[b]23 December 3160[/b]

"Adjust bearing to 3-2-0, 0-4-0, out." The flight controller sounded as though he had spoke such instructions a million times throughout his career. Maybe he was just bored. The fighter pilots followed their instructions and continued flying through the blackness of space. Distant stars filled the blackness around the craft like a Pointillist painting, each one holding a world of possibility and adventure. 

Experienced pilots got used to it after a while and saw the stars not as beautiful beacons but just another part of life. Or as mere distractions. 

The communications opened up again with a small crackle. "Target 13 hundred K out, over." his voice was muffled slightly, a consequence of the flight helmets the pilots wore. 
Aya scanned the space in front of her and saw a slightly peanut-shaped dot; it was slightly dimmed out by the bright stars far, far behind them. "Uh... is it the port or starboard-side one, over?"
"We think port-side." another pilot replied, though he sounded unsure at best. "Wouldn't surprise me if it's wrong, frankly."

Aya replied with something resembling murmured agreement. The Republic's military intelligence agencies didn't care as much about pirates as they should, what with the war going on. On top of that, fewer and fewer ships were devoted to such anti-piracy missions with each passing week resulting in the Navy just barely able to maintain law and order.

Aya took a quick glance at the Ladar screen on her dashboard; there were three blips where there should be two - the pair of asteroids. What was the third one? "I'm getting three dots, probably an error. Are your screens working?" What followed was affirmatives from everyone else in the group. 
"Thinkin' it's a ship." the flight leader said. He maintained his normally calm demeanour even after such an unexpected curveball. "I'll check back with the boat, wait a few. Out."

A moment passed when the comms crackled to life again. "[i]Victorious[/i] thinks it's a captured merchant ship, but we're ordered to engage regardless; 1 through 7 will try to hit any fighters they might deploy while 8 through 1-5 hits their defences. Clear?"

The starfighters continued on their course - the appearance of a ship was an unfortunate complication that the fighters might not be able to deal with, but what else could be done? No other warships besides their carrier were in the area, and leaving the pirates alone certainly wasn't an option.

Chatter began to come through the squadron's communications as half a dozen torpedo bombers accelerated ahead - a salvo of small missiles shot out from their internal bays - defences on the asteroids opened fire immediately in a futile attempt at stopping the tidal wave of ordnance flying at them.

The defences were silenced in short order. Pirate fighter craft exited a small hangar inside one of the asteroids, but that this point it was far too late. The craft rapidly dispersed as cannonfire came at them; the 'merchant ship' emerged from its cover guns blazing, her point-defence cannons shredding a fighter to pieces.

The ship herself looked to be in rough shape, as though she had been caught in the middle of being stripped for parts. Still, her armaments were very much intact and posed a significant threat. Lasers and tracers illuminated the dark space as both sides did battle.

Aya felt her whole fighter vibrate for barely a second as she fired its cannon, sending glowing green tracers into an unlucky pirate's craft. She saw its cockpit module detach from the fuselage - the only safe way to eject from a burning starfighter in space.


She took quick glances at the pod as the battle progressed; it was unusual for pirate pilots to eject, mostly because they are guaranteed to be captured and tried. Still, in Aya's mind it had to be better than dying in a fireball. 

The blinding flash from an enormous explosion grabbed her attention. 

The pirate ship that had been hammering her squadron had a gaping hole where one of its main guns used to sit; a pair of her squadron's torpedo bombers emerged from the thick smoke coming from the ship, only to turn right back around for another pass.

A rapid burst from the surviving cannons quickly put a stop to that.

The pirate ship began to tilt downwards and to starboard, her thrusters pulsing as they began to die. The ship slowly became a victim of the relatively weak gravity of one of the asteroids, slipping closer and closer to the floating rock with each passing second. Still, at that rate it'd still take several hours for them to collide.

"I think I saw an open hangar on that ship," came the voice of her flight leader over the comms. "Port side, near the centre. Over." 
Aya's eyes went back and forth times between the ship's port side and what was ahead of her. Eventually, she caught sight of the hanger - it certainly didn't have a large entrance, but it looked quite deep, going about half-way into the ship's innards. The cogs in Aya's head began to spin.

"Could we get a torp' in there? Uh, over." It sounded like a big ask, but she believed it to be the best shot the squadron had for taking the ship out permanently. After all, a massive explosion [i]inside[/i] the ship would be a lot more destructive than one outside.

Aya could imagine seeing him shrug as he replied. "I mean, probably." A relatively tiny explosion in her peripheral vision interrupted the both of them for a second. "Let's get rid of these fighters that're left and we'll talk. Out."

She and the other fighters hunted down the pirates that remained for the next few minutes, often while dodging fire from the ship's surviving CIWS. Eventually, the space was totally cleared and the small hulks of destroyed fighter craft littered the space around her. Now, only the ship remained.

"Alright people," the squadron leader began, and immediately had everyone's attention. "Our surviving torpedo bombers are going to launch an attack on the open hangar bay on the ship's port side. The rest of us will fly in with them, keep their defences busy. Form up here and await instruction. Out." Once he came off the comms, a bright blue waypoint flashed in Aya's HMD, signifying the rally-point.

Once everyone was there, the comms flared up again. "Okay, the fighters are gonna go in first, get the attention of the defences. Fly as erratically as possible so you can't be tracked easily and just hold on until the bombers have made their run. Only engage the defences if you have to; I do not want more deaths than necessary. I hope I am clear. Out." 

The fighters began their approach towards the ship, and red tracers immediately began flying from the ship's guns. The fire rate of those weapons was so great that the individual tracers were impossible to make out; they looked like fluid laser beams.

Aya and her comrades ducked and weaved through the lightshow, flying without any method or grace whatsoever. 'Still,' Aya thought, 'if it keeps us alive...' The torpedo bombers closed in at a rapid pace from another angle. Aya held her breath and prayed for them to get within range...

Aya heard nothing as the glass of her cockpit shattered - what little air there was got sucked out immediately, and Aya immediately found herself in a vacuum. Although she was magnetically attached to her seat, she still felt the pressure of the vacuum trying to suck her into the void. She actually considered herself lucky - she and others wore sealed flight suits for precisely this reason.

Her fighter shuddered violently as a few more bullets flew straight through the fuselage and one of the wings. She put her fighter into a series of wild twists and turns as red streaks shot right past her. It was much harder to control than before, almost as if the fighter was fighting [i]her[/i] the whole way. Red warning lights flashed all over what was left of the cockpit and sirens blared. Not that she could actually hear them.

Now, her full attention was on flying and surviving. She never should have made the mistake of focusing on what the bombers were doing. A few seconds of radical manoeuvres came and went, as did another few... Then another. 

And then... the tracers stopped. the guns that had been firing at them were silent. Aya looked back at the ship, almost totally enveloped in a massive ball of bright white and red light. The explosive glow slowly began to fade away, revealing the ship - more a floating corpse of metal at this point - torn completely in two. Both halves of the ship floated away in opposite directions.

Aya leaned back in her seat and put her hands over her face. Despite not being prepared to face down an actual ship, she and her squadron succeeded. Even with certain death just an inch from her face, she was [i]happy[/i]. With luck, this dangerous surprise will prompt the intelligence services to once again keep an unblinking eye on piracy. She could only hope.