3.5 Another Point Of View |
Chal Nor braked hard out of hyperspace. He always loved the downjump transition. The brief flickering absense of sound and feeling was and experience that his race found gloriously addictive. He brushed his scaly, lizard-like skin with one of his tactile arms as the waves of pleasure coursed through him.
He watched the gravitational storm and the wash on hard radiation on his screens with a flicker of satisfaction. He never ceased to find it amusing to disrupt local hyperspace and make downjump hard for his sub-commanders. It was one of the perks of being the head of the clan# and he had had his fair share of wash sickness when working his way up through the ranks.
As the last of his fleet exited hyperspace complaints and damage reports started coming in. The last raid had gone well with only a few small ships being lost. The losses were worth it as they would gain much more prestige with the other rivals clans and the planet they had plundered turn out to be populated with a peaceful and boring race. Admiitedly not much of a challenge, but with some very advanced technologies that would make a fortune on the open market. If this string of luck continued, they would soon be able to claim back the position of head clan.
The only reason for stopping off in this system was that the fleet was running low on fuel. The one unfortunate point about thier last port of call was that there turned out to be very little hydrogen in the sysytem which could be used to make fuel. So Chal had been forced to make his fleet take a small detour when they detected the characteristic gravity well of a gas giant during mid-jump.
This particular system had not yet been charted. So as the fleets downjump interference began fading into the background the sensors started picking out other, smaller gravity wells in system. There appeared to be a couple of small planets in close orbit of the star and a couple of minor moons around the gas giant.
It took most of the day to get sensors readings from all the planets and moons in the system. No obvious signs of radio activity could be detected. The system was apparently uninhabited and none of the planets looked like they could support life anyway, and so Nor gave the command to for all ships to proceed to the gas giant and deploy ramscoops to begin refueling.
Nor thought it was a shame that they had not struck lucky yet again, but when you ran a pirate clan you learned to take what you can get. |