The Barricade

The Barricade was a strategy used by pirates and privateers to capture and board a target ship.

The pirate vessel would use a tractor beam to drag a mass barrier into a space lane in order to black the way for the target ship. The mass barrier could be any object more massive than the target ship. When the ship was ensnared, the pirates would attack and board it.

The Barricade had several disadvantages. Firstly, space lanes, even the narrowest ones, would be several kilometers wide, which meant that the chances of a ship passing through the exact coordinates of the mass barrier was quite low. Secondly, the ensnared ship might as well be a heavily armed vessel capable of fighting back and perhaps even repelling the pirates.

Nevertheless, the Barricade was an old technique that had been used by pirated through several generations, especially by those who did not care what they ensnared as long as the target ship did not fight back too effectively, or if it was absolutely certain that the target would go through those coordinates at a specific time - knowledge which was typically obtained via intelligence and espionage.