"Sir!" A mech captain called. "Is it wise to ally with Lydia's Swordmaidens? They're anything but innocent maidens. They're a bunch of bloodthirsty alpha females! They make their living by robbing and pillaging other ships!"
Any outfit labelled with the moniker of pirates inevitably carried a rotten reputation. Different from criminal gangs, they often went to further extremes, robbing and killing in the spacelanes without restraint.
In general, the most awful pirate gangs never dared to show up in civilized space, because the MTA routinely hunted them down whenever they revealed their presence.
"That's a valid concern." Major Verle responded calmly. "While the record of Lydia's Swordmaidens isn't spotless, it's not much worse than ours. The Swordmaidens prey upon treasure hunters and neutral starships in the frontier. While it is anything but an honest business, their victims mostly have themselves to blame for entering lawless space."
