STC Tumen ( BH-828) 
Deep in Hau territory
 LT. Cmdr.Nikal

The explosions rocked the ship violently, immediately making hull breach alarms and fires spread around the affected areas. The first effect to be seen was the loss of their torque drive ( Artificial gravity) and their primary lighting system, soon the entire interior of the ship was pitch black. 

“ Sir, reactor one and two are heavily damaged, I have shut them down and removed the coils.” a voice said over the intercom which miraculously still worked. “ Engineering deck one though three have been breached and open to the vacuum, 10 souls lost sir, two wounded”. Commander Nikal let out a sigh and check in with the rest of his crew, finding similar results. The ship was pock marked and shot to hell, looking more like a piece of swiss cheese then a Septonian combat vessel. Engines were offline or destroyed, Engineering was completely destroyed along with both reactors. Their warp drive and weapons systems were also damaged and not fit for use, the Tumen was dead floating in the vacuum. After a couple seconds the emergency lighting flickered on, starting the two hour battery life each light had. Soon the interior of the ship was bathed in a sinister red hue, as the crew came to their senses. 

“ 30 dead, 45 wounded in some shape or fashion sir” one of the special operations officers said as he floated up to the bridge. “ Almost the entire ship is depressurized and they punched a hole clean through the ship, I have my corpsmen working on your wounded as we speak.”

Nikal thought for a moment before reflexively tapping the star chart button on his command panel before realizing the power was still out. “ shit….” he whispered as he thought of another plan of action, walking around to the rear windows on the bridge to see if he could eye the vessel. With the naked eye it was almost invisible amongst the stars, save for a small black shape that broke the light of the stars in passed over. Letting out a sigh, he calmly walked back to the command chair and produced an old, nearly ancient, spyglass which he quickly extended to its full length. With the added magnification he could easily make out the ship behind them, eyeing the vessel for a few moments before collapsing the spyglass and burying it in his pocket. 

From the exterior of the ship, the large hole could be seen clearly, along with the bodies and parts of bodies suspended around the Tumen. Metal and other debris littered the area around the ship as the vessel started a slow rotation counter clockwise as it drifted unpowered. Commander Nikal had to assume that they  could still see them moving around the ship, but how? Thermal? Very sensitive EM maybe? He really did not have the time to theorize how it worked but he had a plan for how to trick it.

“ Everyone, including the dead get to your designated escape pods. Load the dead, take their identification tags and jettison the pods” he said to through the ships intercom “ Everyone still alive and fit for combat, stay behind, seal the compartment and stay still”. The crew passed the messages to the compartments without oxygen as green status lights lit up, confirming that they had received the order. “ The bodies in the escape pods would still be warm, they would show hot in thermals. That should make them think we escaped and left the dead behind. The bodies on our ship would still be warm as well if we were dead, so unless they are using some advanced life scanner, we should look like an abandoned ship”.

The pirates scanners would see beings moving around the vessel and collecting around the escape pods before they were jettisoned, followed by an erie stillness. Nothing moved on the Tumen after the escape pods were launched deeper into the vacuum, the handful of signals around the escape pod bays would just be floating there, slowly getting colder and colder.