On the Federation's Bartlow Armed Spaceship of the Kalaya Province Planetary Fleet, Chief of Staff Jose was somewhat curious. The spaceship had been traveling for a week, and everyone else aboard was bored, but His Excellency Li John, the Commander-in-Chief of the Kalaya Province Garrison Fleet and Captain and Commander of the Bartlow Armed Spaceship, was enthusiastically wandering around everywhere. Whenever he got tired of walking, he went back to rest.
He was elusive aboard the warship. When no one was looking for him, he was nowhere to be seen, but whenever someone needed him, he appeared quickly.
Of course, Jose did not suspect anything. He merely felt that it was slightly unusual. Armed spaceships were vastly different from civilian ships, with many more things inside them, so it was only natural for the Commander-in-Chief and Captain to be curious.
After all, this might have been the Commander-in-Chief's first time traveling aboard a warship under his command, and perhaps his last as well. Jose believed that once the Commander-in-Chief had spent the money once, he would not spend it a second time.
Cruising in a warship was boring. Even on busy public routes, one might not see more than a few ships in a month—and even then, they only saw each other on radar. In reality, they could be millions of kilometers apart.
Jose had no idea that, in another starfield of the Federation, a fleet was traveling under Silent Navigation.
The Black Skull Pirate Crew was a first-rate force within the Pirate Alliance, because it had ties to the Empire.
There was no danger whatsoever in the mission the Black Skull Pirate Crew had taken this time, because the client had provided extensive intelligence support: all route information, including route detectors, as well as the patrol routes of every