His mother had insisted on dragging him down to medical after the negotiations were over… alongside their one-legged prisoner. He might be an adult… but she was his mom. And this was her ship.

  Besides… he had a broken arm, and he knew the place.

  A ship he’d been on for months at a time before, since she spent almost as much time on it as she did at home… and he knew the path to medical very well.

  The engineering frame he’d had customized was far more delicate, and precise, than the normal one he used. It could actually be more precise than his fingers. And as she walked alongside him to medical, she studied it closely.

  “I like the design. It looks… extremely complex, but functional. Emergency backup frame, or…?”

  He glanced over at her. “Engineering frame. I did most of the work on the ship in zero G, but I built this one so it could handle more precision than the regular one… all the way down to the fingers. I actually had this rig programmed so it could mimic my movements. After I ran a wire I could plan out the next step and it would repeat the process for me on autopilot.”

  She gave a slow nod, as they entered the medical bay… and the doc; an older, bearded man who had been a combat medic… and still was, in a way… looked over… and laughed.

  “Well, hell. Welcome back, Kyle. Manage to hurt yourself already? Looks like I lost the bet.” He gave a sad shake of his head. “Did we punch something and forget the augment suit?”

  “You should know me better than that, doc...Someone took control of it. I had to break it to get free. It…. broke me, in return.”

  He blinked. “Ooof! Terrible. How bad?”

  “Possibly worse, now, so might as well scan me. At least three fractures.”

  His mother stepped forward. “I was thinking of re-evaluating the bone replacement process. Definitely for the arm, possibly for the rest.”

  Kyle sighed, climbing into the same bed he’d been in last time, a few years before. It felt smaller. But then, everything did.

  “If it would be faster, yes, for the arm. Unless it would be faster to do my whole body than to let it heal, no.”

  Doc glanced at him, then at his mother. “Still haven’t changed your mind about the gene therapy? I can get you swapped in minutes. Your mom’s type, or a standard, newer, variety, and you’ll be fine in weeks. Never need the frame again.”

  A slow head-shake. “No. The one I’ve got might have its problems. But if I ever have to work in Alliance space…”

  He sighed. “Guter Jude.”

  “Pretty much.”

  The Empire captain, who was being settled into the bed beside him, blinked. “...Is that german?”

  The doc glanced over. “Ahh. Yeah.” He glanced at the Commodore. “Should we… bother?”

  “We’ll be handing him back over. Actually might even work with him again someday. Doesn’t hurt to be nice. Painkillers, temporary prosthetic. Let his people do the permanent work, they’re better at it.”

  The doc rolled his eyes. “I’ve replaced more legs than just about anyone, Mira. I can get him better than new in however long it takes the clone tank to run, plus about twelve minutes.”

  The prisoner shook his head. “No, no. I would prefer my people do the permanent work. She’s right. But if you don’t mind me asking… ‘Guter Jude’?”

  Kyle laughed. “How much do you know about how the Alliance got started?”

  “..The basics.”

  “Religious nuts, pirates, and crazies. My grandfather on my dad’s side? One of the pirates. He got pissed at the dubs for abandoning him and the whole line after the augment didn’t go how they wanted, and turned rogue. When the Alliance was founded proper, and the religious nutjobs took over, they said everyone who had genetic augments wasn’t really human.”

  “..And what does that have to do with you?”

  The doctor set a cuff in place over Kyle’s arm, which started to buzz softly as it scanned the limb, then turned to the captain, to start carefully removing the bundle of cloth and tourniquet around the limb, preparing for a better solution.

  Kyle glanced down at his arm. “The pirates who helped found it? Their genotypes… which include my father’s… are listed as ‘the good ones’. We aren’t really welcome, and you’d never see one of us in their navy or government, but we can own property, have jobs, that sort of thing. So long as I don’t get it corrected, I can run ops in their space. Someday, if I get bored of running around on my own, I might want to join the family business. And if that happens…”

  His mother nodded. “Unlike me, he’ll be able to command a task force in Alliance space without any problems with the locals. The Skulls like to maintain fleets that can work over there, and it’ll help his odds of getting promoted almost as much as having Huxley for a last name.”

  A slow nod. “Strange, but understandable. How long before I’m reunited with my people? Or is it still prison, for me?”

  She looked him over for a moment. “My son wasn’t hurt in your care. Your ship didn’t wipe the civilians. So long as your people pay as much as BSE would, you’ll be going home. We’ll have to see. For now, though… doc, if you could set the privacy divider.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  The man nodded… and hit a button. With a hum, a thin sheet of grey material slid down from the ceiling… covering both the doc, and the Empire captain… likely not what his mother wanted, but good enough, as the only ones who could hear him now were crew.

  “Okay then. Son. I’ve been doing some research… and I found a quick and dirty solution. Something that can get you ready in three days. Now..”

  Kyle raised one hand. “Dad went through this. Grandpa went through worse. I’ll deal with it. I’ll take the replacements for the left arm bones, but the rest can wait for my body to handle itself.”

  “...Fine. Are you going to be sticking with your new crew?”

  “...No. Unless I find someone I trust, I’m never hiring on crew again. I’m not gonna say never… but its gonna take me months to get the Sapper going again. If I find someone during that time, sure. If not… I’m done.”

  He sighed. “I made friends once, and its not fair to say they abandoned me. I could always have stayed. Not sure if its worth the effort of trying again.”

  She gave a slow nod. “.... For what its worth, I think you made the right choice. You’d never be as happy sitting at home with your friends in that virtual world as you will be exploring the galaxy. Having real adventures.”

  She shakes herself for a moment. “Anyways! You have dumped an enormous opportunity on my lap. The sort that will help expand the company and safeguard our future. I know you don’t want any more money past your inheritance, but I’ll make sure BSE pays you enough for that… ‘Cruiser’... you killed and completing the mission to cover a brand new corvette, if you feel like going with something less… junky.”

  He chuckled. “That thing was capital-sized, wasn’t it? I suppose that’s fine. Though it just means that the Sapper will have hatches to launch drones, instead of needing to pop itself open, next time I’ve got some plans…”

  “Well. Let doc fix up your arm. By the time we wake up, you’ll be in Ash, we’ll be off on another mission… and you’ll have all you need for your captain’s license. Hopefully you don’t go it alone. But… you did as I asked.”

  She leaned in close, and kissed his forehead. “You did me proud there, son.”

  He relaxed on the bed, looking at her for a moment. “...Is it for killing a person, blowing up the dragon, or…?”

  “Calling for help when you thought it was needed. Stabbing an agent to death with an improvised weapon. Retooling your weapons to defeat a superior enemy with tools and tactics. You’re like all thats best about me and your aunt all rolled into one. When you finally decide to join the family business, you’re gonna be a real terror.”

  She stretched, and stepped back. “Now relax. After doc gets the captain fitted with a prosthetic, you can get some sleep while he tears open your flesh and replaces all the bones with new ones. I’m gonna have em put the old ones in a bag. You can keep them as a memento if you want. They’ll be awesome on an armored gauntlet.”

  He stared at her as if she were crazy. Which she likely was. “...Please no.”

  ***

  When he next awoke, Kyle’s left arm was intensely sore… in a very different way from how it was.

  He moved it about, experimentally, as he lay on the bed in the medbay, feeling out the movements… and sighed, looking up at the familiar ceiling.

  He’d laid in this bed before, with broken limbs, multiple times. Every time, his mother offered a way around it. Every time, he turned her down. It felt almost like masochism now, willingly putting up with a disability…. Even if it were temporary.

  He was wearing shorts and a tank-top; and hadn’t been when he laid down, which meant that either Doc or one of the machines had dressed him. He wasn’t sure which he would prefer.

  What he was certain of, though…. Is that he didn’t like his mother’s deal.

  Were the killers punished? Yes, sure. Everyone responsible for killing the colonists was dead. Yumi had died after killing Tom. Actually… what had happened to her implant? Was it still in the wreckage? Should he…. Do something about that?

  Tom had been killed permanently, because his implant was fairly fresh. It hadn’t even fully integrated yet, was still copying his brain. So, unlike, say, Jenny, he was dead for good.

  …Unlike his old friend group, who were still around, just not physically.

  A quick head-shake. No, no. The people truly responsible were some government officials up in the Empire government. His mother’s plan was remarkably kind, despite being so mercenary; she’d get paid, and civilian casualties would be prevented.

  But…. how could he make the people in charge pay?

  He’d slipped one of the eggs quietly out of the system, attached to a comm buoy. Just waiting for him to come back and retrieve. If he brought that to the right person at the United Worlds, and given them the story, would it be enough?

  Letting the egg hatch and getting a good look at a dragon would make anyone who looked at it extremely suspicious of the armor that Empire ships had developed, back in the day… and the way its breath weapon worked? Likely the same for plasma beam weapons.

  Hell. If there was one spaceborne critter, why not multiple? There might be a whole spaceborn ecosystem that the Empire had harvested and studied. So many technologies that they’d come up with, which had advanced humanity back during the era of the first galactic war.

  If it became public? There were people hundreds of years old, who were there for the first war. Knowing that, despite having been crushed because of all the killings to try and keep the secret of how FTL actually worked, they were still keeping more secrets about the galaxy and their tech?

  If he recalled correctly, a few members of the United Worlds senate were actually veterans of that war. The right evidence, in the right place, and the people behind the secrecy might actually end up on the firing line.

  But.

  The Empire weren’t all bad. They were not even slightly fond of the Alliance, not that anyone was. Despite the preference to keep a certain amount of asiatic appearance, the overwhelming majority of their population were augmented, and they’d had a few shooting incidents to retrieve Empire citizens from Alliance slavers.

  The rampant speculation about a third galactic war now mostly boiled down to the Alliance and the Republic against the Empire and the United Worlds.

  If a war started between the Empire and the United Worlds, all the efforts that the dubs were making to keep the Alliance in check would be put on hold; and that bunch of slaving lunatics would spread like wildfire until the shooting stopped.

  His… mother might have been right about how to handle this. Avoiding war, making money, limiting civilian casualties…. The Alliance certainly seemed like more of a problem at the moment.

  Maybe. What if the Empire was still planning on conquering the galaxy, and the first galactic war had only delayed their plans, not stopped them? There might be some superweapon they were working on based on one of these organic space creatures, or some other, similar, nonsense.

  …He needed to find out. He needed to get the Sapper back in working order. Better, even. Weapons to kill another dragon if he met one. Figure out the best ways to quietly gather information about a star system and implement every single one of them.

  ..And see if he could steal some data from the Empire tech his mother had. She probably already had techs working through it. Why not add one more set of eyes? Who knew, he might find something someone else missed.