A month of repairs has dulled the smoke, not the tension. On the observation deck of the neutral sky-port, Mike Stone kneels by a splice panel, clipping a datapad from a dangling cable and waking its encrypted feed.
He straightens, wolf muzzle tight, and crosses the deck toward Tressa with the pad held out like evidence. Below the glass, dock crews and cargo skiffs crawl through floodlit gantries.
Mike Stone
Scorpion Claw is moving. They are filling the gap the Lord left behind.
Mike Stone
They have your supply lines in their sights. Routes, manifests, fuel drops, all of it. This is the proof.
He angles the screen so Tressa can see the hostile traffic, names buried in cipher threads and transfer windows. His posture stays rigid, ready for a bad answer.
Mike Stone
If you wait, they will squeeze you ship by ship.
Tressa
...
✓ Quest Accepted
Protect the fleet’s supply lines
✓ Quest Accepted
Stop Scorpion Claw’s squeeze on the fleet
“K ... Standard bombardment of there Port assets”
SUCCESS (Legendary Reasoning, rolled +1)
Tressa lifts two fingers from the rail, and the datapad feed flickers across her scales. Below the glass, the repair docks look small enough to crush.
Tressa
Hit Scorpion Claw's port assets. Burn their dockside flow.
Mike Stone goes still, then snaps the pad around. His eyes track the transfer windows as if he is already counting fires.
Mike Stone
Acknowledged. I can push the strike package through the fleet net now.
A run of encrypted markers blooms red on the screen, then vanishes under a clean routing stamp. Somewhere off-deck, drones and gunners begin moving on command.
Mike Stone
Their port manifests just lit up. The squeeze line is exposed.
On the glass below, cargo skiffs peel away from a fuel pier, while a nearby loading arm stalls mid-swing. The neutral sky-port starts to feel less neutral by the second.
“"double the raids hit the view unloyal pirates to me left under their payroll show them what it looks like to piss off a queen with 5,000 pirate ships under her command!"”
SUCCESS (Good Willpower, rolled +1)
Tressa does not raise her voice. She just lets the fleet net open wide, and every dockside screen on the port seems to catch the message at once.
Tressa
Double the raids. Hit the unloyal crews still taking Scorpion Claw pay. Let them see what happens when they cross a queen with five thousand ships.
Mike Stone lowers the datapad a fraction, reading the room as much as the numbers. Down below, cargo skiffs keep peeling away from the fuel pier like they have suddenly remembered fear.
Mike Stone
That kind of pressure breaks syndicates fast. It also tells the quiet ones you mean it.
Across the glass, port traffic stutters harder. A loading arm hangs frozen over a tanker cradle, and two dock crews abandon their routes without waiting for orders.
Mike Stone
The strike package is already making them choose sides.
Mike Stone turns the pad so Tressa can see the updated spread. Fresh route lines bloom, then split apart as more transponders go dark or reroute away from Scorpion Claw contracts.
Mike Stone
They are folding. Give me one more pass, and their supply squeeze turns into a panic run.
“"good prepare my ship and a small contingent of 500 ships push the remaining pirates and mercenaries into a tight space surround them no surrender no quarter seize the remaining port assets on the ground hire assassins two bury the rest of their leaders who still want to fight*”
SUCCESS (Legendary Piloting, rolled -1)
Tressa answers with a single clipped gesture, and the fleet net fractures into a tighter war diagram. Five hundred hulls peel off the wider spread and knife inward toward the port lanes, boxing the last loyal pirates and mercenaries against the loading piers.
On the decks below, port assets get snapped up in the rush, fuel tugs, cargo tags, dock control locks. Scorpion Claw crews try to shift, but the squeeze closes faster than their routing can breathe.
Mike Stone
That net is sealed. Give the word, and I can flag the holdouts for removal.
Tressa’s strike order ripples outward. Black shapes drop from two fast skiffs into the shadowed service lanes, small and silent, while the remaining hostile leaders vanish into the tightening knot of traffic and gunfire.
The port’s ground assets flip hands in minutes, shutter codes, crane access, and loading rights all rerouted under her control. Above the tanker cradle, the frozen arm finally lurches free and swings aside.
Mike Stone
Supply lines are yours. Their squeeze is breaking.
But the surviving enemies are not scattered anymore, they are boxed in hard, with nowhere left to run except the last defended pocket by the piers.
Quest Complete
Stop Scorpion Claw’s squeeze on the fleet
New Gift: Scorpion Claw Negotiator
Quest Complete
Protect the fleet’s supply lines