"Ah, we haven't thought of that Plan B…," Garan trailed off with his eyes flickering with visible annoyance and released Zhiva.
He knew as well as I did. If that ship jumps before we got off, we may be headed for anywhere, including the possibility of a few jumps to a blackhole.
Never, ever eliminate possibilities. If the Council really wanted all of us dead, an automated ship to the nearest black hole is an option. Not some penal colony with the biggest chance of escape.
The transport ship cannot resist the intense gravitational pull of the black hole. Anything entering within several parsecs near the event horizon of a black hole reached the end of the line.
The ship will crush itself from the immense pressure of the black hole's pull.
Death only awaited there. Never heard of any ship returning untouched from the rim of the black hole.
The news of that transport, or rather our execution, could be also a setup, an elaborate trap to get me caught for whatever reason I can think of.
If they set their intentions on the Kamuy battle cruiser, a big surprise awaited. I can flip the tables on them once I take a step inside.
No matter how small the probability of that happening, there was no guarantee.
"But our fellow pirates would not fail us."
I applaud them for their confidence in their comrades.
"Have you even done this before?" I asked.
Zhiva and Garan looked at each other and both shook their heads.
That's it. This entire plan may fail before it even started.
"Never attempted to escape an Ultramax via a transport ship before," I pointed the first big problem out as they bit their lips.
"Fair enough," Garan quipped.
"Second. Getting information from people who may truly want us dead," I added.
Zhiva argued, "It will be accurate because —-"
"Don't interrupt me," I snapped at Zhiva, who backed down. "Third, taking on armed military escorts. They could blow us up and blame it on your pals."
Both of them remained silent.
"Am I the only one seeing the problem with this plan?" I got up and then stopped to continue, "Oh wait, you don't have a Plan B or C even."
Enough of my time wasted.
"Are you worried we cannot fight the armed escorts?" Garan spoke up as I turn to leave. "You know little about how we operate, do you?"
I swung around and lowered my head to his level. "Explain then."
"To be a space pirate with us, all the Perunians here are military trained," he started.
I folded my arms, unconvinced. Military had tiers. Elite tiers, officer tiers and foot soldiers. From experience, elite tiers can operate at very low numbers, but warships against a battle fortress and its armed escorts have limitations.
Perunian space pirates, while good in guerilla and close quarter ship fighting manoeuvres, are signing up to be bug squash with a battle fortress. Shoah planetary system had no key hiding places for them to play hide and seek.
One sensor sweep of the area on the radar will reveal their locations. Skirmishes in open areas are a death trap.
"So what?" I asked nonchalantly.
"Only a special breed of Perunians makes it to our space pirate ranks. All of them in the fleet were ex-elite forces."
Hard to convince me they formerly belonged to the elite forces. I trained in the Kamuy elite forces. Anyone with space strategy wouldn't enter open space where others could easily detect them, almost akin to screaming here-I-am-shoot-me-down suicidal scenario.
"They are going to fire, possibly on their own people in the escorts?" I raised my eyebrow.
"No self respecting Perunian will sign up for the Great Swirl Council's military. Our accord with them upon joining is to maintain our own military independence," Zhiva added. "So what if we have a patch of their logo? Doesn't matter at all."
"All the more if I were you, hijack the transport carrier from within," I suggested a more plausible solution if both of them were actually serious. "There's a way to redirect jumps before the wormhole opens on the other end."
"How?" Garan asked. "You don't even know how the transport ship works."
True, I didn't.
"Then, at least give me an idea," I muttered under my breath.
Ship builders made two main styles of transport ships. One style is a full ship with secured segments and the other is what I call a grab and go, where the ship latches onto a specially made container, separating the pilot side from the container.
The first design made it easier for infiltration. Disable the security locks and pass through with my hidden droids.
The second proved a problem because only the latches are connected with the container. If we were lucky, a backup hatch will be also attached to the main segment's docking port.
"The passenger container is fully separated from the pilot side," Garan said as he looked at me wearily. "No hatch attachments. Now you get why we can't come up with a Plan B?"
"One-way trip to the space gallows with no return. They won't care to install back ups to save us," Zhiva added glumly.
"What are the latch attachments like, because if they are jumping through a wormhole—"
"They could kill us," Garan cut in. "The ship is an automated junk. It doesn't even matter to them if it can hold. One-way trip, remember?"
If the ship cannot hold the container, during the wormhole jump, the entire ship can fall apart.
I sat back down on the ground to rack my brains about any way to escape.
"All the receiving crew are holographic. Main pilot section, controlled by one of the escort ships, or at worst, a battle fortress. Our crew out there will be working on a way to hack through the signals to wrestle for control of the ship."
The situation looked hopeless.
"Where's the location of the nearest black hole?" I asked.
Black holes are not something I keep track of in the Council's territory. Those big enough to crush a ship are not common within the occupied territories or the quadrant because no idiot will build a spacefaring civilisation near a wandering black hole.
Unlike the massive twin black holes which hold this galaxy together, the smaller black holes move like rogues on a wild random hunt to swallow ships, asteroids, and even planetary systems in their path.
A civilisation won't make it to the spacefaring stage if too many blackholes came wandering near their region, with a fair chance one might gobble them up before they can escape.
This particular galactic quadrant held the lowest number of black holes, hence probably the reason for housing most spacefaring species.
My Kamuy predecessors didn't pick this quadrant for no reason to set up home.
Perunians, especially the space pirates, would be aware since they travel around in the territory.
"You think they will drop us into—"