The Privateer

"Stay in the shield bubble." Yvian hoped she sounded calmer than she felt. "No point in exposing ourselves before we find the target." She squinted through the viewport at the swirling blue light of the Gate. "Don't take off on your own when you see it. Sound off and fire your weapons so we can find you."

The target would be a Federation ship. At least one. The humans had managed to impregnate the Last Hope five times before Yvian took her away from them. Five baby Lucendian ships to be turned into anti-tech weapons. One was sitting just outside the Xill Hub. At least one other had just exited the Jumpgate. All of them, if Yvian was lucky.

When the humans had tried to take Yvian at Tenril Station, their anti-tech field had spread over two hundred kilometers. No one believed that was as far as they could stretch. The Peacekeeper Queenships were scattered as far from each other as they could get, at the very edges of the Jumpgate's two thousand kilometer width. The best case scenario would be four ships that could cover five or six hundred kilometers. The worst case would be four ships, each capable of jamming the whole space by themselves. Yvian had no way to know, but she supposed it didn't matter.

Yvian's job was simple. Lead a small fleet of gladiators piloted by the best flyers New Pixa could muster. Which wasn't saying much. Until three days ago, they'd been students at the Military Academies the Peacekeepers had set up. None of them had even stepped foot in a real fighter ship before.

Yvian would have preferred people with real combat experience, but there were none to be had. Even if there were, Military Cadets were the only pixens she could get away with bringing into the Sector. They'd sworn allegiance to the Pixen Stellar Defense Force, and promised to obey the orders of their Commanding Officers. Since their Commanding Officers were Peacekeeper units, the students could technically be seen as Servants of the Peacekeepers units. The Peacekeepers were classified as Servants of the Xill, which technically made them Servants of the Xill as well. It was a flimsy excuse with a lot of technically in it, but Kilroy had assured Yvian the Xill would accept it. According to Kilroy, technically correct was the best kind of correct.

Yvian half expected some rookie to give her guff, or go off on their own. No one did. Her Cadets were inexperienced, but they'd all spent at least a year being trained by the finest instructors in the verse. Peacekeeper units were as inpixenly adept at teaching as they were at everything else. These students might be as capable as Yvian was after a year with Mims. At the very least they were disciplined.

Yvian listened to the silence of her radio as she stared out the viewport. Weapons fire obscured a lot of her view. The remaining Xill were still pounding the Doomsday Clock with everything they had. The Queenship's shields were impressive, but they wouldn't hold out forever. Yvian had no idea how long it would take the Xill to smash through them. Hours? Minutes? A few seconds from now? The thought pushed her sense of urgency into outright anxiety. Yvian had to close her eyes for a few seconds and focus on her breathing, an ironic thing to be doing if the shields failed and she died.

Slightly calmer, Yvian went back to searching. A few more seconds of squinting failed to yield results. Satisfied their weren't any ships close enough to see with the naked eye, Yvian reached for the gun next to her seat. It wasn't the trusty BFSR4 sniper rifle she was used to. The Peacekeepers could have built her one, but they didn't have a way to manufacture its special ammunition. Instead, they'd given Yvian the sexiest gun she'd ever seen.

The Bigger Better BFG was actually smaller than the BFSR4. Much smaller, considering the name. It looked and handled like an assault rifle. The Bigger Better's barrel was wider than a beer bottle, with a reinforced ring around the muzzle. The gun was thick and bulky, but there was an odd sleekness to its frame. It felt brutal and elegant and advanced, like a gun from the future. It also fired actual MAC rounds with just over half the force of a MACdriver Cannon.

On top of the gun was a scope. Rectangular. Yvian raised the gun and looked through it. None of the fancy features could be used in an anti-tech field, but the zoom was low tech. She set it to five times magnification and aimed it out the viewport. She still didn't see any ships.

"This is Blue37," a voice crackled over the radio. "I see it! I see it! Firing main guns!" The voice was male, high pitched. He sounded very young.

"Acknowledged, Blue37." A thrill shot up Yvian's legs. The anti-tech ship was here. In her zone. "All even numbered units, stay in the bubble. It's your job to protect the Doomsday Clock from any YEETs that come through the Gate." Killing the anti-tech field wouldn't do them much good if the Queenships were dead, too. "Everyone else, find Blue37. We move in sixty seconds."

Yvian and several hundred other ships delicately moved forward, keeping under the protective bubble of the Clock's shields. Yvian didn't see the distinctive purple of gladiator weapons, but she followed the stream of other ships moving around the bulk of the Queenship. On the opposite side of the Clock they gathered, centering around a single ship launching a stream of plasma lances into the void.

Yvian raised her Bigger Better BFG and followed Blue37's line of fire. There it... No. There they were. A mass of ships all clumped together. Yvian zoomed in a little more. The outer ships weren't really ships at all. Not anymore. They were just floating debris. It didn't take a genius to guess what happened. The Clock and it's fellow Queenships had tried to hit the anti-tech ship before it could activate its field. Their beams had shattered the first few layers of battlecruisers surrounding the thing, but hadn't managed to reach the vessel itself in the few seconds they had.

Yvian had expected an escort fleet. She hadn't expected it to be so Crunch damned big. There must have been a hundred ships huddled in a sphere. She guessed the target was in the middle. Would a MACdriver even penetrate that far? MAC rounds were hunks of metal, but the SHIELDBREACH tech they used was delicate. Yvian didn't know if they'd work after smashing through a single ship, let alone dozens. Yvian shook her head. Didn't matter. They had to try.

"Alright, pilots," she gave the order. "Let's go. Weapons free. If you think you've got a shot, take it." She put down the Bigger Better as the ships in front of her accelerated. "And don't forget your evasives. There are a million Xill out there waiting to blast us out of the sky."

Yvian took the controls. The Starman shot forward. She gunned the acceleration for a few seconds, then pointed the ship down. A few more seconds and she brought the nose up again. The gladiators in front of her had likewise scattered. Good. The clump of ships surrounding her target was bigger now. Closer.

The transparent material that usually covered the Starman's viewports had been removed. Two lines of metal reached across the space where it had been. A steel circle precisely twenty centimeters across surrounded the point where the lines came together, forming a crosshair. The Starman's MACdriver had been fixed in place. It would hit seven meters to the right of the crosshair's center. Yvian centered the clump of ships in the crosshair. The clump barely filled the circle. She wasn't close enough for accuracy. Screw it. She fired off a few rounds.

Another vector change. If the Xill were shooting at her, the first lances of plasma would arrive in a few seconds. If her evasives weren't good enough, she'd be dead before she realized her mistake. Yvian reoriented on the target and sent more MAC rounds its way. Then she realized she hadn't accounted for her own movement. The Starman wasn't heading for the clump in a straight line. It was strafing. None of the shots she'd fired would hit.

Yvian tried to correct her course. She wasn't sure how well she did. Without instrumentation, she had to guess how fast the ship was moving based on her view of the fleet in front of her. It was much bigger now. Yvian tried shooting it again.

A wall of plasma flashed through the top of Yvian's view. The Xill. Yvian cut her acceleration, hoping the next wave would miss as well. The she saw the glint of burning metal, and she knew the Xill hadn't missed. Or at least, hadn't missed everyone.

The clump was growing fast. The enemy fleet had only been three or four hundred kilometers away. A trivial distance to a ship like the Starman. She'd closed most of the distance in less than a minute. Yvian's blood pumped harder as she centered her crosshairs at a spot just behind the front of the fleet. She gave the controls a tiny nudge, slowly turning the ship as she fired MAC rounds as fast as she could push the button. Hitting the target wasn't enough. She had to hit the target's reactor. Since she couldn't actually see the ship behind it's escorts, she was resorting to what Mims referred to as "spray and pray." She took comfort in the knowledge that two hundred other ships were doing the same thing. One of them was bound to hit it eventually.

Time to move again. Yvian strafed right this time. Away from the Gate. As she did, another hundred meter wide barrage of weapons fire passed a few kilometers in front of her. Strange that the Xill weren't firing continuously. Stranger that so few of them were shooting. It would only take a few Quigs to launch that much plasma. Did Reba not think her fleet was a threat? Did she not care if her precious anti-tech ship was slagged?

Yvian cut the strafe and went back to shooting. She was breathing too fast. Fear mixed with dread, giving way to certainty. Reba didn't care. If Reba didn't care, that meant the target wasn't important. Crunch. For all Yvian knew, her pilots might have taken it out already. There were certainly enough of them shooting at it.

Maybe the MACdrivers couldn't pierce the anti-tech ship's shields after smashing their way through the cruisers around it. Maybe there was no anti-tech ship, and this fleet was a decoy. Maybe it was there, but it only took one ship to cover the area and some other motherless son was freezing her tech. Yvian didn't know. Even if she did, there wasn't much she could do about it.

Move again. Keep firing. The Xill barrage passed closer this time. Was she too predictable? Maybe she should make bigger dodges. Yvian was much closer now. Fragged battlecruisers filled her viewport. She strafed up, circling over the swarm of warships. She was looking for a gap. If she could just find...

"The Clock's hit!" The radio jolted Yvian. "Something blew a huge hole..."

More voices crowded the channel. "YEET! It's gotta be a YEET!"

"I don't see any..."

"Where the fuck..."

"Bright Lady! The shields are..."

The voices blended together after a few seconds. Yvian couldn't make any of it out. She didn't need to. If any YEETS had come through the Gate, they'd have the same problems as Yvian. No instruments, no sensors, no aim assist. No way could they get close enough to land a hit without being spotted. If someone was blowing holes in the Doomsday Clock, they were doing it from outside the anti-tech field. Hidden reinforcements? How?

The Gate. Yvian should've known. There was a spare fleet hidden behind the Gate. Now that fleet had come around, and it was smashing the Queenships. Once they did that...

Yvian didn't bother finishing the thought. She grabbed her Bigger Better BFG and scrambled for the viewport. She ducked under the crosshairs as quickly as she could without losing her Peacekeeper fedora. Then she launched herself into the void.

Distance. She needed distance. Yvian's voidarmor still had its jetpack, but it was covered by Peacekeeper attire. Yvian didn't dare remove it. Her armor's stealth functions wouldn't work in the anti-tech field. The Peacekeeper suit was the only thing keeping her hidden. She scrambled to untuck the back of her shirt, praying to the Bright Lady doing so wouldn't give her away.

Yvian keyed the jetpack. She shot forward at an angle. To her enormous relief, it didn't send her into a spin. At least, not much of one. Yvian carefully shifted, angling the jetpack up and away from the mass of enemy ships. The Starman had been approaching slowly by voidship standards, but it was more than enough speed to splatter Yvian if she ran into one.

Light flared in Yvian's visor. She turned enough to see dozens of beams hit the Starman. Yvian yelled and covered her face with her arms. The light flared brighter as the ship exploded. Something punched her in her chest, hip, legs, and one arm. Debris.

The yells on the radio fell silent. Yvian's yell didn't. The stars were spinning. Yvian was spinning. She tried to activate the jetpack's stabilizers. Didn't work. Maybe they were too automated, or maybe they were just muffled by Yvian's Peacekeeper suit. Yvian held her breath, squeezed her eyes shut. Her stomach was lurching, but she couldn't afford to puke. She would drown in it.

Slowly, carefully, Yvian toggled the jetpack controls. Short bursts. She kept keying the stabilizers while she was at it. It took an eternity that was probably only a minute, but she got the spinning slowed down. She opened her eyes to find the wreck of a Federation battlecruiser hurtling towards her.

Yvian did the only thing she could do. She got her feet pointed at the thing and keyed the jetpack for all it was worth. The G forces made it harder to scream profanity, but not hard enough that Yvian had to stop. She cursed and screamed and railed against her inevitable demise.

The jetpack slowed her momentum, but not enough. She passed into the gaping hole in the ship still screaming, and slammed feet first into a bulkhead half a second later. Her butt and back hit next, then her head. She rebounded off the wall, tumbling through the interior of the dead ship.

After some painful bouncing, Yvian found something to grab onto. A chunk of metal that used to be a wall. Her head hurt. Her body hurt more. Careful flexing revealed that both knees still worked, though the left one did so under extreme protest. More importantly, the combination of Peacekeeper suit and voidarmor had prevented any of the Starman's debris from penetrating. Yvian was in remarkably good shape, all things considered.

Yvian cast about, but she didn't see any sign of her Bigger Better BFG. Or much of anything else, really. Dim starlight seeped in through the big rent in the side of the ship, but Yvian was in shadow. Crunch. Yvian had really liked that gun. She never even got the chance to use it.

So what now? Yvian cursed again. The mission was failure. The Doomsday Clock was dead. Her pilots were dead. She doubted the other Queenships had done any better. If they had, the HUD in her helmet would have turned back on.

Yvian had failed. She was insufficient. Reba had beaten her. Beaten them all. Despair crashed over the pixen like a wave. Her eyes watered. She watched tears float away from her face, bobbing in the confines of her helmet.

Was Lissa alive? Mims? For a moment, Yvian desperately wanted to key her radio. She didn't dare. The Peacekeeper suit (hopefully) kept her from showing up on sensors, but a radio transmission would give her away. She'd be dead in moments. If the others were alive, they had the same problem. They were on their own, and so was Yvian.

Maybe she should make for the Gate. It would lead to Xill space, but hopefully those Xill wouldn't be under Reba's control. She could have them comm New Pixa. Get a ride home. Report her failure.

Something butted up against Yvian's arm. She batted it away. It was heavy enough to sting her hand. The metal hunk came back a second later, bouncing off her bruised hip. Yvian grabbed the thing, opening her mouth to scream something incoherent. The feel of it in her hands stopped her. This... This wasn't debris. This was a gun. A Bigger, Better gun.

A laugh that was almost a sob escaped Yvian. The BFG. She'd forgotten it had a tether. Four feet of cord strung between the weapon and her belt. Cradling it like a newborn babe, Yvian pushed off, moving towards the rent that let in the light. She looked the gun over. It had a few scuffs, but...

Yvian wrapped her fingers around the stock. Pressed the button next to the trigger. She couldn't hear the hum of the Bigger Better, but she could feel it. The gun worked. The BFG was intact.

Yvian's smile grew wicked. Screw the Gate. She had something better to do. The mission had gone bad, but it wasn't over. Not yet.

Maybe Yvian could be sufficient after all.