"Is it true?" "Hmm?" The Captain looked up at Yvian's question. His mouth was full of eggs, so a questioning hmm was all he could mange. He had offered no apologies or explanations for his breakdown or locking himself in his quarters, but he had put together an enormous breakfast. He seemed back to normal, mostly. If he occasionally stared at nothing with a troubled expression, the sisters pretended not to notice. Belatedly, Yvian realized she'd asked the question on her mind without providing any context. "Yesterday, you told the Trelg National guy that you could buy his whole country. Is it true?" Mims finished his mouthful and washed it down with some orange juice. "I don't think the Trelg Republic is for sale." "You know what I mean," she chided. "Do you really have enough money to buy a country?" "Probably." The Captain shrugged. "I don't think anyone's selling one, though. Pass the syrup?" Lissa handed it to him. He proceed to slather it on a stack of pancakes. She frowned. "I know privateering pays well, but I didn't think it paid that well." "It doesn't," the Captain agreed. "Then how'd you get so much money?" Lissa scooped herself another helping of fried potatoes. Mims finished chewing a piece for bacon before he replied. "I own Venturetech." Yvian's forkful of french toast froze on the way to her mouth. "You what?" "I own Venturetech." "How?" Lissa demanded. "Getting a controlling interest in a company that size..." "You don't get it," Mims gestured at her with his forkful of pancakes. He took a quick bite, then said. "I don't have a controlling interest. Venturetech's not a publicly traded company. It's a privately owned corporation. Privately owned," He pointed at himself with his now empty fork. "By me." "That's ridiculous." Lissa scoffed as she poured more ketchup onto her plate. "You're not a citizen. You can't own a corporation." "I am a full citizen," Mims assured her. "By way of the Krog Monarchy. They made me a citizen when they Named me." Yvian thought about that for a second. Then she said, "Doesn't that mean your official name is Mimsey-cake?" Lissa giggled. The human puffed himself up a little, offended. "I'll have you know that name was bestowed upon me by the crown princess herself." He folded his arms in front of his chest. "Very few people experience such an honor." His frown deepened as he noticed his fork still had maple syrup on it. A few drops of the syrup had dripped onto his armor. Yvian smirked. "And how old was the crown princess when she named you after a pastry?" "She was four." Mims irritably wiped at the syrup with a cloth napkin. "We're getting off subject," Lissa interjected. "How do you own Venturetech?" "It's not complicated." Mims set down the napkin and activated the cleaning function on his voidarmor. "You know I worked for XTRO, right?" "Yeah, we know you're a spy." "Privateer. Spying's a sideline." Mims sipped some orange juice. "Anyway, it's hard to gather intel on an empire as big as the Confed. Especially when they didn't have centralized communication. Using drones to cross Gates with data packets...it's... unwieldy. It took months for news to travel from one end of the Confed to the other." "So once I was a citizen, my handlers saw an opportunity to fix that. They handed me some schematics and hired me to introduce Node technology to the Confed." "Wait," Yvian set down her fork, thinking through the implications. "Are you saying that the Nexus is human technology? And you built it to spy on us?" "Pretty much." The Captain shrugged. "Since it's built to Terran specs, the Federation can tap in to anything they want. They can see every comm, N-mail, and chatroom that passes through a Node." "Crunch." "Anyway," Mims continued, starting back in on his pancakes. "Once we got some Nodes built, and some servers to process the communication, it was just a matter of maintaining the patents and watching the money roll in. Forty credits a month doesn't sound like much, but when you have six trillion subscribers..." "Is everything Venturetech makes human tech?" Lissa asked. "Not everything." The Captain took another bite. After swallowing he continued, "The medpods are made by the Oluken. We just change the casing and the language interface. And the Jumpdrive was invented by one of our employees. Uses the same quantum entanglement principles the Nodes are based on." He poured himself some more orange juice. "Aside from the Nodes, the Federation doesn't want me spreading Terran tech around, so most Venturetech products are the result of their own R and D." "R and D?" Yvian eyed the fried potatoes, debating whether she could manage another helping. She was feeling pretty full. "Research and Development," Mims clarified. "Basically, we hire-" "I know what Research and Development is, Mims," Yvian gave him a scathing glower. "The translator's not good with abbreviations." "Oh. Right." The Captain gave an apologetic look, then said, "The Nexus is still our biggest earner, but I think it only accounts for forty percent of total revenue." "And you... you run all that?" Yvian could maybe see the Captain doing some paperwork, but she couldn't imagine him running the minutiae of a corporation and still finding time to do the things they'd been doing. Mims snorted. "I don't run shit. I just own it. The CEO sends me a report every quarter, and money gets dumped into my account. That's as involved as I get." "Speaking of money..." Lissa's grin was sly. "How much we talking?" Mims shrugged. "More than I can spend." "Trillions, at least." Lissa thought for a few seconds, sipping beer. "Hundreds of trillions?" "Add a few more zeros." "Bright Lady," she swore. Then she tilted her head, puzzled. "But if you've got all this money, why are you working as a privateer?" "I'm a pilot," Mims told her. "Flying is what I do." "Ok..." Yvian drawled. "But why are you so greedy about it?" "I'm not greedy." Mims raised his chin. "I just know what I'm worth." "You're greedy." "It's a matter of principle," he raised his fork as he intoned. "A privateer..." "Never does anything for free," the girls finished in unison, rolling their eyes. "You're still greedy," Lissa told him. "Shut up." They were on the bridge of the Encounter forty minutes later. The Recompense was still decelerating, but they'd neared the destination Mims had programmed. The destination was an asteroid. A big one, shaped like... well. Shaped like a piece of anatomy not discussed in polite company. The formation appeared to be natural, as far as Yvian could tell. It was a whopping six hundred kilometers in length, and roughly ninety kilometers around, though it was noticeably thicker on one end. "Uh, Mims?" Yvian was concerned. "We're going to crash into that asteroid." "No we're not." Mims dismissed her concern. "We're headed right for it." "I know." "Don't you think we should-" "Don't worry about it." Yvian pulled up a video feed of the Recompense's forward sensors. The asteroid loomed large as the cruiser dived towards the bottom of the thinner end. At the speed they were going, Yvian figured the Recompense's shields could withstand the impact, but the sudden stop might overload the inertial dampeners and cause the Random Encounter to slide around in its docking bay. "Are you sure?" Lissa asked. "Trust me." Yvian braced herself for impact. The impact never came. The Recompense flew right through the base of the asteroid. The image slid around its hull, falling away after half a second. Yvian lost sensor contact with the rest of the sector, but the interior of the asteroid was revealed. It was a hidden base. Two of them, in fact. Two hundred kilometers worth of asteroid had been hollowed out. In the middle of the space was a medium sized equipment dock. Built into the rock at the other end of the space was another station, but emergency notifications interrupted Yvian before she could get a good look at it. "Shit! We're being targeted." Sensors revealed two heavy weapons platforms and three anti-fighter platforms aiming at them. A quarter second later a big ship, probably a destroyer, pointed guns their way as well. At the same time Yvian spoke, an automated message piped in through the comms. "Take what you can." Mims activated his own comm and replied, "Give nothing back." "Code Accepted," the automated voice replied. The weapon platforms and the destroyer stopped targeting them. "It's an old pirate base," Mims explained. "Used to belong to the Akindi." He set a course for the equipment dock. "The crystal ship should be safe here while we deal with other things." "You're not worried the Akindi might come back?" Lissa asked. "There are no more Akindi." the Captain told her. Yvian went back to scanning the area. The base built into the asteroid was the standard LiveShop Commerce station a lot of pirates use. The destroyer was a model she'd never seen before. She wondered if the pirates had built it themselves. There were over four thousand dead bodies floating along the interior of the asteroid. "What happened to them?" Yvian wondered. Mims leaned over to look at her screen. "Most pirate stations have automated defenses. Turrets and such. Looks like somebody took control and massacred both stations. Dumped the bodies into space." "Was it you?" Lissa studied his grim expression. "No comment." "There are children among the bodies." Mims let out a breath through his nose. "Yeah." "And you're ok with that?" "Not really." The Captain started to shrug, then stopped himself. He sighed. "This was one of the biggest slave processing stations in the Confed at the time. Most of those kids were already implanted. If you knew what happens after..." Mims shook his head. "Death was the only mercy I could give them." "But not all of them were implanted." Lissa guessed. "No." Mims admitted. "Not all."