An hour later...
Flint's face was so dark it looked ready to drip ink.
The Ghost Pirate Gang had indeed kept its word and withdrawn voluntarily, but what it had taken away... was a little over the limit...
On the display, almost every ship moving away from the core of Gold Coin Base looked a size larger, because loads of cargo had been "strapped" to their hulls.
Some had gone even further, towing several cargo containers behind them!
This flagrant violation of the "Interstellar Overloading Law" only made Flint's heart ache more...
If their engines had been powerful enough, Flint seriously suspected they would have chained up a few of the base's asteroids and towed those away too...
But that was not the main issue. The main issue was that the Ghost Pirate Gang had packed up and taken not only nearly a hundred large freighters from the base, but also nearly three hundred ships from the former Gold Coin Pirate Gang's fleet...
Yes, these surviving Gold Coin warships had actually surrendered to the Ghost Pirate Gang during their retreat!
For pirates who roamed interstellar space pillaging at will, the importance of ships went without saying. The number they possessed was also a direct measure of a Pirate Crew's strength.
Yet almost half of the surviving Gold Coin Pirate Gang fleet, which Flint valued above all else, had gone straight over to the Ghost Pirate Gang!
Everyone knew the Gold Coin Pirate Gang was finished and merely clinging to life. Every eye was therefore fixed on this fleet, surrounded on all sides and doomed to raise the White Flag sooner or later.
Not only Flint, but the leaders of the other Pirate Crews had long since begun privately contacting Gold Coin Pirate Gang officers they knew, competing to offer lavish