And if the space pirate is an alien or even lives in a universe where Earth doesn't exist, that's no obstacle to them acting like the stereotype of an Earth pirate in the age of sail. Lacking ropes, they'll beam a Boarding Party over to their victim's ship, or send out a shuttle, or use a Tractor Beam. They may even have ships shaped like boats, and instead of making their victims Walk the Plank, they set them adrift in escape pods waiting for the oxygen tanks to run out or just throw them out the airlock without any protective gear. They have parrots (probably robotic or alien), and they're Dressed to Plunder with false limbs (probably cybernetic), beards, tricorn hats, and eyepatches (or cybernetic eyes). They have Cornish accents and say "Arr!" a lot. Reasons for including this version will typically be along the lines of "Because Space Is an Ocean, it has to have Pirates" rather than making any meaningful attempt at justifying their existence. The other version does a Recycled IN SPACE! on every eighteenth century pirate cliche ever.That could be anything from the technology of the setting creating trade lanes (via a Portal Network, predictable Hyperspace Lanes thanks to Negative Space Wedgies, or timed space flights between planets to reduce time spent between planets, as in Real Life), to using a variant of the method employed by modern pirates (say, smaller ships striking at commercial shipping in the orbit of a planet). Done this way, piracy actually makes sense, provided there's an enabling factor. Once you have shipping between different solar systems/planets, pirates preying on said shipping are bound to show. The normal version are violent criminals with a spaceship, who attack other spaceships, just like present-day pirates-or, in fact, most pirates of any kind.
Particularly since doing so would require working in a plausible means for the pirates to escape undetected after plundering their target.Īs with Pirates in general, there are two kinds of Space Pirates in science fiction: Sometimes, this is cleverly worked around and justified. On the other hand, detecting commercial shipping in open space is orders of magnitude easier, just because it is so empty and clear. The challenge of catching commercial shipping in open space is orders of magnitudes more difficult than catching them on the open seas. The major problem with space pirates preying on space commerce is that space is vast.
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