Page 3 of Commander’s Mate

Degatu looked at me for a long moment. “That is why I came to you before I sent my next message.”

“What message?”

“Our resignation from Consortium Defense service.”

I looked past him to the smoke hanging low over Waysatu. My home village had once been a place of gardens, orchards, training yards, and children running between houses with stolen fruit in their hands. Now it was a map of impact sites.

“The Consortium owns the dreadnoughts,” I said.

“They bought hulls. They did not buy our blood.”

“They will cut our funding.”

“They already have.”

That turned my head.

Degatu’s mouth tightened. “Unofficially. I received a coded warning from a contact in the outer council. If we formally nullify the contract, they will freeze all accounts connected to Farseek military assets and order us to return the ships.”

“They can order all they like.”

“They have no one left to enforce it.”

Not quite true. The Consortium had courts, sanctions, trade routes, hired security, and the ability to starve a broken world by committee. But their strongest outer military force had been Farseek.

Had been.

“They left our world undefended,” I said. “They blocked the warnings. They let our families be taken so we would not leave their stronghold.”

“I know.”

“Then there is no contract.”

“No.” Degatu looked toward the settlement where rescue crews moved through the wreckage. “There is only our people.”

Our people.

The living and the stolen. The dead we could bury and the missing we would have to hunt across half the Empire. The children in tunnels. The elders who had watched their descendants dragged into shuttles. The warriors returning to empty beds and silent houses.

“How many missing?” I asked.

“We do not have a number yet.”

“Estimate.”

His jaw flexed. “Hundreds of thousands. Possibly more than a million.”

The cold moved through me then. Not the winter cold. Something older. Cleaner. The kind of cold that made decisions simple.

“We find them.”

“We will need ships, fuel, bribes, intelligence, safe ports, medical supplies, housing for survivors, and credits we no longer have.”

“Then we earn them.”

“As mercenaries?”

“If the Consortium made us disposable soldiers, we may as well charge a proper price.”