We just got saved by a squad of Lane Hacker Daggers. In their words, "The enemies of Liberty are our friends." We're headed to their base, Mactan, which I've heard of, but never seen. Few people have I suspect.

My Defender is sick. I'm down to two packs of nanobots. My right wing and the Magma Hammer plasma cannon mounted there are gone. The main drive is making these hiccupping noises that scare the hell out of me. Unhappy plasma is bad plasma. My Warning Board is lit up like an electronics store at Christmas. I'm probably lucky the fighter hasn't just blown the hell up on me. The head Lane Hacker wants to talk to Juni; I'm going to see if this thing can be fixed in a reasonable timeframe and send a message to my uncle Tobias to expect us.

They gave me a new Defender they were using for false-flag stuff, and I gave them five thousand creds to cover repairing mine. Considering the ship new costs about twice that, and repairs are cheap with nanofabricated parts, they're getting a pretty sweet deal. I need to get a new ship with a new ID squawk, though, or I'm going to have Bounty Hunters on me thick as fleas. They couldn't arrange that.

Something...just hit the station. Sounded like a torpedo. Hot launch time. Four Rhineland Valkyries. Mactan is still manning fighters and turrets. I jump one that some of the active turrets are shooting at and pop him with a cockpit shot, then slot in behind another who's setting up for a torpedo run and blow him apart with two volleys. Lane Hacker fighters start to launch as I get on the third and pound him. He evades the second volley, but not the other two after it. These guys aren't very good. The Lane Hackers are all over the last guy with turrets and fighters, but I still manage to get the killshot somehow.

Juni wants to split up, with me setting up a safehouse in Leeds for us and her heading to Cambridge to find Professor Quintaine. I'm not for that, because...well because I think Juni's handling now, but she's about to come apart. So...

"Jun'ko." Oh, that intake of breath. She's about to snarl at me. "Look, I haven't got a better way to indicate I want to have a realtalk moment with you, okay? You can't cope forever by keeping busy. When this all catches up...promise me you'll call. I'll call you. Okay?"

"Trent, if you think I'm some crybaby-"

"Your whole nation, to which you dedicated your life, just turned on you." Saying it may not be smart; maybe she hasn't processed it and I'm forcing her to. But I don't know what else to do. "And we don't even know why. Don't bullshit with me, Juni. I'm on the edge and I didn't have nearly as much to lose. Promise you'll call me."

She sighs. Juni doesn't believe me it's going to happen. "I'll call you."

Leeds. Smog clouds. In space. Yeah, it's that bad. Bretonnia was founded last of the major houses. Some things were necessary to catch up. Some, especially now, happened because Bretonia Mining and Metals doesn't always manage to give a damn. Still, BMM isn't the monster it used to be in most ways. The Founders' Day Revolt made sure of that. If you're a spacer or employed on space work, they manage to treat you like a real person. The ground based operations...it's being worked on.

Tobias was waiting. He had some sharp words; I pointed out I had more than 100k creds to my name, a ship, and a combat record. He gave me a load of fertilizers for the money and the ship, considering the million-credit deal I left on. I pointed out it's not my fault Freeport 7 blew up. Naturally the Liberty most wanted thing came up...but he was softening out. Tobias raised me, after the shuttle accident to my parents. He's a good man, in the end, worried about me. And I'm glad. Plus, he was Bretonia Armed Forces. He knows being blooded means something.

He told me to get a new ship, and tried to give me some cash, but I told him that wasn't necessary. I can pay for it. Outbound to New London to see what's on offer. If I want a heavy fighter again I'll have to get a Crusader...the damn thing looks awful, but I guess I don't have a choice unless I grab a Clydesdale and fly cargo.

I guess I'll suffer the looks. The closest source is...

Shit. The closest source is probably the Essex in Dublin. I'm not going in there.

Bretonia. Home. I didn't leave to get away, but somehow being home isn't filling me with nostalgia. I was born on Leeds; I've lived there or Cambridge.

Bretonia, like Liberty, has its problems. Ironically, in some ways it's better off, a fact that can be put down entirely to its style of government. Bretonia is a constitutional monarchy, in theory. In practice, power resides in the civil service and the office of the monarchy. It's not that Parliament does not have fangs; it's that the Parliament hasn't gotten off it's ass and actually governed the House in four generations, so the task of keeping Bretonia running falls to Queen Carina and her duly appointed representatives.

Fortunately for the population Her Majesty is roughly my age and an idealist; her position allows her to cut through the red tape around the Royal Charters that let Bretonia Mining and Metals run roughshod over Leeds and Dublin. Life expectancy is up, poverty and planetside crime is down.

That just means the criminals are in space. We have the Gaians, a misplaced environmental effort against all terraformation, including that of worlds which never played home to life. We have the Mollys, the remains of the Founders' Day Revolt in Dublin who are fighting a long, bitter, incredibly bloody to civilians, and largely unsuccessful war to secede. From out of the depths Corsairs and Outcasts both have a presence too.

I just picked up a BMM contract for some escort runs, Leeds to Stokes Smelter to LD-14. Interestingly, they appeared to know about my Liberty warrants. Also interestingly, they appeared not to care save that it established my credentials as a combat pilot. Apparently the Ageira Technologies local rep on New London contacted the Crown Prosecution Service and vouched for my good conduct, including a statement obtained in confidence from certain members of the Liberty Navy.

Thank you, Christina and Cynthia. Wherever you are.

They call working LD-14 "short time"; triple pay, but the radiation levels from work with uranium age people dramatically even at safe dosages and with modern pharmaceuticals to keep them healthy. The station produces one of Bretonia's three main exports: MOX, which is UO2, oxidized uranium, around a small amount of plutonium. Minimally radioactive itself, it provides the fuel that powers large starships and heavy smelter platforms across the colonies.

The station, because it processes material useful for weapons of mass destruction to planetary targets, is also heavily secured...though in ten out of ten launches from LD-14 I have immediately rolled in on Mollys attacking the facility. Launching from LD-14 is the most dangerous part of the run on the Leeds-Stokes-LD-14 and back trip. I'm running with Gateway Shipping convoys; they ship to Kusari and the Border Worlds only, but I'm just covering this part. They actually don't have the major part of the contract for shipping out of LD-14; that's Border World Exports, which holds most of BMM's contracts.

Gateway, though, is good people. Bowex, like BMM itself, will eagerly throw its freelancers under the metaphorical bus to save itself. Gateway has your back when you've got theirs and offers service to small companies Bowex wouldn't even pick up the phone for.

Stokes isn't turning out to be very safe either. Because it's situated on the main shipping line, there's always a lot of traffic, and most of that traffic is usually either dogfighting with or firing its turrets at Molly ships attacking them or Stokes Smelter itself. It's not as constant as the attacks at LD-14, and you can definitely have a quiet transit of the Stokes waypoint. But it's still amazingly common.

I've completed my week-long contract there with Gateway, and am outbound to check in on some of the other Bretonia systems. Edinburgh first. If the Molly problem is really this bad...or are they desperate? It's been generations, the Mollys are entirely spaceborne and heavily dependent, and there were only so many of them. With the changes to operating practices and the way things are getting better thanks to Queen Carina, it's got to be harder to recruit now that BMM has to treat people better, too. They might be lashing out because they're seeing the inevitable loss by attrition approaching.