The Admin station for the Ash system was directly over the planet; and as you approached, you could see the world below… the dull grey, constant storms. The glittering lights of domed cities… and the far more numerous ones of the orbital habitats forming a loose ring around the planet.

  Kyle had been here before; they administered some tests here, in a controlled environment, to prevent cheating; and had planned to go here as soon as he graduated, to get his Captain’s license.

  He was a bit delayed… but still doing so.

  When the shuttle docked, Thor stepped off, grinning down at him. “You go ahead and meet with the board. There’s a pub about a klick and a half from there, called the Starlit Stain. You’ll probably end up taking at least an hour, so I’m gonna do a bit of shopping, then meet you there.”

  “...Stay safe. Just you, or…?”

  “You’ll just have to see. Stay safe yourself, Mastermind.”

  The man turned to walk away, and Kyle slowly shook his head, turning to head for the Captain’s Board complex…. And to step into line.

  Before the incident, Thor was one of his closest friends. They’d done so many stupid things together as kids, and while Kyle had always been focused on exploring the real universe, Thor had been more interested in the sort of fully-immersive fantasy worlds that could be found online, with persistent games that crossed all of human space, some with billions of players.

  He’d managed to drag Kyle into it, and he’d played a decent support… but his heart had never been in it the way it was for them.

  Considering he’d been able to spend a few years living in a fantasy world that he loved 24/7, death likely hadn’t been all that hard on him.

  As he slowly moved forward in the line, he thought back to that day. The fire. The blood.

  At the time he was just confused, terrified. He had no idea what was happening, or why. He thought, maybe, that they were targeting him, because of his family. But…. no.

  One of his friends, Sherry? Family was some big-wigs back in the Republic. They were trying to abduct her, and fucked up. Four deaths; fortunately all implanted. One serious injury. And lifelong psychological trauma.

  His mother had gone from the hospital to the Harbinger of Pain, her flagship at the time… and he didn’t know much. But whoever had been involved didn’t exist anymore. And the Republic had made some sort of a deal with the Skulls after, enough that they put another task force together, patrolling the area around the new Republic colonies on the rim.

  Whatever else you could say about her…. She was extremely protective. And he was the only one of his siblings any of this bullshit had ever happened to, so he’d probably earned ‘Troublemaker’.

  When he reached the head of the line, there were a series of doors, and a single guard… a bored man in a grey skinsuit with a stun-pistol at his hip, directing people towards entryways whenever a light turned green.

  Soon enough, a light turned green, and the guard nodded him towards one of the doors… and he passed through into a small room with a table, a chair, a connection to hook into an implant, and a series of displays… with a door on the other side.

  He settled in, hooking himself up… and the displays popped up.

  Five images. A tiny blonde woman wearing the dark blue uniform of the real United Worlds navy; a rarity, since you almost always always saw hired guns instead. A pair of much larger, stronger-looking figures; though appearances were probably deceiving in that matter; who had the distinctive markings of tattoos commonly given to slaves by the Alliance; as well as the markings representing someone who had been freed.

  Then a more normal-looking pair; an older man and woman, both wearing the same grey uniform as the guard outside. Wherever they actually were, the projections showed them in chairs as if they were in the room.

  The navy officer started off. “Please state your name, for the record.”

  Kyle leaned forward. “Kyle Tiberius Huxley.”

  The group nodded as one. The officer looked at her display. “Mister Huxley. You are here applying for a Captain’s License in the United Worlds. This license will authorize you to command starships capable of faster-than-light travel within our borders. Any such vessel is, in the wrong hands, a weapon of mass destruction, capable of being used to cause cataclysmic damage.”

  She studied him. “This requires you to have passed both a series of psychological evaluations, as well as testing out as competent in every vital system in the operation of such a ship, including but not limited to piloting, sensors, communications, and life support, as well as to have demonstrated competence in each of these fields over a set number of hours on-duty. I have here both a series of recorded hours of you performing these functions, as well as signed statements of additional hours whose recordings have been lost. Do you attest that these recordings are an accurate reflection of your time spent at these tasks?”

  Kyle glanced at the display on the table before him. Right now it just showed numbers of hours for each field. He had over two thousand hours in piloting, but the display only showed a little over a thousand; which was still beyond the minimum.

  “Mostly? It seems as if some of the recordings or statements were misplaced in some fashion, as my hours on-duty for each position are lower than they should be. In some cases by as much as half.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Was someone attempting to stop you from becoming a Captain?”

  He glanced back up at her. “I can neither confirm nor deny anything of the sort, but I can attest that I have operated all of the needed positions a minimum of the required time, or more, and that each of the required numbers of hours listed is either at or less than the truth.”

  “..Understood. Now. You have a pre-existing Mercenary license received when you graduated from United Worlds. Being a licensed captain has a unique impact on that, and the contract you signed when you received it. I need you to explain, in your own words, your understanding of that.”

  “At its core? That I not make unilateral hostile actions against the legal owners of a given territory. While within United Worlds space, unless the subject is a known criminal I will not fire unless fired upon. And that if another galactic war starts up, I will be required to be involved on behalf of the United Worlds at standard contract rates based on the number of crew and tonnage of ships I provide.”

  The woman nodded. “That is the heart of it, and shows a clear understanding of the license. Does anyone else have any questions for the applicant?”

  One of the two enormous, burly men leaned forward. “You’ve gone through significant effort to ensure you can take contracts in Alliance space in the future should you need to. Will this become a problem should conflict arise between the Alliance and the United Worlds?”

  The other nodded. “Exactly. Will you breach the contract and switch sides if paid to?”

  Kyle blinked. “...While sources of revenue are always good to keep open, I am fully aware both that the Alliance are a bunch of lunatics who don’t view my mother as a person, and pose zero chance of winning an armed conflict with the United Worlds. The only reason they still exist is that if the Directorate and Republic believe the United Worlds started the war, they would both intervene to defend the Alliance. I am neither suicidal nor a religious nutjob.”

  “So if it came down to a war between the Alliance, the Directorate, and the Republic, against the rest of the galaxy?”

  Kyle shrugged. “I would probably join up with my mother’s organization and participate in incursions into Alliance space. She’s already got lines built-in to all of her Alliance contracts that if they start a war with you people all terms are void.”

  The officer coughed. “This has gone a bit beyond the scope of how this exam normally goes, gentlemen, and we have dozens more to go through today. I vote to approve the young man’s license. All in favor?”

  As a group, they all nodded. “Excellent. Mister Huxley, you are now authorized to captain a ship in United Worlds space. Note that the Empire, Republic, Directorate, and Alliance all recognize our licenses but may have restrictions or requirements on your operations within their territory, in the same way we do for non-United Worlds licenses. You may wish to consult them before crossing the border.”

  The screen shut down; and a simple buzzing sound emerged from the table, as a white plastic disk emerged; bearing his name and data.

  His license. After all the extra bullshit his mother had put him through, he could finally get out into the galaxy without supervision, as if he were still a child.

  He took it, and headed out the door on the other side. He had some friends to meet… and something to celebrate.

  ***

  The Starlit Stain wasn’t too familiar to Kyle; he hadn’t actually been in that many bars before. It was spotless, all done up in chrome, with the entire ceiling being a projected screen of the starscape outside.

  There was a long bar, with a few dozen stools, and only three people sitting at it; and an array of booths around the outer edge; one of which had a pair of familiar figures; the tall, slim form of Sherry, who… amusingly enough, he was better able to see the distinctions between her Chinese origin and the japanese now that he’d spent so much time around a few folks from the Empire…

  And of course, Thor, who’d turned himself into a tanned blonde-haired athlete. Zero surprise.

  As Kyle settled in across from them, a couple of holo-emitters activated; revealing the faces of Elise; the red-head who he’d had a crush on for years; and her boyfriend, Barry.

  All of them were related to Screaming Skulls members, and grew up together on the same base; some tiny independent world that was practically owned by the Skulls, called Requiem.

  He glanced at the emitters, then at Thor and Sherry.

  “So is it that all of you got new bodies, or just these two?”

  Barry gave a laugh. “All of us. Your mom pulled us all into a conference call, and told us she was worried about you. That having your friends all die on you might have done some sort of deep, psychological, damage, made you unwilling to work with people.”

  Thor nodded. “Yup. Made sense to us. We still talked, and played online sometimes, but we were there 24/7 now…. So we got past you. While you got into the nitty-gritty of starship engineering and got way past us. So though we still talked, and even got relocated here from Requiem when you did, partially because this is just a much bigger hub with so many more players….”

  Sherry was laser-focused on him. “We still didn’t hang out nearly as much as we used to. So. We talked it over, she paid for the process, and we got ourselves physical bodies cloned out. Most of us stuck to normal….” She glanced at Thor. “Some of us decided to change things. Still only you, Barry, and Elise that can go in Alliance space without possible problems, so I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  Kyle gave a slow nod. “Well then. Are all of you wanting to go? I gotta admit… as weird as it would be, it’d be great to have any of you that care to join me. This last time, I brought strangers, and… it went bad.”

  Barry chipped in. “Care to explain? Thor said you wouldn’t until we were all together.”

  “Not here. Gotta be a secure place. All I’ll say here… is that I got betrayed by one of the crew. She tied up some of us, shocked all of us.. And I had to kill her. I….I’m not to happy about that.”

  Barry gave a slow nod. “Ooof, fuck. That sounds like a problem. Well, I was thinking we take turns between helping get the guild ready for us to be gone for a while, and helping you get the ship fixed up. All go on one last raid together… and then take a vacation exploring the stars. Say… three months? And you can either come down planetside and go over what happened, or we can do it in orbit later.”

  “Sounds good to me. I just got my Captain’s License. Gonna look through all the junkyards again, see if anything calls to me… and then get started on fixing her. Hopefully it won’t take three months, but I'll make sure its less than that…especially if I get some help.”

  “True enough! So, by celebrating, do you mean having a drink and doing some karaoke with your friends, or what does that mean now?”

  Kyle chuckled. “...I wasn’t old enough to drink the last time any of us were together before. So fuck it. No time like the present, yes?”