I looked at the group around me as they all tried to avoid eye contact.

Even though I tried, I couldn't meet any of their eyes.

They all tried to avoid my gaze.

''You know I don't like to sugarcoat things so I'll say it straight to your faces.''

I gave them a few seconds to adjust.

It would be enough to prepare them for the disciplining that was to come.

''You meddled in things that you had no business meddling with.''

''You played stupid games and won your stupid prize.''

They crossed the line.

But to accomplish this they must have had overwhelming support.

Let's dig a bit more to see how deep this treachery ran.

I think I could piece everything together now.

Let's look over the perpetrators once more.

Nathan is the man in charge of relations between crew so that people don't negatively affect each other while working. Right.

He must have told them to start that fight to cause chaos, which would confuse me for the time being.

The timing of that incident as we were just about to land now makes sense.

Stefan on my left, is in charge of logistics.

He probably fabricated the logistical documents to make sure that the reports would match the now missing cargo.

Those could would have fooled me if I had actually read them.

John is obvious.

If they didn't get him into this plot they could have never done this in the first place. The man is meticulous, he would have foiled this plot instantly.

B'rn on the other hand must have convinced the bartender to buy the supply.

People often don’t wanna bring this thought forward, but-

The same species are more likely to trust each other after all.

The more important question is, why would she of all people help them?

How would this benefit the GC?

What did they gain?

While I had been thinking everything over I probably didn't consider what they were experiencing.

Because Nathan cracked under the pressure before I could even open my mouth.

''H-How the hell?! You didn't even check the logistical reports or look into the cargo bay. Did Omar sell us out!?''

Heh.

He spilled the beans.

They may have been able to pull it off till now, plead innocent by pretending I was just confused about what was going on, but Nathan just admitted to it all.

‘’He didn’t. I figured it out on my own after connecting the dots.’’

Of course Omar sold them out.

Maybe by accident when mentioning the betting ring inside the cargo bay.

Oh, what a singular slip of the tongue can do.

I had a sneaking suspicion ever since the bartender had mentioned when and how he had gotten a hold of those drinks. He had probably thought that it wouldn't matter.

It had given me a big portion of the full picture.

Never trust a gardenworlder to be able to deceive anyone.

''Even just by the taste I could tell that was my Jack Daniels.''

''Clever little plan you all, but not good enough.''

I had no idea at all that it was my Jack Daniels.

It didn't matter.

The desired effect took hold.

I could see, they gave up hope.

They would never expect me to be lying about any of this, well.

Maybe John knew I was making it all up on purpose, but he had probably understood my intentions long before, after our little one-on-one.

I turned to Stefan with my raised eyebrow, but he didn't answer my unasked questions. The Bulgarian man had never been a big talker and he opted to just hang his head in shame signalling that he learned his lesson, so I left him be.

A mistake I often saw was authority exercising excessive force to deal with everything.

You have to handle these matters gently.

Using too much force on someone who already thinks they lost leads to hate for authority.

The Reformists learned that the hard way.

I learned that the hard way.

''You?''

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

As I turned my eyes towards him John looked perplexed. He looked like he wanted to say something but couldn't decide if he should.

This motherf-

''You may speak freely.''

He gave me a quick salute before continuing

''With no offense, sir, we are all worried about you.''

He stops again, examining my reactions.

Damn it John, you know who you are speaking to.

I won't shatter on the spot if you talk, will I?

I give him a nod to let him know that he can continue.

''We know how much you have sacrificed and how much you have done for us. It is not just us either, the entire crew thinks this way.''

''No one wants to see you destroy yourself drinking captain.''

I knew it. I called it.

Good intentions, however, that is not what matters.

The end result matters more than the motives.

I thought about it for a bit, I would handle this later.

''I'll get back to you on that, now-''

''Would you explain to me B'rn, why you are also involved?''

The birdwoman who had been busy cleaning her feathers, or that's what I'm guessing she was doing diverted her attention back to me.

Overseer. Symbol of my current forced subjugation.

She wouldn't get anything from stopping my 'self-destructive' tendencies.

Nor did my 'allies'.

She didn't gain anything from this.

Or did she?

''Have you finally lost your wits, old man?''

''If we had the chance we would of course wish our collaborator to be in the right state of mind, and not [intoxicated] [24/7].''

I looked over the birdwoman as she looked at me with duller, expressionless eyes.

She must have hit that switch to turn off her receptors.

Probably why my Overseer was a Xirkix.

I scoffed.

''Really now? Have those buffoons come to their senses and seen my worth finally? They took their sweet time.''

I pried into her words.

I had a suspicion that there were no such orders.

My contacts wouldn't give a fuck about things like this, and worse yet, they would probably want to keep me addicted to hold leverage.

It was highly likely that she made this call on her own.

''My orders are to stop you from destroying yourself. You are a valuable asset. Your 'allies' wouldn't want you to turn hostile by limiting your freedom.''

Yeah, no. That is some bullshit.

They barely trust me enough to keep me alive.

I literally have an 'Overseer' to make sure I don't disrupt the GC's inner workings.

That only leaves us with one option.

She has already fallen for the bait, she is on the hook.

All I need to do now is reel her in, bit by bit.

''Right. Appreciate it.''

I said with a neutral expression.

Good to see that all my effort wasn't wasted.

Some schemes do pay off in the end it seems.

Let's continue.

''Now, it is time for your collective punishment.

Even if you did something that you thought had a just cause and good intentions behind it, you couldn't foresee what the end results would bring.''

I took a deep breath.

''Listen to me, all of you. This is how idealists destroy society.

They all have these grand ambitions, for the sake of all good things.

But the end results always backfire on them.''

They definitely heard me, but I wasn't sure if they understood.

They still believed themselves just, they couldn't see the truth.

They thought their ways were still right, the moral and just path.

With a disappointed sigh, I continued:

''All of you will be clocking in and doing your best until I am satisfied.''

''If I see any of you slacking, even you B'rn go help with ship cleaning or something otherwise I will ask for a new 'Overseer'. I will start cutting access to the small amount of luxuries that you do have.’’

‘’Now chop-chop.''

The worry was still visible in their eyes, but I wouldn't budge.

I was NOT going to give away the single luxury that I had taken an interest in.

I didn't have an over-the-top captain's quarters.

I didn't have a collection of artifacts of antiques.

I barely had any hobbies, left.

All I had was my alcohol collection, and they had taken what was left. I wasn't going to take it kindly.

Unfortunate, but I'd regain it all in due time. Even if they conspired.

That, however, was for the future.

I needed to deal with the priorities at hand.

Deciding that we should begin moving, I pulled out my Pad, connected to the comms of the ship, and gave the order to our pilots to start the jump as I made my way to my seat at the bridge.

I may have been a 'Captain', but I was mostly so in name.

I had a general idea of what to do in most situations after 17 years, but I still relied on my officers to do most things.

My only real job was to contact other parties, make the final decisions, and handle the more extreme cases among the crew that would have started a cascade or mutinies without my intervention.

I had managed to garner such respect that even if there were any issues, the crew who wouldn't listen to anyone else would immedietly fall into line when I got involved.

Speaking of said crew I was honestly impressed.

Around 300 Humans and 1700 Xenos, and we still only had around a handful of significant problems in almost 18 years.

There are still some small fights or arguments from time to time between individuals or small groups, but there had never been the 'race war' that we anticipated would come.

The workstations were mixed, but when we had gotten the Ark I made the executive decision to split the living quarters on the ship into 4: Humans, non-human deathworlders, toughworlders, and gardenworlders.

It was a very successful investment.

When the crew was first being gathered we used to have a lot more issues with crew members not being used to how other species operated.

Funnily enough, the ratio of incidents involving and not involving humans was four to one. Nearly 80% of all alarms that had been pulled on the ship were when a Xeno would panic over what humans would consider 'normal'.

These also included other deathworld species, even they were unable to cope with what we humans were doing, so they very much enjoyed their separate quarters.

Some people questioned if this was segregation and an 'apartheid' workspace, but the crew themselves wanted to keep this policy more than I did when asked if we should be forced to change it.

I really wish it didn't have to be like this, but trying to keep a Glorp, Kalq'un, and Human in the same room for extended periods did not end well so I just decided to keep the status quo.

Another issue I was beginning to see was the groups forming inside the crew. Most people decided to stick to the same species or species from the same class of worlds as their homeworld, but friendships and even relationships would get formed between people or groups of differing species.

So it was possible to see the races mingling with each other, but those often resulted in different groups forming based on personal relations, not due to worldclass-to-worldclass acceptance. And since all these groups were based on personal relationships and iedals, you could bet there would be a group who held the opposite views to yours.

This would no doubt lead to friction, which it did, hence why I had put Nathan in charge of making sure that all the groups with opposing beliefs didn't have to interact unless they had to be, moving their responsibilities around the ship and changing shift times. He did what he could but there were always cracks.

I think it would have all fallen apart if it was any other ship.

Well, not like there were any ships like the Ark.

I had yet to see a single ship, single army, or single faction with this many different species from different types of worlds working together and not imploding in on itself.

Ah.

I really had doubts in the beginning.

I wondered, what if they had been right?

But this was solid proof. Those bastards had to be-

''Attention! Captain on the bridge!''

The background chattering ceased, coinciding with me finally getting to the bridge.

The shouting of the order pulling me out of my thoughts.

Making my way to my chair I gave a nod to my officers and took my seat as captain as everyone got to their duties as the warp was being engaged.

''How are our disruption and anti-shield missile silos holding?''

''We got around 15 each. Our other munitions are also around the same level. We can expect them to hold out for whatever it may be we are against. Will probably need more credit to buy resupply after we are done.''

John answered as he also took his seat as Vice-Captain.

Yeah, that made sense.

What else, what else.

I started checking some of the other systems.

It was always best to do things by hand after all, relying on the computer was fine but I preffered this.

Power levels were fine.

Warp inconsistency was within acceptable levels.

Scans showed an error…

Wait a minute.

The scan picked up something.

I looked towards John.

A conversation quickly took hold.

One without words, it didn't need them.

He shook his head in confirmation.

“That…”

I muttered to myself as my hands worked on getting that data into the rest of our systems, forwarding it to the rest of the bridge.

“-is very interesting…”