AN: I'm going to be trying something a little different in this chapter, and depending on how I like it, I may or may not continue it. I'm going to be doing first-person POV's when following Mark and third person for everyone else.
17 Advanced Chapters available on my Patreon! Crimson_Reapr is the name, and writing Scifi is the way.
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Mark POV
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand as I left the meeting room. There was something off about the old man, and although he was trying to hide it, I could tell that Varis had other plans in mind that he obviously wasn't planning on sharing with me.
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand as I left the meeting room. There was something off about the old man, and although he was trying to hide it behind that calm, political mask, I could tell Admiral Varis had other plans in mind. Plans that involved me in ways he obviously wasn't planning on sharing with me.
Thanks to living a military life, I could tell that his plans were for me to become a private contractor for the Navy. Yeah, no fucking way I was doing that.
I'd just spent most of this life tied down by military chains, even if they were initially put in place to "protect" me. Now that I had come to be free of them, or rather, "died" and they just naturally slipped off, I wasn't about to put them back on, no matter how shiny or gilded they looked.
The corridor outside the meeting room was quiet and had a faint antiseptic smell that always came from military stations. My boots echoed softly against the deck as I turned a corner and nearly collided with the same young ensign who'd escorted me earlier.
"Oh, sorry about that, bud," I said, catching myself before I could barrel into him.
The kid straightened immediately. "Nothing to apologize for, sir," he said quickly. "I hope your meeting went well. Would you like my help leaving the military sector of the station?"
I was tempted to tell him no since, thanks to Ani's life-saving experiments, I'd already memorized the route well enough from a single walkthrough. Truth be told, I didn't need an escort to find my way out. But if I brushed him off, that would just feed the story Varis had already formed in that little fucked up mind of his. That I was the lone wolf type, the unpredictable asset he just couldn't help but "keep an eye on" under the guise of a partnership.
"Yeah," I said finally, giving the kid a nod. "That would be helpful. I've got a handful of goods I picked up from the pirates I took out. Would you mind taking me to where I could sell those off?"
The ensign blinked, caught off guard by my request. For a second, I could practically hear the gears in his mind turning as if he was flipping through some mental manual, trying to figure out which section covered "Hero of the Week Wants to Sell Pirate Junk." Then he nodded, more to himself than to me.
"Yeah, sure," he said. "I can take you to the commercial ring of the station. There, you can get everything sorted out to sell your cargo. Just give them your trading license and they'll tell you what to do after that."
'Trading license?' I repeated in my head while outwardly, I just gave him a polite nod. Internally, I was digging through everything I could remember from both lifetimes, Earth, the IUC, the Navy, and my time under Strathmore. Nope, nada, nothing, zilch. There wasn't a single piece of useful information about trade registration or how to sell the valuables I had yoinked from the pirates.
Part of me, fueled by my memories from Earth, cursed the stupidity of the Navy for only teaching me military tactics and Strathmore for raising me so isolated from the wider universe. The other part, the one raised under Strathmore's obsessive discipline, was oddly grateful. Being raised in isolation had taught me how to think on my feet, how to keep calm under stress, and how to adapt without letting on that I was improvising.
So I followed the ensign in silence, trying to plan out what to do if it turned out this so-called trading license required me to go all the way to an inner system world, which I was already planning on doing. However, I wanted to get that cargo off my hands, never know how much more I may end up running across on my way there.
The lingering sense of unease from my meeting with Varis still prickled at my mind. The old admiral had played his hand too smoothly. He'd made the offer sound like a grand opportunity, as if I would be serving the Empire on my own terms, with full freedom of action. But like that saying back on earth said, "the eyes never lie, chico," and Varis's eyes had a burning intensity in them when he talked about 'compromise' and 'plausible deniability.' It wasn't the look of a recruiter, but rather the look of a strategist who had just found a new, useful pawn.
"He wants a ghost, a black asset who operates outside the chain of command but answers only to him. No thanks," I reaffirmed internally. It was the last thing I needed and the last thing I would do. My freedom, the true freedom of charting my own course in this galaxy, was non-negotiable.
The environment around us began to shift dramatically, and the Navy sector that had been all polished with sterile white bulkheads and silent footsteps had transformed. As we passed through a series of increasingly grimy pressure doors, the air changed. It became warmer, heavier, thick with the combined scents of synthetic food, stale synth-ale, ozone, and the stank of dried sweat. The lighting degraded from a clinical white to a jaundiced, flickering yellow, and the quiet footsteps turned into a cacophony of sound that came in the form of shouted sales pitches, the metallic clang of cargo handling, the hiss of pneumatic lifts, and a dozen different languages being broadcast through cheap G-comm systems.
What stood before the open doors was a true commercial ring, and unlike the one from Eidolon Reach, which had its own liveliness, this one was wonderfully and chaotically alive.
"We're here, sir," the ensign said, his voice barely audible over the noise. He stopped by a heavily trafficked concourse where data screens flashed neon ads for everything from cheap starship parts to illicit pharmaceuticals. "This is the main Trade Authority Nexus of Station Xendor. Technically, it is separate from the activities of Base B-147, and it is open to the public. Here you can handle all your cargo sales and licensing needs. Just look for the 'Trade Facilitation' kiosk."
I gave him a genuine, grateful nod. "Thanks, bud. You've been a real help. Get back to your post before your Lieutenant realizes you've been ferrying an unwanted civilian around."
He smiled, a quick, nervous smile. "Will do, sir. Good luck with your cargo."
With a final, sharp salute, he turned and vanished back toward the controlled order of the military docks, leaving me alone in the riot of the marketplace.
I took a deep breath, relishing the anonymity of the crowd before making my way toward the indicated kiosk. It wasn't a sleek glass booth, but rather a dented, utilitarian metal counter where a young woman with a bored expression and brightly colored, bio-luminescent pink hair was scrolling through what looked like low-quality celebrity gossip on her datapad.
"Next," she droned, not even bothering to look up.
"Hey. I have some cargo to offload, but first, I need to get a trading license," I stated with a smile.
She sighed dramatically, pushed the datapad away, and ran a quick scan of my attire. My custom-fitted armor and my unkempt appearance contrasted heavily, something that set me apart from the local crowd. "A license, huh? Haven't got one, or lost the old one?"
"Never had one," I admitted. "I'm new to independent trade in Imperial space."
She tapped a few keys on her terminal. "Right. Easy enough. Basic Class-C Merchant License, required for transacting more than ten thousand credits of goods in a quarter. The process is three steps. One: Confirmation of a registered Bank Account with a bank recognized by the Empire. Two: Biometric scan for background check and record creation. Three: Licensing Fee."
Bank account check. Check. Biometric scan... well, here goes nothing. I tried to keep my face neutral, but the smallest tremor of anxiety ran through me. While I knew Ani hadn't registered me as a wanted criminal or anything like that, I had no idea what kind of red flags it would bring up. My entire existence was probably a legal black hole.
"The bank account is fine," I said, giving her the details of my Helix Intergalactic Bank account, showing a balance of 107,567 Imperial Credits. "Ready for the scan."
"Place your right palm flat on the plate. Do not move or blink for five seconds," she instructed, her voice already regaining its bored monotone.
I moved my hand towards the polished steel plate of the scanner, my armor retracting from it just before the two made contact. A faint blue light washed over my skin, and it felt as if the five seconds stretched into an eternity.
Finally, the light vanished, and the attendant's eyes darted to her screen, searching for the tell-tale red notification that would signal a wanted criminal.
She shrugged, looking utterly disappointed. "Clean. No outstanding warrants, no unpaid fines, no red flags. Just... nothing. It's almost as if you're a ghost, mate. That's good. We get too many low-grade smugglers trying to get clean records here, but their biometrics never lie."
A deep wave of relief washed over me, immediately replaced by a fresh, buoyant surge of confidence. 'Varis's assessment was correct. I am a ghost, in a sense. A dead man walking. The Empire has most likely already forgotten about Mark Shepherd, the young rising star of the Navy, and now only Mark Shephard, the new Class-C merchant, exists.'
"License granted. That'll be two hundred credits for the filing fee," she said. I took out my bank card from my inventory and handed it to her. She scanned it, and a moment later, a small yellow card, my official trading license, slid into the output tray. I didn't think I would feel this excited about having an official Imperial document, but I guess that bringing me a step closer to the plans I want to undertake did wonders for my ego.
"Now for the cargo," I said, retrieving my trading license.
She perked up slightly, sensing a larger transaction. "Right. Any cargo you wish to sell on the station needs to be manifested and scanned for contraband. What is the nature and origin of the goods?"
"I have the salvaged holds of four pirate ships. They weren't that big, maybe 180 meters long at the max, so my guess is they were originally small freighters that had weapons strapped to them. They had electronics, small arms, bulk foodstuffs, and some precious metals. They ambushed me after an emergency jump, but they heavily underestimated the combat ability of my ship."
Her eyes widened slightly at the mention of four ships. "Four ships? That's… substantial. We need proof of acquisition and destruction. The Navy takes a keen interest in high-volume salvaging, especially of criminal assets."
"Give me a second, let me just ask my crew if that was recorded," I told her. Marcos, who had probably been listening in on our conversation the entire time, didn't even allow me to ask him for it.
"I just sent the combat log with visual and kinematic data to your G-comm Mobile. It's a file labeled 'Pirate Engagement 001." Marcos's voice rang in my earpiece instantly.
"I have a full, high-fidelity log of the engagement, including visual confirmation of all four vessels and their destruction, along with the rescue of 24 Navy personnel," I informed the attendant as I presented her my G-comm.
"Oh wow. Well, that saves a lot of paperwork. Just tap right here to transfer it over to us... Great. Now, before we scan and price the goods, I have to inform you that any hostile engagement involving criminal assets carries a potential bounty or reward paid out by the Mercenaries Association. Even small-fry pirates are worth something. You should check in with them before you fully liquidate your assets, just to collect the extra credits."
That was sound advice. The Navy hadn't mentioned a bounty, though they had given me 25,000 credits for the rescue of the girls. But an extra few thousand credits wouldn't hurt.
"Understood. Where's the Mercenaries Association office on this station?"
"Second level down, Sector Gamma, just past the fuel depot. Can't miss it. It smells like cheap tobacco and despair." She laughed, letting out a snort at her own joke. "I'll start the paperwork for the transfer now. I'll send a manifest drone to the Strathos' Shepherd's docking bay to conduct a preliminary inventory and contraband scan. We'll finalize the price here once that's done. It's an automated process. Shouldn't take more than twenty minutes."
I thanked her and stepped back, allowing another trader to approach the counter. Twenty minutes was perfect. I pulled out my G-comm and scrolled through a social media app while waiting.
The drone notification hit my G-comm exactly eighteen minutes later, and I stepped back to the counter.
"Hi, again. The manifest is complete, and it is determined that your cargo is clean. There were no restricted military components or high-grade narcotics, just the standard pirate haul. Electronics, rations, general-use weapons, like you had declared," the attendant confirmed. She rattled off a detailed list of bulk quantities that meant nothing to me.
She looked at the final tally on her screen. "We're offering forty-seven thousand, five hundred Imperial Credits for the lot. That's at the current salvage rate, factored for the hassle of processing. Our policy prohibits us from negotiating with new members, so take it or leave it."
"That price is shit, forty-seven point three-two-nine-eight percent lower than the true market value of the parts," Marcos' voice rang in my earpiece once again. "But that's the best price you're probably going to get for a while, and there's the convenience of instant liquidation. I say just take it, beats trying to sell thousands of units of bulk rations one by one."
"Accepted," I said. The attendant tapped away before a chime sounded in my G-comm. I looked at the notification, which read: "Trade Authority Transaction #238973289342, +47,500."
I nodded to myself before opening my banking app and checking my current balance: 179,867 Imperial Credits. In about two weeks' time, I had almost doubled what Ani had given me, which now left me with a solid cushion to play with.
"Thank you for your business, Merchant Mark," the attendant said, finally sounding a little less bored. "Have a pleasant day."
"Thanks, you too," I said as I turned and left the establishment. I navigated through the thick crowd, already feeling the shift in my posture. Although the nerves weren't killing me, they had been bothering me ever since I arrived at the station. It did house a military installation, after all, so being a ghost with no past and a forged identity was a little nerve-wracking.
I walked through the crowd, asking for directions every once in a while as I made my way to the Mercenaries Association. The walk to Sector Gamma was a descent, not only in levels but in quality too. The floors were stained, the walls were tainted with aggressive graffiti, and the people I was walking past were all armed. This wasn't the place for trade, or I guess it technically was, just that its violence was sanctioned as a "Business."
I found the Mercenaries Association office exactly where the attendant and a few of the people I asked said it would be. It had a narrow, unmarked entrance that was between a flickering neon sign for an 'orbital massage parlor' and a large, noisy pipe that occasionally vented coolant vapor.
The interior was a single, long room lit by weak, red-tinted light strips that did nothing to hide the grunge. The air was heavy with smoke and the smell of alcohol. The furniture consisted of cheap, battered ferrocrete tables where several individuals. There was a mix of scruffy-looking bounty hunters, heavily-armored mercenaries, and one or two clean-cut corporate security types who were filling out forms or arguing loudly into their G-comms. A worn, cracked data screen above a reinforced counter displayed a static list of active local bounties, most of them listing a value too small to cover the cost of a single ship missile, but I guess it was more than enough for those who lived on the station.
I approached the counter, which was protected by a thick sheet of transparent, blast-proof polymer. Behind it sat a man whose most defining feature was his sheer lack of interest in the entire galaxy. He was massively built, wore a sleeveless vest that exposed arms covered in faded tattoos, and was currently using a small, polished blade to meticulously pick at something stuck in his fingernail.
"What do you want?" He grunted, not bothering to look up as he was too focused on cleaning his nails.
"I'm here to file for the bounty on four pirate ships destroyed approximately nine days ago," I said, keeping my tone level. I didn't need to assert dominance, but I also couldn't sound like some naive kid.
The man slowly lifted his head, his small dark eyes meeting mine. His skin was the color and texture of dried river mud, and a thick, horizontal scar bisected his lower lip.
"Four ships, nine days ago," he repeated in a voice like grinding gravel. He put the knife down with clinical precision. "You got a sector for that?"
I shook my head. "Nah, I don't think I do. I just know it was about 5 jumps from Station Eidolon's Reach."
"Yeah, that sure narrows it down," the man grunted as he thought for a second. "That's Navy jurisdiction, out in the border swells. They usually scoop those claims every couple of weeks. You got documentation, or you just trying to get a free beer out of me, kid?"
"I have the certified combat log and manifest from the Trade Authority," I said as I pushed my new trading license under the polymer window into a reader slot. The man picked it up with two massive, calloused fingers and plugged it into his terminal. His eyes finally looked at the screen.
"Mark, huh? Fresh license. Let's see this log." He pulled up the combat data, which I had transferred to the Trade Authority earlier. As he scrolled, his face remained impassive, but a flicker of something, maybe genuine interest, crossed his gaze. He zoomed in on a section of the log where the calculations of the energy output of my railguns as they ventilated the bridges of the pirate ships.
"You hit that scout with an energy profile of 7.2 gigajoules," he muttered, pulling a cheap stylus from his vest and tapping the screen. "That's a heavy hit for a heavy frigate. I guess you're not running any standard-issue Navy hardware, most likely a custom job."
"He's an astute observer of destructive capabilities, Captain. Remarkable, given his aesthetic," Marcos commented dryly in my ear.
I simply shrugged. "Yeah, well, she ain't your run of the mill heavy frigate."
The man grunted. "Right. The markings from the wreckage and the names of the ships indicate that they are probably with the Iron Talon Syndicate. Low-grade filth, mostly just preying on independent haulers in the outer belt. But they are on the registered kill list. Four ships, all of them small freighters converted into gunships. That's four documented kills."
He pulled up a different screen. "The bounty structure for the Iron Talon is five thousand credits per confirmed kill. The total bounty comes to twenty thousand Imperial Credits. I'm throwing in an extra fifteen hundred since one of the ships was supposedly piloted by a Navy defector, but there's nothing to confirm that."
I blinked. After all that effort, all that bureaucratic wrangling, the total reward was barely enough to cover refueling and rearming costs. Thank God the Navy had me covered on that side. My face must have betrayed my surprise, because the man gave a low, rumbling laugh.
"You look like you just got fleeced, kid. Welcome to the association. We're not the Navy. We pay for confirmed threats, not potential futures. These kills are peanuts. But… the documentation is solid. We gotta pay out what's due."
He finalized the transfer. My G-comm chimed with a transaction from the Mercenary's Association and an updated balance of 201,367 Imperial Credits.
"Don't let the measly payout discourage you," the man continued, leaning closer to the polymer barrier, his dark eyes fixed on mine. "The real money isn't in the standard kill claims. It's in the Discreet Assets list. You want real Imperial money, you go after the big fish that the Navy won't touch for political reasons or the ones they are afraid to provoke. The ones they only list here, hoping someone stupid or capable will do their dirty work."
He tapped the screen above the counter, which instantly shifted from the paltry Iron Talon list to a complex, multi-tiered hierarchy.
"See this? That is the Red List. On it are the big fish targets. High-level corporate espionage agents, sector warlords, rogue military intelligence officers, and pirates with better-equipped ships than the ones you took out. They're worth millions, but the risk is extreme. The payout is guaranteed by the Imperial Charter with no questions asked once they confirm the job is done. But you have to bring proof that cannot be refuted. Head, a key data chip, a specific bio-tag, it all depends on the target, data extracted from the destroyed ship's black box."
He pointed to the top entry.
"Take this one. His name is Kaelen Rix. He's a former Fleet Logistics Commander who embezzled enough fuel to power this station for a decade and disappeared. He's running a massive black market fuel depot somewhere in the Ghala System's dead space. His head is currently priced at 350 Million Credits. Live capture adds twenty percent."
I studied the entry, analyzing the target profile. The risk was enormous, and it was estimated that he had a small fleet of frigates, corvettes, and even a destroyer as his personal capital ship.
"How often are these lists updated?" I asked.
"Hourly. And they are always monitored. You go after one of these, and you're not just fighting a target; you're fighting everyone who depends on that target staying alive, and everyone who wants the bounty before you do." He paused, then gave me a hard look that was surprisingly insightful. "You got the ship, and it clearly has the guns. You got the stomach for it, Mark. But you don't have the crew or the reputation. If you take this on, you'll be a target yourself."
"I'm aware of the risks," I replied, allowing myself a small, tight smile. "Thanks for the advice... and the credits."
"Yeah, yeah. Get out of here." He waved a hand dismissively and picked up his knife again, returning to the meticulous scraping of his fingernail.
I left the Mercenaries Association, the 21,500 credits already forgotten, replaced entirely by the vision of 350 million. The things I could do with that amount of money meant total operational independence, the ability to buy my way through any checkpoint, and outgun anyone.
What the fuck am I thinking? That shit is clearly suicide, especially for me right now. God, I don't even truly know what I want to do. Ani offered me the option of using that knowledge to make a corporation and help advance humanity that way. I mean, sure, that would rake in a good amount of money as well, but I don't know if I have the money to start it.