Gaius, Week 7

Formal Report, Third Person Perspective
We encountered two Aslan, ostensibly descended from the former crew of their scout vessel, who recognized the Calamity from sensor logs of a battle. During the battle, the Calamity was able to successfully notify Imperial forces of an incoming Aslan armada - the penultimate battle of the great rift war some 50 years ago. These Aslan challenged our crew to simulated ship-to-ship combat with their unarmored scout vessel, a proposal we eagerly accepted. We stirred up interest in the battle by having Gaius arm wrestle the larger of the two, a struggle which the cat barely won. Ten thousand credits were put on the line by each crew, and the accumulated bets of spectators gave us two to one odds, against us.

The battle began with the two vessels parked 25,000 km apart, close enough to the station that spectators with visual aids could see maneuvers. The Aslan ship, significantly faster than ours, started to close distance and loosed a volley of missiles. As the missiles approached, Newton piloting the ship performed a rolling maneuver that provided the turret manned by Gaius with a wide arc of fire, which was used to smash open the enemy fuel hold in the simulated battle by way of pulse laser, and destroyed most of the incoming missiles as the vessel curved back around.

Minno, nursing a hangover, stumbled onto the bridge in a panic. Shoving Newton aside, the best pilot in the Spinward Marches took the controls. Bobbing and weaving like a prizefighter, the allegedly less agile ship was able to shake off a sensor lock and dodge both remaining incoming missiles, remaining untouched as a volley of our own missiles were launched. The Aslan vessel accelerated rapidly to dodge, but was unable to cover enough distance - the simulated missiles struck with explosive force, neutralizing the unarmored vessel. The crew's communicators chirped as 20k credits flowed into each the accounts of the crew and the individual Gaius, who had placed an additional 10k credit bet after the first successful strike.

Abernathy, his reattached arm resting in a sling, described the jump pattern of the strange ship he's been studying. Zig-zagging coreward through sword world space, it is decided that the vessel is to be intercepted. Sitting in a somewhat removed booth in the bar, the crew of the Calamity worked out a plan to intercept the vessel in a vacant Sword World sector. In return for reimbursing their 10k credit loss from the bet, the Aslan agree to accompany us to the location, hauling fuel that we may then utilize to jump from the otherwise detached location before they depart to handle their own matters. Playing our cards close to the chest, we told them it was a scientific mission, but they seemed laughably unconvinced, though their admiration of us seems to outweigh any concerns of malice.

The first jump was to Enos, a stepping stone in the 3 week journey to the predicted location of the mysterious jumping ship. Approaching the planet, the Calamity was intercepted by a delapidated system defense vessel which claimed to be an imperial guard, but being in the wrong location and of the wrong type and in such a state, nobody was fooled that they were anything but pirates. Allowing the pirates to believe their deception was successful, we closed distance until at point blank range and then opened comms, thretening to open fire unless the captain immediately surrendered himself and guaranteed the safe refueling of the vessel. The pirate captain, pretending to concede after two warning shots from the pulse laser, ejected a member of his crew into space who he claimed was himself. Moments later, believing their exit to be concealed by proximity and perspective, a boarding party of four followed in his wake. They were mistaken. Kyras manned the sandcaster in the turret bay and set its sights on the drifting pack. With a pull of the trigger, their suits and flesh alike were stripped from their bones by a jet of glassy silica. The remaining pirates, horrified, attempted to disengage, leaving their scapegoat screaming in space, only to find their ship shaken by the contact of the two vessels' docking ports.

Moments later, Gaius and Kyras were moving down the corridor of the pirate ship, the former ascending to the bridge and the latter taking up position in the central conduit. The pirates, unprepared and halved, took up what weapons they could - the engineer salvaging a shotgun and the crewmembers on the bridge wielding each an old pistol and sword. Kyras, wielding a stun weapon, was able to subdue the shotgun-wielder while Gaius cut into his enemy with a static axe. The pistol and cutlass-wielders repeatedly failed to strike Gaius, harming both themselves and their bridge with ricocheting bullets. In short order, static axe crackling, and with the loud encouragement of a sound system reminding them of their predicament, they surrendered. The captain, who had been wielding the cutlass, was given no choice but to accept our demands. It was determined that the pirate ship would be stowed on the second planet in the system, its salvage rights being a valuable commodity we'll later exploit.

Gaius Livius