Mike’s grin returned, sharp and predatory. “Exactly. Which is why she isn’t going to a normal fleet ship. And neither are you.”
A cold trickle of apprehension, separate from my chronic pain, traced its way down my spine. I kept my voice carefully neutral, a skill honed over decades of not showing fear to things that wanted to eat my face. “What do you mean, sir?”
He laughed, a sharp, barking sound. “Don’t you dare ‘sir’ me, you old bastard. If you’d swallowed your pride and accepted OCS when you had the chance, you’d probably be a sector chief by now, with your own damn fleet. But you didn’t, so here we are. After graduation, you get a week to get your affairs in order—what few of them you have—and then you report to the UPFFS Crow. You’ll report after she’s had a chance to settle in.”
“UPFFS?” The acronym clicked into place. “A Privateer?” The word tasted like ash. Privateers were barely a step above pirates, licensed opportunists who’d as soon raid a UPF supply line as a Chaos flotilla if the price was right.
He shook his head. “You know better than that. It’s a tier-7 light drone carrier, currently in the Calintare shipyards for a refit after changing commands. The ship’s new captain is the daughter of the previous one. That spotter I told you about? The one who identified Roisin’s potential during the creeper incident on Korinth? She was from the Crow. Her boss, the former commander, pulled every string she had to get Roisin funneled directly to them after J-School.”
“But… a civilian ship?” The logistical nightmares unfolded in my mind. “Supply lines, command structure, rules of engagement…”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Privately contracted warship,” Mike corrected. “The Captain holds a UPF commission, even if the ship herself doesn’t. We can trust her to keep her mouth shut until it’s a done deal. I think she, and a few others like her, hope to shift our current catastrophic policy back to something resembling Imperial standards. Back when the fleet was tasked with protecting the skies, and the delving and rifting was handled by licensed private concerns. It kept a balance of power.”
“The admiralty will crucify her for even suggesting it,” I stated flatly. “It takes power and, more importantly, funding directly out of their hands.”
“The admiralty is losing,” Mike said, his voice losing all its humor, becoming grim and hollow. The change was jarring. “We have lost twelve core worlds in the last two years, Dave. Twelve. We’ve only managed to reclaim eight of them, long after the populations were devoured, corrupted, or worse. And without private contractors supplementing our lines, we can’t protect what we have left."
"The biggest problem is the scrotting draft. The slaver worlds are always happy to sell us their ‘surplus,’ but the free worlds resist, and the amount of fleet resources we have to pour into just enforcing conscription is bleeding us dry. The very people who should be our greatest heroes—the system defenders, the independent rift-breakers—are spending their time as rebels, fighting against UPF press gangs instead of the actual enemy.”
He slowly shook his head, a gesture of profound weariness. “Planets like Korse are the exception, not the rule. Most conscripts are the dregs, the trash that couldn’t find a better job, and the poor schmucks who got caught in an easy-avoidance sweep. You know as well as I do that a single system hero who actually enjoys their job can do more damage to the enemy than a million conscripts in ill-fitting boots.”
I nodded slowly, a piece of the puzzle clicking into place. “You noticed that, huh? That she was having the time of her life in those unwinnable scenarios.”
