Brotherhood Bar-Talks

[Laowai]

From his usual dark barely lit corner, Ben Laowai surveyed the growing soir?e around the returned exile with an expressionless face. He had encountered some of these OPG pilots in the skies of Gamma. He knew of them, by reputation and by overhearing small pieces of conversation in the bar. But as a self imposed exile himself, and a habitual loner, he didn't really know much at all. His natural distrust of the factionalism among corsairs, and, more to the point, his natural distrust of everyone, told him to hold his opinions until some other time.

A bottle appeared in front of him, opened already. He chuckled, he really did come here too often. The Barman, by now a practiced reader of Laowai's moods, which were not usually good, had deposited the bottle of Baijiu without needing an invitation. The black aura that seemed to radiate from Laowai's corner table had been invitation enough.

"the new ship?" he asked.

Ben nodded, "yes, the blasted new ship"

Barely a week after piecing the remains of his Titan together the Xibanyu Nuren, his cruiser, his father's cruiser, that he had taken years to assemble, was sitting now in the same maintenance bay. The Bounty Hunter Gunboats, three of them, had given it a severe pasting, it's hull, a swiss cheese like sculpture of hull breaches, scorch marks and impact fractures, had been unable to take the strain and he and his crew had ejected. However, some of the young crewmembers, Green Corsair's that Laowai had employed from the slums outside town, had not made it.
Life support had been non existent, and when, some hours later, a salvage craft had returned to take the battered Nuren into dock, they had found their bodies, frozen and lifeless, floating throughout the ship.

Soon after landing on Crete. Ben had taken the bodies of the men and woman to the morgue, and, one by one, he had visited the families of each one. Every family on Crete knew the risks involved when their sons, brothers, fathers, sisters and mothers set foot in a spacecraft. They were raised with the stories of Corsair valour in space, told from birth, of their legacy as the terror's of the stars. Families knew, that sometimes, people just didn't come home. Life had never been easy on Crete, loss, was an everyday part of it.

But the reality was always something else, always something personal and no reaction was the same. This had been especially hard, these young men and woman had been on crew for a week.

"Bounty Hunters" the barman said, shaking his head and sneering "wretched filth".

Ben nodded, swigging the baijiu. He was in no mood for conversation, the barman, sensing this, returned to his work.

The night before, unable to sleep. Ben had taken his Titan out alone. He had headed to the Omicron Theta jumphole, knowing full well that he would find a Bounty Hunter patrol there. Sure enough, he did and a furious dogfight had ensued. One by one, he destroyed the bounty hunter fighters, his rage, channeled into a bizarre calm. He had downed two fighters rapidly, tractoring the pilots into his hold "you men are all going to die here tonight" he had said on the open comm.

An hour later, he had all eight bounty hunter's in his hold. He could hear them calling out to him through the internal comm system,

"we can pay you....." not everyone is a whore that can be bought as you are....he thought to himself, he brought the ship to a halt, floating a few million kilometers from the bright Omicron Gamma Sun.

"Our friends will find you....

"Let them" he said over the intercom.


He flicked a switch on his control panel and a computer voice in his earpiece chirped up, "Jettison, please confirm " . There was a slight hissing sound as his ships shields deactivated, and a metallic clinking sound as the maglocks on his cargo bay doors unlatched.

" what!? what are you doi..." the voices from the hold came through again.

He flicked the blinking control and the computer voice chirped again "confirmed" it said.

The voices in the hold began to shout, "wait! what are you..." there was a loud clang as the cargo bay doors opened quickly followed by a swooshing sound, and the bounty hunters were sucked out into the vacuum...

The proximity to the sun and its radiation was not strong enough at this distance to kill instantly, but the flight suits the Hunters wore, strong lightweight material designed to protect from the harshest effects of space would nevertheless give little protection against its effects , they would go blind, blister and burn long before death took them. The suits contained days worth of oxygen but the suns gravity would pull them, unavoidably into its mass, in half that time. Not that they would live long enough to notice that. Their deaths, would be slow and painful.

He backed off from the flailing, floating terrified forms of the bounty hunter pilots, watching them dispassionately. "weapons systems on"

As a final gesture of contempt, he vaporised the nearest hunter pilot. Powering up the ships cruise engines, he flew back to Crete, leaving his grizzly work behind him.

"Your sons and daughters fought and died well, as corsairs, their deaths, will be avenged"


"viva los Corsairs" Ben muttered to himself, finishing the bottle.

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