"Damn it, those damned pirates! I'll hang them, every last one of them!"
Kinlock angrily waved his pudgy little fists. Most of the objects in the room had been reduced to fragments strewn across the floor, evidence of the storm that had just swept through it.
One star system invaded, another planet captured, yet another warehouse looted... every day brought more bad news like this.
Each report was like a knife gouging out his flesh. His food had lost all flavor, and he had even shed several pounds.
The Jin Family's painstaking efforts over generations, along with Kinlock's lifetime of savings, had shrunk by almost a third in this pirate disaster.
Worse still, the Five Great Pirate Bands' joint pillaging was only the beginning.
As they tore open the Locke Conglomerate's outer defenses and plundered its interior, the other Shattered Star Pirates caught wind of it and converged on the conglomerate like sharks scenting blood.
If the Five Great Pirate Bands were a pride of lions, these small and midsized Pirate Crews were hyenas.
Their strength varied wildly, and they had few warships. Some had only a dozen or so armed merchant ships, but they made up for it in sheer numbers, with two or three thousand vessels between them.
They prowled around the Locke Conglomerate's outskirts, swarming any suitable target they spotted.
Some of the conglomerate's star systems had barely begun celebrating the departure of the Five Great Pirate Bands' raiding fleets when these smaller Pirate Crews arrived in groups for a second or even third round.
They had no objection to taking what the Five Great Pirate Bands had turned their noses up at, leaving those systems stripped even barer...
Naturally, the Five Great Pirate Bands had tacitly encouraged this situation from behind the scenes, if not actively