Captain Alphonso Jaeger stared out the view port of his Eagle class assault shuttle as the pilot, Lieutenant Kath, threaded his way through the busy orbital dry-dock in geo-stationary orbit above Terra. His new command, the Terran Alliance Ship Wolf, was waiting for him among the many partially completed frigates and destroyers of the rapidly expanding Terran Alliance Navy.
The Wolf is not a warship, though it is armed as one. It was originally a Synod merchant freighter carrying bulk goods among the many planets of the Synod of Worlds. It found its way into the hands of the Terran Alliance's new Preservation Society allies and then into Alliance hands to help lift the poor, backward humans out of barbarism and prevent the Synod from glassing the planet in a preventative act of genocide.
The Synod is, on the surface at least, a peaceful pacifistic society that promotes art, culture and the pursuit of knowledge. In the eons of its existence it seeded the universe with genetic material that would eventually become a vast assortment of races and cultures. Some of those cultures did not adhere to the Synod's peaceful ways and pursued war and violence. Those cultures were left to their own devices for the most part, at least until they reached one of the two benchmarks of an advanced society the Synod had set out for inclusion within the Synod of Worlds. If a world reached both of the benchmarks then the world was automatically offered inclusion within the Synod. If the Synod felt that the culture or race was too violent or warlike they could, before they reached the second benchmark, glass the planet and prevent a potential dangerous organism from disrupting their utopian universe.
The Preservation Societies formed from individuals opposed to these callous acts of genocide and they work hard to protect these endangered species by illegally providing those worlds in danger the technology and knowledge necessary for them to reach the second benchmark before they were wiped out. A society had to show both aptitude with biology through genetic manipulation and engineering by discovering how to fold space and jump through a rift.
In the year 2035 Humans, now called Terrans as a show of solidarity, had already mastered cloning and was working hard on space exploration but had not invented a working FTL engine. The Tytin Prometheus, an expert on humans and human society, decided that the time had come to push us that last step. He knew a vast Synod fleet was being assembled to cleanse the Sol Sector of "Fallen" lifeforms. Fallen because they were not completely pacifistic societies and therefore not easily be dominated. They would resist Synod Dominion and therefore must be eliminated before their rebellious attitude infected other, more docile cultures. Prometheus gave us examples of Rift jump technology to reverse engineer, a handful of data cubes containing the complete Synod technical library and a Maker. A Maker is a large nano-tech factory that can literally make anything as long as it is given the technical specifications and access to raw materials.
Preservation Societies showed up a year later to hand over a dozen old freighters to kick-start the Terran space program. For the past two decades those freighters have allowed the nations of Terra to explore nearby worlds and open up asteroid mining, colonization of Mars, Titan and Luna and the construction of the Titan and Terran Dockyards. Two of those freighters have provided valuable service but high command reasoned that if Terra was to expand it would need more freighters than they could build and faster than the dockyards could turn them out. So the freighters were commissioned and refitted as commerce raiders, the Wolf and the Surprise.
They are not beautiful ships but heavily armed with two double railgun turrets an six point defense railguns in double mounts for anti-fighter/anti-missile defense. The two ships also have four torpedo tubes mounted in the bow and a bow hold full of torpedoes. It has docking points for three Eagle class assault shuttles. The shuttles act as the raider's scouts and the delivery mechanism for its platoon of Terran Marines who will board and capture any merchantmen we came across.
Captain Jaeger was jarred from his thoughts by the sight of his new ship coming into view near the edge of the dockyards. It was not a pretty ship. It was old, scarred with micrometeorite impacts and seemed to be made entirely from spare parts. It was beautiful to Jaeger though. It had a fresh coat of black, lidar absorbent, paint and bristled with disguised weapons. It was filled with people he had hand-picked for his crew and provisioned for a year in space. He felt a keen sense of anticipation, a slight fear of failure, a fear of letting down his crew and getting them all killed. The joy of a completely independent command and the burden of complete responsibility for the one hundred and twenty three souls now under his command.
The shuttle bumped gently against the docking collar. He stood up from the co-pilot's seat and laid a hand on the pilot's shoulder.
"Thanks for the smooth ride Phil," he said as he moved from the cockpit to the passenger compartment and its docking hatch in the floor.
"The Warpig taxi service always aims to please sir," Kath said as he shutdown the shuttle's systems and went over his checklist for securing it on the docking port.
Alphonso Jeager was a tall man and built like a linebacker and did not look like a typical naval officer. He wore no uniform and instead sported a beige turtleneck underneath a worn leather jacket and wore black cargo pants. His black leather combat boots scraped against the metal rungs of the ladder that led from the shuttle's docking port to the interior of the Wolf. He reached the bottom of the ladder and pressed a button to cycle the air and un-dog the interior hatch. The hatch underneath his feet opened with a bang and he climbed down the next ladder until he was standing on the port cargo deck and facing the welcoming party. There were no side-boys or ceremony as was ancient naval tradition. Instead there was an inscrutable alien with pale skin and small black eyes wearing a blue skinsuit and a datapad. His executive officer, Mister Taban, a Paan'Ku. Paan'Ku were distant cousins to humans and shared virtually the same physiology. Mister Taban was formerly a member of the Preservation Society until he took a commission with the new Terran Alliance Navy.
"Welcome Aboard, sir," Taban said in a completely neutral voice lacking inflection, one of the quirks of the Paan'ku. He would make the perfect comedic straight-man, if only he understood Terran humor. "We are fully provisioned and all systems have been checked and re-checked."
"Is all of the crew aboard?" Jaeger asked as he strode casually down the passageway.
"All crew are present and accounted for," Taban said in his monotone voice, "we can break orbit whenever you wish, sir."
"Very good, thank you Mister Taban," he said as he hopped up the ladder-well and entered the bridge.
"Captain on the bridge," said a small man in a bright, flowery hawiian shirt and cargo shorts.
"Nice outfit Lieutenant Rashley," Jaeger said smiling, "I think, maybe, you are taking the pirate motif a little too much to heart."
"Arrrr, captain, It's a pirate's life for me." The small man replied.
"Just don't bring any parrots aboard please." Jaeger said still smiling.
"Yar, no promises o'captain, my captain," Rashley said, laughing.
"This is going to be a long cruise mister Taban."
"Twelve months and three days is not a long time time for a free trader captain. Three Terran years is standard for most shipping companies." Taban responded flatly.
"A long cruise indeed."
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