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When Harlow jumped into the next system, the Asgardian shadows weren't far behind. They once again tried their tactics of firing off a volley of projectiles from a distance before turning away.

He made sure his fleet immediately adjusted course on a random heading, and none of the projectiles even came close. To further rub in the fact that those ships were powerless to stop him, he had his people do the exact same thing to a small mining station in the system.
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For a few minutes, he thought he had provoked a response when one of the ships turned and came back toward them again. It quickly turned around before getting too far from the other Asgardian ships though.

Harlow smirked at that. It seemed he had hit a sore spot for one of the captains. He would simply have to pick at it again and again until they finally reacted.

The next system was a much busier one and had actual planetary infrastructure and multiple space stations littered throughout.

The four Asgardian destroyers were joined by three local frigates while the rest of the traffic fled.

Not willing to give the Asgardians, who had been hounding him for the past two weeks, a chance to rearm, he split his fleet into three fleets that were all several times larger in number than the seven Asgardian ships present.

He knew splitting up was a risky maneuver, but he wanted to try baiting the Asgardians into engaging.

The two other fleets picked the largest space stations to attack while Harlow took his portion of the fleet straight for the planet.

Unlike the pathetic orbital defenses of the prior Coalition worlds, this world sported a decent array of orbital cannons as well as missile defenses.

Before he ever got within range of them though, he used the Asgardian's own tactic against them and simply lobbed volley after volley of projectiles at the planet.

He wasn't worried about replacing his own ammunition stores, his supply ships were jumping behind the fleet at preplanned coordinates outside of each system to keep them out of harm's reach.

It seemed like bombarding the surface of the planet with railguns was too much for the Asgardian fleet to stomach as they finally made their move. They didn't throw themselves at Harlow's portion of the fleet to his utter annoyance.

Instead, they went after one of the fleets he had sent to attack the stations.

They looked like they were going to do a rapid flypast after they fired another volley of projectiles, but three of the gunships in that portion of Harlow's fleet broke off and accelerated at their maximum speed in the same direction of travel for the Asgardian ships, spreading out before turning into mobile gravity traps.

He would have preferred to keep this little trick a secret for longer, but he was getting annoyed with these Asgardians and his people were restless for blood.

The Asgardian fleet realized it was a trap much too late as Harlow's second fleet jumped in behind them, boxing the ships in.

His fleet joined the fight only a few minutes later, but the battle was nearly over by that point. The Asgardians had managed to destroy the three gunships used to spring the trap as well as a destroyer and four of his frigates before finally falling to the concentrated firepower from over sixty ships.

The losses to his fleet were minimal, his only complaint was the fact Harlow's Might hadn't been able to join in on the fun. In a fit of spite, his fleet spent the next week and a half in the system, reducing everything in space to floating piles of debris. Then he turned his eyes toward the planet and used a few of his remaining nukes to ensure the people who lived on it understood where they stood in humanity's new pecking order.

If they wanted to survive his rise to power, they would need to learn to bow and scrape for his mercy or he would wipe them from the universe, it was as simple as that.

***

"Thank you for the information," Vyrik spoke into the comm unit in his ear. His face was a mask of stoic resolve, so Katalynn knew the news wasn't good.

"Well?" she asked when the man let his arm drop from the communication device.

"Jarl Brynja Thaldis has fallen in battle," he stated flatly.

"The man died well, I'm sure he is already feasting in the halls of Valhalla," she responded stoically.

Jarl Thaldis' death was a crushing loss for the Asgardian people and her. The man had been one of her staunchest supporters after she took over for her father, and his support had never wavered, even when she pulled the mission to attack Haven. She would never call the man a coward, that clearly wasn't the case as he had gone down fighting, but she got the impression that he preferred to remain on his homeworld instead of chasing glory like the younger Jarls.

"That's not all, Lagertha. Our scouts jumped back in to survey the destruction after Harlow's fleet left. He destroyed all orbital infrastructure and nuked the capital of Shalheim. The other population centers were left untouched, but we do not know the extent of the damage to the planet's capital."

She ground her teeth to keep from punching something. "Is Harlow heading along the route we predicted?" Harlow stopping to vent his ire at Thaldis' probing attacks was a blessing in disguise. It had slowed his approach and given her fleet time to join up with Jarl Ylva Bergson's fleet, bolstering their numbers with another ten vessels.

Katalynn would like to say that her numbers now matched Harlow's, but adding Jarl Bergson's fleet only brought their ship numbers up to twenty-three, and she was still hesitant to rely on the durability of Kane's ship, Wayward Soul. Not that she would risk a slugging match between her smaller fleet and Harlow's nearly one hundred ships even if she thought an Asgardian ship was worth three of the pirates.

Thaldis had orders to harass and monitor Harlow but to not engage. Something obviously changed since the man was now dead.

"Yes, Harlow is still heading along the quickest chain of systems to Eden's End. If we want to give Jarl Kane time to refit Valkyrie, we need to delay Harlow by at least two more weeks. More would be better," Vyrik stated.

"Relay a message to our scouts and see if any of them can find out how the Jarl's fleet ended up in direct combat. Once that's done, get a message to Ylva to see if she's ready."

Katalynn needed to keep an eye on Jarl Ylva Bergson, she was young and inexperienced, and might still hold a grudge against Katalynn for the death of her father. The duel was sanctioned but some people never truly got over a loss like that.

She doubted Ylva would do anything as abhorrent as Isbjorn had done, the woman was far too much like her father for that. The former Yarl Bergson was a diehard traditionalist and would die before stooping to such underhanded methods, and his daughter was raised the same way. It wasn't having the woman turn traitor that concerned Katalynn, it was the thought of Ylva hesitating at just the wrong time.

Replacing the woman with a more seasoned commander wasn't an option. Even if it was, that would undermine the trust of her other commanders. Katalynn would need to keep her in charge and hope for the best.

***

They arrived at their destination a week and a half later.

"Report," Katalynn said as her people quickly scanned the system for threats.

"Our scout has yet to arrive from the next system over," Vyrik confirmed.

That meant Harlow was still on his way and they had time to lay a bit of a trap.

It took a full day for the scout to arrive with information on Harlow's fleet and an update from Shalheim.

"It appears Harlow has taken the gravity anchor traps to the next level and simply outfitted some of his gunships with additional gravity plating. On a positive note, the gunships will be completely helpless when they are powering those extra plates."

Katalynn grunted at her tactician's words. She would not call that much of a positive.

"Is Harlow still using the standard jump points?" she asked. The pirate was so sure of his superiority that he had been entering systems like they were of no concern to him. If he was still doing that, she would make him regret that decision.

"Yes. The scouts have even given a rough estimate of his arrival since the last system contained no Asgardian infrastructure to keep Harlow and his people engaged."

"Alright. Order the fleet into position and let's lay out our trap."

There was no guarantee it would work, but even if it didn't, that would be fine. Her goal wasn't to cause as much damage as possible, however, she wouldn't say no to that occurring. Her goal was to simply make Harlow cautious, thus slowing him down.

Setting up the missiles so they would loiter was a lot of work on the standard Asgardian weapons. Not so much with Kane's though. She was surprised by how easy it was to program them to do what she wanted. If the weapons worked, she may need to contract Kane for more.

Once the missiles were set to rendezvous near the jump point at roughly the time Harlow was set to emerge, all of her ships pulled back and fired off multiple waves of projectiles, all set to saturate that emergence area with projectiles.

It was a long shot that anything would hit because the emergence area of a jump point was a large section of space, which is why space mines weren't ever used, but she had hope in this plan because of its unexpectedness.

The first missiles flew through the space where Harlow should have appeared without Harlow's fleet arriving, but soon his ships started to come out of warp.

As soon as the weapons detected the ships emerging from FTL, the oncoming missiles fired off their rockets and did their best to angle toward their targets, but most were going too fast to change course that far.

As more of Harlow's ships appeared, the missiles started to get hit by ECM as the enemy ships realized what was coming toward them, further reducing their effectiveness.

The only weapons which were unaffected by the ECM were Kane's which had also been launched last. The BSE missiles locked onto targets and fired off their engines, as their onboard computers fought against both the ECM and the flak that was quickly filling the space.

Four of the weapons found their targets and exploded. One even hit Harlow's ugly dreadnaught, blowing a large gash out of the front of the ship. While his capital ship was mainly unharmed by the missile barrage, the other three frigates weren't as lucky.

Two of the vessels had broken apart due to secondary explosions from their own weapons while the third had a gaping hole along its side as air, debris, and bodies likely tumbled out into space. If this was the final result of their efforts, she would have been happy, but they still had one more surprise for the pirate fleet.

The first round of kinetics passed through the arrival area as the pirates were in chaos.

From their distant vantage point, it was hard to tell what was going on, but she thought she saw a few bright flashes signifying hits.

Three more waves of projectiles flew through space, but only one more of Harlow's ships exploded, either from prior damage or a lucky shot. Not that it mattered. Dead was dead.

"That's for Jarl Thaldis and Shalheim," she stated proudly.

Her statement earned a round of cheers from the crew before they quickly settled.

"Move us to the jump point, we're done here." Even if Harlow was somehow dumb enough to fall for the trap again, her ships did not have the reserves of ammo to make it a reality. They had used a full third of their onboard supply to set up this trap, and she had to conserve what they had left if she wanted it to last long enough to reach Unokane while utilizing it effectively to force Harlow to stick to a cautious approach.