The Privateers

The Taking of the Makin Atoll

The SLCG Makin Atoll was a colony ship built over a period of five years, crewed a thousand strong, constructed for the explicit purpose of settling Ceres - well past the border of fringe space. She was escorted by a full complement of Coalition Navy interdiction bombers, heavy fighters, and gunboats. The so-named 92nd Fleet was ready for all forms of resistance. Not even a single enemy fighter would breach their defensive borders on their way to Ceres.

Not a single fighter needed to.

What the 92nd Fleet hadn't recognized at the time was that "fringe space" was fringe for a reason. The outer reaches of Sol were where the Red Chasm took up roost. A fearsome, and curiously well-armed, band of marauders, claiming to fight for nothing more than their own easy living, made up of all manner of ex-Coalitioneers and traders who had been chased out from their more lucrative markets. Red Chasm had become well known in these reaches, to the point most legit traders and mercenaries wouldn't normally go past Pluto. These days, nobody really knew exactly where the Red Chasm's home base was. But the 92nd Fleet - and their flagship, the Makin Atoll - were about to pass right over them, without a second thought.

The opportunity was too great to pass up. A hastily gathered meeting resulted in an equally hasty plan of action. As the Makin Atoll passed over them, a small detachment of Red Chasm hijackers would attach to the flagship's hull. The pirates couldn't use their ships, for the simple reason that it'd give the hideout's position away, and because no amount of pirates in stolen fighters could stand up to the naval might of the Solar Liberty Coalition. And of course, the 92nd would have signaled for help - or at least, reported an active engagement - long before the action had a chance to get started.

What the pirates had planned instead was daring, insane even, but simple. The hijackers would approach the Makin Atoll in nothing but EVA suits. The suits registered such a small signal on radar that it would be futile to pinpoint them; scans would have too high of a noise-to-signal ratio to pick up anything smaller than a single-person ship. And even if discovered, the 92nd Fleet was not permitted to open fire on the hijackers; shipboard weapons ran too much risk of damaging the flagship in the process of trying to remove the hijackers, on top of the resultant carnage being just too horrific. The colonists aboard the Makin Atoll wouldn't want to disembark to find their ship covered in bloodstains.

The hijackers' plan was already in motion, as a shuttle bay was chosen as a point of entry. The shuttle bays wouldn't be used at a time like this; the shuttles would get in the way of the ship's escorts, therefore all the crew in charge of shuttles would be on call somewhere else. Security systems were a non-issue, and shuttle bays were already configured to grant entry to EVA suits.

As soon as Red Chasm gained entry, the discarded EVA suits were spotted by a pair of SLC airmen on break. They failed to raise an alarm before being incapacitated. The Red Chasm boarding squad found their way to an unguarded armory adjacent to the shuttle bay, acquiring exactly the kind of weapons and tools needed to thwart - or conduct - a full-scale boarding. And with a crew consisting of at least 90% unarmed civilians, the band of pirates were able to carefully pick off the handful of Naval security aboard. Within the hour, the engineering bay and the remaining launch bays had been taken; within two, the bridge. Two hours and thirty minutes after boarding, Red Chasm had effectively seized control of the Makin Atoll - and her escorts had no idea, until she spontaneously opened fire on them.

The 92nd Fleet didn't take long to conclude that their quarry was now under control of an opposing force, but rules of engagement forbade them from fighting back at capacity. Heavy fighters could attempt to precisely target the Makin Atoll's shipboard weapons to limit damage, but bombers could not risk a missed salvo, and cruisers could not attempt to cripple the Makin Atoll's engines for fear of stranding the civilians in deep space. Damaging the colony ship itself could endanger more lives than their own.

By the time the heavy fighter wing had been wiped out, the rules of engagement had gone out the window, but the hijackers could handle even that. Repair drones, their programming scrambled, were launched en masse like a cloud of chaotic wasps, immediately swarming the nearby escorts and ruining their lines of fire. Hundreds of them surrounded the gunboats and were then ordered to self-destruct, the chain reaction heavily damaging most of them, crippling or outright destroying a few more. Stocks of fuels were jettisoned and then fired upon by the Makin Atoll's aft defense turrets, creating another chain-reaction that would effectively blind any escorts nearby.

When the dust had cleared, the Makin Atoll simply wasn't there anymore. Fewer than ten percent of her escorts remained undamaged. The fate of her crew and the several hundred civilian colonists remained unknown.

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COLONY SHIP M.I.A.

Over 900 Colonists Unaccounted For

The Solar Liberty Coalition government announced today that the colonists aboard the SLCG Makin Atoll are now declared "Missing In Action," as two weeks of search parties and fruitless scans come to a close with no solid evidence. The Makin Atoll last reported its vitals data to the Coalition on the 14th of June, reporting no unusual activity and all systems go for their mission. Rumors and speculation abound, but Coalition officers will neither confirm nor deny suspicions that there may have been pirate activity in the vicinity at the time the ship disappeared.

"While it is true that a ship of this size and importance does not simply go missing, we cannot speculate at this time," said the Coalition's Chief of Relations, Colonel Raine Huxley. Col. Huxley then went on to declare that those colonists aboard the Makin Atoll were "brave young men and women that deserve to be honored," though no date has yet been set for any sort of memorial service. Further questions to Col. Huxley regarding the Coalition's next move remained unanswered as of this writing.

The writers and editors at Extra!Net wish to express their condolences to relatives and friends of the missing colonists. We hope and/or pray for their safety.