This was truly undeniable, once he'd considered it. So he grudgingly admitted to naming the class after the first one completed, which just happened to be his personal flagship, The Flamberge. The others wouldn't have its impenetrable hull, but they'd serve well enough under its name.
Shampoo had six Flamberge class ships for this ambush, more than was really needed. The Imperial Navy was very reluctant to let its proud Imperials serve escort duty, so lesser ships got stuck with that job. In this case, a regular Dreadnought not phased out of Imperial service quite yet, and a Tapani-class frigate, which was mislabeled because it was just as much a cruiser as the Dreadnought.
The Tapani shipyards produced it for in-sector picket fleets, for their rich customers noticed that Imperial regulations were much freer about allowing planets to own frigates for defense than they were about allowing non-naval ownership of cruisers. Hence, it got called a frigate no matter what the facts of its size, drive signature and weapons profile were. The ship was every inch the size of the Dreadnought, but something of a Frankenstein's monster spliced together out of parts from dozens of different manufacturers. While servicable, it was far from being an excellent design of ship.
That actually served their owners perfectly. They didn't want their Imperial masters to either get offended at their end run around the restrictive cruiser regulations, or lust after the ships themselves and take them for Imperial service. Neither was likely to happen. Tapani was too rich and important a sector to offend casually, and the navy too set in its ways to want to bother integrating such a nonstandard ship with all their quirks of operation thrown in.
Shampoo's half dozen Flamberges outgunned the escorts many more times than three to one. It would be more but their turbolasers were still pitiful. Of course, no worse than the Dreadnought they faced.
It was not the objective of piracy to fight fair. A successful pirate never fought fair if he could help it. Best to overawe the enemy and not have to fight at all. Hardly romantic, but repairs cost money and valuables could get blown up, lost or damaged.
They'd set this ambush for this spot because a meteor of unusual consistency had gone through the area recently, spreading strong particles that sent radiation out across multiple bands, giving out static on most scanners and possibly form some minor navigation hazard.
They'd used enough 'hyperspace accidents' recently to take whole convoys that a little extra excuse was a good idea. One or two more raids like this and they'd retire for a time to assemble the infrastructure made possible by all this plunder. Some bureaucrat would point to a fall in major hyperspace accidents and claim the increase in safety was because of his policy, she was sure.
Then she could go back to her cushy job at Industrial Automation, cutting her 'family vacation' short to recommence shifting new technologies and scuttled projects to Ranma. With luck, she'd even get pregnant by him in the celebration of a successful return.
===========
Nabiki Tendo was a very greedy Moff.
Almost her entire family had bought into Palpatine's New Order from the start, and early in made for the highest rise if you played along and managed the advantage right.
They had.
Nabiki was unusual both for her age, she was very young to serve as any kind of official in the New Order, and for her gender. The Emperor was as reluctant, almost, to promote females to positions of power as he was to permit aliens those same slots of authority.
But her family had proved themselves. More importantly, she had proven herself. And just now she was gradually settling down to rape the resources of an entire sector to expand her personal and family fortunes. Buuuuuuuttt, there never seemed quite enough.
She demanded luxury, and a poor farming sector just wasn't good enough. She either had to embrace the task of struggling further up the ladder of imperial favor - a nigh impossible goal given her gender, find ways to make the credits go farther (Yuck! Thrift was Kasumi's job and she was happy to leave it to her - the Black Sheep of their family), or supplement her generous slice of the tax income in interesting and diverse ways.
Hence this raid.
She'd already become her own crimelord. That had been fun, but setup costs depleted her personal purse and money was something she wanted to roll in; not to have sitting sterile in a bank somewhere, but drape ostentatiously over every available surface and surround herself with glory and splendor. All of the time, so this dip in her personal fortunes had to be corrected. Now!
Hey, things had been tight when she was growing up. She felt she was entitled to overcompensate a little (or a lot - she privately admitted).
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(Posted Mon, 22 Mar 2004 18:14)
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