Prologue : Pirate attack

Maya's parents decide to flee the Empire to raise Maya in peace but the trip is not as peaceful as anticipated

" Captain, we just picked up a gravspace footprint," the tactical officer managed to say in a tone almost even by using all of his self-restraint. Besides, if his voice still betrayed hints of the exhilaration he felt inside, who could blame him?
Michael Sarson, the Captain of the raider starship Remorseless, was an intense man with a dangerous and unpredictable temper but, in this instance he was definitely inclined to share the excitement of his officer. Anything to shake down the doom and gloom atmosphere that had permeated every nook and cranny in the ship since their last aborted attack.
The last six months had brought one stroke of bad luck after another, culminating with a chase by a Federation heavy cruiser which very nearly captured them. Their escape into gravspace had occured a matter of seconds before a spread of missiles was set to hit his ship. That had been entirely too close for comfort. He shivered in remembrance. If just one of his people had been slower, it is very likely he would not be here right now.
With effort, he turned his mind away from the depressing memory to focus on the issue at hand.
Was this an indication that their luck had turned? They had been lying doggo close to the gravspace limit for only two hours and this might be their chance not to return home empty-handed after all.
"What else can you tell me?"
"It's a single ship: the ISS Merkava; we have it in our database. An old model of passenger liner from the Xentike Empire."
Nothing he said could have shifted the ambience on the bridge from one of anticipation to one of nervous tension so easily and so completely.
The Captain did not even need to vocalize the question, a simple look at the astrogator made his intentions known.
"Given their vector of entry in the system, they clearly came from within the Empire," the man confirmed. "And they're headed for Burp," he added as an afterthought.
They were just outside the gravspace limit of the Burp system so the destination came as a surprise to no one but in this case it added insult to injury.
There weren't many rules the pirates chose to respect, as one would expect. Men who hired as raiders and slavers were not fond of pesky things like discipline and morality. Instead they employed common sense and they had developed two unofficial precepts. First, leave the Empire ships alone and second, do not raid in their home system.
The raiders performed a service for which the Empire was glad. Everyone knew the biggest buyers of slaves and cargo came from the Empire, including the Imperial family. That, however, did not mean that the raiders had a license to engage any ship with impunity and the Imperial ire was a mighty beast it was best not to awaken.
On a slightly different note, attacking ships in the Burp system would not necessarily change anything in the short term but it could lead to the drying up of resources if shipping companies suddenly estimated it was too dangerous to send freighters to Burp. What was the proverb again? It's an ill bird that fouls his own nest. Or in this case don't hunt in your own backyard.
Yet here Sarson was, contemplating the breaking of two rules at once. But things were kind of desperate, the liner was quite literally a godsend. There were probably around five thousand passengers for the plucking. If they managed to capture the ship intact and all the passengers and crew alive, they could be set for several years.
He realized now that, though he had not made a conscious decision at the time, this was exactly what he had had in mind when he ordered his ship in this position instead of heading directly for Burp. He recalled the crew had looked at him strangely upon hearing the order. But where else to find a ship to attack, this was the direction with the most traffic into the Burp system, everybody knew that. And because they so rarely suffered attacks by pirates, they were probably a lot less prepared than ships from other provenances.
Michael Sarson frowned thoughtfully at the tactical display. Considering his moves carefully did not come naturally to him.
He was much more used to just reach out and take whatever he wanted wherever he saw it. And damn the consequences!
A little part of him knew that he would probably not live a long life with this mindset but the biggest part enjoyed living like a prince too much. He relished being the master of his own destiny and the Captain of Remorseless, a very dangerous, albeit relatively small starship.
Did they dare attack this Empire liner?
He knew what he wanted to do, he wanted to go after the ship and to hell with the Empire. But he motioned his Second closer and whispered. "What do you think? Should we go for it?"
The two men had known each other for eight years and the Second had learned to read and navigate the moods of his Captain pretty well over that time. It was no surprise then that he had followed relatively accurately what the Captain was thinking from the moment they saw the ship appear. He also had his own misgivings about the Empire, what man wouldn't? Unfortunately the crew was a growing concern. He was slightly more aware of the grumbling and the complaining of the men than the Captain and he knew that passing this opportunity might be more than the crew could take. The men in the crews of pirates ships were in it for the adventure, the glory and the money. Only fear of punishment and the promise of rewards had any effect on them, up to a limit. But he chose to keep that to himself. "I'm sure we wouldn't be the first ones", he pointed out instead, "If the ship was really important, they would be in a convoy with armed escorts. I doubt we will cause future trouble if we attack." His tone conveyed complete confidence despite the fact that he was not as convinced inside, but if they didn't jump at this, he suspected an other much more immediate kind of trouble would brew.
Glad to have his own opinion confirmed, the Captain immediately announced "Okay we go for it." It was as if a bubble had burst and the excess energy was suddenly drained out of everyone, leaving every officer intent on their tasks.
Sarson turned to the com officer, "Warn everyone on ship to expect acceleration in the next minute and possible maneuvers in the next hour, Brad" Then to the tactical officer, "Did they detect us?"
"It's extremely unlikely, skipper. Their sensor suites must be several decades old while our stealth systems are quite recent. Plus, our engines are turned off, making it almost impossible to spot us. They accelerated to 1g on a direct heading for Burp and they're going to pass only two hundred thousand kilometers on our port side in a minute and a half."
The Captain considered their options for a few seconds then instructed the helm officer , "Okay, start accelerating at 1g, Carlos, and correct our course to be parallel to theirs."
The order was acknowledged with a "Yes, sir!" and he queried the tactical officer again, "Do they have any weapons we can detect, Darvas."
They were now close enough to have very good sensor readings. "No Captain, as far as I can tell, they don't even have anti-missile laser clusters."
"Perfect, we need to take their ship intact if possible, we have no way to take more than two thousand people aboard our own ship, even for a trip so short so we'll offer them the option to surrender once they're too far from the gravspace limit to escape."
It was a sad fact that slavery was alive and thriving in this region of space, enthusiastically encouraged by the Xentike Empire. The reputation of pirates and slavers as extremely vicious was so widespread that most spaceship captains chose not to surrender even against impossible odds. It was a sort of catch-22. To manage to capture as many people alive as possible, the pirates had to be even more vicious in turn and stealth their approachs to  attack completely by surprise and prevent any sort of defense in case the ship had weapons to retaliate. The "waste", as they thought about it, was huge but it was still immensely better than having the prize ships ram them or fight until there were no more than pieces of scraps remaining. Which happened all too often if they offered the option to surrender. Rescue was extremely rare and the life of a slave was neither a long nor an easy one. Slaves could be punished or die at the whim of their masters for the smallest infraction, real or imagined. It was a good reason to prefer suicide to capture. So, over time, pirates simply did not offer the possibility to surrender anymore, aiming to disable the enemy ships as fast as possible. A few slaves was better than none after all.
Of course an exception could be made when you were certain the enemy ship had no weapon.

***
Abdul Maalik Arif, the Captain of the Imperial Starship Merkava was a veteran of this run and he had never been attacked by pirates in his long career. It was common sense not to bite the hand that fed you so raiders usually hunted a lot farther from the Empire. He and his crew were bored with the monotony of the trip but they were by no means complacent. Every station was manned around the clock and the space around them was constantly scrutinized.
It did not make a difference. There was nothing he could do, nothing anyone could have done really. Their fate was sealed the moment their sensors failed to detect the pirate ship. To be fair, sensor suites with good capabilities were prohibitively expensive so they were mostly installed in ships designed for combat, used by the military or corporations with money. Against the more common commercial sensors, the pirates just needed simple measures to be all but invisible.
When they first learned of the pirates presence, it was already too late to escape.
"Captain, we're being hailed," the communications officer suddenly announced, obviously as shocked by his own words as anyone else.
The Captain's expression did not change but he already knew the only way they could be hailed by a ship they had not even detected. "Put it on my screen, Badr."
"ISS Merkava, this is Captain Sarson of the Raider Starship Remorseless, maintain course, stop your acceleration and prepare to be boarded. Any resistance will be met by the use force. I repeat, prepare to be boarded."
"Captain, I see them now," the sensors officer announced. "Their signal is so weak that our Diehl sensors barely picks it up and the computer completely dismissed it. They're three hundred and fifty thousand kilometers on our starboard side, matching our course. They have just a little less velocity than us."
Arif made a few calculations quickly but he realized almost as fast that it was already over. There was no way they could reenter gravspace without taking a few missiles. And they did not even have any weapons to even the odds. He was one hundred and sixteen years old according to the calendar of his birth planet, which corresponded roughly to seventy-nine terran years and he had been a free man all his life. He had no intention of being a slave, in fact he was not even sure he would be a slave for long, he was no longer exactly in his prime. But that's not how he explained it to his officers, who might have a different opinion on the issue. "It's a bluff, they cannot destroy our ship, they have to be way too small to transport that many passengers so they have to keep our ship functional. We have a chance to save the ship if we prevent them from boarding us." Without giving them time to consider his words carefully, he ordered the helm officer," Increase our acceleration to 2g, Ashqar."
Everyone was startled but the officer executed the order. Arif knew that if they maintained this acceleration too long, some of the passengers were susceptible to die just from the stress imposed on their body but he had to hope that would be enough to gain velocity and flee.
His executive officer was the one to ask in a strained voice "What if they attack us, Captain?"
"Then so be it," Arif replied sharply. "Do you want to be a slave, Misfar?" He was about to launch into a rant when the sensors officer shouted "Multiple missile launch. At least six missiles headed for us, Captain, they'll hit us in less than thirty seconds."
They all watched helplessly as the missiles bore on them and tore the ship apart.
The ISS Merkava was several decades old and even when it was built, it was not designed to resist missiles. The missiles were not nuclear, but they did an enormous amount of damage. Each missile did not just destroy their target, they pierced the hull and opened entire compartments to space.

The passengers had already suffered injuries when the ship suddenly accelerated to 2g with no warning and even those who were in the best shape were under a certain amount of strain.
The raiders opened fire so suddenly that sixteen hundred nineteen people, almost a third of the ship's complement died without realizing that they were under attack.
For those still alive, it was horrific. It had been a period of rest for the passengers and in the space of thirty seconds they had gone from 2g to no gravity at all when the engines failed, to compartments open to space, to wounds, screams and chaos. None of them knew what to do in case of emergency, not that they understood what was happening. The wounded were pretty much abandoned to their fates while the rest mostly tried to make way towards the center of the ship where the bridge was located.
Maya's father awoke with the increase in gravity but he barely had time to exchange a stressed but inquisitive look with his wife before he was in agonizing pain.
 He wasn't sure what had happened but the sensation was so encompassing that he had trouble getting a grip on his consciousness for a few moments.
When he finally managed to take stock of himself, he realized that the only reason he was still alive was because of his magic. Until that point, he had been channeling his energy, preparing to heal himself, but this realization made him stop and reconsider. What of his wife and his daughter?
He forced himself to open his eyes and take a look around their cabin. There was a bleeding form crumpled in the corner on the deck. He did not need to use his extra senses to know that it was too late for her. He wanted to mourn but he detected the life sign of Maya in an adjacent cabin, extremely weak and fading. Without the magic in their blood, they would both have been goners. Adding to his list of worry was already at this point, acknowledged or not, the fact that he would have trouble healing both of them, let alone do anything else afterward. Healing was definitely not one of his specialties.
The compartment was distantly losing pressure so they would need to teleport in another part of the ship to survive.
In a sudden flash of insight brought on by the urgency of the situation, he realized that there was no way to save both Maya and himself and a fraction of a second later, he had made his decision. All his worries evaporated, he partially relaxed to be sure not to forget anything. He was committed to give his daughter the best chance to survive and he would then join his wife. He first enveloped Maya in a cocoon of healing energy and repaired her injuries as best he could. He felt his own energy drain quickly while Maya' life force regained strenght. Mindful of the fact that he would need to teleport her, he gave her the last gift of protection he could under the circumstances. Maya would be very strong when she came into her own but at ten years old she was still very young and until then she would be at the mercy of anybody stronger, so it was better if nobody could read her memories before this attack and discover the extent of what she could do or who her parents were. He quickly pulled all her memories and shielded them in her mind. She would be the only one able to breach the shield and regain her early memories when the time came.
Then, with his dwindling energy, he sent Maya admiships, close to the bridge, as safe as possible. Content with himself finally and certain he had done as much as possible with what he had, he allowed himself to mourn for his beloved wife.
He died thinking of the perfect times they had together and of Maya, their most precious creation.

***
One spread of missiles was all it took to destroy the engines and force a surrender, not that anybody had been in any shape to formally surrender on the Merkava. With just six missiles, the ship had suffered too much damage to be space-worthy, it would have to be towed to Burp. Either as pieces or as a whole, the hull still had value for shipbuilders.
It took the better part of a day for the pirates to round out every survivor and to pilfer the provisions and the cargo.
During that time another fifteen hundred and fifty people died for lack of timely medical assistance or because their injuries were too serious to be treated without dedicated facilities but that was okay with the pirates, it would already be crowded enough in the Remorseless as it was, and it was still a very respectable catch, especially when the expectation had been that they would go home empty for the last three months.

Author's Note

I'm interested in any constructive criticism