Peli introduces the Raalid as Hawk, the little brother of Hooke.

“So these brats are the new recruits huh? Not very impressive, I thought Bruce was looking for strong ones this time.”

Peli answers him, seemingly standing up for us.

“They’re from the Lunarian and Sapien race, plenty of potential if you ask me.”

“These weaklings? Pfft, my left pinky toe has more potential than these two… I was all excited at the thought of a new sparring partner, but it’ll take these brats another 100 years to get on my level.”

Peli sighs and turns to us:

*SIGH* “He’s a bit arrogant, but he’s probably one of the strongest fighters in our fleet. He can actually hold out for a couple of seconds against our captain.”

Hawk, having heard what Peli just said, snorts:

“Hmpf, pretty soon I’ll even surpass Bruce!”

“Croakakaka, sure Hawk.”

Even after the belly-laugh Peli gave him, Hawk doesn’t look embarrassed. Seems like he’s actually pretty serious about this… I hate to admit it, but that’s kind of cool… Unafraid to work towards a lofty goal like that…

Finally, Peli shows us the living quarters of the ship.

After explaining where everybody sleeps and warning us that we shouldn’t enter one of the girls’ rooms at night if we don’t want to be disemboweled by H’Mara, he shows us the place where we will be sleeping.

The room is dusty and old, with three beds in the center. To my and Ares’ surprise, there’s already someone laying down on the middle bed, a small-looking girl with a 15 cm horn on the middle-upper part of her forehead. She has silky brown hair and her skin has a light-blueish tint to it. If I recall correctly, she’s from the Thaeneur race… There sure are a lot of different races gathered on this ship…

“Ah right, this young lass here is also a newly bought slave like you guys, Chelou was her name I think? Hey Chelou, introduce yourself to your fellow slaves would ya? Their names are Ares and Ryder.”

With a grunt the girl gets out of bed, removing her covers and sadly still being completely dressed in a one-piece blue suit with a collar around her neck. She looks absolutely miserable, with bags underneath her eyes and dried up blood around the corners of her mouth.

“You the new guys? Urgh, a Sapien and a Lunarian, just my luck…”

She inspects us from top to bottom before finally speaking:

“Ah, looks like you haven’t received your ‘training’ equipment from H’Mara yet… Good luck.”

Why did she put ‘training’ in air quotes?

I worriedly look over at Peli who just awkwardly scratches the back of his head before reassuring us:

“Eeeuurr, don’t worry bout that… Now, hurry up and go to the command center, H’Mara will get cranky if you don’t meet her there soon.”

For some mysterious reason, I feel like I do have to worry about that equipment…

Peli points us towards a large iron door, also located on the lower deck, but doesn’t follow us into the room... Now I’m really starting to worry.

Inside the octagon-shaped room, there is large window stretching across the back 3 walls. The view is quite spectacular… Beneath the large window are also a lot of panels with buttons and sliders on them. Playing with those buttons, is a large hairy man with two horns, looks like an ox-based Zoan. In the middle of the room is a large chair seated in front of a joystick and surrounded by holographic control panels.

The chair swivels around revealing H’Mara. The chair was big enough to hide her stature when we first entered the room.

“So Peli is finally done showing you two around huh? Took him long enough…”

I decided to answer her rhetorical question. I got the impression that these people appreciate someone with guts. Like Bruce already said, only strength matters here… Although I still got none of that…

“Yes, he seems very nice. The rest of the crew too, this might be weird coming from a slave, but please take care of me.”

After I finish talking, I flash H’Mara my best customer-service smile.

“Tch, don’t mistake our indifference for kindness. You want respect? You gotta earn it first! You and your friend there will start at the bottom of this ship’s hierarchy. Act inappropriately and we’ll hand you off to some other crew in our fleet… And believe me, you don’t want that.“

Still smiling, I reply:

“So you’re saying that we’ll have opportunities to prove ourselves and climb up the ranks? Sweet!”

Ares pokes my side with an elbow, he’s clearly going for the ‘keep your head down’ approach… Might be a good idea, but… That isn’t good enough for me… My adventure won’t stop here… No, this is only the beginning.

“D-Didn’t you hear what I just said? *SIGH* Whatever, at least you’re not boring… You’re also not wrong, you’ll be presented with multiple opportunities, if you don’t fuck em’ all up, you can even be freed from your slavedom. So listen carefully… Ryder was it? You too Lunarian.”

Not boring huh? Looks like I managed to at least leave some impression.

“Bruce wants to detransition from the asteroid mining business and focus more on mercenary work. Meaning that you two will become useless baggage after a year or so. I don’t know how you guys tricked Bruce, but he originally went to the slave auction this morning in order to acquire some strong muscle, ya know, for the mercenary work.”

Ooooh, that was probably the reason why he was so pissed off after discovering I’m actually not that strong…

“Bruce send you guys to me in order to not let his investments go to waste. We’ll try and train your bodies over the next couple of months so you’ll be able to transition from mining to combat. But don’t worry, you’ll get a bit of help from the training-equipment that our engineer Hooke recently made. He combined a restraining collar with a discontinued military training uniform. He was pretty proud of the end-result.”

This time Ares speaks up:

“A-And if I may ask… Why was this military training uniform discontinued?”

After listening to his question, H’Mara suddenly has this guilty look on her face, her eyes not looking directly at us anymore.

“D-Don’t worry about that… Just some ‘ethical’ issues or whatever…”

Niku20

-Explanations-

Thaeneur: A race beloning to the Greater Planetary Union. They share DNA with Sapiens and are often known for their beautifull craftmanship. They are a naturally strong race and thus pride, strength and thoughness hold great importance within their culture. Although they are arrogant, they will easily submit themselves to someone stronger in order to learn from them or for marriage purposes.