About a fifty years after the landing at Tau Ceti II, the first new ship was launched. Others followed in short order. Within ten years, at least three of them had gone missing and became the first Void Pirate ships. At first their activity was limited to occasional raids on automated freighters delivering raw materials from the asteroid mines or fuel cracker orbiting Ettinger. Later, when the people of Tau Ceti II started to colonize other systems and made contact with the closest Lost Colonies, the resulting trade gave the Void Pirates a whole new field to play in.
Naturally, that wasn’t going to go unchallenged, and the Patrol appeared specifically to protect these colonies from pirate raids. Over the last century or so the Patrol has been more or less successful in their mission and have driven the majority of pirate cartels out to the Frontier. This is especially true of the reformed Patrol in the wake of the Celestial Host War. While the war itself and the horrific losses inflicted upon the Patrol gave the pirates some freedom for a decade or so, once the Patrol got fully back on its feet it came back with a vengeance. This hatred has been mutual, and there is a lot of bad blood on both sides. At least one Patrol Captain is known to issue a “warning shot” consisting of an X-ray laser burst directly into a pirate ship’s command center.
Captain Barton’s Raid
In AC 998, the Poison Cutlass defolded in Hephaestus space with four escorts and a half dozen bulk freighters and openly assaulted the Patrol base there.
When the dust settled, the Patrol starships Oberon and Triton had been destroyed and the Frigate Basilisk had been stolen, along with more than half the cargo stored there. The only reason more wasn’t taken was the Pirates had completely filled their ships’ holds. His only loss in the raid proper was the Buccaneer’s Plunder, which was destroyed when it rammed the cruiser Oberon and self-destructed.
“Societal” Overview
They’re not the nice kind of pirates like in the recent Pirates of the Caribbean movies. These guys are slave traders, murderers, and thieves of the worst possible kind. There is no single King of the Pirates, and most don’t bother trying – even the Alliance can’t control all of Alliance space, and they’re not a bunch of pirates!
Their “legal” system is very straightforward. Grievances are settled through duels. These duels are usually bare-knuckle fistfights or involve melee weapons in a pit, but some cartels have been reported holding pistol duels or knife fights in vacuum. Whether a duel is to the death theoretically depends on the nature of the crime, but the final decision is usually made by the combatants or whoever is overseeing it. Needless to say, if a duel is to be held using vibroblades twenty meters outside the starboard lounge’s picture window it’s almost certainly going to end with at least one combatant dead.
The Void Pirate philosophy can be summed up as follows: “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable. If it isn’t nailed down it’s mine, and if it is nailed down that just means I need a claw hammer.”
Pirates are almost without exception overconfident flamboyant showoffs. Even the rank and file will take unnecessary risks, and they expect their leaders to be larger than life action heroes. A pirate Captain that doesn’t act like Zorro is not going to keep his command long.
Some Void Pirates are slavers. They take slaves, mainly for entertainment, and often force them to fight as gladiators against each other or a Pirate who fancies himself a master of the martial arts.
Void Pirates are found throughout the Frontier, and occasionally venture into the Core or TOA despite the nearly suicidal nature of such trips. With a very few exceptions, their home bases are either completely mobile (many pirates never set foot on a planetary surface again after joining) or temporary.
Pirate Technology
Void Pirates have very little technology that is distinctively theirs. They use weapons, armor and other gear from the Alliance and her member planets, as well as the neighboring empires. Even the Thabbo aren’t as adept at converting technology to meet their needs as the Void Pirates. While they can produce some modern equipment (mostly knockoffs of stolen Patrol smallarms) and have stolen quite a bit more, the majority of their manufacturing is relatively primitive.
Being pirates, they have almost no standardized equipment. That said, there are some common themes. A typical loadout for a pirate on a raid will include a spacesuit or space-capable armor with standard communication and sensor visor, sidearm, and melee weapon. Some pirates carry heavier weapons, but these tend to be short-ranged and lower-powered than military gear. Typical pirate targets are civilians, not armored infantry, and holing a starship in a boarding action can be catastrophic for the pirates as well as their prey.
They have a tendency toward elective bionic and genetic modification. Where an Alliance citizen will have a severed or badly-damaged limb regrown, pirates usually opt for bionic replacement. These replacements are usually quite obvious, and often borne as badges of honor. When possible, they also enhance the owner’s combat abilities – claws, targeting systems, implanted weapons and armor, etc. Most pirates, especially battlesuit and starfighter pilots, have a neural jack at the base of the neck. This isn’t a giveaway that someone is a pirate, however, as they’re also given to starfighter and battlesuit pilots in the Patrol, planetary defense forces, and mercenary commands.