Deep within the Vt-Tun Freehold, two Hunzk were arguing as they rode in a rental cargo mover.

"I can't believe you did this!" Ghtpt spluttered through his tiny mouth at the tip of his muscular earthworm-like head. "The boss is going to pluck your ass bald!"

Beep reflexively pulled the feathery fluff extending from his rear quarter tight against his round flexible body. He hated getting plucked.

"He won't after he sees the profits!" Beep exclaimed, "These things are fantastic! We are going to make so much money!"

"If they are so great," Ghtpt grumbled, "Then why haven't I heard about them before?"

"Because nobody knows how great they are out here!" Beep exclaimed. "You don't usually get them this far out! I'm telling you, Ghtpt, they are worth every penny a hundred times over! I've read all about them on the net!"

"You spent all that money on something you read about on that stupid hypernet?!?" Ghtpt fluted, his feathers shaking with anger. "It's bad enough you waste your time and our energy reserves on that nonsense. Now, it's rotted what little neural tissue you had! Everyone knows that garbage is just lies and sparkle! I'm telling your mother about this!"

"You will be telling her how smart I was for getting them!" Beep shouted back, raising his rear and splaying his feathers in a peacock-like fan. "They are going to change everything for us!"

"You were supposed to be buying scrap!" Ghtpt shouted, booping Beep angrily with his nose, "Now what are we going to do?"

"We have plenty of scrap!" Beep snapped, sticking his little tongue out angrily, "This is a thousand times better!"

Inside the cargo mover, a young human woman, wearing only a thick metal collar, glared at her companion.

"At least we are still together?" the young man said hopefully.

"You are lucky I love you," the woman grumbled, "Because if I didn't..."

"If you didn't love me, you wouldn't be in this mess to begin with," the young man replied, "Now, pee on me."

"What?"

***

Jessica Morgan sat in front of a wall of archaic OLED monitors, each displaying a different face.

"Good job, people," Jessica Morgan said with a smile, "Nice to see that nobody forgot how to be a pirate. The Federation is bleeding credits out of a million different assholes. We got them chasing their tails, but don't get cocky. We have good intel that they have broken out their Argent class heavy cruisers, and those things are no joke. They were built to hunt and eliminate the Republic fleet. If one of those things gets one of yours in their sights, it's over for them. Make sure to review what we know about their specs and start thinking about how to take those things on or at least how to detect them. They have some top-class adaptable cloaking. One of the elders probably finally came across with some tech. They can appear to be literally any ship on your scans. By the time you jump to visual range, you are nose to nose with something built to fight Republic battleships."

"So it's just a sensor spoof?" A grey haired man wearing an Old-Earth Naval uniform asked.

"Yes," Jessica replied, "But it's a damn good one. We've lost over a dozen ships to them so far, and even Analytica can't tell the difference. The ship gets a good ID, jumps in, and we get only get a few frames of a very large Fed Cruiser before the feed goes dead."

"When are we getting the Cherry Blossoms?" the man asked. "We could jump and launch immediately."

"We are assembling them now and training the pilots," Jessica replied. "but it's going to be a couple of more weeks before we have enough for the first wave at the minimum. We want enough to hit hard before they realize what they are. Pissing them out a couple at a time just shows our hand."

The old Navy officer nodded.

"Now, on to our next item," Jessica said, "Our small arms and squad level heavy weapons situation is stable, but we are completely reliant on the fucking Terrans. I don't like that."

There was a general murmur of assent.

"I hate sucking the Terran's dick for arms," Jessica growled, "I loathe handing billions of credits to the fuckers for the exact same shit they used on us. Worst of all, we are literally fighting and dying to build their brand. We are making the AK the weapon of choice for Federation dissidents."

She leaned forward.

"This has to stop. We need our own arms. We need something that we can make en masse, that is effective, and, I can't stress this enough, is iconic. We need our own 'AK'."

There was a "ping" from The Nova, the cruise liner housing their mobile PR task force.

"Ah, Bella," Jessica said as she smiled at her granddaughter. "Does the creator of our new flag have something?"

"Yes!" she said excitedly, "My team has been discussing this very issue!"

"Excellent!" Jessica said with genuine pleasure.

"The AK wasn't the only weapon of that era!" Bella said excitedly, "Why don't we embrace our American heritage? The AR—"

She was cut off by laughter from almost every screen.

Jessica's expression darkened.

"Alright," Jessica snarled, "who put her up to this? Rebekah, if it was you, I swear to fuck..."

"It wasn't me!" A woman with long white hair wearing an old-style camouflaged tunic with the words "US ARMY" on the chest, along with two black stars, laughed as she wiped tears from her eyes.

"...What?" Bella Morgan asked with genuine confusion. "I just thought..."

"It's an old and rather… thorny issue with your ancestor," General Rebekah Jacobs laughed, "We might have had this discussion before once or twice. I've been trying to get the old witch to adopt either the AR platform or one of the six eights that followed it."

"And I've said repeatedly that it's just the fucking AK by another name," Jessica growled to everyone's amusement. "Thousand-year-old tech is thousand-year-old tech. We might as well keep buying the fucking AKs and ammo from the fucking Republic! They are better at it! I am NOT building factories just to copycat the Terrans and make an inferior product! It's the fucking thirty-second century, people! There has to be something better! FIND IT!"

She turned to her granddaughter, now frozen with embarrassment and just a little bit of fear.

"Sweetie, you didn't know," Jessica smiled, "But don't EVER mention a goddamn M-16, M-4, or any of that shit again. It pisses me off."

"Yes, Grand… Yes, ma'am."

"We already have an 'iconic' weapon," A man wearing a Russian uniform said calmly, "The sabergun. It has clearly demonstrated its effectiveness against the Federation, and they are already scared shitless by them. I know we can't produce them in any numbers. Hell, we can't even replace our losses in the field, but we can make them. What about pulling up pre-supercap gauss weapons from the database. It's still old, but they were what replaced that gunpowder shit. Maybe we can modernize one of those old designs? I know they are still in use out in the Kuiper belt and among other unaffiliated human groups."

"It's a definite contender," Jessica mused, "I was still hoping for something better than just a fucking coilgun, but needs must. Let's get an engineering team on that and see what we can come up with. If we can get good power out of one, it's an option. Just don't hand me a needler."

"Anybody else?" she asked the group at large.

Silence and shrugs were her only replies.

"Well, put some people on this, goddammit," Jessica said firmly, "I consider this one of our top priorities. We can't keep handing out AKs. It just looks bad, and in this war, PR and building our 'brand' is more important than our kill ratio. We need a Porkie gun, and we need it now."

She pulled out her tablet.

"Do we have any new developments out there?"

There was a ping from digital intelligence services.

"Yes?" Jessica inquired.

"It should come as no surprise that some of our people have decided to flee the entire situation and leave Federation space," a black-haired woman said, "Some of them have made for The Fringes, The Great Asscrack, and other areas outside of 'The Big Three's' influence."

"Makes sense," Jessica nodded. "Win or Lose, leaving the Federation is what we will all do once we become a true spacefaring civilization again. Have our pioneers found anything?"

"Trouble, mostly," the woman replied, "They are usually ok if they stick close to the borders, but the further they venture away from civilized space and our reputation, the more trouble they encounter. It's shocking, but it turns out that a small group of unknown xenos flying mostly unarmed or lightly armed civilian craft far from any backup might just be viewed as easy prey once our… reputation… becomes unknown or discounted as an exaggeration since nobody has actually faced us. We have reports of humans being killed or taken as slaves, especially in the Asscrack."

"Not good," Sebastian Morgan, head of the PR task force, said grimly, "First impressions are everything, and if we become known as a 'slave species', it will make expansion into those areas more difficult. If we are planning on entering or dealing with these areas, we need to respond."

"I agree," Jessica Morgan replied.

She paused a moment, sipping her ever present cup of tea.

She smiled.

"Grand Bard Bozo," she said with an evil smile as the group let out a satisfied malevolent chuckle.

"Yes, General," a brightly dressed man with a head that was completely shaven and painted pure white with two black inverted crosses painted over his eyes.

"The Harlequins have served... respectably... during our recent raids, but I strongly suspect that you aren't engaging as enthusiastically as some of the others?" Jessica smiled.

"Because we aren't as stupid as some of the others," Bozo replied.

The words, "You aren't getting rid of us that easy, bitch :)" appeared on the screen under his name.

Jessica snorted.

"Then you would have the resources to attend to this matter for us?"

"I would," the "bard" replied as he smiled, revealing wickedly filed teeth.

"Excellent," Jessica purred, "Introduce them to humanity. No. In the words of a certain journalist, introduce them to our species."