As the Protoss zealots and Terran marines and marauders stormed through the passageway and began tearing through the halls and walls of the light cruiser, Captain Hector and his crew finally began reacting. They still had no idea where the aliens with laser swords came from or how to best deal with them, so they followed the usual protocols during a boarding action.
The link between the light cruiser and Viktor's P-34 starcruiser was quickly severed. With that step completed, Captain Hector ordered his ship to open fire on the treacherous starcruiser. The starcruiser, under Viktor's orders, began taking evasive actions. It would never be able to outrun the light cruiser, and it didn't need to. It had done its part of the plan. Now all it had to do was outlast the light cruiser. More specifically, outlast its crew. Given what was going on in the light cruiser, that would quickly prove to be easier than anticipated.
The next step for Captain Hector was to deal with boarding parties inside the hulls of the ship, and that part soon proved to be much tougher than it sounded. Usually, the enemies could maybe get a few squads across the passageway before their plan was discovered and the two ships parted ways. The isolated squads would quickly be captured or killed by overwhelming numbers. This was the idea, and it usually worked. This was why the common consensus was that only an idiot commander would try to perform a boarding action like this, but it soon became clear that Athena was hardly an idiot.
Athena knew her advantage at the moment was her powerful infantry units. She didn't have air units that could trade blows with the light cruiser head-on, so she opted to fight the battle her forces were good at.
During the brief minutes, Athena was able to get 5 zealots and around four dozen marines and marauders onto the light cruiser. While they were technically trapped on the light cruiser with the crew, a more appropriate description might be that the crew of the light cruiser was trapped with them.
After boarding the ship, the Protoss and the Terrans divided into three squads to strike three key targets at once. The female Protoss warrior Vayron took a squad and went for the bridge. The second squad rushed to the reactor. The third squad headed for the Callisto Engine to physically destroy it if that became necessary to keep the ship from escaping.
Initially, in the confusion, Captain Hector sent squads to the breach point to try to hold back the intruders. When that failed and he realized the aliens were tougher than he anticipated, the captain had his men try to set up heavy weapons at chokepoints, but the Protoss zealots moved much faster than anticipated. Small squads of fire teams couldn't delay the zealots for more than a few seconds. Half-a-meter-thick blast doors lasted a bit longer, but instead of using explosives or detonation charges, the zealots simply began cutting. When they did encounter the heavy machine guns, the zealots simply charged through the hail of gunfire with their plasma shields up. Once the distance was gone, it was all over.
Each zealot was worth 1,000 units of minerals. They could still be brought down, of course. Bombers, missiles, artilleries, and tanks could also kill a zealot. Athena knew that well, which was why she chose the battlefields carefully before deploying the zealots.
The light cruiser had over a thousand crew members in total, but this was a case where quality meant more than quantity. It didn't take long before the remaining crew of the ship began wavering. None of the pirates who came face to face with the zealots lived to tell the tale, but the cameras still saw what the zealots were capable of, and that was enough for many among the crew to think twice about their allegiance.
After all, what could they do with enemies who seemed impervious to small arms fire and could close the distance in the flash of an eye? Fix bayonets? Throw themselves at the enemies with armed grenades and try to bring an alien down to hell with them? They were pirates, not Cadians or Kriegsmen. Good pirates, but pirates nonetheless. Charging against powerful alien warriors who were cutting their comrades into pieces with ease wasn't really something they were ready for.
As soon as the light cruiser docked with Viktor's P-34, its fate was already sealed. The pirates and their captain might be a lot more competent than Orlan and the White Tigress, but none of that made them resistant to psionic blades and Gauss rifles.
Two minutes after the initial boarding, the reactor core fell to the combined Protoss and Terran forces.
Three minutes after the initial boarding, the engine room was taken.
Five and a half minutes after the initial boarding, Vayron and a squad of Terrans cut through the last pirate fire teams and breached the command bridge. The young Captain Hector did everything he could to keep them away, but none of his countermeasures worked. Most of the bridge crew were captured and held at gunpoint. If dedicated armsmen couldn't stop the Protoss and the Terran, what hope did this bridge crew have?
There were still hundreds of pirates alive and scattered through the ship, but they would never be able to retake the bridge against the firepower of the Terrans and the melee prowess of the zealots. They also had nowhere to go. The light cruiser had no hangars, and fleeing the area in escape pods would simply be a more difficult option of committing suicide when there were no other friendly ships in sight. Slowly drifting through the vacuum of space and eventually dying due to thirst or suffocation was much worse than a simple bullet to the head.
With the bridge under the control of her troops, Athena had secured the light cruiser for the time being. The marines at the bridge handed the crew there a set of coordinates to jump to. These coordinates belonged to the home base of the White Tigress. The pirate officers weren't exactly eager to comply, but after two officers who tried to secretly jump to one of the pirate outposts were beheaded by Vayron after the zealot sensed their schemes, the others had no choice but to comply and hope they would come out alive in the end.
"Human technologies detected in close proximity to units…"
"Analyzing technology…"
"Analysis complete. Technologies show resemblance to Terran engineering…"
"Terran structure Starport has been unlocked…"
Not long after the light cruiser fell under her control, Athena, still in the White Tigress home base, received a notification telling her that she could now construct Terran starports. It seemed like her hypothesis was correct after all.
Unlike the garbage ships of Viktor and the White Tigress, this light cruiser was an actual warship designed to be a part of a professional naval fleet. During the initial battle for the colony on R412, the light cruiser helped the Kiara Legion defeat several other pirate ships. Modified civilian crafts were no match for the shield, armor, and firepower of a light cruiser.
In a head-on engagement, the light cruiser could demolish both of Athena's ships with little damage to itself, which was why Athena chose to target its crew instead. She learned about the common conventions of naval engagements and used the unexpected prowess of the Protoss to surprise her enemies. No amount of railgun turrets or missile tubes could hit the enemies when they were inside the ship. The young Captain Hector was absolutely unprepared for five Protoss zealots suddenly charging onto his ship and butchering his crew, and why would he be? There was no way any sane individual could see this coming.
In a sense it really wasn't fair, but when have things ever been fair in this galaxy? Athena had won this battle, and that was all that mattered as of now. Her methods might not be noble or chivalrous, but they have proved to yield quite profitable results.
To begin with, the Starport gave her 500 extra units of supply. Athena was quite impressed before she saw the supply cost of the Terran air units, which varied from 5 to 25 supplies.
This meant Athena could build a much larger Terran infantry army if she wanted to, but at the same time, these supplies would likely be eaten up by the newly unlocked air units.
The Terran Starport by itself unlocked three Terran air units: the Viking, the Medivac, and the Liberator.
The Viking, or the A2 Viking Armored Mechanical Hybrid, was the air superiority starfighter in the terran army. They were capable of operating both in the vacuum of space and in a planet's atmosphere. Like almost all terran air units, Vikings had no shields, instead using thick armored plating to protect the starfighter and the pilot within. That sounded unimpressive until one realized Vikings were often going against Zerg and Protoss aerial units. They weren't invincible, but they weren't exactly fragile either. If their armor could protect them against Zerg acid and Protoss lasers, they likely could do fine against the firepower of Athena's enemies in this galaxy as well.
The main anti-air weapon of Vikings was the MT50 lanzer torpedoes, designed to bring down heavily armored enemy targets. Vikings tended to be less effective against light enemy air units.
On top of that, what truly made Vikings impressive was their ability to rapidly shift from a fighter to a walker during combat with built-in transformation modules. While in walker state, the Vikings used their twin Gatling cannons to provide fire support for other troops on the ground. As of now, without Seige Tanks, Thors, or Goliaths, the Vikings might actually be Athena's toughest ground unit.
Each Viking would cost Athena 1,000 units of resources and 10 supplies. Resource-wise a Viking, a Terran starfighter, cost the same as the most common Zealots in the Protoss forces.
Next came the Medivacs. Medivacs were Terran light transports capable of using built-in nanite beams to heal injured terran troops while they were in battle. These medivacs, each capable of rapidly moving and deploying a squad of eight infantry troops, were often critical to maintaining the effectiveness of the relatively fragile Terran squads. They were capable of operating in the vacuum of space and using afterburners to move rapidly for a short period of time, but they themselves were often easy targets for enemy anti-air firepower.
Each Medivac would cost Athena 500 units of resources and 5 supplies. They were much cheaper than Vikings, but each still cost the price of 10 marines.
Finally, there were the Liberators. When Athena first saw the cost of the Liberators, she thought she was being ripped off. Each Liberator cost 8,000 units of resources and 25 supplies, a staggering price that felt insane for a unit that Athena often thought was equal to Vikings. However, a few explanations from the adjutant made her realize the mistakes in her understanding.
In Starcraft games, for obvious reasons, Liberators were no larger than Vikings or Medivacs, but that couldn't be more wrong in reality. Lore-wise, Liberators were medium-sized gunships while Vikings were fighters. While a Viking was maybe 5 meters in height and length, a Liberator was over 25 meters tall and 75 meters long. In fact, the Liberators could be classified as missile frigates. They were starships while Vikings were starfighters.
Each Liberator was manned by a crew of over 50. It was equipped with Lexington rockets designed to bring down lighter air targets and Concord cannons that could blast through the toughest fortifications on the ground while the Liberator itself was in the planet's lower orbit and far outside of the range of most light anti-air systems.
Liberators were a bit smaller than The Ravager and the P-34 starcruiser, but their weapons far outclassed both ships.
The three Terran air units, at least the variations Athena had unlocked, didn't have built-in warp drives. This meant Athena either had to be present to deploy them into battle or needed a larger vessel to act as a carrier.
The Ravager had a hangar, but given how little Athena trusted the competency of the pirates, she would rather keep her air units in her game and deploy them when necessary.
"Vikings to take down enemy ships. Liberators deal with fighters and ground targets. Medivacs as troop healing and transport. I suppose I should focus on Vikings for now." Athena thought to herself as she examined her current ship models. "There are three more units from the Starport yet to be unlocked. Banshees as covert tactical strike fighters against ground targets. Ravens to provide support. Battlecruisers to base a fleet around and act as carriers."
As she examined the three new Terran units, Athena found herself with an interesting thought.
"The starport gave me 500 extra supplies, or the equivalent of 50 Vikings. That is a lot of Vikings and Vikings seem tough so far, but if I'm going up against a real armada, 50 Vikings or 25 Liberators are not enough to do much."
"Even if I only produce marines, I have around 900 Terran supplies now. 900 marines is a lot, and maybe they're enough to take down a full regiment of Imperial troops, but a regiment is nothing in a real conflict."
"Either unlocking other Terran structures will give me a lot more supplies, or I will have other ways to build or recruit troops that are much faster and more flexible than what I have been doing so far." Athena glanced at the co-op commander icon on the side of the screen and tapped her chin thoughtfully.
Perhaps unlocking a co-op commander would be a lot more important than she thought. It was a good thing she could begin building Terran air units now. She needed to absorb as many pirate forces as she could, and the Vikings and Liberators would help her with that.