When Commodore Huxley sent out the order, a message went out to the small task force she’d assembled for an entirely different mission a few hours travel away; one that really only required a single capital ship to show up and intimidate some pirates, but would at least keep it from costing the company money to sort-of babysit her boy with a whole task force.

  There were three corvettes accompanying the battlegroup that Commodore Huxley had brought along; and in an amusing coincidence, two of them were classic designs, modified versions of an old ‘Dragon’ class.

  They’d done well facing Empire forces in the first galactic war, because, much like the actual dead dragon in front of them, those old vessels had been covered in a thick layer that helped dissipate heat-based weaponry; and the Dragon was literally built around a 45-meter railgun; and could extend a section forward to make it longer, to achieve higher-velocity shots, if need be.

  Over the years, the model had been upgraded. Newer versions of the same design existed in both the United Worlds, as well as various Independent navies, all based around one core idea.

  The smallest possible ship whose main gun could penetrate any warship whatsoever, even if it couldn’t kill it with that shot. A gun that could be used to destroy a building from orbit, or take out a reactor on the toughest battleship.

  And when the fleet emerged back into realspace, each of these targeted roughly where they believed the reactors should be on the Empire vessel; and fired within fractions of a second.

  There was barely a warning. One moment, the cruiser was investigating; a long, black, sleek structure, hard to make out against the stars with the naked eye, pulling in closer, undoubtedly concerned about what it was seeing, confused about how this much damage had been done, how the dragon had managed to do this.

  The one destroyer was mostly intact, but had several obvious holes in it. The other two? Mostly gone. It looked as if the self-destruct had somehow been triggered by accident to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Something that happened, sometimes, when dealing with dragons, but was incredibly rare.

  The next… a different sort of Dragon had opened fire.

  One of the two had nailed a reactor dead-on with its initial shot. The only thing in the ship dense enough to meaningfully slow down a railgun slug, the reactor had taken the hit, been torn apart, and managed to deflect chunks of the solid iron mass, sending bits of it scattering through the internal spaces; shredding dozens of unfortunate crew and leaving the hull on the other side cracked in a dozen places.

  The other had missed; still hitting the forward engineering bay, the slug hadn’t hit anything dense enough to slow it down, and simply torn through all the decks, severing some of the connectors, shattering through the other side; leaving a tiny hole on the end facing the corvette, and a much larger one out the other side.

  The cruiser still had power. Was thinking, possibly, it would be facing a space-monster, so its weapons were ready.

  Even as the weaker, smaller, but more numerous railguns that the Harbinger of Sorrows opened up with started to find their mark, smaller slugs buried in the hull dealing massive damage to internal structures, turrets turned to focus on the two corvettes, emitters came online, and slugs started to divert… missing the cruiser, pushed off-course or at angles that would allow a deflection instead of a clean penetration.

  She was hurt, and badly… but not out of the fight. And before the second shot from the two corvettes could be fired, both of them were raked by anti-gunship turrets, and the cruiser started turning, aiming to bring its forward weapons to bear on the Harbinger.

  One of the dragons listed to the side. Its next shot striking the upper section of the Empire cruiser; the shot piercing clean through, damaging lines running to a few turrets, but nothing critical. The other, however, despite taking a fair number of low-power hits, nailed its second shot, hitting just the right spot to ensure the deflection merely slowed it down rather than actually missing…

  And the second rector came unmoored, most of its connections broken, rapidly overloading and frying the remaining connectors as power failed throughout the ship.

  The main bank of plasma weapons at the fore of the cruiser failed even as she lined up with the carrier… and seconds later, she followed her sisters… the reactor detonating, triggering the failsafes across the ship, as everything considered proprietary started to slag itself beyond recognition… and the shattered ruins of the cruiser became an expanding cloud of debris.

  One of the two corvettes had lost thrusters on one side, and was drifting… but otherwise, everyone was mostly intact.

  The commodore smiled. “Get me an assessment of the Door Knocker’s engine damage, and have everyone sift through the debris, bundle it all up together. Anything useful, we keep. We’ll make an Ash run to drop off the rest.”

  She looked thoughtful for a moment… and then nodded to herself. “Check for any survivors, shoot them, and record the kills, as well as any bodies you can find. Make sure to record everything. I doubt there will be many, but best to make a sweep.”

  The Empire captain just stared at the display, and glanced up at her. “.... Why its…. I doubt many would survive. If our reactor hadn’t been eaten, I wouldn’t be here, but…”

  She glanced back. “Captain. Do I need to remind you of the reason we just killed her? The dead from that system she just left?”

  “...No.” BSE had an outstanding contract, paying bounties on ships that attacked their operations. Legally, that was a pirate ship, and every crewman would have a bounty.

  “Good. Now. As soon as we’re safely on our way, I’m going to be calling to negotiate. I want the comm information of your superior officer.”

  “I cannot provide that.”

  A soft chuckle. “Then someone who you’re allowed to give contact info, who can negotiate, who is sufficiently secure your people wouldn’t mind talking about these space monsters of yours.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  He sighed. “There are various ambassadors and the like, but… I suppose I can give you something you would be able to access without my assistance. I can’t tell you why I’d recommend speaking with him, but he’s the best option.”

  ***

  A few minutes later, the fleet.. Alongside a bundle of salvage all wrapped up in an enormous net… had started to head towards the Ash system… though they had little intent of actually reaching it.

  The moment they’d entered Darkspace, the fleet had placed a call. Hundreds of light-years away, an Empire ambassador had received a message… and reluctantly boarded a ship to conduct a real-time chat, with little idea what to expect… only the knowledge that a band of mercenaries was requesting a conference… using an encrypted Empire-produced communications device.

  It took him an hour to get into position to make the call; and there he was, settled in a private office on an Empire station, looking over his desk at… a holographic projection of a woman wearing a grisly, bone-covered armor suit… and what appeared to be one of his own captains, sitting strapped to a chair, missing a leg.

  He frowned, leaning forward… there was another figure there. Looking like a male version of the armored woman; pale, dark hair, green eyes… only with his arm in a sling. The injuries and the facts of the call… did not paint a pleasant picture.

  “I am Ambassadaor Yakura, representing his Imperial majesty in affairs of the Horth province and its negotiations with its neighbors. The image I see before me is… troubling, as is the manner in which I was reached. I trust there is a good explanation?”

  The woman smiled. “Well hello, Yakkie-boy. I’m Commodore Miranda Huxley, this would be my son, Kyle, and this fellow over here is a space pirate we captured. Part of a band that slagged a few colonies. As a favor, I’m just going to say, before we go through the next part, that if you have any means of enhancing privacy on your end, you should use them now.”

  The ambassador blinked.. And glanced at his desk, before nodding. “Only my superiors, on my end, can watch this. Why are you referring to someone who appears to be one of our captains as a pirate? What proof do you have of these unorthodox claims?”

  An evil grin came across the woman’s face. “Why, eye-witness testimony of this ship capturing a mercenary actively pursuing pirates, namely, the one my son was on, as well as recordings from both vessels. And of a few allied pirate ships just ruthlessly butchering a bunch of civilians. Why, these are some of the nastiest bunch of pirates I ever laid eyes on.”

  She leaned back in her chair. “Fortunately, I was in the area on an unrelated mission, and was able to handle them. All either dead or captured. No more threat, from their part. On the other hand….these pirates also happened to run across something I believe is of interest to you.”

  She tapped the console. An image appeared… of a long, serpentine black form, with numerous holes broken into it and glowing yellow flesh exposed beneath the scales. “Its really quite strange. It looks almost like a living, organic being, capable of producing a plasma beam, and with an armored shell that is capable of resisting incoming heat-based attacks.”

  She glanced up at the Ambassador. “Even more strangely, the ship we captured mostly intact… had living armor, that seemed to work on the same principles. Considering how long ago we first saw Empire ships with this sort of armor, that everyone would eventually make their own, lesser, copies of, it has certain… implications.”

  Yakura stared at the image… and then at the mercenary. “... Would it be possible for these… pirates… to be turned over to Empire custody, alongside their vessels and this… sample? We can certainly make it worth your time.”

  “Mmm, well. I’m afraid that the pirates themselves have to be turned over to BSE. Contracts and all that. We’ve gone over the ships, the wreckage, and found a few pieces we’ve decided to keep. And the rest? Well, I’m sure the dubs would just love to buy anything we don’t have a use for. Why…. it might be enough for me to buy another few task forces and get back to being the biggest merc company again.”

  The two stared at each other… and Yakura sighed. “...One hundred million credits. Agree to hand over all the hardware and captured… pirates, and keep this secret. That would be enough to buy a task-force outright. A destroyer, a few frigates, a pack of corvettes. All brand new from the Empire’s export-grade shipyards.”

  She gave a slow nod. “Ahh, but the dubs would pay more than that. Not only that, but once they worked everything out, and realized what I already have… we’d have a repeat of the first galactic war. Empire keeping a bunch of secrets, and murdering to keep them. Everyone finds out. Everyone gets pissed off. How many ‘unexplained disappearances’ in the border worlds are they going to pin on you, right or wrong, after this goes public? You know… not only would I make a ton of credits selling it to them…. But wars are very profitable business for mercenary groups like mine. A new galactic war….”

  She shrugged. “And the dubs are going to be hiring every single merc group out there. Not only would we be able to get paid… but fight alongside Dub, Directorate, and republic task forces… and get to keep the spoils. Hell, the Alliance might even join in for a share of the loot.”

  “...What would it take to buy your silence, and the return of my countrymen?”

  “Add a zero. A billion sounds good. And an ongoing contract from you to patrol this particular region, at double our usual task-force rates, for two task forces. Both of which will be required to load NDA software if they encounter another creature. And if we discover civilian witnesses, the Empire pays to get them implanted and loaded with the same.”

  “...Pirate witnesses, we kill.”

  The ambassador blinked. “...You’ll help us cover this up in the future?”

  She gave a low chuckle. “Pay us enough to make it worth our while, and we’ll do just about anything. The Empire is the only major star nation we haven’t had any long-term contracts with. Though… I will say that you should consider when to release that info. Its gonna get out. In fact, if you pay us enough, we can even help plant enough eggs and whatever somewhere way the hell out of the way and arrange discovery so people aren’t as suspicious.”

  Yakura gave a slow nod. “...Why would we do that?”

  “Remember the first galactic war? Everybody knew the deaths were on you guys because it was all using drives you built, and they discovered all the lies about how they worked. Secrets like this aren’t gonna be kept forever. That’s doomed. My XO tells me that these critters float through deep space for centuries to get to a new system to feed. Give it enough time, and a dub patrol is gonna find one somewhere.”

  The ambassador gave a slow nod. “I’m uncertain about the latter. But as far as the billion credits, and the ongoing patrols? We can make an agreement. Simply return them to us.”

  “Ohhh, no. We’re gonna leave the dead dragon with one of our units by a comm beacon, and take the eggs to Ash. You find out where the beacon is when we get payment. After you pick up the dragon, we sign the contract and hand over the eggs. Our fleet stays under the watchful eyes of a Dub naval base, and the location of that body stays hidden, til we get paid.”

  “..You don’t trust us?”

  “Nobody does. I might be a mercenary, but you’re the Empire. That contract’s terms are gonna be paid in advance for each year of patrol, with a ten-year penalty if you cancel, half of it held in escrow.”

  “We are a noble and honorable star nation, the most advanced in the galaxy!”

  “You are thieves, liars, and murderers, and one wrong phrase away from a third galactic war.”

  The ambassador sighed. “...Your proposal is acceptable.”