The group had returned home to a very excited Mikasa.

Jaruna found the little creature absolutely enthralling, and had nearly torn her dress before realizing getting down to play with the puppy in her finery was a bit unbecoming.

Mikasa was now snuggled into Syl’s lap as Jerry began to discuss his family business, and by the goddess was it a doozy.

Syl’s ears flatten to her head as she tries to process what she’d just heard her husband say.

“You... Want to leave Centris? But the business! And... and...”

Jerry reaches over and gently strokes Syl’s cheek, reassuring her.

“I’m not leaving without you, any of you. I want that to be clear. This will be a family move... and if we play things right with Admiral Cistern, it’ll mean I’m actually with you more often than having to go back for duty all the time. It’ll also be in the name of the business. I did a little research over the last day once we got home after the shoot out. Here...”

He fiddles with the Tri-D viewer and brings up a projection of a small science ship, about half the size of a standard cargo hauler.

“We could rig up all the cloning tanks we have and then some in this ship, with some space in the cargo bays after provisions and equipment left over for storage of live animals. We were discussing how to service the developing Undaunted world of Vucsa 5, the human colony on Bruel... if Bruel herself doesn’t soon become an Undaunted world, and any other possessions or territories seized by the Undaunted for Earth and her allies. It would also let us more directly exploit situations like the Yauya home world’s desire for Zagala without paying exorbitant shipping costs... We could simply fly a circuit and develop orders for the next destination before we arrive at our current destination. We service that world, keep an ear out for any commercial sales and start the next world’s orders in the tanks. They mature by the time we arrive, and so forth.”

Another image pops up showing a store for rent in a spire much closer to the Dauntless.

“We’d keep a permanent facility here in the hands of employees, to service the pet needs of the Dauntless’s crew... and any Centris residents who think they want one of course. The main focus however would be provisions, both for the Dauntless while she’s here, and with special priority for the same and EFL ships. However we’ll specifically be looking to develop the market for the food products here. Beef, pork, chicken, in its varying types and varieties stand to be worth a lot of damn money if we play our cards right, even after the Dauntless moves on.”

Their husband sits back with a furrowed brow.

“The one problem is me. I think we need to leave Centris. We’ve been attacked twice in a major way and I’m worried the third time will be the charm for the bad guys. We might get attacked anywhere, but I’d rather be a moving target. I’d also like to be able to regularly take my children places with grass that aren’t a public park, and honestly I think that’ll be easier if we’re spacers than living here in the galactic center. Which leads me back to the trouble. I’m still in the Undaunted military. I’m an asset, an important one that the Admiral won’t want to just give up. He can’t just place me on loose leash protocols like the men crewing with the EFL or Vernon Shay after he met that princess of his.”

It’s Syl’s turn to furrow her brow. She can’t disagree with anything he said. The actual profit potential of going mobile was incredible just running the numbers in her head, and that was just working solely with Undaunted allies. The idea of running a just in time delivery system for cloning could be huge, and all it would take would be... doing what? Would their standard of living change? Many ships have nice living quarters, but with five adults and the goddess only knows how many children in the future.

“Hold it.” Jaruna holds up a hand. “I think I have a solution.” She gestures to the projector with her own small computer. “If I may?”

Syl quickly nods her consent, wondering what the mercenary might have in mind. For how much she clearly enjoyed battle, she really was a very erudite, intelligent creature, and she planned things out without taking much care for the common biases of her kind.

“We’re not thinking big enough Hubby. That little ship would be tight going for our family before the babies come, and between all of us we’ve got the cash for something decent. It’d be an investment... but I think I can see a way to get your Admiral Cistern to pay off a lot of our changes and upgrades. I like to shop for space ships, been planning on getting a heavily armed little gunship to call my own and get off Centris. Well I saw this thing when I was going through the listings the other day...”

A much larger ship pops up on screen. It’s not the ugliest vessel in the world, one of the smaller classes of mass conveyor, a kind intentionally designed to be incredibly versatile and modular while still having a fully enclosed hull.

Many cargo ships just hauled depressurized cargo pods through the void without so much as a care in the universe. This beast, which was even larger than the Dauntless herself, was something different.

“With this bad girl, we could have ourselves a palatial estate as part of the intended living quarters. We could maintain separate damn homes if we wanted and not fill up too badly... and there’d be plenty of space for barracks or smaller apartments to take on staff, and we would want to be taking on staff. When configured for labs we’d be able to do our cloning work, expand said work, and take on scientists from the Dauntless in a piecemeal manner...:”

Jaruna rotates the wire model, pointing out different parts of the hull.

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“They just come aboard all quiet like, equipment’s swapped in and out disguised as cargo assuming the Admiral likes keeping as much information private as possible. Defensively these things rate massive shields standard, and we can always upgrade them. Maybe get some of that armor you humans are so fond of. Plus on this model in particular, the power plant’s massively oversized.”

The schematics flash to the power plant, which admittedly is pretty sizable.

“Enough we could fit some capital grade laser turrets and plasma turrets if we wanted with plenty of juice to spare. If that’s not enough for weapons surprises, I know a girl who can not only get us a deal on the las and plas, but can also get us capital scale missile weapons. Anti Ship missiles and the like are one thing, but also stuff like orbit to ground precision strike missiles. Nice thing about them is they just take space, and we’ll have plenty of that if we’re using this thing as a science, research, supply ship and mobile trading hub. One of the primary uses of this class of conveyor was making supply runs to new colonies in uncharted space, or acting as small colony ships themselves. There’s not a lot they can’t do if we’re willing to configure it.”

Jerry leans in, deeply fascinated now.

“In effect, we’d be making a Q ship. Q ships were ocean going cargo haulers designed to look relatively harmless so no one paid attention to them. Their German cousins were the same way, though with different intent. The Q ships would lure submarines, stealth vessels under the waves, up to the surface where they’d pulverize them with their guns. The Germans with their auxiliary cruisers did something similar, but acted more as pirates and commerce raiders, using their unassuming look to get merchantmen to let their guard down before pouncing.”

Another few schematics flash by.

“Hmm... you know it strikes me. We’d be able to have commercial traffic come in and out locally with this beast. The hangars are perfect for it. Even sell cargo space to our next destination. These hangars in the back though... we could keep them private. There’s all this space... it’s perfect for running special operations off the ship. We wouldn’t need to be directly involved, we’d just have a particularly heavy ship’s security company from Admiral Cistern to protect the ship and its vital supplies.”

Syl’s ears are perking up again, the plan was forming properly in her mind now. She’d be able to do an incredible amount business wise with this sort of space. The potential space for their family or clan quarters also had lots of potential. She could even fortify them. Add defenses, emergency escape pods. Whatever would satisfy her that she was doing everything possible to protect her family and especially her kits. They could have a good life among the stars. Set up properly on a large vessel they’d want for nothing. They could even put a terrarium in to get a little bit of green in their daily lives.

“If I remember the minimum crew to actually fly and maintain that kind of ship’s around two hundred people, more if we need gunnery crews on the sly... those are harder to find though.” Syl’s all business now. She’d sold herself on the plan, now was the time to make sure it could actually succeed.

“No, we can just put word out to the EFL that we’re willing to take on girls with a “colorful” background that are looking to go legit. Provided an EFL captain will vouch for them and they’re willing to take the Oath of the Undaunted personally, not just as a pirate we can scare up experienced crew women in all sorts of fields, as well as hopefully get some more folks off the Dauntless and running around the galaxy proper.”

Jerry manipulates the design again, pointing to one long pair of decks in the ‘top’ module.

“Facilities wise, there’s room for proper shops on something like this, and they could be quite profitable if they’re owned and managed by the ship’s owners. Which would be us in this case. A proper sick bay that we could bring up to hospital grade, with both Axiom, genetic and human healing techniques. There’s even room for a school if there’s other families aboard or we have enough kids that home schooling isn’t feasible any more.”

The four of them gaze at the schematic of the ship for a moment. They all silently raise their hands as if on cue, and Nadi hops down off the couch.

“I’ll go call our wayward Yauya, I’m sure she’ll be happy to tour with us.”

The petite dragon bounces up to steal a smooch from Jerry before heading off to one of the more powerful computer terminals.

Syl rises. “I’ll start marshaling the funds, I haven’t signed the contracts on the expansions for this facility so that’s quite a bit of funding available as well, if we get Dauntless support... yes. I think this has a lot of potential in many, many ways. I’ll also call my lawyer and tell them to rush a contract over to the people selling that ship. It’s a good deal, but ships that size sell slowly. She’ll open negotiations and make sure we get the best deal possible... but also make sure we get that damn ship.”

The Volpir woman smiles over to her husband across the coffee table, her evident joy reaching the very tips of her ears as her tell tale tail wags behind her. She’d thought she’d be scared or frightened tonight after the events of the day. Instead she was in love... and looking forward to tomorrow.

“I never thought I’d leave Centris, but... I’m excited now.”

Jerry leans over and gives Syl a deep, passionate kiss. “I’m glad. I want us all to be happy, safe, and productive after all.”

Jaruna leans in, clearly eager for her own smooch as Syl sashays away, humming to herself as she considers her work for the next few days. “I’m not sure what I’ll do besides being the family’s muscle. But I’m in. All the way. All the time. That’s what a family is right?”

She startles a bit as her husband to be rests a finger on her nose. “Actually, I think I have a job that’ll suit you perfectly... see we’ll be having a large complement of soldiers if this goes right. You’re damn experienced, more than experienced enough to be one of those soldiers and you have unique experience with power armor... I want one of the suggestions we take to Cistern be that we dissect, reverse engineer, build, equip, and train my special operations troops with power armor, and another dozen Officers, NCOs and technicians who will come back to the Dauntless once we’re done with the program and start putting that into mass scale...”

Jaruna interrupts him by resting a finger on his lips in turn. “I love your genius mind, I want you to know that. Such clever little creatures you humans are, and you in particular. I love it when you lead... but right now darling, I want to be very, very clear. Just like I’ll be encouraging my sisters to be very, very clear to you when it’s relevant to them. You have something better to be doing than playing with toy soldiers for Cistern. We should wait till Eymali returns at least, so we can present our plan to him as a group of five. United. Undaunted.”

“Well, that sounds perfectly reasonable. So what’s this something better I should be doing instead of working out plans for the Crimson Tear?”

The Cannidor’s grin widens to the point that Jerry’s a touch worried she’s going to swallow him whole.

“Me of course.”