Battle At Pirate's Bay: A Spider Wars' Prequel Read online

  Battle At Pirate’s Bay

  A Spider Wars’ Prequel

  Randy Dyess

  Copyright © 2017 Randy Dyess

  All rights reserved.

  Aliens, Corrupt Government, Indifferent Corporations, Backwater Planets, Unlikely Heroes

  In the distant future, humans have colonized hundreds of planets and thousands of moons and asteroids. We travel between planets in large numbers and have made advances in all aspects of human achievement. As with the present, the future with all its advancements is not exactly Utopia. Powerful politicians and the extremely rich enjoy benefits on the planets closest to Earth that trillions of people on the outer planets only dream about. Large corporations have replaced nations and control planets and billions of workers. Workers live and work on the same planet and for the same corporations as generations of their ancestors. Generations have lived with no hope of ever having any life other than one of “just getting by”.

  At least they don't have to worry about other species competing with us. – Well, until now.

  Humans are all alone in the stars and haven’t fought a war in hundreds of years, but that doesn’t mean everyone gets along. Pirates raid cargo ships in all of the outer-rim sectors and one pirate has risen above all of the others and has named himself King Florres. Join our young captain, Dakota Sullivan, and the rest of her family as they team up with a large corporation’s security team to try to rid their systems of this dreaded pirate king and make the lives just a little easier for everyone in the Taurus and Pegasus sectors. Find out how the spider wars’ heroes meet for the first time as they come together for the Battle At Pirate’s Bay.

  DEDICATION

  To all my wonderful grandchildren. Your names are the main characters in these stories. You are the main characters in mine.

  Spider War Series:

  Battle At Pirate’s Bay: Book 0

  First Contact: Book 1

  On The Run: Book 2

  Fighting Back: Book 3: (Coming Apr 2017)

  Fleet Action: Book 4: (Coming May 2017)

  Invasion: Book 5: (Coming Jun 2017)

  Receive a complimentary copy of the prequel story Battle At Pirate's Bayby signing up on our mailing list: lazydogpublishing.com/Newsletter

  Want to hear about new releases? Sign up (www.LazyDogPublishing.com)for my mailing list and get an inside track to my next release.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  First Contact: Chapter 1

  Chapter 1

  The King’s ready room on Pirate’s Bay was nothing to be proud of, even before the space station had been abandoned. The small conference room was barren and ugly, and after a few years of hosting hundreds of pirates, the ready room was a filthy, smelly place. It still resembled a conference room, though, and King Florres liked to think of himself as a corporate titan and not just a pirate.

  Fifteen pirate captains stood around the room, waiting for King Florres to begin his briefing. There was not enough room for chairs, so they had to stand. Another thing King Florres liked was that he was the only one in the room important enough for a chair—it put the others in their place. Also, the more senior or the more liked you were by King Florres determined where you stood; those out of favor, but who were still needed, were often made to stand in the doorway leading to the small storage closet at the back of the room. Others who King Florres wanted to favor or who had recently captured prize cargoes got to stand next to the King as he gave his pre-raid or post-raid briefings.

  “Although most of you couldn’t fight your way out of a Choin’s nest,” King Florres started off with drawing a loud laugh from the assembled captains, “I’m going to take you lot on a little raid with me.”

  A whoop went out from the small group of men and women. Even though the King would get the majority of the captured cargo, a successful raid would still give the captains enough profit to pay their men and enjoy their lives a few months longer.

  “Since I know everything that goes on in my kingdom,” King Florres said. Even though they knew it wasn’t true, no one laughed at him—the last captain who’d laughed at this had spent his next raid tied to the front of the Anarchy without his space suit. “I’ve heard of a little pox outbreak on Wethea, and Peterson Mining is sending the treatment aboard a Sullivan freighter in two days. I’ve also heard that the freighter will have a large amount of U-981 on it.”

  The captains looked excited at the news: U-981 was a very rare mineralized crystal, which made faster-than-light travel possible. Without FTL, ships couldn’t travel between systems and mankind would still be stranded in the Sol system. Over five hundred years ago, someone had discovered that this rare crystal could harness the power to achieve faster-than-light travel. Since then, every asteroid in colonized space had been scoured for U-981 in mankind’s race to colonize space. Now the mineral could only be found in asteroids at the far reaches of human space, but never in large quantities. It took tens of thousands of asteroid miners searching every little rock to find enough U-981 to keep mankind traveling between the stars expanding human-controlled space. U-981 was very valuable, and King Florres now knew where enough of it would be to power his fleet for years to come, as well as make a fortune with the remaining U-981 crystals.

  “How much U-981?” Captain Chaos asked. He was currently King Florres’ right-hand man and could ask questions during the briefing.

  “Over a ton,” the King replied. That amount would power their fleet for over a decade since it only took a few grams for an average-size ship to create an FTL tunnel.

  “There has never been a shipment that large. Why so much?” Captain Chaos wanted to know.

  “Peterson is sending a fleet of Galaxy-class freighters to Earth and needs a lot of U-981 to power those big boys.”

  Galaxy-class freighters were over three-thousand meters long—the largest ships ever constructed by humans. When they were attached to a full string of cargo pods, it took several kilograms of U-981 to create an FTL tunnel for that much mass. Every captain in the room was already calculating the amount of money they would make from their share of the U-981.

  “Also, don’t forget,” King Florres said to get their attention back, “the pox medical supplies will be worth a fortune when we sell them on the Wethea black market. Those miners are begging for help; the way Peterson overcharges them for everything, they’ll buy our stuff at a premium and still pay less than buying it from a Peterson commissary.”

  Peterson Mining used independent contract miners and charged them a fortune for every bit of supplies they needed. A good miner, however, could still make enough profit over their ten-year contract to escape the cycle of corporate serfdom their families had faced for generations.

  Captain King Florres reached over and turned on the 3D monitor in the conference room. He pointed to a spot off the Candus Corporation planet of Candus and said, “Here is where the Rascal will come out of FTL. In two days, I want everyone mixed in with the regular traffic over Candus, but do not get more than a few minutes’ flight from this spot.”

  One of the captains asked how he knew about the shipment and which ship it would be on, and King Florres just looked at him like he was an idiot. “How many times do I have to tell you, morons? I have a gift. I know these things because my brain works them out better than the best AI out there. Have I ever been wrong?”

  Most of the captains knew the truth, but they also knew King Florres liked to think of himself as some gifted titan. Every t
ime they had one of these pre-raid meetings, someone always had to ask how the King knew about the shipments. They needed to give him the chance to act superior to them, otherwise, his bad temper would grow and he would become nasty—and people lost their lives when King Florres became nasty.

  “Sorry, my King. I just can’t understand how you do it,” the captain who’d asked the question replied. He lowered his head before smiling to himself and thinking, It’s over. I win the pot, and it is a big one, this time.

  Another thing the captains did before each meeting was put money into a betting pot. The first one to ask how King Florres knew something won the pot. Someone had to do it. The Idiot Pool, as they called it, often got quite large when something big was about to happen. The current pool was larger than it had ever been.

  The captains knew that in real life, King Florres had a network of FTL endpoint booking agents on his payroll as informants. They provided shipping schedules, cargo information, and which FTL endpoint was booked on each planet. Since FTL endpoints and tunnels were highly influenced by gravity wells, there were only so many spots above a planet that a ship could create an FTL endpoint and exit or enter an FTL tunnel. Those locations were subject to traffic control through FTL endpoint booking agents for each system, and they had to be booked weeks in advance of a shipment. The mass of a shipment had to be accounted for, as well, because smaller masses could exit closer to planets than larger masses. Often, the captain of the vessel simply included the cargo list, so the booking AI could figure out which endpoint the ship needed to book.

  Most corporations wouldn’t pay their people enough money to afford more than a basic living, and this made it easy for pirates to provide a little bonus each month for those cargo lists—bonuses that often meant the difference between a full belly and a hungry one for agents on the smallest planets. These bonuses often gave King Florres information about shipments and traitors and kept him in power, as well. The other captains knew that, until they could build their own networks of informants, they were better off staying with King Florres.

  The King finished up his pre-raid briefing by saying, “Damage her and board her only when they give up. Keep your men under control during the boarding or there will be hell to pay. I don’t want any extra killing. Also, there is no one important on the manifest, but you all know that corporate bigwigs often travel off the manifest, so if you find anyone that doesn’t look like crew, grab them and bring them back. Otherwise, get in and get out. I don’t want Candus Security and that bilge rat, Moore, showing up.”

  ******

  The problem with a pirate ship was that it couldn’t look like one. Gone were the days of intercepting cargo ships as they made their way from port to port; with FTL travel and the huge distances to travel after arriving in a star system, it was nearly impossible to catch a freighter by surprise, unless they thought you were one of their own. After capturing the Anarchy from Peterson Mining, King Florres had to do a lot of work on her internal systems so she wouldn’t register as the missing security vessel, but as an ordinary freighter. He didn’t worry about the way the Anarchy actually looked since no one could see anything at such a distance—all “seeing” in space was done through electronic sensors at extremely long ranges and not with human eyes. Transponder codes were easy to spoof, but electronic emissions and drive signatures were not very easy to change unless you actually changed out the drives, themselves.

  King Antonio Florres was like every other pirate out there who wanted to use a captured ship: the first thing they did was beef up the engines. Catching another ship in orbit took incredible amounts of acceleration, as well as deceleration, so you didn’t just fly right past your intended target. It wasn’t the same in space as it was on land or in the atmosphere: there was no friction to slow you down, so you had to provide the power, yourself. This took planning and calculation by pirate captains and their AIs. Luckily, King Florres was one of the best and had a very good AI; he always put his fleet right on target.

  The Anarchy and fifteen other pirate ships exited their FTL tunnels and immediately began to mix in with the other freighters over the Candus Corporation planet. This was easy for the other fifteen ships of King Florres’ fleet since they were old freighters turned into pirate ships with larger drives and hidden weapon systems. With the distances between ships, it was about speed and not massive firepower. For all of King Florres’ weaknesses, he was very good at coordinating space battles. He would have made a great Terran Naval officer if Terran Naval officers actually had to know something and didn’t just achieve their ranks by purchasing them. Everyone knew the Terran Navy was a joke and couldn’t fight its way out of anything or save anyone in trouble.

  “There she is, boys! Can you smell the credits from here?” King Florres joked with his small bridge crew.

  “Aye, Captain, I can smell them from here,” one of his men joked back. Some of their favorite holo-vids were remakes of centuries-old pirate movies, and the crew loved to mimic them. Someone on his crew had even placed an animatronic parrot on the bridge as a joke, and it had become their ship’s good luck symbol.

  “Once we get this done,” King Florres announced over the ship’s intercom, “a visit to Madame Trusseau’s is on me.”

  The whole crew acknowledged his statement with whoops and cheers. It had been months since they had last gotten shore leave, as they called it. Months spent on the Anarchy or in Pirate’s Bay and not at any real recreational place were wearing them thin.

  King Florres left the intercom system on, so everyone could hear. “That reminds me of this girl I met the last time at Madames. She had the,” he was interrupted as the crew’s laughter rocked the ship.

  They were still laughing at King Florres’ story when the sensor officer spotted an FTL endpoint forming at the exact spot King Florres told him to watch. Sullivan Shipping only used three exit points over Candus, and this was the one his sources had indicated the Rascal would use to come into the system.

  “Get ready, boys. Our prey is about to show us the credits,” King Florres announced as his crew tensed at their stations. “Now!” He shouted at his fleet.

  The sensor officer could see fifteen ships’ engines fire up all around the FTL endpoint’s location and maneuver to pass the endpoint a few seconds after it spits out the Rascal. This would give the pirate fleet the most time over the Rascal to fire and destroy her engines. All ships were offline for a few seconds after exiting an endpoint, and the pirates wanted to make the most of this vulnerable time.

  The fifteen ships were lined up on both sides of the endpoint, traveling in the same direction the Rascal would, as they saw the flash that indicated a ship exiting an FTL tunnel.

  King Florres yelled, “Get on her, boys. There’s money to be made and women waiting to spend it on!” Whoops were heard over the com network as the pirate ships moved in for the attack.

  ******

  The Rascal’s Captain had no time to react as a line of ships on his port and starboard sides begin firing at his ship.

  “Get a message to Candus Security! We’re being attacked and need help!” the Captain shouted at his communication officer. He was hoping he would have a few minutes to get a message off before some pirate ship got lucky and knocked his communications offline.

  “Get maneuvering up and start evasive maneuvers!” Captain McKenzie yelled to his crew. He reached for the intercom, “All hands! All hands! Man, your battle stations—we’re under attack! All hands, man your battle stations and prepare for boarding!”

  “Captain! Candus Security is telling us there’s nothing they can do. They only have three security patrol vessels and they are at least a day away.”

  “What?” Captain McKenzie shouted. “Don’t they know what we are carrying? Why aren’t their ships here? Get them back on the com!” He spoke into it, “Damn it, there are pirates all over us. Where’s your security patrol?” Captain McKenzie screamed at the Candus Security officer on the other end of the link. �
�Get someone here now!”

  “Sorry, sir,” the officer replied. “Due to cutbacks, there are only three security vessels in this sector, and they are more than a day away.”

  “That doesn’t help us now, does it? Can’t you send us something?”

  “Negative. No help is available at this time. Best to dump your cargo and let the pirates have it.”

  “We can’t dump our cargo, you idiot! This ship doesn’t have detachable cargo pods—it’s stored in internal holds. And do you have any idea of how much this cargo is worth? Didn’t anyone tell you about us?”

  “Sorry, we can’t help you. We’ve notified Candus Security’s main office and they will send a message to Captain Moore on the Castle when he comes out of the tunnel he’s currently in. Don’t count on him being able to do anything other than taking your statement.”

  “Let me tell you what you and your Captain Moore can do with yourselves,” screamed Captain McKenzie as the communications officer cut off the link.

  “Captain,” the sensor officer said, “the largest pirate ship is placing itself in between us and Candus. I think they are trying to cut us off from Candus Security.”