The Freeport of Ngilli is a large human settlement that has been deeply involved in this region for a long time, and has achieved a considerable degree of self-sufficiency under almost impossible circumstances, relying on the oppression of millions of people in the lower strata and the transportation of goods by ships from other parts of the region.

They mined supplies from various asteroids, assisted transportation, and even replaced the Empire's small satellites and the Holy Bones in them to provide proper subspace travel aid positioning for those traveling on the Empire's borders.

As a result, this behemoth in the void has been able to effectively control the entire surrounding star system by virtue of its vast commercial and armed capabilities.

And this genius idea was created by the Imperial Admiral who once actually controlled Freeport, Rod Brown. Feng. Duo and its "Feng" family were born after more than 1,000 years of planning.

As a result, she became a well-known celebrity, and it was her privateering bills that made Freeport almost a pirate headquarters, and gained more armed forces than the rest of the world, and based on this, she continued to expand her advantage.

However, no amount of glory and success could change their powerlessness in the face of the Red Pirates, and the Admiral's sturdy defenses made him a thorn in the side of the Blackheart King before the Sun Lord's vengeful expedition began.

In an almost decisive battle, the flagship of Freeport Ngilli was destroyed by the Blackheart King's car. Feng. His whereabouts are unknown, and his whereabouts are unknown, and the von family is ruled by the brutal merchant dynasty of Bandetar, a wanderer, and falls under the Red Pirates.

What was once born under the leadership of the Empire has been dissipated by the violence and oppression of today, and what was once an outpost of the Empire's pioneers is now a place where the Red Pirates are wreaking havoc.

Adventurers, Liberty Captains, Mercenaries, Wandering Traders, and many of the concepts of romance and violence have always had two sides, and if the core of Freeport once ruled by the Admiral was the Pioneer, it is now a complete machine of terror and violence.

There have always been two sides to things, the Pioneer Camp is it, and so is the violent pirate base, but no one has changed one thing beneath those complex surfaces, and that is that a free port does not actually have the Mandeville Point pulled by the magnetic field of the planets, the gravitational pull of the universe, because it is a man-made, metal-enclosed iron circle in the void.

However, it was not a commercial artery, it was built to house adventurers and supplies on the way.

In other words, the asteroid fortresses represent an extension of the entire Freeport, and their colleagues act as blood vessels and limbs, using their firepower to escort ships and provide pirates with a base to threaten the rest of the star system.

It was also the existence of those forts that ensured that the free port could be used for supplies, distribution, logistics at all times and at a low cost, and the longer the travel in this dark forty-millennium, the greater the risk, and in the absence of the Mandeville point as a transport core, normal navigation was close to several months of risk.

The trade routes from the very edge of the nearest star system to the Free Ports were made up of the distribution of the diligent fortresses and the countless small ships that transported them.

Behind this system, which seems to be extremely advanced in the dark of forty thousand years, is that the asteroid fortresses everywhere are like shrunken and weak empires, highly autonomous, highly independent, controlled by all kinds of people, and it is not Engilly who enslaves them, but what is called profit.

As a result, it is a highly centralized and fragmented system, where the asteroids rely on profit and the reputation of the protection of the Freeport to plunder their wealth, the Freeport relies on strong control to maintain centralized power, and the final oppression and plunder will always be the pitiful world in the several nearby star systems.

However, this balance is very fragile and easy to break, which is why this time Freeport is focused on expansion, he, the owner of this port, wants a pirate empire similar to the maelstrom, and can compete with the empire.

Under such circumstances, Alan Baier, who was gradually approaching the first asteroid fortress, was on the bridge, looking at the endless void, and was disturbed by the captain's words. "What do you think of the admirals of Freeport?"

He asked an unprecedented question about the aristocracy that he usually didn't like to talk about, the captain had always regarded himself as a member of the navy or a simple captain, Alan Baier had not asked his family questions, but at most he answered his own name without mentioning his surname.

"Those old Feng's?" Alan Baier was surprised by this family, if it was really the nobleman who had existed in ancient Terra, then it was already as old as the emperor, but in view of the great changes in human civilization at the end of the 4000 years, he believed that this behemoth who had almost mastered Pangia was actually a "deceitful and famous thief".

It may be a translation problem, it may be a name seen in the monuments, but this sentence "Feng" does pull him back a little back to the past, very distant, so far away that he can't remember the past, maybe he also used a passerby tone to evaluate the many stories of this family on Gutera, but now, except for the names of several great powers and the two wars, other historical details can't be remembered.

Therefore, he hardly wears colored glasses for evaluation. "Pirates, the power used by the Feng family, how to say it, the foundation determines the upper level, when they operate the pirates to complete their grand plan of power, I no longer think they can get rid of this curse."

"The Red Pirates, it's just an unexpected external force, without them it would be like this, one day this free port will be overwhelmed by the mixed forces, because its strength is built on unstable external force, it may be a certain merchant dynasty, or a powerful pirate group, or an alien invasion, of course, including the current one, heresy."

After Alan Baier finished speaking, the captain just put his head back to his working position, and then replied coldly, or even indifferently. "yes, that's going to happen, stupid bunch."

"Do we have plans to break through the fortress defenses compared to this?"

Alan Baier shook his head. "I don't have much to do other than project the landing ship, I originally wanted to rely on the powerful deployment ability of the Space Marine to occupy the area, and then smash the stability of the Imperial Guard, but now it has been completely disrupted because of the subspace storm."

The captain replied. "But that would have killed a lot."

At this moment, Alan Baier just continued to look at the void, those things were not important to this huge universe, except for the smoke of gunpowder, death, war, and sacrifice, there was nothing important in this world, he just watched the giant ship slowly move forward.

Sub-light speed is not fast in this universe, it can be said that it is just crawling, and the absence of Mandeville Point is both a curse and a blessing, because it can effectively hinder the enemy's advance, in the dark and boundless universe, the silence of sailing is stretched for a long time, and after a few hours, it feels like a few days, excluding those boredom, and the suffocating silence.

The entire bridge was now only the muffled breathing of the engines, humming, humming, only the sounds of the contemplative array's calculations, dripping, dripping, chaotic and orderly, silent and noisy, in the void far from the stars, the human eye was of no practical use, and the senses were reduced to nothingness.

Nowadays, only the powerful psionic powers of the navigator and the star whisperer can guide the ship forward, and the eyes or words in the traditional sense are no longer effective, so unlike ground warfare, the battle on the battleship is quite fragmented, it is a war that cannot be detected by the naked eye, and it is abrupt and empty.

It was like that eerie sense of separation, a rapid roar with that irritating noise in the black universe as always, no flickering fires or huge enemy ships, just small dots focused by the faint yellow light on the dark green holographic divination monitor.

"Not red, not mechnistic or enemy, not green, friendly friend of the Empire." Alan Bair, as the commander, could approach and observe, and he thought for a moment. "A civilian boat?"

"Wanderer's little one." The captain spoke in a relaxed tone.

Alan Bair only subconsciously opened his tactical tablet and called the information repository on the linked battleship, or the Ponderor Array, because he had never known about civilian warships, and now he had to be wary and aware of those things.

And soon, he got the answer.

The Vagabond Class Merchant Trader, which was an extremely common type of cargo ship in the Imperial merchant fleet, was versatile and capable of transporting all kinds of goods and even people, which made them popular among poor charter captains.

Despite being inconspicuous but reliable, it is also equipped with small arms to defend against pirates and to keep the hapless ones out of many skirmishes, and its smaller body allows it to be more mobile and more able to move around in transport.

Technical specifications: 2 km vertically, 0.4 km horizontally, weight 8 million tons, crew of about 18,000 people, gravitational acceleration 2.1g.

But the confusion soon came, this is not a reasonable shipping route, this area is neither the nearest nor the safest, but only the most hidden, Captain Charter will certainly not choose this place, those people are restricted by the Empire, in order to ensure the stability of trade transportation and taxation.

So Alan Baier didn't understand why the little guy was sailing here, but he already had the answer in his heart.

The captain asked. "Do you want to communicate with them?"

"It's going to be exposed, forget it, they're not far away, and we're on top of it." Alan Baier asked. "Can we get close and launch a boarding assault ship?"

"It's simple." The captain did not hesitate to lower the hull, and under the operation of mobilizing thousands of people, the huge hull slowly approached diagonally downward, but this "slowly" was actually for the huge universe.

In the case of benchmarking, the poor wanderer's ship is as fast as a tortoise in a tortoise-hare race, and the call of a tortoise overtaking a hare is unlikely to be a reality.

After a few rapid accelerations, the little thing first came to the naked eye, it was a monster like a giant pipe organ, like a church organ floating in the void, the stern glowing with blue flames, and the only two small macro cannons in the bow as weapons, and the captain couldn't help but say that it was hard for him to imagine what it was like to only shoot the enemy with a frontal gun.

But soon his words were fulfilled, and the jumping gang full of elite Imperial Guards was launched from the flames, bright flames flickered, and in an instant the fragile hull was drilled with heavy engineering, and dozens of transport assault ships broke through from the bow, barn, and stern, because of the lack of artillery fire, those people could only watch them move, and they did not dare and could not resist.

Then the good news came unexpectedly, and it didn't take long to wait, and the soldiers of the Imperial Guard were like flames burning those sawdust enemies, but more often than not, those people saw the members of the Imperial Guard and directly threw away their armor and scattered their guns.

In just a few hours, the merchant ship had become an Imperial Guard, and according to the report, the interior of the ship was even more cramped, with most of its space used in warehouses, typical commercial modifications, and even the fact that the crew inside was not full, and the mere reluctance to travel far enough for supplies and permanent personnel explained why they were so slow to get close to the Imperial Guard.

Alan Bair then asks to speak to the captain or the person in charge, and the person he talks to is also funny, claiming to be the captain of the Imperial Charter who is transporting medicines, and can pay enough tolls, and reiterates that she has not disobeyed Lord Bandertar's wishes, but that the line is clogged and has to change the course.

And the voice that sounded young and sharp through the radio made him quickly realize that it should be a woman on the other side, and of course it was not ruled out that it was a sissy pervert of Slaanesh.

In contrast, Alan Baier shouted loudly. "I'm Alan Bair, the War Lord of the Astral Army, the Commander of the Fourth Infantry Regiment of Skadi, the Governor of the Skadi Planet, and you, as the captain of the Charter, actually helped to do this!"

The other side immediately changed its attitude, but it was actually very polite in the first place, after all, as long as it was a normal person, it was clear that those who could move around in an imperial cruiser must not be provoked.

But the name Alan Bair was already famous, and she immediately replied wisely. "You misunderstood, I'm not a legitimate businessman, what I just said was just a decision, if I knew that I was meeting the great Sun Lord, the King of Skadi, I would definitely not make such a tongue-making statement."

She also emphasized that this guaranteed that her next sentence was true. "I'm a cold trade broker, I'm transporting a batch of medicines, and I'm very familiar with the next fortress and the situation in this area, it will definitely be useful, it will be useful!"

"Cold Trade Brokers...", Alan Bair nodded, and translated in his mind as "smuggler" or "smuggler intermediary", but only focusing on alien goods.

He was a little sneering, but asked again. "What the hell are you transporting?"

The woman's tone hesitated, then replied. "Alluvial tincture"

Alan Baier was not surprised, it was obvious that men needed this thing whenever they wanted, and in Gutera's words, it was an aphrodisiac made by the Spirit Clan.

But more than her small business, Alan Baier now cares more about how many soldiers and equipment her small boat can transport... Because he's going to smuggle the soldiers in!

(End of chapter)