RavensDagger

  Chapter Thirty-Five - Initiative

  Initiative was everything in spabat.

  Some would say it was everything in all forms of bat, but it was especially true when people were fighting in the harsh vacuum of space.

  The Sappho had initiative.

  The eight torpedo tubes atop the ship opened with a stuttaco of thumps, heavy metal ptes shifting aside to reveal the dark pits within where six-metre-long rods of explosive death were waiting.

  Ivil, in her brand netain's chair, punched iarget coordinates for all eight torpedoes. They'd each have their own uarget and e in from a very specific veissy had primed things already, and now all she needed was to press the button to unch.

  "Missy, are the point-defence guns up?"

  "Looks like it," Missy replied.

  Twenty-Six's head rose up from behind her sole. "We're going to be shot at?" she asked.

  Ivil blinked. She would have thought that it was a fone clusion. Shooting at people usually opened yourself up to being shot at. Retaliation was a religion, and Ivil was its head priestess. It felt strao be w with people that didn't uand that on a fual level.

  "Ohey see us shooting at them, they'll obviously want to shoot back," Aurora said. "Uh, Miss Ville, you give me the names of the targets?"

  "The statiohe end amma and in the tre of Arm Helios," Ivil said. "Then a strike against the corvette parked o the Held Together. Anainst the destroyer above us, and the remaining four torpedoes are aimed at the defence empts around the station."

  "I see. Give me a moment?"

  "Certainly," Ivil replied. Her hand hovered over the unch button as she turned her attention towards Aurora.

  The ook in a deep breath, cleared her throat, then gingerly pressed a button on the unication's system. Ivil squihat had established a direct e with the station. "They're in Arm Gamma! I repeat! Arm Gamma! The Arm is sealed! Hit it now!" Aurora shouted.

  It was... very theatrid incredibly, impossibly, fake. It reminded Ivil of her soaps, actually, the drama turned up to a point where it erred away from believability.

  Aurora cleared her throat again. "Arm Helios! Strike at Arm Helios! Oh god, oh lord!"

  "Wow," Missy said. "Are you aiming for an award?"

  Aurora turned a gre at the Warmime. "I'm aiming to sow fusion," she replied before tapping the s again. This time she broadcast across all frequencies. "Warning to all ships, the defeurrets have been promised! The corvette... Marie Antoie and the destroyer Joan of Arc are reying codes to the turrets! They're betraying us! They're with the enemy!"

  Ivil waited for Aurora to close the s before she started to cp politely. "You really put your heart into that," she said.

  "Why thank you," Aurora replied. She was slightly flushed, but heless tilted her head back a little to dispy her noble nostrils.

  "Will that... work?" Twenty-Six asked.

  The s panel lit up with ining chatter, and even though she wasn't close to it, Ivil picked up ss of panid questions being tossed over some rather deadly accusations. "It'll muddy things a little," Ivil replied.

  Then she pressed the button.

  The Sappho's man thrusters immediately fired up to teract the downwards push caused by eight torpedoes leaping out of the ship.

  Ivil closed her eyes, slowed down her perception of time, and followed their trajectory.

  Without any fragile anics to worry about, the torpedoes had nothing to stop them from accelerating as hard and fast as they could, which meant that they rammed out of their hatches and immediately burned nearly all of their fuel as soon as they were lined up. Two of them were the exception, their courses requiring a number of small deviations and ges.

  The pirate fleet was in a state of readiness already, but they were not at full battle readiness. Shields weren't up, and point defence guns were still offline. A few tracked the torpedoes, but they registered as allied for the moment.

  At least until the first few struck, and the primitive AI in the ships around the station clued into the fact that something was terribly wrong.

  The corvette aroyer exploded spectacurly as the torpedoes rammed into them while still burning hot, theonated just within their hulls. The explosio off a rea, catg the air within the ships on fire and lighting up munitions and fuel.

  The strikes against the station were far less spectacur. The projectiles slipped through the thin walls, theohemselves. There was a rush of fire as the air burned up, but bulkheads smmed shut in an instant. The fgration was mostly debris thrown out and away from the station.

  The defeforms stationed around were both iing and not. Ivil had a good sense for vectors and angles. It came with a number of her lesser cores. So, with that, it was simplicity itself to have the torpedoes strike the ptforms at angles where the majority of the debris from their strikes would be propelled in a... useful dire.

  Notably, right into other nearby ptforms.

  Space filled with point-defence fire about three seds after Ivil pressed fire. Mostly, these were aimed at the rgest ks of debris now floating freely, and quickly, away from the targets she'd struck.

  A few of those attacks were sensibly aimed at the Sappho.

  Ivil batted them aside. Powers that alloerson to have a shield of sorts were quite on. Powers that allowed them to pce immovable, unbreakable shields wherever they damned well pleased were less on, but Ivil didn't want the paint on her brand new ship scuffed.

  "Goddamn shit UI," Missy muttered as she tried to grapple with the trols for the Sappho's main batteries.

  "I've got it," Ivil replied as she slipped and to her captain's chair then assigned priority targets. There were a number of defenstaltio, and a few ships that were both threats, and also within the firing arc of their guns.

  Their shields were up, of course, and now faint glimmers of light were appearing around other ships as well. The entire pirate fleet was rushing into a state of readiness.

  It would have been so easy to ruin it all, to sweep all of the ships aside, crush them, then casually extract what few cores she could sense. But... no, her cover was holding on with barely nothing at all, but she khat there was a differeween people suspeg that she owerful, and people knowing who she was.

  "Auret the Held Together on the liell the good captain to burn out of their berth. Missy, take over one of the dorsal point-defence guns, s the cmps holding them iwenty-Six, are the engines hot?"

  "Super!" Twenty-Six said.

  "Alright. Everyone, hang on, we're going to start a light acceleration burn. Two Gs. We're leaving and we want to make it clear that we won't be around for long. Let the pirates blow each other up if that's what they want, we're leaving."

  "We're running away? 't we blow them all up?" Twenty-Six asked.

  Ivil blinked. "That's blood-thirsty of you," she said.

  "Well, they're pirates," Twenty-Six replied with a small, rather i little shrug.

  "Don't get too excited," Missy said. "We're still outnumbered too-many-to-one. Get in your station's crash seat."

  Twenty-Six did just that, strapping herself in quickly. The others did the same, though Aurora needed a moment to puzzle out the straps on her seat. Ivil did up her own, mostly for show, theured to Missy. "You've got the helm," she said.

  "Aye," Missy replied. There was a lot of sarcasm in that one sylble, but she heless took and of the ship, pushed up the throttle a little, then aimed it forwards and away from the station. Almost as soon as they had a heading, Missy was back to trolling the dorsal guns.

  Ivil closed her eyes ahings out. The Held Together was still in its berth, but it wouldn't be that way for long. Most of the cmps had let go already, and the ship's engines were on and lighting the station on fire with their thrust as the ship tried to pull free.

  A quick burst of surprisingly accurate fire from Missy ripped apart the e between a cmp and the station, and the ship was able to pull itself free with a wrench.

  Ivil almost felt bad for it. The Held Together was only barely living up to its name before, and now it had to deal with a rather forceful extra on top of the rest.

  Still, it was free. "Ah, the captain's asking for a location to meet up in," Aurora said.

  Ivil did a little mental maths, the some coordinates over. They were a few hour's away assuming that they only moved at a very slow, steady pace. Still, it would be outside of the average gun's calcuble range.

  They were, for the moment, free, leaving chaos aru in their wake.

  ***

  RavensDagger

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