Chapter 560: Prize Ship
Once Greyhide broadcast his surrender, the attacking pirates' morale collapsed, and most of their will to fight evaporated.
The pirates who'd already boarded Kian's ship lost most of their fighting spirit and were wiped out by the Sword-class escort's anti-boarding teams.
The pirates still aboard the pirate ship wanted to resist. They wanted to retake the bridge and run with the ship.
But Greyhide had already sealed every hatch he could reach from the central console, cutting the pirates off from each other in separate spaces.
He'd even cut the power, plunging them into darkness.
After that it was simple. Once the Sword-class escort's anti-boarding teams had killed every pirate on their own ship, they shuttled infantry over to the pirate ship and started clearing it section by section.
It took about three days, and every pirate on the pirate ship was either dead or had surrendered.
On the pirate ship's bridge, an anti-boarding officer came before Kian, made the sign of the aquila, and said:
"Sir, the pirate ship is ours. We killed 4,535 and captured 8,520. Your orders?"
Kian said:
"Send people to check them. Anyone with mutations, Chaos tattoos, anyone who laughs like kehehehe, or anyone you just don't like the look of. Drag them all out and kill them!"
A few hours later, the officer came back to report:
"Sir, as you ordered, we've executed three thousand. Five thousand five hundred remain. We've checked them with instruments, and their Warp corruption is within safe levels."
Kian nodded in satisfaction.
"Tie them all up and lock them away. We've got fewer fighters than they have prisoners, and I don't want them rising up in the middle of the voyage.
"Also, go ask if any of them has a special trade. If so, they'd better step forward now, or they're getting sold as slaves."
Kian's original plan had been to go straight to Feudal World 481 and meet up with Inquisitor Trasolh. That wasn't going to work now. In the boarding fight, the Sword-class escort had been punched full of dozens of holes by boarding torpedoes.
For a behemoth like a warship, those holes were nothing much, but if he had the chance, he should still get the ship properly repaired.
As it happened, a few days away was the Crossroads, the asteroid world where Kian had helped wipe out the Genestealers last time.
He remembered telling the governor there that they should do more business together.
Living conditions on that asteroid were harsh, and after several geological disasters that had killed huge numbers, people were the most precious commodity there was.
And Kian just happened to have 5,500 pirates on his hands. He'd haul them over and sell them!
Kian spent a few days doing basic patch-up work on both ships, then took them together to the Mandeville point, raised the Gellar Field, and entered the Warp.
The ship the Angels had crewed for Kian did have a Navigator. He was very old. All three of his eyes had gone milky white, as if he had cataracts.
The old Navigator told Kian his Warp eye had degenerated badly, and four or five more trips into the Warp would just about leave him blind.
He told Kian to hurry and find a new Navigator before he went fully blind, or every Warp trip after that would be like a blind man walking.
As for the pirate ship, it did have a Navigator too, but Kian had burned him to death with Holy Amasec.
Damn it, the thing had fully mutated. There was a huge mound of tumorous flesh growing on the Navigation Spire, and at the top of the mound was an eye the size of a human head. That thing had been the pirate ship's Navigator.
Pirates, on the one hand, weren't very capable of resisting Chaos corruption, and on the other hand, they didn't much want to.
As long as the tainted didn't go berserk and start hacking people apart, or turn into anything too weird, they didn't care.
The two ships entered the Warp together and set course for the Crossroads.
Kian had already looked over the data on the pirate ship he'd captured. It was a pirate refit of a Cobra-class destroyer.
The tech-priests had pulled the ship's history from its black box.
It had once served in the Imperial Navy. Later, because of its age and other reasons, it was sold to a Rogue Trader family.
Later still, that Rogue Trader family fought another trading family, and the ship was lost in deep space.
Then it was found by passing void pirates, who spent more than a century repairing it.
Once repaired, the ship took part in countless fights between pirate factions. It was sunk once more, then salvaged by another pirate faction, who spent several centuries repairing it again.
All that combat history, and all those brutal refits, meant there was no way to tell from the outside that it had ever been a Cobra-class destroyer.
In the end, the ship's captain, Greyhide's predecessor, betrayed a major pirate who commanded three warships, meaning to strike out on his own.
But before that would-be independent pirate could make anything of himself, his underling Greyhide stabbed him to death and took his place as the new pirate captain.
In the kaleidoscopic Warp, the Sword-class escort and the pirate ship sailed side by side. In three days they would drop out of the Warp near the Crossroads.
In the Sword-class escort's interrogation room, Greyhide was strapped into an electric chair, spilling everything he knew.
"After I stabbed our old captain to death, I became the ship's new master.
"Out among the stars I did some trading here, some highway robbery there. Plenty of big shots know me.
"One day, an envoy from a Rogue Trader house came aboard my ship. He told me there was a brand-new Sword-class escort parked near Agri-World 496b.
"He told me it was a newly built ship and couldn't have many fighters aboard.
"So I got greedy and brought my men to try and take this new ship."
Kian sat across from the electric chair with a cigarette in his mouth. He blew a smoke ring and said:
"That Rogue Trader didn't mention the ship was repaired by the Astartes?"
Kian was honestly impressed. Greyhide had guts!
If he'd asked around at all and heard about the fearsome Old Fart Kian, and that the ship had been repaired by the Astartes, would he still have dared try something like this?
Greyhide's face had gone ashen.
"That Rogue Trader played me. They used me as their advance scout.
"It's just, I thought, I thought..."
Kian snorted.
"You thought you could take my ship fast and jump into the Warp before anything happened?
"That whatever schemes those Rogue Traders were running couldn't touch you!
"Okay, okay, smart guy. Tell me the name of that Rogue Trader house. Don't worry, I'll avenge you."
Kian drew the bolt rifle at his hip and pressed it to Greyhide's head.
Greyhide knew he wasn't going to live. All he wanted now was a quick death, and to cause some trouble for the Rogue Trader house that had played him.
So he spilled everything he knew.
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you