Chapter 233: The Captain
Kian walked into the bar and looked around.
Renaud had said the Captain was a distinctive type — you'd know him on sight. That turned out to be accurate. Kian locked onto him within seconds: a man in the corner, drinking alone, occupying a completely different visual register from everyone else in the room.
This world ran on something between feudal and early industrial aesthetics. The other patrons were dressed in the elaborate, colourful finery of minor nobility and merchant class — layered fabric, decorative trim, the whole period-appropriate palette. The man in the corner wore a grey military tunic, a peaked cap, nothing decorative anywhere on his person. He looked like a Soviet political commissar who had wandered into the wrong century.
Kian pulled out the chair across from him and sat down.
The Captain was somewhere between forty and fifty, with a substantial beard going salt-and-pepper. When Kian sat, he gave him a single assessing glance, then slid an empty glass across the table.
"Son, I know why you're here. A captain who's travelled the void has stories. But do you have something to drink?"
Kian flagged the barkeep and ordered a bottle of vodka at five hundred thousand Agri-Scrips.
The Captain's expression brightened considerably.
"Comrade, you are the most generous of all the people who've ever wanted to hear my stories. Ask me anything you like — while this bottle lasts, I'm yours."
He poured immediately and drained it.
Kian asked: "I've heard you have a ship in low orbit above this world?"
"Correct. She's been parked up there for ten years now. I came in with a full load of premium industrial goods — the agreement with the Planetary Governor was to take on an equivalent load of high-grade agricultural produce for the return trip. The Emperor, apparently, had other plans for this world. The rebellion happened, and the Governor has now spent ten years failing to resolve it. The efficiency of this is genuinely astonishing. Back on my home world — 496-Alpha, the forge world — a Governor this derelict in his duty would have been arrested and shot by the Internal Affairs Directorate inside a month."
Kian pulled out the key information from this and pursued it.
"Tell me about your ship. And the cargo."
The Captain refilled and drained again.
"She's called the Great Ivan. Five hundred metres in length, one hundred and twenty wide, one hundred tall. A freighter — minimal self-defence armaments, no warp drive, conventional inter-system propulsion only. She runs the route between 496-Bravo and 496-Alpha, exchanging resources.
My current manifest: primarily military equipment and power systems. Two mid-scale controlled fusion reactors. Ten Aquila-pattern shuttle craft. Sixty Chimera Armoured Transports. Twenty Leman Russ battle tanks."
Kian's heartbeat jumped when he heard Aquila-pattern shuttle craft.
The Aquila was a re-entry capable medium transport — the standard interface vehicle for moving between planetary surfaces and ships in low orbit. With those, you had the basic capability to reach space. The range was limited, the payload modest, but it was the first rung of a ladder that went upward.
He steadied himself and continued.
"Captain — you came here on a mission. Ten years without completing it, returning with an empty hold. Won't that be a problem for you?"
The Captain nodded and also shook his head, a gesture conveying complex nuance.
"I carry the obligation to complete my assignment. Returning empty would — as you suggest — result in a public ceremony and a bullet. However, the void is vast and full of complications. Xenos, pirates, Chaos warships — any of these can end a voyage, and accordingly captains of my class retain significant discretionary authority.
A situation like this one — two worlds with a standing trade agreement, one world unable to deliver because of internal disorder — this is precisely the kind of situation where I exercise that discretion."
He gave Kian the look of a man indicating that an opportunity exists.
Kian took it.
"What would it cost me to acquire everything in your hold?"
The Captain picked up the remaining vodka and finished the bottle. Kian ordered another without being asked. The Captain acknowledged this with a nod of approval.
"Fill my hold. Load the Great Ivan with the agricultural goods I need to complete my contract, and everything in her cargo bays is yours."
The specification for high-grade agricultural goods had several requirements. The product had to be meat-based — premium, boneless, ready to consume directly from the container. Nutritionally dense, flavourful. The kind of ration provided to senior officers rather than the general ranks.
The critical requirement: shelf life exceeding five hundred years.
The void was vast. Conventional inter-system travel was measured in years, sometimes decades. Cargo that couldn't survive the transit was worthless cargo.
Kian sat with this and felt the machinery in his head start turning.
Agricultural product. He had farming operations producing at scale. He had guana-beast stock that could be processed into boneless meat. The animals bred prolifically, grew quickly, and had acceptable flavour profiles once properly prepared. Expand the operation over six to twelve months and the volume became achievable.
Processing wasn't a problem either — the food facility had high-specification production lines capable of hermetic sealing with century-scale preservation. Five hundred years was within their capability.
The question was whether he wanted to commit to this.
Twenty Leman Russ tanks. Sixty Chimeras. Ten Aquila shuttles. Two fusion reactors.
Yes. He wanted to commit to this.
[End of Chapter 233]
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