Terse Period

The Terse Period is a name given to a roughly 20-30 year era following the end of the Kamian Succession Wars, categorized by lawlessness and a dramatic rise in space piracy. The era is sometimes romanticized as "the Golden Age of Space Piracy".

Background

Following the end of the war, a very large quantity of weapons, particularly high-endurance warships, made its way onto the black market. Previously, such items were few and far between, with very tight controls especially on weapons, and the rarity of military-grade spacecraft keeping such things in check.

Most of the material came from the Alliance and the larger member worlds, who were quick to disarm once the fighting had ceased. Smaller ships, such as frigates, corvettes, and cutters, were the first to go. Such vessels had been built in huge numbers during the war for scouting and patrol duties, and were comparatively not much needed in peace time.

Ship Acquisitions

Spacecraft came into the hands of pirates in one of three ways:

Legitimate Sales

Following the war, many ships were stripped of their armaments and resold on the secondary market. This was a fully legitimate and legal system to dispose of surplus war materials, and indeed small numbers of vehicles had always trickled into the civilian sector this way, to be repossessed as liners, tramp traders, and mail ships. Any number of roles existed whereby a combination of speed, high endurance, or just especially well-made ships were highly sought after for wholly legitimate reasons.

Often, only nominal efforts were made to "de-militarize" the warships before sale. This typically consisted of unloading any remaining munitions, and removal of the high-power components used in energy weapons. Railguns (legal for civilian ownership and use) were left intact and operational, along with the myriad of support systems. The directed energy weapons, which should have been removed entirely, were only stripped of those components considered valuable for resale, which were often sold in lots alongside the ships themselves.

Vessels were typically sold at auction, but aside from registration with the Alliance Space Commission, not much effort was made to track them after sale. This is how most of the smaller ships came into pirate hands.

Salvage

While a great many surplus warships were disarmed and resold, quite a few were set adrift. Many smaller nations, operating space navies for the first time, did not have the resources to repair damaged craft and left them. Others, which had challenge crew requirements, were abandoned for being uneconomical to return. Officially, such ships were supposed to be "scrapped in place"(destroyed), but in many cases were simply abandoned. In at least the majority of cases, the crews took the precaution of firing off any consumable ordnance (such as missiles and torpedoes) but a considerable number of warships were left fully operational and with partial compliments of very dangerous weapons.

In some cases, these ships were claimed as salvage, but with piracy a common side-hustle for salvage crews, it wasn't much better. Any ship found derelict and towed to a legitimate port (here defined as "any solar system with a habitable planet") can be claimed as salvage. All a crew must do is put a salvage lien on it, at which point the government who owned it had a certain period to claim the ship. There were millions of these vessels officially "owned" by the Alliance, who lacked the resources to retrieve even a fraction of them (more than a few such ships had originally been abandoned by the Alliance).

A salvage crew who claimed such a prize was then free to re-sell the ship. Since it was no longer classified as "salvage", this meant there were no restrictions and no registration. It could be sold to anyone, at any price, and the crew legally allowed to profit by it. Some attempts were made to put a stop to such operations, but the resource-strapped Alliance could do very little.

The Gudersnipe Foundation was a bit better in dealing with the problem. Large numbers of ships had been built under license or supplied under lend-lease. Whenever the Foundation received word that a ship of theirs had been claimed, they could respond. Most often a Crimson Blade patrol was dispatched and granted authority to evaluate the claim and deal with it according to their own wisdom. Most often this involved scuttling the ship or otherwise rendering it inoperable, depending on the nature and repute of the salvagers. Called "breaker teams", these task forces succeeded in keeping a large number of ships out of pirate hands, but had limited authority.

Theft

Once again because of the rapid disarmament and general post-war chaos, many vessels were simply stolen outright, in some cases even by their war-time crews. Anything smaller than a cutter was easy to sell off and re-purpose for civilian use, but the larger ships, frigates and destroyers in particular, were primarily earmarked to be mothballed and laid up for future use. Destroyers, which had been built in huge numbers, mostly belonged directly to the Foundation, and had only been on loan to Alliance and member worlds. These ships in particular needed to be returned, and so were mostly put into a warm stand-by-mode whereby they could be stored for several years and reactivated as crews became available to ferry them to Crimson Blade reserve fleets.

Under relaxed security, it was not difficult for unscrupulous types to steal such vessels. Destroyers were particularly prized, being the largest of the sub-capitols and the smallest to have significant armor. These were also about the largest ship a pirate crew could easily manage, without cost over-runs. However, it should be noted that larger vessels like cruisers and even one battle-cruiser were left to this fate. These, too costly to operate, were often taken away to secret bases to act as defensive power for short-lived "pirate states".

Destroyers posed a very significant threat. Heavily armed and armored, they were well beyond the threat armed merchant marine ships could deal with, and outclassed the small home guard and patrol ships usually dispatched to deal with pirates. A pirate crew manning a destroyer was effectively invincible, and could raid with impunity.

Weapons

Railguns

The railgun had always been legal for civilian purchase and operation. Manufactured civilian-grade weapon systems were expensive, inaccurate, and could typically only fire a few shots at a low rate. This was not due to any regulation (as there was none) but the simple realities of building sophisticated weapons. Revenue service did not have a large profit margin, and civilian arms manufacturers lacked the resources and technological know-how to build more sophisticated equipment.

Most of the ships being sold, stolen, or salvaged were equipped with much larger, more powerful railguns. Ammunition was not an issue as it could be made from any ferric material with little skill and simple tools, and was more than adequate to puncture the hull of a merchant ship.

Kinetic Missiles

The kinetic missiles, similarly, were costly to built and good only for a single use, and lacked accurate targeting systems. While they were built to be compatible with military launchers, they were not very useful except perhaps as a show of strength.

The war made available vast quantities of much more powerful missiles, in particular those designed for use with the ships now being operated.

Other Weapons

This all changed dramatically with the cessation of hostilities. While during the war munitions had been very tightly controlled, VK Day's aftermath was ignored by the various armed forces. Conscripts were dismissed from service immediately, and many left their posts with little more than discarding their side-arms along the way.

Huge caches of weapons and other equipment was left unguarded, and stolen to be sold on the black market. Some of the more enterprising governments became profiteers themselves, openly selling surplus war material with little consideration for exactly who was buying it. Officially, many items were only legal for resale to foreign allied governments, but the end of the war saw the rise of countless "brokers", who would buy the weapons to resell them later; often less than reputable.

The Foundation was particularly troubled by these events. A significant portion of the materials pilfered had been provided under lend-lease agreements, and were supposed to be returned. In practice, it was unlikely the Foundation would have retrieved much of the equipment, but of serious concern were the vast numbers of N2 warheads passing into disreputable hands. The N2, having a nominal yield around 40 megatons, could easily level a city.

High-power equipment such as capacitors and super-conductive interfaces had a wide array of uses in civilian life, but more importantly were often all that was required to refit the battleship-caliber beam cannons arming the multitude of fast-attack ships now in pirate hands.

The Terse Period

The era following the war saw vast movements in the commercial sector. Soldiers returning home, ex-patriots returning home, refugees, and large quantities of goods were moved to rebuild shattered worlds. There were many cold and desperate people, and piracy seemed like a simple solution.

So, the era saw roving gangs armed with military-grade weapons haunting the outskirts of every major solar system. The most common tactic was to approach and demand the goods be surrendered, but warning shots and outright firefights were not uncommon. Many civilian transport craft had illegally obtained weapons of their own, and firefights were not uncommon. This was, sadly, not wise for the merchants. They were going up against actual warships, in most cases crewed by former soldiers familiar with their weapons and even more skilled at tactics.

The short story The Other Half is set in this period, and depicts a typical pirate encounter.