Wolves in sheep's clothing

It was a tense meeting when you finally set foot on the bridge of your ship. You had cringed more than a little when you had seen that someone put a standard issue Fleet airlock on your ship rather than to repair the one the stupid marines damaged. (you hoped they didn't throw the parts, Ophidian technology is slightly more advanced than the Fleet standards and you had little chance to go back to your home planet to resupply.)

The hull damage had been patched up in a way that stopped atmosphere from leaking but would give a cardiac attack to any of your teachers on Ophidia.

The replacement crew was in much the same vein, fulfilling its function but totally mismatched and with a lot of hidden flaws.

At least they hadn't turn your ship into a palace or a brothel, the only thing that reminded you the Iscariot were the naked girls sitting on small cushions on the floor. The purpose of these small pads was clear as a naked women was kneeling on one to suck her master's cock. During your transfer to the Gorgon, you linked in to the support ship's interface and experimentally linked into the fleet command system.

It was a true surprise but you had kept access to the Fleet database now that your rank had been confirmed in the traitorous rebels. It allowed you to review the records of your new crew during the shuttle flight to your ship.

You had been given a pilot (as your second officer), a gunner, a comms officer and a marine; no engineer as you could easily fulfill that role. The presence of even a single marine on a support ship was unnecessary, burdensome, well just stupid. Many parts of the ship could not even be accessed while wearing the bulky power armor, and the presence of the tinpot was a clear sign that while Stretton was willing to make a show of you commanding your ship he was far from trusting you.

Lieutenant Cyrus Jenks, your pilot, born in the NorthAm Consortium he made rank flying an **** corvette in a bomber squadron. He ended being transferred under Stretton's command after being just barely cleared of charges in a court martial. According to the thumbnail synopsis Jenks had used a fully manned civilian ship as bait in a battle with Draykchins, deliberately allowing the scaly lizards to dock themselves to the ship to capture slaves before returning to blow both ships up with a full spread of torpedoes. Tall, thin, blond-haired with a vicious smile, the lieutenant had a predatory look that gave you the creeps even just looking at his official picture.

Ensign Linus Jenks your gunner, Cyrus's younger brother had flown with him on his **** corvette and had been the officer who had launched the eight torpedoes that had destroyed the pair of ships. He too had transferred with his brother after the same trial.

Major Leonid Sokoliakov, your communication officer, was born on Novaya Moskva and had an unremarkable service with the UTF Fleet. In fact, his records were so unremarkable that you took some time examining them and soon found a slew of odd transfers with many holes and inconsistencies. A small detail about his pension let you to guess that he served not in the Fleet itself but the Intelligence Gathering Service (the various indexes used to calculate pensions were very varied, the program used by the IGS to generate their covers left a recognizable pattern that repeated itself if you knew what to look for.) That he was a spy you had no doubt, what remained to be learned was who he was spying on, you or Stretton?

Corporal Ricardo Santos of the UTF marine corps ended the list. Born in the slums around Rio de Janeiro in the SouthAm Confederation he had to interupt a promising career as a gang member to join the army. (the judge left him two options, to enlist or to serve his 20 years sentence of **** labor on a mining colony.) Santos had served under Stretton since his first day as a marine and his purpose on board was clear: he was there to kill you if you betrayed the Lord-Admiral, failed in your assigned task, or (in all likelihood) once you succeeded.

The Jenks Brothers only brought one girl for the two to share along with one of the cabins. Sokoliakov and Santos brought one each and would bunk in the other one. You kept your own cabin and would keep Diana and Lisa with you. (given the nature of your crew you even considered locking them inside of it at all times but we're pretty sure that at least Sokoliakov could manage to open the door and that Santos would be ready to **** it if he wanted to go in.)

"Lord-admiral Stretton has personally entrusted me with a capital mission, I hope you know what to do without having me babysitting you. I'll be in my quarters to get a look at the task at hand, I want a full inventory of stocks and any damaged systems in an hour. And get those sluts to prepare something to eat." You ordered in your best asshole officer impersonation, you hoped that getting the men busy and giving the girls they brought a task would at least keep the slaves safe for the first few hours under your command. From the dead look in the women's eyes it was probably too late, they had been broken a long time ago.

You didn't wait for their response and they made little haste of obeying you. All of them were armed and Santos was in power armor, a bit overkill as he could probably break you in two with his bare hands even without it, but ironically it also gave you a chance. You would have better hope of jamming his armor than to best him in combat if it came to that.

You only stopped by the engineering deck before going to your cabin followed by your real crew. Lots of things were missing or damaged (even the crate with your new Droid must have fallen out of the hull breach) but you picked a spare AI core, a large portable databank, an interface helmet. (used to control the dozen of flexible repair and mining arms that give the Gorgon her name.)

Putting all of it on your desk in you cabin you made sure to lock the door. You had checked but it did not look like you were observed in the cabin.

You then did something that could end very badly but you hoped it wouldn't be that bad, you released your former crew of their restraints.