Present time …

***

As I stood over Captain Brineck’s corpse, his head rolling across the ground, I had trouble stopping my hand from shaking. Even when I had to make adjustments to Orcus, I was only able to keep my composer by fiddling with its handle. I took a long, deep breath and knelt, picking up Brineck’s head by his hair and looking into his blank, unseeing eyes.

“Sparky,” I said as her nanite smoke dissipated and flowed into a small cylinder on her hip, “Send our location to The Reaver and tell Oni to get here quickly. Then patch me through to the fleet. I need to talk to everyone in this fleet.”

“Heard,” Sparky said as her circuitry lit up and she activated comms. “Message sent. Talking to the fleet in five … four … three … two,” she said as she gave me a count down and pointed to the camera I’ll be talking into for the fleet.

I focused my attention on the terminal before me and smiled as a video screen of my face popped up. “Attention! Zero fleet!” I exclaimed with bravado, “I have just killed your leader, Captain Sam Brineck. No need to thank me,” I then bowed as I presented the bastard’s head before unceremoniously dropping it and standing again, “Now, most of you are not new to this sort of thing in your power structure, but some of you are new to it. So here’s what’s going to happen. I am going to be leading this fleet from now on, and you all will follow my orders. If you have a problem with that, come see me on my ship.” Just as I said this, my ship, the Reaver, came out of hyperspace right before the fleet, dwarfing all the frigates and making the dreadnaught I was on look small. I then added, “That ship that came out of hyperspace, in fact. Now, if you’ll excuse me, oh, and can all the commanders on the rest of the frigates please see me in an hour. Toodles.”

With that, Sparky ended the connection and asked, “What now?”

I sighed, “Now we leave with the women and get on my ship. Besides, I need to check on Haru.” Sparky nodded and followed after me as I quickly left the bridge.

Gathering the women took a bit longer than it should’ve since most of them were despondent, and it took nearly forty-five minutes to get to the ship’s hanger bay and then fly them all to my ship. Luckily, none of the rest of the crew we encountered stopped us, but neither did they help us move the women. Once we dropped them off in the med bay, I got an alert that someone landed in our hangar, followed by more alerts that multiple people had landed in our hangar.

Sighing again, I went to a conference room near the front of the ship on the second deck, with a long table and about a dozen seats. I sat down at the head of the table and waited, sending a message to Adjani to escort our guests to the conference room. He sent back a middle finger. But he did as he was told like a good little pee-on, and within a few minutes, the door to the conference room opened with a hiss, and twenty-three men with two guards each walked in, taking seats around the table with the rest standing around the room surrounding me.

“Why are we here, and who the fuck are you?!” a large man with a brown tattered military coat adorned with official-looking medals and no sleeves asked to the right of me.

I slowly turned to look him in his big brown eyes and scruffy face, only to see him sneer with yellowed teeth. I smiled, showing my pearly white teeth, “You are here because I told you to be here. And I’m the Reaper. Also known as your new boss. Got a problem with that?”

“Yeah!” a different man yelled from halfway down the table. He wore much the same as the first man but was bald and skinny. Several people around the table nodded and grumbled in agreement.

Shaking my head slightly, I looked down at the table and took a deep breath before standing and clapping my hands loudly, “Okay! I feel like we’ll get nowhere if we don’t know each other. Why don’t we go around the table and introduce ourselves and what ship we command? I’ll start!” I paused to clear my throat unnecessarily, “Hi! I’m Violet V. Vermillion, The Tifth Reaper and commander of the dreadnaught class battleship The Reaver.”

I then turned toward the big guy with yellow teeth to my right and looked at him expectantly. He Sneered and rolled his eyes, “I’m Lieutenant Felix, The Render. Commander of the frigate class transport ship Orthax.”

The man next to him was wearing weird glasses that made his eyes three times bigger and had grease all over his blond hair spoke next, and his voice sounded weak and hesitant, “I-I’m Lieutenant Carl, The Weasel. Com-Commander of the fri-frigate class su-support ship Breaker.”

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The proceedings went on like that for a couple of minutes as I dedicated everyone’s names and ships to memory. Five support frigates commanded by Lieutenant Carl, Peter, Terry, Will, and Zander. Five transport frigates commanded by Lieutenant Felix, Frank, Frederick, Fill, and Finn, who were all brothers and would look identical if not for a few slight differences in hair color. Five anti-ship frigates commanded by Lieutenant Sam, Darik, Rick, Fernando, and Henry. Five stealth frigates commanded by Lieutenant Kevin, Jace, Orrin, Patrick, and Gerry. Three battleship cruisers commanded by Lieutenants Herald The Spear, Nathen The Shield, and Quinn The Sword. Herald turned out to be the bald man halfway down the table, and they got their titles from their ships and battle tactics.

Once everyone finished introducing themselves and got back to me, I smiled and said, “Well, it’s nice to meet everyone. Now, I need you all to understand that I am in charge, and you will do as I say. Is that clear?”

Felix scoffed, “Why should we listen to a woman?! You’re nothing more than a pleasure thing for us. The only reason I’m here now is because I don’t think you were able actually to kill the captain on his ship. You probably bribed a few of the men to free you and kill him.”

Still smiling, I turned to face him, staring into his eyes without saying a single word until he began to shift in his chair uncomfortably. “Lieutenant Felix, The Render,” I began speaking slowly, “Do you not know the title of the Reaper and the power it holds in the criminal underworld?”

Felix shrugged, “Can’t say that I do.”

“Well, let me tell you a short little story. Around six hundred years ago, when humanity had expanded quite far into the stars, a man began killing for hire. His first job was to kill one single governor of a large mining colony near the outer reaches of the Federation. The target was heavily defended and was hardly ever vulnerable. So, do you know what he did?”

“No. What does this have to do with—”

“That man highjacked a space colony’s engine room and set it on a collision course with the mining colony. He killed everyone and the target in one single move. Killing nearly half a million people. And when the Federation caught up to him, cornering him in a back alley with twenty men, he killed all of them with two knives. Not a single officer in that alley was killed by gunfire or a stray shot from their own weapons. Just two sharp knives. After a while, he gained infamy and trained an apprentice, who then killed him and took his place. This cycle went on and on until I, the greatest assassin in the known galaxy, killed my master and started my search for my apprentice. I have killed more people than you can possibly count and will continue to do so until my apprentice can kill me,” I stood and slowly leaned closer to him as I whispered, “Everyone who deals in crime knows my name and fears it. It would be best if you feared it, too.”

Felix fell silent for a moment and shook his head, “That can’t be true. I’m not going to listen to any more of this bullshit.” He stood and faced the rest of the table, “I say we kill this bitch and move on with our lives. Electing a new captain of the fleet between Herald The Spear, Nathen The Shield, and Quinn The Sword! We’re not going to bow to some weak, pathetic woman!” he sneered into my face as he spat out the last words.

I calmly wiped the spit from my eyes and face as I took another deep breath and said, “Fine, I see I can’t convince you peacefully.” With a flick of my right wrist, Orcus shot out of my sleeve and into my hand, shifting into a short sword that decapitated Felix with a quick slash. His head rolled across the table as his body fell limply and hit the ground with a dull thud. I looked around the table and yelled, “Do any of you have a problem with that?!”

A pregnant silence fell across the room before Weasel raised his hand, “I-I don’t think tha-that Felix had a se-second in command. So-so you’d need to appoint some-someone to his job.”

Sighing, I pulled the jacket off the corps and tossed it to one of Felix’s guards, a man with a slender frame and jet-black hair, “Congrats, you’re in charge of the ship, Orthax. What’s your name?”

“Cole, ma’am,” the man named Cole answered with a sloppy salute as he put on the too-big jacket.

“Cole, nice to meet you,” I said with a nod and a half-hearted proper salute. I then turned my attention to the rest of the people at the table and said, “Now that we’ve settled that, let’s get down to business. I need my ship manned, and we need a new commander for the other dreadnaught. Also, I need to know the other dreadnaught’s name because I can’t keep calling it the other dreadnaught.”

“It’s called Cimeterium,” Herald said, answering my last order.

I nodded and said, “Good to know. I’m leaving now. Get back to me when everything is done.” Then left the conference room unhindered. I quickly walked down the hall to the med bay, where Dr.Whisper was attending to one of the imprisoned girls. “Where is Haru?” I asked, hardly keeping the panic from my voice.

Dr.Whisper sighed and nodded to her patient before turning to me, “This way.” As she walked, she began explaining what happened, “Haru suffered several severe lacerations on her back, arms, and legs. No broken bones, thankfully. But stim packs could only do so much for her, so she’s in a medically induced coma right now as she recovers.” She then pulled open a curtain in the corner of the med bay, revealing Haru.

She was wrapped in bandages and lying on her stomach with a face mask pumping air into her lungs as she breathed slowly and evenly. I knelt next to her and wrapped my hand around hers, feeling her cold fingers in my hand. I took a deep breath and asked, “When will she wake up?”

“I’ll wake her in a few days, two weeks at most. We need to let her body rest and heal,” the doctor answered.

I nodded and mumbled, “Thank you.” Dr.Whisper said nothing and closed the curtain, leaving me alone with Haru.