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The pirate known as the Star Hunter has attained a legendary status across stellar civilization, with stories being told and embellished even into modern times.
Though the events surrounding him occurred almost four thousand years prior to humanity’s first encounter, the Star Hunter has remained a darling of cheap dramas and thrillers. Viewed as a villain, a dark hero, or sometimes even as a victim of great forces far beyond the individual, he remains a household name.
So many stories have been told that the reality of his life and final days are oft lost and forgotten.
What is known for certain of the Dessei, whose birth name was Keraoãng, is that he was born on the mid-size island of Nosng on Enope, the Dessei homeworld. Son of mid-tier public officials, his joining the Dessei Republic Fleet was a very natural and easy step in his life path.
While scoring well in his training and exams, Keraoãng was not exemplary in most fields, but displayed a great desire to explore unknown space. All Dessei have their head in the sky, it is said, but Keraoãng was born with his head in the stars.
Becoming the captain of a deep-space scout vessel, he was one of many seeking to chart places only ever seen through telescopes or by probes. On one of these long-term missions, in the darkness between systems he claimed to discover an ancient space station that he dubbed a temple-station. While appearing abandoned, the story goes, he felt drawn to the place.
Against the judgment of his subordinate officers, Keraoãng landed his scout ship on the station and led a boarding party.
There are no reliable accounts of what occurred in the station, only distorted messages that described great danger and an unknown opposing force.
Finally, a single clear message came through from Keraoãng himself; “I have found it.”
Keraoãng and less than a third of his original party returned to the scout ship. The survivors would not speak of what they had seen or experienced, and Keraoãng dismissed such details as unimportant. The remaining members of the crew on the ship noted a severe change in personality in Keraoãng after recovering the item he called relic technology.
Whereas prior he had been a well-liked commander who followed protocol and cared little for personal prestige, after the trip onto the station he became arrogant and brutal. He carried an object with him in a pouch on his chest, but would not tell or show anyone what it was. Those who pressed too hard were punished severely. Finally, after a confrontation with his first officer, Keraoãng shot and killed him. After that, none aboard dared to question him.
Returning to Dessei space, he was detained by the Dessei government and questioned in secret. Rumors abounded about what punishment he might face for losing so many crew members and his later behavior, but the government dragged its feet on the issue for unknown reasons. The day before a sentence was to be announced, however, Keraoãng was freed by members of his crew who had gone into the temple-station with him. Together, they seized control of a light cruiser and fled Dessei space.
The Dessei government were in clear shock over this turn of events, and while little was publicly admitted, sources of good repute leaked that the government had been more curious in the temple-station and relic technology than Keraoãng’s aberrant behavior. Yet despite that, they had not learned the location of the supposed temple-station, and all data on the scout ship’s computers had been erased by Keraoãng before arrival back at Enope.
The incident faded from public minds until two years later, when Keraoãng returned. Now leading a fleet of ramshackle ships with his light cruiser, which he had named the Rightful Prize.
In a series of lightning strikes, Keraoãng, now identifying himself as Star Hunter, captured several more small warships, taking hostages with each attack.
To add to his mystique, the Star Hunter sent a series of missives, claiming to be a legal privateer in service to “a higher power”.
His boldness growing, the Star Hunter even staged a raid upon Enope itself, capturing and taking back with him a military defense platform along with his original scout vessel. Exactly how this was achieved has been a closely-guarded secret of the Dessei Republic – many have noted in the centuries since that the ability to carry off an entire station should not have been possible with the level of technology then in play.
Attempts by the Dessei to crush the Star Hunter met in dismal failure; in several battles, the Dessei Republic Fleet was humbled by the pirate’s inferior forces, suffering staggering losses in the process.
The apparently impossible nature of the Star Hunter’s attacks became a recurring theme. The precision of his zerospace jumps and the rapidity with which his ships could jump again still has not been explained. They allowed him to bypass standard defenses and reach prize targets with ease, taking what he wished to supply and strengthen his forces.
Likewise, the Rightful Prize seemed able to punch far above her weight class; in several battles that are still studied by multiple species, the light cruiser bested groups of heavier vessels that faced it, without sustaining any serious damage. The destruction of the battleship Winged Heart with all hands has become the subject of several songs alone.
In further communiques sent by dummy drones, the Star Hunter claimed that the relic technology he had discovered granted him these powers and that his strength would only continue to grow. In none of these communiques did the Star Hunter ever declare a clear goal, and as time went on they became longer and more rambling, often decrying the existing government of the Dessei Republic for ‘lacking true vision’ and ‘seeing only the mundane’.
He sent out a more general call, summoning to him every privateer and mercenary in known space.
Millions flocked to his banner, and a small local annoyance soon became a clear threat to the stability of governments in space.
Ranging further, Star Hunter began to strike outside of Dessei space, into territories of the Sepht and Bicet. With each victory increasing the technological advantage of his forces, he gained more ships and took more hostages at every turn.
His most notorious attack became known as the Taking of New Enope, where nearly all 300,000 people in a Dessei colony were taken prisoner by Star Hunter’s forces.
Some stories claimed that he had long frequented the colony and had fallen in love with a local woman. But because she loved her home so much, Star Hunter had taken them all to allow her to keep them near her.
Other stories, and likely the reality, were far darker.
Attempts to track the zerojumps of Star Hunter’s forces proved useless; his fleets seemed to move impossibly fast, at times even to be in two places at once.
This threat led the Dessei Republic to press for peace with their long-time rivals, the Sepht. The wise leadership of both peoples saw the threat posed by the Star Hunter, and they joined forces. The Bicet were more than happy to join this coalition, planting the seed that would eventually grow into the Sapient Union.
Attempting to determine patterns in Star Hunter’s attacks, which now focused on Sepht and Bicet colonies as a form of retaliation for the alliance, a suspected pattern was found by a team of researchers. This team were not military analysts or even mathematicians, but tenkionic researchers who had been attempting to understand the nature of subspace itself. Though two of them took their lives not long after submitting their findings, the Combined Fleet was able to catch Star Hunter’s forces in action attacking a Bicet colony.
While the fight itself was inconclusive, as Star Hunter quickly withdrew, it was hailed as a major turning point.
Months of cat-and-mouse chases continued without success, however, until a small ship of defectors from the Star Hunter’s forces were found, desperately seeking to surrender.
These defectors claimed that the Star Hunter was sinking into a dark insanity. The beings taken as hostages were being sacrificed, and his secret base which could not be located was in the ancient temple-station where he had first found his technology. Further, these defectors were willing to trade the location of the temple-station in return for amnesty.
The combined forces saw that this could be a trap, but having no other leads, decided to launch an attack.
Arriving, they found the ancient edifice, larger than any known space station, and engaged the pirate fleet.
Star Hunter’s forces were not at all prepared for an assault on their home base, not even reacting until they had been attacked.
Once roused to action, though, the severely outnumbered pirate fleet fought back. Anchored by the defense platform taken years earlier, they were able to mount a formidable defense, inflicting heavy damage on the Combined Fleet. But the comradeship that had been built between the three species told; the heroic defense of the disabled Sepht flagship by Dessei forces helped to heal centuries of mistrust between the two species.
The Star Hunter’s fleet fought to the very last, even as their ships were shattered apart, pockets of resistance held out.
Now able to approach the temple-station, a combined-arms force was launched. From here there is little solid information, as the official records have been sealed by each of the involved governments.
Stories, however, tell that the temple was filled with blood-sacrifices, growing more gruesome and twisted the deeper they went. The living in the temple were maniacs, the original followers of the Star Hunter who had become completely mindless puppets.
The most fanciful stories tell that the troops encountered beings of a species unknown, that were nearly immune to conventional weapons and could keep fighting even when nearly torn apart.
Sustaining great casualties, the forces drove into the heart of the temple-station. There is no real information on what occurred there, but after a four-hour battle the Star Hunter fled from the temple, escaping in the Rightful Prize.
Whatever luck the Star Hunter had once possessed that allowed him to fight against incredible odds in the past seemed to abandon him. Or perhaps the odds were simply too great, but as the Rightful Prize moved away, the Combined Fleet launched overwhelming volleys of missiles and coilgun strikes.
Taking hits, the Star Hunter broadcast a constant stream of maddened invective, cursing the Combined Fleet and all in it.
Defying calls for his surrender, the Rightful Prize instead made a desperate dive into zerospace.
Most experts agree that in the state of the Rightful Prize, it likely broke up and disintegrated almost immediately after submersion. Even if it did survive the initial acceleration into zerospace, it is unlikely it could have exited safely. And even if all of that did not occur, with the damage the vessel had sustained, it was unlikely the crew could survive much longer.
The mysterious temple-station itself likewise met its end; perhaps as a result of damage from the battle, it began to break apart and collapse in on itself. It is suspected that it was powered by a black hole at its heart, and the containment system was damaged. Of the boarding forces deployed, only a handful managed to escape in time.
Gravitic anomalies and debris, it is said, forced the retreat of the Combined Fleet. Later investigations into the region found no traces of the temple-station, and studies of its external views have determined very little.
Thus, the story of the Star Hunter ends.
Stories and legends continue on without end; the more romantic deny claims of human sacrifice as mere propaganda and claim that in the end Star Hunter was able to escape with his unnamed wife and finally found peace out beyond the fringe. Others say that his relic technology conferred upon him immortality, and he is only biding his time before he attacks again.
Though the Sapient Union itself was not founded directly after this incident, the Space Hunter War is sometimes listed as one of the factors that led to the Union’s birth. Official histories, however, do not even mention the period or even call it a war.
The survivors of the landing party have never been identified, and if any of them returned to normal life, they never spoke of what they saw. It is sometimes claimed that the stories they spread were so disturbing that they were re-settled on a distant secret colony.
Whatever happened to them, or to the Star Hunter, in times since many pirates have tried to claim his mantle or that they have a piece of his relic technology. Many go out seeking the supposed Lost Treasure of the Star Hunter, a cache they claim he made before the final battle where he hid his relic technology, thus explaining his failures in that final battle.
Thus far, there are no publicly confirmed accounts of other space pirates obtaining such relic technology.
Unofficially, however, on a need to know basis, it is known that such incidents have occurred. While none have been as overtly threatening as the Star Hunter War, they are treated with the utmost seriousness by the Sapient Union.
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