14/6/467 AC, FSS Ironsides
Pedraz had to admit it, the FSN squids had made himself and the other seventeen men of the crew pretty damned comfortable over the last several days. He'd missed his rum ration, of course, and the food wasn't really as close to home cooking as was served aboard legionary ships and boats. Still, the quarters were comparatively spacious and the mattress, oh, much better.
The break was over. A remotely piloted vehicle from one of the frigates escorting the Ironsides had spotted what appeared to a medium sized group of Xamari pirates collecting and boarding three smallish boats for an excursion.
Pedraz had watched in real time in CIC as the pirates gathered.
"Do they always act like that?" he'd asked of a Spanish speaking sailor manning a visual screen
"Generally, yeah, Chief. They dance around, shooting their rifles into the air to psyche themselves up. Then they get all the old men, women and kids cheering. Then they board and launch. By the time we are allowed to do anything it's always too late. See, we can't do a damned thing until they've actually committed piracy on the high seas. By then . . . by the time we can act; they'll have grabbed the crew as hostages and we're stymied."
After watching the pirates' boats for a while, Pedraz commented, "Slower than shit, aren't they?"
"Yeah," the other sailor agreed. "And that's how you're going to get them, this once anyway."
Pedraz went back to watching the slow progress of the pirates' vessels. He estimated them as doing no better than ten knots. A few quick mental calculations told him they needed to get at least eight miles offshore for him to have a decent chance of both intercepting them before they reached the boat and not warning them in time for them to turn around.
After what seemed to Pedraz to be a very long time watching, Ironsides' operations officer spoke up, in English. "Tell Mr. Pedraz to man his boat and to have the Agustin's crew man as well. We'll lower them to the water and then signal when it's time to leave."
14/6/467 AC, Xamar, Abdulahi's Headquarters
The pirate chief's smile grew into a chuckle as he watched three of his boats closing on the lone freighter. He watched on a laptop's screen, the laptop hooked into the receiver provided to him by those space-faring infidels overhead.
Such a useful toy it was, that receiver. It was not only capable of giving him the locations of any naval vessels that might interfere with his operations, it gave him the precise locations of potential targets and identified—though this was trickier—ships belongs to companies that were already paying the Jizya. It would never do to seize those who paid to avoid attack unless, of course, those payments were late.
Abdulahi panned back, to embrace a broader ocean area. At this scale he could make out the two infidel carrier groups, which he thought of as "the greater and the lesser infidels," both the distinctive flat tops and their smaller escorts. He could close the view in, also, to watch the take offs and landings of their aircraft. That, however, usually cut off the view of the escorts unless they happened to be very close to the carriers.
Recentering the cursor on the waters between the target freighter and where his own boats had to be, Abdulahi clicked to lower the scale to where he could just make out his vessels. The two carrier groups disappeared off to the sides of the screen.
One might have thought that the pirate lord would have paid more attention to the threat to his operations, rather than the targets. But there was emotional satisfaction in watching the targets taken. The threat? Well, he knew the rules of engagement as well as the captains and crews of the warships. The FSN wasn't allowed to be a threat until it was too late and the others, the infidel mercenaries, were not nearly as capable and were, moreover, being watched by the space-faring infidels who would warn him if the mercenaries got into a position to interfere.
UEPF Spirit of Peace
While Abdulahi concentrated on the target, Wallenstein—from Robinson's desk—focused on the threat. She, unlike the Xamari, was not restricted to a laptop screen. Instead, she had the latest in Terra Novan video technology, and something every bit as good as anything produced at home, the High Admiral's two-and-a-half meter Kurosawa. With that, and the processing power inherent in the ship's computer, she was able to track both war fleets as well as the pirates and their targets. Symbols stood in for full views of the ships.
That is to say, she was able to track everything but didn't see the need. Once she'd identified that the mercenary fleet was in no position to interfere with the pirates with their own ships, she focused in on the carrier to ensure it wasn't launching aircraft at the pirates. That kept her rapt attention. The only thing that had bothered her was the disappearance of the two patrol boats from the ocean surface. This had not troubled her long, however, for she had found them sitting under tarps atop the ship the screen identified as the Harpy Eagle.
BdL Harpy Eagle
The boatswain spared a glance overhead, silently praying that his camouflage job would do.
The hardest part had been assembling the frames in the midst of the storm, with the wind roaring and the waves sometimes washing over the deck. It had actually been fairly easy to construct the frames out of cheap lumber down in the cargo hold. Taking them apart and stowing them in an open space within the deck level of the superstructure hadn't been hard. But getting the frames out and built when no man could hear a word, or sometimes even see another for all the spray in the air? The boatswain rather hoped they'd not have to try this trick again and certainly not in a storm like the last one.
Safe enough bet, though, he thought. Like most tricks, it's unlikely to work more than once.
Still silently, the boatswain said a small prayer for the success of the Trinidad and the Agustin.
BdL Santisima Trinidad
The sea state, so long after the storm, was low and the bow rode high, skipping over the waves, propelled by twin screws driven by sixty-two hundred horsepower. Pedraz stood at the helm, giving light taps to the wheel to cut expertly across the waves. His body bounced in time with the beating of the hull.
Up front, on the 40mm, stood Seamen Clavell and Guptillo. The pair wore Legion standard (plus) body armor and helmets, though Clavell's helmet covered a set of headphones that were hooked into the boat's intercom. The "plus" came in the form of a silk and liquid metal apron that extended over the crotch, and liquid metal greaves covering chins and knees. There wasn't a hell of a lot of cover on a patrol boat.
A few paces behind the gun crouched two more of the crew, likewise accoutered. One of these carried a clip of five 40mm shells and was close to the forty. The other had the same but was closer to the magazine well from which more shells would be passed upward.
Pedraz looked to port where Seaman Leonardo Panfillo clutched the spade grips of a .41-caliber heavy machine gun. The shiny brass belt draped down before disappearing into a gray painted ammunition can. Pedraz looked for signs of worry in Panfillo's face. There weren't any—and perhaps this made perfect sense after having braved the hair-raising transfer during the storm—but only a look of grim determination.