Charity or war.

  This duality of life that Karim Ashok had been afflicted with since he was small, echoed now with a buffeting force as he stepped into his new role as Fleet Admiral of the Terran Sovereignty’s Third Fleet.

  His father, ever the paragon of his people’s ideals, had lived a life of charity. In course, he had enthralled the woman that would be Karim’s mother and taken her off her own family’s path; the backside of their shared culture’s coin. Where on one side was his father’s passion for others, opposite was that of Karim’s mum’s mum; The great and venerated Admiral Sadia Kaur.

  Though a noble calling, charity was not what Sadia Kaur had in mind for her only grandson. From a young age, she tutored Karim in the tactics of war, of command, and where appropriate, that of mercy. She was not a cruel woman in any sense of the word. Rather, when other recruits or officers would refer to his grandmother in Karim’s presence, a certain effort went into dancing around what to call her.

  Sadia was a proud woman of the military, and as such looked down on those who did not serve. It was to her shock and horror that her own daughter would shirk the path and follow a man that many in the community viewed as soft.

  For in a community dominated by two pillars; one of charity and one of war, that one’s actions would always lead to the upset of many.

  To some level, Karim understood this duality as truth. But, having grown up in the tall shadow of Admiral Kaur, he grew a certain distaste for the other side, and by extension his own father and mother. And in following in Admiral Kaur’s footsteps, he’d hoped to redeem his family in the eyes of the military. And do so, he had.

  Karim had had a meteoric career amongst the fleets of the Sovereignty’s Navy. With a duty to prove himself and the will to right his family’s path, he had excelled at every aspect of military life. From his days as a cadet, through to his first command aboard a small picketship, to his culminatory station as a commodore overseeing the protection of the core of the Hold worlds, his ascension had seemingly been written in the aether.

  In his naming as Fleet Admiral – one of three in the whole of the Soveriegnty’s purview – he finally felt as though he was on a path that would have made his grandmother proud. Though there was always something at the rear of his lizard brain irking him. A voice tugged at the back of his dastār. Not good enough, he could hear in Admiral Sadia Kaur’s unforgiving voice.

  He wished to distance himself from the undeserved privilege afforded to him by his grandmother’s military career, by her celebrity. He would be his own man, achieve greatness, and now that he had risen so high he would follow his own path. All the while staying true to his people, to his faith, and above all else remain humble.

  That was the reason he had accepted the command of the Third Fleet. When a close personal friend of his, Karess Margit of Baldasare, the very same Karess of the Sovereignty, had approached him with the promotion he had given it little pause. Not because it would be a favour to her, but because he saw this as a chance to truly rejuvenate his destiny.

  Karess Margit had given him the charge of putting an end to the uptick in piracy coming from just outside Sovereignty space in recent years. Now, standing on the ship’s bridge of the keepship, The TNS Kolkata, he took to his task without delay.

  The keepship mantle was a class of vessel so named for their ability to maintain order through their sheer presence alone. The Kolkata was no exception, boasting the mass of several battleships, but as Karim understood it, was still dwarfed by the capitalships of their Herd rivals. Despite this, the Kolkata boasted a wide array of weaponry, defensive shielding, as well as supportships, all in a show of force to dissuade its enemies from the notion of fighting back. He and his new armada of twelve destroyers and twelve battleships would begin the hunt.

  “Corporal Chaasker,” Karim ordered the Kolkata’s chief pilot on their first flight as the fleet’s new commander, “Take us out of drydock.”

  “Affirmative, Admiral,” answered Anit Chaasker, tasking the keepship with undocking and broadcasting a follow request to each of the other ships that were chained in the fleet. “The Third Fleet will be assembled and ready to open rift in eight minutes, thirty-five.”

  Karim nodded in acknowledgement and moved to stand at the captain’s station.

  The Kolkata was a new ship, freshly minted just like himself. Along with the usual arsenal that a keepship like this carried The Kolkata came with a powershell, a network of battery cells that wrapped the vessel’s inner hull, providing it with an unprecedented level of energy storage – enough to power most all of the keepship’s operations during peacetime. It also came installed with twin fusion battle-generators, for added capacity when circumstances required it.

  As the Kolkata pulled out and away from the dock, pitched downward from the dockyard’s plane, and accelerated away, Karim pulled up the rear view feed on his terminal. Hirok Inferior Station – the less grand cousin of Hirok Superior – seemed to shrink away and disappear on the backdrop of the magenta gas giant Brahma, around which the two stations and multitudes more complexes and habitats orbited amongst an asteroid field, remnants of a long smashed world. They were hold-outs against the unforgiving black and lifelessness outside, paradoxical in that they housed the seat of the crown and council, and all of the life and power that held strong over the wider Sovereignty.

  Brahma’s gas clouds swirled with an unforgiving tumult in the well below, covering the entirety of Karim’s viewport. Its skies were a sea of vapour that hosted a flurry of gas-miners, each scraping the atmosphere for a cheap payday. On the star-side of Brahma, several hundred kilometres of solar collectors traced their paths, beaming the day’s starlight back to the dockyard’s charging stations.

  Panning out, Karim could make out several dozen of the ship-building platforms that dotted the asteroid belt and housed the secret of the Sovereignty’s real power. In the capacity of their yards, and the tenacity of their arms, the people of the Sovereignty resisted those nations outside their borders that would bring them to their knees.

  Being her first run around the system, The Kolkata still needed to prove she had legs. Karim checked the power readings; all systems read black. He typed a command in his terminal ordering all accompanying ships to shed some speed and keep their distance.

  “Chaasker, why don’t we power on the battle-generators, one at a time,” he ordered, “see what she can do.”

  “We’ll need to take a shot with the wake cannon to dissipate the additional load,” Chaasker noted.

  “Fire it out into the black away from Hirok, I doubt God will mind.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” she confirmed.

  Within moments, the first of the fusion generators spun to life, pumping a massive amount of power into the Kolkata’s grid. Seconds later, a dull thwomp echoed through the keepship’s inner corridors as the weapon fired. Through sight alone, anyone witnessing the discharge of the wake cannon would be none-the-wiser. The keepship’s sensors however, showed a very different truth as they screamed with activity. The cannon had generated a normally devastating gravity wake, akin to that which would be produced by rapidly jumping in and out of rift. Instead the blast sailed harmlessly out away from civilization as the Kolkata’s sensor readings returned to normal levels.

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  “All readings from the battle-generator and the wake cannon are nominal,” confirmed Chaasker.

  “Double strength. Spin up the second generator and fire another round,” ordered Karim.

  Corporal Chaasker nodded. The second generator whirred to life along with the first and power levels again spiked. Seconds later, another thwomp, followed by a noticeable jolt to the deck below Karim’s feet as the keepship’s dampening struggled to counteract the pushing force. Sensors flared for a moment as the wake rippled outward into the void, and again silence returned.

  “Readings nominal Admiral,” reported Chaasker, showing a protuberance in her voice this time around.

  “You felt that too, Corporal?” Karim asked, Chaasker nodded. “Good, it’s not just these old legs then. Have engineering look at boosting the gravity system’s response time. Seems their simulations are a chair short of reality.”

  Chaasker nodded, typing a command into her terminal. Karim wasn’t overly concerned with the small hiccup on an otherwise flawless demonstration– a show of brilliance that he hoped the rest of his new fleet and the whole of the Sovereignty by extension had witnessed. He had learned long ago to trust in his engineers, in his people. A true leader knew what matters deserved his attention.

  For now, The Kolkata had proven fruitful. What he needed next was to address the elephant that lumbered slowly behind through the underbrush. He had been named Fleet Admiral nearly two days prior. In that time he had had little opportunity to greet any of those faces that now flew under his command, both in the bridge surrounding him and trailing his vessel in their own as they awaited his first orders. He hadn’t even told his own family of his promotion and his new assignment that would pull him out of Hirok space.

  The one person he wished he could tell, his grandmother, had long since departed.

  “Well,” Karim said to himself, “it’s no time like the present.”

  “Sir?” asked Chaasker.

  “Open a bulletin to the Third Fleet.”

  He wasn’t positive what exactly he had said by the end of his speech, having done many of these on each stage of his climb in the fleet he had the whole thing rehearsed into muscle memory. His words must’ve spoken to a few though, as many faces both on the bridge and on the wallscreen that showed bridges of each of the ships of the fleet now beamed with sovereignty zeal.

  “Back to work,” Karim said, wrapping up the bulletin.

  Checking his terminal with an accomplished grin, he watched as private text bulletins began to pile up from the captains of the fleet, each congratulating him and wishing him the best of luck. One however, stuck out at him.

  Karim tapped the suspect message before it was pushed offscreen by the still flowing bulletins. It was from the only man in the fleet that ranked above the rest of the captains, a Commodore Lior der Waals of the battleship Mercurial.

  The message from Commodore der Waals read:

  “If we’re quite done here, I believe we have work to do.”

  Karim considered it for a moment, finding the candidness unexpectedly refreshing. A kernel zeal for the job streamed from the space between the letters that made up the succinct message, something Karim hoped mirrored his own.

  The Admiral wasted no time, opening a bulletin to the man on his private terminal. To his surprise, der Waals opened the link with only seconds delay as if he were waiting for this very call.

  “Admiral, let me be the first to welcome you to the command in person,” said a dour der Waals, “I trust you got my message.”

  “I did indeed, Commodore. And I must say, I agree. The work is paramount and should begin without delay now that our shakedown of the Kolkata has been undertaken.”

  “It is a gift to be sure, and please, Lior will do fine.”

  “Lior, then. Tell me, with your tenure aboard a fair number of my new ships, where would you have us begin?”

  “Our prime directive is to deal with these brigandes. I have come across some of their number in recent months, with ever increasing frequency. I believe we start by finding their base of operations; root them out of their den, as it were,” said der Waals.

  Having been struck into his role as rapidly as he had, Karim only had what Karess Margit had briefly stated to him in the presence of her court and council. The pirates were a rising nuisance in the Sovereignty's mind, a fringe group that she and her council wished to not allow to develop further.

  Opening der Waals’ service record now, Karim began skimming through while the Commodore waited for a response on the open bulletin. Uncomfortability growing on the man’s face.

  “Saul Calmos,” Karim said after a prolonged silence. “Merchant Navy Lieutenant, dishonourably discharged for mutiny, for piracy, and for crimes against an ally of the Karess and Sovereignty. Tell me, Lior. Where is this Saul Calmos now? The records are incomplete and I find myself wanting.”

  Lior let out a huff, “You can thank our ally for that. The Quisabar Vilmogurr kept Saul and most of his crew for himself. And with little force in that region of space, it was mum’s to back us up when push came and the shove fell us flat.”

  “And you’re hoping this newfound force in the Third Fleet will rectify this?” puzzled Karim.

  “I hope only that it would show to our would-be foes that we mean to take matters at the edges of our domain seriously. These pirates have been endured for longer than I can stomach. Allowing them another moment to spread their villainy is an affront to our Karess.”

  “And these friends of ours, how certain are you that our presence will be tolerated in turn? From what your records of their last engagement with Calmos’ ship placed their force a great deal above your own.”

  “They are a problem,” der Waals admitted, “with The Kolkata, and the larger compliment it brings, I believe a show of force will speak more to our commitment to securing the region.”

  “This region, just outside the Hold Worlds, I see no mention of it in our records,” Karim noted. “Does there exist a star chart?”

  “No,” der Waals said flatly, “the Quisabar have yet to share it with us. This whole matter has been closed in their eyes, with any query sent by my staff returning rejected by theirs as heresy. It was their reason for keeping Calmos and his crew at the outset.”

  Karim found that interesting. Heresy wasn’t a matter he took lightly. Coming from a culture nestled deep within an empire of widely varied values and views, it was interesting to see another species entirely held the same matter in such high reverence. While he would never let his own beliefs govern the actions of others, he could respect the quisabar’s position.

  “Did this Vilmogurr elaborate on the charges?” Karim asked.

  “He did not. You’d have better luck talking philosophy with vacuum, at least then you’d get a straightforward answer.”

  “After that engagement concluded, it says here that you have had some luck mopping up some emerging pirates.”

  “A handful, here and there. Nothing to the doggedness as Calmos,” sighed der Waals. Karim could almost make out a fading glint of adversarial admiration in the man’s response; almost as if he’d lost a friend as much as a nemesis.

  “And–” Karim paused, “–in the following months were you able to gleam where these pirates called home?”

  Commodore der Waals’ face shifted from ennui to frustration, the same expression that had marked the start of the bulletin.

  “I believe I was nearly at a breakthrough,” der Waals insisted, “a breakthrough that was interrupted by your inauguration and our recall home.”

  There it is, Karim thought, chiding himself for finally dragging it out of the man. Though, he placed no fault on him. Karim knew in his gut that he would have felt the same.

  “As you said, Commodore. This fleet, and my inauguration as its leader, should give us the capacity to squash out this annoyance with finality,” Karim assured the man. “And with this fist of our Sovereign, I will see it done.”

  Lior leaned back at this, his face relaxing from frustration back into boredom. Maybe Karim hadn’t inspired the man, but at least he could tell der Waals was willing to grant him the benefit of the doubt and hold his tongue, for now.

  “Where do you suppose we start, Admiral?” asked der Waals.

  “I say we get out there and start knocking on doors. The Vass, the Quisabar, and our own citizens may be able to point us in the right direction should we ask nicely. Our quarry must have wronged one of them,” Karim proposed. “Wrong a crooked man and he’ll seek recompense on his own, Wrong a good man, and he’ll nudge society into doing it for him.”

  Lior der Waals finally smiled and Karim conceded a little legroom for his ego.

  “It’s off to the edge of human space then,” said Karim.

  “Back to the edge for me and my crew,” der Waals said, moving to terminate the bulletin. Karim raised a finger forestalling him.

  “One last thing,” he said. “You never did tell me what this region of space– this pirate Shangri-La of yours is called.”

  “Some in the fleet have come to call it Brigande’s Breach. A preposterous name. I’ve forbidden its usage on my ship.”

  Karim smiled and closed the bulletin.

  With all the crewmen on the fleet behind him, his shiny new vessel in working order, his grandmother’s legacy satiated for the time being, Karim knew what he had to do next.

  Turning to his crew still smiling, he said, “Chaasker, take us out.”

  ? Antigravity ?

  by _None