Identification:[CREDENTIALS EXPIRED] Taskmaster Rodney Miller Affiliation:[UNVERIFIED] Octavarium Fleet, Away Division
To: Consul John Riley, Taskmaster Weaver
Subject: Well, that was an "enjoyable" vacation. Encryption:Yep. Location: Orbiting Canberra Star City, Tau-44
Riley, Weaver,
Apologies for the disappearance. It seems we have had something of a problem with that of late. I suspect that the verification warnings I received logging into our communications network means that my credentials have either been revoked or were otherwise allowed to lapse; in either case, I feel confident in saying that it is in no small part due to my absence.
It appears that it was fortuitous that I was on the front lines getting my shit pushed in by a rabble of unpleasant Frenchmen and then promptly spent the next five and a half months in a makeshift prison, as the Gallic idea of a field prison is not entirely unlike the Kusari idea of an unpleasant night out for a businessman except with a ration of hobo wine instead of endless hot sake and plain sandwiches of pasteurized deli meat on rapidly-approaching-stale baguette rounds instead of being dared to eat fresh sushi out of a Golden Chrysanthemum prospect's twat -- there's no beatings, but there's certainly a sense of dread and regret that you can neither remember all of the details of the previous night nor are you sure what they'll mean for you in the near future.
Also, you know, it appears I missed being sucked into the goddamn void by an apparently-failed jump drive experiment.
Anyways, the prison station got raided by some Libertonians who were pleasant enough not to just blow the place to bits like the last one I remember seeing erected in some asscrack of the Independent Worlds, and after they gave me a quick medical and dropped me off on a refugee camp slash resettlement opportunity slash manual labour rotation on California Minor I grabbed the nearest and cheapest ship I could find and put the charge on an old credit account that probably won't hold up for transaction processing for much longer and made my way back home.
Either way I'm pretty sure that my return is going to be seen as unexpected and suspicious, so I'm going to go ahead and offer myself back to the fleet with something of a reduction of rank. No doubt you've filled the position of Taskmaster of the Fleet while I've been savoring dainty sandwiches and pretending it's hot Japanese box, courtesy of everyone's favourite north-weastern foreign superpower, and even if you haven't, I'm not entirely sure I'd want it back. Guys with that rank have a tendency of getting captured by the enemy or sucked into a negative space wedgie or being replaced by an advanced AI prototype in their sleep by Escher.
Assuming I'm not disbarred from the Natio, that is.
Let me know how you want to work this out.
Yours in hopefully not being sent to the salt mines,
Commander Rodney Miller Fourth Octavarium Fleet, Away Division
PS: We're probably gonna have to change the serials on this ship. No way in hell does that account actually have a hundred and eighty thousand credits in it.
![[Image: Rodney-Miller.png]](https://files.cordilon.net/disco/vagrant/of/Rodney-Miller.png)