Revolutionary

[Blodo]

Stuttgart
22th December, 810 AS

Dresden, New Berlin, Stuttgart. The convoy made it through all of those without a single attack. It would appear that despite what the propaganda said, the so called "pirates of Rheinland" were human beings after all. Or at least they are treated like ones, "unlike Kruger employees" - Meisnerr thought. Wouldn't be the first time he would be sent on an errand like this. Deliver some cargo here, escort someone there; all at ridiculous times and dates and virtually unpaid. He was the resident "shifty" of Kruger, being the errand boy for the creepy deals. It used to bother him, but he couldn't even remember when it stopped.
- "All right. Prepare to make the jump."
The convoy had reached the Omega-7 gate. Mueller, being in a safe place away from the convoy, kept barking orders at the pilots by radio comms, trying to micromanage them as much as possible.
By itself this wasn't the usual shipment convoy. Meisnerr felt it in his gut. There was something bad about it, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Maybe it was the amount of micromanagement they were recieving? Everyone seemed annoyed at it, so at least he wasn't the only one.

The convoy slowly moved towards the gate one by one. Meisnerr's ship on autopilot, he was one of the first people to go through the gate. Nothing out of the usual. In a few moments he was on the other side, accompanied by four other pilots who were busy chatting away to kill the time.
- "Why the hell do we have to fly this here convoy through this blasted system anyways? On christmas no less?"
- "Because the brass tells you to, knucklehead."
- "Hey, I want my paycheck badly, but I don't want it this bad."
- "Then quit the damn job!"
Their filler conversation was interrupted as Mueller's familiar voice punched itself through the speakers on each ship.
- "God dammit you all, shut your traps. It's starting."
It took a short second for this to register with the escort ships.
- "Wait, what's starting - " - Meisnerr asked before being interrupted
- "Maintain radio silence and dock with the trade lane."

All ships in formation, the convoy had initiated the lane and the ships were accelerated to light speed in the magnetic well the machines produced, all in the direction of the massive gas cloud. One that blocked all sensors.
The sequence was soon complete and the convoy had returned to impulse speed. As the pilots regained awareness of the area, they all began to realise just what has happened. There was no station in the vicinity, instead about 20 unidentified craft were flashing on short range sensors. The moment of silence the pilots enjoyed seemed like it lasted for hours, as they tried to register what exactly just happened.

- "Wait a second.. this isn't Freistadt!"
- "Hola amigos, look at what we have here? A Christmas present!"
Time slowly turned from a halt to a heartbeat for the pilots as more transmissions from the unidentified craft began echoing across the comms of the convoy. The only thing the convoy escorts heard amidst all the interference were frantic reports shouted through the comms by their fellow pilots.
- "The trade lane was disrupted! All units, arm yourselves!"
- "Corsairs surrounding us!"
As the escorts tried to regain composure and muster some sort of desperate defence against the vastly larger pirate force, the three ships right in front of the convoy engaged their engines and flied closer to the transports. No shots were fired yet, but it looked like there would be soon.
- "I paid a lot to get to these diamonds, compadre. Hand it over now."
With even more blips showing up on scanners, the convoy was all but ready to surrender.
- "We have more contacts inbound. We can't win this!"
Meisnerr however kept careful attention to the scanner. As the blips entered IFF recognition range, he immediately shouted into secure comms.
- "It's friendlies! Repeat, friendly units on intercept vector!"
- "Friendlies?"
The mere scanner blips were now visible as they entered sight range. The incoming force was no less than eleven Rheinland Banshee fighters and a gunboat. Right then a distorted voice came through on system wide comms.
- "This is Kapitan Brueker of the Rheinland Military to all attackers in the vicinity. You will surrender immediately. Comply now or be eliminated."
This provoked a second long silence again, until all the pirate vessels in the area engaged their engines towards the military ships, and a short but meaningful sentence was heard across system comms.
- "Bite me, fritz!"