Small Hunt
Police central at Manhattan to Silver_Arrows patrol ship in Colorado: "Central to patrol, we have here an emergency situation, do you copy?" "Roger, prepared to receive a message, switching to a coded channel" came reply in a few seconds. Police fighter has just undocked from Battleship Rio Grande and its cruise engines were activating, when silent "beep" announced incoming message. It was report about the pirate attack - pirate known as Vulkan ambushed one from IOC traders in Bering. Unusual was, that this trader has not only reported this accident, but he also set a high bounty on a pirate. "Interesting" has thought officer, "to have a 'free of charge' mercenary assistance could come handy". Police ship entered trade lane leading to New York and officer started check incoming data about the pirate ship known course, his potential next victims and he also checked for mercenaries which could be interested for a small bounty hunt ... considering later affairs was this hunt everything else as a "small" one ...
Once officer reached Bering was clear that his target knows that he is being chased. Distance between them slowly decreased but this progress was painfully slow. The pirate ship course led through New London to The Corridor and from there up to pirates strong ground X-3043. But this time no one answered the pirate call, so he decided to outmanoeuvre his chaser in Neophobos. But the officer had at his disposal very detailed system map and soon after pirate jumped to Vespus he followed him tightly. After search on trade lanes he met at gate to X-3043 known mercenary Moorhuhn. He was looking for the same target, so made a chase-agreement was quick affair. Next to this appeared in space another officer known as APE and pirate started to have less and less choices for free escape. Was only a matter of time when he will need to fight, but this one was dangerous. Hunters were well aware that theirs numbers give them only a bigger chance to force him fight, but was no guarantee that they will be the winners at the end.
... to be continued.