own station and hauling it onboard your own ship. Your own men are helping, of course, since you still feel uneasy lingering here even if the distress beacon never got activated.

>>5843653

And for good reason. “Captain,” your comm buzzes. It’s Shis’so, who you ordered to return to the Flow My Tears in the interim. “What is your present location?”

“The station bridge,” you murmur into the comm. “What’s the matter?”

“The low-weight vessel near the station is moving. It appears to be drifting away from the station.”

You mentally curse yourself for neglecting the other ship, even if it appeared harmless. Unlike defense platforms, a ship had an actual crew, a crew which could make decisions on its own regardless of what the station said. And you had been docked and silent for quite some time. You should have followed up with an IFF ping or something once docked. Was it a General Systems ship? Possibly, since the initial scan said it was fairly stripped down. So not a threat, but still moving…

But Shis’so had described it as “drifting.” The Carlottan was deliberate, they would never choose a word that wasn’t accurate, and drifting was something that derelicts and disabled ships did. “Has it raised shields?”

“No, sir.”

Even stranger. You tell your XO to hold and then switch channels to the assault team frequency. “Wilmar, what’s the status of the loading?”

“I’d say we’re three quarters of the way there, sir. I’ve got a team that’s downloading all the data we can use from the main banks, then they’ll wipe the whole thing. Disable the defensive systems too.”

“Good. Let’s see if we can’t expedite that. I get the feeling we might need to leave sooner than expected.”

“Got it, skipper.”

You’re almost done. Just need to keep a cool head. Now, about that ship. Shis’so is still waiting for you on the channel when you switch back. “Any idea what started the drifting?”

“The ship was not being watched when it started. It could be intentional, it could be a derelict experiencing a random power surge. Cosmic wind is also a common explanation for these happenings, but has not been scientifically proven.”

“Alright, thank you.” A ghost ship, or simply a new threat. Well, you had some options.

>The ship’s small enough that you can grab it in a tractor field. Holding it there and jamming it will be enough for now.
>Same as above, but retask an assault team to make another EVA and board the vessel. Better put this to rest as soon as possible.
>It seems to have no shields. A simple blast with an EM beam would be lethal to the ship.
>Aren’t you thinking too fast? Have your comms officer hail the ship before proceeding.
>Write-in (feel free to make decisions about the station as well)

>>5843655
>Write-in (feel free to make decisions about the station as well)
Ask the Station crew about it. After that;
>>Aren’t you thinking too fast? Have your comms officer hail the ship before proceeding.

>>5843655
>Write-in (feel free to make decisions about the station as well)
Ask the commander about the ship. Ask if any have already decided to join and have them hail the ship from the station.

>>5843663
+1

>>5843396
I have pride in knowing that I would stand by what I believe no matter what others may call me, I stand by what I believe and do not bend by what the thoughts of others are.
>>5843655
>>5843663
Ditto

>>5843663
Support

Sorry anons, had to do a lot of driving today and didn't have a lot of time to write. Here you go.

----

Alright, hold it, you’re moving too fast. Assess as much as you can, then go from there. Who would know most about the ship?

You find the station commander busy lugging an electronics case down a hallway under the watchful eye of one of your crew. At a gesture from you, the crewman stops the commander and you approach him, looking down at the man sweating from his unexpected labor.

“There’s a low-weight ship out there. What do you know about it?”

Annoyingly, the commander decides to stay quiet. You casually brush aside your coat to reveal the sidearm in its holster, a tactic which usually works. The commander doesn’t look too apprehensive, but relents nevertheless. “It’s an old company vessel that got dumped on us. We don’t keep it manned, but there’s a low-level tractor field on it just to keep it from drifting away naturally.”

Ah. So it was a derelict after all. Stepping out of the commander’s earshot, you comm Wilmar again. “When the EVA team took the bridge, did it alter any of the station’s systems?”

“We might’ve turned a few things off when we started going through the databanks,” the team leader says in response to your odd question.

“Like a tractor field?”

A moment’s pause. “I don’t see one online, so probably.”

The one time that some attentiveness would’ve really paid off. Not that anyone was expecting it to be a problem, you remind yourself. The logical answer is that the commander is telling the truth, and the tractor field was accidentally deactivated by the assault team while they were on the station bridge, which let the derelict begin to drift.

One last thing to check, though. You have your assault team take one of the crew who had already decided to join you and meet you on the station bridge, where you stand next to the yet-untouched comms console. First you ask the would-be pirate the same question you asked the commander, and upon getting the same answer, you directed him to open a hailing frequency.

“You’re going to hail that ship as a member of this station and request a status check, as you would in a normal situation.”

He balks. “I’m not a comms officer-”

You reach over and open the channel yourself, pointing the mic at him with no further words. With what you interpret as bemusement, the man makes a generic inquiry to the vessel and steps away.

No response.

How do you proceed?

>>5843655

>1) tractor the ship
>2) target the ship
>3) hail the ship. No point in warning them we're on to them before we're ready to vaporize them.
>4) demand surrender, fire warning shot
>5) if they break tractor lock, vaporize them
>6) if they do nothing, EVA, board and secure.

>>5844783
>1) tractor the ship
>7) EVA, board and secure.

>>5843758
>but I'd also consider Harlock to be a villain within his own setting
>Harlock
>The only man alive to know and fight against the Mizone
>An alien race coming to kill and take over the Earth
>Harlock
>Who took it upon himself to repel the invaders
>Even while the government of the planet Earth almost killed everyone who could warn the citizens, did nothing to counteract their coming, and branded him a criminal
>Harlock
>a villian

It's okay to admit you didn't watch a 50 year old anime, understand its plot, realize the motivation of the character, or know what a Romantic hero is, anon. The fact that you would ever consider Harlock a villain goes to show how little you know of people, the world, and what it means to be human.

>>5844783
>>1) tractor the ship

>>5844788
>>5844864
Lads, I'm pretty sure that's another anon formatting his vote in a list, not the QM.
>>5844783
Support

>>5844888
oof

>>5844795
It's alright to admit you don't know the meaning of the word Villain, within the universe most people consider him a villain, he's the protagonist and hero of the anime but it is possible for people to have different viewpoints on things especially if they're being rule over by a tyrannical system.

>>5844961
>it is possible for people to have different viewpoints on things especially if they're being rule over by a tyrannical system.
Hey the Romanians are absolutely right, Vlad the impaler is a fucking hero. The Turks and their libel about him being a villain is bullshit.

>>5844965
Agreed, short-stake impalement is an effective deterrent and the turks had no business in the Carpathian Alps.

Anons, while I appreciate the literary debate and will not comment on it so I can remain impartial I implore you to vote ;-; (unless everyone just agrees with the first two voters)

Update in the next 12 hours hopefully

>>5844783
>>1) tractor the ship
then
>>6) if they do nothing, EVA, board and secure.

>>5844788
Support

>>5844788
>support

With the station operations in order and nearing completion, you decide to return to your own bridge, where Shis’so has enlarged the tri-D display to focus on your own ship and the movement of the other vessel. It’s still drifting, and you immediately order the weapons officer to catch it in a tractor field.

“Locked, skipper.”

The EVA team had returned to the ship with you and were already prepping to take a second trip over to the possible derelict. All the old tales about ghost ships were resurfacing in your head as you watched them deploy across space, the Flow My Tears’ available weaponry targeting the ship just in case.

The ship’s interior is still pressurized when the team forces the airlock to cycle, revealing a wide, poorly illuminated corridor. In the way of most space hulks, everything appears neglected while not actually being dirty or broken; the result of abandonment without the weather or inevitable animal life inherent to planetary mothball facilities. Still, the lack of regular use has left the ship a bit creaky: doors open sluggishly and computer terminals take minutes to register an input.

“A bit dated,” you murmur. Shis’so swells briefly in their position over the console.

“The ship appears to have been stripped down significantly, similar to our current activities on the station.”

You consider that for a moment. “For a similar reason?”

“The information is insufficient to determine that.”

Naturally. You tap the comm on and order the away team to look into the nearest executive console for some more concrete information, assuming the ship’s log hasn’t been purged. The commander hadn’t mentioned exactly why the ship was put here, or why the company had dumped it on them to begin with instead of scrapping it—that would be interesting information to know, to be sure. Derelicts (supposed derelicts) were not usually something that companies put out in the middle of nowhere for no reason.

Not that interstellar freight companies were your area of expertise. Fleet dealt with civilian navies as little as possible, leaving that job to the Central Service and the FSP’s civilian organs for the most part, and as a pirate, your dealings with civilians lie mostly in holding them at gunpoint. You know as much as you had to in order to take advantage of them… something that you’re quite comfortable with, all things considered.

The comm brings your attention back to the matter at hand. “System records have been deleted,” the team leader is saying, “but we can still get a diagnosis on the systems. The environmental systems don’t show a lot of bacterial or fungal growth, hydroponics is cleaned out, Data deck is completely empty, and Main doesn’t show any signs of habitation. The ship is functioning in a standby mode, though. Minimal thruster usage allowed, no FTL, no shields.”

>>5847278

A pretty standard state for a ship like this to be in. They would be left on a low-power mode right up until getting mothballed, at which point the ship would well and truly be shut down. Evidently this one had not yet reached that point. “Crew?”

“No signs of anyone but us, but we’re heading to the bridge now.”

You tap the comm to listen-only and look at your XO. “Assessment?”

“Difficult to tell. It may be that General Systems is running out of space for its reserve fleet, so it is beginning to move them to other stations. Or this station is a waystation for derelicts being sent to mothball facilities. The variables are too many to decide on a single most likely possibility.”

“Um.” More convoluted theories are running through your head. Was this a sign of some internal shift at the company? Or perhaps a conspiracy which the station was a part of? But the commander had not seemed to be lying, even if he didn’t want to talk to you. And the ship was well and truly abandoned, not in any state to be given away unless the gift-receiver wanted a vessel with next to no capability. You didn’t think that your instincts were wrong, though: something was up with this ship, even if you couldn’t find out now.”

“Bridge is secured, skipper,” the team reports. “And it’s just as empty. Most of the systems have been locked as well, but from what we can tell there’s no part of the ship that’s been occupied recently. IFF’s been removed as well.”

Okay.

>You’ve got time. Search the ship from top to bottom for any clues about its origin or purpose.
>Finders keepers. Deploy a skeleton crew to return the ship to full functionality, and take it with you as a prize ship.
>You’ve done your due diligence; leave the ship and finish up on the station.
>Blow it up. (What? Pirates don’t need to explain themselves)
>Write-in.

>>5847279
>Finders keepers. Deploy a skeleton crew to return the ship to full functionality, and take it with you as a prize ship.


>You’ve got time. Search the ship from top to bottom for any clues about its origin or purpose.
Just the top if we don't have time for both now.

>>5847279
>>Finders keepers. Deploy a skeleton crew to return the ship to full functionality, and take it with you as a prize ship.

>>5847279
>>You’ve got time. Search the ship from top to bottom for any clues about its origin or purpose.
Let's make sure it's not trapped.

If we don't have the time, scuttle her and-
>Blow it up.

If we do;
>Finders keepers.
Then we can keep, sell, or strip the ship later.

>>5847279
>>You’ve got time. Search the ship from top to bottom for any clues about its origin or purpose.
>>Finders keepers. Deploy a skeleton crew to return the ship to full functionality, and take it with you as a prize ship.

>>5847279
>Write-in.
My spidey sense, pun not intended XO, says its corporate espionage work or trafficking something. Used in a corp hit as if it was pirates perhaps, and sent out here to lay low and eventual refit. Got something stored somewhere hidden, a black space on the ship schematics, or inside a corp version of a smuggler's compartment. Check the latest orders in the data we mined for messages from corporate for an obvious or coded order regarding the ship. Say we intend to take the ship infront of the Captain and see if he has an unusual reaction to it.

>>5847318
Seconded.

“Search the rest of the ship––make sure it’s not trapped in any way.”

You start thinking through your own crew, estimating the impact it would have on your ship to take a handful of them and send them to the other vessel. Most smaller spacecraft (at least, Fleet craft) could be flown by just a bridge crew, if not a single pilot, so you detail the minimum amount of people to transfer over in a space-rated sled.

“Wilmar, what’s the update on the station?”

“We’ve pretty much cleaned it out, skipper. The new recruits are ready to come aboard at your command.”

“And how many did we get?”

“Baker’s dozen, sir.”

Well… less than you had thought, but not bad. It was likely that a few potential recruits had changed their mind after you’d pressganged them, but that wasn’t a bad thing—if someone hated you just because you’d made them do hard labor for a few hours, you didn’t want them on your crew anyway. The thirteen men and women who did want to join likely had both the conviction and will to serve adequately… or at least they had the beginning of that. Everyone would come around eventually; they had to.

While the away team is sweeping the rest of the ship, you start sifting through the returns from the station. Aside from the monetary collection, you’ve got a wealth of information from the station’s computer system on other General Systems ships and stations in the sector. Certainly enough to give you a steady source of targets in the immediate future, even if you ignored the tougher nuts. Shis’so emits an observational hum as they examine the data with you.

“Well recorded, and this is without decrypting some records.”

“Take a look at it when you can,” you say. “You can tell me what you make of it and we’ll compare.”

>>5856097

Your crew is starting to return to the Flow My Tears, with the final team finishing up by taking the station’s defense systems offline and stripping any record on the sensors of your ship having visited. The station crew left behind would be able to attest to your presence, of course, but your ship was externally similar to thousands of other cargo haulers, and without their sensor data, it’s unlikely that General Systems would have anything worth reporting to Fleet for a formal investigation, particularly when your raid was just one of many that happened on a weekly basis across Federation space.

The report from the away team is the last thing you’re waiting for, and it appears to be favorable. The assault team has cleared the rest of the ship, and the skeleton crew’s brought the reactor out of standby and into a fully online state. There was nothing to stop you from taking the ship with you, besides navigation—which you fix by having Shis’so slave the prize ship to your own computer, so it’ll follow behind you (sort of. Even the most sophisticated computer can’t track other vessels in FTL mode, so it’ll always be a jump behind). Good enough for your purposes.

You’re almost done on the station and the prize ship has been successfully captured. Is there anything else you would like to do before departing? Less time-sensitive tasks like interacting with the crew, going over captured goods, and deciding how to spend your money can be done in between raids/missions.

Apologies for the wait and short length anons. It's been another busy week and probably will be another one. I'll try to get another update out within a week and after that, I should be back on a faster schedule.

>>5856101
>>5856099
Thanks and no problem. Nothing that I can think of, since we stripped anything worth taking.

>>5856099
We are good to go, engage.

Also welcome back.

Ships had lost something from their distant past. A captain used to approach his ship lying at dockside, visible to the naked eye, crew bustling on the deck as flags waved in the sea air, and crossed the gangplank to board his vessel. Now the crew of any vessel had only to walk down several identical corridors, cross an unremarkable umbilical, and they would be aboard the ship. You supposed it was all rather quaint.

“Crew aboard, skipper,” the operations officer reports.

“Very good. Helm, take us out.”

With a silent nod, the pilot releases the ship from the station and begins to guide it away, past the silent defense platforms and past the errant ship, which begins to fall in behind you as the other crew takes its cue. You lean back in your chair, nodding slightly to yourself.

“Course?” helm asks. You think for a second and reply:

“The Point. Your speed.”

“Aye. Entering FTL state with a flux margin of point-one-seven.”

The farther you travel from the station, the more satisfied you become. For what had been planned as a raid for only cash and information resulted in quite a bit of a bonus, even if the prize ship still seems suspect and you need to actually sell off the stolen goods before you can count them as profit. A raid like that could build your name more than you anticipated, too, but that was assuming that word got out… that would happen as long as your crew talked while at port, which they always did. Whether or not people believed it was irrelevant.

With the ship on a steady course, you stand up, giving command to Shis’so before you step off the bridge. Beyond the sealed doors lie several narrow hallways branching off to different parts of the upper deck, with only a single large corridor leading to the main lift. The two guards posted nod to you as you step inside and begin the descent to the lower levels of the ship.

>>5864822

Like most merchant vessels, the large amidships corridor of the Flow My Tears runs almost the entire length of the vessel’s storage area, with a similarly sized one crossing it at the beam. In normal operation, such a hallway would be where cargo could be loaded onto the ship via the immense pressurized doors. As it were, those doors saw minimal use, as your crew preferred to travel through the more moderately sized loading doors on hallways subordinate to the main one. Despite the lack of use, though, most of the crew used it as something akin to a main avenue, traveling to and fro the various storage bays being used to keep the loot from the station. Only four were in use, and only because the quartermaster had wanted to separate items for ease of organizing. You saunter into the first bay to find Starkey overseeing a sensor module being loaded onto a pallet of similar components.

“Bust that container and I’ll be seeing you off on the next transport bound for Shankill! Watch it!”

His words went unheeded by the lift operator, but despite the frantic movements of the exoskeleton, the crate made it safely onto the stack. With some effort, Starkey tears his gaze away from the ongoing work and over to you, at whom he offers a gruff smile. “Captain. Still sorting through everything, but it looks good so far. I think the initial estimate was good.”

You only glance at the list, sure that the quartermaster would never falsify his report. Certainly not when he’s part of the small percentage of crew receiving a bigger payout. Something catches your attention, though. “‘Special item?’”

“Your eyes only, captain,” he says, tucking his hands into the front pockets on his shipsuit. “Something I set aside.”

Sometimes expensive items get pocketed; that’s just a fact of life on pirate ships. But Starkey was considerate enough to save something for you, something… unique. He and you were both canny enough to know that money was hardly the most important thing in many circles.

“Starkey, what… is this?”

>An authentic Jahma Authority commodore’s longcoat. Blue with white and gold accents, it’s the picture of authority, inspired by Old Earth fashion and carrying centuries of naval history in its styling. Not protective in the slightest, and might fall apart if you get too acrobatic.
>LaBauve-type laspistol, manufacturing date… wow, ‘23. This thing was old. Laspistols had been out of fashion for a while, needleguns being the most common sidearm, but laser weaponry had its place with collectors and enthusiasts. It was flashy, sure, but let’s just say it sends a strong message in combat. You’ll need some practice on it.
>Container of ash. Gateway had been… well, nobody talked about it. But you’d find remnants of the thing scattered around the galaxy, reminders of it all. Not that anyone had really forgotten. What the hell had it all been for, anyway?

>>5864823
>LaBauve-type laspistol, manufacturing date… wow, ‘23. This thing was old. Laspistols had been out of fashion for a while, needleguns being the most common sidearm, but laser weaponry had its place with collectors and enthusiasts. It was flashy, sure, but let’s just say it sends a strong message in combat. You’ll need some practice on it.

>>5864823
>>An authentic Jahma Authority commodore’s longcoat. Blue with white and gold accents, it’s the picture of authority, inspired by Old Earth fashion and carrying centuries of naval history in its styling. Not protective in the slightest, and might fall apart if you get too acrobatic.

>>5864823
>LaBauve-type laspistol, manufacturing date… wow, ‘23. This thing was old. Laspistols had been out of fashion for a while, needleguns being the most common sidearm, but laser weaponry had its place with collectors and enthusiasts. It was flashy, sure, but let’s just say it sends a strong message in combat. You’ll need some practice on it.

>An authentic Jahma Authority commodore’s longcoat. Blue with white and gold accents, it’s the picture of authority, inspired by Old Earth fashion and carrying centuries of naval history in its styling. Not protective in the slightest, and might fall apart if you get too acrobatic.

>>5864823
Merry Christmas!

Okay so this definitely died because the holidays took me by surprise. That said, I'll get a new thread going soon (in the next day or two ideally), picking up from where we left off selling our loot. Apologies to everyone for going AWOL.

>>5874208
thank you anon :)

>>5882367
Nice! Shit happens.