“We’re not pirates!” insisted Deb to her crew, “We are patriots fighting for the freedom of our people. We have to keep our focus on fighting the enemy, hindering their support structure, harassing their forces to keep their focus away from our boys back home.”

“Yeah, sure, grand, so long as we get paid,” said Tyler simply. Much of the crew nodded in agreement (assholes).

“The colonies will pay you all as soon as we get back home, I promise, I just need to be able to show them that we are actually fighting the Kingdom. And the best way to be able to show that is to attack the Drake while she’s in port for repairs. Capture her if we can, destroy her if we must,” Deb was pleading now. This conversation had been going on for an hour at this point and by the look of things she wasn’t convincing anybody. They had left port the day before and this was the first meeting with her crew for this voyage, she needed to get everybody on the same page or she would lose them all at the next stop. The first meeting was always a little chippy, as crew members tried to establish themselves in the political pecking order. It annoyed Deb to no end (fucking useless politics).

“Don’t lie to us Deb, paycheck from the colonies ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on. We make money on this trip by taking money,” said Doc, who was not a Doc but everyone called him that anyway, “And there’s no money in attacking one military ship in port. We need to be hitting convoys and filling that big beautiful cargo bay over there.” (short sighted piece of shit)

“I understand the need, Doc, and not to worry, with the lanes we’ll be patrolling, there’ll be plenty of opportunities to fill our belly with rich cargo. All I’m saying is that, in the long run, there is more to gain by hitting the military targets. If the colonies see that we are having success hitting the Kingdom where it hurts, then they’ll start sending more ships under our command. Pretty soon we won’t be patrolling out here all by our dangerous lonesome, we’ll be sailing with a whole squadron of ships, taking on rich targets like military convoys and ports of call,” Deb’s eyes twinkled at the image she was painting. Her crews’ eyes, however, did not.

“We’re not here to stroke your ego, Deb,” someone called from the back, resulting in more than a few snickers.

“Oh no, Patty, I’m sure you’re all far too busy stroking your own… egos,” retorted Deb bringing genuine laughter this time. Once the laughter began to die down, Deb relented and proposed her other idea (I was hoping I wouldn’t have to resort to this), “Look, I can see that simple gains are more important to you all right now, so why don’t we compromise. If I can get that cargo bay at least half full, will you all be willing to begin going after military targets?”

There was some silence at the proposal, with some quiet grunts of reluctant approval, “Make it three quarters full and you have a deal,” yelled Tyler.

“No, Tyler, half. We will need the space for the loot we take from the military targets. Ammo, small arms, armor, medical supplies. Say what you want about the Colonies’ payroll, but they will pay for these kinds of supplies cash on delivery,” Deb could see she had them, so she was standing firm now.

“That sounds reasonable to me,” Sally chimed in for the first time (kiss-ass). Nonetheless, there were a lot of silent nods of agreement and looking around.

“Alright, to that end, I have a first target in mind. The port of Coventry,” the crew looked at each other, clearly no one had ever heard of it, “it’s a tiny little port on one of Epsilon 2’s moons,” Deb explained.

“That’s in the heart of Kingdom space,” said one of the crew, incredulous.

“Technically, yes, which makes it a great symbolic attack against the Kingdom. And at the same time it’s on the opposite side of Kingdom space from the War with the Colonies, so that area won’t be heavily patrolled. In the mean time, it is also one of the first stops in Kingdom space for ships coming in from Pelagia, so there are usually a bunch of merchant ships stopping in there. It’s also a cheap spot for repair work, so a lot of inner Kingdom merchant companies will send their smaller ships there for basic repairs. I say we go in, rob the store houses, plunder the docked Pelagian ships, and sabotage the Kingdom ships there for repairs.”

“Pelagian ships mean spices. I know people in the colonies that’ll pay good money for that,” offered Doc, clearly intrigued.

“Port like that must have some defenses,” replied Tyler, still cautious.

“Aye,” replied Deb with a smile, “There’s a defense grid that can tear us apart. But I know of a maintenance terminal where we can hack in and shut it down.”

“How do you know so much about this place?” asked the preacher, speaking from the back for the first time.

Deb’s smile disappeared (I was hoping no one would ask me that), “… I grew up there.”

Deb walked back to the spaceport from the Den of Bens (shudder). She preferred to walk home whenever she woke up hungover (it’s only a walk of shame if you feel shame). It helped her sober up and clear her head, and she always felt better when she got back to the ship (still tired as shit, though).

She found the Poor Dick in one of the docking bays and walked slowly up the ramp into the cargo bay of her ship, still feeling pretty ragged even though her head had cleared considerably (nothing a good nap won’t fix). She found Tyler and Rozelle playing poker on one of the crates. Rozelle had his back to her, his long dreadlocks hiding his thick neck but not his massive shoulders. Tyler was opposite Rozelle and facing the entrance. His skinny frame perked up as he noticed Deb’s slow approach. “Oi Cap! How was your night? Where’s your shirt?” he chipped to her through a mild Australian accent.

Deb shuffled up to her crew, hands in her jacket pocket. “If I knew that, I would be wearing it, Ty,” she said as if still in bed trying to sleep (idiot). She shuffled past them towards her quarters.

“Must’ve been a good night, then,” Tyler said with a rye smile as he turned back to his cards.

“Sally’s back there waiting for you. She seemed pretty pissed,” Rozelle told her without looking up from his cards.

Deb’s feet hesitated for a moment at the warning, but then continued their prisoner’s shuffle toward bed. “Thanks, Roz,” she mumbled.

Deb walked into her quarters and was greeted by a very stern Sally, dressed and showered, sitting on Deb’s bed with the stern look of an angry mother. Deb looked at her through half closed eyes, then sat down at her desk and began taking off her boots. For what seemed like forever, Sally said nothing, just staring daggers into Deb (I’m too tired to deal with a lecture). “Well, I hope you had fun, Deborah,” Sally began.

“At this point, you would know better than I.” (I don’t need a mother, least of all one that wants to fuck me)

“Oh, no I would not. I was back here by midnight, like you promised you would be,” Sally said, letting her anger seep through.

“I recall you promising me that you would make sure I got home safe if I got drunk. I got drunk.”

“Yeah, and then you shot me, Deborah! With a bullet. From a gun.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have been on the other side of the door,” said Deb simply, taking her jacket off.

“I was knocking to see if you were in there. I went to the bathroom and you were on the couch, I came back and you were gone, a boot on the couch and your shirt on the floor.”

“Gah! It was on the floor! I knew I should have looked there,” said Deb, dropping her arms from her unbuttoned fly and throwing her head back in frustration (Ben did say I threw it behind me, I should have figured that out).

“This isn’t a joke, Deb, I had to tell the hospital I got caught in the crossfire of one of the gang battles over in the combat zone. They made me give a statement and everything.”

“I’m sure you were very convincing,” said Deb as she crawled into bed.

Sally sighed out of frustration. She knew that it was useless trying to argue when Deb was like this. Rather than trying to continue the argument she tabled it for later and instead turned around on the bed and starting spooning with Deb.

“Sal, get outta here,” said Deb with practiced annoyance, “we’ve talked about this, I’m not a lesbian.”

“I’m pretty sure that girl last night would have some interesting thoughts on the issue,” said Sally, annoyed at having to explain a simple hug from opposite sides of the sheets.

“I have no memory of any of that. If a tree falls in the woods and I don’t remember cutting it down, then I’m definitely not a lumberjack,” mumbled Deb.

Sally frowned, “I… don’t know what that means, but whatever. You are easily the most in-the-closet lesbian I know. You sleep with women. You never hang out with dudes. You named your ship The Poor Dick for crying out loud, could you hate men any more?”

“It’s an historical reference!”

“Whatever, you treat every man you meet like a total dick.”

“Yes, real, flesh and blood dicks, that I fuck. Ergo, ipso facto, e pluribus unum, not a lesbian. Now, go away and let me sleep off this hangover.”

Sally sighed and stood up, “Alright, but sooner or later you are going to realize that all that flesh and blood dick you’ve been fucking isn’t worth it, and then you’re going to come to me all, ‘wow, Sally you were right all along, I like vaginas and tits’ and I’m gonna be all, ‘see, I told you, now let’s go back to my place.’ And you’re going to be like ‘Alright,’ and I’m gonna be like, ‘Cool.'”

Deb was snoring.

Deb came back to consciousness reluctantly. Very reluctantly. She had tried hard the night before to make sure that she wouldn’t have to deal with consciousness the next day, but alas, just one more failure.

She began to move, also reluctantly, and only partially underneath the sheets. She became vaguely aware that she was naked, but was too concerned with the massive headache that seemed to be permeating her entire body. Where was she?

She opened her eyes (reluctantly) sat up (reluctantly) and looked around (painfully). The unfamiliar room was small but not prohibitively so. Clothing was everywhere, too much of it to all have been removed from bodies last night. There was an old dirty couch across the room from the bed and an old dirty dresser on the other side, next to a closed door with… what looked like a fresh bullet hole in it (mildly concerning, but sure).

Unconscious on the floor was a mostly naked young man that Deb didn’t recognize. Unconscious on the couch was a completely naked young woman drooling on her pillow. Deb didn’t recall meeting either of them, but she just shook her head, rolled her eyes (whatever) and once again rubbed her head.

She began the long and confusing process of finding her clothes. She found her gun belt first (somehow she always finds that first). The belt was missing one gun, however (the good one, too). She immediately gave up on her clothes and started looking for the gun. Tossing clothes, pushing over naked, grumbling bodies, she eventually found it behind the couch, clearly thrown there and missing one round (I guess that explains the door).

She found her pants and one boot in the room. Through bleary eyes, she opened the newly ventilated door to a short hallway that lead to a larger room that included a small galley-style kitchen and a living room with a couple couches. There were two clothed men sleeping on the couches and a man in pajama bottoms in the kitchen cooking something that probably would smell good if it didn’t make Deb wanna vomit (fucking whiskey). “Good morning,” said the cook through raised eyebrows, “want some breakfast?”

“No,” croaked Deb, “where’s my shirt and boot?”

“Well I think your boot may be that one over on the couch under Tom, and as I recall, you took your shirt off, threw it somewhere and said ‘fuck it, let’s get weird’,” replied the cook with no small amount of amused judgement.

Deb stared at the cook through a pouting, hungover frown for a moment (You are way too coherent right now. I kinda want to shoot you). Then she suddenly gave up on the frown and muttered, “Actually that sounds about right.”

She walked over to the couch, grabbed her boot from underneath the feet of Tom, then pushed Tom off the couch and starting rifling through the cushions. Tom landed with a thud and demanded an angry, sleepy “What the fuck?”

She didn’t find her shirt, but she found her jacket crumpled into the corner of the couch cushions. “This’ll work,” she said, putting the jacket on and moving to the door (I’ve got other shirts).

She reached the door, paused, turned around and said with a shrug, “Thanks for the… roof over my head, Ben.”

“Ben? Who’s Ben?” asked the cook.

Deb opened the door, “You are.”

“Uh, no I’m not.”

Deb stopped in the middle of the doorway and gave a short exasperated sigh to herself (Why are you making me explain?), “Yes, you are. You’re Ben, and he’s Ben, all you dicks are Ben. And Ben can go fuck himself.”

The door slammed behind her a little harder than she had intended.

The Pelagians are a race of sentient aquatic animals coming from the planet Pelagia. Pelagians typically boast eight invertebrate limbs, causing some on Earth to equate them with squids or octopuses. However, apart from the limbs which help visually define Pelagians, they actually carry an extensive skeletal structure within their torso and skull regions. Respective to human anatomy, Pelagians exhibit a much greater proportion of their torsos and skulls. Having said that, when a Pelagian is “standing” on solid ground next to a human, it appears to be much shorter as it tends not to stand as tall on its limbs in standard gravity as a human does.

What distinguishes Pelagians from other space fairing creatures the most, however, has not been their physical differences so much as the affect they have had on space warfare and other out-of-atmosphere military engagements.

By way of background, it is important to note that the pelagians required a relatively long time to develop space flight as compared to the other species of space. This is due in no small part to their aquatic nature, which requires their spacecrafts to be filled with the much heavier water, as opposed to the various gaseous atmospheres required in other ships. This, combined with the sub-aquatic natures of the launch pads used by early pelagian spacecraft, vastly complicated the necessary systems to achieve early space flight. As a direct result, pelagian societies were necessarily further developed at the moment they achieved space flight as compared to the other species of space at the same moment.

The degree to which this fact influenced Pelagian strategic advancement, however, remains a subject of debate. Some scholars argue that the extra time required to develop space flight allowed pelagian military strategists more time to develop their craft and develop strategies not seen on other planets or in other military encounters.

Other scholars, however, point to a more evolutionary influence on pelagian military strategy. These scholars argue that given the purely aquatic evolution of the pelagian species, they developed a more natural understanding of military strategy in a three dimensional environment. This lead to a military strategy more initially suited to out-0f-atmosphere engagements.

Regardless of the cause, it is generally agreed that early Pelagian military strategies (as exhibited in their first engagements with Sapien Colonial forces and later with expeditionary forces under the command of the Unified Human Military Command) were surprisingly advanced for such an ostensibly less technologically advanced military force.

We say ostensibly inferior technology because, despite clear inferiority to human spacecraft on a number of rather basic levels (propulsion systems, sensors, firepower, etc.) Pelagian military spacecraft enjoyed a number of technological advantages over their human counterparts that directly led to a number of their early victories (and indeed advantages that continue to hold true today).

Foremost among these advantages is the very basic fact that pelagian spacecraft are filled with water. This means that Pelagian craft are, by necessity, many times denser than other spacecraft. The weapons employed by the human forces in the early engagements with Pelagian forces were designed to pierce the hulls of far less dense objects at high velocity. As a result, the projectiles from these weapons had a tendency to ricochet off the Pelagian ships or, in the case of more direct hits, would be more quickly absorbed and, ultimately, do far less damage than would otherwise be expected. It was not until more advanced analyses of the battles were undertaken and better intelligence gathered that human military forces began using the “old fashioned” yet more effective concussive weaponry against Pelagian forces.

Nonetheless, Pelagian military forces continue to enjoy impressive advancements on a number of fronts, and Pelagian military strategists continue to surprise, confound and challenge their adversaries to this day. As such, Pelagian military forces have come to be some of the most feared and respected military forces in the known universe.