I sat on the bed without care and was greeted by the magnanimous feeling of high-tech furniture on my ass. Damn, it would be great to live like this… Well, whatever.

Hallie, please display the files.

[Displaying files in cascade presentation]

There were a shitload of documents in here… Good thing I have you, Hallie. Please, filter out everything that doesn’t contain information directly related to the main mission.

[Filtering…]

About three minutes later, I heard her again.

[Filter ready, remaining files with filters applied, seven]

Great. So let’s start with the shortest one: ‘Timeline of pirate sightings on the Tauri Bridge’. Well, the title already gives me a good idea of what we will be up against. There’s been reports of pirates on the Tauri Bridge, which is about a week of traveling distance from here, according to Hallie; and the part that people are worried about is that the Tauri Bridge apparently works as some sort of traveling crossroads for ships going in and from human territory, as it’s located near the domains of the Alari Union and the Valdari Regime. There should be no pirate party daring to go so close to an important city of the Stellar Union, but they seem to be attacking space stations and ships on the outer regions of the system.

I read the other documents, and most of them explain the current situation of the Tauri Bridge and mention the stationary space stations located there, which are the Tauri HRK-317, SU-Savo, and one called The Bifrost. There’s about twenty or more stations, mostly trade stations that move around systems, and there’s no habitable planet there, but there’s a couple of iridium mines on gas planets operated by automated AI’s. Iridium mines, even back in my day, were pretty rare, and now make up a big part of human economy and exports.

The last report is a detailed recount of the last pirate attack, in which they boarded a Valdari civilian ship and kidnapped the passengers, probably to sell them as slaves, then proceeded to crash that ship into a space station, destroying a section of it.

My guess, probably racist extremist, but there’s a lot of possibilities. The could be something about the mines as well, or an unknown variable related to the big stations. What bothers me the most is why send us? We are a newly established crew, and this seems important enough to call an elite team, or a special forces unit, I don't know, the Stellar Union should have at least one group for that.

Guess I'll have to call General Hyrvin later…

Let’s do it now instead.

Hallie.

[Connecting]

I have to wait about thirty minutes, and several suspicious disconnections before he picks up. He connects without video, probably to avoid meeting my eyes. I just smile at the cowardness of this man, it’s getting amusing at the moment.

“What do you want, Commander?” He says coldly.

“Do your job and tell me some details about the mission” I say nonchalantly.

“Hey! You are talking to a superior, mind you tone!”

“What? Are you going to discharge me?”

“Ugh!... Then i’m not obligated to answer that, so Hyrvin out”

“So i’ll die then… guess i can tell my crew to record a message that says that we couldn’t finish a mission because General Hyrvin didn’t disclose enough information”

“Ah fuck! God damn! You… fine, listen, you are to locate the pirates, track them down, find where they took the fucking Valdari and exterminate them, understood?”

I rub my chin, processing the information. It’s a rescue mission basically, but my intuition tells me there’s something else, something…

“You are not telling me something”

“Wha... No, i... “ He mumbles.

“C’mon, spit it out, your doubts make it obvious”

“...” He sighs “Among the Valdari is a distant relative of one of the Regime’s councillors, a Van’hil Blackfang… he’s the main reason we even bother with a request from those animals”

Oh ho, i have to add racist on top of coward to the profile of the general. I haven’t met any Valdari yet but they are supposed to be feral-like, with fur, claws and accelerated metabolism; a race that got to their position through conquest, and decided to settle down their war culture after more than a hundred years.

The general’s words also finally complete the picture for me.

“Ah… send a rookie team to help the foreing country, not too friendly, not too hostile” The general staying silent just confirms it for me “Well, that’s all, see you later”.

“Wait so now you—” I hang up without waiting for him to speak. Besides, I'm sure there was nothing of value lost. I process the information, now finally complete. It’s going to be a tricky mission, that’s for sure; rescuing people is not my forte, let’s hope my crew can compensate for that and I'll take care of butchering pirates, at least that’s something I'm familiar with.