Commodore

[Unseelie]

Disfigured and mutilated bodies were downed in the halls, splatters of blood leading far down the corridors from the corpses. On the command deck, two men lounged with helmets at their feet. Safeties were on, the guns leaning against the hall. Sophie watched as the screens flickered, her computing spike rewriting the controls and systems. Soon this ship would be transferred to her mate's neural net, and he would be a Captain. Sophie would march back to her ship, and two vessels would land at Malta, trading refits and repairs for the multitude of warm bodies teeming in their bellies.

Trade between the stars was profitable. Every station needed air, needed food, water. Many were sites of construction, demanding raw materials or intermediate goods, and wherever people were, consumables and luxuries were well paid for. Many stations were robotic, drawing in the cheap mechanics and systems to build and maintain, and needed no people at all. Others attracted people, with luxury suites, advanced education, profit sharing, promises at a better life. Still others demanded people, sucked at warm bodies and living populations, paying premiums for wives or concubines, pretties and skills. Souls to feed the maws of mines, to farm the fields, to maintain the air...doctors, mechanics, pilots, whores...Brute labor, orbiting the darkest, cruelest stars, sucked in the life of the Houses and consumed it, demanding more. And more the Union fed it.

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