บท 11: Pirate Base

The pirate base was different from what I thought it might look like.

When I reached the location on the map, what I found was a half destroyed battleship floating in an asteroid field. Though from the fact that there were still lights on some parts of the ship, it was still somewhat functional I suppose.

I guess the pirates must have found this place and converted the functional parts of the ship to turn it into their base, especially since the hangar part of the ship seemed to be one of said functional parts.

I had chosen to approach the base the stealthy way which involved shutting down power to my shields and pretty much everything else while having my engines at only quarter power with the bare minimum thrust.

This would allow me to slip past most scanners as just another floating debris so unless the pirates have some highly advanced scanners, I should be able to get close without raising any alarms.

As I floated by the derelict, I tried to gauge how big of a pirate crew I was dealing with.

There were about two or three Fighter class ships hovering around the hangar entrance, probably acting as guards, though I wonder why they needed something like that.

It's not like their location was compromised, right?

I mean… It is, but they don't know that yet.

I adjusted my flight path a little so that I could peek into the hangar, hoping that I could see how many ships were docked there. If I could see how many ships were docked inside, I could roughly guess how many pirates might be inside the base.

As my line of sight levelled with the hangar, I counted at least three A Class ships and two B Class ships.

Honestly, that's more ships than I thought there would be but it was still a number that I could deal with.

A safe guess would be that there's at least a dozen to two dozens of pirates active in this base. Sounds about right for such a base.

I did another quick scan of the base, trying to see if there might be any unexpected surprises waiting for me.

Since this was a battleship, are the weapons on it working?

I couldn't get too close or I'd get spotted but I still tried to move as close as I could to check the turrets on the ship.

That was when I heard the warning that my ship was being targeted.

I looked in the direction that my computer was warning me about the threat and I saw one of the battleship turrets tracking my ship.

Fuck, I guess that answers my question of whether the weapon systems were online… And I guess the pirates set it to target and shoot at any foreign objects that stray within a certain distance of their base.

Damn… Ok… This makes things a little complicated but it's still fine, I can still deal with this.

Let's just do a quick scan of how many turrets there are first…

Four with two on each side? That can be easily dealt with.

Alright. Guess I'm doing this… Once I start, there's no going back…

I sucked in a breath and let it out slowly.

My fingers then flew across my console and powered up my shields, engines and weapon systems.

My other hand immediately activated the engine boost and propelled my ship forward and out of the turret's firing arc, avoiding the energy bolts that it shot towards me the moment I increased my ship's power levels.

I then pulled back on my controls, forcing my ship to do a loop back to point my guns at the turret that was still in the midst of turning towards me.

My photon laser and chainguns fired at the same time, piercing through the turret's armour plating and blowing it up.

If the pirates didn't know they were under attack, they certainly do now.

I turned on my railgun turret's targeting system to target enemy fighters specifically and it swivelled to fire at the pirate closest to me.

That poor guy didn't even manage to react before my projectile tore through his ship's hull, turning it into a wreck as its engines sputtered and died.

I flew past the first turret I destroyed and went straight for the second turret, keeping myself in its blind spot to avoid getting shot at.

I used my chainguns and ballistic cannons this time since I was this close to it, the turret ripped to shreds with just a single salvo.

I swung my ship past the turret just as the other two pirate ships caught sight of me, both of them turning to engage me.

One of them tried to shoot me with their energy blasters but I engaged my ship's thrusters to do a barrel roll and avoided the shots.

My railgun turret swivelled back and fired a shot at my enemy, catching the pirate completely by surprise as the projectile literally cut through his ship and separated it into two.

The last pirate tried to flank me but I cut my engine's power and diverted all power to thrusters, turning my ship to face it.

A hail of energy blasted out from my chaingun and tore the pirate fighter apart, the ship spinning out of control and crashing into the side of the derelict battleship before exploding.

The other two turrets weren't a problem for now since I was outside their arc of fire, allowing me to focus my attention on the hangar bay instead.

I engaged my reverse thrusters to keep my ship right above the hangar exit, positioning myself to be in the perfect ambush spot above any ship that was leaving the hangar.

In other words, I was in a perfect spot to shoot any ship that chooses to come out of the hangar bay right now.

And as though on cue, right as I trained my weapons at the doors, an A Class Fighter was in the process of leaving from the hangar bay.

That ship barely had time to turn before my photon laser pierced through the centre of its hull, leaving a hole in its belly and sending the Fighter spinning out of control away from the derelict battleship and into the void of space.

The other two Fighters left the hangar right after that, only to be gunned down by a hail of energy bullets coming from my chaingun that shredded apart their engines and wings.

The two ships crashed into each other and exploded in a giant ball of flame, joining the first one in the void of space.

I waited there for the other two B Class ships to appear but… Even after waiting there for a while, neither of them seemed to be showing up.

Hmm… I was sure that I spotted those two ships sitting in the hangar just now… And this hangar bay only had one way in and out right?

Wait… Could it be that the other side had a door that was closed and they only just opened it to sneak out from the other side?

I spun my ship around and sped towards the other side of the battleship, destroying the two remaining turrets on the way quickly.

When I reached the other side however, I found no hangar bays on the other side.

Odd… So they weren't coming out from here as well… Then why have they not come out yet?

I flew under the battleship and returned to where the hangar bay was, ascending my ship up with my guns facing the hangar bay in case they were planning a surprise of their own.

When I was levelled with the hangar entrance, I realised that the two corvettes were still docked there with no signs of it being prepared to be launched.

In fact, the entire hangar seemed to be quite empty.

Huh… That can't be all the pirates right? Or… Perhaps those two ships were actually originally part of this derelict ship's and the pirates could not use them?

Ugh… Now I feel a little stupid for being so cautious…

Though now I have a problem…

My weapons can't exactly blow this battleship up even if I were to use up all my energy blasting at it… And I'm definitely not going to just assume that all the pirates are dead just like this.

Who knows? Maybe there were a few more still hiding inside as part of their ground crew?

But I'm not without options though.

Since the hangar and the turrets were still functioning, that meant that it still had a functioning generator somewhere on the ship.

If I were to board it and set it to overload itself, I could blow the entire ship up.

But well… The problem with that is that I would need to actually physically board the ship and find the generator to overload it…

Fuck it, I was already kind of expecting something like this to happen anyway, which was why I did an equipment check before I got here.

Let's get this done and over with…

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Draekai

Captain's Log:

Fuuuuuuuuuck this shit. Boarding the pirate base now and hoping that the generator room isn't that far to blow it up. Even better if the control panel is inside the hangar and I can remote detonate it from there...

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