Frozen Soul, and other works: Chapter 126 - Public Relations (Retaliations?)

(Mercenary Vessel Fall of Theramore, Interstellar Space)

“-dy!”

Everything was pain. Oh Gods, why did everything hurt? She hadn’t had THAT much to drink, right? No, wait, she was on ship. She never drank on ship. Bad example for the crew. So why did everything hurt? And what was that wailing?

“Milady! Can you understand me?”

The lights finally stopped swimming in front of her eyes, and Lady Proudmoore managed to focus on the person speaking to her. Who? Oh, yes, the Captain. He looked like he’d been injured.

“What?”

“The Black Stars, milady. They hit us with something we’ve never seen before. We’re on emergency power and dead in the water.”

Lady Proudmoore grit her teeth, fighting through the pain (and probable concussion) to say, “How bad?”

“Unknown, milady. We have limited internal communications, but they are sketchy where we do have them, and we can’t raise anyone aft of section five on any deck. It is like the aft two thirds of the ship are just GONE!”

“Sensors!”

The sensor tech who had been watching the fight came up, and touched her shoulder lightly, and she felt her head get slightly better. “Sorry, Ma’am. Best I can do with my powers. Right now we’re triaging wounded and I’m the only one with healing Psy powers.” He took a breath, and then said, “I have gone over the data we have before we were hit. In each case we detected weapons fire from the Starlight Raven approximately one hundred and twenty seconds AFTER we got the light from the frigates being destroyed. Sensors went out before we could get the light from whatever hit us.”

That thought chilled the blood of any spacer. There was only one thing that could make your enemy detect the light of an attack after the attack had already hit. “S-superluminal? In a tarpit?”

The Captain looked shaken as well. “But there are laws! Treaties! It is madness! No one would dare use superluminal weapons! The entire galaxy would rise up against them!”

Slowly, Lady Proudmoore shook her head. “There are treaties against using them against inhabited planets, even by accident. If a superluminal weapon should miss and hit any planet or moon with a population, the treaties would demand everyone descend upon Black Star and rip it apart. But there are no planets here.”

The Captain looked ‘agitated’, to put it mildly, and she had to agree with the emotion at the moment. “How did they launch a superluminal weapon while in a tarpit? Surely there is no one mad enough to tamper with the safeguards?”

The Sensor tech shook his head. “The owner is a Nomad. Didn’t one of them start the Imperial Civil War by crashing a shuttle into the Imperial Palace since they knew they wouldn’t die?”

Lady Proudmoore sighed. “There is no point asking if ‘whether’ someone would do such a thing. They clearly have. Now, can we get this news out? Or call for a rescue?”

The Captain shook his head as he looked up from a tablet one of the techs handed him. “Long-range communications are dead. They were located in section seven, deck two.”

“How bad is it, really, Captain?”

“We managed to get some of the external sensors online again. Everything aft of Section 5 is simply gone, Milady. Most decks Section 5 is breached, or at least damaged. We have confirmed life signs from twenty-two crewmen, including bridge crew. The rest of the ship’s crew is most likely KIA. I am afraid we will not be coming home with a sterling record, Milady.”

Lady Proudmoore snorted at the thought. Three ships destroyed, and only 22 survivors out of a detachment that had sported almost thirteen hundred? Sterling record indeed!

*THUNK* *THUNK* *THUNK*

Blinking at the sudden sounds of metal on metal reverberating through the hull, Lady Proudmoore looked at the sensor tech. “What is happening?”

“Wait one. Trying to get a picture…” The Sensor tech gulped as he looked up from his tablet, and turned it so the Captain and she could see. “Cables, ma’am. We are being taken under tow.”

“So we’re not going to be destroyed, but captured, hmm?”

The Captain nodded his head. “The Black Stars are registered as a mercenary group, so there is some hope that they will abide by the Accords and offer Ransom.”

“This is the Black Star Ship Starlight Raven. We are conducting legitimate salvage operations under the Unified Mercenary Force Accords. Given that your ships initiated conflict with ours without prior declaration of intent vis a vis Section 3.14.159-26 of the UMFA, your vessel and your persons are to be considered property of the Black Star Company until such time as you are either Ransomed to your planet of origin or sold at auction or in private sale as overseen by a member of the Interstellar Slavers’ Guild.”

“As a member of the Interstellar Slavers’ Guild, as well as the owner of the Black Star Company, it is my pleasure to announce that if Kul’tiras does not pay your Ransom, you will all be sold to truly horrible places, where I do not doubt that you will never know freedom again. Should any of you choose to resist when our forces come aboard to collar you in preparation of transferring you over to our ship, you will be stunned, and THEN collared with your Stepford protocols activated, forcing you to sit, silent and motionless, in a compartment until we reach Kul’tiras. Of course, by that time you will no doubt have died from dehydration, if the life support doesn’t fail first. I would recommend you not resist.”

Lady Proudmoore sighed, and said, “Help me to my feet. We must at least look presentable before we are shamed in our return to Kul’tiras.”

(BSS Starlight Raven, Kul’tiras Gateway, Free Worlds Alliance)

“Unknown Freighter, this is Kul’tiran Navy Vessel Waycrest’s Pride. You are in Kul’tiras Space, hauling the remains of a warship. Identify yourself, and cut your engines to prepare for inspection.”

I looked at the time. Hmm. Just under a minute since I exited the Gateway. Not bad, not bad at all. Still, they were getting awfully presumptuous. Better give them something else to think about before they started getting pushy. Maybe… ooh, yes, that would do nicely.

“Raven, have Lady Proudmoore come to the cockpit.”

Raven chuckled. “You do know she’s still in that maid outfit Sana is making her wear, right?”

“Even better! Have her up her on the double. And when we go live, prepare to send our response in the clear to everyone in the system, and rebroadcast to every news group in Known Space that you can reach.”

The hatch opened, and Lady Proudmoore was standing there, dressed in a uniform that could best be described as ‘Slutty French Maid’, with her hair dyed pink and pulled up in two side pony-tails. Her face was frozen in a vapid smile, like a perfect bimbo. I nodded slightly, that would do nicely. “Good. Now, you will stay there and smile while we project your humiliation to all of Known Space.”

Turning to face the camera, I waited until Raven gave me the signal that we were live, and said, “This is Captain Mirikon Mollen of the Black Star Ship, Starlight Raven. Negative on cutting our engines and negative on inspection. We are conducting a salvage operation under Section 3.14.159-26 of the Unified Mercenary Forces Accord, and will not yield our bounty to you.”

“That Section only applies to the destroying craft, not freighters hired to haul—”

“I know damn well what it applies to, you rat-infested fecal connoisseur! I destroyed the Fall of Theramore, Culling of Stratholme, and Lament of Arthas after those three ships of the Kul’tiras Mercenary Group attacked my lone freighter in interstellar space. Unfortunately, the miserable hunk of wreckage was the only piece large enough to be worth hauling back. In accordance with Section 3.14.159-26, I have also taken all of the surviving crew of the Fall of Theramore as my property until such time as they can be ransomed or sold at auction. Among the survivors is one Lady Jaina Proudmoore who you can see behind me. She and the rest of her crew are available to be ransomed. To ensure that all offers are treated fairly, I will retransmit all ransom offers and counteroffers in the clear system-wide. If offers are not sufficient for the annoyance the Kul’tiras Mercenary Group has provided me, then as a member of the Interstellar Slavers’ Guild in good standing I will conduct an auction to sell them at the Zandalar Slave Market in the Ihm Imperium, where no doubt they will go for a heady price.”

“Also in accordance with the UMFA, I am announcing the public sale by auction of the remains of the Fall of Theramore, starting in five hours, which should give plenty of time for anyone within range of a Gateway who wishes to bid on this pitiful piece of scrap that couldn’t even stand up to a freighter.”

I smiled into the camera. “I will not be entertaining further questions until after the disposition of the wreckage and slaves. This transmission ends.”

(Confederate Intelligence Service HQ, Somewhere on Dimiya)

“Sir! The Starlight Raven has just resurfaced!”

Alok Paxisys sighed in relief. He had initially thought that sending the warning would allow Mollen an easy chance to evade or defeat the planned ambush, but as hours turned to days and there was still no word about the Raven, he grew concerned. When the BSS Articuno, another Raven-class ship, appeared in the Starlight Raven’s place, delivering the cargo she was supposed to be carrying, he got worried. Now it was almost two weeks after the Raven had left Dimiya, and he was finally getting some answers.

Looking over to his aide, Aldred, he asked, “Well? Where did they end up?”

Aldred shook his head. “They ended up in Kul’tiras, sir. Eyes on the Gateway there said that they dialed in from Desolace.”

“Why in the hells would he go there?”

“Because he was hauling what looked like maybe half a warship behind him, saying it was salvage from a battle. He claimed to have been attacked by three Kul’tiran Navy—” he coughed, “sorry, Kul’tiras Mercenary Group ships, and he named two frigates and a heavy cruiser confirmed to be out at the time. Preliminary scans in system say that the remains of the ship he is hauling is the Fall of Theramore, as he claimed when he announced his presence to every news group in Known Space. We also have video that says he has captured the young Lady Proudmoore and is offering to Ransom her under the Mercenary Accords.”

Paxisys waved off the aide’s backhanded joke. It was an open secret that the Kul’tiras Mercenary Group was just Kul’tiran Navy being sent outside their borders. That was a polite legal fiction they were allowed to get away with because it was profitable for everyone involved. But to take on three of their ships alone and come out on top? That was impressive. Looking over to Aldred, he said, “And that is why we don’t want to be on his bad side. The man is damnably good at what he does. He simultaneously humiliated the Kul’tirans in front of the galaxy and made certain that he will get top dollar for ransom, if only to keep their enemies from buying her on the slave market.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“So, how did he cheat?”

“Sir?” Aldred looked confused.

“The man once told me himself, ‘If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying’. Oh sure, he’ll play fair in an exhibition, or in training where you’re trying to learn new things, but otherwise he plays to win. So assume he cheated somehow. Were there any Black Star ships unaccounted for?”

“Only Black Star ship out of dock during the time the Starlight Raven was ambushed would be the Articuno, and they didn’t leave the system until after the attack occurred.”

“So they want anyone watching to know unequivocally that only one ship of theirs was involved. Cheeky, and definitely his style. So, one freighter took on three warships and survived. How badly damaged were they?”

“Long-range scans said they looked undamaged. Could they have been faked?”

“Not with the timeframe. It would have taken most of that two weeks to haul the wreckage through space to the Desolace gate. They didn’t have time to stop for repairs, and their hulls mean that any real battle damage would have required some time to repair, even if they could repair underway. It isn’t something you’d do at warp.”

Paxisys frowned. One freighter took down three warships, essentially untouched. Obviously he cheated somehow, but in what way? Perhaps a new weapon? “Any modifications to the Raven, that we can tell?”

“Yes sir. Scans before they left port indicate that the missile bays have been replaced with torpedo launchers. This dramatically reduces their available load, going from forty-eight missiles to eight torpedoes in the same space. Dual launchers fore and aft. Bays would have six forward-facing torpedoes and two aft-facing ones, unless they expanded the space.”

“Their Dragonbreath torpedoes are powerful, but not THAT powerful. What could they have done?”

“Sir, why not just ask him? He’ll probably be in good spirits after ransoming the slaves.”

Alok laughed. “From the mouths of babes! Yes, have a courier deliver a message to one of the Black Star offices, asking for a meeting ‘when convenient’.”