Admiral Kapsis Stevens's Story

Larion couldn't help but smile under the mask. Appearances of the now aside, she was still like a child, and found himself gravitating towards the behavior. As a Mercenary, this was a big red flag for him. Someone with a child-like behavior was easily someone who would hold back payment on a whim, or someone who'd make extravagant demands because they figured they, the merc, could handle it, based on one performance.

Then he found himself remembering that she wasn't the one paying, and their route was set. So in the end, the mans hardly advertised soft spot sealed the deal for him.

He then decided to let the creature's attention deficient nature allow him to leave the last question unanswered, that of which caused him to roll his tongue along the right side of his jowls, where those sharp teeth for ripping and tearing were... It was still odd not to feel the flesh...

He lifted his right hand, standing straight in a salute that caused the hydraulics in the suit to give their signature whine. "If that is all, Mi' Lad'eh?"

Maiori gave Larion a strange look, as if he'd just said asked her to burb a baloon made of sawdust. "What the hell is a mialadeh?" She asked, scratching her head before pausing to look around. Her head tilted as she appeared to listen, then she rolled her eyes. "Hey, tell your people at the landing pad to quit holding out on Fnoori and feed him." She said, approaching one of the guards. "seriously, this ship is just ridiculous, metal metal and more metal, and then some oil and rocks, but wheres the water and the grass and the trees. It's like you guys want to live in a coffin." She groaned, rubbing her feet into the ground.

At the landing pad the ship had ceased reaching around with it's vines, having realized the guards didn't like it touching their stuff. It then began "singing" louder and louder, as though it was trying to talk to them. After a few minutes of this it started sounding sad and dejected, and it furthered this by closing back up, the petals curling and wrapping tight around the body of the ship.

The guards in the conference room looked at each other. Maiori could see them talking to each other, but their vacuum sealed helmets muted the sound, talking through short range radios. One of them finally spoke out loud, external speakers giving his voice a distinct artificial tone. "Yeah... uh, we'll see what we can do."

In the hangar the guards were starting to relax, but when the orders came over the radio, they hadn't the slightest idea what to do.
"The hell are we supposed to feed a giant plant? We ain't exactly got any fertilizer."
"Why do we even have to feed it?"
"Admiral offered them resupply and refuel. Guess what feeding a plant-ship counts as."
"Boys escorting the merc in power armor say the captain likes meat. A lot."
"Does that ship look like a god damn little girl with antlers?"
"No no, see, turns out it was a meat-loving plant."
"Do they look like the same species?"
"The hell do I know?! Maybe the ship is her grandmother! Do I look like a god damn biologist?"
"Fuck it, we don't have any fertilizer, and the owner of the damn thing is a meat-eating plant. Throw it some meat and see what happens."
"Why the hell is it crying?! We didn't do shit!"
"It's pouting cause we won't let it touch our damn guns."
"Give it a Rubric's cube or something."

The Marines began carting meat to the ship, one putting a Rubric's cube on the floor near it. Clearly, they were far out of their element, taking care of a living starship was beyond then.

Larion chuckled beneath the suit, rolling his shoulders in good humor. "Mi' Lad'eh, don't butcher it. My. Lady." He left it at that, turning around to his escort. "Gentlemen, I believe it is time I inspect my ship, to ensure your tech's didn't attempt to turn my Corvette into a miner." He said with good humor, turning with a whirl of the suit as he sought to exit back to his ship.

Nivera meanwhile was already running a diagnostic on the ship systems, ensuring that the new additions to the ship did were not incompatible with the software meant to run them, fixing them as errors came up.

And, of course, she ran an internal scan, looking for unknown signal sources, both in the new hardware, and the compartments the tech's had access to.

Miaori grumbled something under her breath before turning and hopping up to sit on the table. She then resigned to wait until either the rep came back or someone told her it was time to go.

In the hanger. the ship uncurled and opened up when the cart of meat had been brought. It reached over with it's vines and tendrils and inadvertedly knocked the cart over. The vines laid over the meat, smaller tendrils growing into the protein and breaking it down, subsuming it into the plant for use as fuel. It took only a matter of minutes for it to completely wrap over and consume the entire cart, and once it had finished it's tendrils began shifting about, looking for more. In this manner it found the rubiks cube and, after first recoiling from it, it began to roll the thing over. It first tried to subsume it as well, but found nothing of use in the materiel. It then began to flick it about between two vines, feeling it over trying to figure out what it was. The long sad singing changed to what sounded like the chuckles of a giant infant dolphin as it flicked the cube around.

This however did not stop the ship from continuing to look for more food. Considering that the plant was used as a ship, and a single tray of fuel wouldn't be enough to refuel a common ship, it paid to assume that a single tray would not be enough for the giant plant.

The Marines continued carting meat to the ship, using forklifts to cart massive pallets of it. The ship began to groan, machines that hadn't been used for a long time suddenly roaring to life. The Environmental systems, deep in the core of the vessel, had begun synthesizing massive amounts of food to replace what Maiori's ship consumed. The crew, upon realizing what the mechanical rumbling was, were not pleased, and for good reason. Food synthesized by a ship's environmental systems tasted horrible. There was a reason something as monolithic as an interstellar corporation was willing to spend millions on shipping food to their deep space ships when the ship was perfectly capable of meeting the demand for food on it's own.

Even worse was that the crew knew they couldn't simply just feed the synthesized food to Maiori's ship instead of their rations. Even if there wasn't a prevalent superstition that synth-food would be completely unappetizing even if you utterly lacked the ability to taste food, for all they knew, the ship had more sensitive taste than humans. It had, thus far, demonstrated, if not a child-like intelligence, then at least animal intelligence, and they didn't care to find out what a frigate-sized ship throwing a tantrum inside the delicate innards of a hangar could do.

As such, the general consensus was along the lines of "Only a little bit longer, then the next time they want to dock with us, we can dump them on one of the mining carriers. Let them deal with it."

Larion's escorts followed him out, making sure he got to his ship. The representative, still with Maiori, listened to her earpiece for a moment, and nodded. "Ma`am, the other Freighter... the... Scrapheap... has arrived. They will be leaving in ten minutes, with or without you. Do you have everything you need?"

Larion found his ship easily enough, it's not as if they had it transported to a shipyard or anything. After all, with a fighter bay like that, it was reasonable to assume they were capable of both producing, and maintaing their own ships. He left his escort at the door, letting the hatch seal abruptly behind him without his word. Perhaps Nivera was testing after a bunch of strangers crawled inside what amounted to her body. He'd ask her to run an internal scan on the ship, both to settle her nerves of them, and his own home grown paranoia of people being inside his ship, but found she had already completed the task.

To his elation, he also found the mag lock's on his weapon compartments scattered around the ship still intact, which told him that they likely didn't snoop in much else. It'd be a shame, after all, if he lost the Viper to the black box detonating, and having to try to worm his way out of trying to explain that to the local officers. He'd also likely have to try to force his back here to retrieve Nivera, which he wouldn't dare leave without.

As he sat in his chair, he estimated that while he severely outclassed those he saw here in terms of armor and weaponry, and perhaps discipline, given he'd have all the persuasion to survive, it spelled him next to certain death... And then getting out of the asteroid field intact while being pursued? Maybe if he had the viper, but that'd be already assuming he'd lost it.

While this thinking of itself was grim, it was more or less a symptom of a man evaluating people he has yet to encounter before. On that, he still had mixed feelings for these people. They weren't people for nonsense...

But thought way to highly of themselves. He couldn't get them teasing him about flying into an asteroid field out of his head. "Asshole's can run a tight ship, but gotta stop assuming folks can't navigate for shit."

He turned himself to the matter at hand, putting in a request to undock, and asking for navigation out of the hanger. He then opened up a separate comm's channel, that of which he checked was encrypted. It wasn't a typical encryption, as in order to unlock the communication, it required three different keys all assembled both at the place of transmission, and place it was to be received, and failure on any end of communications resulted in the transmitted data deleting itself. It was hard coded into itself. After all, when Larion programmed it himself, he didn't want some asshole just changing the programming from some computer a few thousand light years down the line.

He typed in a few words, that of which he kept between himself and Nivera... He waited for a few minutes, as the message took it's sweet time going to it's destinations general grid, then sorted itself, finding the port that would bring it to the intended receiver... Then as another message made it's way back, and popped up back in his screen.

A toothy smile, calm and content, formed under his mask, as he typed back.

"Good to see you two are paying attention... I'll be sending you some money shortly, make sure to buy yourselves some more food, it might be a bit till I get back."

"Yes, Father!" Along with some weird set of characters that appeared to form some kind of happy face. Where the fuck did they get that? He'd figure he ask them in his next message, typing it down while he waited for clearance.

Miaori Rolled her eyes at the Rep. "I thought we were waiting on you." She said, grumbling as she started the trek back to her ship. "Honestly this is some hospitality. First off your atmospherics are so damn oxygen rich I can hardly breath, then you have some offtaste minerals in the metalwork." She stomped a foot to emphasize her point. "Nobody bothers to offer me a rebreather or anything to deal so I gotta do rework my intake, and that makes me hungry, and I was already hungry from having to make the warp. And the damn vishnu wouldn't let me warp any closer, said they didn't wanna scare the locals, even though they did that plenty when they insisted on sending a whole fucking storm to secure the route, when a simple fighter escort would have been fine!" At this point she's devolved into an angry muttering that's only just audible. "And then on top of everything else, after I get told that you guys'll take care of Fnoori, I hear him crying cuz he hasn't gotten fed."

At around this point in the conversation, she arrives at the landing pad where Fnoori is and just stops dumb, watching him play with a rubix cube and eating copious amounts of meat. She then explodes screaming at the people carting the meat, not in a threatening way mind you. Really, her impression given is that of an angry mother. "Oh my god what you feeding him?!! Ugh please tell me that's not carbon based? Ohhh he's going to have the worst indigestion!" She stomps over to the rubix cube and snatches it up. She then starts shouting at the giant plant in a language that sounds more like a series of clicks and musical notes, like the ones the plant was making earlier. There's no actual translation for what she says, but the nearest semblence of it is "And you! You know damn well what your doing, don't play dumb and stop acting stupid! You do this every time we make port at a new planet, making a nuisance out of yourself, making it that much harder to come back for return trips. Ugh! I thought you would have learned after the fiasco at Floren-172, or was an angry mob trying to set you on fire just not enough?!! Next time you pull this I'll promise you I'll twist your dnorit until your vits shrivel!"

The ship, needless to say, immediately withdrew and curled up into it's closed form. Those of sharp eyes looking on would have discerned the ship shaking, as though in fear, as Miaori let loose her tirade. When she had finished she turned back to the rep, made a face, then rolled her eyes and said "well, never mind about all that stuff earlier, having to deal with this little pile of slug stink puts us about even." She then turned to those who had been responsible for feeding the giant plant. "Just... As a heads up for next time, Gominorian's can generate their own sustanance, as long as they have water. I didn't think to say anything because I figured that your species would be able to put the connection together that a big plant needs water the same way a little plant does." She rolled her eyes then as she walked back into the opening Fnoori left for her, disappearing inside the plant ship.

The ship made more of it's singing as the opening petal closed back up, and the vessel actually shivered, as it waited for permission to leave.

A few kilometers from the Wastelander, a single point began flickering, small flashes of light popping into existence. Then, the Scrapheap exploded into existence, a great vortex of energy rushing in all directions as it emerged from FTL. And, by any conceivable standard of measurement, it was the ugliest ship that had ever defiled that star system with it's presence. The SMC ships were by no means pretty things, they were designed exclusively to get the job done. But there was a rugged, utilitarian grace to them, they would certainly appeal to anyone who appreciated a well made tool. The Scrapheap didn't even have that. It was a beastly, twisted mess. Studying it, it was plainly obvious someone had started to design a freighter, given up, and instead started gathering mothballed ships and haphazardly bolting them together to make a ship. And then sold it to someone who had taken it further. It was almost as large as the titanic Wastelander.

There was no way to tell where anything in that mess of a boat was. There were several sections that looked like they might be a bridge, but only because no one had bothered to remove them when gutting a ship and strapping it onto the abomination. Several sections were very obviously ships that had their engines torn out, and their aft welded onto the front of another. In some places, engines had been strapped on and armored in what could only be described as a rousing game of blindfolded "Pin the Tail on the Donkey." The only reason it was flying straight was probably because someone had the sense to bolt in a computer that could compensate for the wild placement of engines. As if it weren't ugly enough already, cargo containers were bolted onto the sides. At this point, it would make a good smuggling ship by virtue of making law enforcement afraid to step inside for fear of the whole thing coming apart, no matter how many times the inspectors said the ship was technically obeying all construction codes.

Then there were the guns. A massive array of AA guns, and outdated deck guns were bolted on, seemingly at random, to the ship. It was no military ship, despite it's massive size, a frigate would rip it apart. But it would absolutely rip apart anything smaller than a frigate. Not to mention anyone that tried a hostile boarding action. Even if someone were to get on board, there was no way anyone would know where to go. It was, again, a massive ship, and as what some would politely call a junker, there wasn't a database in the world that could predict what was inside it. It was doubtful even it's own crew had it fully mapped out.

On the Wastelander, hangar control radioed all the mercenaries still on board. "All ships, you are cleared to launch as soon as possible. You will take up convoy positions around the Scrapheap, and head to your destination."

Larion grinned, as the mechanical dock that held him in place released his ship. The constant lurches and hisses gave him a start, mostly due to the noise, but soon enough, his ship was dropped, and his thrusters kicked in to spin him around, and align him with the docking exit.

A few bursts of thrusts carried him out of the Wastelander, and a few pops of propellant spun him towards the Scrapheap. He turned off Nivera's insurmountable amount of incomprehension, confusion, and somewhat annoyed chatter, as his scans sought to decipher the impossible.

He brought his ship to bear, placing his ship at the left section of the giant freighter (If there really was a left, given the thing was so haphazard he couldn't tell if he really was in position of it's left, perhapes he was infact under it.), setting himself into position where he could speed himself out of formation to bring himself to bear against would be 'pirates' or 'government tax collectors' as the company seemed to be afraid of.

He set his systems favor his weapons and engines, and figured that his shields were strong enough to persist in a dog fight, and if needed, he could always cut some of his weapons and power the shields, or use the power cell.

Fnoori made a noise like a more musical elephant trumpet, and the large plant began to float off the platform. The red 'bubbles' that coated the underside of the plantship glowed brightly, and just like that it flew it's way out of the docks. When it passed outside Miaori had him detect Larion's ship by his unique scent, and when Fnoori had finished that, she began sending a signal to him, to open a transmission. "Hey, hope you don't mind, but seeing as your the only one of these rnars I was able to actually meet with, I'm much sooner to trust you then any of them. So Fnoori and I are gonna keep close to you, and freak out if he starts fondling your ship, he gets curious about them since none of them are like him."

With that, the plant ship flew up to and close behind Larions ship. The plantform making those same whalelike noise which science said shouldn't be audible out in the vacuum of space, but some how everyone nearby was able to hear the damn thing. As for Fnoori himself, he didn't seem interested, at the moment anyway, in fondling anyones ship, whatever Miaori had meant by that.

As the ships finally settled into formation, the Scrapheap sent an open broadcast. "Listen up you hotshots! This is captain Hastus of the Scrapheap. It's come to my attention that damn near every one of our FTL systems are completely different from everyone else's. Among countless other problems, that means if we just up and left like a bunch of morons, we'd drift apart by days. Shit, some of you have FTL drives that have a chance of simply vanishing without a trace. I'm looking at you, Rampage. Normally, that would mean we'd be stuck here for a few days as we tuned our drives so we'd match the speed of our slowest escort. Don't think I don't remember the last convoy you escorted, Burnout. But you're all in luck, the IAC is willing to pay for some very expensive services to get this done quickly. In exactly five minutes, the Scrapheap is going to pull you all into slipspace, and drag you along until we arrive. For those of you unfamiliar with slipspace, it will look like the fabric of space is being ripped apart by a god damn lightning storm on steroids. Fly on in to the big scary violation of reality, and the Scrapheap's FTL drive will take care of the rest. Final note, if you're going to miss the entry, miss the entire thing, don't graze the edge unless you want your ship to be utterly annihilated. Most people think their ship will be simply sheared off like a razor cut them. In reality, the laws of physics react poorly to having subatomic particles being split apart. You'll stop existing. Simple as that."

As promised, in five minutes, a massive rift tore open in front of the Scrapheap, large enough to accommodate the behemoth junk ship and the rest of the convoy. The Scrapheap flew into that infinite abyss unflinchingly, with the wide variety of escorts following in close.

Larion decided that for the time being, he'd leave the plant folk in silence, not entirely sure on how he should respond. Was she saying that her ship would try to fondle his ship? Was Nivera pondering the same question?

He put aside the meta-physical question of if ships could be fondled to listen to Scrapheap's transmission, and nearly groaned at the mention of slip space. A frame shift was so much more similar, incredibly less hazardous, and was possible to fit drives capable of lifting ships into the higher shifts onto even tiny fighters!

Then he briefly asked himself the question of the technological ramifications. Frameshifts were cheap because the companies that produce them invest in high tech.

He concluded he was a bit whiny to groan at the thought when it was, in fact, convenient form of travel when the involved engines and drives were so varied, that something that can encompass the entire fleet of something so diverse would be a vast logistical advantage.

He told Nivera to research the content and bring it up to him later.

Never the less, Nivera threw up warning signs of a sub-atomic anomaly as the giant maw opened, and strafed his ship to the side for the maw.

His ships subsystems blew their personified lids of course, mistaking the slip space gateway as someone trying to interdict him from mid shift, even though he was in basic space. A bug. Fantastic. He had to force shut down the sub-system to prevent him from trying to auto-escape, and muttered to Nivera to track the code issue.

"And if we ever get our hands on a better drive, I want you to make sure they tested the damn things near quantum shitstorms like this." He finished off his irritated rant.

Fnoori made a noise like a goat bleating and immediatly began to retreat from the slipspace opening. "Shhhh Hush you big baby, we've done this before dozens of times, it's not gonna kill you. Just stay in the center of it. Look see, follow that guy and do what he does and everything will be okay."

The ship responded by sneezing at her, but it followed her directions and centered in the slipspace opening, following the scrapheap through. Fnoori Shuddered with fear as it passed the doorway, and began to whine at Miaori. "Oh stop that, you know that sound hurts my ears." She griped at him. "Just do what they do, it'll be alright. And besides worst comes to worst we tell the Golden boyscouts they sent us through a subspace rectum and they'll go ape shit on em, deal?"

Fnoori seemed to purr at that.

Once the trade fleet passed through the event horizon, the ships shut their engines off, an infinite blue void all around them. They were within slipspace for a little less than three hours when the Scrapheap sent a transmission. "All ships, commencing emergency slipspace exit, we're being interdicted! Be ready for a fight!"

Intercepting a ship travelling through any form of FTL was difficult at the best of times. First, you had to have immense resources to pour into not only building a highly expensive, specialized ship, but you also had to make sure you were building the right kind of system for the form of FTL. And where as, for instance, getting a chaotic variety of ships to follow a ship into slipspace was a simple matter of turning off the FTL drives of most of the ships, to interdict them, you had to know exactly which form of FTL your target was using to catch it. You couldn't just throw a bunch of interdiction systems onto one ship, turn them all on, and hope for the best. Most used far too much power for a ship's reactor to support more than one at a time. And some were so wildly incompatible that they'd literally rip the ship apart if both were used at once.

To top it off, you had to put your interdiction ship directly in the path of your target, which means either knowing exactly what path your target would take, or having enough incredibly expensive interdiction ships to cover all the routes they could use. And putting an interdiction ship on a widely used route was a dangerous proposition. If ships start disappearing on a route, a government will either close the route, or, more commonly, dispatch a military fleet on that route and let it be interdicted.

These reasons all combined to make a simple statement. Pirates don't interdict their prey. It requires resources few have, attracts a lot more attention than lurking on the outskirts of a remote system, and you're shit out of luck if you accidentally catch a military patrol. Mercenaries don't interdict their targets. The resources put into an interdiction ship could be better put into more troops, ships, supplies, and countless other things, and there were far more efficient and more profitable ways to take out a target. And governments don't like mercenaries having interdiction systems.

The end result was that they were about to run into ships publicly backed by a powerful government. Such as a legitimate military force.

"This is Baron, sensors clearing now... I read two frigate class ships and... fuck, I've got a strike carrier on sensors! It's already launching fighters and boarding craft!" The transmission broadcast over the convoy's channel, one of the mercenary fighters.

"Attention merchantmen. This is the LNS Hendricks. You are illegally carrying goods from the terrorist organization "Independent Alliance of Corporations." I don't know what they told you, but they are nothing more than wealthy criminals pretending to be freedom fighters. You will power down your defense systems, you will be boarded, and we will seize their property as part of their court sentence."

"This is the Scrapheap, I don't know if you damn thugs bother to keep up with international law, but the IAC is a legitimate government that has been officially recognized by the required minimum of ten interstellar governments. Under the Haysen treaty, which I know for a fact your government signed, that means you are required to recognize their sovereignty. And under the Free Trade Agreement, which you also signed, unless there is an active state of war between you and the IAC, you have no business interdicting independent merchants carrying their goods! And since you are treating them as, ahem, rebels, and not a legitimate government, you haven't actually bothered to declare war. That makes your dumb ass a war criminal. So I suggest you take your fleet and kindly FUCK OFF before Liguria finds itself embargoed!"

"We will not be intimidated by terrorists hiding behind foreign laws. This is your last warning."

With that, the broadcast cut off, and the boarding craft began approaching. As the IAC had promised, they clearly expected the mercenary escorts to abandon the convoy at the sight of military ships. As such, only the shuttles and a few of the fighter craft were approaching.

"This is Baron to convoy, the lazy bastards are leaving themselves wide open. Recommend holding fire for now. If we charge at them, they'll have plenty of time to shape up. Scrapheap, those ancient guns of yours will come in handy. Those old chemical propellant weapons won't show up on modern sensors. Recommend letting them get in close, then ripping them apart."

"You dumbass, gunpowder weapons won't do shit against modern armor! Too damn slow!"

"Scrapheap has chemical gel munitions, we'll be fine. We'll go with Baron's suggestion. All ships, wait for them to get in close, then rip them apart. It'll take them time to launch new strike craft, and we can use that time to close on the strike carrier and rip apart the interdiction systems. Rhino, ram whatever frigate looks squishier, Vanguard, park near the carrier's launch bays and rip apart anything that tries to launch."

Larion looked out the cockpit windows as they entered slipspace... It was... Vast. Empty. Discernible. It was so perplexing and odd, that he was sure his brain might not be able to even process the information his eyes were desperately trying to send to it...

"Nivera, what am I looking at."

"An alternate plane of existence from all records and current accounts. It's law of physics is vastly different from our own. The Scrapheap is using it's slip space drive to project a bubble of 'real space' about forty kilometers out, which is effectively a bubble of our own physics, which allows us to exist in this realm without conflicting with the outside laws."

The power armor shifted, as it's head inclined to look outside. "Any expansive studies on it?"

"Few that I can reach, Commander. This realm operates on a set of physics entirely different from our own. Biological eyes, as well as electronic scanning, are simply not meant to process this information, which often results in strange readings or sights on both sets of hardware. Here, it is entirely possible, that Two, Plus Two, equals five, which renders anything we can use to scan the area unusable. We are simply not meant to exist here."

"And if we drifted out of this bubble?"

"To the rest of the fleet, we would simply disappear from readings, and we have a high probability of ceasing to exist. We would be exotic particles in a foreign environment. Our very atoms would likely shift and change in unimaginable ways to accommodate the foreign laws. However, while we are in this bubble, it is as if we are drifting in space. We are simply using Slipspace to, in a metaphor, 'Fold a map to make the beginning and end points closer.'. It is similar to folding space itself."

The Viper drifted with the rest of the fleet for this time. Larion remained quite, except for occasionally checking in with other groups of mercs, and fire control. Sometimes he wandered his ship, inspecting the hardware to ensure it was all at peak efficiency.

It was not long after his third inspection that Scrapeheap called over the Radio of an interdiction. Thankfully, emergency drop from Slipspace wouldn't render a ship overloaded, as if seemed they had to pull out immediately. A rip opened up, and the entire fleet passed through. . .

"Warning. Capital Class Signature detected." Well Fuck me, he unconsciously thought.

He listened to the chatter of what appeared to be government forces laying claim on the cargo in question, only for his contractee's to reject it.

He gave his sensors a quick appraisal. Combat frigates, a strike carrier, and dozens of small craft and boarding craft.

"General shield charge, deploy hard points, power point defense." Larion called out, slamming his ass to seat as his hands glided over controls. The Viper on the outside hissed with gaps of air, as in under a second, ports were sliding out, and displaying an arsenal massive for the size of this ship. Even more threatening was the missile tubes now deployed to the belly of the ship, ready to cripple systems. Energy weapons buzzed to life, turning and swiveling as they pointed themselves to the side, ready to make the viper into a figurative disco ball. Finally, the mini-cannons slowly extended from the top of the craft's head, ready to tear apart anything smaller than a heavy corvette that was unlucky enough to stay in front of him for more than a few seconds.

Finally, the window's of the cockpit darkened, and slabs of Neotrinium armor shot up from both above and below. The inside of the ship groaned, as the seat and controls of the viper was slowly condensed into the ship, a secondary bulk head coming up to reinforce the front, right where the controls where a few seconds ago. Finally, a holographic display came up, display a live feed of the front of the ship.

"Combat mode ready. Shields running at Maximum. Tagging hostile forces now. Awaiting input, Commander." Nivera called out, her voice trying to hide a non-existent smirk. Larion himself gave a deadly, sharp grin, and even complimented it with a sinister laughter, as the adrenaline of pre-combat reached his head. Then, he opened his com to fleet command.

"Viper MKIV, requesting priority targets and orders."

Fnoori Burbled and fluttered alongside the other ships in the slip space bubble. It seemed to be humming to itself, listing side to side as it did so. Miaori took the passing through slip space to take a nap, confident that Fnoori wouldn't be able to get into too much trouble in the bubble, and even if he could she knew he wasn't stupid enough to try something in such a precarious place.

Understanding that, It's of little sutprise then that when alarms were being sounded and Miaori woke up, the first thing she said was "God damn it Fnoori what did you do this time!"

And then she saw the ships.

"Oh....." She gasped, before pressing a hand to a nerve center in Fnoori's core, causing the plantform vessel to squeak. A connection was then established with the communication systems of the rest of the fleet, wherein Miaori Proceeded to scream "WHAT THE FUCKING HELL!"

"Hasn't even been a full cycle yet and were already getting attacked?!! I swear to the golden wonder that sits in the cold well of the clay city that if Fnoori suffers so much as ONE scratch then I'm going to take it out of your collective asses!" She ranted on, spouting similar invective's and obscenities with such gusto that even the most jaded sailor would have felt offended.

Fnoori, it would do well to note, also seemed put off by these events. Which he showed by blowing bubbles from various locations over his body. How those bubbles persisted in the vacuume of space, and what was in them, is probably better left unsaid. Still, the bubbles floated near him, such that he appeared to have suddenly become surrounded by a minefield.

It took Miaori a moment to notice what Fnoori was doing, but when she did she quickly amended her prior message. "Oi oi oi! If you don't want your ship to get gobbled up with acid you keep it away from the bubbles. They got little buggers in em that infest and eat ships."

Scrapheap was silent for a few minutes. "Scrapheap to Miaori, minefield acknowledged, relaying to fleet. Viper MKIV, you're on defense, these assholes might be lazy bastards now, but once they realize we won't take this sitting down, we're going to be drowning in military-grade strike craft."

The boarding shuttles and their escorts began to close on the convoy, and one of the escorts radioed in. "This is Raven, we've got a problem. These ships don't have any life signs. They're throwing combat drones at us. Same thing with the shuttles. There's not telling how many drones are on each shuttle."

"Vanguard to fleet, whatever we do, we'll need to do it fast. If they're using combat drones... tearing them to bits will be easy enough, but that carrier can easily hold more drones than we have munitions."

"Scrapheap acknowledges. Fleet, that Strike Carrier is the priority. That slipspace inhibitor needs to be taken out. Once that's dealt with, it's a clear shot to our destination, and those fucking Ligurians will be too busy dealing with international fallout to stop us on the return trip."

The boarding craft began to close on the Scrapheap and Fnoori. One shuttle flew into one of Fnoori's "mines," and all hell broke loose.

"All ships, weapons free! Rip em apart!"

Scrapheap's weapons powered up instantly, and began firing within seconds. The numerous strike craft and boarding craft were torn apart by countless ballistic weapons, their sensors unable to register the horribly outdated guns until they were powered up. Vanguard followed suit, it's railguns taking much longer to power up. It charged straight at the strike carrier. The Strike Carrier, however, was already launching it's entire compliment of fighters. Interceptors, bombers, and the odd corvette streamed out of the carrier before the Vanguard was close enough to block the hangar. The two frigates began firing at the Vanguard eagerly. The ship was too old to effectively fight back, but the thick layers of armor it's designers had insisted on took the hits from the more modern ships just as well as a cruiser might have.

The convoy's numerous escorts swarmed into action, each having their own instructions. Several corvettes targeted one of the two enemy frigates, pounding it with heavy guns. Fighters streamed towards the carrier, following in the Vanguard's wake. They began firing on the carrier, slowly breaking through it's shields so they could take out the slipspace inhibitor.

It was all he needed to hear. He fired off his thrusters to bring himself to bare at the front of Scrapeheap, before cooling them, and powered his left thrusters, allowing him to strafe right, making him a moving target. He then centered the front of his ship onto the massive ungodly swarm of unmanned ships. This gave the viper an incredibly small stiletto to target, thanks to it's arrowhead like design, and brought all of the Corvettes weapon's to bear.

He'd give it to them, why support a living military when you can just spam mechanical horror's that required nothing more than space to put them? The sheer numbers of the enemy was already making him nervous, and he could figure that it was both deadly not only to those foolish enough to try a head on charge into this swarm, but found himself remembering his contractors words. Any unwashed militia facing this would have surely ran at the first sign.

Thankfully, he was surronded in friendly AA, and had a bit of his own. Still... If any of that reached him...

His solution came in a split second, as he came to recognize what it meant to be facing an army of drones. He shut off his directional thrusters, letting him drift at speed, and then began spinning his like a clock.

"Release Chauff."

"Chauff released." Nivera instantly reported.

To the outside eye, it'd appear that the viper might have a coolant leak, as tiny white specks began to spill out into space in a large cloud. In reality, they were an incredible swarm of tiny computers. These computers could fit about five of themselves into a hand, and was a simple mesh of electronic parts, but their purpose was sinister.

Each computer did it's best to broadcast on every frequencies in it's range, which for it's hardware, was quite broad. It then began to overheat to the point of turning into a molten ball, a design flaw in it's original design which was eventually tooted as a feature, which prevented any lock on heat based signatures, as the entire cloud of these computers made a giant ball of 'heat'. Finally, as the computer overheated, it's suicide produced a very small electromagnetic wave, which further distorted all scans and signatures in the cloud. All of this happened in the span of five seconds for each computer. While anything that closed on the cloud close enough for the viper to take a significant take of their eyesight, would be able to target the ship without much problem, the viper itself, being the 'mothership' of the tiny computers, was able to ignore their screaming frequencies, ignored the heat as it's targeting systems was not based on heat signatures, and was close enough to the cloud, being right in the middle of it, that their suicides did not interfere with his target tracking, and as long as his allies were not attempting to target him, the cloud shouldn't interfere with their own targeting.

The same could not be said for anyone trying to target him, or anyone close enough to the chauff cloud. Auto-targets simply couldn't cope with the mass of signatures in the cloud, as they fired loosely and haphazardly, trying to target what they think was the ship, only to be targeting a particular part of the cloud, and missing the ship entirely. Lucky shots could score a hit, but this would be usually with a ship standing still, or in the middle of banking, where the entire surface of the ship was exposed to anyone attempting to target it, and either situation required the distance to be, atleast when compared to the relative distances of objects in space, right in the ships metaphorical face.

The effect even applied to gimbaled weapons, which were technically 'fixed' point weapons, though an internal gimbal in the gun allowed it give it a cone of fire, as with the case of Larion's Multi-cannons.

The solution, typically, was for the opposition's fighter pilots to use fixed weapons, which since they did not rely on targeting software, was completely unhindered by the chauff. Then the fight would usually revert into a normal Dogfight. Or, you could wait for about thirty seconds, where the Chauff launcher ran out of it's prefabricated computers, and had to take about half a minute to manufacture enough for another spill, and even then, it would eventually completely ran out. Since the cloud would dissipate in about eight seconds without something reinforcing it, a pilot had twenty two seconds to bring all their weapons to bear.

What Larion was banking on, however, was that he was facing drones. Swarms of them, yes, but not human pilots. People could bring their guns to bear on a target they knew for a fact was there... Yet these drones, were, he supposed, just a pile of electronics that dictated it's navigation and targeting. He didn't know that for sure, but in the end, they were still computers.

"Nivera, take the stick on the beams, I got cannons. Prioritize anything that isn't a shuttle." Larion said, setting his hands back on the controls.

"My pleasure." Nivera said with a rare hint of joy. Immediately, the viper became a disco ball, as beams of focused energy shot out at the swarm of incoming interceptors, trying to cut swaths with all four weapons.

Meanwhile, Larion centered the Viper's spin on the nearest shuttle, and fire the multicannons. Shot after shot of high energy, armor piercing rounds, poured out after the incoming boarding craft, as the gimbals cannons sought to target power distributors, boarding compartments, as well as fuel storage.

Fnoori had been getting increasingly nervous as the transports got closer and closer, and it had taken all of Miaori's goading to keep him from spewing more of the 'mines' around him, as well as keep him still.

"Shush shhhh, it's okay big guy, we hired them to protect us and thats what they're gonna do, it's what they're good at. Just calm down and let them do their job, they know what they're doing."

When the transport hit the mine cloud however, it did something that would have freaked out EVERYONE who didn't know what was about to happen. Within seconds the microbes in the cloud had attached to the surface of the vessel and began breaking down the hull of it using enzymes to break the moluceules themselves into litte more then base element compounds. This process generated heat, energy, and some of the compounds changed states as their bonds were broken off. While most of the elements the metal broke down to in and of themselves could not be used, the energy, heat, and gas compounds combined to create environments of rapid growth. And what was a colony of microbes rapidly grew into a plant that started digging it's vines into the smallest crevices of the ship, ripping it apart like the roots of a tree rip apart solid stone. Within a minute the transport ship had been pulled apart, and in it's place there was now an amalgation of scrap metal and plant matter, still writing it's tendrils around looking for something else to latch onto. Any ship that came to close to it's vines was grabbed, and the process repeated as the voracious microbial colony sought to grow larger and larger. The entity resembled coral, with the wreckage of the metal bent and reshaped to form the mineral skeleton, and the long vines and plant matter being the swarming microbial creatures.

At that, Fnoori started trumpeting and floated himself closer to the scrap heap, finding a snug little crevice that the bioship would proceed to snuggle into, pulling itself closer to the ship with it's vines.

Miaori rolled her nonfunctional eyes and sighed. "Yeah, you guys probably want to clear this up quickly, or he'll be whining about it for the rest of the cycle. And believe me, nobody wants to listen to that all day.