The Ceres Crossroads

Beowulf and her crew drift from New Texas towards Ceres, New Oregon.

At the same time, a pirate corvette, the Celestial Eagle, is headed towards Dallas, New Texas, coming at nearly 90˚ to Beowulf's path. Coming in the opposite direction of Beowulf is a military frigate, Overlord. 

Beowulf is on the right edge of the picture. The pirates area in the bottom left, and Overlord is in the upper right corner.

At first the ships just continue on their courses.

As the pirates' ships are marked in Overlord's database as enemies,  Overlord starts firing on the fighters from long range, but does no damage. The fighters fire their thrusters to engage Overlord.

Overlord kills one of the fighter's pilots and the other is destroyed by a shot from the laser. The fighters turn to fire on Overlord but cannot penetrate Overlord's armor.

While the fighters and Overlord are engaging each other, the Celestial Eagle hails Beowulf and demands that they come to relative stop. To reinforce the message, they fire on Beowulf but cause no significant damage.

Beowulf is unarmed, so gives in as cannon fire causes Heavy Damage, cuts off parts of Beowulf's fuel supply, and reduces Beowulf's armor. 

At the same time, the fighters make a pass by Overlord, dogfighting with the slower frigate. Despite some skilled piloting, Overlord loses some Armor as a result of the fight. Its own laser manages to heavily damage one of the fighters, reducing fuel and speed significantly. The fighters are effectively out of the fight, using their last fuel to move on a vector that will make them easy to pick up/refuel after the battle.

To escape the fighters, Overlord accelerates with its main engine towards the Celestial Eagle and Beowulf. Celestial Eagle has just begun boarding Beowulf... while at the same time, the pilot of the Celestial Eagle is killed by fire from Overlord which lightly damages the ship.

As I have details on the crew and this is a campaign I'm following more closely than a quick battle, I decide to play out the boarding action with 5150. 

The crew prepares for boarding... Dempson and Sarah hide in the engine room with their weapons drawn, while Yosi and Sam prepare to stop any attempts at taking the cockpit. Poor Doctor Sera is stuck alone far away from anyone else as Beowulf is boarded; he's in the medbay downstairs!

The pirates' captain and his two best soldiers come in through the airlock first. Closely behind them are 4 of the regular crewmen... the engineer and the pilot (who is killed as this is all going on) stayed back on the Celestial Eagle.

Two of the pirates capture Doctor Sera while the Captain and his first mate head upstairs and wait for back up before proceeding. Meanwhile, Yosi and Sam have a minor disagreement over whether to try to ambush the pirates and retake their (now damaged) ship or to wait and see how things play out. Sam easily wins the argument, as he doesn't want to lose Sera and they are heavily outgunned. He accepts that they are probably going to be captured, but hopes for a better opportunity to show up soon.

The pirates regroup on the main deck in the crew area (kitchen,  lounge area, crew cabins).

Then I roll doubles for activation and go back to the space combat. Overlord turns to continue firing (like a mobile turret) on Celestial Eagle as it flies by. Celestial Eagle is now severely damaged.

The Engineer comes over onto Beowulf to escape the fire. Meanwhile, the pirate captain and his first mate come into the bridge area. There is a standoff between the crew of the Beowulf and the crew of the Celestial Eagle in the engine room and the cockpit. 

(The following is the result of an Argument Roll).

"Stand down, cowboy, I don't think you know how to use that gun." The Pirate Captain says to Sam.
"Lets skip to business," Sam responds, "We know that you have one of our crew captive downstairs."
"Captive for now. If my pilot isn't flying this ship in ten sec--" His first mate whispers in his ear-- "Well if you're not flying this ship the way I want it in ten seconds, your crewman's dead and this situation will get a bit more interesting."
"Look," Yosi says as he lowers his weapon, "We don't need to point guns at you, the authorities are already shooting theirs'. Now I don't think the authorities like me too much either. So I see this going one of two ways. Either you stand down and we all get out of this, settle our differences later, or we fight now but we all get killed-- by that frigate or by each other."
"Why don't we just kill you and get out of here ourselves?"
"Because," says Sam, "As soon as your finger goes for that trigger, I'll press shit button," he raises a small communicator "And we hail that ship. As soon as they hear that we're boarded and under attack, they'll come straight for you.
"Besides, without a pilot, I doubt you'll be able to outrace them with this beat up freighter."
There is a tense moment of silence.
"Alright," says the pirate captain as he lowers his weapon. "Just get us out of here."

So the combined crews (minus the fighter pilots and the pilot of the Celestial Eagle) pull away from the exploding Celestial Eagle.

The Overlord finishes off the Celestial Eagle, assuming that Beowulf was merely escaping its pursuers. By the time Overlord realizes that Beowulf has pirates on board-- it picks up the two fighters peacefully-- Overlord is too far away to positively ID Beowulf, as its high velocity from escaping the fighters took a little while to beat, and Beowulf hit the antimatter drives to get away. Figuring that they weren't sure that Beowulf was criminal, the Overlord merely posts a note to look out for all ships of that class and continues on its original path.