BSE Chapter 3-58

Harlow cackled hysterically as he waved his flechette pistol at the surviving crew with one hand and his sword with the other. “Fire faster you useless shits!”

The surviving crew were those too afraid to confront him as the battle quickly spiraled out of control. His second in command had been the first to voice his concern and the man now lay in a pool of drying blood off to the side, having been the first person Harlow dealt with.

It hadn’t been the last though.

None of them were quite as vocal as his dead second, but he saw the side-eyed glances and heard the muttered complaints.

He couldn’t allow dissent into his ranks in this crucial battle so those people quickly followed his second.

His plan had been to jump in and tie up the orbital defenses with as many incoming missiles as possible. It was working, the orbital defenses were still occupied, but that wouldn’t last for long. He needed to cripple Char’s fleet, then jump away from the defensive cordon around the planet. Once he did that, what remained of his fleet could pick off the orbital weapons and remaining ships.

“Faster!” he roared. “Fire all of the remaining plasma missiles at their three largest ships.”

The missiles went out and Harlow nearly cheered prematurely when one got through and almost took down one of Char’s cruisers. His victory was stolen from him as the cruiser vectored hard and avoided a killing strike.

The damage to the vessel was significant, but it wasn’t enough to take it out of the fight. He cursed, making people on the bridge flinch at his outburst. A wave of his weapons got them to shut up and focus on their jobs.

Soon the fleets reached the point where his point defense would do little and he ordered his remaining ships to fire all of their missiles.

Very few of his fleet’s weapons survived. Char’s ECM and point defense were far more capable than they should have been. When Char’s fleet tried a similar tactic a few moments later, their missiles seemed to finally succumb to his fleet’s ECM.

When their ECM had been ineffective earlier in the battle he had shot one of the electronic warfare specialists in a fit of anger. It seemed his replacement was far more capable.

The fleets quickly closed the distance and those damnable lasers kept digging through the armor on the front of Harlow’s Might, looking for a weakness. They hadn’t yet found it, but he needed to flip his large ship soon to avoid an aft strike.

The fleets quickly flashed by each other and Harlow ordered his plot to turn the ship around.

Thrusters on opposite sides of the large vessel fired off and the massive ship began to pivot to keep its weak side away from enemy fire.

The ship shook and the pilot turned white. “They hit our engines,” the man stated.

Harlow shot him for failing to do his duty and not addressing him properly. The auxiliary pilot took over control and the ship lurched awkwardly as the remaining thrusters fired to slow them down.

“No, you fucking idiot!” Harlow screamed. “Jump us out of here!”

The man quickly started to fire up the jump drive, but the delay had given Char the opportunity she needed.

“Multiple gravity traps deployed amongst the Char fleet.”

The sensor operator joined the growing pile of dead as Harlow stood from his chair. “Keep firing!”

He walked over to the main pilot's terminal and set a trajectory. He locked it in and stepped away.

His ship powered forward, straight for Char’s largest ship. If he could take her out it would be all worth it. Nobody glanced his way as he silently exited the room, locking the door biometrically behind him. Harlow couldn’t have people abandoning their post, but he certainly wouldn’t be going down with the ship.

Even if his fleet somehow managed to pull off a miracle and win this battle, his time as Emperor was over. The surviving pirates would tear him apart if they got ahold of him after this was over. But if nobody was left to speak of his defeat, he could crawl his way back to the top.

Harlow had to grab the side rail as the ship shook while he made his way down the corridor. The enemy was trying their best to punch through the armor.

He didn’t need it to last forever, just long enough to get to his escape craft. He soon reached the nondescript wall panel and slid his card to one side of it.

The panel popped open and he quickly pulled himself into the tight space before climbing a ladder and stepping through an open hatch.

The escape craft was not what you would call spacious or comfortable. It had a single seat that he barely fit within and the helmet of his suit brushed the ceiling. What it lacked in creature comforts, it more than made up for with survivability.

The ship was fitted with a jump drive, fusion reactor, and enough fuel to get him to the border zone. Once there, he could purchase a ship and crew and make his way back and rebuild what he had lost. This wasn’t over, not by a long shot.

Harlow started powering up the ship and the hatch flicked shut, sealing him in. He ignored the prompt to engage the stasis systems. He wanted to be conscious until he was assured of his escape.

When the ship was ready, he pressed the launch button. A large chunk of Might’s armor blew away and he was pushed back into the seat hard as the ship was launched through a rail slightly larger than the ones for his plasma missiles.

His vision started to black out but he forced himself to remain conscious as he adjusted the course of the ship to escape the gravity bubbles.

Harlow let out a victorious chuckle at successfully evading death only for that feeling to quickly turn to ash as his ship shook.

He was violently wrenched forward, the straps holding him in place digging painfully into his shoulders and chest.

He reflexively threw his hand out to keep from slamming into the control panel. When he could finally breathe again, he found his thoughts to be sluggish. It took him a moment to realize why.

When he glanced at the panel, it said stasis initiated on it.

“No, no, no,” he said frantically, his voice slurring as the sedatives being pumped into his suit started to take effect.

He tried disabling the system, but it kept throwing an error, stating “Stasis process cannot be interrupted or canceled.”

Harlow cursed and punched at the panel, his efforts weakening and his eyes drooping. Had he realized sooner that he couldn’t interrupt the process, he may have thought to put in a wake-up timer. As it stood, the system had no such contingency programmed into it.

The self-proclaimed Pirate Emperor drifted off to sleep, stuck in a broken ship, floating through the Unokane system, a prisoner to his own hubris.

***

Katalynn watched as the remains of the pirate fleet finally broke in the face of unwavering commitment and tried to flee. Something had changed, but she wasn’t sure what.

Harlow’s ship still barreled towards them, the tac-display clearly warning of a collision course. Her pilot adjusted Valkyrie until the warning went away.

It was just in time to witness a large chunk of the enemy ship's armor break free as something came rocketing out the top of the ship.

At first, she thought it was another plasma missile, but the unknown object changed course and flew in the opposite direction. She knew then that it was some sort of escape device.

“Fire on that missile!” she urged, but her weapons were all focused elsewhere or recharging for the next shot.

Before the ship could clear the gravity trap, a large burst of energy intersected it, slagging the back half off.

That concentrated laser fire hadn’t come from any ship though, it had come from the orbital defenses and it hadn’t been aimed at the unfortunate vessel, but at Harlow’s ship. The vessel had just been unlucky enough to be at the wrong spot at the right time.

Energy tore through the thinner side armor of Harlow’s dreadnought with impunity, aiming for the exposed section.

The angle wasn’t quite right, but the defensive lasers eventually melted a path through and into the interior of the ship. They must have hit something important because the ship fell silent and stopped accelerating.

“Track that object that was fired from Harlow’s ship,” she ordered.

It wasn’t clear if Harlow had tried to escape or someone else had, but she wasn’t letting any pirates live to see another day, not when the battle had finally turned in their favor.

In another surprising act, three ships started firing as they approached from the planet. One was the Talon, but the second was a modified mining vessel, and the last was a small cargo hauler with the designation of Fafo.

The pirates caught between the fleet and the defensive installations tried to change course or return fire. They were quickly silenced by the laser installations, the trio of ships from the planet, or the actual warships still hot on their tails.

Soon, all of the pirate ships were disabled or destroyed and all that was left was to take stock of their losses and clean up the surviving pirates.

“Report,” she said tiredly. The battle had only lasted for thirty minutes or so, but it had felt like hours and she was exhausted.

Vyrik cleared his throat before speaking. “All of your frigates and corvettes are gone, Lagertha, bringing your fleet down to three ships.” Katalynn winced at that but didn’t interrupt her tactician as he continued recounting their losses.

“Jarl Ylva’s ship is heavily damaged, and the woman is unconscious, but her Sub-Commander says she should recover. Only one other ship in her fleet survived unscathed and that was a frigate. The rest will need to be checked for survivors.”

That was less than ideal. She was glad the Jarl survived, but no matter how many people they managed to recover, their losses would be horrendous.

“Jarl Kane’s fleet seems to have weathered the storm better than most. Both of their cruisers still stand, although Kane’s has taken serious damage. They did lose a destroyer and the three frigates assigned to them by the mercenaries along with all of their gunships, however.”

It was worse than she had expected and even though the combined fleet had defeated a superior foe, she couldn’t help but think of this as a pyrrhic victory at best. She also didn’t agree with her tactician on Kane coming out better than the others. The man had forty ships at the start of this engagement. Sure most were gunships, but those were all losses. That didn’t even count the additional twenty stealth gunships that he had deployed, which were also now all gone.

From a fleet size of sixty-eight or eighty-eight depending on how you looked at it, they had been effectively reduced to a mere handful of ships. A total of eleven combat-capable vessels if she used the term loosely. This would have serious ramifications for her continued control over Asgardian space, but she pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind. She had done the right thing here, even if it would cost her dearly in the short term.

“May our brothers and sisters find their places at Odin’s dining hall,” she said as everyone on the bridge thumped their feet to the deck and chanted a popular prayer. Katalynn quickly joined in.

“Hail the soul that journeys onward,

Across the bridge of starlit paths,

To halls where valor is eternal,

And kin awaits in feast and song.

O mighty Allfather, guide their steps,

Through mists of time and shadow deep.

Frigga’s grace enfolds their heart,

As Heimdall stands the steadfast guard.

May the roots of Yggdrasil cradle their spirit,

And the winds of Æsir whisper their name.

In memory, they rise like dawn’s first light,

And live forever in the echoes of our deeds.

Till the end of all cycles, we honor thee.

Skål.”

As the prayer finished, hands were raised in a mock toast. Libations would follow, but not until their work was complete.

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I know, I know. A multi-chapter fight can be annoying, but Harlow has been this big bad for so long that he needed an equally fitting ending. Hopefully, you all found it as thrilling as it was for me to write it.