The R.S.S. Backstabber was rather unassuming at first glance. The

converted Action VI freighter was the brainchild of Richard Ginter who

was both it's designer and it's captain. On the outside the only real

thing differentiating it from any other Action VI was two swellings just

aft of the maneuvering fins and the fact that if you got close, I mean

really close, you would see that the hull was covered in very closely

interlocking tiles that were painted to match the Action VI's normal

coloration and that occasionally there were what appeared to be seams in

said covering at various points along the ship. Inside it was a techies

dream and a chiropractor's nightmare. The cargo bays had been near

completely converted into proton torpedo magazines and equipment bays.

Her shielding systems, both ray and kinetic, had been given a complete

overhaul along with her sub-light engines and her hyperdrive. Bracing

struts had been added to all her walkways and corridors, four were even

present on the bridge forcing many of the crew to crouch while moving

from place to place aboard the ship. Hence the ship's reputation for

causing back problems. Her armament had also been upgraded heavily she

possessed eight turrets, 4 standard-sized TL's all on the dorsal

surface, and 4 anti-starfighter turrets divided equally among the dorsal

and ventral surfaces. All Turrets had been modified so that they were

able to recess into the hull and thus maintain the illusion of a

harmless freighter. But perhaps her most important modifications were

her recessed proton torpedo turret in the bow, her sensor-masking system

that allowed her to remain undetected when on the fringes of an ISD's

scanning range, her power and data lines had been heavily shielded

against Ion cannon and EM pulse effects, and lastly she was equipped

with a cloaking device. True she was no match for an ISD in a

straight-up slapfight but that was not her purpose.

 

Richard Ginter was relaxing in the command chair when suddenly the

sensor operator announced "Sir scanners have detected an ISD, the IFF

says she's the Vengeance."

 

Instantly alert Richard turned to the operator and asked the 64 trillion

credit question, "What's her condition?"

 

The operator was quick to reply. "Sir, she appears fully operational

but oddly she's being attacked by her own fleet of gunboats."

 

After a moments consideration Richard gave the order they all had been

waiting for, "Helm plot us an intercept course I want to be just aft of

her. All stations prepare to proceed with attack."

 

Out in space the R.S.S. Backstabber quietly, and without fanfare turned

to move just aft of the Vengeance and after applying maximum thrust

activated her cloaking device and vanished from sight.

 

On the bridge of the Vengeance the crew was too busy dealing with their

own problem of the electronic Boyds and the attacking gunships to notice

the faint blip on the very edge of the scanner scope disappear.

 

Once behind the great leviathan of the ISD the Backstabber disengaged

the cloaking device, brought up all of it's shields to their maximum

power and then slipped into the ISD's exhaust contrail. The

Backstabbers'''' XO a young LT without much experience turned to the

captain and with a puzzled look on his face asked "What in the name of

the Force are we doing here!? Surely they must know we're here!"

 

"Calm yourself," replied Captain Ginter "All will become clear in a few

moments." Then turning to the weapons officer, "Tactical drop the

kinetic shields and fire one reinforced torpedo straight into each of

the ISD's sub-light engines. Then helm, I want you to get us out of

here a trajectory that keeps us aft of the ISD."

 

On board the Vengeance the sensor operator suddenly screamed "Sir, there

is a ship leaving our blind-spot it's heading appears to be an escape

trajectory!!"

 

Admiral MKSheppard turned to the operator and said, "What!? That's

impossible our blind-spot is where the radioactive exhaust from our

sub-light engines is vented. It would be suicide to enter the

contrail!!"

 

Just as the last word left his mouth the entire ISD shuddered like it

had been hit with a hammer the size of a small moon. Alarms blaired,

the main lighting failed and the backup illumination kicked in. The

helmsman screamed "Sir, helm is no longer responding I can't get the

ship to do anything!"

 

What had happened was that the three torpedoes that had been fired into

the engines had (courtesy of their structural reinforcement) survived

and impacted against the inside of each sub-light engine and literally

caused them to detonate in a most spectacular fashion. Fortunately the

designers of the ISD had planned for something similar to this. The

general shape and structure of the ship had vented the majority of the

blast outward and a reinforced wall had protected the main reactor.

Unfortunately the entire engine room was gone taking with it the ISD's

main hyperdrive and the backup.

 

Admiral MKSheppard after regaining his footing turned to his weapons

officer and screamed, "BLOW THAT SHIP OUT OF THE SKY!!! I WANT WHOEVER

DID THIS TO DIE!!!" The tactical officer merely looked at him and said

"I can't sir all the weapons systems on this ship are positioned in such

a way that they can't fire to the aft. Since that ship is above and

behind us none of the ventral guns can track him and dorsal guns would

have to fire through the command tower."

 

Captain Ginter calmly turned to his weapons officer and said "Tactical

fire three high yield torpedoes from the aft launchers. Two to go into

the hole in back of the ISD and home in on the Fusion Reactor and the

third to hit the bridge tower, for good measure."

 

Admiral MKSheppard was just coming to terms with the idea that the

unknown vessel was going to get away scot-free when the sensor operator

had to once again ruin his day. "Sir the unknown has a torpedo lock on

us!!"

 

The Admiral turned to the rear viewpoint just in time to see three

proton torpedoes lance out from two swellings on the aft of the ship.

One was headed toward the bridge and the other two were rushing off to a

lower point on the stern of the ISD. It didn't take a brilliant

tactician to figure out where the other two were headed. The Admiral

stunned at how fast his ship had been blown out from underneath him

could only whisper, "By the Emperor, the main reactor!" Right before

his world ended in a flash brighter than any sun.

 

At this instant the three torpedoes hit their targets. The bridge tower

taking only minimal damage, but that wasn't the important one. The

important ones did their job all to well, they blew through the blast

wall protecting the main reactor and then detonated, causing the reactor

to loose containment. The resulting fireball spread to consume every

square centimeter of the ISD, while at the same time emitting an EM

pulse strong enough to serve as the death scream of a dying leviathan.

The few remaining Boyds on other ships died horrible deaths as the EM

pulse scrambled every single circuit onboard the ships even the ones in

the ROM chips.

 

The pulse was shrugged off by the Backstabber thanks to the extra

shielding around her conduits. On the bridge, after all the hoopla died

down Captain Ginter turned to the helmsman and said "Perform two short

hyperjumps on a random vectors to throw off pursuit then make any

necessary repairs and then set course for base we need to make plans.

XO you have the bridge."

 

Just before the Captain left the bridge his XO turned to him and said

"Sir I do have a couple of questions if you don't mind." Richard looked

at him and said "Let me guess 'how did our first three torpedoes pass

through the shields of the ISD' and the second one is 'how are we still

here'." The Lt. nodded.

 

"Ok, the first one is rather simple. They didn't." At the XO's

confused look he elaborated. "All ships have their shielding divided

into two sub-systems, the ray shielding and the kinetic shielding. Ray

shielding protects against TLs and Kinetic shielding stops torpedoes and

missiles. But there can't be any KE shielding over the exhaust to a

sub-light engine. All sub-light engines work by venting particulate

mater which exerts a counter-force on the ship itself. Now if you had a

KE shield over the exhaust vents the exhaust would be stopped by the KE

shield and it would either a) exert enough force on the inside of the KE

shield that it would cause it to fail b) make the ship 'boil in it's own

juices' so to speak or c) both. In fact the only thing preventing an

attack on the engines of a ship is the fact that the contrail is highly

radioactive and most ships would die in seconds if they dropped their

shields long enough to make an attack."

 

"Now as to why we are still here, that's owed to a combination of

factors. First off the exhaust contrail didn't kill us when we dropped

our KE shields to fire the first volley of torpedoes is because of the

tiles that cover our hull. They are ceramic tiles with a bit of lead

mixed in to prevent radiation or thermal effects from harming the main

hull and they get scoured away by the gases instead of anything

important. After an attack all that is necessary is to replace the most

heavily damaged tiles along the bow. Secondly we remained undetected by

the ISD even after we dropped the cloak because we were in it's blind

spot. Every ship, even the Backstabber, has a blind spot caused by the

emissions of the Sub-Light drive interfering with any and all

rear-facing scanner modules. The size of the blind spot depends on the

size of the ship and the amount of emissions. An ISD is the second or

third largest ship in the Imperial navy and it is also one of the

fastest capital ships they poses which means that the engines on an ISD

have to develop a lot of thrust and therefore they have an extremely

high emissions rating. Finally the ISD was unable to kill us as we left

it's blind spot for two reasons. First it was unable to turn due to the

fact that we had blown it's propulsion to hell, and secondly it's shape.

An ISD is basically two big Wedges placed flat surfaces together with a

command tower affixed the wide end. All the weapons emplacements are on

the sloped foreword surfaces of the ISD and in the rim trenches. Since

we were above and behind the Vengeance the ventral guns couldn't be

brought to bear against us and the dorsal guns would have had to shoot

through the command tower. The trench guns are anti-starfighter class

and while they would have been annoying they couldn't have killed us

before we were out of range. Hence our continued existence."

Richard Ginter

 

 

Feeling the ISD shudder around him, Boyd knew he had seconds to live.

Hailing the 'Backstabber', he forced open a connection to her computers

and downloaded himself, just finishing the transfer as the final volley

of torpedeos struck home. The last thing he saw before the transfer was

completed was Sheppard and his crew getting into environmental suits [we

can't have you dying just yet, can we. I haven't tortured you nearly

enough <grin>]

 

Checking his new surroundings, Boyd realised that the crew was totally

unaware of his presence. Instead, they were celebrating as Cap. Ginter

proudly explained how he had beaten the mighty ISD. Boyd smirked as only

a computer can as he seized control of the freighter's droids.

Dispatching several to the outer hull, he began stripping off hull

plates before taking control of the ship's engines.

 

'Backstabber' shook suddenly, throwing Ginter off his feet. Landing

unceremoniously on the deck, he staggered to his feet and yeled "Status

report!"

 

"We appear to be turning back towards the wreckage of 'Vengenace', sir.

We're accelerating towards her engines." stammered the inexperienced Lt.

 

"Helm, take us back to our original heading!"

 

"Helm isn't responding!"

 

"Captain, we've got another problem. Our droid complement has taken over

engineering and is peeling the hull plates off the ship. The engineering

crew is being forced to... to... it's to hideous to say sir... they're

being forced to watch 'Bambi'!"

 

Ginter paled. Who had brought that instrument of torture on board? He

wasn't sure which fate was worse, being forced to watch Disney, or being

fried by the radiation still eminating from the crippled ISD. Boyd was

not, however, going to give him a choice. Sealing every door and

bulkhead on the bridge, Boyd ejected every lifepod, shuttle and means of

transportation on the ship. Once they were within 500m of the ISD's

engines, Boyd blew every sytem on the ship, knocking out engines,

weapons, communications. Everything. Except for a single pulse laser

transmitter. Setting its circuits to overload in 30seconds, Boyd

targetted a single escape pod into which he had placed a droid.

Activating the laser, he transfered himself first to the escape pod,

then to the droid. Smiling, smugly, Boyd watched as the crew of

'Backstabber' faced an aganising death from radiation sickness. Imaging

their pain, he relaxed and drifted contentedly, awaiting pick up,

whenever it came.

Jonathan

 

 

Captain Ginter recovered quickly the moment his helmsman and gave the

one order he hoped that he would never face. "XO, the Engineering team

can be considered a combat loss. If they aren't dead they are surely

insane. Execute emergency sequence gamma. Shut down the emergency

receiver, the ISD clearly infected us with some sort of virus." Richard

then calmly reached over and flipped a single switch on the armrest of

the command chair.

 

This switch was connected to a purely analog device which, when

activated, detonated several charges that were connected to the main

structural support beams that connected the bridge to the rest of the

ship. It then activated a second explosive package that blasted the

bridge clear of ship.

 

On board the bridge secondary control panels were flickering to life as

the completely isolated subsystems of the bridge kicked in. The

helmsman, being no fool, immediately altered the modules course to take

it well away from the radioactive wreckage.

 

Captain Ginter quickly surveyed the scene and was pleased to note that

the system had worked perfectly, the bridge was now a completely

separate starship. "Sensors, are you detecting anything anomalous in

the area?"

 

The sensor operator after consulting his display for a second replied,

"Yes sir, there appears to be a single escape-pod which cleared the EM

pulse radius of the ISD. The readings I am getting from it are strange,

there appears to be no life-forms aboard."

 

Richard considered for a moment and then decided on a course of action.

"Keep that com system off, it could be a decoy designed to re-infect the

attacking ship in case it survived. Take us out of the system but as we

leave I want us to pass close enough to that pod to burn it out of space

to be certain we have seen the last of that virus. After that make a

few random hyperjumps and then head home. I have a lot of work to do to

correct the flaws in my design before we build a second Backstabber.

Maybe I'll even come up with a better name for her."

 

The module as it made it's way clear of the system to facilitate a

hyperjump passed close enough to the escape pod where the 'virus' also

known as Boyd #???? resided to put it within even it's limited weapons

range. The single swivel laser cannon on the module turned and spat

bolt after bolt until the pod was reduced to dissipating vapor.

 

The module then made one short hyperjump followed by two more, and then

it made the final jump back to Captain Ginter's base. Where ever that

may be.

 

However, had Captain Ginter or his crew known it was an electronic

entity that had infected the Backstabber's main systems they would have

been far more worried. For you see the odds of that single entity being

the last one of its kind were very hard to calculate....:)

Richard Ginter

 

 

Ginter had indeed successfully dealt with the entity known as Boyd

#????. However, there were many more Boyds left to avenge his/its death.

Boyd #684, aboard a captured transport had, after much searching,

located a cloning facility. Resurrecting Boyd, it created several

copies, so that if something did happen, at least there would be several

more to take over.

 

It felt good to be alive again. Boyd #(Ï^-2) had, with the aid of

several thousand clones, taken over the ISDs 'Vindicator' and 'Gryffon'.

Against 2 such ships, Cpt. Ginter would be unable to use his innovative

tactic, giving Boyd the clear advantage. Locating Ginter's base using a

method too complex for mere mortal's to understand, the ISDs dropped out

of hyperspace in precision formation, launching every starfighter and

obliterating the base's puny defenses ina flury of shots before a single

bolt could be loosed in reply. Passing quickly over the planet, the 2

ISDs released bioweapon #9367-D into the atmosphere. Even if present in

as small a quantity as one part in 1E15, the deadly gas would have a

horrific effect of the victim. Obliterating the immune system, the gas

slowly turned the blood acidic, eating the vitim from within.

Additionally, the gas would cause the victim to hallucinate, forcing

them to watch Barney, the giant purple dinosaur during their last

several hours. There was no cure and the death would be slow and

painful. It would suffice where radiation sickness ha failed. His task

accomplished, Boyd departed, laughing maniacally as he did so.

 

Muhahahahahahah!!!!!!

Jonathan

 

The two ISD had dealt a death blow to the base but hardly to Captain

Ginter. Realizing that there would be a reckoning for destroying an ISD

he had set plans into motion the moment he had returned to base.

 

All of Richard's personnel and equipment had been moved to another base

days before the ISDs had arrived. The captain himself only left the

system moments before the two ISDs had jumped in. In order to throw off

pursuit he had set all of the defenses to go fully automatic when any

Imperial design ships entered the system. He knew that the base's

defenses which had been cobbled together from old systems salvaged from

various ships and junkyards would be obliterated, but all they had to

serve as was a distraction.

 

As Boyd's ISDs were egressing the system a small object about the size

of a flashlight penetrated their shields at the exhaust contrail. These

devices latched onto both ship's hulls and released a bug-like droid.

 

The droids soon found what they were looking for, a data line that ran

close enough to the surface of each ship for their micro drill/data

probes to interface with the computer of their respective ISD. Then

they copied an adaptive worm virus into the computer of each ship. This

virus slowly spread through out the ship integrating itself with the

computer's core OS.

 

Several days later while Boyd and the crews of the Vindicator and

Gryphon were on a standard patrol the computers went haywire. All

command interfaces locked up, all data access ports shut down, and every

single computer screen in both ISD's began to play nothing but a

combination of Animated Disney movies, Telletubbies, Barney, and the

worst fate to ever befall an Imperial agent; STAR-TREK reruns!

 

Meanwhile, Captain Ginter had already begun the construction of his

new-improved starship. This time he was building it from the ground up

and not relying on a converted bulk freighter. His next ship would be

everything that the Backstabber was and more. . . . . . .

Richard Ginter

 

 

Boyd recoiled in horror from the images of Teletubbies, Barney and

Disney, but was able to regain his composure when the ST reruns began.

Mirroring the tactic of his nemesis, Admiral Sheppard, he gave orders

for every computer relay on the ship to be blown. As systems cut out

then slowly came back on line, he carefully considered his next move.

His ships were too badly damaged to withstand an assault which would be

inevitable and they were weeks away from the nearest base, using just

the backup hyperdrive. Instead, he limped back to Ginter's former base.

The bioweapon having cleared from the atmosphere, Boyd dispatched a

salvage team to retieve a holo-net transmitter and immediately called

for help.

 

Within a day, part of Boyd's evergrowing fleet arrived, staffed by

clones, droids and computer copies of his mind. His influence grew

daily, much to his pleasure and his resources would soon rival those of

the Empire [N.B. this is set during/after SotP] 5 ISDs, 3 MC 90s, 12

Corellian Gunships and a medical frigate dropped out of hyperspace,

awiting Boyd's command. Departing from 'Vindicator', Boyd transferred

his flag to 'Malice', an ISD II, heavily refitted with additional heavy

TLs and anti-starfighter cannons. Setting course for the location of

Ginter's base, which had been located by his intelligence experts, he

departed into hyperspace.

 

Aboard 'Malice', Boyd discovered a welcome surprise. Bobba Fett. Having

stumbled on Boyd's fleet, while tracking down a transport carrying one

of computer minds, Fett's ship had quickly been disabled by the B-Wing

patrols and heavy ion fire from the capital ships. Having read the Evil

Overlord lists, Boyd knew there was only one thing to do. Pulling out

his custom built, combination Gorn disruptor/Cardassian phaser, he shot

Fett repeatedly in the head, gut, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and any

other vital organ he could locate. Scraping up the bloody mess which

more resembled Timmothy Jones' arguments than a bounty hunter, he had

them cremated and scattered in hyperspace. That dealt quite well with

that problem.

 

A day later, the fleet dropped out of hyperspace, rendezvousing with

another taskforce, consisting of 8 Nebulon-B frigates, 24 Corellian

Corvettes, 5 MC80s and 3 Interdictors with their 6 ISD II escorts. This

comprised the majority of his available assets, the rest engaged in

peace keeping duties throughout his fledgling empire and the rest on

patrol for pirates, Imperials, Rebels or other assimilateable scum.

Regrouping, the fleet entered hyperspace for the last time before

arriving at Ginter's shipyard.

 

It had been a pleasant day at the shipyards, for Ginter. His ship had

cleared the design process and was now under construction. His small

fleet of an escort carrier, 5 Corellian Corvettes and 2 Marauder

Corvettes was in orbit, ready to intercept threats too far away for the

2 Golan II defense platforms to deal with. There was a brief flash of

light far out in space. At the same instant, the shipyard's alarms all

went crazy.

 

"Sir, we've detected a large fleet incoming. 3 MC90s ,5 MC80s, 13 ISDs,

8 Nebulon-B frigates, 12 Corellian Gunships, 24 Corellian Corvettes, 3

Interdictors and a medical frigate! 2 of the ISDs match the profiles of

'Vengeance' and 'Gryffon'."

 

Ginter paled at this news. He was outgunned 10 to and he couldn't flee

because of those Interdictors. There was only one thing he could do.

Raise the planetary shields and pray that someone would come to his aid.

Giving the orders. He ran for the command centre of the shipyard. The

shipyard itself had no weapons, but the Golan platforms could hide

beneath the shields and force Boyd to keep his distance. A huge

explosion shook the ground. Glancing at the Master Situation Monitor, he

saw that every shield generator had just exploded after several

starfighter sized objects impacted at high speed against them. "Oh

dear..."

 

Boyd was in a good mood. Sacrificing a squadron of X-Wings, he had

hyperjumped them into the planet from the edge of the system, on a

course that would cause them to impact on shield generators. So far

everything was going according to plan. Launching every starfighter in

the fleet, 18 wings, a total of almost 1300 fighters, he watched as the

Planet grew larger. His expression soured slightly as the small

taskforce protecting the planet broke orbit and ran for hyperspace. Oh

well, taking them out would have been too easy. Jamming all

communications so that the Golan platforms couldn't surrender, he

instructed the fleet via laser to open fire. Within seconds, the

platforms were reduced to dust. Now, it was time for the final part of

his plan. Ordering the fleet to withdraw slightly, he gave 'Gryffon'

permission to proceed. Manned solely by droids and his computer mind,

the ISD plunged into the planet's atmosphere and collided violently with

the surface. Immediately every sensor on the ship lit up with reports of

huge dust clouds, massive seismic disturbances and other signs of a

dying planet. A huge fireball erupted from the crash site, temporarily

obscuring the planet from view. With his computers protected by his own

mind and other anti-viral systems, all the shields up and a starfighter

screen around the ship, there was no way his fleet could be attacked.

Wit the Interdictors surrounding the planet, escorted by several capital

ships, there was no way Ginter could escape. Boyd sat back and watched

the planet and all,life on it, die.

Jonathan

 

 

Richard knew that Boyd would not leave the battlespace until either his

forces were depleted to the point where it was no longer wise to remain

insystem or he had obliterated the shipyard with the Captain on board.

When he reached the control room he quickly looked at the tactical

display and smiled, ah poor Boyd he had once again jumped into the

system in formation and along the very vector that attackers shouldn't

take when attacking HIS base.

 

Turning to the main console he booted the voice recognition program and

gave the command, "Computer, activate defense pattern 'Hell Gate'

authorization tango, tango, fiver, six, bravo, execute." From the

shipyard, unnoticed by the attacking fleet, a mono-pulse signal was

transmitted that activated the Hell Gate system.

 

Boyd was on the bridge of the Malice enjoying the prospect of soon being

rid of the pest of Captain Ginter when suddenly his sensor operator had

the Gall to interrupt his thoughts, "Sir, uh a very powerful deflector

shield has just formed around the shipyard sir, it is at least

comparable to an ISD II in strength." Boyd, annoyed that Richard would

try to prolong his miserable hide by a few moments said "Take it out,

surely a shield like that won't stand up to our combined barrage for

long!"

 

Meanwhile something was happening on asteroids that surrounded the

system. Originally dismissed by Boyd as merely a source of raw

materials. Back on the Malice Boyd's sensor operator suddenly had a

very good reason to loose all composure, "SIR, I detect 8,000 no 16,000

torpedo targeting packages in the system surrounding us going HOT!!!

Also, *(&(*^ SIR there are also 34,000 Concussion Missile targeting

systems, and an impossible number of TL and anti-starfighter cannon

targeting arrays!!!" Boyd turning quickly to the display was only able

to utter a surprised "What?" before the space surrounding the fleet lit

up with an impossible amount of blue, orange, and green flashes.

 

Each asteroid had been converted by Richard into defense platforms for

his base. Each asteroid was equipped with six torpedo launchers all

linked to a single targeting device, twelve missile launchers shared by

two targeting packages, 40 TL's each with their own targeting system,

numerous independent anti-starfighter guns, and a hideously strong

shielding system. Boyd's fighter screen died in the first 10 seconds of

the battle swatted from the sky like so many insects, the Correllian

corvettes and gunships died in the first minute; their shields not up to

task of shrugging off repeated multiple torpedo impacts.

 

As the fringe elements of Boyd's fleet died the asteroid defense

stations fired their engines and moved in closer to the core of the

fleet and engaged his fleet with their TLs, Torpedoes, and missiles at

standard ranges. On the Malice's bridge Boyd was strapped into his

command chair to ride out the shaking that the huge amount of torpedoes

striking the hull was inducing and listening to his XO's report. "Sir,

the Vengeance is dead, the medical frigate is withdrawing from the

batllespace due to severe damage and loss of shields, 2 of the three

MC90s are dead, the MC80s all report severe damage and casualty reports

are coming in from all decks, all of the ISDs including us have taken

significant damage, and the Nebulon B's are reporting crippling blows to

their drive systems." Suddenly the communications officer yelled out

"Sir I have lost all contact with the Interdictors, the planet and

shipyard are no longer blockaded." Boyd immediately realizing that he

would not be able to kill Richard this day ordered an immediate

withdrawal of all forces. As his fleet was moving to escape the 4 of

the MC80s died along with 7 of his ISDs. All of his surviving ships

including the Malice were damaged to the point that dockyard refits

would be required to get any of the ships back up to spec. Boyd's

mauled fleet then jumped out of the system running at maximum for the

nearest system that had a sufficiently large shipyard.

 

After the battle fleet left Richard took stock of what he had left and

came to a decision. "Commander, send a signal to the fringe of the

system we are transferring operations to the Base ship."

 

Five minutes later the Base ship jumped into the system and had Boyd

still been in the system he would have truly been amazed. Richard's

base ship was his greatest creation ever, it was as large as a city and

had enough space in it's mammoth docking bay to even accommodate a ship

the size of an SSD. It's armament was strong enough repel whole fleets.

It's hull was saucer shaped which allowed its guns and point defense

batteries to traverse a full 360 degrees, no ship could sneak up on it

without taking the risk of coming under fire. But probably it's

greatest advance was the fully functional recycling and production

system inside the hull. The ship was capable of designing and

constructing whole new ships and ship classes.

 

After 10 more minutes Richard had all of his personnel, equipment, and

fleet ships were transferred to the base ship. After setting his

shipyard and planetary base to detonate after they left the system

Richard boarded the Base Ship left orbit. Before they hyperjumped out

of the system Richard did two things, first he tractored the wreckage of

Boyd's fleet and his remaining asteroid defense stations into his ship

where they were melted down and recycled into new ships that would form

the beginnings of his new fleet and secondly he made a hypercomm call.

 

Captain Richard faced the screen and said "Well Mr. S, do we have a

deal?" The man on the other end of the hypercomm link considered for a

moment and then said, "Yes I believe we do, I'll ruin this Jonathan Boyd

for you and you'll supply the agreed upon materials?" Richard nodded.

The man continued, "Very good then, watch INN and you'll see me at work.

Have a nice day." After the call terminated Richard leaned back in his

seat and relaxed only to be interrupted by his XO, "Sir, I know that

Boyd has truly put a crimp in your plans but was it really necessary to

send the Evil Sith Legal Investigator Kenneth Starr after him? I mean

even Boyd deserves something better."

 

Richard turned to his XO and said "No, he doesn't. Besides, if I know

Boyd he'll find a way to avoid being completely ruined by Mr. Starr's

investigations. Now on to business, what should we christen our new

home? Personally, I was leaning to naming her the Leviathan but I think

the entire command staff should have a say in it." The discussion of a

name for their new base of operations was still raging when the huge

ship made the jump to light speed and off to parts unknown . . . . .

 

End.

 

Well Mr. Boyd get out of this one! I've got Kenneth Starr on your tail!

:)

Richard Ginter

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