Chapter 555: The Pirate Ship
Kian saved his gun-mod settings, picked up the two guns, and went over to the wall of his quarters where several suits of his power armour were kept.
He mounted the two guns in the vambrace hardpoints of his power armour and thought he'd need to find a battlefield to test how powerful these two specialized laser weapons really were.
He'd only just had the thought when the alarm light in his room suddenly flashed red, and a piercing alarm blared through every part of the ship.
The Captain's voice came over the loudspeakers throughout the ship:
"General quarters! All non-combat personnel return to your quarters, seal your doors, and stay put!
"Anti-boarding teams, get to your stations immediately and set up defences!
"Macro-cannon and laser batteries, target our port side and stand by.
"Raise the void shields now!"
A string of clear orders came from the Captain, and the whole ship geared up for battle.
Hearing the orders, Kian knew they must have run into an enemy. He quickly put on a suit of heavy power armour and ran for the bridge.
The moment he reached the bridge, the Captain at the command station reported:
"As we entered the asteroid field, an unknown ship not registered in any Imperial records suddenly appeared off our port side. It's so heavily modified we can't even tell what class it is!!"
The Captain pulled up an image on the hologram for Kian.
Kian took one look. It was a small ship about 1.5 kilometres long, covered head to toe in weld scars. It obviously wasn't anything legitimate, and something immediately occurred to him.
"Don't tell me that's a pirate ship?"
The universe was huge, with so many unpatrolled regions that of course there'd be plenty of pirate ships!
The Captain nodded grimly.
"It came out of nowhere as we were passing through the asteroid field. Looks like pirates. And even if they're not pirates, they're up to no good!"
The Captain tapped a few controls and brought up the enemy ship's specs for Kian.
"This ship is fast too, one and a half times our speed. That fits the pirate playbook exactly: fight if you can win, run if you can't.
"Also, the hull has a lot of torpedo tubes on it. Those are probably for launching boarding torpedoes."
Kian looked at the unknown ship rapidly closing in on them, at a loss for words.
"The Golden Road is miles bigger than that little boat. And it dares to pick a fight with us?!"
The Captain was puzzled too. By rights, for ships like these, size was the most obvious measure of fighting strength.
The Sword-class escort was 2.2 kilometres long, and this unknown little ship was only 1.5.
How did it dare go after a Sword-class escort with a hull that small? That was like a kid picking a fight with a grown man!
The Captain rubbed his chin and thought it through:
"Fast ship, lots of torpedo tubes.
"It's basically certain this is a pirate ship. As for why they'd dare to take on something as big as us, my guess is they know our ship is fresh out of the yard and doesn't have a full complement of fighters aboard.
"We've only got two thousand armed men on the whole ship. But everyone aboard a pirate ship is a fighter, so they definitely have more people than we do.
"Add all those modified torpedo tubes. They get close, fire hundreds of boarding torpedoes at once, and they might simply drown us in bodies and take our ship!"
Then something clicked for Kian. Governor Zeppelin had told him that some of the merchants who came to collect tithes on their planet had seen the Sword-class escort and coveted it badly, scheming to take it.
But moving a warship somewhere else was a massive undertaking.
He figured those people hadn't had time to make their move before he dealt with the situation on the Forge World and the Angels used their own resources to help him tow the ship away.
But those merchants probably hadn't given up. They'd been lying in wait for ten years, hoping to pocket this ownerless Sword-class escort.
So these half-merchant, half-pirate types had hidden a fast ship here in ambush, meaning to try a boarding action and see if they could seize the ship!
The pirates had figured that this was a newly finished warship that probably didn't have many fighters aboard. Roll the dice, trade the bicycle for a motorbike, turn a little ship into a big one!
The pirates had hidden in the asteroid field, and when Kian's ship came through, they'd burst out for a good, bloody boarding action!!
The Captain kept his eyes fixed on the hologram in front of him, ears pricked for the data his officers were reporting.
"That little ship's void shield won't be up to much. All hands, prepare all port-side batteries. First volley overloads its void shield, second volley sinks it!"
The Captain gave the order to attack, but Kian immediately bellowed:
"HOW DARE YOU!! Who dares fire on my warship?!"
The senior officers on the bridge turned and stared at Kian in confusion.
The Captain froze for a second, then realized what Kian was thinking and hurried to talk him out of it:
"I know you've got your eye on that pirate ship, but I'm telling you, don't.
"Our ship is new. We've only got two thousand fighters.
"If we let that pirate ship come alongside and fire all its boarding torpedoes at us, we could be facing three or four times our numbers or more!"
Kian licked his lips, looking at the little pirate ship closing in fast, his eyes full of the wisdom of a man about to go all in.
"Don't worry. Do as I say. Stand down all macro-cannons and lances, and let that thing come in close!
"Point-defence weapons, all-out fire. Destroy as many of their boarding torpedoes as you can.
"Tell our fighters aboard to fight like hell. If they win this, I'll give them a lump sum of twenty months'... no! Thirty months' pay!
"And from now on, whenever my forces promote officers or hand out anything else good, they get first pick!!"
The Captain was aghast. This meant a fight to the death.
"Are you sure? There's really no need! With our ship's firepower, we can destroy that pirate ship from a distance!
"But if we let it in and fight a boarding action, we'd be two thousand against four thousand-plus pirates!"
Kian wagged his finger.
"No, no, no. It's four thousand-plus pirates against our two thousand, plus one Astartes!"
Kian thumped his chest. In heavy power armour, he stood nearly two and a half metres tall.
A Lumberer stubber was mounted over his head, and ultra-heavy lasrifles on both his vambraces.
A power sword hung at his left hip, a bolt rifle at his right, and on his back he carried an adamantium shield and a number of melta grenades. He was a walking arsenal.
Kian looked at the pirate ship approaching on the hologram, his eyes full of greed.
"When the fight starts and they fire their boarding torpedoes at us, you take all two thousand of our fighters and hold our ship!
"Then load me into a boarding torpedo and fire me back at their ship. I'm going to hit their home base all by myself!!"
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