The Privateer

In all the verse, there was no ship more feared than the Klaath Queenship. A five hundred kilometer line of spheres with three bladelike spirals winding around it. A Queenship's shields were two point six millions times stronger than the Federation's toughest dreadnaught. A single one of its beam emitters hit as hard as nine hundred eighteen Stinger beam weapons. A Queenship had thousands of such emitters. Yvian had thought they had a range of ninety thousand kilometers, but that had been a limitation of the Klaath themselves. The actual effective range was in the tens of millions.

The arrival of a single Queenship was the death of a sector. Its shields were unbreakable. Its weapons were overwhelming. Yvian had once seen a holo of the battle of Valgan, the original homeworld of the Flivvan. Ten million Confederation Military vessels had been destroyed in just under three hours. In all of history, no species had ever defeated a Queenship in direct combat. At least, that's what Yvian had been taught.

The truth was, one species had developed weaponry specifically to kill the flagships of the Klaath. Simple projectiles launched at extreme speeds. Normally, an accelerated chunk of metal would be no threat. The shields of even the weakest ship could withstand such a thing with ease. But not these. The MAC weapons of the humans used a technology no one knew how to replicate. Some kind of energy disruption field. The field made the projectiles invisible to sensors. More importantly, it made the invisible chunks of metal pass through shielding.

With these weapons, the humans had gleefully killed the Klaath wherever they found them. The same weapons had allowed Yvian's Peacekeeper units to defeat sixty Queens in a single fight. The mere existence of MAC Cannons and YEET Artillery Barges changed the Queenships from an unstoppable force to an easy target. Using them to attack Xill Sector 37 would be stupid. Borderline suicidal.

So of course that's what they were doing.

"Bright Lady, please let this work." Yvian's prayer was heard by no one. The ship she was in, a Gladiator class fighter similar to the Random Encounter, had been decompressed. The Peacekeeper unit flying the ship was only a meter away, but he might as well have been in another sector. Yvian's comms had been disabled, and her wrist console had been left on New Pixa.

The Peacekeeper unit, who had named himself Bowie, turned and placed a finger on Yvian's faceplate. "Your prayer is unnecessary, Yvian. We will be sufficient."

Yvian blinked. He'd heard her?

"You meatbags always underestimate Peacekeeper units." Bowie regarded her with an amused yellow glow. "Your vibrations are carried through your voidarmor and into the deck. This unit can detect them."

"Oh." Yvian stared up at the viewport. The blue swirling light of the Gate Effect stared back. "Lend forgiveness. I'm just a little nervous."

"Forgiveness is unnecessary," said the Peacekeeper. "Even Big Daddy Mims does not grasp this unit's full capabilities." He moved his hand down to clasp her shoulder. "Your fear is useful. It will keep you sharp. Just remember that you are not alone. This unit is with you. This unit believes in you. You are sufficient, Yvian Kiver. Whatever happens, you will find a way to win."

Yvian smiled and put a hand over the Peacekeeper's. "Thanks, Kilroy."

"Bowie," the unit reminded her.

"Crunch." Talking to Bowie felt exactly the same as talking to Kilroy, but that was no excuse for mixing up his name. "Sorry, Bowie. Lend me forgiveness?"

His eyes were yellow again. "Forgiveness is lent. This unit is not offended. This unit is standard, and carries the memories of Kilroy. It is no surprise your unreliable meatbag brain would be confused." The machine kept one hand on Yvian's shoulder, but his other flashed over his control console. "The Doomsday Clock is entering Xill Sector 37. Sensor readings are being transferred to your station."

Yvian turned to her console. Sensor readings appeared. She saw ships. A lot of ships. Six million Xill vessels guarded each of the sectors' four gates. Two million Quig Battlecruisers, four million Lig and Mig fighters, and a full thousand Yig Destroyers. Yvian had seen a destroyed Yig once, but she'd never seen one in action. No one had. Rumor had it the appearance of a Yig would doom a sector as surely as a Klaath Queen.

Human ships were mixed in with the defenders. Reba must have pulled every XTRO ship she could get her hands on. At least, Yvian hoped she had. There were over three million ships at each Gate. Half a million Gladiator class fighters. Half a million conventional capital ships, of which fifty thousand were YEET Artillery Barges. Lastly, there were two million Ronin Battlecruisers armed with beam weapons. Yvian guessed they were from the same fleet that had attacked New Pixa.

There were another two million Xill scattered throughout the Sector, along with a few million Federation ships gathered around the Hub. Yvian looked past them, to the Hub itself. She found the frigate. The one with the Lucendian weapon. The ship had moved. It was hiding behind the Hub, now, carefully positioned so it couldn't be targeted from any of the four Gates. Yvian swore. If they hadn't moved, her Queenships could vaporize the motherless sons from here.

The moment the Doomsday Clock started to exit the Gate every vessel within twenty thousand kilometers opened fire. A storm of plasma and ion and missiles appeared on the sensors. It was a daunting display, but it was nothing compared to the torrent Yvian couldn't see. A torrent of shield piercing metal.

For all it's power, the Queens of the Klaath had two glaring weaknesses. First, they were slow. At maximum output, the Doomsday Clock's engines could only manage nine meters per second's worth of acceleration. That was if it was moving forward. In any other direction, two meters per second was the best it could do. The thing turned so slowly you could barely tell it was moving at all.

The Clock's poor maneuverability was compounded by its second, more obvious weakness. The ship was huge. It dwarfed most stations. In open space this meant it was a large, nearly immobile target. A fair trade for superior shields and firepower. But with a Gate....

Jumpgates were strange. No matter what speed an object entered, it would always be ejected from the Gate Effect at ten meters per second. A ship could accelerate once its engines cleared the Gate, but not before. A battlecruiser needed just under a minute to enter a sector. The Clock would take nine hours, and be unable to use a single beam emitter for the first seven minutes. Yvian doubted the ship could survive that long unarmed and exposed.

Scientists, Warmasters, and the crew of the Random Encounter had thought furiously on the problem, and come up with two solutions. The first part was the simplest. The Doomsday Clock's jumpdrive was modified. The Queenship, along with fourteen others, would enter the Gate sideways. Instead of ejecting a five hundred kilometer length, the Gate would eject twenty kilometers of width. The ship would clear the Gate in just under half an hour, and they'd be able to start shooting almost immediately.

Yvian watched beam weapons crash against the Clock's shields. The more conventional weapons would take longer to reach it. The closest defenders were positioned over eight thousand kilometers from the Gate. Even the YEET rounds would need another minute to cross that much space. The Clock and fourteen other Queenships returned fire. Massive beams of white light slammed into the nearest YEETs, reducing them to molten debris.

Bowie sent a message to Yvian's console. It said, "POINT DEFENSE ACTIVATED." This was the second solution. The Clock's shield bubble was much larger than the ship itself. Stinger units filled as much of that space as they could without blocking the ship's weapons. Stinger ships were fighters, eighty meters long and thirty meters at their widest points. Each of them carried a beam weapon. Those beam weapons had been modified. Instead of a single line of charged particles, they now fired a cone. The weapons lost most of their range, but covered a large amount of space with enough energy to disable a YEET round. The Stingers swept their weapons in a grid pattern around the Doomsday Clock, turning the deadly shield piercing rounds into useless hunks of fast moving metal.

The barrage of cannon fire reached the Clock next. Millions of blasts of plasma and charged particles splashed against shields. Yvian looked up at the viewport, but all she saw was the swirling blue of the Gate Effect. Her ship hadn't made it out yet.

The Doomsday Clock and her fellows continued their attack. Beams of death jumped from one YEET to another, destroying ship after ship as swiftly as they could. Once the YEETs were dead, the beams shifted to the Gladiators. The Peacekeepers ignored the Xill ships pouring fire into them. The Federation and their MAC guns were the bigger threat for now.

Another message appeared on Yvian's screen. "EXITING GATE IN 45 SECONDS. PUT ON YOUR HAT."

"Got it," Yvian replied. The hat was a Peacekeeper fedora. It matched the suit Yvian was wearing over her armor. Yvian doublechecked the magnetic band on the inside of the hat. She couldn't risk it falling off when the time came to move. Satisfied, she placed it on her head. "How do I look?"

The Peacekeeper left his console. He adjusted Yvian's hat with swift precise motions. He did the same to Yvian's coat and tie. He placed both on hands on her shoulders and examined her. "Acceptable," the machine decided. "For a meatbag."

Bowie returned to his station. Yvian followed suit. A few seconds later the viewport shifted. Instead of the swirling blue of the Gate, a riot of multicolored light flashed into the ship. The arrival of the... Yvian stared down at her console. She didn't know the name of the ship she was on. "Uh, Bowie?"

"YOU ARE ON THE STARMAN," the Peacekeeper messaged.

"Thanks," said Yvian. The arrival of the Starman didn't change anything. Not yet. There were hundreds of Gladiators just like it scattered among the Stingers in the Clock's shield bubble. Hundreds more waited with the other Queenships. Each of them was manned by a Peacekeeper unit with a single pixen pilot as back up. Or human, in Mims' case. Yvian very much hoped they wouldn't be needed.

The Queenships finished off the Federation ships in short order. By the time the Doomsday Clock finished exiting the Gate, half the Xill ships had been blasted out of the sky as well. The sight of impending victory should have eased Yvian's nerves, but her tension only increased. "This is too easy," she muttered. "It shouldn't be this easy." She turned to Bowie. "Do you think..."

Bowie fell. There was no air to carry the sound of his crash to the deck, but Yvian felt the thump through her boots. She looked up at the viewport. The flashes of light continued, but she didn't see the yellow cones of the Stinger point defense. She looked at her console. The screen was blank.

"Crunch." Yvian shook her head. "Should have kept my mouth shut." She flipped the switch that activated manual control, and put her hands on the joysticks. "Alright. I guess it's my turn."

Yvian took a breath. Let it out slow. She reached up and pressed a button on the side of her helmet, activating a low tech radio. "This is Blue Leader. There's a ship out there with a Lucendian Weapon. It's our job to find it and take it out. Stay on me, and watch each other's backs."

Yvian took one more breath, then eased the Starman forward. It was time to be sufficient.