I was ripped from a wonderful dream by a penetrating sound, waking up to feel disoriented and confused. My mind took a few seconds to switch from a deep sleep into something akin to wakefulness but the sounds I was hearing sped up the process, my body conditioned to respond to them with a generous dose of adrenaline. It was a call to general quarters, meaning that it was either an unannounced drill or somewhere, a rotary air impeller had been hit by the brown matter. Whichever it was, I had to abandon my comfortable bunk and get into flight country. After rolling out of my bunk, I realised that the artificial gravity worked as it should, which I wouldn’t expect if that was a drill.

I put on my helmet, making sure that the pressure-sensors were active to instantly seal me up if there was a pressure drop and went over to Grace, so we could give the other a short inspection of our suits, just in case. It also helped to make sure that both of us were active, not that I thought anyone would be able to sleep through the blaring alarm. With a quick nod to the other, we left the cabin and went our separate ways.

There was a steady, if confusing, stream of people quickly moving about in the hallway outside, everyone dressed just as we were, in the ship-suits we were required to sleep in and helmet, not a uniform in sight. If it wasn’t a situation in which lives might have been at stake, possibly ours, the sight would have been quite interesting, a large group of people running around in skin-tight suits that left little of their body-shape to imagination, it was something to behold. But not while someone might blow the nice metal can, that was keeping breathable air around us, up.

I quickly made my way to flight-country, getting there just in time to hear an announcement that the whole squadron was to deploy in a combat-launch, meaning that the area around the Merathorn would contain enemies. That was about the most dangerous situation one could be in, short only of uncalculated hyperspace jumps.

Running up to my Starfighter, I checked the maintenance-instruments, making sure that everything was as it should be and confirmed it with a nearby technician before jumping up the ladder and strapping into my seat, connecting my suit to the Fighter while the technician was pulling away the ladder. Knowing that speed might be of the essence, I began the login process with my headware while the cockpit sealed itself. On a normal start, I was supposed to first login and use the Starfighter’s computer to run a check before sealing but it was a procedure that could be ignored in an emergency.

After the second of disorientation that came with merging my headware with a Starfighter, I quickly made sure that everything was as it should be and reported readiness, noticing that I had managed to beat out Wolverine and Manta but not Wildcat.

“Wildcat, you know what is going on?” I asked over our group-channel while pulling up the information from the combat-center to take a look myself.

“Good speed, you must have hustled. The bridge received a distress-call, just some five minutes old, and the Merathorn is performing a micro-jump, so we get there before the party is over. No real idea what we will find, not with five light-minutes between us, but it seems you’ll get your first taste of anti-pirate action.” Wildcat explained and somewhere in the middle of it, the readiness-indicator for Wolverine switched to green, quickly followed by the one for Manta.

As I was looking at the information from the combat-center, I quickly understood what Wildcat meant with us having no real idea. At five light-minutes, the returns were as imprecise as one should expect, trying to resolve quickly accelerating objects a few hundred meters long and maybe half as wide from hundred-eighty million kilometers away.

What we knew was that a Federation Merchant had sent out a distress-call, reporting that there were multiple contacts in an apparent attack-formation and not responding to calls. That sounded about as hostile as could be without any actual weapons fire, so the reaction from Captain Burris was in line with our rules of engagement.

“Brace for hyperspace micro-jump!” echoed over the ship’s public address-system. It wasn’t relevant for me, I was strapped into the seat of my fighter and wouldn’t be affected by a momentary recalibration in the inertial dampening system, which was generally felt as a sudden burst of acceleration throughout the ship but on normal stations, it could knock you off your feet if you weren’t properly braced.

“Carmine-Squadron, prepare for combat-launch.” another voice ordered over our squadron-channel and Commodore Ming added that the groups would launch in order, as fast as possible.

The jump-announcement was repeated twice before it changed to a three second countdown followed by the jump. The jump itself was incredibly short, we only spent a few scant moments in hyperspace, the computer trying to send us into the fray as precise as possible. It would be a hair-raising thing, even the bad sensor-data we had was five minutes old and in that time, things could massively change. But without something nobody had yet managed, a way to transmit information faster than the speed of light without a spacecraft to carry them, there was just no way to know more. We would be going in blind, hoping not to run into trouble we couldn’t handle.

A sudden shove, pushing me into my harness, told me that we had successfully jumped and, just a split-second later, the combat-center started to relay the information gathered by the Merathorn’s sensors to our starfighters, allowing us to see what was going on out there, even as group 1 was launched into the void. With the sudden flood of information, I closed my physical eyes, focusing solely on the connection to my Starfighter’s computer, trying to absorb and understand what the combat-center was telling us as fast as possible.

Around us, space was crowded, either by luck or incredible skill from the Merathron’s navigator, we had jumped right into the middle of the frey, coming out of hyperspace between the freighter that had called for help and a group of space-pirates. The pirates were a reasonably well equipped group, at least from what I could tell, using half a squadron of fighters, a modified heavy freighter, most likely to carry the goods away and maybe to launch the fighters and finally, a frigate covering the freighter and providing fire-support for the fighters.

The computer added more information as fast as it could search through the data-bases for sensor-matches, giving me more and more information. The frigate, for example, was some fifty years out of date but back in the day, that class had been considered a major threat to Starfighters. There was no reason why its fast-tracking plasma-cannons would be any less deadly today than they had been back then.

The rest of their forces was more difficult to identify, the computer having trouble with identifying the kludged together spacecrafts. But, again, just because they were not the norm didn’t mean that their weapons wouldn’t give us a serious headache.

Last, but certainly not least, the modified freighter, cum Starfighter-carrier was the least dangerous Spacecraft the pirates had but also the most expensive. From what the sensors could tell, it had begun it’s life as a standard heavy freighter, able to carry about hundred and sixty thousand cubic meters of goods through hyperspace but what remained of the original blueprint was anyone’s guess. For now, the only thing that mattered was that someone had bolted two plasma-cannons on the front-section where the bridge and crew-quarters were and two more on the back-section, where engineering should be located. The computer noted more modifications in the mid-section, which essentially was a long shaft. Usually, the goods transported by such a freighter would be loaded into containers and carried into space using smaller movers, before they would be secured at that shaft. The modifications seemed to be something to carry Starfighters without losing transport capabilities which was quite impressive. It would only work for short missions as maintenance on the Starfighters would be next to impossible out on the hull but for what the pirates would need it for, it wa perfectly servicable.

“Group 2, we are going to go after the Starfighters, make sure they can’t get at the Merathorn or the freighter, it would be bad if they murder those spacers on our watch. Group 3, go after the frigate, group 4, go after the modified freighter.” Commodore Ming ordered over the Squadron-channel, just as group 2 was shot out into space and I felt the vibration of the systems that shifted my Starfighter from the bay it usually rested in, into the launch-tube.

“Launch in 3…” the computer told me and I put my game-face on, knowing that now, it would be kill or be killed.