One Hammerhead and six stubborn bastards 

The day started simply. I was traveling with Echovald, and we picked up a bounty contract. It led us straight to Security Post Kareah. Normally, that’d be suicide — but with the contract in hand, security actually let us land on the pads. We rushed in, weapons hot, and found the mark mid-hack, trying to scrub their crimestat. Before they could finish, we dropped them, tagged the body, and had them shipped off to Klescher for some quality time on the rock piles. Job done. Easy credits.

We’d barely left Kareah when all our MobiGlas units lit up at once. A live transmission — some group calling themselves XenoThreat. The whole Stanton system was on alert. Not five minutes later, a CDF contract came through, calling for immediate support to repel XenoThreat from one of the stations.

A patrol turned into a war.

We rallied the crew — Spectemus, Echovald, John, Ghostkiller7, WWIIGaming, our engineer, and I. The Hammerhead came out of storage, and we burned time and credits getting it loaded. Fuel and ammo for a Hammerhead don’t come cheap. Luckily, the CDF was footing the bill today. That basically means unlimited fuel and ammo. 

When we arrived on site, it was chaos. XenoThreat had brought an Idris, a Hammerhead, and swarms of fighters. Fighters, I expected. A Hammerhead, maybe. But an Idris? That’s a capital ship worth billions to manufacture. How the hell does a fringe terror group get its hands on one? 

We didn’t have time to ask.

Spectemus threw us straight into the fight, juking the Hammerhead like he thought it was a Gladius. Shields flared and hull plating screamed as we traded broadsides. Our engineer rerouted power on the fly, burning reserves like fuel to keep shields alive. John chewed through their turrets. Ghostkiller7, WWIIGaming, and Echovald manned the heavy mounts, pouring fire into the Idris’s shields, cursing and shouting over comms as they tried to crack it open. I locked down starboard, hammering until my hands cramped, trying to carve light into the darkness.

The Idris hit back hard. Turrets lit the void. Gatlings chewed holes in our armor. One pass skimmed so close it bubbled the bow. If it had been a hair closer, we’d be vapor.

But piece by piece, we broke them down. Fighters first, then their Hammerhead. Finally, it was just us against the Idris. We called for backup, but the CDF didn't respond.  Nobody else was coming. How is it that everyone else in Stanton would just stand by and let this happen? 

Spectemus rolled us belly-to-belly, so close I could see silhouettes behind their glass. “All guns,” he barked, voice steady even as the ship shook itself apart. “Pour it in.”

And we did. Shields collapsed. Plates buckled. The beast started to bleed. Our systems went red across our boards, ammo ran dry, turrets overheated, our engineer screamed warnings — but still we fired.

Then the unthinkable. Their aft section went up. A thunderclap in the void as ammo stores cooked off, fires spreading faster than they could contain. And here’s the thing — XenoThreat must not practice proper damage control. The fires we started rolled through their decks unchecked, one after another. No seals, no teams, no training. Their own ship was killing them from the inside, deck by deck.

The Idris broke apart, a giant burning hulk in the black. 

Then it happened — the core exploded. The black lit up with a blinding blue fireball, the shockwave rippling out and slamming into us like a hammer. For a moment, it felt like the whole system shuddered. When the light faded, there was nothing left of the Idris but vapor and dust.

Almost immediately, we saw salvagers in Reclaimers, Vultures, and their cargo ships show up to pick from the remains.  

The CDF confirmed the kill and pushed the payout. Our mobis lit up with confirmation.  The CDF promised more work to come. Do they know something we don't? 

Silence filled our comms. Six voices, stunned, watching where a giant had been. Against every odd, with no reinforcements, Cassini held the line. All I saw was the wreckage that wasn’t there anymore — and six stubborn bastards who refused to break.