Hijacked!

Seeing the universe around him through the shifting lens of his photon shroud, Guiding Hand Social Club operative Arenis Xemdal eyed the prize unseen with hungry eyes. There it was, a meagre ten klicks astern: an Imperial Issue Armageddon battleship.

Today was to be the day of a historic arms exchange between two affluent captains, each possessing a prize the other envied. Hamish Ramatakhlan, the Guiding Hand’s favourite unwitting pet, captaining a Nightmare; an obscene horror borne of mad Sansha’s shipyards, whose non-euclidean geometries terrify and confound travellers throughout wilderness space. And then there was Icarus Starkiller who came to own the golden Imperial Armageddon through dumb luck, having won it in the BIG Corporation’s lottery. Instead, today would become the day that both would fall prey to the Guiding Hand’s next caper.

The handover was to be performed in Naval tradition - both captains come to a stop some distance apart, un-dock their capsules from their warships leaving only a skeleton crew behind to handle basic ship operations, and exchange places with well-wishing and commiseration aplenty. The one thing both captains were not counting on was the presence of a stealthy assault shuttle loaded with breaching pods and manned by the best the Hand had to offer. The whole affair was an affront to Xemdal - the pride of the Amarr Navy being passed around between apes like some dirty whore. He knew that the ape Hamish sought to reverse-engineer the mighty Imperial Armageddon, to reveal the secrets of its martial might to Republic war engineers. It was Xemdal who approached the old man with a bold plot to reclaim that pride, knowing beforehand that the self-admitted Imperiophile would readily go along.

Now there was only the small matter of seizing control of one of Amarr’s mightiest warships.

The two objective captains clearly felt secure in this core system, under the watchful aegis of CONCORD’s ever-present SWAT battleships. The presence of an Interstellar Correspondent made it likely they were feeling a little star-struck also, expecting to make the news, except not in quite the manner they had hoped.

The handover ceremony had commenced. The two captains were exchanging inane pleasantries over local channel, the eager IC paparazzo no doubt scribbling down their pithy words. Xemdal tensed. He was not used to commanding a ship devoid of a capsule. The breaching pods necessitated the wholesale removal of that crucial subsystem, leaving the assault barge steerable only by means of crude manual controls. He marvelled at the technological savagery civilian pilots took for granted. Now was the time to strike, and the window of opportunity was not going to stay open for long.

The breaching pod burst from the assault barge’s cloaking field just as Icarus Starkiller’s capsule separated from the golden hulk, crashing into the Armageddon’s hull at speeds likely to liquefy its occupant were he not suspended in protective decel-gel. The pod made short work of the Armageddon’s thick carapace, hewing through it like a butcher cleaving at bone. The heavy cylinder of capillary-ridden tungsten fell into the ship’s bowels, its edges still glowing red from the breaching pod’s cutting lasers, followed immediately by the Guiding Hand hijacker clad in a skin-tight black combat suit. He slicked himself clean of the shock absorbing gel, leaving a puddle of it on the Imperial Armageddon’s lavishly carved wooden decks - every inch of which had enjoyed the attention of Imperial artisans. Shogaatsu himself was not far; always present with a contingency plan should things head south.

Her hallways were devoid of life. The soon-to-be previous owner took great care to clear his prize of his crew’s personal possessions, and leave her pristine for the handover. The vaulted bridge loomed ahead. The voices coming from the great, cathedral-like chamber indicated an utter lack of preparedness. Soundlessly, the operative slipped onto the central command dais. All the crew would have to be taken down in the blink of an eye to avoid raising an alarm.

Arenis levelled his weapons at two groups of Minmatar warriors clumsily manning the drive and communications consoles. They were plainly not accustomed to Amarr technology. The old man had insisted on a bloodless raid, and the operative’s armaments of choice were strangle-webs; simple but effective pneumatic guns favoured by slavers and Holders that fired a steel net tipped with servo-motors. These screwed themselves into any flat surface and winched the net taut upon impact, immobilizing its hapless prey but not killing them.

With a sharp crack, the four men manning the consoles found themselves bolted to a wall. Arenis nodded to no one in particular, satisfied in the result. “They’ll live.”

The operative pulled off his black mask, and attached remote uplinks to the now vacant consoles. These devices, when placed against the crew consoles’ data transfer interfaces, would slave the mammoth warship’s controls to another similar warship - in this case, the Chorus of Angels, lying in wait one star system away.

As her drives lit unexpectedly, local came alive with indignant shouts and accusations, both parties spewing calls of treachery against one another. Her twin reactors roared to power, the Armageddon’s mass spinning upon its axis, and a system away a smiling old man took a well-deserved drink of cognac.