I took another sip of my rum & quafe and continued to browse through the mess of corporate news. Being alone, cut off from the secured corp channels was annoying. Waiting for a bunch of bureaucrats to decide whether or not I was dangerous to the federation was more annoying. The alcohol helped.

I perused the recent news. A smile spreading across my face.

Corp Pilot was assaulted while on a federation mission in the system of Yvangier. Pilot escaped the situation and returned in a destroyer seeking retaliation.

My lips mouthed the words as I read. My smile growing.

Corp mining operation interrupted by thieves. Mining foreman left operation and returned in a combat craft. Pilot destroyed one potential threat, no losses recorded.

I put the datapad down and took another drink. I remembered the old days, as a mercenary. We protected our fair share of fat weak industrialists. It was a decent living. My work since coming back to the sky had been different. I had been living amongst the industrialists, training, advising… learning.

Times had changed, at least here. These were the industrialists I recognized. They spent far too many hours pouring over ore reports for my tastes, spent far too long training to blast asteroids, melt rocks. But they were different. They were not fat and weak, they were lean and becoming progressively more dangerous.

“You possess only that which you have the capacity to defend,” I mumbled, a quote from somewhere long forgotten. Industrialists certainly, but they understood this.

They were beginning to bare their teeth.