(Admiral’s Suite, BNS Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Amazon System)
I awakened to a lovely sight: Slave-Captain Ara Virstina moaning softly as she rode slowly on my cock, doing her best to keep her voice down as she fucked herself with my morning wood. While I had originally intended to break her of some of the conditioning she’d been subjected to as a slave for so many years, I had a change of heart when she and her daughter, the Senator, made me promise to let them have a ‘reunion’ when I next got back to Dimiya. Seems they’d been sharing stories about me with each other. Oh well, who was I to complain, after all the things I’d done in this game?
Reaching up, I gripped the Captain by her hips, causing her to open her eyes in surprise, just before I slammed her down hard. “Such a naughty little slave-captain you are, Ara. Perhaps I should find a way to punish you?”
Captain Virstina moaned louder now, not bothering to keep her voice down. “Whatever you wish, Master. I am just happy to serve you, as always!” Even as I held her hips down against mine, I could feel her grinding back and forth quite nicely. Whoever had trained her had done an excellent job.
Groaning pleasurably, I said, “Well, then I think I will punish you by having you report on the condition of the ship and the group, while I enjoy myself. If you mess up, then I’ll be adding new punishments. So do a good job, or I’ll be forced to get creative.”
“Aahhh! Oh, yes Master! Th-the fleet has finished gathering with the last of the new additions being added in the last six hours. The – ah! — Knight class Destroyers look to be very capable, M-master! They’ve been through f-field trials and are ready for action. The fu-uuull order of battle for First Group has the Ama-no-Murakumo, two Reapers, six Knights, eight Assassins, sixteen Gunboats, the carrier Pandora’s Box, and the heavy logistics freighter Davenport. We-eee also have the First Group of the Black Star Marines and the Nova Eden-class Colony ship Starborn which will follow us once we secure the other side of the Gateway.”
I smiled as she tried to keep things together, despite me becoming more active in this morning play. The ‘order of battle’ she described was the ‘standard’ for the Black Star fleet, but the Second and Third groups didn’t really bother with that as much. The Second Group was the Dimiya defense group, protecting our holdings in Dimiya and performing jobs in that sector. The Third Group was more geared towards support rather than offense or defense, and was typically going to be in rear areas. Neither of them needed the power that First Group had. Fourth and Fifth groups, though, were the ones that would be directly going into harm’s way more often than not, and they needed the boost. “Very good, my pet. I trust your people have made the best use of the last couple months?”
“Oooh! Yes, Master! They are aaaah-ll ready to go. Everything is ready for diving to check the Nineteenth Gate Address. We haaave calculated according to the texts left behind by the aliens which brought the Nuevo Edoans to their world, and we believe that o-one of the gates is nearby, like how the Desolace, Aquarian, and Nania systems were all relatively close, all being in Confederate space.”
I nodded as I moved to change positions, rolling over so that I was on top of the knelfi woman now. “Well done, Captain. You and your crew have worked hard to get ready for venturing through the Gateway. Now, take your reward!”
“OH! THANK YOU, MASTER!”
(Main Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Amazon System)
I looked over the bridge crew, who were all smiles as they saw me enter alongside the Slave-Captain. No doubt the rumor mill had already let it be known that the Captain had spent the night in my quarters. Well, it was the truth, and I saw no reason to deny or be ashamed of it. It wasn’t like I didn’t have the reputation for doing that, and more, by now.
I turned my attention to the screens, seeing the fleet assembled. We’d chosen the Amazon system to launch our first expedition from because we could control access to the system easier than we could, say, Desolace or other worlds with Gateways. Even the pirates stopped trying their luck in getting the planet full of potential slaves, since the Amazon planet was still rich with Greenwave nanites (current estimates had it being another fifty years before colonization efforts could begin). This was important, not just for keeping the Gate address secret as long as possible, but also for not rattling our neighbors more than was needed.
The problem, of course, was that the Black Star Navy now had battleships and real carriers that weren’t war prizes. This was something that made people nervous when I had them parked places they did business. Which is why as soon as the Ama-no-Murakumo had finished construction, I had it ship out for the Gateway as soon as possible. It wouldn’t do to leave it hanging in the public eye and making people nervous.
The other two battleships in the Fleet were the BSN Gugnir in Fourth Group, based at Madrigal Base, and the BSN Banshee’s Wail, in Fifth Group, based at Nuevo Edo. This made the Banshee’s Wail the only one of the battleships that were in more or less constant view of the public. But Captain Windrunner was smart enough to keep the Fifth group from just sitting in orbit like a threat. They were officially there to help protect the planet and Black Star property if the X’thari returned. Unofficially, she was using Nuevo Edo as a staging point as the Assassins from Fifth Group were scouting the nearby systems.
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As Slave-Captain Virstina had said, the First Group had grown considerably. Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi was the center of the group, naturally. Of course, many of First Group’s ships were old hands, but there were several newcomers. Shinokage was one of two Reapers in the Group now, with the Shifrat Almawt (a name that meant Death’s Blade) as the second. Six Knight class Destroyers were added to the formation, and I had unilaterally declared that they would be named Lancelot, Galahad, Bedivere, Kay, Gawain, and Tristan, after some of the Knights of the Round Table. The blooded Assasins Shadowdancer, Simo Hayha, Wisteria, and Artemis were joined by the newcomers Spitfire, Whirlwind, Zephyr, and Reliant. Our little swarm of gunboats had risen to sixteen, and the Vicious Return had been shifted into the Marines, while the new carrier Pandora’s Box and the Oregon Trail class heavy freighter Davenport rounded out the ships in our group. The Vicious Return may have gone to the Marines, but Ghost Squadron was now stationed on Pandora’s Box, along with the new Red Guardian, Silver Sentinel, Gold, and Black Dragon Squadrons.
The First Group of the Black Star Marine Corps was going to be joining us on this venture, just in case we found some X’thari we needed to educate on their new place in the world, or anyone else we needed to make the kind of subtle diplomatic approach that only Marines offered you. BSMS Thunderfury led the way, of course, but now she was joined by the BSMS Vicious Return and her new Firelord Squadron. The three Crow class Assault Ships (Threnody, Deliverance, and Wrathgate) added to the Marine group’s firepower, both in space and on the ground, giving the Marines some powerful options. I’ve never once heard about Marines complaining about having more options on the battlefield that weren’t ‘field expedient’ patch jobs that were the product of pure desperation and insanity.
Of course, the final piece of the puzzle for our new expedition was the Nova Eden class colony ship that the Empress had gifted us with as payment for our part in the Civil War. We’d named it the Starborn, not only because it was easier to say than a complex alphanumerical serial number, but also because colonies often took the name of the colony ship that founded them. A Black Star colony being known as Starborn sounded like a nice fit. The Starborn would wait until we cleared the system of hazards before transferring through. There was no way I was risking that ship on the unknown.
Some would probably wonder why I needed a colony ship, if I had things like the Nightforge in Third Group. Well, to be honest, I could make a colony on a world without it. But the Nova Eden ships were designed to be a one-stop shop for setting up a colony overnight. The colony ship itself would form the basis of the colony, essentially landing shelter, defense, communications, manufacturing, food production, and all the other essentials on the face of a world that may or may not be capable of supporting the kind of life found in Known Space. While the capabilities of the facilities were limited, especially when taking into account the potential growth of the new colony, when trade and new settlers beyond the five thousand souls in stasis arrived, it was perfect for providing a secure site where the newborn colony could manufacture their own infrastructure.
Actually, the Nova Eden series were quite a bit smaller and more streamlined than the original colony ships, which would actually separate into sections in orbit, with each section doing a (hopefully) controlled descent to the colony location. The newer ships were only the size of a superdreadnought, instead of the far larger generation ships that were originally launched. Not needing to deal with the life support concerns of the five thousand colonists save for a small support crew made the whole effort far more streamlined, allowing the colony ship to actually land on the surface, which greatly reduced the potential problems in getting all those resources and people down to the surface.
I took a breath, and said, “Sensors, are we alone?”
The sensor officer nodded his head. “Aye, Admiral. No ships on sensors not belonging to Black Star. All satellites and probes not belonging to Black Star have been destroyed or commandeered, according to their origin. Last tachyon pulse of the system was twenty minutes ago, and showed we were all clear.”
I took a breath. “Communications, put me fleet wide.” When the communications officer nodded that we were live, I looked into the camera, and said, “Men, women, and others of the Black Star Fleet, this is the Admiral speaking. We are gathered here on the precipice of history once again. Since the fires of Jagloth, Black Star has been pushing forward, always on the cutting edge.”
“It was no government entity that recovered the address for Nuevo Edo. It was Black Star. It was not an empire which helped Nuevo Edo fight off their ancient foes, and help them stand on their feet again, fighting alongside our forces with no less courage than we showed as we defended their world from the X’thari threat. It was Black Star. It was no Confederate or Terran Marine force that captured the first intact X’thari carrier class vessel. It was Black Star.”
“Once more, we are poised on the brink of history. We have functioned as mercenaries and businessmen as the case may be, hiding in the shadow of larger governments. Now, we are a power that is too large for governments to simply ignore, but too powerful for them to easily take down. Already, we have had to fend off attacks from the rich and the powerful who thought that they could pressure us and take what was not theirs simply because their methods had always worked before. We repulsed them emphatically, and now we have made many people nervous as all hell.”
“Some of you may be wondering why we would push the boundaries again and again. Why should we be the ones to explore, when it is nice and safe living in someone else’s shadow, letting others do the hard and dangerous work of venturing into the unknown? I will tell you why! For over a hundred years, we have known about the Gateways. In that time, only a handful of people have ever tried flying through addresses that were not on the Valoys Tablet found in the Ihm Imperium that gave us the first sixteen addresses in Known Space. The only ones who tried were those so desperate or insane that they tried dialing random addresses, and the overwhelming majority were never heard from again. And then Black Star came along. We found the seventeenth address, and with it, Nuevo Edo. There, we found an address book, containing many, many more addresses.”
“So why hasn’t anyone gone visiting to these addresses? Because it is the unknown. We know that there must be a Gateway with the X’thari homeworld on the other side, but we have no way of knowing where it may be. And that is only considering the X’thari, and not any other threats or hazards that may be out there. After all, a group of aliens was responsible for droping the Nuevo Edoans where they landed.”
“That is why we have gathered here, in order to make history. We have a fleet unlike any that has been assembled before, one capable of defending itself at need, and fighting off a superior foe. We have some of the best people in the galaxy in our fleet, blooded in battle with the Usurper Emperor and the X’thari. We will do what others dare not, for we are Black Star!”
“And should the forces be too great for us, and we are forced to flee away from the Gateway? We believe the gate we are dialing is a little over a month’s travel from Nuevo Edo with conventional FTL drives. So even if the worst should happen, I will not throw you needlessly into the fire. We may get battered, but we will not be broken. We may get pushed back, but we will not be defeated. We are Black Star, and we lead the way where others dare not tred!”
“This is Admiral Mollen to all ships, prepare for Gate travel!”