A Prelude to Commander’s Mate
A Prelude to Commander’s Mate
THE FIRST CONTRACT
Zared Maktu had learned that grief could power a war, but it could not fuel a dreadnought.
The distinction offended him.
Farseek had given the Consortium ships, soldiers, years, blood, and the illusion of loyalty.
The Consortium had returned the favor by leaving his world undefended.
Now the surviving dreadnoughts needed fuel.
The wounded needed medicine. Civilians needed food, transport, shelter, and places on ships already carrying too many people.
Every search for the missing cost something.
So the Farseek Brigade had become something else.
Mercenaries.
The word still tasted wrong. The mission did not.
Admiral Garvan Degatu stood across the command table while a contract file glowed between them.
A governor’s daughter had been taken into the Sargus slave trade.
Intelligence placed her at an auction complex on Ursaga.
Her family would pay enough for the recovery to fund repairs, provisions, and another search sweep through three trafficking corridors.
Zared read the file twice. Not because he doubted the target. Because the intelligence estimate listed other captives at the same location.
Dozens.
Maybe more.
Degatu watched him. "The contract is for one woman."
"The payment is for one woman," Zared said.
"That is not the same thing."
No. It was not.
They had already begun learning the rules of the life forced on them. Rescue cost fuel. Freedom required food after the chains came off. A person pulled from an auction block still needed somewhere to sleep, someone to ask where home was, and enough truth to choose what happened next.
Farseek could not rescue everyone in the Sargus Empire.
Zared hated that sentence more every time it became true.
He closed the contract file. "We recover the governor’s daughter. We take every Farseekan we can identify. And if we can open cages without losing the mission, we do not leave people behind because no one paid for their names."
Degatu’s expression did not change, but something in his shoulders eased. "That could become expensive."
"Everything worth doing appears to be expensive."
"You are adapting well to mercenary life."
Zared gave him a look that ended the joke.
Outside the command blister, scarred ships moved against a field of stars.
Some carried survivors. Some carried soldiers who no longer had homes to return to.
Somewhere beyond those stars were the people stolen from Farseek—mothers, fathers, children, mates, siblings, friends—reduced by traffickers to inventory lines and prices.
They would find them.
One contract. One prison. One auction. One name at a time.
Zared touched the authorization control.
"Accept it."
The contract changed status.
FIRST PAID RECOVERY — ACTIVE.
Orders moved through the fleet. Navigation solutions populated. Weapons crews reported ready. Boarding teams assembled. For the first time since the fall of Farseek, the surviving force was not simply reacting to what had been done to them.
They were going hunting.
Zared did not know that one of the captives waiting at the end of this mission came from a planet his people could not find on any chart.
He did not know her name was Harper Avery.
He did not know that one breath in a slave auction would divide his life into before and after.
He only knew there were people in chains.
And the Farseek Mercenaries were coming.
***
Continue with Commander’s Mate — Farseek Mercenaries, Book 1
Zared Maktu came home from war to find Farseek in ashes. Harper Avery was stolen from Earth and marked for sale. Their first meeting will force both of them to confront the difference between rescue, protection, possession—and choice.