(NERV Game Site – Official DAtS Offline Forums)

Number5Alive, Golddigger, BurtBacharach, CrazyCelt, Blaze, DoYouEvenLyft?, MarcoPolo, MightMakesRight, l33tpally, Bennie, SEA-TAC_Sweetie, Requiesce-in-Pace, MacD, HaveGunsWillTravel, Guardian, GunKitty, Chummer, Inquisitor, SemiSolidSnake, ElfMama, Not_the_Face!, Anonymous3, Anonymous4, Anonymous9, AggregatorOfSorrows, WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot, Dolcett, Backlog, DarkAvariel, Knocker, Hullu_Kapteeni, GrimDark, BloodForTheBloodGod, Queen’s_Bitch, BackDat@55Up, DoYouEvenDPS?, MajorTom, Parca, and DarkAngel are in the chat.

Knocker: What the hell is this about these “X’thari”? What are they?

Number5Alive: Ooh. They’re nasty buggers. No one really knows what they look like, since they always walk around in those technorganic suits of theirs, like some kind of chitin.

Anonymous4: Are you sure they’re suits? Could be actual insectoids.

Number5Alive: Yes, I’m sure. Unless they’ve changed things from Beta.

MacD: Ugh, that was some seriously nasty shit.

CrazyCelt: What happened?

MacD: You ‘wake up’ on a ship, and alarms are going off, and you have to try and get off before the thing goes boom, while landing parties of X’thari try boarding the ship.

CrazyCelt: How tough are they?

MacD: Individually? Not impossible. Their armor is tough, and they’re good fighters, but a combat spec could take one down. Problem is, they’re pack hunters, so there’s never just one.

Number5Alive: Yeah. But you can get a group of them, if you know how to rig traps.

MacD: So one of your traps knocked them out of their suit, and you had time to take a look?

Number5Alive: All of about 20 seconds before the thing came to, noticed I’d removed its helmet, and self-destructed. Took out half the ship with sympathetic explosions.

CrazyCelt: Suicide vests?

MacD: No one knows for sure. But whatever it is, it is like a pocket-sized nuke. Very nasty, if you’re within about 20-30 meters.

Guardian: 5, that was you? I heard talk on the boards about someone in Beta getting a look under the hood.

Number5Alive: Yep. Nasty shock. Didn’t really have time for more than a quick look, and the Beta license didn’t let us save images, for obvious reasons.

Backlog: Man, that would have put you in one of the top spots for the beta, if you didn’t get yourself blown up, right?

Number5Alive: Yeah. Fastest time on the Beta was actually some guy with the Engineer spec. But he showed up on the other specs, too, though with slower times.

M.Mollen: I used to be an engineer in real life. Out of game skills helping game skills, and all.

Backlog: Used to be?

M.Mollen: Medical discharge. I was in an accident, and was left paralyzed from the waist down. Suddenly had a LOT of time for gaming.

Knocker: So are you why the X’thari are showing up all over the place?

M.Mollen: Yes and no. No, I didn’t send them. Yes, they’re showing up because of something I did.

l33tpally: What did you do?

M.Mollen: Led the defense of Nuevo Edo against the X’thari raiders who targeted it, and won.

Knocker: Why would they go off attacking elsewhere, then?

Parca: Because we stomped their asses so hard their mothers felt it. Close on 200 ships and we killed them all, without a dreadnought in our group.

Hullu_Kapteeni: Well, the Boss did call in a favor and get some Imperial assistance to take out the one group.

Parca: OK, fair enough. But we’d already damn near killed them all. That last group would have bled us, but we’d have won.

GunKitty: But now you won, and you don’t have to replace half the fleet.

Anonymous9: So that’s why those Black Star ships ran to the Gateway, and came back today looking they’d been put through the wringer?

M.Mollen: Yeah, had to call in all hands. The Assassin-class corvettes and Reaper-class cruisers are simply not built for slug-fests, and the gunboats are badass for their size, but they’re tiny. Sending that kind of force against a group that included dreadnoughts would be suicidal if that wasn’t our only choice.

BackDat@55Up: Could have cut and run, right? I mean, it wasn’t like you HAD to stay.

M.Mollen: Sure, if you count leaving a planet full of people to die as a viable option. And maybe if there were more of them, I would have made that call.

MarcoPolo: So what does this have to do with raiding in ‘Known Space’?

M.Mollen: Because they had a stealth probe in the system that watched the gate traffic, so they know where we came from. And they now know we have abilities allowing us to fight above our weight class.

Knocker: They’re looking to do tech steals?

M.Mollen: That is what our analysts believe, yes.

Guardian: ‘Analysts’. Heh.

M.Mollen: Technically, I do have several analysts.

HaveGunsWillTravel: That exist primarily so you can say ‘analysts’ with a straight face, and in case they make a jump a more logical mind wouldn’t.

MajorTom: We prefer to think of her as the IT department.

Parca: Chief navigator.

GunKitty: You guys are so bad!

Anonymous4: You have some kind of super-analyst? Is that how you’ve managed to jump ahead in different tech fields?

M.Mollen: The tech jump happened because I got a bunch of clever people together, gave them some tech I ‘acquired’, and told them to go wild designing new things.

Anonymous4: And this super-analyst?

M.Mollen: Is a secret. One that I will torment you with so you won’t think about what else I’m doing while you’re distracted.

Golddigger: That’s cold.

DarkAvariel: So, if most of your fleet is in for repairs, where’s that leave you and Black Star?

M.Mollen: Well, the tech guys are working on some new ship designs, and the Nuevo Edoans are very happy with their investment in Black Star products so far, so we’re going to be building up their fleet for a while.

MajorTom: Don’t forget R&D on the captured X’thari ship.

M.Mollen: Ah yes, the X’thari launched a new ship type at us, so we captured it. R&D is being shared between us and Nuevo Edo, but we may be able to do some contract work for the Empire and Confederates once we unlock a few of their mysteries.

l33tpally: You captured an entirely new type of X’thari ship? How did they not blow it up?

M.Mollen: We kept hitting it with ion cannons to disable the systems and keep them down, and I have Marines, so why wouldn’t I toss them at a problem like capturing an entirely unknown ship type?

MajorTom: That’s why we’re Marines. It is what we do.

M.Mollen: Yep. Oh, and if any of you guys are looking to get thrown into a lot of action, by now any major power will be looking to get as many Nomads into highly lethal roles as possible. Soldiers, spies, fighter pilots… the guy they send into the fusion reactor.

MajorTom: Hah!

Parca: That’s a good one.

Hullu_Kapteeni: He’s not wrong, though. But only for grunts. People like me, who are captains, they prefer we stay out of trouble. Is not like Star Trek at all. A very disappointing lack of sexy green women.

M.Mollen: Don’t give me that crap. That lady last week with the cosmetic mods…

Hullu_Kapteeni: Yes, yes. But is one ever really enough?

M.Mollen: Well… ok, you got me there.

ElfMama: And now I need a cold shower.

Dolcett: Hah!

(Raven’s Roost Bar, Black Star Station, Dimiya System)

The bar was packed to capacity, but people weren’t celebrating. The bar had actually been rented out by the owner of Black Star Company, and while he could have simply demanded the use of the bar, he paid the normal rental fee. The bar’s owner, after all, was the wife of Wisteria’s tactical team leader, who had been injured during the defense of Nuevo Edo when a conduit ruptured in his face.

Two of his team members had died in the blast, which made him one of the ‘lucky’ ones, even if he had burns over 30% of his body. There were many stories like him throughout the Black Star Fleet, but especially amongst the group who had been with the Owner the longest, the members of First Group, who had fought alongside him during the Imperial Civil War.

When the X’thari had attacked the Nuevo Edo System, they’d come in at several different points, to split the defenders’ forces. The Owner had known this, and split his groups anyway, to keep the X’thari from gathering and overwhelming the defenders. Every tactical simulation agreed that if the X’thari had come in at the same point, they would have been able to mass enough weight of fire that they could easily have destroyed the entire Black Star Fleet, and the Nuevo Edoan Navy. The only thing that saved them was the caution the X’thari showed in approaching a group that had shown they had weapons and tactics the insectile aliens had never seen before. But the cost of victory had been steep. Oh sure, the dead and wounded were a pittance compared to the numbers who would have died if the fleet was wiped out, but the losses amongst the defenders were not small.

Everyone here was a friend or relative of one of the fallen. Everyone here knew someone who was not coming back. Fully two thirds of the Shinokage’s crew had been killed during the battle, which left her with the dubious distinction of having the highest death toll of any ship that survived the battle. Those who were members of the Black Star Fleet were dressed in full dress uniforms, black upon crimson, in reverse of the normal blacks they wore while on duty. When Shinokage had been repaired, First Group returned through the Gateway to Dimiya, to allow the Nightforge and the Nuevo Edo yards to repair the system’s defenders first, and begin building up the defensive fleet.

The low murmurs of conversation died immediately when a high, piercing whistle sounded throughout the bar. Turning to the source of the sound, the crowd saw the Owner there, standing in his own dress uniform, with his crew from the Starlight Raven standing behind him. As one, they walked through the crowd, until they got to a podium that stood upon the stage where normally a band would be playing. The Owner’s Harem, as the girls were known, stood at attention behind the man that led them all as he stepped to the podium.

“For those of you who have not met me before, I am Mirikon Mollen, Commodore of the Black Star Fleet and Owner of the Black Star Company. Two months ago, the Black Star Fleet, with the help of the Nuevo Edo Navy, repelled an attack upon the Nuevo Edo System by the X’thari, in what has been confirmed to be the largest fleet action by the X’thari since the end of the last X’thari War.”

“We were outnumbered, outmassed, and outgunned. Our ships, built for stealth and sneak attacks, were forced to take on the enemy in pitched battle, because if we did not, then a world would die. It was truly the worst possible situation a fleet like ours could be thrown into, and we went in willingly, knowing that we might all die that day.”

“The victory we won that day belongs not to any one individual or small group of people, but to all of Black Star. It belongs to the captains and officers who fought their ships, and kept a cool head under fire, never ceding defeat, doing whatever they could for victory. It belongs to the engineers and crewmen who worked desperately to keep their ships in the fight, often at grave risk to their own lives. It belongs to the fighter pilots who took on frigates and cruisers that massively outmassed them so that their fellows would have just one more chance to strike back at the enemy. It belongs to the bombers, who struck heavy blows at the enemy, stripping away their numbers before the battle even began. It belongs to the Marines who hurled themselves into the unknown, being the first group to capture a new class of X’thari vessel intact. It belongs to the yard workers, who up to the last moment were turning out new ships, new fighters, new bombers, racing against time to give us as good a chance as we could possibly get. And it belongs to all of you, the silent supporters, the reason many of our comrades fought and bled and went that extra measure in the hopes of returning home. The victory belongs to all of Black Star, and as the Owner, it is my command that not one of you forgets that!”

There were cheers, and the owner allowed them to continue. His people here needed this, as much as the crews of First Group did. He waited a moment, and then raised his hands to quiet the crowd.

“As you know, First Group of the Fleet was hit hardest in the battle, as we were the only group without bomber support. I want you all to know that the decision to throw First Group into that fight was mine, and mine alone. We had four groups of enemies entering the system, and three groups of ships to respond to them with. To say that this was an untenable situation would be a massive understatement. I chose to throw First Group into the fire, knowing that we might lose all the ships, because they were, and still are, the most experienced forces of the Fleet. It was a deadly situation, and I knew that only our most experienced crews would have a chance to pull through. And pull through they did! Battered and broken, but never beaten, they fought and bled and died, but their ships and crewmates survived, and the X’thari did not.”

One of the bar’s servers came on stage with a tray with glasses filled with wine. One by one, each member of the Owner’s Harem picked up a glass, and held it in front of them. Finally, the owner himself picked up the last of the glasses. Servers throughout the bar had just finished replenishing glasses, so that every man and woman in the bar now held a glass aloft.

“We are gathered here to pay respects to the dead, those men and women of all races who fought and fell, but did not fight in vain. Many, too many, died because we fought a fleet that outmatched us, but many more live on because of their courage, their sacrifice. To all the members of the Black Star Fleet, but especially to the survivors and the fallen of First Group, we lift our cups. I promise you now that we will learn from this battle, and will not be caught unprepared again!”

“We fight as one!”

And the crowd yelled back, “WE FIGHT AS ONE!”

With that response from the gathered crowd, he drained his glass, as did the rest of the bar. Again, he waited for the crowd to settle, before he said, “I have just a few more remarks, before allowing you all to get to your remembrances. There are those amongst you who were dependents of a Black Star who fell. Whether they were a slave or free, they were Black Stars, and so are you. If you feared being turned out because they died, rest assured, you are one of us, and will remain so. Those of you who had before tended the home fires, and now find yourselves adrift, we are offering training and new jobs as the fleet expands.”

“Yes, all three Groups will be returned to their pre-battle strength, and then will be reinforced with new ships. In addition, I am announcing that the Fourth and Fifth groups are now planned. As we now have operations in two arms of the galaxy, I have decided that we should be able to protect our people in both arms. Second Group will remain the Home Fleet for our people here in Dimiya, and Fourth Group will be formed to support them, and operations throughout this area of Known Space. Third Group will continue to aid in the building of the Nuevo Edo fleet, and Fifth Group will be created to support operations in that arm, as the X’thari will no doubt attempt to probe our defenses once again. And First Group shall forever be the tip of the spear. We have the addresses of Gateways across the galaxy, so there is an entire galaxy for us to explore. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll find where the X’thari are hiding and take the fight to their homes for a change, with the Black Star Marines leading the way!”

He let the cheers die out, before saying, “And for those of you who realize that a warrior’s life is not for you, I can tell you that we will also be expanding our merchant fleet, expanding our seven Raven-class light freighters to twelve, and introducing a new class of Bulk Freighters, beginning with the BSS Oregon Trail, which had the keel laid just this morning! Or maybe you wish to explore the arts, or learn a craftsman’s trade? We will train you for that, too! And if science is your passion? Then we are always looking for ways to improve the Fleet, and the individuals who serve it. You have an idea that others laugh at because it goes against the norm? We’ve manufactured our success doing just that! Oh sure, we may laugh when we hear the idea, but then we’re going to get to work with you and see if we can’t make that idea a reality that can help our fighters the next time they go into battle!”

As the polite laughter died down, the owner nodded to the crowd, and said, “Now, the bar is open for the rest of the night. Drink up, in memory of those who are gone, because tomorrow we go back to work, so that we don’t shame their memories by wallowing in our grief, but hone it into a sword and shield to protect those who remain!”

(Confederate Intelligence Service HQ, Somewhere on Dimiya)

Alok Paxisys sighed as he reviewed the latest data coming across his desk on the Black Star Fleet, and its enigmatic Commodore. He’d originally thought to turn him into an intelligence asset when they first met, but that idea had quickly been scrapped with the way he suddenly rose in visibility with his Black Star Company. Besides the fact that he was too visible and financially stable to be a proper agent, his attitude, like most Nomads, was completely inappropriate for an intelligence asset. So with ‘spy’ off the table, he had next floated the idea of using the Black Stars as privateers to harass the Imperials while they were in their civil war, and that had been a success. Too much of a success, actually, as he had turned the entire civil war around, helping to end it before the Imperials could be bled completely dry.

After that, he had tried to turn members of the company, but traditional methods didn’t work, and the ‘special’ methods they’d originally developed on Jagloth were useless against a group that already knew them and had defenses in place. Now, they had beaten off a True Variant Hunt of the X’thari, with numbers that, on paper, should have been completely wiped out! This, along with the new Terran Empress supporting Nuevo Edo as a free port, which rumors suggested was Commodore Mollen’s idea, had ruined some of the more hawkish members of the Senate’s ambitions to expand the Confederacy by including Nuevo Edo forcefully, if necessary. Those members were now turning their displeasure towards the Black Star Company, and Paxisys had been ordered to find something they could use against the Nomad and his people.

Alok sighed, and hit a button on his desk, “Alred, get in here. We have work to do.”

(Shvehona City College Career Fair, Shvehona City, Dimiya)

As one of the industrial centers of Dimiya, Shvehona City had a lot of people, even in a world where automation could do a lot. A lot of people meant a lot of kids, and those kids eventually grew up and needed to look for jobs. As it so happened, I needed to hire a bunch of people because of the losses and expansions Black Star was facing, so I did something I really wasn’t used to, and put on an actual suit with a tie and everything. All nicely tailored, of course, so that it made me look like a professional businessman. Or a Man in Black, but most people here wouldn’t get that reference, so that was fine.

Shvehona City College was not the most prestigious school on the planet, but it had a lot of smart kids that couldn’t afford better schools, and were hoping for some kind of education to improve their chances at getting good jobs. Even better, the College opened their annual Career Fair to the public, so anyone who was looking to make a change could come in, see who was hiring, and fill out applications.

The Black Star Company had actually paid for four adjoining tables, with a very nicely done banner with the corporate logo stretching over them. The in-house art department did good work with it. The leader of the art department was actually a widow, who lost her husband at Nuevo Edo when the Artemis took a nasty hit. After my speech at the club, she sought me out (along with pretty much everyone in attendance, but we’d planned on that so it was quickly organized with numbers being called) and said that she was an artist before Jagloth. She showed me some of her work, and I had her get in touch with the HR people to start up an art department. She was actually at a similar job fair at the art college in Thelorious, just like one of our best eggheads was holding an interview event at one of the better known research institutes on the planet. Both of those were also open to the public.

The four tables were separated by the roles Black Star took on. We had the ‘military’ table, with a representative each from the Black Star Navy and the Black Star Marines, the ‘shipping’ table, with Captain Chaebella of the Articuno, one of the Raven-class freighters I employed, the ‘production’ table, with Nondrin taking a break from the yards, lured by the prospect of getting fresh hands, and finally the ‘not sure’ table, where Raven and I were sitting (and also going through applications and interviews of people sent to us by the other tables). Suffice to say, we had a lot of people interested in what jobs we had available. We were, after all, the hot new company that was going out and doing crazy things. When we had reached out to Shvehona City College to arrange our attendance, they were happy to have us. When we made clear what kind of presence we were going to have, they were thrilled, since this would bring visibility to their college from across the planet.

Most people fit into the first three tables. Dimiya was a big planet, but public transport was fairly cheap, and we’d publicly announced where we were going to be, so most of the ‘science’ and ‘creative’ types had gone to those interviews, although we did have some of them come here, if only because they weren’t sure about us, and were looking at the other groups hiring as well. Some really couldn’t afford the transit fees. That was fine with me. The poor people who were getting a hand up were the ones more likely to be loyal to a company that didn’t treat them like dirt, or a cog in the machine.

I had Raven with me, of course, and Cali and Jaynie were providing discrete protection nearby, officially listed as ‘helpers’ who were arranging the gift bags we had put together for those who put in an application. Also with me was Liviana Armata, the former pop star who had been brutalized in the Empire for her stance on slavery, now acting as my assistant. She’d been making good strides lately, and while she wasn’t ready to become a pop star again, her counselor said that it would be a good move to have her out in public without the Stepford protocols on. She was more reserved than she had been as a pop idol, and with how she wore her hair now, one would be hard pressed to recognize her, even if we were on Earth.

Aimon Elasatra

Knelfi Male

Level 5

Titles: Hacker, Programmer, Criminal

I broke myself out of my reverie as another candidate stepped up. Looking the kid over, he was a fairly typical Knelfi, though he was definitely on the scrawny side, but he at least was good at pretending to have confidence. This could be interesting. Raven popped a notice up in my HUD. Oh, so this kid not only had a record, but he tried to hack himself an interview with a fake name? Looking at Raven’s notes, he was actually a decent hacker, though he needed more training to be at the level of some of the people on the Black Star teams. “Hello, I’m Mirikon Mollen, owner of the Black Star Company. Are you interested in working for Black Star, Mr. Elasatra?”

Using his real name brought the kid up short, and pretty much shattered his confidence. He started looking for either cops closing in, or a way to make an exit. Well, that wasn’t going to be any fun. So I hit him with Influence, and said, “Take a seat, Mr. Elasatra. You tried to hack your way into a meeting with me, so now you’ve got one. You didn’t really think a company like Black Star would be without technical support, now did you? Or do you prefer being called Wrayth_Override?”

The kid sat heavily in the chair, surprised that he did so. Now he was looking even more scared, and I could tell he was about to get up. Another bolt of Influence made him sit still, for the moment. “If you move from that seat before I tell you to, Mr. Elasatra, you will be in jail before the day is out, I promise you. Now, what name do you prefer, and why did you use a fake name to get into this event?”

Realizing that he was caught, and not getting out of this on anything but my terms, the kid deflated slightly, and said, “Wrayth. Only the cops call me Mr. Elasatra.”

“Excellent. Now we’re getting somewhere. So, Wrayth, why did you arrange this meeting? I assume you had some purpose?” He started to speak, but I broke him off. “Oh, and my assistants here both have the best in lie-detection software up and running already, and we already have a nice baseline for you, but if I have reason to believe you’re lying, then this will cease to be a ‘pleasant chat’ about a potential job offer, and will move into ‘interrogation’. Do you understand this mild threat, or should I be more explicit in the future?”

“N-no, no need for that. I understand. Lie detecters, mental psy, and who knows what else. Got it. So, I came for the bounty.”

“Oh? It can’t be a physical bounty, since while I’m sure you could do some damage in the digital realm, you are not exactly the right build for a bounty hunter. So it would be one of the digital bounties, then. Tell me more.”

“Well, the black networks, there’s sites only hackers know about, right? Once your ships came back from the planet that’s all chicks, some bounties went up on your company, and you personally, looking for dirt.”

“Ah, so it was someone who did not like our performance at Nuevo Edo. Interesting. I assume that you checked into who was offering these bounties, yes? To make sure you weren’t being led into a trap?”

“Natch. But they were good, had a cutout that would have fooled most people that led to one of the Senators for Dimiya. He was one of the ones who was hawkish about fighting the Impies again, but the new Empress doesn’t want war, and he wanted the new planet you found added to the Confederation.”

Raven brought up four possibilities for sitting Senators from Dimiya that fit the profile, based on their public remarks. Looks like I was stuck in some political garbage. Wonderful! Fortunately, if they were taking this to the dark net, then I didn’t have to play fair, either. Nodding to Wrayth, I said, “Continue. What exactly were you hoping to get?”

“Well, there were three bounties. One wanted your tech stuff, natch, since you’ve got some of the best toys out there. Your ships beet off a shit ton of X’thari, and they’re like bogeymen of Known Space, right? Second was looking for your financials, so they could see if there was anything they could use there. Third was looking for blackmail on you or the people working for you.”

“And why did you come here? It isn’t like I would be so foolish as to keep any of that on me in a public place.”

“Well, the servers have been bashing hackers since they went online. No clue how you do it, but you got some drek-hot software. Anyways, I knew I couldn’t get in the normal way, so I figured maybe it was easier if I was already in the system, legit.”

I leaned back in my chair, and said, “Ah, well that explains things. Very interesting indeed. Now, Wayth, that brings us to the question of what we are going to do with you.”

The kid started looking defensive again. “Hey, woah, I told you everything I know! And I didn’t actually hack you, so there’s no reason to go doing anything to me, you know. I just walk out, we pretend this never happened, and I don’t come near you again, yeah?”

I ignored him, and looked over to Raven. “Thoughts?”

“Including ‘Wrayth’, there have been four hundred and thirty-seven hackers who have attempted to infiltrate Black Star systems since the bounties went live. Fifty-six of those attempts included illicit access to Black Star properties to attempt physical access to closed systems. Of the digital attempts, only three can be traced to the top 40% of known hacker aliases on Dimiya. Those three have been traced to known associates of a certain member of the Confederation Senate. All other top names, including military and intelligence ones, have apparently learned from the lessons we taught them last time. No attempts have been made from hackers associated with organized crime.”

Wrayth’s eyes went wide. “You have all that info, right there, without needing to go look it up?”

Raven looked at Wrayth, and smiled a smile that would freeze one to the marrow. “Oh no, I collated the data starting from when you mentioned the bounties, and then spent extra time cross-checking to ensure other avenues were missed.”

Wrayth was pale already, like most ‘information specialists’ but his face went white as the implications of what he heard hit him, and he realized that he was nowhere near the league of the woman in front of him. Fortunately, he knew when to shut his mouth, it seemed, because he didn’t say anything else.

I looked over to my other assistant. “Liviana, do we have any openings for a… technology and information specialist position in Black Star?”

Liviana didn’t even flinch when I called her by name. It had taken her a long time, but I was glad to see she was coming out of her shell. I made a note to have some music of different backgrounds sent to her, if the counselor agreed. Perhaps instead of pop she could do some blues, or cabaret style songs? That would be more low-key and less ‘peppy’ than a pop idol would be.

“Yes, Master. The Black Star Navy has openings on all new ships, as well as several of the ones that were damaged. The Black Star Marines and the tactical teams both could use hackers for field work during hostile engagements. From the other side, additional security for the Dimiya and Nuevo Edo locations could include another in-house digital security specialist.”

I nodded, and then turned to look at Wrayth. “Now, you have two options. Option one, you get up, leave, and never so much as dream of working against Black Star or anyone we’re working with. You get no bounty, you get no job, but you will have us paying very close attention to you, should we need to bring you in for a ‘discussion’ if you do something we don’t like. Do you understand option one?” I waited for him to nod his head, and continued. “Option two, you forget about this bounty business, come to work for Black Star in a paying position, but you will be monitored and given ‘incentives’ to prevent temptation on betraying the company or its employees. You will work at the site we designate for you, and this will include moving from your mother’s basement in Essrion to someplace more secure. You will be an employee, not a prisoner, but until you prove you can be trusted, you will not be trusted further than I can throw you. Betraying the company will result in your enslavement, or worse. Do you understand option two?”

Wrayth nodded.

“Excellent. Now, what are you going to choose, Mr. Elasatra?”

(Confederate Intelligence Service HQ, Somewhere on Dimiya)

Alok Paxisys was not pleased. The pressure from ‘on high’ for results was growing, and he had no results to show the important people who wanted to control Black Star. He’d already talked with Zumrora, and they were leaning on the military side as well. Fortunately, the military higher-ups had firmly quashed any ‘direct action’ against a Confederate company without direct written orders in triplicate and sealed with the President of the Confederation’s signature. Considering Mollen’s psych profile, that was probably a good thing.

So far, he’d managed to avoid having to send any of his own operatives against black star, instead contracting out the work to hired hackers and the bounties on the dark nets. The progress to date was more or less exactly as he thought it would be. There were some penetrations into the outer shell of Black Star’s networks, but everyone had known for ages that nothing good was kept there. According to his analysts, there were actually at least three networks in play. There was the public network, which was useless. Then there was an in-house network that only employees could access. Finally there was the military network, which only Black Star Military could access. Encryption on all three networks was impressive, but the two private nets were a cut above.

The obvious solution was to find a weak link, like an employee comm, and slip in through there. But Black Star employees were surprisingly vigilant in using separate commlinks for work and personal use, and Black Star commlinks were designed so that they locked after a few minutes of disuse, and had to have a password and biometric scan to unlock. A failed password attempt blocked the device itself until a system administrator unlocked it. Attempting to physically crack the encryption on the commlinks resulted in the destruction of the link, Black Star ‘security’ was dispatched. The fact that the system didn’t collapse under the paranoia involved astounded most of the analysts in his department. It was unbelievable that a whole company would go along with such measures without SOMEONE cheating! But Paxisys knew better. Until the hiring binge leading up to his expedition, the majority of Mollen’s people were at Jagloth. They’d seen what happened when someone didn’t take tech risks seriously. Information Security was practically the religion at Black Star.

None of this helped him with the problem of certain Senators on the Intelligence Oversight Committee wanting to ‘reign in’ Black Star. Those idiots on the Committee thought Black Star was like any other company. Company messing up your agenda? Find some leverage, and get them to change. Maybe you buy in enough to muddy the waters. Maybe you get some ‘accidents’ and shake consumer confidence. Maybe a scandal rocks the leadership to keep them distracted, or get some government oversight called in. Whatever methods you used, there were ways to deal with recalcitrant companies.

Those worked on normal companies, run by normal men. Black Star was privately owned, so there was no stock to manipulate. Most of their properties (and all the ones worth mentioning) were in space, so you couldn’t arrange for local ‘assets’ to cause sabotage or steal data. You couldn’t even get teams to the site usually because they had their own fleet guarding their facilities. The Owner was impossible to draw into a scandal, since he was an admitted playboy who openly enjoyed the affections of multiple partners. The one time someone tried to cry ‘rape’, he produced full video of the entire evening, from multiple viewpoints, including the woman in question propositioning him and the explicit sex tape that followed. After which the woman’s banking records were exposed to the public, showing that she had been paid by a competitor’s CEO, which opened a string of legal actions resulting in Black Star now owning the company that produced their commlinks.

Paxisys had shut down the idea of using mercenaries to attack Black Star. There was no way he’d throw people into that kind of meat grinder for no reason. When the Senator behind that suggestion got insistent, Paxisys showed him the spy probe footage of what happened in the Badlands, with the Black Star Fleet destroying ten criminal outposts as a message to those who simply encouraged an attack on their people, and the ‘battle’ to destroy the pirates at Booty Bay, wiping out 73% of the pirates in the entire sector in one fell swoop. He showed the of the ‘Pirate Queen’ being executed again in that meeting, when one of the Senators suggested taking some Black Star workers or their families into ‘protective custody’.

But the idiots were still insisting that he do something. Yes, Alok Paxisys was not pleased. Not in the least. Now he had to come up with a plan that would be more aggressive, but not lead back to him. Somehow.

(Eclipse Club, Shvehona City, Dimiya)

Interviewing prospective employees all day was tiring work, but when I talked with the various managers, all of them agreed that it may have been boring at times, but it was the best way to get some quality recruits from an underserved pool of applicants. The built in loyalty we’d get for recruiting directly from lower-income and less prestigious areas was a good thing.

The art head and the egghead in chief had both decided to return to the orbital compound with their security teams after they finished their day’s interviews, but I had a more diverse crowd with me, and so we ended up heading out on the town for a bit of a ‘breather’. By which I meant ‘going to the club for drinks and dancing’. Thankfully, one of the more popular clubs in Shvehona City was nearby. Even better, Alais Loraric was performing that night, bringing her unique blend of knelfi technojazz to the people.

Liviana was actually excited to get out and see her fellow singer on stage, which the counselor agreed was a positive sign. Being out in public as herself, and going to a music venue on top of that, was more than she had done since before she’d been enslaved. Raven reserved the VIP section for us ahead of opening, so we could all relax and enjoy ourselves when we weren’t heading out into the club proper for drinks and fun.

Of course, it wasn’t all just fun and games. Oh sure, I had a drink in hand, and I looked relaxed, but Raven and I were busy subvocalizing a conversation as we went over the data on the bounties, and who might be behind them. We’d caught all the intruders before they could do anything, but I’d rather not wait until someone got lucky. Why wait when you could just go to the root of the problem and take care of the problem in a more permanent fashion? I didn’t need these kinds of distractions while I was rebuilding and planning my next moves.

M.Mollen: So, what do we know?

Raven: The majority of the hacking attempts are amateurs, probably only in it for the bounty. There’s a few who are ‘professionals’ but are in the mid-range of proficiency, and are known for being ‘hackers for hire’.

M.Mollen: So, definitely a concerted effort. But why are none of the heavy hitters in on this? Anyone going to the trouble of setting up an anonymous bounty on the dark nets would at least reach out to the big names? Maybe not the top 10%, but the fact that we aren’t seeing any takers in the top 40% is strange.

Raven: And the lack of Government or Organized Crime direct affiliates in the group of hackers?

M.Mollen: Well, the government groups wouldn’t be able to do anything legally, so they’re probably trying to stay ‘hands off’ unless there’s some orders coming down. We have close enough ties to the intel groups here on Dimiya that they know our abilities, and they wouldn’t care to push it. The organized crime groups, on the other hand, are still reeling from our ‘demonstration’ in the Badlands before heading to Nuevo Edo. We stomped the whole system for simply not telling those pirates that fucking with us was a bad idea. The two major syndicates here on the planet both have friendly relations with us, and we’ve worked to keep those relations friendly.

Raven: All right, so if we eliminate legitimate government action and organized crime as possible sources, we’re looking at a roughly 60% chance that the source of these attacks runs back to the corporate sector, and a 60% chance that it leads to a black or illegal government operation or rogue elements within the government playing their own agenda. There is a 30% overlap between the two, suggesting either an alliance or a government member with strong corporate ties. Remaining 10% is reserved for foreign polities, and Nomads who may be working against Black Star for their own reasons, possibly to manipulate us into attacking targets within the Confederacy in order to weaken us, or the Confederacy.

M.Mollen: Hmm. The three attacks that came back to associates of the Senator, where does that fit in with this?

Raven: Malon Adynore is one of the Senators for Iylia, a predominantly Human-Knelfi world in the border area between the Confederacy and the Terran Empire. She is also a member of the Shining Path faction. They are basically Unificationists, who believe that all Known Space should be unified into the Confederacy, for the good of all peoples, and to prevent war, blah blah blah. They’re war hawks, basically. According to the records, Senator Adynore was actively campaigning for the Confederacy to declare war on the Empire while the Civil War was going on, so they could grab territory from the Empire while they were fighting amongst themselves. She is also on public record saying that it is a shame that the fighting stopped so quickly. The hackers that her associates hired were quite proficient, probably in the top 25% of the hackers on Dimiya.

M.Mollen: We caught one of them, right?

Raven: Yes. Harry Shaw (hacker alias: 1/0, DivideByZero) was part of the team that broke into our Thelorious offices. They attempted direct access to the servers, hoping to get around the stand alone protocols which we’ve implemented on Black Star commlinks.

M.Mollen: They went for the dummy servers, right?

Raven: Yes, 1/0 had copies of the official building schematics on file with the Thelorious government, and his team proceeded directly to the room marked Internal Communications Servers. As designed, when he connected to the fake server farm without disengaging the physical overrides, the security system went off, sealing the room and dropping flash-bangs from concealed compartments in the ceiling. After detonation of the flash-bangs, the atmosphere in the room was ventilated to vacuum conditions. Once the team of five were rendered unconscious due to hypoxia, atmosphere was restored and security teams apprehended them. They are currently being held in the Black Star internal holding facility at the orbital compound.

M.Mollen: Hah! And did they ever come close to finding the real server room, Raven?

Raven: *sigh* No. In fact, they ran directly past the door marked ‘Secondary Waste Management Facility’.

M.Mollen: You owe me twenty credits, you know.

Raven: Yes, yes. It has already been added to your account.

M.Mollen: All right. Let me know when the interrogators start really getting to the good stuff. Tell them that all methods are authorized, these prisoners were never there, and never existed. Whether they continue their non-existence in life or as a posthumous reminder depends entirely on their cooperation.

Feeling good that we’d worked through at least one target for a ‘friendly chat’ whenever we could arrange a meeting, I turned my attention to the club again, just in time to see another familiar face heading our way. Elnaril Triswyn, leader of the Crystal Fang Syndicate, was heading our way. Considering his niece was playing here, and we were in his town, he probably owned this club. Given what we’d learned, I was glad he came, so I didn’t have to find him and confirm what I was beginning to suspect.

I signaled the bouncer to let Elnaril in moments before the elder knelfi could pull the ‘do you know who I am’ card. Elnaril looked to me and nodded slightly. I nodded in return, and motioned to an empty spot at our table. “This should prove interesting.”

(Eclipse Club, Shvehona City, Dimiya)

I got up to give Elnaril the traditional greeting as he approached. Little touches like that weren’t expected of non-knelfi, but when someone offered them without being prompted, it was appreciated. “Ah, Elnaril my old friend! You’re looking well. And I see your niece has already established herself here on Dimiya. I had hoped she would find her way after that unpleasantness on Jagloth, and I’m glad she has.”

Elnaril smiled as he clasped my hand in the traditional way. “Ah, Mirikon, you rascal. You’ve been holding out on me! Already you have your harem, including the brilliant Raven, but who is this new flower you have attending you? Surely you will leave some of the lovely ladies for us lonely old businessmen?”

“Bah!” I scoffed as I motioned Elnaril to one of the chairs. “As if you don’t have all the women you can handle. Or is your niece cracking down on you, trying to wheedle you into living a proper family life after all this time?” I laughed at the joke, but didn’t let it continue to the point of awkwardness. “But where are my manners! Elnaril Triswyn, meet Liviana Armata, formerly of Terra. She is a lost soul I picked up on my travels during the Civil War, and has made great strides. Liviana, meet Elnaril Triswyn, arguably one of the most powerful men on Dimiya, and certainly the most powerful one in Shvehona City, thanks to his varied enterprises in the less regulated fields, and his strong network of associates stretching throughout the sector.”

Elnaril looked at Liviana for a second, studying her. “Armata? Back before the Terrans had their Civil War, there was a very popular singer who got into some trouble for speaking the truth when it was unpopular.”

Liviana lowered her head, to try and keep the paleness that had flooded her features out of view, and I decided to rescue the poor girl. “Yes, she is the same one. By the time I purchased her contract, she was under quite a bit of strain, you see, and it was best to keep her out of the public eye, but she’s made great strides recently. I was actually going to suggest to her that she might try her hand at singing again, but perhaps straying away from the pop music she used to sing. Something slower, more adult, where she can take her experiences and use them, and people aren’t putting her under the pressure of being a perfect pop princess.”

“Oh hoh. That is certainly an interesting idea you have. Little Alais has shared a few recordings of her pre-war work with me, and while I’m afraid that that style of music did not much appeal to a man of my age, I could clearly hear the strength of her voice, and the skill involved as she sang.” The knelfi man looked over to Liviana with a smile, and said, “No pressure, my dear, but I would be eager to see what you might accomplish in a new style of music.” Then he turned back to me, and said, “But alas, I cannot spend all my time speaking of music and beautiful flowers. It is fortunate you came here this evening, my friend, as I was about to seek you out to confer on you about some troubling developments. It seems your recent successes have upset a few worthies who had hoped to take advantage of different situations, but your actions ruined their plans.”

I nodded, since this was now getting into the actual business of things. “Yes, Raven and I had just been discussing some of those ‘worthies’. It seems someone has taken out several large digital bounties, hoping to get dirt on Black Star. Raven was quick to point out that those information specialists in your enterprises and those in your associates and competitors have remained out of the hunt. This makes me glad, as we have always had a good business relationship, and I would hate to see a cloud come between us and end a friendship because of some idiot politicians.”

Elnaril chuckled. “Ah, yes. You may find it hard to believe, but Nakahara-dono and myself barely had to do any persuasion at all to convince the organized groups to remain out of this battle. The message you sent to the various organizations before leaving on your expedition was received with the intent it was meant, and while the groups will not align themselves with you, they have contacted me, as I have one of the better relationships with you, and wished to make sure that you knew they were most emphatically not aligning against you.”

I laughed at that little joke. “In other words, they remember that my fleet destroyed their outposts as a warning before taking out the Pirate Queen. Good. That was the kind of message I was hoping for. Please tell your ‘associates’ that nothing would please me more than to continue friendly business relationships into the long term, and so long as they do not confuse my amicable nature for weakness, then we shall not have a problem.”

Pausing momentarily for a drink, I continued, “As for those who actually are arraying themselves against me and mine, they shall be dealt with, as Black Star always deals with such insolence. This anonymous bounty business reeks of disrespect. If they had simply come with some kind of open challenge, then I would be content with simply smacking away the threat. But this method of doing business is distasteful, and so I must take more extreme measures.”

The knelfi smiled, and said, “I believe that will put a great many minds to rest, my friend. I don’t know how much you’ve looked into the situation, but I can tell you that before the bounties were posted, several of the local groups were approached by cutouts who were traced back to Confederate Intelligence. In fact, the cutouts were so obvious as to have no worth as cutouts at all, save on paper. One of my younger talents said it felt as though they were offering up raw recruits instead of seasoned agents for this task of finding some way to pressure the infamous Black Star Company.”

I sighed, and said, “I had hoped I was wrong about that, but the Senator we have our sights on is a member of the Intelligence Oversight Committee. The senior senator from Iylia, whose ‘Shining Path’ will lead her to ruin if she continues her course of action.”

Elnaril nodded slowly. “Ah, yes, I know the one you speak of. She is a troublesome one. She lost family in the last Empire war, you know, and not just in battle. Iylia was invaded briefly during the war, and several transports of fresh slaves had been taken from the planet before they were forced to retreat back to the pre-war lines by the Alliance entering the conflict. The Senator’s daughter was among those taken, and never found again.”

“A terrible fate for any parent, and not one I would wish on even my enemies.” Elnaril raised an eyebrow at that statement, and I smiled. “Oh, the knowledge that their child is possibly alive out there, somewhere, but is being kept from them? That’s just cruel torture without reason. No, I would not do such things. I may kill the parent and leave the child an orphan if the parent moves against me, but stealing the child from the mother is cruelty itself. No, I don’t allow such things in Black Star. But that also means that the foolish woman is most likely a zealot, and will not be persuaded of anything that promotes peace and profitable business.”

“True enough. However, according to those I know, she is the leader of the other members of the Path on the Committee. If she were to falter or fall, then the others could be persuaded, as they are businessmen. They simply see the greatest profits in promoting a war, since their families happen to own several large arms companies. Oh, and the junior Senator from Dimiya on the Committee is the scion of a family who was hurt a good deal by your eliminating the local pirates, as their orders for ‘customs inspectors’ and escort craft went down considerably when there was less perceived need for them.”

“Ah yes. Him and two others were quite put out that I saved the major shipping companies millions if not billions of credits in ships, crews, and replacements for lost cargo. They were even more upset when those companies bought modified Raven-class freighters for their ‘high value’ shipments.”

“Oh, modified how?”

“Removed the stealth settings, and increased power to shields, mostly. They don’t have the greatest cargo capacity out there, but they are fast, and can fight well enough to give a pirate pause. For high value shipments, where the value of the shipment makes it an attractive target for thieves, but it does not take up too much area, it is an extremely effective design, even if they don’t have the smuggling compartments that may or may not have existed on the Raven since before I took ownership of her.”

“Ah, the story of how you got hold of the Raven and your wonderful companion is one I simply must hear.”

“Well, I cannot go into all the details for sensitive reasons, but I happened to be on Luna at the time…”

(Confederate Intelligence Service HQ, Somewhere on Dimiya)

“Are you certain about this, Sir?”

Paxisys shook his head. “No, of course I’m bloody not sure of this! This has to be the dumbest play we could possibly make with the man, but those idiots on the Committee aren’t leaving me any choice. The syndicates at least still take him on his word that he’s a ‘live and let live’ kind of operator. So long as you don’t engage in operations against his people, or encourage others to do the same, he is content to allow you to live, and will engage in business with you. If you work against him, he figures out who was to blame, and destroys them.”

The intelligence officer sighed. “But we don’t have a choice. The Shining Path has too many members on the Committee, and that damn zealot Adynore has them all following her lead, saying that Black Star is a ‘destabilizing influence’ that has to be ‘brought under control’ before they convince other companies to expand beyond the Confederacy’s borders as well, shielding them from potential problems. The Empire’s stance on nonhumans has always been a selling point for the Path, and other polities aren’t known for being inclusive of outsiders, but with Nuevo Edo being a free port, they suddenly see a threat to the controls they’ve put in place.”

“I understand that, sir, but is calling in a mercenary group really the answer?”

“No, but the Committee is demanding some direct action, since the bounties aren’t working, and both the syndicates and the military won’t move. So we are forced to use the ‘pirates’ to attack their ships between Dimiya and the Nania Gateway and simply pray that it won’t come back on us personally.”

His subordinate looked confused. “I’m sorry, Sir, but if this Mollen and his people are as good as you say they are, then if they survive the attack, they WILL be looking for revenge, and the ‘pirates’…”

“Were paid for with shell accounts leading back into the Shining Path’s ‘black’ accounts. I have also arranged for a message to arrive to him through ‘back channels’ letting him know which Senators are targeting him and what they are demanding, but the message will be unfortunately mistimed so that it arrives before the intended time, in enough time for him to blunt or prevent the attack. Hopefully that will be enough.”

“Sir, if you do that, your career may well be over if the Senate finds out.”

“Alred, if I didn’t do that, our lives would be over, and a significant portion of the Confederacy would look like Terra or the Amazon world before we were done. Never underestimate an immortal hell bent on revenge, especially when they have access to weapons that can wipe out any technological world.”

“Good point, sir.”

(Mercenary Vessel Fall of Theramore, Interstellar Space)

“Message received from the advance scouts, milady! The target has left Dimiya, heading for Nania as planned.”

Lady Proudmoore nodded to the technician. “Very well. Assume that they have military drives. These are freighters, not military, so they won’t waste their precious time on maneuvers without reason, and for some reason the local pirates aren’t doing enough to discourage them.”

The Captain of the Theramore shook his head, but didn’t go against the leader of the Kul’tiras Mercenary Group in front of everyone. The haughty woman had a reputation for blowing up at such things, and with her extensive psy powers, the explosions could easily become more than verbal. Still, he wasn’t sure whether the Lady had actually read the reports that the intel group had been providing. The reason the local pirates weren’t ‘doing enough to discourage’ their target company is because the company had killed the majority of the pirates in the entire sector, and there wasn’t a major criminal group on Dimiya that would touch a member of the company on purpose. Responding to an attack on his people that, by all accounts, did very little actual damage with the destruction of almost every installation in the system the pirates came from, and killing or enslaving all the pirates they captured gave them a reputation for retaliation with overwhelming force. They were the kind of group that would answer the death of one with the death of a thousand.

Unfortunately, Lady Proudmoore’s Father was the Lord Admiral of Kul’tiras, and the leader of their little world in the Free Worlds Alliance. As such, she was in control of this group, and there was nothing a mere Captain of a heavy cruiser could do to talk her out of this job, especially once the contracts had been signed. Her ‘honor’ wouldn’t let her back out of the deal.

When the proper time came, Lady Proudmoore ordered, “Deploy the tarpits! The Theramore and her escorts are to attack any ships belonging to the Black Star Navy immediately, but open a channel to their freighters. We’ll have their technology, and the money from the contract, and become the most sought-after mercenaries in the Alliance!”

(BSS Starlight Raven, Interstellar Space)

It felt good to be back at the controls of my ship again, even if I knew that I was flying into a trap. This was something I had missed in the weeks and months of building a business and running Black Star. Sure, fleet-level conflicts were awesome, but the thrill of having a single ship at your command, fighting those who would try and take it from you. When this little diversion was over, he really was going to have to try and get back in the field more.

For now, though, it was time to put the recently upgraded Raven through her paces, and teach some Mercenaries a lesson they would not soon forget. If they lived.

Alarms went off as the ship fell out of warp. With a look at Raven, she nodded. “Tarpits in our path, Captain. We are picking up three ships. Make them as one Heavy Cruiser and two frigates, Kul’tiran make. Transponders claim they are the Fall of Theramore, Lament of Arthas, and Culling of Stratholme. They are all registered to the Kul’tiras Mercenary Group. In other words, they’re Kul’tiras Navy in all but name, so their forces can get experience in conflicts outside the Alliance without declaring war.”

I scoffed at that. “I guess the greedy little Senators couldn’t get anyone closer to home to agree for merc work against Black Star even with Confederate Intelligence giving away our exit path.”

“That is true, but the ships are formidable, and they are standard warships, not converted merchantmen like pirates.”

“Very well, have they opened communications?”

“Wait one… coming through now, language is Alliance trade standard.”

“This is Lady Proudmoore of the Kul’tiran Mercenary Group. On orders of the Confederate Senate, you are to heave to and prepare to be boarded while our forces search your hold for contraband.”

I looked at the blonde-haired woman on the screen, and said, “Oh, so you’re playing it that way, hmm? Well, that’s really too bad, Lady Proudmoore. I’m not feeling in the mood for surrender today. But if you ask me really nicely, I can accept your surrender to me. Perhaps I’ll add you to my harem of slavegirls. Doesn’t that sound like a much better use of your assets than trying to play pretend that you’re a warrior? Or perhaps you’ve been hoping for this all along, hoping a nice, strong man would come along who will conquer and ravage you again and again in front of your crews, before turning you over to them to use until their hearts’ content?”

“YOU INSOLENT BASTARD! I WILL HAVE YOUR HEAD FOR THIS INSULT! YOU WILL DIE A THOUSAND DEATHS BEFORE I AM THROUGH WITH YOU!”

Seeing the communications cut off, I looked over at Raven, and said, “Was it something I said?”

Raven sighed, and said, “Maybe, just maybe, Captain.” The laughter from the ship’s intercom was loud and riotous, however, since everyone aboard had heard the conversation piped through the speakers.

“Boss, you do realize that she’s soon going to send pretty much everything she has at us, right?”

Raven looked over, and said, “Jaynie is correct. Scanners detect they are preparing to fire their weapons.”

“Well, looks like the party is getting started! All hands, get ready, we’re going evasive! Jaynie, Cali, focus on taking down incoming missiles, but leave the ships for our other weapons. Shearah, drop our own tarpit to keep these idiots from escaping. Sheila, Carissa, Sana, prepare to repel boarders, just in case. Also prepare for combat if we get one of those ships in a big enough of a piece to take prisoners. It is time for our first weapons test of the new Dragonbreath torpedoes.”

“Wait, you’re going to test that on a Heavy Cruiser and a pair of Frigates?”

“Yes, Sheila, I am. Perfect testing conditions, actually. Nice and isolated so no one is around to see what happens. So thoughtful for the prey to prepare the test site for us.”

“Well, I guess it sucks to be part of the Kul’tiran Mercenaries today.”

(Mercenary Vessel Fall of Theramore, Interstellar Space)

“DAMNIT! WHY IS THAT SHIP STILL IN ONE PIECE?!?”

Lady Proudmoore was not pleased. The arrogant man in that freighter had publicly humiliated her in front of her crews! As if she would ever lower herself to being some freighter captain’s harem slave, or sleep with her crews! This man was a disgrace, and the universe would be better off without him in it. Their contract included killing or capturing Black Star ships, so they didn’t need this fool alive to complete their mission.

Unfortunately, the ship was extremely fast and far more agile than any ship that size had a right to be. It was clearly a smuggler’s ship, and it was using its speed to best effect, keeping the gap between her forces and the freighter open, and getting slowly wider, giving her crews a more difficult job of attacking him due to range. And his own tarpit trap had forced her ships into the same problem, not allowing them to maneuver in FTL and take him quickly.

The damnable man had some skill piloting a freighter, she would give him that. Perhaps if he was captured, then they could make use of him, if he could be properly broken first. Yes, she would take her time breaking the man’s mind, teaching him to respect and fear her. He would pay for his insolence in front of her crew.

“Enemy vessel coming about! Milady, it looks like they’re preparing an attack run!”

“All ships close and open fire! A freighter doesn’t have anything strong enough to harm ships made by Kul’tiran hands! It is a trick in order to do a flyby of us and decrease the engagement time enough that they hope to get past us and free of the tarpit! I’m not letting this bastard get away from me now!”

Suddenly, the Culling of Stratholme exploded in a light show bright enough to be blinding on the bridge of the Theramore, half a light-second behind the faster frigates. There was a moment’s shocked silence, and then, “REPORT! Sensors, what the hell happened to the Stratholme?”

“Unknown weapon system, Milady! We don’t know what they hit them with, but the explosion was off the charts!”

“Tactical room is going over the scans. Evidence of a launch from the freighter’s forward-facing tubes. Believe they have replaced standard missile launchers with torpedoes.”

Proudmoore growled, “There is no way in hell a simple torpedo did THAT!”

There was another flash, equally blinding, as the Lament of Arthas disappeared in light and fire as well. “Sensors! Did you get a read on the weapon this time?”

“Negative. We do not have scans of the weapon. Initial analysis suggests some kind of high-energy weapon focused along the freighter’s length, like the guns of their Assassins.” The sensor technician paused, and then said, “Target is turning to engage us directly!”

The Captain stepped in, blatantly disregarding Lady Proudmoore’s presence and authority. “Emergency evasive! Helm, full speed, full maneuvering, keep us out of line with that ship! Random course changes at your discretion! Full retreat until we escape the limits of their tarpit, all shields aft, double strength! Close all blast doors, reinforce structural integrity fields! The moment we are free of the tarpit, drop to warp, do not wait for orders! I want us a full light-day away from here the moment we are able!”

Lady Proudmoore growled as her eyes flashed at the Captain, and she opened up her Psy talents to crush his mind for suggesting they run in the face of the enemy, but then the sensor technician called, “OH SHIT!”

Then the whole world became light and sound and pain, as the Theramore was thrown violently about, sending Lady Proudmoore flying into a bulkhead.

(BSS Starlight Raven, Interstellar Space)

I whistled appreciatively as we reviewed the results from the new Dragonbreath 2.0s. Well, I’d probably have someone rechristen them as Starbolts. Yeah, that worked nicely. “Raven, make a note to change the name of the new torpedo design to ‘Starbolt’. Inform the design teams that their initial prototypes have been properly tested, and found to be up to the task of wiping away Black Star’s enemies. Add a twenty percent bonus for the quarter to the one who suggested disabling the safeties.”

I paused for a moment, and said, “And get them to figure out a way to do IFF targeting, so that we don’t accidentally hit our own people, or planets, with the things if it comes to a fight.”

Raven nodded, and said, “Recommend that we restrict Starbolt use to the warships and Ravens, as they have the adequate maneuverability, and will find it easy enough to set up shots without presenting too large a profile or endangering friendlies, including planets in the launch path, and require multiple authorizations for Starbolt use, akin to old Nuclear Missile Keys on blue-water navy ships. At this time I see no reason to have these weapons on the bombers. The Dragons’ mission profile is more than adequately served by the current Dragonbreath torpedoes.”

“Agreed. Status of the enemy ships?”

“Frigates Culling of Stratholme and Lament of Arthas have been destroyed utterly. The energy was far too high for their shields to deal with. The Heavy Cruiser Fall of Theramore survived, barely, but is a wreck. Sensors indicated that the cruiser turned and began evasive maneuvers, coupled with throwing full strength to aft shields in an attempt to flee the engagement zone. The forward third of the ship appears to be mostly intact, but the aft sections of the ship have been destroyed.”

“Hmm. And the extra shields were enough to get it off with just that much damage?”

“No, the random course changes meant that the torpedo missed the timing, and reverted to its extramassive state too soon. Resulting in a slight deviation from projected course and speed.”

“Very well, life signs on the Theramore?”

“Twenty-five life-signs. Large portions of the remaining ship have been opened to vacuum, naturally, and there are radiation concerns in other areas.”

“Well, have everyone suit up so we can go welcome our new slaves on being the first survivors of a successful superluminal weapons test in history.”

(Mercenary Vessel Fall of Theramore, Interstellar Space)

“-dy!”

Everything was pain. Oh Gods, why did everything hurt? She hadn’t had THAT much to drink, right? No, wait, she was on ship. She never drank on ship. Bad example for the crew. So why did everything hurt? And what was that wailing?

“Milady! Can you understand me?”

The lights finally stopped swimming in front of her eyes, and Lady Proudmoore managed to focus on the person speaking to her. Who? Oh, yes, the Captain. He looked like he’d been injured.

“What?”

“The Black Stars, milady. They hit us with something we’ve never seen before. We’re on emergency power and dead in the water.”

Lady Proudmoore grit her teeth, fighting through the pain (and probable concussion) to say, “How bad?”

“Unknown, milady. We have limited internal communications, but they are sketchy where we do have them, and we can’t raise anyone aft of section five on any deck. It is like the aft two thirds of the ship are just GONE!”

“Sensors!”

The sensor tech who had been watching the fight came up, and touched her shoulder lightly, and she felt her head get slightly better. “Sorry, Ma’am. Best I can do with my powers. Right now we’re triaging wounded and I’m the only one with healing Psy powers.” He took a breath, and then said, “I have gone over the data we have before we were hit. In each case we detected weapons fire from the Starlight Raven approximately one hundred and twenty seconds AFTER we got the light from the frigates being destroyed. Sensors went out before we could get the light from whatever hit us.”

That thought chilled the blood of any spacer. There was only one thing that could make your enemy detect the light of an attack after the attack had already hit. “S-superluminal? In a tarpit?”

The Captain looked shaken as well. “But there are laws! Treaties! It is madness! No one would dare use superluminal weapons! The entire galaxy would rise up against them!”

Slowly, Lady Proudmoore shook her head. “There are treaties against using them against inhabited planets, even by accident. If a superluminal weapon should miss and hit any planet or moon with a population, the treaties would demand everyone descend upon Black Star and rip it apart. But there are no planets here.”

The Captain looked ‘agitated’, to put it mildly, and she had to agree with the emotion at the moment. “How did they launch a superluminal weapon while in a tarpit? Surely there is no one mad enough to tamper with the safeguards?”

The Sensor tech shook his head. “The owner is a Nomad. Didn’t one of them start the Imperial Civil War by crashing a shuttle into the Imperial Palace since they knew they wouldn’t die?”

Lady Proudmoore sighed. “There is no point asking if ‘whether’ someone would do such a thing. They clearly have. Now, can we get this news out? Or call for a rescue?”

The Captain shook his head as he looked up from a tablet one of the techs handed him. “Long-range communications are dead. They were located in section seven, deck two.”

“How bad is it, really, Captain?”

“We managed to get some of the external sensors online again. Everything aft of Section 5 is simply gone, Milady. Most decks Section 5 is breached, or at least damaged. We have confirmed life signs from twenty-two crewmen, including bridge crew. The rest of the ship’s crew is most likely KIA. I am afraid we will not be coming home with a sterling record, Milady.”

Lady Proudmoore snorted at the thought. Three ships destroyed, and only 22 survivors out of a detachment that had sported almost thirteen hundred? Sterling record indeed!

*THUNK* *THUNK* *THUNK*

Blinking at the sudden sounds of metal on metal reverberating through the hull, Lady Proudmoore looked at the sensor tech. “What is happening?”

“Wait one. Trying to get a picture…” The Sensor tech gulped as he looked up from his tablet, and turned it so the Captain and she could see. “Cables, ma’am. We are being taken under tow.”

“So we’re not going to be destroyed, but captured, hmm?”

The Captain nodded his head. “The Black Stars are registered as a mercenary group, so there is some hope that they will abide by the Accords and offer Ransom.”

“This is the Black Star Ship Starlight Raven. We are conducting legitimate salvage operations under the Unified Mercenary Force Accords. Given that your ships initiated conflict with ours without prior declaration of intent vis a vis Section 3.14.159-26 of the UMFA, your vessel and your persons are to be considered property of the Black Star Company until such time as you are either Ransomed to your planet of origin or sold at auction or in private sale as overseen by a member of the Interstellar Slavers’ Guild.”

“As a member of the Interstellar Slavers’ Guild, as well as the owner of the Black Star Company, it is my pleasure to announce that if Kul’tiras does not pay your Ransom, you will all be sold to truly horrible places, where I do not doubt that you will never know freedom again. Should any of you choose to resist when our forces come aboard to collar you in preparation of transferring you over to our ship, you will be stunned, and THEN collared with your Stepford protocols activated, forcing you to sit, silent and motionless, in a compartment until we reach Kul’tiras. Of course, by that time you will no doubt have died from dehydration, if the life support doesn’t fail first. I would recommend you not resist.”

Lady Proudmoore sighed, and said, “Help me to my feet. We must at least look presentable before we are shamed in our return to Kul’tiras.”

(BSS Starlight Raven, Kul’tiras Gateway, Free Worlds Alliance)

“Unknown Freighter, this is Kul’tiran Navy Vessel Waycrest’s Pride. You are in Kul’tiras Space, hauling the remains of a warship. Identify yourself, and cut your engines to prepare for inspection.”

I looked at the time. Hmm. Just under a minute since I exited the Gateway. Not bad, not bad at all. Still, they were getting awfully presumptuous. Better give them something else to think about before they started getting pushy. Maybe… ooh, yes, that would do nicely.

“Raven, have Lady Proudmoore come to the cockpit.”

Raven chuckled. “You do know she’s still in that maid outfit Sana is making her wear, right?”

“Even better! Have her up her on the double. And when we go live, prepare to send our response in the clear to everyone in the system, and rebroadcast to every news group in Known Space that you can reach.”

The hatch opened, and Lady Proudmoore was standing there, dressed in a uniform that could best be described as ‘Slutty French Maid’, with her hair dyed pink and pulled up in two side pony-tails. Her face was frozen in a vapid smile, like a perfect bimbo. I nodded slightly, that would do nicely. “Good. Now, you will stay there and smile while we project your humiliation to all of Known Space.”

Turning to face the camera, I waited until Raven gave me the signal that we were live, and said, “This is Captain Mirikon Mollen of the Black Star Ship, Starlight Raven. Negative on cutting our engines and negative on inspection. We are conducting a salvage operation under Section 3.14.159-26 of the Unified Mercenary Forces Accord, and will not yield our bounty to you.”

“That Section only applies to the destroying craft, not freighters hired to haul—”

“I know damn well what it applies to, you rat-infested fecal connoisseur! I destroyed the Fall of Theramore, Culling of Stratholme, and Lament of Arthas after those three ships of the Kul’tiras Mercenary Group attacked my lone freighter in interstellar space. Unfortunately, the miserable hunk of wreckage was the only piece large enough to be worth hauling back. In accordance with Section 3.14.159-26, I have also taken all of the surviving crew of the Fall of Theramore as my property until such time as they can be ransomed or sold at auction. Among the survivors is one Lady Jaina Proudmoore who you can see behind me. She and the rest of her crew are available to be ransomed. To ensure that all offers are treated fairly, I will retransmit all ransom offers and counteroffers in the clear system-wide. If offers are not sufficient for the annoyance the Kul’tiras Mercenary Group has provided me, then as a member of the Interstellar Slavers’ Guild in good standing I will conduct an auction to sell them at the Zandalar Slave Market in the Ihm Imperium, where no doubt they will go for a heady price.”

“Also in accordance with the UMFA, I am announcing the public sale by auction of the remains of the Fall of Theramore, starting in five hours, which should give plenty of time for anyone within range of a Gateway who wishes to bid on this pitiful piece of scrap that couldn’t even stand up to a freighter.”

I smiled into the camera. “I will not be entertaining further questions until after the disposition of the wreckage and slaves. This transmission ends.”

(Confederate Intelligence Service HQ, Somewhere on Dimiya)

“Sir! The Starlight Raven has just resurfaced!”

Alok Paxisys sighed in relief. He had initially thought that sending the warning would allow Mollen an easy chance to evade or defeat the planned ambush, but as hours turned to days and there was still no word about the Raven, he grew concerned. When the BSS Articuno, another Raven-class ship, appeared in the Starlight Raven’s place, delivering the cargo she was supposed to be carrying, he got worried. Now it was almost two weeks after the Raven had left Dimiya, and he was finally getting some answers.

Looking over to his aide, Aldred, he asked, “Well? Where did they end up?”

Aldred shook his head. “They ended up in Kul’tiras, sir. Eyes on the Gateway there said that they dialed in from Desolace.”

“Why in the hells would he go there?”

“Because he was hauling what looked like maybe half a warship behind him, saying it was salvage from a battle. He claimed to have been attacked by three Kul’tiran Navy—” he coughed, “sorry, Kul’tiras Mercenary Group ships, and he named two frigates and a heavy cruiser confirmed to be out at the time. Preliminary scans in system say that the remains of the ship he is hauling is the Fall of Theramore, as he claimed when he announced his presence to every news group in Known Space. We also have video that says he has captured the young Lady Proudmoore and is offering to Ransom her under the Mercenary Accords.”

Paxisys waved off the aide’s backhanded joke. It was an open secret that the Kul’tiras Mercenary Group was just Kul’tiran Navy being sent outside their borders. That was a polite legal fiction they were allowed to get away with because it was profitable for everyone involved. But to take on three of their ships alone and come out on top? That was impressive. Looking over to Aldred, he said, “And that is why we don’t want to be on his bad side. The man is damnably good at what he does. He simultaneously humiliated the Kul’tirans in front of the galaxy and made certain that he will get top dollar for ransom, if only to keep their enemies from buying her on the slave market.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“So, how did he cheat?”

“Sir?” Aldred looked confused.

“The man once told me himself, ‘If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying’. Oh sure, he’ll play fair in an exhibition, or in training where you’re trying to learn new things, but otherwise he plays to win. So assume he cheated somehow. Were there any Black Star ships unaccounted for?”

“Only Black Star ship out of dock during the time the Starlight Raven was ambushed would be the Articuno, and they didn’t leave the system until after the attack occurred.”

“So they want anyone watching to know unequivocally that only one ship of theirs was involved. Cheeky, and definitely his style. So, one freighter took on three warships and survived. How badly damaged were they?”

“Long-range scans said they looked undamaged. Could they have been faked?”

“Not with the timeframe. It would have taken most of that two weeks to haul the wreckage through space to the Desolace gate. They didn’t have time to stop for repairs, and their hulls mean that any real battle damage would have required some time to repair, even if they could repair underway. It isn’t something you’d do at warp.”

Paxisys frowned. One freighter took down three warships, essentially untouched. Obviously he cheated somehow, but in what way? Perhaps a new weapon? “Any modifications to the Raven, that we can tell?”

“Yes sir. Scans before they left port indicate that the missile bays have been replaced with torpedo launchers. This dramatically reduces their available load, going from forty-eight missiles to eight torpedoes in the same space. Dual launchers fore and aft. Bays would have six forward-facing torpedoes and two aft-facing ones, unless they expanded the space.”

“Their Dragonbreath torpedoes are powerful, but not THAT powerful. What could they have done?”

“Sir, why not just ask him? He’ll probably be in good spirits after ransoming the slaves.”

Alok laughed. “From the mouths of babes! Yes, have a courier deliver a message to one of the Black Star offices, asking for a meeting ‘when convenient’.”

(Origin Club, Thelorious, Dimiya)

The Origin Club was the most prestigious and exclusive club on Dimiya. No mere nightclub for the masses, the Origin Club was a strictly ‘members only’ affair that catered to the rich and the powerful. Getting a membership, even on a provisional basis, required the support of other members of the Origin Club. The number of people who even knew of the Origin Club’s existence, save members and the trusted staff who worked there, numbered in the mere dozens, across the entire planet.

Simply put, if you knew about the Origin Club and didn’t work there, you were either a member, or you were on one of two lists. The first list was for people who were potential members, either as legacies or as up and comers. The second list was for people to watch in case they caused problems for the club, so that a quiet ‘accident’ could be arranged for them. Some people, naturally, were on both lists.

This exclusivity and discretion gave the Origin Club a cachet that allowed politicians, businessmen, religious leaders, and all other types to speak freely often crossing the party lines or other divides that separated them in the outside world. Many a deal had been hammered out in the sitting rooms of the Origin Club over one’s intoxicant of choice.

In the Trophy Room, a group of twelve Senators and business leaders were meeting, away from the prying eyes of aides, the press, and other annoyances. It was not unusual for any or all of them to be at the Origin Club, or for them to sometimes have a ‘working dinner’ with their fellows to work out the best forms a piece of legislation should take. Tonight, however, their conversation was on less pleasant topics of how they should arrange the future of the Confederacy for the ‘greater good’ (which included THEIR good, of course).

Malon Adynore of Iylia was the ‘hostess’ for their current get together, and the Senator was quite upset with the news that had broken earlier that day. “I am telling you, this Black Star group is far too powerful! And they’re getting more power by the day! We need to step in and bring them in line!”

Aiwin Lukian, CEO of the largest shipbuilding firm in the Confederacy, shrugged his shoulders. “We have tried the business measures, but his products are good, and reliable. They’ve gotten considerable favorable press for their designs thanks to the Imperial Civil War and the business at Nuevo Edo. The only reason they aren’t cutting more into our bottom line is because the owner seems content to build small military craft and freighters, and has not ventured into industrial craft. Now, he’s putting the first large freighter of his, this ‘Oregon Trail’, into space, and several of the mid-sized shipping companies are already interested in what it can do.”

Kamata Kanko, one of only three humans in the gathering shook his head. “It is no use going through the normal criminal routes, either. Nakahara-dono of the Rose Dragons and Triswyn-dono of the Crystal Fangs have spread the word that Black Star is not to be touched. Even rival organizations, like our Jade Serpents, cannot move openly against them. All the underworld would unite against any syndicate that moves against the Black Stars, if only to ensure that their retribution does not result in too much ‘collateral damage’.”

Lukian looked over to the man, and said, “Are they still that scared over what he did in the Badlands, Kamata-dono? I understand that destroying the outposts was a setback to most of the syndicates, but surely that would encourage them to get some revenge?”

Kamata shook his head. “Oh, there are many who would rejoice if they could bring the Black Stars down, but they are not foolish enough to risk open conflict with a group as powerfully armed as they are, who have been proven to destroy targets that merely encouraged others to their doom. On the other hand, Black Star is willing to deal with those who aren’t against them, and their products are high quality. Not always the best, or the fastest, but reliable, and discrete. And their products are priced fairly. He has their fear, but he also has their respect. It is very upsetting.”

Adynore growled in frustration. “And now even mercenaries are useless against him! You’ve heard the terms he arranged for the release of those damned Kul’tirans who couldn’t even destroy a single freighter? 2.1 MILLION credits for twenty-one crew members! The standard rate is 10 thousand per head, for officers. And the price for that Proudmoore bitch? He got another 2.1 million for her alone!”

Faylen Miravaris, an executive in one of the more prominent arms manufacturers in the Confederacy, shook her head. “That is not what worries me, to be honest. We already know that he possesses the ability to produce Greenwave. Once the Proudmoore girl was released from her slave collar, she began informing those who needed to know that her ships had been destroyed by FTL torpedoes.”

Adynore smiled like a hawk at that news. “Excellent! With that, we can nail him with the treaties banning those weapons. He’ll have to do whatever we tell him to!”

Miravaris sighed. “If only it were so simple. It seems as though the treaties were written to prevent attacks on planets or lunar colonies. Attacking a ship would not apply. At the time, battles at faster than light speeds were a possibility in interstellar space. The development of tarpit traps removed that as a factor, but the treaties were never changed.”

Lukian shook his head. “There is no way we’d be able to get the treaties changed, not in any length of time that would help us. There is some hope for the court of public opinion, but their owner has developed a somewhat flamboyant persona as the ‘plucky upstart able to fight above his weight class’, and his successes make him popular. He need only say he was looking to improve his forces against Pirates or the X’thari, and people would cheer him on. His defense of Nuevo Edo has made the Black Stars into heroes in many people’s eyes. A smear campaign may do more harm than good.”

Miravaris leaned back in her chair, considering. “From the reports, he is quite the lecher, so have we considered a seduction? We could arrange a honeypot for him, either to get a scandal, or ensure we can influence him. Perhaps a mental psy user? Surely we have one with enough subtlety for the job that we can call on?”

Taeral Elcaryn, one of the Senators from Dimiya itself, shook his head. “We have several in the intelligence services who could do the work, but the CIS is refusing point blank to issue such orders without written authorization, citing the fact that they’ve already burned substantial assets attempting to infiltrate Black Star before we began pressuring them, and they will not throw away ‘vital security assets’ on ‘political games’.”

Adynore growled. “We’ll need to replace the leader of the CIS then, to ensure that they have the… guts necessary to do as they’re told. I want to know what the bastard has on them that we don’t, so we can turn and make them start doing their jobs!”

“Perhaps they just know me better than you do, hmm?”

(Ziunov, Ihm Imperium)

Ziunov was a charming little planet, on the edge of the Imperium, not far from the border with the brash Terran Empire. Those humans had tried, from time to time, to make in-roads against the Imperium, but the sturdy warriors and cunning leaders of the Warrior and Leader castes had stopped the enemy each time, and driven the Empire back more than once. Ziunov was originally an Imperial world, but after the last war the Imperium had claimed it as spoils, and dismantled the small fleet refueling station that had been there, turning Ziunov into a shining example of an Ihm colony.

A local month ago (1.3 Terran Months), there was a large disturbance as an unidentified ship emerged from FTL at the edge of the atmosphere, stopped by the automatic safeguards, no doubt, and proceeded to crash in the mountainous region of the southern continent known as the Lamtara Rise. Naturally, such an event was major news across Ziunov for a day, perhaps two, but after it became clear that there could be no survivors, the story was relegated to a background piece on whether the safeguards on FTL engines should be strengthened.

There was an unusual bit of news related to the crash, however. When the first flights had tried to reach the crash site with flyers, they were still several kilometers away from the site when they had begun experiencing interference with their instruments. Sensors detected increased particulate residue in the air, and so it was assumed that something aboard the crashed ship had been released into the atmosphere, and was interfering with the systems. When satellite pictures showed the extent of the wreckage, search and rescue efforts were called off, as there could be no survivors from such a wreck.

Of course, that was when the Salvagers got involved. When the ‘interference’ continued despite several days of wind and rain in the mountains, people began saying that perhaps there was some new technology (or perhaps even Lost Technology!!) that had survived the crash, and was active. However, the nearest settlement was almost two weeks away on foot. Even taking transports as close as they dared before walking the rest of the way, they were still looking at hiking for at least a week, thanks to the mountains.

Zass Whitescale was leading this particular venture. A rare variant of the Ihm people, the Whitescale clan were far, far more resistant to the cold than others of their people. The cold wind, rain, and snow of the mountains would not bother them. They were, in fact, the only Salvager group who could operate in the Mountains without flyer support, which is why getting the exclusive contract for the crash site and whatever they found there was easy enough.

She looked around at her four hulking brothers, Bhox, Roxl, Uathru, and Throsk. All fine specimens of Ihm malehood, and all Whitescales who would not hesitate on a mission like this because of the cold. She would have preferred to have one of the men from the local village along as well, but having a playmate to warm her burrow while they were working was not worth the trouble bringing a ‘normal’ Ihm would cause them. Perhaps when they got back, however….

She shook her delusions, fun as they were, aside. Now was not the time for such things. The flyer had left them two days ago, and already the climb into the mountains was getting treacherous, even for an Ihm who could easily take the cold, and had prepared for things, even going so far as to prepare more primitive ‘backup’ tools, should the source of the interference in the mountains cause problems with their more modern equipment. While all five of them carried a share of the gear, her brothers naturally carried more in their packs, since they were better equipped to carrying large loads. Thanks to this, they actually had supplies to last a local month, if they needed it, but they hoped that they’d be long out of the mountains, at least, before supplies started to become an issue.

Climbing to the top of a rise, Zass pulled out a pair of binoculars fitted to her Ihm features. Such a device was not native to the Ihm people, but was something they had adapted from the Humans during their conflicts. The ability to enhance one’s vision was a powerful tool, but the idea of using tools held in one’s claws for the task, rather than using Psy to enhance the eyes directly, was an approach the Ihm had not considered. She knew how to enhance her sight the ‘normal’ way, but when in the wild one always needed to be aware of one’s strength, and conserve their energy for the proper moment. Learn from your enemies as well as your allies, that is what the Matron had said.

Looking through the device, she could just see the remains of the alien ship far off in the distance. She couldn’t be sure of what kind of ship it was, but there appeared to be a cave forming nearby under an overhang that hid it from satellites. Perhaps there was a survivor after all?

(Confederate Intelligence Service HQ, Somewhere on Dimiya)

Alok Paxisys was busy. Regardless of what certain Senators thought, he had more responsibilities than simply overseeing their political games against the Black Star Company. There were many potential threats to the Confederation, both from without and within. Finding those threats and ending them before they became a problem was the job of the Confederate Intelligence Service.

Currently, he was going over the forensic report on the events of Jagloth. The planet had been burned to a crisp almost two years ago now, but a proper review of the intelligence apparatus took time, and the task was not made easier by the large number of resources that had been destroyed when the legion was eliminated. But that was fine. This was not a report for the Senate or anyone on the ‘outside’. This was an in-house report, to try and find out if there was anything that the CIS could have done to prevent the disaster, short of having psychics who could flawlessly predict the future, or completely shredding the rights of citizens.

Unfortunately, due to the speed of the Legion takeover, and the way it spread, traditional intelligence techniques would not help, once someone had gotten a sample of the nanites and begun replication. And according to sources in the Nomad community, the Nomad who had been responsible had apparently altered the nanite coding himself, so there would have been no warning there. No, the only place where they could have done better was in interdicting the ‘Hundeherstellar’ nanites or better tracking who the nanites went to when they had gotten into the underworld of Jagloth. Thankfully, the syndicates had been most helpful in eliminating the smugglers who brought in the nanites, and his sources told him that the word was out that anyone bringing the nanites into Confederate space would find themselves on the wrong side of an airlock if the syndicates found out about it. Situations like Jagloth were bad for business, after all.

A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. Looking up, he saw his aide. “Ah, Alred. What is it?”

The aide looked flustered. “Captain Mollen has sent a response to our request to meet. He just sent a response saying that he was back on Dimiya, and will be happy to meet with us, but suggests tomorrow, as he will be attending a meeting with a certain Senator tonight.”

Paxisys blinked, stunned. “He said WHAT?”

(Origin Club, Thelorious, Dimiya)

“Perhaps they just know me better than you do, hmm?”

Senator Adynore’s head snapped up, looking to the source of that foreboding sentence. Sitting at the other end of the table from her was Rina Virstina, one of the junior Senators for Dimiya, and a rising star in the Shining Path faction. Glowering at the younger woman, Adynore said, “Explain yourself.”

Virstina smiled, and stood, so that the entire room could see her clearly. And then her face began to shift, as though melting! Several people gasped in horror, and pushed back from the table, but Adynore stood transfixed, unable to turn away from the sight of the other woman’s features warping to change into that of the human they had been talking about, though still on Virstina’s body. When ‘she’ spoke again, it was with the deeper voice that one associated with the leader of the Black Star Company.

“It is as I said. Perhaps the intelligence groups simply know me better than you do.” ‘She’ smiled, and looked around the room. “Oh, dear, I guess some introductions are in order? You see, my name is Mirikon Mollen, Captain of the Starlight Raven, Owner of the Black Star Company, and Commodore of the Black Star Navy. Though I expect they’ll be insisting on me being an admiral if we get many more ships.”

He held up a hand as some people were starting to come out of shock, and were about to interject, “Now, some of you may be wondering how I am here, looking like this? Well, let us just say that there is proprietary technology that we have not released to the public, and leave it at that. Not everything Black Star does is suitable for the open market, but it does have its uses.”

Adynore growled, now that her target was right in front of her. “What did you do with Senator Virstina?”

“Ah, Rina? I’m afraid that she is very tired after the thorough workout I gave her while persuading her that she should stop supporting a losing cause. You see, she was always just using you people in the Shining Path to further her career, but she represents the region around Shvehona City, you know? And I am very popular there, enough that she really couldn’t refuse to meet me. From there, I seduced her, and took great care to pump her long and hard… for information, of course. By the time I was done, she was shouting your secrets so loudly that the whole building would have heard her if not for the soundproofed walls. When she told me of this lovely meeting, I decided that I simply must attend in her place, since she was sleeping off our exertions.”

Adynore bristled with rage. That WHORE! She sold out the party? Her people’s destiny? Everything? And for what, some man who was rumored to have slept with half of Nuevo Edo already? The whore was going to be ruined when Adynore got out of here. There would be no place on this planet – no, the entire Confederacy! – that she would be able to hide from her shame!

The… thing that had masqueraded as Virstina chuckled wickedly and turned ‘her’ attention to Kamata. “Now, Kamata, I believe you were warned about what would happen if you tried to move against Black Star. In fact, I know you were, because I was personally informed that all the syndicates on Dimiya had been informed of the consequences of that. And after listening to your conversation, I have decided that you are too stupid to be a syndicate leader. Fortunately, a disagreement between me and you does not need to become a disagreement between Black Star and the Jade Serpents. See, when I am done here I will go to your second, and have a discussion with him. If that doesn’t prove fruitful, I will continue having discussions as I elevate people from within your organization due to vacancies at the top.”

The Yakuza leader bristled at the way he was being talked down to, like a child, and snapped. “What, you would threaten to kill me, in front of all these witnesses? You would be ruined! You may be able to get to one of us, but by then we would have called every police officer on this planet to come and arrest you, and there would be no escape for you then.”

“Ah, foolish, foolish Kamata-chan. You see, I am not worried in the slightest about any of the people in this room. After all, each and every one of you are dead men and women, you just haven’t figured it out yet.”

‘She’ turned her attention to Miravaris, who was trying to reach someone, anyone on her commlink. “Oh dear, I’m sorry, Miss Miravaris, but I am afraid this room is quite excellently shielded to prevent any communications from coming in or out. After all, the Origin Club prides itself on discretion, and this meeting was to be of the utmost discretion. Senator Virstina saw to it personally, though the funds came from a Shining Path account. Yes, I am afraid all of you are completely cut off from the outside.”

Adynore growled, and said, “Enough of this nonsense!” She slapped the ‘call’ button to summon the Club staff so they would come and open the doors, which would break the secure comms protocols on the room, at least long enough for an emergency message to get out.

‘Virstina’ simply smiled, and said, “Oh, no, I’m afraid it hasn’t been nearly enough yet, Senator. You see, my people have already taken control of the building’s computer systems, and have quietly isolated this room, to ensure that we will be completely undisturbed. I did not go to all the trouble of crashing this party to allow you all to run away like frightened rats.”

Lukian looked fearful. “You cannot do this! We’re some of the most powerful people in the Confederacy! You will become a pariah! You will be hunted throughout the galaxy!”

“Ah, Lukian. Are you talking about your little ‘insurance policy’? Having a fund of a million credits ready to go should you die of unnatural causes to be paid out when your executor is presented with the head of the ones responsible for your untimely death is inspired, truly. Unfortunately, it is a trick I have seen before, and I’ve already made preparations.”

‘Virstina’ chuckled at Lukian’s look of shock. “Oh yes, I have. You see, a well known assassin is on Dimiya as we speak. When we conclude our conversation, he will receive a packet of information detailing the nature of your contract, as well as the evidence pointing to one of Senator Adynore’s rivals within the Shining Path, and their concerns that she was gaining too much influence in the movement. That evidence will be released publicly just before the assassin takes out the target, and I’m sure they’ll thank you for your quick payment on services rendered.”

Adynore rose from her chair. She couldn’t let this Nomad continue to control the flow of the conversation. She needed to reassert her dominance, and move it into an arena where she could outmaneuver him, or at least make it so that she could survive this. She would strike back when he least expected it. That in mind, she glared at the man that was somehow wearing a woman’s body, and said, “What is it that you want? You’ve made your point, now, what deal do you want to make it as if this never happened? I assume that Virstina is your fall woman that will be executed to answer Lukian’s bounty?”

“Oh my, no. It will be the Senator from Vidara, Daniels. You really have been more and more virulent in your anti-human rhetoric lately, and it was disturbing him greatly, since he planned to oust you before the next elections. Taking out your supporters was simply an added benefit.”

“As for Rina, she has the perfect alibi, if a bit scandalous. She was seen in the company of a dashing young man last night at one of Thelorious’s trendiest clubs, where many people caught the two of them on video. The two of them went to a nearby hotel, where they were both seen entering the hotel, and going up to a penthouse suite. Their neighbors made a noise complaint because of how loud they were in their lovemaking. Since then, she has canceled her appearances for today, which weren’t many since it is the weekend, and enjoyed a day in bed, and room service has confirmed delivery multiple times to the room. In the meantime, a prosthetic disguise with her face will be found next to these discarded clothes by the police, confirming that someone posing as her infiltrated the club, where checking identification is not done, to keep from leaving records of who comes in or out of the club. When she checks out of the hotel with the man tomorrow morning, she will have a very valid alibi, I assure you.”

Miraveris looked up at ‘Virstina’, and said, “You said we were already dead. What did you mean?”

“Ah, you poor thing. You never checked your food and drink for poison. Well, not a poison, in this case, but nanites. They’ve been placed in each one of your meals, and by now have spread throughout your body, simply waiting for a signal. What will these nanites do, you’re probably wondering? Well, simply put, they will induce cardiac arrest in your hearts, killing you all quickly and cleanly, with no evidence as to who killed you. Honestly, I have some wonderful people working for me.”

Then ‘she’ pressed a button on her bracer, and Adynore felt a stabbing pain in her chest, before things went dark.

(BSS Oregon Trail, Black Star Shipyards, Dimiya System)

There had been quite a crowd gathered for the official launch of the Black Star Company’s newest ship, their first large freighter design called the Oregon Trail. Painted in their signature all-black look, the Oregon Trail was designed with an internal hold to carry up to 160 standard cargo containers, stacked in blocks of 16. Eighty percent of the ship was the hold, which was generally kept in vacuum and null gravity. The reason for that was that it helped prevent the spread of any parasites that might sneak aboard one container from infecting the rest of the cargo. It also had the added benefit of making it so that if there was an accident in flight, the number of things that could go wrong went down dramatically when you didn’t have a big tube of air with a bunch of heavy containers that had been secured by their weight now suddenly flying around in zero g. They loaded and secured everything in vacuum and zero g, which meant they never had to worry about what happened if the air escaped or the gravity turned off.

The rest of the ship was primarily engineering spaces, of course, with the massive engines that were able to send such a bulk through space at anything other than a slow crawl, and quarters for the eight-man crew, as well as some passengers if any cared to make the trip on a freighter. While any passengers and crew the Oregon Trail might take on were not going to be living in luxury, there was enough space for them to at least have more comfort than was normal on a freighter.

Megumi knew all this, of course, because she had the job of junior engineer on the Oregon Trail! She was a Nomad, which is why you had a cute (in her opinion) human girl with a Japanese name on a planet mainly inhabited by Knelfi. She’d been taking classes at the Shvehona City College to get Engineering certifications and some skill XP, when she found out that Black Star was going to be at the Career Fair! How cool was that? The biggest and best company run by a Nomad in the game was hiring at her school! She went by to check things out, and boy was she surprised! They had gone all in on the recruitment, with four tables!

She’d just gotten her certifications, so she was super happy to be chosen as the junior engineer for the Trail. Not only was she going to be working for the coolest company on Dimiya, but she was going to be able to learn in the field on one of their newest ships! How cool was that? Super cool!

Now that the official launch was over, though, she had to make sure everything was ready for when the ship started taking on cargo. There was so much to do! It was too bad that she didn’t get a chance to hang out at the party more. The owner was so dreamy, with the dark and dangerous vibe he gave off. And his harem weren’t shy about his exploits, so the whole company knew that he’d done a lot of ‘stamina training’. But she didn’t expect the owner to pay attention to her, not until she did something awesome to—

Whoosh!

Hmm? Why was that hatch opening? There shouldn’t be anyone coming in here for a while. All she was doing was tuning up the engines, after all. Ooh, it was probably the Chief, looking to make sure she was working hard! Well, she’d show how hard she was willing to work! She stayed bent over in the engine space where she was working, and just called out, “Hey Chief! I’m just tuning up these engines a bit! They were on factory standard, which is fine for new engines, but I tweaked them a bit, and we’re going to have about five, maybe ten percent more power over factory settings! That’ll get us a bit more speed and turn!”

She yelped in surprise when a hand came to rest on her hip, and she became very aware that she was only wearing a skin-tight ship-suit, thanks to the narrow spaces she had to get into sometimes. Then a voice that most definitely WASN’T the Chief’s came from behind her. “Oh good, I was wondering what my cute junior engineer had gone off to do so quickly after the ceremony.” She knew that voice, that was the owner’s voice! Oh god, and he was touching her butt! This was like something out of one of those movies she’d been watching with her roommate before she’d gotten the job with Black Star!

The owner chuckled softly, and a voice whispered in her head. “Such interesting images in your head. The one with the pretty engineer who gets taken on top of her engine is a nice one. Would you like to make it a reality?” And his hand wasn’t rubbing her butt any more, but going oooh! That was not her butt at all, but something much more exciting. Oh god, the skinsuit was tight enough that it probably showed everything to him! So embarrassing!

Megumi gulped, not daring to move, or to turn and look, and said, “But what about your girlfriends?”

The voice returned, outside her head this time, “My pets know that I enjoy sampling delights from all over. They accept this, because they know that I always come back to them. Sometimes, they join in. Oh, I see that thought excites you. Perhaps next time I’ll bring one of them with me, hmm? For now, why don’t you come out and let me get you out of that suit, hmm?” And then the hand groping her spanked her butt, causing her to yelp in surprise.

Oh goodness, she couldn’t wait to tell the girls from the dorm about this! They were going to be so jealous! Trying not to shake her hips too obscenely, she slipped out of the engine housing, and turned to find herself face to face with the owner of the company, her boss. And he was smiling at her, like a wolf watching a deer.

“Good girl. Now let me see what I get to play with today. Do a good job, and I’ll give you the ride of your life.”

Oh goodness, the girls were going to be so jealous!

(Owner’s Office, Black Star Yards, Dimiya System)

Once I’d done my part in enhancing my image of a charismatic playboy and womanizer by giving the young engineer of the Oregon Trail a story to tell her friends (which would only help the story now spreading about Senator Virstina), I returned to my offices at the Yards to do a bit of paperwork that Raven shoved in front of me the moment I got in the door. Ah well, the ‘playboy CEO’ has to actually work at the ‘CEO’ part of things as much as the fun part sometimes. Of course, this was just me passing time until my next meeting started. This one promised to be less fun than my ‘meeting’ with the young engineer, but it needed to happen.

Right on time, Alok Paxisys walked through the doors of my office, with Zumrora at his heels. They both looked like they’d been having more than a few nights with little sleep. I stood and offered my hand to each of them. “Ah, gentlemen. So good of you to come. I hope you’re both doing well?”

Zumrora laughed at that, while Paxisys just grumbled. The military spook nudged him with an elbow, and said, “I’ve been quite well. Fortunately, the military has a history of not playing the kind of political games that certain Senators were up to, and backed me when I told them, politely, to go to hell unless they had written orders when they asked for some action against Black Star. Idiots! Poor Paxisys, however, has been running himself ragged trying to deal with them. Haven’t you, Alok?”

Paxisys mock glared at the two of us, before saying, “Well, I can’t say that it hasn’t been an interesting couple of months, ever since you went and killed all those X’thari. The ‘idiots’, as Zumrora puts them, were very upset that you halted their plans for the expansion of the Confederacy. The potential jump of being the ones to control access to an entire arm of the galaxy with all the potentially untapped resources was making some heads spin.”

He sighed dramatically, and continued, “To have that dream snatched so suddenly from them by the declaration of Nuevo Edo as a free port was a shock, make no mistake. And following on the heels of the ‘lost opportunity’ of the Imperial Civil War, where they might have ‘liberated’ a few worlds from the Empire if things had gone on much longer! They were positively distraught, I assure you! Unfortunately, it would seem that their grief made them lose track of reason, which brings us to the actions against you, and your company.”

I smiled as I leaned back in my chair, “Then it is so very fortunate that they managed to get caught up in an internal struggle within their faction, yes? And even the rather nasty insurance policy one of them had was cleanly dealt with.” I paused, and said, “And as a happy coincidence, it seems that all of those who were pushing for actions against my company are now indisposed, or are too weak to do anything about it, while there are a great many other shiny objects to distract them as the press tears into the Origin Club.”

Paxisys grunted. “And it just so happens that the only member of the group that was supposed to be meeting at the club that night who survived was publicly seen having an affair with the CEO of the Black Star Company, and they were seen both entering and exiting the building, giving them solid alibis.”

“Yes, well, when I met with Miss Virstina to see about her positions on my company, I found that she was a lot less set on things than her compatriots were, and was simply riding coattails to reach higher. I made certain to test how flexible she was during our discussion, and found it quite enjoyable. And wouldn’t you know it, but even the backlash of a tryst with a playboy is sliding off her when there are so many other, more interesting stories coming out right now.”

Zumrora laughed “So, now that you’ve created a bunch of chaos, yet again, what do you have in mind for going forward?”

I looked over to Zumrora, and winked, “Don’t think I don’t know that you’ve probably got money riding on this. Anyways, I’m going to be doing some rebuilding, and once we get our fleet back to where it was, if not better, I plan on doing some exploration of the Gateway network.”

Zumrora leaned forward. “The Nuevo Edoans showed you their little ‘address book’ of Gateway Addresses?”

I smiled, and said, “Oh, yes. But exploring the Gateways isn’t something you can do with a single ship. All our Gateways have defenses, so why wouldn’t Gateways in unknown areas? And we know that one or more of those Gateways must play home to the X’thari, so it isn’t something you can just run out and send shuttles through to check things out. Even with an all-Nomad crew, that would be very risky, since you’d be telling them where you came from.”

Zumrora nodded. “And no reason on giving the X’thari a reason to show up any earlier than they might otherwise. Speaking of which, I have a couple requests from the military. First, they’d like to see about buying weapons from you, and second, they’re interested in some ‘training exercises’.”

“Oh? Well, let’s start with the weapons. What are they looking to buy, exactly?”

“To be frank, they want to buy those FTL weapons you have, and the torpedoes you used at Nuevo Edo. Bombers had been thought to be a waste of space for the last few development cycles, but you’ve shown they can be very nasty, and an FTL weapon? Yeah, that is scary to pretty much everyone.”

“The Dragonbreath torpedoes I’d be willing to sell to the Navy, sure, along with the Dragon Bombers. But the Starbolt is something I’d like to keep a close leash on, for obvious reasons. Especially because it really is just a torpedo with a hyperdrive that has had the safeguards removed. Oh, there’s more to it than that, but that is the entire secret of how the Starbolt works inside tarpits. Currently I have them locked down requiring effectively the same level of command authorizations as people use for Exterminatus weapons. The only reason they were on the Starlight Raven for that run was because I didn’t know how much force I’d be facing, so it was the perfect time for weapons tests.”

Zumrora sighed. “Well, that’s to be expected, but the fleet commanders will be happy to get those bombers, even if the fighter pilots won’t be happy about a ‘downgrade’.”

“Hah! Fighter pilots aren’t happy unless they’ve got the fastest thing in space. That will never change. So, what about these ‘exercises’?”

“Well, they Navy has started taking possession of the Assassins they ordered from you, and the CSN Luvon Gilrie has been commissioned and has a full crew. What they don’t have is experience with the kind of weapons and tactics that you’ve used with the Black Stars. The Navy wanted to know if they could put the Gilrie on detached duty to shadow one of your fleet groups to gain some experience.”

“Well, Zumrora, send the captain to me, and if they aren’t an asshat, I’ll allow them to join with us temporarily so they can learn a little.”

(Lamtara Rise, Ziunov, Ihm Imperium)

When she had seen the wreckage of the ship from atop the rise, she’d measured the range to be just over forty kilometers away on a straight line. On flat ground, that would have been a day’s walk, perhaps two if they took it easy, or had problems. In the mountains, however, it is not so simple as just moving in a straight line. Privately, Zass thought they were making fairly good time to move through trackless mountains, keeping their orientation despite the weather and their instruments going haywire just as the flyer instruments had. It was evening on the fourth day after sighting the wreckage, and they were now at a small shelf not two kilometers below the wreck site. Tomorrow, they would be able to see the wreck itself.

Bhox nudged her with his large elbow. “Sister, I don’t think we’ll find a better spot to make camp before the sun leaves us. I know you wanted to be at the crash tonight, but…”

Zass shook her head. “No, you’re right. I wished we could make it, but I already sent the message saying we would not be able to make it this night. That collapsed ridge from the wreckage set us back too much.”

Roxl laughed. “I’m just glad that the radios still work! Not good if you need help and have to climb all the way out of the mountains to get it, and then climb all the way back because the flyers won’t fly.”

Zass smiled at her brothers. “Yes, thankfully it is just the nav computers and sensor readings that are affected, not communications. Otherwise the Matriarch wouldn’t have approved this job without twice the crew, to make sure we could make a trail back to base. Anyway, set up the camp, and I’ll call in and let them know our status. Throsk gets first watch tonight.”

Standing watches on the side of a mountain might seem like a foolish idea, but there were wild animals that lived in the mountains, and more than a few of them were quite capable of eating a full-grown Ihm, and weren’t shy about trying. A few of the most worrisome ones were too stupid to realize that they couldn’t actually digest an adult Ihm, but that hardly mattered to the person being eaten, as they’d still be dead. So yes, setting a watch was a standard practice, even on the side of a mountain. ESPECIALLY when you were on a side of a mountain and the instruments you usually used to keep the predators away couldn’t be relied on to work properly.

The next morning, they ate a cold breakfast of chilled ruglee jerky, and began their final climb. Two hours later, they had crested the final rise, and were able to look upon the wreckage from up close.

And that was when the first surprise came.

“Where is all the wreckage? Are we in the right spot?”

Zass didn’t bother to rebuke Uathru’s words, which could be taken as disrespect against her navigational skills. If she were honest, she was wondering much the same thing herself. “Of course we’re in the right spot! You see that huge-ass hole in the shelf? That’s solid rock! You don’t just make a hole like that with a hammer. We’re looking at an impact crater for sure, and recent, none of the edges have been weathered.”

“Then where is all the wreckage? There’s just a few pieces of hull on the ground! The pictures we’ve seen suggested there was a lot more of the wreckage intact.”

Indeed, that was the question. The configuration of the hull plates was the same as they’d seen from the initial satellite pictures and from other long-range scans, but now when they got here, the hull fragments were the only thing left!

Bhox shook his head. “There’s been cloud cover since the crash. No chance for satellites to update the visuals, just the heat scans and EM readings. Looks like we got swindled.”

“Another company? We’re the only salvage group on the planet that could make the climb.”

Roxl grunted. “Unless there was someone with a flyer crazy enough to fly in without instruments or comm beacons. They’d be flying blind, and who knows what would happen to electronics after prolonged exposure to whatever’s causing this, but it isn’t impossible.”

Throsk growled. “Or maybe they’re the ones causing the interference.”

Zass shook her head. “Nope, not believing it. With the amount of space this wreck covered, you’d need more than a single flyer to do this much salvage work so quickly. And there’s no way a whole team of flyers flew up here with no navigation and no one told the clan. Something else is going on, here.”

Bhox shrugged. “Well, it looks like there’s drag marks here. Why don’t we follow them, and see where things go?”

Zass nodded, and said, “Let me call this in, so people know something is weird up here, and then we’ll do that. Meantime, find someplace to stow the equipment, and break out the weapons and armor. If there are other people, or maybe survivors, up here, they may be having restless trigger claws. Either because they came up here to steal our claim, or because they’re not sure who is coming for them. I don’t want the hassle of explaining to the Matriarch why one of you louts died because we got cocky following the trail.”

Two hours later, the field hampering navigation and instrumentation near the mountain fell, and a call went out that shook all of Ziunov.

(Confederate News Network Broadcast)

A human male is pictured, in a business suit. The location appears to be in front of an Ihm government building, with its signature rounded lines.

“This is Chet Ubetcha of CNN, reporting live from Ziunov in the Ihm Imperium, on the border with the Terran Empire. Approximately two Galactic Standard months ago, a spacecraft of Terran origin crash landed in a remote mountainous region of the southern continent of Ziunov.”

“The crash was originally believed to be the result of a faulty FTL mass-detection safeguard system, causing the ship, which was classified as a light freighter, to emerge from hyperspace too close to Ziunov’s atmosphere while travelling at a high rate of speed. The ship, tracked on satellite and other scanners, was believed to be a total loss due to the speed and location of the impact.”

“Initial Search and Rescue efforts were hampered by intense electromagnetic fields and particle residue in the atmosphere surrounding the crash site, disrupting navigation and other instrumentation in the atmospheric craft attempting to respond to the crash site. When satellite imagery showed the total destruction of the freighter with a sizeable impact crater, the crash was deemed unsurvivable, and Search and Rescue efforts were called off.”

“Because of the terrain and the difficulties with instrumentation, salvagers from the Whitescale clan won the right to salvage the wreck and ascertain the cause of the lingering interference. Six hours ago, three of the team of five Ihm were rescued alive off the mountain when the disruption field fell.”

“Earlier, I was able to interview one of the survivors when they were out of surgery.”

The picture changes to a two shot of Chet and a white scaled Ihm female in hospital robes, with one arm in a sling and a patch over one eye. She is identified as Zass Whitescale.

CHET: [Junior Matriarch] Whitescale, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. May I begin by offering our condolences for your losses. Let their spirits find their ancestors with honor.

ZASS: My thanks. Few knelfi know the traditional words. You may call me Zass. And I agreed to speak to you because my brothers did not make it off that mountain, and they deserve to have their story told.

CHET: For our viewers who are not familiar with the Ihm Imperium, the Whitescale Clan is the premier hazardous terrain salvage company on Ziunov, yes?

ZASS: Yes, that’s right. As [Arctic-equivalent] Ihm, we have an advantage in most mountainous terrain and other hazardous environments, with the exception of our ocean-dwelling cousins who can breathe underwater in the deeps.

CHET: So your group was the best suited to the conditions on the mountain, and you went in prepared for a wide range of possible hazards, correct?

ZASS: Yes, we’re professional salvagers. If it were going to be easy or safe, they would call the flat-land companies. We go in expecting all possible environmental hazards, as well as more conventional hazards, like hostile wildlife or rival salvagers. That doesn’t happen often, given the jobs we go on, but we prepare for it all the same.

CHET: Can you tell us what happened on the mountain?

ZASS: Flyer dropped us off on a two-day hike from the ridge-line. That was as close as they could get us without their instruments being affected. As we hiked in, we found communications were not impaired, and so we were able to give regular reports. When we reached the crash site, the entire site had been stripped clean, except for some large hull fragments that had melted into the stone of the impact crater.

CHET: Another team beat you to the site?

ZASS: No. There’d been bad weather in the mountains for a while even without the interference. You may have been able to find one pilot crazy enough to fly in those conditions and hope they didn’t die, but enough to bring in the equipment needed to clean up the site and remove all the debris? Every salvager on the planet was watching that mountain. Someone would have seen it.

CHET: So where did the wreckage go?

ZASS: Well, that’s what we were hoping to find out. We could see drag marks leading from the impact crater to a tunnel that had been drilled into the mountain. I called in the possible hostile activity, so the Clan had a flyer ready, if we could get the disruption field down. My brothers and I, we armored up and got ready for a fight, just in case. Like I said, we prepared for rival salvagers, but sometimes we find survivors, and sometimes they’re a little too eager to shoot first and talk later.

ZASS: Anyway. We entered the cavern, but we quickly found that there were traps in the halls. Some were crude, just monowire strung across a hallway, but others were some real nasty pieces of work. But like I said, we prepare for things. Traps in the hall aren’t that much different from a salvage site that is likely to fall apart around you while you’re trying to locate the priority items.

ZASS: It was maybe one hundred, two hundred meters down the corridor that we encountered our first real problem. Blast doors slammed shut behind us, and a human opened fire on us from a concealed position. Throsk got hit in the shoulder, but wasn’t down. They weren’t expecting us to have armor. Roxl managed to get him with a shot as he was reloading his weapon, which was a psyshot assault rifle.

ZASS: From there… <looks away from camera>

CHET: If you like, we could continue later…

ZASS: No! No. I’ll go on. We fought our way through the damn tunnels, which were turning into some kind of base, until we found the source of the disruption, some big piece of Imperial tech. There were more fighters coming, so we had to hurry. We used some thermite charges and burned the thing up. That shut the thing off nicely, and must have caused some kind of failsafe to go off, because a door opened in the wall, leading to a tunnel heading out.

CHET: Did the fighters follow you?

ZASS: That was the strange thing, they didn’t follow us, even though we where carrying Throsk and Uathru, which slowed us down. We got out, and called in the flyer for immediate evac.

CHET: Was there any indication as to who these fighters were?

ZASS: <shakes head no> Nothing. But… when we left the tunnels, we saw an inscription above the cave that wasn’t there before.

CHET: What did it say?

ZASS: It was in some old language the computer identified as Latin. ‘Gloria in Machina Deo. Deus regnat.’

(Virtual Room in NERV HQ)

“YES!”

Isaac was not alone in cheering as the virtual report from Ziunov began playing across the galactic networks in game. It had taken a little bit of work to arrange things with the main game AI, but he’d managed to get one of CNN’s main Ihm Imperium correspondents to get out to the border, intending to report on the tragic crash of a freighter, and doing a feel-good piece about strengthening FTL safeguards to prevent something like this from happening in the future, putting him in the right place at the right time to report on the news coming out of the southern continent and send it to the galaxy.

Turning to one of the technicians, he said, “How are the metrics looking? Is it getting visibility on the populated worlds?”

“Yes, the translation of the Latin text has caused several high-level members of various governments to call emergency meetings. They’re managing to keep the people calm so far, as this was an isolated incident on a remote planet.”

“Good, just as intended, then.” Isaac turned to the tech who was focused on the forums. “How are the players taking the news?”

“Between the CNN report and the message posted to the forums, they’re going wild. The first actual dungeon in game is something they’ve been waiting for, and the Ihm players are excited. They’ll probably be flooding the place as soon as a base camp can be established by the entrance to the dungeon.”

“What are we rating the difficulty as? I don’t want elites just steamrolling the place.”

“Mid-level difficulty for experienced teams, high-level difficulty for solo players due to numbers and variety of enemies. Instances are in place, so no more than six people in an instance.”

“In-game reason why the discoverers only lost two, compared to the Nomads going in who will be losing more?”

“Dungeon was not fully set up yet, so they were able to storm the base before all the mobs had spawned and the traps were set. Later groups will get the same basic layout, but the difficulty will be as intended.”

Isaac nodded. “Excellent. And the players have been informed that this is merely the first dungeon discovered, and more are out there, yes?”

“Yes, but the information is propagating slower than we projected in the Free Worlds Alliance and Confederacy. Local events are causing competition for space in news cycles, both in game and on the forums.”

Isaac looked like he had been personally attacked. “What the hell is competing with my dungeon rollout? Don’t tell me some damn fool found the X’thari Gateway address and invited them in!”

Morgan laughed as she walked into the virtual room. “You ought to know that by now, Isaac. No good deed goes unpunished, it seems. The Black Star Company has been dealing with quite a few attacks since they helped beat off the X’thari attack on Nuevo Edo.”

Isaac took a deep breath. “So he didn’t go and invite the X’thari into Known Space?” Morgan shook her head, and Isaac sighed. “Fine, fine. I can handle it. What did he do now that kicked my carefully planned masterstroke off the news cycles?”

“Well, first you should know that his tactic of ‘making examples of people so that everyone else is too scared to move against him’ has been working wonders so far. Our analysts say he probably prevented about sixty-three percent of the potential attacks just through his actions against the pirates who attacked his people and the groups that tacitly supported them in the Badlands. He’s also worked well with those people who have treated him with respect, and that’s kept other groups from joining in. The syndicates on Dimiya refused outright to attack him, or let their people attack, and the military also refused, unless they got written orders signed by the President, since attacking immortals with WMDs is a really stupid idea in their book, especially when there’s no security need for hitting them.”

“So who was after him?”

“Senators and business interests. They were upset that the Civil War ended before they could drag the Confederacy into it and get some spoils, and then he went and made Nuevo Edo a free port on top of that, preventing them from establishing a controlling presence in the other arm of the galaxy.”

“And Black Star isn’t one of the companies that responds to ‘normal’ tactics. Got it.”

“Yeah, so when they convinced the Kul’tirans to send their ‘mercenaries’ after his ship, he blasted two ships to dust, captured the fragment of the one that was left, and ransomed the crew, including the daughter of the leader of Kul’tiras, for north of four million credits, plus what he sold the scrap for. THEN, he went back to Dimiya and publicly seduced a Senator, before apparently taking her place at a meeting of the conspirators and killing them all. By the way, he’s still playing the shapechanging thing as a ‘unique psy power’.”

Isaac humphed in disgust. “Fine, I guess the fallout from all of that is almost equal to my dungeon rollout. But only because it is local news!”

“Yes, yes.”

“So, our boy solved one crisis by making a bigger one, and we’ve given the players something to take their minds off Black Star for a while as they start exploring looking for dungeons. We’ve announced that First Clears of a newly discovered dungeon will get enhanced loot, so that will convince people to go looking.”

“That about sums it up.”

“Good, good. Well, it is five o’clock, so I think this deserves a night leaving early. Want to go check out that new movie that just came out?”

“I already bought us tickets.”

“I swear, you are the perfect woman.”

“And don’t you forget it!”

The two of them politely ignored the sounds of giggling and mock gagging from the technicians in the room watching their ‘moment’.