Chapter 556: Boarding Action
"Go, go, go! Fire every boarding torpedo we've got and take that big ship!!"
Inside the pirate ship, a ragged mob of pirates who looked like space refugees, all in mismatched armour and carrying mismatched weapons, poured into the huge boarding-torpedo bays.
With one roar after another, the boarding torpedoes were launched from the pirate ship's tubes, streaking toward the Sword-class escort!
This specially modified pirate ship fired off dozens of boarding torpedoes in an instant.
A few dozen seconds later, it fired dozens more.
In under a minute, it had launched more than a hundred boarding torpedoes at the Sword-class escort!
In void combat, boarding torpedoes were slow weapons. Void shields didn't stop them. They passed right through and hit the hull.
A boarding torpedo had plenty of room inside and could carry over a hundred armed men. The whole torpedo was built of alloy steel and could withstand most small-calibre point-defence fire.
The front of the torpedo usually had a melta nozzle, and the back had a rocket motor.
When the torpedo was about to hit the enemy hull, the nozzle at its head sprayed a jet of superheated plasma that melted through the enemy's metres-thick armour.
Then the rocket at the back fired, and the boarding torpedo drove into the enemy hull like a spear.
Now a swarm of pirate boarding torpedoes was streaking toward the Sword-class escort. Some couldn't take the Sword-class's point-defence fire and were blown apart in midflight.
The hundred-odd pirates inside were exposed to vacuum and died in moments.
But more boarding torpedoes, protected by their hard armour, withstood the point-defence fire, passed through the void shield, and slammed into the hull.
The melta nozzles at the torpedoes' heads began spraying melta jets. The Sword-class escort's metres-thick alloy armour melted through, and the boarding torpedoes punched their way into the hull!
As soon as a torpedo was inside the ship, several hatches opened, and the pirates inside came pouring out, yelling.
"Kill, kill, kill!! Kill every fighter in here and take this ship!!"
The pirates came yelling out of their torpedoes, but they were met by well-equipped anti-boarding teams.
The ship's two thousand anti-boarding troops had been equipped by the Forge World.
Every soldier carried a shotgun, a high-energy lasrifle, melta grenades, or some other weapon.
For protection they wore unpowered armour, something like a void suit.
The chest of this armour was hard ceramite that could stop laser and solid-round fire, and the rubbery joints could disperse laser fire.
On the ground this armour would be very heavy, but in space it was just right. Even in heavy armour, the soldiers could move nimbly.
On top of that, when the enemy boarding torpedoes were fired at the hull, the Captain had turned down the ship's artificial gravity a little, so the gravity inside the ship had become very light.
In low gravity, if you weren't careful, a single step could send you flying several metres.
The soles of the anti-boarding teams' armour had mag-locks that let them anchor themselves in low gravity.
The pirates didn't necessarily have gear that advanced.
Sure enough, the moment the pirates jumped out of their torpedoes, the low gravity sent them flailing and drifting around, unable to control their bodies properly.
Before the flailing pirates could get the hang of low gravity, they were cut down by laser and solid-round fire from every direction.
The two thousand anti-boarding troops went berserk. Thirty months' pay would keep them living large for a long time!
They were really fighting for their lives now, and their lasers hit fast and hard!
Of course, anyone who made it as a pirate had a few tricks up their sleeve.
Boarding torpedoes kept streaking from the pirate ship toward the Sword-class escort. At first the pirates couldn't adjust to the low gravity, and a lot of them were killed.
But within a few minutes they'd adapted, found their footing on the Sword-class escort, and started shooting back at the anti-boarding teams.
Just as the Captain had predicted, the pirate ship really did have a lot of men. The pirates' gear was a mixed bag, generally worse than the anti-boarding teams', but there were just too many of them.
Three minutes into the fight, nearly a thousand pirates had boarded the Sword-class escort.
In a few more minutes, that number would probably multiply several times over!
From the bridge, the Captain kept directing and redeploying his troops, ordering them to hold the ship's vital facilities. The vital facilities could not fall to the pirates, no matter what.
At the same time, he got Kian on the vox:
"My lord, your ship is holding for now. Are you sure you want to board the enemy ship?"
By now Kian had put on a suit of heavy power armour, loaded himself up with weapons, and climbed inside a boarding torpedo.
"I'm sure! Fire me at the enemy ship. There's an old saying from Old Terra: when all's said and done, it comes down to who can raze the other guy's base faster!
"Once I take their spawn point, these pirates will panic. Then whether we make them surrender or wipe them out, they're ours to play with!"
The Captain couldn't argue with that. He pressed a few buttons on the control panel, then slammed down a red one.
The two ships were now running side by side about a dozen kilometres apart.
The pirate ship couldn't figure out why the Sword-class escort wasn't firing at it, so it had grown very bold.
The pirate ship had pulled closer to the Sword-class escort and turned to bring its broadside to bear on the Sword-class escort's broadside.
The pirate ship's broadside had even more torpedo tubes, so they could get their forces onto the Sword-class escort even faster.
If anyone had been watching from nearby, they'd have seen things launching nonstop from the smaller pirate ship's broadside toward the Sword-class escort.
Those swarms of little black dots were boarding torpedoes packed with pirate infantry.
Inside the pirate ship, every pirate had gone wild!
They brandished their weapons and crowded around the torpedo tubes.
Some pirates even killed each other on the spot, fighting over a place in a torpedo tube!
These void pirates lived by the law of the jungle. Whoever won the most glory got the most respect on this ship!
Loudspeakers were everywhere inside the pirate ship, and the pirate captain's excited shouts blared from them:
"Get out there, all of you! Throw your worthless lives at that big ship and take it!
"Whoever earns glory gets first pick of the best booze, the best women, and the best food!
"Go! Kill! You wanna rot on the lower decks like the trash you are, or roll the dice and get to the top?!"
The rousing words echoed through the pirate ship, and every time the pirate captain's voice came over the loudspeakers, the pirates below let out a war cry.
They poured into the torpedo bays even faster, cramming 150 or even 200-plus men into a torpedo built for 100!
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