[u][b]Radak Station
Planet Socordia[/b][/u]

Ifoise Mbuku scowled up at the early morning sky, staring intently at a very bright star situated directly overhead. Mbuku knew that the brightest object in the crepuscular sky - save for the planet's sun just now cresting over the mountain range to the east - was no star, but rather a starship. Rasvan Saroyan had parked the [i]Bushwhacker[/i] - his destroyer and mobile heroin processing plant - in orbit directly above Mbuku's outpost on Socordia. Even now, the [i]Bushwhacker [/i]had it's spinal-mounted laser cannon aimed directly at Mbuku and the Radak Station outpost. Although the facility was effectively a large bunker half buried into Socordia's southern salt desert, even the outpost's thick concrete walls would provide little protection against an armament powerful enough to effortlessly punch through starship armor and vaporize cities. The pirate lord's ultimatum to Mbuku was unambiguous: surrender himself and everything he had to Saroyan within two hours or become the center of a blackened crater a kilometer wide.

"I'll give you everything I got, liddle man,"  said Mbuku, staring up at the star above him with a malign smile. "Just you wait." 

Mbuku stood atop the roof of the outpost's bunkerized compound. Equal parts militarized heroin warehouse, forward operating base, and starship hangar, Radak Station was well armed and more than equipped to launch an attack on the [i]Bushwhacker[/i] if Mbuku so chose. Two anti-orbital cannons the size of large houses were mounted onto pillbox turrets on the corners of the building capable of launching hull-penetrating tungsten darts or high-explosive warheads into any orbiting target at relativistic speed. A surprise salvo from such artillery would easily cripple the [i]Bushwhacker[/i], but with Saroyan waiting in orbit directly above watching his every move, Mbuku would not have the element of surprise. He knew that if he wanted to survive this encounter alive, he would have to employ subterfuge.

Killing Saroyan would be easy enough for Mbuku, for he was no stranger to killing men. He killed his first man at 11, fighting against pirate invaders on his homeworld of Katanga. By the age of 15, Mbuku had joined the the pirates simply because they paid better. Over the course of his life, he had fought in brushfire conflicts on six worlds and killed over one hundred combatants, human or otherwise. Killing Saroyan would be easy enough, sure, but then what? Saroyan's franchise of pirates throughout the frontier worlds and beyond would never submit to Mbuku.

But if he could take the [i]Bushwhacker[/i], along with its onboard processing facility, what choice would Saroyan's pirates have?

Mbuku had been skimming off the top of his heroin shipments up to Saroyan since the beginning. But to neglect to send up half of the scheduled shipment, Saroyan would certainly notice that. Mbuku was counting on it. And just as Mbuku had planned, Saroyan had taken the bait.

Socordia's sun had now risen well above the peaks of the massif to the east, and Mbuku could already feel the temperature climbing rapidly. Shimmering mirages were starting to form on the low lying spots of the white desert that surrounded Radak Station. In just an hour or two, outdoor temperatures would rise to a lethal 60 C; the horrendous heat of Socordia's unterraformed salt deserts served as an added defense against maroon bandits and escaped slaves from the opium farming regions. Mbuku navigated the station's maze of rooftop air conditioning units before descending through the rooftop access to retreat back into air conditioned comfort.

The pirate warlord descended a ladder into an open, cavernous space. All along the walls, giant metal shelving held entire pallets full of black tar heroin compressed into huge tacky bricks, not a single one of which was being loaded onto either of the two freighter starships docked in the bunker's vertical hangar silos. One of the the starships was being loaded, but [i]not[/i] with heroin. Teams of Mbuku's subordinates directed hoverjacks bearing pressurized metal crates into the hold of one of the freighters. He stepped down onto the concrete floor of the bunker and made his way over to the freighters.

"Shouldn't we be wearing some kind of hazardous material suit handling this shit?" Mbuku overhead one of the pirates steering a hoverjack remark as he approached. "If one of these crates busts open-"

"If one of these crates busts," one of the other porters interrupted, "then we're all dead even if we're wearing spacesuits. That's the thing about fusogenic acid. It fuses - or sticks - to any organic compound. That means it'll adhere and eat its way through any suits, even the rubber fittings under power armors and exosuits, and then it'll fuse to [i]you[/i]. It'll eat through your skin and into your bloodstream. It volatilizes into vapor and gets breathed in, and if you get it in your lungs, then it melts your lungs from the inside out. Just a little inside a hazmat helmet will kill you painfully and slowly as it melts your eyes and turns the inside of your lungs into bloody mush. Completely exposed like we are now, if one of these crates were to spring a leak, then we'd be turned into pools of red sludge before you even felt anything. Trust me, you're better off without a suit."

"Jesus..." his companion shuddered.

"Back in my previous life as a merc, we used it regularly in brushfire wars on shitty frontier planets. Unlike a lot of chemical weapons, this stuff actually works better in low-pressure atmospheres like the kind you see on unterraformed rocks. The low atmospheric pressure lets the fusogenic acid volatilize and disperse easier, which means it gets on more people and scores more kills. The core worlds try to ban it, but unfortunately for them and fortunately for ne'er-do-wells like us, it's relatively easy to make. A good chemistry student following a recipe for it could probably whip up enough for a grenade using common lab equipment. It's scary stuff, even in small quantities. I don't even want to know what boss man is planning to do with several tons of it."

"Das enough chatter," Mbuku barked. "We got less den two hours to load dis ship. Keep wasting time, and I'll test dis acid out on you lot first."

"No worries boss man," said the more knowledgeable of the porters. "Only another two crates two go. Then all we gotta do is set up the remote detonators, put them on the crates, and they're good to go."

"Well den get to it. Finish up here, get your guns and report to de other freighter. I want you lot dere in an hour or I'm leaving you."

Mbuku left his porters to finish their work as he went over to the other freighter. The warlord looked inside the hull and did not see any of the pressurized crates bearing deadly fusogenic acid, though his subordinates had loaded an assortment of munitions from around the station: few cases of grenades, some ammunition for kinetic weapons. Few other supplies would be coming with. Mbuku had been asked by his subordinates why they would not be bringing any of the heroin. He replied telling them that they had been promoted and some other chump would get stuck with Radak Outpost; though he had failed to specify just how their "promotion" would be taking place.

The pirate warlord made his way to the freighter's cockpit and took his seat at the helm of the vessel. Through the windshield of the cockpit, only the metal bulkheads of the hangar silo could be seen. But in just a few short hours, this vessel's cockpit would provide a front-row seat to the mutiny that would end the generation-long lull in piracy and threaten billions of lives across the cluster.

Once seated at the helm of the vessel, Mbuku initiated a communications link and hailed the [i]Bushwhacker[/i].

"Mister Saroyan, my deepest apologies for de shortage of product and de delay. Loading of de product we do have on hand is nearly complete. In just a few short minutes I will be departing and I assure you, I am bringing wit me [i]everyting[/i] I've got."