novelzi Chapter 11 Pirate Base
Chapter 11 Pirate Base
The pirate base was different from what I thought it might look like.
When I reached the location on the map, what I found was a half destroyed battleship floating in an asteroid field. Though from the fact that there were still lights on some parts of the ship, it was still somewhat functional I suppose.
I guess the pirates must have found this place and converted the functional parts of the ship to turn it into their base, especially since the hangar part of the ship seemed to be one of said functional parts.
I had chosen to approach the base the stealthy way which involved shutting down power to my shields and pretty much everything else while having my engines at only quarter power with the bare minimum thrust.
This would allow me to slip past most scanners as just another floating debris so unless the pirates have some highly advanced scanners, I should be able to get close without raising any alarms.
As I floated by the derelict, I tried to gauge how big of a pirate crew I was dealing with.
There were about two or three Fighter class ships hovering around the hangar entrance, probably acting as guards, though I wonder why they needed something like that.
It's not like their location was compromised, right?
I mean... It is, but they don't know that yet.
I adjusted my flight path a little so that I could peek into the hangar, hoping that I could see how many ships were docked there. If I could see how many ships were docked inside, I could roughly guess how many pirates might be inside the base.
As my line of sight levelled with the hangar, I counted at least three A Class ships and two B Class ships.
Honestly, that's more ships than I thought there would be but it was still a number that I could deal with.
A safe guess would be that there's at least a dozen to two dozens of pirates active in this base. Sounds about right for such a base.
I did another quick scan of the base, trying to see if there might be any unexpected surprises waiting for me.
Since this was a battleship, are the weapons on it working?
I couldn't get too close or I'd get spotted but I still tried to move as close as I could to check the turrets on the ship.
That was when I heard the warning that my ship was being targeted.
I looked in the direction that my computer was warning me about the threat and I saw one of the battleship turrets tracking my ship.
Fuck, I guess that answers my question of whether the weapon systems were online... And I guess the pirates set it to target and shoot at any foreign objects that stray within a certain distance of their base.
Damn... Ok... This makes things a little complicated but it's still fine, I can still deal with this.
Let's just do a quick scan of how many turrets there are first...
The other two Fighters left the hangar right after that, only to be gunned down by a hail of energy bullets coming from my chaingun that shredded apart their engines and wings.
The two ships crashed into each other and exploded in a giant ball of flame, joining the first one in the void of space.
I waited there for the other two B Class ships to appear but... Even after waiting there for a while, neither of them seemed to be showing up.
Hmm... I was sure that I spotted those two ships sitting in the hangar just now... And this hangar bay only had one way in and out right?
Wait... Could it be that the other side had a door that was closed and they only just opened it to sneak out from the other side?
I spun my ship around and sped towards the other side of the battleship, destroying the two remaining turrets on the way quickly.
When I reached the other side however, I found no hangar bays on the other side.
Odd... So they weren't coming out from here as well... Then why have they not come out yet?
I flew under the battleship and returned to where the hangar bay was, ascending my ship up with my guns facing the hangar bay in case they were planning a surprise of their own.
When I was levelled with the hangar entrance, I realised that the two corvettes were still docked there with no signs of it being prepared to be launched.
In fact, the entire hangar seemed to be quite empty.
Huh... That can't be all the pirates right? Or... Perhaps those two ships were actually originally part of this derelict ship's and the pirates could not use them?
Ugh... Now I feel a little stupid for being so cautious...
Though now I have a problem...
My weapons can't exactly blow this battleship up even if I were to use up all my energy blasting at it... And I'm definitely not going to just assume that all the pirates are dead just like this.
Who knows? Maybe there were a few more still hiding inside as part of their ground crew?
But I'm not without options though.
Since the hangar and the turrets were still functioning, that meant that it still had a functioning generator somewhere on the ship.
If I were to board it and set it to overload itself, I could blow the entire ship up.
But well... The problem with that is that I would need to actually physically board the ship and find the generator to overload it...
Fuck it, I was already kind of expecting something like this to happen anyway, which was why I did an equipment check before I got here.
Let's get this done and over with...