LOCATION: OUTSIDE OORT CLOUD


    SYSTEM: WOLF 1061


    DATE: 2400


    Harlow waited nearly a full light day outside of the system with his fleet. It hadn’t taken long to consolidate his power back on Haven. Everyone had seen what he did to his own parents, and they respected power.


    He didn’t let his new subjects idle about though. Any ship with FTL was ordered to reinforce his other fleets. Today was the day he would take the next step to increase the size of his empire.


    "Is everyone ready?" he demanded from his new throne aboard Harlow’s Might.


    "Yes, Emperor," the man bowed.


    Harlow grinned widely at the new title and the respect it garnered. He would no longer have to fight over scraps from his family, everything was now his to im. As soon as the STO took the bait, it would be time.


    He went over the n in his head onest time. A group of his weaker ships had already jumped into the system to harass the spacenes. It was arge enough group to provoke a response from the STO fleet stationed there but notrge enough to scare them off. The STO fleet would give chase like they had been doing for thest few months. When his people pulled the STO into an open jump corridor, his people would jump out without engaging.


    The only reason this n would work is because he had been conditioning the STO to respond this way every few days. The spies he had in the system had ryed their response both before and after his people left. It was always the same. Once his people jumped out, the STO would flip around and start decelerating back to their patrol route.


    "Jump contacts, Sir!" the sensor operator shouted in glee.


    Harlow grinned. "Start the countdown and tell the ships that just jumped in to swing around but not to decelerate."


    His people went about their tasks with rabid fervor. And who could me them? The system they were going to hit might not be a core world, but it was a rich one. If everything went well today, it would be ripe for the picking.


    "Jumping!" the pilot yelled.


    The jump from a light day out took hardly any time at all and when they came out, they were practically on top of the STO fleet as far as ster distances went. He didn’t need to give any orders, his people had already been told what to do. As soon as their sensors got a firing solution, missiles and railgun darts fired from every single ship in his fleet.


    The STO ships were caught at a near-dead stop as he had timed his jump to coincide with their velocity having been nearly canceled out as they attempted to return to their patrol route.


    Even though he caught them t-footed, the STO ships fired their maneuvering thrusters to try and angle their vulnerable engine sections away from the iing fire. It wasn’t fast enough to save them all though.


    Railgun darts punched through the engines of half the ships in the STO line, sending the vessels jerking wildly as their other engines sent them off course. Then the missiles arrived, detonating nearby as the enemy fleet failed to orient their point defense cannons in time. Three of the STO ships blew apart as they were struck by multiple missiles but the rest were turning to engage.


    That was when Harlow ordered the sma missiles fired. The weapons wereunched from the ship and lit off their drives almost immediately as they locked onto their targets. Since the STO ships were moving so slowly, they had no chance to maneuver out of the way as the projectiles turned into miniature suns that shed through vessels one after the other.


    Eight more STO ships drifted aimlessly after that attack, leaving only two ships remaining. They tried to flee but there was no chance as the rest of his fleet pounded them with a hail of railgun darts. One of the ships lost containment and Harlow watched in glee as the back half of the vessel bubbled away into space in an orb of expanding molten metal.


    "Report!" he demanded as he pulled his gaze away from the holo disy that showed the fight.


    "One of the older frigates lost power, and the crew is likely dead, Your Majesty."


    "And Harlow’s Might?" he demanded, not caring about the dregs of his fleet.


    "Minor armor damage from return fire."


    It had been an overwhelming victory and his dreadnaught had once again shown it was the undisputed powerhouse on the battlefield.


    "Tell the rest of the fleet to put some more holes in those disabled ships, then tell them to go wild. It’s time to celebrate!"


    The crew roared in approval and Harlow ordered his gship deeper into the system so they could finally im the. The other ships jumped back in to join the festivities not long after the initial fight had ended.


    Those ships joined him as they approached the. Already he could see people trying to flee the system as ships desperately exited the atmosphere while others were pushing their drives as fast as they would go to make it to the jump point. The corvettes that had apanied him zipped on ahead to disable or destroy those ships before they could clear the gravity well. They wouldn’t get them all, but that was fine.


    They soon caught and disabled the majority of the vessels as they all streamed for the designated jump point. It was like shooting fish in a barrel and he was d that most people were too ignorant to program alternate jump points on their own. He had to thank the STO for forcing standardized jump points, it made hunting down ships so much easier.


    The had some orbital defenses, but Harlow’s people picked them off one after the other. The STO relied too heavily on missile defenses around theirs, and the few Gauss cannons they had in ce were quickly destroyed before they could do any significant damage. As for the missiles, they couldn’t get past the jamming, electronic countermeasures, and PDC fire to do anything.


    The orbital defenses were never meant to function without a fleet as backup, and he had neutered that possibility.


    "Open a channel to the, all bands."


    The sensor operator nodded and pointed to him when it was ready.


    "People of Poltaryov, you are now free from the oppression of the STO. I am Emperor Harlow Anazi the First and I graciously extend you this offer to join my burgeoning empire."


    "Emperor, we are receiving a response from theary governor."


    He nodded for the man to put it on the holo.


    An older man with gray hair at his temples popped up on the disy. "We reject your offer, and you can go to hell, you pirate scum!" The man ended the call after that, leaving the bridge deathly quiet as Harlow did his best not tough.


    "Did you pinpoint the location of the transmission?"


    "Yes, Emperor," themunications person replied.


    "Let’s send the man a gift, perhaps that will make the rest of them more amenable?"


    Most of the people on the bridge didn’t seem to get the joke, but his second-inmand did. The man chuckled darkly, "It will be done."


    Less than a minuteter, a single missile fired out from the front of Harlow’s Might and streaked toward the surface of Poltaryov. There was a sh that banished the night on that side of the before a mushroom cloud boiled itself into the cloudyer.


    The STO may not see a need to use nuclear weapons, but Harlow had nopunctions about ssing entire cities to get the poption under control. And thanks to securing his parent’s enrichment facilities, he now had more of the weapons than he could ever need.


    It wasn’t long before some low-level adjunct contacted him from the surface and surrendered the. It seemed anyone higher up was too busy hiding or being dead to respond. A pity really, Harlow would have liked to have taught them a lesson in person but he was a busy man and an Emperor now, there were others to get their hands dirty.


    Simr attacks took ce at four other systems where the STO had fleet presences. Not all of them were as devastating for the STO as Harlow’s ambush, but the STO suffered heavy losses with each encounter, so they were forced to pull back and abandon each of those systems, expanding Harlow’s empire yet again.


    ***


    LOCATION: FLEET HEADQUARTERS


    SYSTEM: SOL


    "Exin to me how a mob of unruly pirates managed to take four more systems and destroy over twenty-five ships, Admiral Clement. And it better be good."


    Clement clenched his jaw to prevent himself from saying what he wanted to say to the STO Chairman. The man was obviously looking to pin the me on this colossal screw-up on anyone other than himself. Clement knew he was already on thin ice, rocking the boat would likely get him a military tribunal instead of just a dishonorable discharge. So he decided to respond as diplomatically as possible.


    "There was no indication that Harlow had these sorts of resources avable to him." This was true, and also a major miss by the intelligence people.


    "No indication?" the Chairman’s hologram replied casually as it tapped its fingers on the surface of some invisible desk. "Am I meant to believe that our intelligence services are so utterly ipetent that they could not find a single thread of evidence that led to this monstrosity!" the man’s words peaked in volume toward the end as he gestured to the enormous ship captured in the still frame that floated between them.


    Unfortunately, Clement had no response to that usation, so he remained silent, which seemed to anger the Chairman even more.


    "You are officially relieved of duty, Clement. You will remain where you are until the judiciarymittee can determine if your actions were simply gross ipetence or treason. You best hope they don’t have reason to believe treason. We are at war, Clement, and there is only one punishment for traitors during wartime. Now, get out of my sight, you disgust me."


    Now that the Chairman had found someone he could pin the me on, it was conveniently a war. He really despised politicians and everything they stood for.


    Without another word, Clement nodded and left the room. The oue was much as he expected when he first got the news of the attack. He didn’t know which Admiral would rece him and he didn’t particrly care. The STO had turned into a cesspool, so it would likely be some bootlicker of the Chairman or the mega-corporations.


    He was d he warned Fletcher before this meeting since they were likely monitoring all hismunications now. Vice Admiral Fletcher was likely the next on the chopping block since it was his department that had missed this critical information. Then again, the man was much better at the whole political wrangling than Clement had ever been so he might somehow survive.


    Clement didn’t me Fletcher and his people for the miss, space was impossibly huge, and the STO’s budget wasn’t endless, so they did what they could with what they had.


    Even though this devastating attack was awful and tragic, maybe it was what the STO needed to finally take the pirate threat seriously, like he had been campaigning from the start. If not, he suspected Harlow was going to continue annexing systems until he started to do some real damage and the corporations had to get involved.