[Traverse] Passengers And Crew Escape Pirate Attack

Passengers And Crew Escape Pirate Attack

Meina Raniva – The Galactic Observer

ILLIUM - A spaceliner carrying fifty colonists and material from Illium into the Traverse was attacked by pirates earlier this week. The ship in question had been traveling at subluminal speed between systems when it was approached by two vessels and raided by a boarding party.

The party emptied the cargo rooms, taking the passengers’ personal items as well. The crew and passengers survived, however, by retreating to the safety of a “panic room” installed within the ship by the PerSafe Group. After several hours of unsuccessful attempts to break into the room, the raiders withdrew from the ship and left.

“It all happened so fast! I feared for my life, I was sure they would just blow up the ship out of frustration,” one survivor stated.

Several enterprises throughout the sector have begun to equip their vessels with such tightly-shielded chambers as a retreat in case of attack. Specific parameters are being withheld from release, however, citing safety.

“We don’t want to give these pirates any information,” A spokesperson for PerSafe said. “We recommend, however, that people traveling in dangerous regions ask their carrier about the availability of such systems, and preferably use carriers that provide safe rooms on their vessels.”

Security footage shows that the pirates in this raid were of mixed species but obviously batarian led. They appear unlinked to any known organization, though investigations are ongoing.

A turian patrol later received the ship's automated distress call and came to aid fourteen hours after the attack.

“We need a closer knit web of patrols on the merchant routes,” an anonymous turian officer involved in the rescue told the Observer. “I’d be happy to blast a few of those bastards out of space.”

Hmm. Good to know the panic room worked.

I'm surprised they didn't demand a condemnation from the Confederacy towards piracy over this.

Why the fuck would anyone travel interstellar space at subluminal means? It would take decades to get between even the closest stars.

For that matter, how in the hell did pirates find a ship that was traveling STL in between the stars? The odds of that are obscenely small when you're outside a system.

Prior warning?

Sabotage?

What I want to know is why they don't just impose similar security measures to the panic room on the cargo bay. Keep the bad guys from getting the goods altogether. It's what I would do. Sure, it'd be pretty pricey, but you need to admit that a guarantee of 'no theft by pirates' would yield impressive returns for any shipping companies that did it in regions with large pirate threats.

Assuming the pirates don't just blow up the transport, of course, but that's exactly what happened here.

That also depends on what they're transporting. Blowing up transport just to kill the civilians on it is fairly unnecessary. Blowing it up to salvage the eezo in its cargo holds would be far more profitable than just letting it go.

Of course, this entire setup reeks of marketing.

Mostly because it'd be an implausibly expensive security measure to institute across an entire fleet of decidedly large cargo ships. Especially considering that a. it just encourages potential raiders to just blow the entire ship and scoop what they can out of the wreckage (since it'll take far too long to breach all those holds individually) and b. armed escorts are much much more versatile and effective in discouraging attacks in the first place.

And yes, frankly I'm with Blitz. This entire article practically screams "Illium marketing campaign". Not the least because the pirates didn't even bother to scuttle the ship after the fact.

just because the article doesn't mention it, doesn't mean, they didn't take the cargo. I actually just assume so.

Also, they were possibly taking a navigation point at sublight speeds. To me that looks lkike as if the pirates had detailed information on flightplans.

Drop Trap combined with knowing the route beforehand? Trigger the FTL safeties, jump the ship while it figures out what's going on. Alternately they grabbed them when they were venting static, but the description of subluminal speeds between stars doesn't quite fit.

Prevention of future attacks could explain the lack of details; however, the event itself is indeed a tad suspicious.

Quite likely. Aside from actions in truly anarchic systems (which most traders and transports would avoid anyway), most acts of piracy are at the direction of dirtside collaborators who tell their hired crews exactly where and when a target will be. Which is why flightplans are so closely guarded of course, but there's always someone willing to sell out someone else for the right price, especially when they never leave their office - it's not 'piracy' to them, it's just sending messages and processing transactions.

Which isn't to say PerSafe had anything to do with it - their stock's up (naturally), but if the report seems oddly focused on promoting their hardware, it's probably nothing more than their having slipped someone at the Observer a few credits to spin the story their way.

It's the flight path itself that seems incredibly unlikely. The only reason to enter sublight in interstellar space is to make a course change or avoid observers/followers. A common freight/transport ship shouldn't have needed to do either of these; a single, straight-shot FTL jump is the safest, fastest, and cheapest way to travel.

No, this reeks of a marketing set-up. Staging it in interstellar space eliminates the chance for an outsider to observe or interfere, and adds an extra bit of spice to the subsequent marketing campaign. When combined with their antiquated "security-through-obscurity" approach that sounds good to the public but is usually lacking when compared with other protection standards, I'd say that the entire thing was a farce. It's cheaper to pay off a small pirate crew and a ship's captain than it is to launch a major media campaign these days.

This precludes stopping at a fueling- or private station between systems.

Maybe the pirates "failed" to enter the panic room because their informant was in it, avoiding to blow his or her cover. In which case they got the good, and their ally is still above suspicions.

Seems possible. In any case, there's not nearly enough info in the article to figure out what exactly happened... can someone get the route they were following?