Theo would have liked to say that Kaela's onboarding went smoothly, but two of her crew had expunged criminal records. That wasn't surprising. The records of their activities had shown up on the entry check. Thankfully, the record of an arrest couldn't be wiped away, or the criminal could just move to another world and do it all over again. Many worlds would simply turn you away if they saw an arrest record, expunged or not. It made sense considering he knew plenty of judges who would expunge a record for the right price. The existence of such a record didn't eliminate them from joining BSE, but it did require additional questioning to determine what sort of crimes they had been arrested for.

After grilling the two members from Kaela's crew, they confirmed they had both been arrested for petty theft in their youth. Theo double-checked their stories by verifying them with the Lokis, who had the information prepared when he contacted them.

It was oddly terrifying that the Order had been able to gather the sealed information and have it ready for him before he first contacted them, but he couldn't argue with their effectiveness at information gathering.

"So now that we're all signed up, when do I get my new ship?" Kaela asked.

Theo chuckled at Miss Voss' question. "In time. We currently have more captains than ships, and a frigate takes time to build."

"Well, hopefully not three years, because I doubt I'm going to sign a second contract."

"Noted," Theo said as he walked beside the woman to their destination. "Normally, our contracts only have a one-year requirement."

"Are you saying you screwed me over?" she demanded as she glared at him.

"On the contrary. Mr. Kane decided to increase the contract's term because of what you were requesting for your ship. He wanted to make sure you understood the gravity of your request. We also offer plenty of additional courses on top of those you will be required to take. These terms were clearly laid out in your contract."

"Is the cost being subtracted from my pay?"

Theo looked at her. "No. The courses are included. Did you not read the contract?"

The woman nodded. "I read it and I saw that some courses were provided free of charge, but I assumed those were the courses to get me up to the level of a captain. As I already have a captaincy certificate from the STO, I didn't pay much attention to that section. I was more concerned with the agreed-upon upgrades and anything in the contract that might indenture me to you, BSE, or Kane."

"I guess I can see that," Theo said with a shrug. Alex's deal came across as suspicious as hell. Who provides free access to learning modules along with the higher-than-average pay? That just didn't happen within the STO.

"You don't seem surprised," Kaela replied.

"I'm not. Do you have any idea who I worked for before I was hired on by BSE?"

"No. Should I?" the woman asked nonchalantly.

Kaela Voss may come off as uninterested, but Theo heard the slight shift in her tone to indicate otherwise and almost chuckled. He was going to tell her anyway, so it wasn't like it mattered if she wanted to know or not. "I worked as a Liquidation Specialist for Omni."

The woman stopped dead, her hand going to her weapon, which had been returned after she had signed on with BSE. She didn't draw it, however, which was more than he could say for some people he interviewed over the last year. He knew people hated Omni, but he didn't quite understand how much. Luckily, he was wearing one of the defensive field generators.

Theo turned to look at her. "I see you understand what that means. I'm sorry if you ever ran afoul of one of my peers. Our work tended to be very dirty."

"Your kind are a monstrous cancer. I've had to put more than one of you down over the years," she growled, the gun rising slightly from her holster.

"I don't doubt that," he replied evenly. "The position I held within Omni had a high turnover rate, and some of the lower-level specialists tended to get overly aggressive to prove themselves. Omni let those deaths slide because they had no use for sloppy assets. Instead of doing the hard work of filtering the chaff from the diamonds, they let people like you do it for them. More cost-effective that way."

"And you were a diamond?" she asked, her gun slipping farther from her holster.

Theo laughed, surprising the woman and making her take a step back. "No. I was a rough chunk of coal at best. A middling agent within Omni's ranks. I preferred to handle the less violent roles because that was what I was best at. I also never really liked the killing, even though I was forced to do it at times. Now, if you don't intend to shoot me, we really do need to keep going. There is a whole presentation to show you that I think you'll want to see."

Without waiting for a response, he turned and continued down the hallway at a slightly faster pace.

When his field emitter didn't activate, and he heard footsteps approaching, he smiled. Theo knew about Kaela Voss' run-in with Omni's low-level agents and her dislike of them. If she had found out about his connection later, it would have caused issues for Alex, so he ripped the band-aid off now.

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He had been pretty sure the former bounty hunter wouldn't shoot him. Still, a trickle of nervous sweat ran down his back from the tense encounter, despite having the defensive field available.

"Why is it always guns?" he muttered under his breath before Voss caught up.

"You're not going to try and sell me a timeshare, are you?" Kaela asked as she jogged up beside him, pretending like the last few minutes had never happened.

If she was willing to let things slide, who was he to complain? "No, but I do know of a wonderful seaside villa on Malis that you would be crazy to pass on."

The woman rolled her eyes at the lame comeback to her lame joke.

Theo wasn't hitting on her or anything. While Voss was a very attractive woman, she wasn't his type. Nor was he dumb enough to get between her and Krieger's weird relationship, even if she was.

"Mr. Kane, or Alex as he prefers to be called, decided that simply giving your ship…"

Sourced directly from MV6LEMP6YR.

"Kyuubi no Kitsune," Voss provided.

"Yes, the nine-tailed fox. An interesting name. I had to look that up."

Voss gave a little victory smirk at that information.

"Anyway. Alex decided that since a frigate wasn't slated to be ready for you for at least four months, you still needed a capable ship. The contract detailed plans to fully upgrade the Kyuubi no Kitsune at no cost to you. That's another reason why he extended your contract duration."

The woman gave him a cold stare. "I was meaning to talk to you about that. These upgrades better not screw up my ship, I only wanted weapons. I liked the rest of it the way it was."

"Trust me, the upgrades will be worth it."

"They better be," she said in annoyance. Then she pulled a fusion activation crystal out of her suit. "I assume you'll be needing this then?"

He shook his head as they arrived outside the holo-theater. Alex had purchased the design schematics for Voss' ship and had spent the last week, while they verified her people, redesigning her vessel to meet minimum BSE standards. Then he turned the result into a partially interactive hologram.

Theo gestured for her to head inside.

The woman froze when she saw the slowly rotating hologram in the center of the room.

"What is that?" she demanded, pointing at the obsidian ship rotating quietly in the center of the room.

To Theo, it looked like a rough black diamond.

"That is the new Kyuubi no Kitsune," Theo said with a smile.

When Alex had first seen the ship schematics, he had been intrigued by the possibilities. Much like Voss herself, the ship had a very aggressive look to it, with flat, angular surfaces. It wasn't quite as aggressive-looking as, say, a Swordfish-class corvette, but her ship was larger than Alex's automated ship.

"Alex had no intention of building a corvette, but I think he liked your ship design so much that he couldn't help himself. He gets like that sometimes."

"Just how much is he modifying?" the woman asked absently as she stared at the hologram.

"Let's take a look and see. This is my first time seeing it as well." With a motion, the small hologram expanded until they were standing inside the ship.

Now that she knew the hologram was interactive, Theo simply stood there and answered any questions she had while she explored the changes.

"A new reactor! Why? Mine was recently overhauled. It would have been good for years."

"It wasn't compatible with the new engines," Theo said.

The scene blurred as Kaela moved the image to show the rear of the ship. "Well, fuck me. Are those compressed plasma ejection thrusters?"

"They are." Watching the woman's constant surprise gave him a pretty good understanding of why Alex loved to spring things on people so often.

***

Kaela went over every inch of her ship. It was hard to think of the vessel as the same Kitsune she had arrived with. The terms of the contract stated a full overhaul, but this was beyond her expectations. The thrusters and reactor were a big enough change, but then they came to the weapons.

"No lasers?" she pouted. She had seen the massive weapons on Vitor's cruiser, and she couldn't help but want some for herself.

"Not enough space," Pembrooke added regretfully.

"I guess Gauss cannons are better than nothing," she said, running her hand through the holographic turret.

"Oh, those aren't Gauss cannons. Those are FE cannons."

She looked at the man sideways, waiting for him to explain. When he refused to elaborate, she sighed and took the bait. "What's an FE cannon?"

Pembrooke smiled. "Think of it like a cross between a Gauss cannon and a railgun, only better in every conceivable way. It's more accurate, fires more rapidly, and the rounds travel significantly faster than a railgun."

If that was all true, then holy shit. While she said she wished for lasers, she honestly expected simple autocannons, not whatever the hell prototype weapon system that Kane's company had thought up.

"Unfortunately, your ship isn't big enough to house more than one turret. I believe Alex did add two gimbaled cannons to the front of the vessel; they should be adjacent to the missile tube.

Missile tube! She hadn't even seen that yet.

The ship's interior whipped past once again, and Kaela was soon staring at the circular scar in the armor where the covered missile tube resided. She could see the small holes on either side that were slightly recessed into the black armor. Those had to be the gun ports. She hadn't asked about the armor yet, but she would.

Kaela retracted the image until she was eye to eye with the small storage space where the missiles resided. It looked like the ship could fit three, which was three more than she ever expected to have.

"What's that?" she asked, tapping on an orb stuffed next to the communication gear.

"FTL comm node. Alex is already working on releasing them within the STO, so don't worry about it being too dangerous to have aboard. They will be as common as jump drives soon enough."

She didn't quite believe that, then a thought struck her. "That's how Vitor knew I was coming, isn't it?"

"Yes. We have stealth satellites along the entire route from Varlen to Unokane," Pembrooke confirmed.

"Cheating bastard," she muttered. "Stealth? Is that the same type of armor that's on my ship?"

"Yes and no. The armor on your ship is stealth armor, but also experimental. If it works, it'll be even better than the current stealth armor. If it doesn't, it'll still be just as good as our current stealth armor. It's not foolproof, though, but I'll let Admiral Krieger give you the rundown on that."

"How is all this even possible?" she asked in exasperation. When she read 'full overhaul,' she thought maybe a cleaning and replacement of worn-out components with standard parts, not what she was seeing in the hologram.

Half of the technologies she had never even heard of, but Kane was seemingly just slapping them all into her ship for a simple three-year contract. It was madness.

Pembrooke shrugged. "That's Alex for you, but you get used to it."