Foreclosure

The Crimson Fleet built the Mace wide and flat on purpose. Hull-to-hull boarding operations require a stable contact platform — the magnetic clamps need surface area, the breaching corridors need to stay aligned under fire, and the crew delivering the boarding party needs a ship that doesn't flinch while everything at close range is shooting at it. Thirty-eight armor. Four weapon mounts to suppress return fire during approach. A prow shaped like an argument that the other ship is going to lose. The Foreclosure has the same prow. The clamp housings are welded shut — pirates don't board ships, they remove the need for boarding by other means — and the breaching access panels have been plated over and the armor rating has dropped from thirty-eight to twenty-two because fury alloy and durasteel have better markets than a pirate shipyard. What didn't change is the geometry. Wide, flat, stable. Four weapon mounts in the original positions, covering the same arcs, running the same suppression pattern the Mace used during approach. The approach just ends differently now. The Crimson Fleet built the Mace to take ships intact. The Foreclosure takes everything else and calls it resolved.