Kaela felt extremely conflicted about the mission Vitor had assigned her. She was happy, annoyed, and terrified all in one. On the one hand, she loved the fact that he trusted her enough to give her such a huge responsibility right out of the gate. On the other hand, she was annoyed that he took the first opportunity he could to send her far away. It was counter to her entire purpose for coming out here. The terror she felt was just common sense. Anyone who spent enough time dealing with the seedy underbelly of society knew who Grand Admiral Xin was, the stories surrounding him, and what his people did to those they caught.

"This prototype optic camouflage better work," she muttered under her breath as she took stock of their supplies.

Omari glanced over, but the man quickly went back to counting. Her people had been with her long enough to ignore her eccentricities.

Once Omari finished counting, he spoke up. "Looks like we have enough provisions for three months. We'll need to resupply before crossing the border."

Kaela nodded at that. She still found it hard to believe that the Char pirates weren't actually pirates, but an entire empire called the Asgardian Union. She had heard about Char and her people, but those stories lacked the same violence and depravity that usually came along with people surviving pirate attacks. She had never encountered them, herself, but that alone should have told her they were different.

She was glad for that. Especially after being humbled so effortlessly during the close combat course offered at the academy. The Asgardian woman who ran that course did not screw around, but the pain had been worth it to experience their form of martial arts. You could never have too much experience facing people in hand-to-hand combat.

Speaking of combat, Kaela moved to the new armory. One of the spare bunk rooms that she normally loaned out to passengers had been converted to house some really impressive new tech.

The Kitsune had a rather small crew of seven, but the room now sported seven sets of matte black armor that made the stuff Pembrooke had shown her look quite outdated. The former bulkiness and coverings over the exposed actuators were nearly completely gone. There were still some bulges here and there, but they were integrated into the actual suit instead of being used as a cover. It was clear that these suits were a generational improvement over the last ones in terms of enhancement capabilities.

The upgrades didn't end there. The helmet's clear faceplate and heads-up display had been completely removed and replaced with an angular armor panel. She didn't pretend to understand how Kane managed to feed visual data to the internal holo-display, which mimicked the one aboard her ship without any observable cameras.

She did understand the necessity of such a change after being shown the video of Kane's assault teams fighting the Shican. Those cybernetic little shits were fast beyond belief, and knew how to exploit the previous weakness in the armor.

Her entire crew had been trained with the augment gear and the defensive field. The suits and the weapons were impressive beyond her wildest imagination, but the little revelation that Kane's people had personal force fields had left her stunned. The fact that Vitor just shrugged when she brought it up and told her to get used to it annoyed the hell out of her.

None of the technological growth out here was normal. Why couldn't he see that? It was just another reason to verify Kane's true motives. While everything the man did seemed on the up and up, could you really trust an alien's thinking? Help* us out by r+e^adi.ng+ on M|&V#|LE!M5P.YR.&

And now she was going to be gone when Kane returned. The suspicious part of her wanted to believe that it was on purpose, but Kane couldn't know her true reason for coming there.

Kaela could have turned down the assignment, but that would have meant someone else would have taken her ship on the mission, and she couldn't allow that. She was aware of the clause in her contract, but she assumed Kane had more than enough warships that he wouldn't need to commandeer hers for a mission. How wrong she was.

Still… she would get to keep all the upgrades after her term of service was up, so that did lessen the sting a little.

She pushed her suspicions to the back of her mind while she concentrated on preparing for the mission. This wouldn't be the first time she had worked for a less-than-honest employer. She avoided the truly despicable people, but a job was a job, and so long as it was above board, she would do it.

"Are we ready?" she asked as she finally made her way to the bridge.

Taigo, the crew member that she had assigned to the new weapons station, scratched his face as he put down the tablet he had been reading over. "I think so, Cap. Everything seems to be exactly like the simulators. It's just weird seeing a weapons menu aboard Kitsune."

"Get used to it," she replied, parroting what Vitor had told her. When she realized what she had done, she had to shove down the flare of annoyance that accompanied it. "Are all of the systems good?"

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

"Double and triple checked," Taigo replied.

"Alright, let Control know we're ready to launch and do our shakedown cruise." Kane's people had already done a shakedown, but she didn't trust anyone to know her ship better than she did.

Vitor had been annoyed when she requested the two-day delay, but she wasn't going to fly into a warzone with an untested ship. If there were some idiosyncrasies she needed to know about, she wanted to find out before she jumped. They had the onboard capability to fix most things, but it would mean significant delays to set up the manufacturing outside the ship.

The shakedown would also give her and her people time to work with the other ships joining them on the trip out.

The automated vessels, which were another advancement she found hard to trust, would only be tagging along to the front line. It was good practice for her people to work with other ships, even if those other ships had no crews.

By the time she was strapping into her chair, the Kyuubi no Kitsune was undocking and backing away from the circular structure that could be generously called a station. She had visited worse, and while she wasn't a pampered little princess, that didn't mean she didn't enjoy being pampered in a luxurious hotel every now and then. Despite Eden's End's lack of accommodations, she found the rough but friendly community to be rather enjoyable. They were her type of people.

Once they were clear, she used the comm node to contact Vanguard to keep their communications private. "Vanguard, Kyuubi no Kitsune is ready for the wargame."

"Roger that, Captain Voss. Once you jump, we will deploy full active scanners in an attempt to locate your ship. Good luck."

The shakedown cruise might have been her idea, but the wargame had been Vitor's. Her goal was to get within a twentieth of a light second of the cruiser without being discovered. He said that should be more than enough to assure her that the ship would remain undetected during her mission.

That might be good enough for Vitor, but Kaela knew it wouldn't cut it if they wanted to collect intel other than random snippets of radio communications. She was about to find out if her plan was workable or not.

***

Stenvar watched the tactical display closely. It had been a full day since the wargame had started, and Vanguard hadn't detected Voss' ship at all. He would have contacted her and asked what the issue was, but she hadn't declared defeat or sent the end-of-training code.

He could cheat and simply enable the scanning package designed to pick up the occlusions in starlight that a stealth ship made, but the point wasn't to blow through her stealth. The point of the exercise was to see how effective Jarl Kane's newest improvements were against normal sensors, and Vanguards were already far better than what she would encounter among Xin's fleet.

Still, he expected to see some sign of the ship by now. He was just about to command his people to do another thorough pass when the ship shook slightly. Frowning, he radioed engineering. "What was that?"

"I'm not sure, Captain. We're checking the ship's systems now to ensure it's nothing critical."

"I'll leave you to it," Stenvar said, closing the connection. He was probably worried for nothing. The Vanguard was so well put together that he forgot that every ship had its little quirks and issues. Not seeing any reason to panic, he pushed the thought to the back of his mind as he ordered the scan. Voss was running out of time; she would have to approach their position soon or lose the wargame.

***

Kaela winced as the ship shook. Omari, her pilot, had done his best to keep the docking maneuver as gentle as possible. While he was doing that, the rest of them had prepared for the 'boarding action' with full augmentation gear and weapons.

The weapons were armed with training lasers, and the armor was because nobody aboard Vanguard was aware of what she was planning to do. If some crewman freaked out and pulled a service weapon, the armor would protect them from an accidental discharge.

It was reckless and dangerous, but boarding a Xin ship was the most likely way to acquire the information Vitor wanted. The fact that she had gotten this far was already way beyond her expectations.

Getting close to the large cruiser had been relatively easy. Kitsune simply trailed the larger vessel while cloaked, using Vanguard's rear sensors, which experienced far more distortion thanks to the exhaust, to help hide their slow approach. That last bit had taken far longer because the optical camouflage was not nearly as effective at such a close range. Kaela figured that out while launching a few camera drones before the training mission kicked off. She also learned that the distortion of their camouflage was relative to their speed, so a slow approach reduced the effect significantly.

Then came the docking. Omari had to fight against Vanguard's static field, which kept trying to push them away. Thankfully, the side fields had a lot less strength, and the field didn't have the power to move her ship more than a little bit.

The airlock opened, and Kaela and her team stepped aboard Vanguard. A very surprised crewman stared at them before she pulled the trigger on her FE rifle. The weapon flickered out a visible beam of light against the man's vac suit, and she called out. "You're dead."

Understanding bloomed in the surprised man's eyes, and he nodded, sitting down on the floor and giving her and her people a salute as they passed.

Their group made it nearly to the bridge before they came across one of Captain Vargthane's strike team people. The man was fully suited up in the previous generation suit, weapon, and all. He didn't get time to react as Kaela's people rounded the corner, weapons raised.

Six beams of light flickered against the man's armor, and he raised his FE rifle in response, but quickly lowered it when he realized what was happening.

"Fuck," the man said as he flicked open his helmet to stare at her group. "I had my display in standby and my armor on low assist to conserve power. I won't make that mistake again."

The group shook hands, and the man took a seat on the deck to wait out the completion of the wargame.

Soon enough, Kaela's team arrived outside the bridge. She used her captain's credentials to unlock the secured door and got a very surprised look as her intact team arrived on the bridge and subdued the entire crew.

"I think it's safe to say the optical camouflage works," she said with her signature smirk, earning an annoyed look of defeat from Captain Vargthane.