My newly christened ship now named The Gray Shade as ready as we could make it I made sure to have the crew load on everything they could think of that would fit in the limited cargo bay the ship has. Originally built in an era where armor was all there was and The Gray Shade is armored as well as a modern battleship and honestly it would be slow if you had the original drive systems in it but my ingenious crew and I replaced the old drives with significantly smaller and more powerful units but that's not all the ship can now drop into hyper on command granted its limited to the theta bands still having one at all is an improvement.
We set off under full burn as we tested every system we could having to fix a few issues from the shield and drive systems otherwise everything was working as intended so we gave our untested hyper drive modification a test. We only did a short run out to the Ganymede colony to trade and pick up supplies as at this point we were nearly out and it was when we transitioned back to normal space that issues came up. We had dropped out of ftl In the middle of a pitched battle on the edge of the defense zone luckily we dropped where did too as we had real time data for what happened next.
As part of my improvised standard operating procedure shields were up and all power storage was as full as possible because a few seconds aft the drop we took three plasma hits on the bow they didn't do any damage but took the shields down by half. The combat log : c : sir we are in a war zone (ship shakes 3 times in rapid succession) c2 : sir we took a hit on the fore bow shields held sir standing at 70% roughly sir me : open fire on the ship that attacked us put the rail on him let's see how he likes high speed chunks of metal lobbed at him.
The entire frigate shook from the first railgun shot being fired and sparks flew as we watched the enemy corvette be ripped inside out and our shell took the the long way through their ship. One corvette down only 8 more broadcasting pirate "colors" and then there were the two pirate frigates so I retargeted the ships weapons on a pirate frigate and swung my frigate around to fire.
My railgun belched a hail of sparks and fire at the first frigate the round hit and blasted a hole in the side of the frigate and then we fired again further aft and then they went dead in space. After taking the first frigate down I designated the remaining ships of that faction as targets for the time being and then I was attacked by another ship so I hit that ship with a railgun shot finishing off my rail ammunition and the enemy ship. c1: sir we are out of rail ammunition sir me: I'm aware prep the auto cannons and let's focus on that last frigate. The ship shook from something more solid than plasma fire and I saw one of the pirate corvettes making a strafing run on us so I ordered the 20mm guns to remove him and while our fire only lasted a half second it was accurate and he was quickly disabled and out of the fight.
The remaining few rounds aboard ship belonged to the 100 mm guns and there were so few I doubted they would have much effect on the enemy frigate but I had a plan I ordered the crew to "strap in were giving that frigate a love tap" the sound of safety belts being locked resounding throughout the ship was my answer and in we went firing the hellbore as we went. With a ship as tough and heavy as ours we were going to eviscerate the frigate if they didn't try to run and honestly I think they were surprised by the actions as no normal captain would order ramming speed in battle. The pirate frigate took the hit like a champ for all of a millisecond before both their and our shields failed then their hull peeled open on the bow of my ship like it was a can opener and they were sardines.
The impact of ramming the pirates frigate was pretty bad the only actual casualty was the poor crewman who had been clinging to life and had actually started getting better despite the fact that our medical situation was in dire need of fixing while the remaining 5 of us all suffered from the impact with minor injuries mostly bruises from the safety straps but the effects on the remaining 4 pirate corvettes was perfect as they watched us sail clear of their crippled frigate and turn towards them accelerating. The remaining pirate corvettes turned to flee so we put the 100mm cannons to use and destroyed two of them before range and our lack of ammunition forced us to stop.
The locals were more than happy to let us salvage the pirates wrecks and let us dock at their station but I knew better than to let on that there were only 5 of us aboard the ship so I coached the crew on how to act and we salvaged ammunition from the pirates wrecks which actually filled our 20mm ammunition capacity and gave us half capacity for our 100mm guns but we only salvaged eight railgu. shots for our ship that were of the right size luckily we also salvaged some machinists tools and a fabricator so we could now make our own if we had the resources to do it.
Once the salvaging was done the entire crew and I went aboard the locals station and ended up hiring two idealistic young men I had taken back with two of the crew and told my crew that under no circumstances were they to be allowed to communicate with the station until we were underway. Once the crew situation was sorted I traded salvaged goods for supplies and fuel it set us up nicely with full fuel and supplies while we were still short some on ammunition we should be good for the near future. Once all of the preparations were completed we headed out and luckily the locals didn't get greedy and as we jumped onwards to the next destination I hoped that we would be in time for the next pirate attack wherever it may be.