"Major, hyperspace reversion in five minutes." reported the navigator. Major Kin Narcessa was the commander of the convoy that was in transit from a mining planet to a manufacturing planet. The neutral territories had been having pirate troubles lately, and so the Starstriker Corporation had stepped in to offer transport and protection, transport to last until they could replace their freighter fleet, and protection to endure until the pirate thread was lifted from the region. The current convoy, if it could be called that, consisted of two freighters, escorted by four Tri-fighters and the ship they were aboard, the Starsika class picket cruiser Etenard. The major glanced at the chronometer next to his seat on the bridge and slowly counted off the minutes.

When hyperspace reversion came, the convoy dropped out of hyperspace into the heavily traveled trade region. At first the major wondered why there was not more taffic in the region, and then his answers came to him as alarm bells went off on the bridge.

"Major, we have multipule contacts in the system. I read four medium sized freighters closest to us. On the other side are two small frigate sized vessels. Both are of unknown type. Beyond that, I read one Belarus type medium cruiser, two corellian gunships, heavily modified, and four Gallofree medium transports, also modified. I also have many numerous starfighter readings through the zone." reported the sensors officer.

The major looked out through the viewport and noticed the long lances of weapons fire cascading between the two frigates and the three larger capital ships. As he looked, a small detonated occured onboard one of the gunships, and that vessel wobbled off course.

"Can you pick up any identification on the vessels?" inquired the Major.

"Sir, the two frigates are tentaivley identified according to hull markings as Stellar enterprises, while the other ships have gang or pirate style markings across their hulls." reported the sensors officer.

"It seems we have found the pirates responsible for our friends trouble. Let's give them a friendly welcome." said the major as a grin grew on his face. "Send the freighters on their way. Form up into an attack wedge. Sensors, what are the pirate's medium transports up to?" he asked.

"Two of them have the look of starfighter carriers and are staying away from the engagement. The other two with an escort of six fighters are battling their way around the engagement to head for the freighters." reported sensors.

"They must be assault transports. All right let's head for those targets. Order the starfighters to pair off and clip the pirate fighters off of our tails. We'll go for the freighters." ordered the major, now grinning devilshly.

The four T-wing fighters formed up and headed torwards the enemy starfighters, identified as Y-wing types. These probably would have been used to disable the freighters with their ion cannons. Used, because their existance is about to be terminated before they can complete their mission.

The fighters used their high rate of manueverability to quickly dodged around the slower, clunkier craft, and fired their laser cannons in powerful triple linked volleys. Making high speed passes, the T-wings quickly reduced the Y-wing fighters into flaming hulks. With the starfighters out of the way, the Etenard was free to come in and use her weapons on the medium transports.

The enforcement cruiser fired her conussion missile launchers at the medium transports, which responded with a volley of ion torpedo warheads. The major waited until they were nearly at their door, then swung the ship sharply downwards to avoid the torpedoes, which overshot them. Then, swinging swiftly back up with a manuevering rate that few ships of equal size could match, they saw a sight to behold as the missiles detonated against the medium transports shields, shattering them. The major used the turbolaser cannons on the picket to destroy one of the medium transports, holding it near the stern where the bridge and drive engines are located, causing a chain reaction explosion which blew the transport in half. The other one he worked over with his ion cannons, disabling it and leaving it to drift in space.

With closest threat to his freighters eliminated, the major ordered his craft to stand down for the moment, and to open a link with the escort frigate.

"Calling unidientified Stellar Enterprises frigate, this is Major Narcessa of the Starstriker Corporation. Since you are in the middle of a battle, I will make this brief. Seeing as we have common enemies and problems, I would like to offer our assistance in exchange for sitting down to talk after this mess is over." communicated the major. Now to wait for the reply.

Four Hours Previous...

Captain Goliver sat in his command seat and slowly brought the cup of warm cafe to his lips. He took a small sip while looking on at the display to his front. It covered the whole wall and at the moment showed a three dimensional representation of the space around his ship. The information had been quickly gathered through the advanced sensor arrays on his vessel and her sister ship that floated along her to the starboard side. Both ships were now communicating back and forth through the use of short bursts from their laser data links.

These links quickly and securely sent data from one ship to another at the speed of light. Once the data is recieved it is decrypted and processed by the ship's main computer system. The processed information is transfered to the bridge where it is gone over and used in the proper manner. It was this data that was now being displayed and showed the large asteroid field which lay in front of both vessels.

It was just off to the side of this field that a large station hung in space. It had been completed not too long ago and was now functioning as a processing and refining facility for the Genon Asteroid Field. Under the agreement between Stellar Enterprises and the government of Kashan, the field was allowed to be used for the harvesting of resources by Stellar Enterprises. The company had wasted no time in the construction an expensive station to serve as the Control Center for the in system mining operation.

As harvesters moved from asteroid to asteroid taking samples or mining mineral rich bodies, the station was processing and refining every load that was was brought back. Once refined the ore was transfered into freighters floating along side the station. These freighters were feed from multiple extensions coming off the station and were fitting were the neccessary cargo modules needed to carry the ore.

Today these freighters were different, however. The freighters now taking on their cargo were of a new design and had only recently been built in specially modified factories on Genon itself. These freighters were completely automated and just needed to be given orders from which to work. In order to cut down on thier production costs, the ships were manufactured from recycled metals and equiptment. They did not have to be front line vessels and for that reason off the shelf, readily availible parts were used for their systems. These older and more widely used parts were not only cheaper, but had been around for a long enough time to be full tested out across the galaxy and had all their flaws mostly worked out. The equipment had been proven and was used because of its great reliablity.

As the freighters were designed to work in groups, three of the Hauler class freighters floated in formation near the station. They would await the fourth and then move onto predetermined coordinates. There they would be joined by the two Starstreak Frigates and the group would jump out of the system together. Usually the convoy would consist of just the freighters, however, private activity had increased along the route do to more traffic. For this reason the frigates would join these four freighters and keep them protected should anything happen.

It took twenty minutes to fill the last freighter's 50,000 metric ton cargo hold. When this was complete the transfer arm drew away and let the freighter slowly push away from the station. This lone Hauler turned towards the other three of its kind and formed up with them. Once completed, the formation as a whole powered up and moved towards the frigates that awaited them.

Within moments the freighters, flanked on both sides by the frigates, entered hyperspace towards their first waypoint.
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Now...

"Sir, new ships coming out of hyperspace at Zero Four Nine, two hundred kilometers out."

Captain Goliver called up the display and quickly saw the data with these new contacts coming out of hyperspace and accelerate towards the battle. He was about to ask wheather they were friendly or hostile, but saw the ships turn on a vector that would take them towards the pirate ships. Deciding it was better to conduct the battle and keep a watch on those other ships, the Captain turned the display back to show battle data that was constantly being gathered by his ships.

These pirates had gotten the jump on his convoy as soon as it exited hyperspace and before they could jump away to their next waypoint. Two of the freighters had been hit with ion cannon fire right after reversion and it was decided to stay and protect the freighters until the ones hit could conduct the proper repairs. As the fight progressed both frigates had held their own against the larger pirate force, buying precious time for the repair droids to do their job inside the two frieghters.

The display in front switched views just in time to see one of the gunships take three full streams of fire from the rotating turbolaser cannons on board the other Starstreak Class Frigate. The steady stream of turbolaser fire smashed through the gunship's shields and impacted the forward bridge structure as well as the area between the center section and engine compartment. The armor plating over both areas vaporized almost instantly with the first blasts and the rest moved deeped into the ship. This steady rain death acted almost like a drill and pierced deep into the ship's hull. The foward section completely disappeared into molten slag while an explosion ripped through the rear of the vessel and tore it in two.

Captain Goliver looked away and let the other frigate go after the second gunship. His ship was concentrating at the bigger Belarus class ship directly ahead. He wondered where in the galaxy these pirates had found such a ship to call their own, however, inside he knew it wouldn't be for long. While the pirates had a larger force, his was more highly trained and was equipt with the latest technologies.

The forward shields lit up as turbolaser blasts slashed against them. Ion cannon shots went through, however, and impacted the forward section of the ship. These blasts were dicipated by the carbon matrix hull armor and did something to the ship's systems. In return the Starstreak responded with a barrage from two of the Rotating turbolaser emplacements as well as four dual turbolaser batteries. The rotating turbolaser cannons spun to life quick and shot out a streem of almost continuous energy. It drained so much power from the ship's systems that only after the firing could the other turbolasers be used.

Their effect was immediate though as they hammered away at the foward shielding of the Belarus Cruiser. The streems impacted a single area of the shield and quickly concentrated so much energy on that point that the forward shields buckled and collapsed. Once the shield was down, the rest of the turbolaser bolts quickly slammed into the hull and started vaporizing armor plating. Small explosions expanded out of the hull at each point of impact and when the rotating turbolasers ceased fire for their cool down period the other turbolasers joined in as power was feed to them again.

"Turn to starboard! All port side turbolasers target the Cruiser. Starboard side weapons engage those enemy transports! I want fighter cover for the Freighters." The captain called out.

As soon so words were spoken the Starstreak turned faster than any ship in its class. The forward part seemed to hold still as the rear pushed out, turning the frigate for a broadside barrage. The weapons fired out instantly and bombered the Belarus once again. It had managed to bring up its shields again, but these quickly fell as they were underpowered. The enemy returned fire, but this soon came in pauses as ion cannons impacted around the projected targeting stations.

The transports of the pirates fared no better as the other weapons systems started to engage them. Their shields flicked with each blast and became weaker by the moment. On displays around the internal bridge images of the battle could be seen. Droid fighters, piloted by pilots onboard the two frigates were engaging the pirates and winning in all cases. These fighters out turned and out gunned anything the pirates could throw up against them. Explosions blosomed out in space as the dark grey Hellhound fighters destroyed one enemy after another with only two losses of their own. These fighters conducted maneuvers that could never be matched by humans and soon had reduced the number of enemies to almost nothing. Those that remained were pushed towards the frigates and were blown to pieces by fast tracking rotating laser cannons.

Under new orders, the pilots onboard the Starstreak turned some of their fighter groups towards the enemy transports and fired off proton torpedoes in pairs. Groups of these weapons impacted the rear shields of both Gallofrees. The shree number of these weapons and the fact that all impacted in the same section of shields, caused the particle shields to buckle and flash out. This collapsed allowed other groups of fighters to straff the engines of the transports with more torpedoes. The resulting explosions riped apart both ships engines and critically damaged their power systems. First one then the other lost all power and their weapons became silent as did their momentum.

With their mission complete the fighters speed off to support the tri-wings that were going against the remaining pirate fighters. As they did the other remaining gunship tired to turn and flee the battle, but was quickly put down with a salvo of six heavy Proton torpedoes. These split the ship in half on impact and caused secondard explosions that destroyed whatever remained. With that ship finished off, the second frigate recieved new orders and moved to assist the Starstreak.

"Recieving communication for the other ships sir."

Captain Goliver listened and nodded before replying. "This is Captain Goliver of the Starstreak. Stellar Enterprises appreciates your assistance and we will be happy to talk in a few moments. I think it would be best you communicate with someone more important than myself. I will direct you to that person, however. Thank you again for your help."

He smiled as he turned towards the weapons officer. "Lets give them a show shall we? Give me one salvo of Plasma warheads and inform the StarLight to launch the DW-10s. Fire when ready."

He sat back and watched as the crew carried out the orders. Information was quickly passed on and feed into both ships central computers. These quickly established the launch times neccessary to coordinate the attack. Once done both systems requested fire clearance, which was quicklt given. With that six warheads magnetically launched towards the Belarus at high speeds. They closed the distance between the two ships in seconds and fired off their thrusts for minor course adjustment before detonating just infront of the shield barrier. Based off T-33 bombs, each warhead produced a massive amount of plasma which stressed the shields of the Cruiser to the brink. This stress had its intended effect within seconds as the larger Cruisers shield banks overloaded and exploded internally, causing the shields to drop just before the other warheads slammed into it.

The other Disintegration Warheads used their reinforced nose tips to smash through the Cruiser's hull plates and bury inside it before triggering their deadly fields. These fields eminated from the warhead's center and disintegrated anything in their path. People and bulkheads were vaporized instantly, covering the ship in deep creators and explosions as generators and other systems exploded. Coolant lines were vaporized as here parts of the reactor systems. In seconds the rear of the ship exploded out in violent event that made what was left of the Cruiser jump and move foward in space. The broken and melted hulk of a once great warship hung motionless in space. It had not been the pirate groups lucky day.

The major took the reply from the commander of the escort force for the Stellar Enterprises's convoy, then looked to his communications officer, seated nearby.

"Send a message to the Viceroy. Inform him that we have made contact with representatives of Stellar Enterprises. Then be prepared to send him additional details as we work out a meeting time and place." ordered Narcessa. While the communications officer went to work, Narcessa glanced out the forward viewports of the picket ship and watched as the seemingly normal escort went to work obliterating what remained of the pirate fleet. When they were finished, he offered up one long whistle. While he had heard that Stellar Enterprises specialized in vessels that were high performance, he hadn't expected quite what he had seen before him.

With the enemy pirate fleet eliminated, it was time for the two convoys to go on about their own ways, to continue their buisness. However, potential profit was to be made between these two companies, if an agreement could be worked out. The major dispatched his remaining warships to go escort the freighters so that they may be on their way, with just his picket ship remaining within the system. He then ordered communications to open another channel to the Stellar flagship.

"We of the Starstriker Corporation would love for a chance to negotiate with those from Stellar Corporation. Our president is avilable for a conference at anytime, and we will provide his communications frequency. Please, for matters of mutual potential profit, please contact him soon." said Narcessa. With that, the picket ship roared up and away, entering hyperspace soon after to rejoin it's comrades, leaving the Stellar ships alone to continue on their own way.

Before the commander could respond, the Starstriker Corporation ship turned away and jumped into hyperspace. He didn't have too much time to contemplate about their prompt arrival at this point and their sudden departure. There were other things he had to go over first, such as the status of his convoy.

"Was the message recorded?"

"Yes, sir. Message recorded and stored."

He nodded at the man from his seat and looked out at the displays. "Transmit it to HQ."

The Captain then turned towards the XO and looked at the man. His second in command had preformed well in this engagement. The man had stayed calm and collected. Had carried out his duty as best as he could, something that Captain Goliver was not surprised about. He knew the potential of the other man and had no doubt that someday the man would make a fine captain.

"Full status report?" Captain Goliver requested of the XO and was watched the man quickly recheck the datapad he held in his palm.

"No damage reported sir. StarLight reports minor hull damage and fractures, but it has been contained and seal. No casualties reported either sir. All crew members accounted for." The man paused and typed something on his pad before looking back up at the Captain. "The two ionized freighters report ready for hyperspace. All damage has been repaired."

"Good. Comms, contact local security forces and let them know there are disabled ships full of pirates at this location. They wont be going anywhere anytime soon." He smiled and leaned back in his seat, while the orders were being carried out.

"Lets continue shall we? We have cargo to deliver."

With that it was back to work as usual. The crew members who had never before been through combat were amazed at how fast the Captain had transitioned from it. No longer than minutes before they had been engaged in a heated battle and now they were ordered to get underway again as if nothing had happened. These men and women had not even the time to process what had happened. They had no time to realize that they could all have been killed, which was what the Captain had wanted. He knew that crews had to be pushed and learn to deal with the stress of combat, but not at the expense of their duty. They would have time to think about it later on leave, but for not they all had work to do.

Bridge of the Xion, floating in deep space

The communications officer responded to the bleeping noise on his console, listening for the recepient of the message that was coming into his station. He then looked around, finding where the Viceroy was standing at. As usual at this time of day, Gilad was sitting in his captain's chair, having a conference with his aides. The officer stood up and walked out of the crew pit, coming before the viceroy's station and offering a bow, meaning that he had something for Gilad. The Neimodian put a pause to the conference and asked what he wanted with a slight snarl to his voice. Gilad did not like to be interrupted. With a gulp, the communications officer said that he had an incoming transmission, marked urgent, for his excellency.

Gilad took the call at his personal station. He listened to the report by his subordinates, and then signed off. It was a recorded transmission. He grimaced. He would have to teach his men another lesson about marking recorded messages urgent. But it was a good piece of news at least. He looked over to his aide and ordered him to look into anything they knew about Stellar Enterprises, and to report back to him ASAP. And then, the viceroy resumed his conference calls. Busy busy busy.

Incoming Message:

"Greetings Starstriker Corporation. This is Rob Stellar from Stellar Enterprises. I would like to thank you for your ship's help in our recent engagement together. It is my feeling that our two companies could do business with one another and profit mutually. How would you feel about a meeting between us to discuss how we could benefit from each other? I shall be waiting to hear from you.

-Rob Stellar
President and CEO Stellar Enterprises
"
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Once sent, Rob leaned back in his chair and looked out at the color filled space that existed just outside his viewport. This new company showed some promise and Rob knew they could work together to profit. He hopped the one in charge of StarStriker would see that as well and that they could both have a long and close relationship together. To Rob the more friends one made the better. This galaxy was full of enemies and one less would be a great achievement.