Chapter 40: Purpose
Faced with what was no doubt an Eden inquisitor, Mike knew he would have no time to think, one wrong move and he was dead and there was nothing he could do about it. Wearing only a set of pants most of the inquisitor's body was plainly visible with the most glaring feature being his lack of eyes, both eye sockets and the bridge of his nose was horribly scarred.
Whatever action had robbed him of his eyesight had been a deliberate, lengthy process.
"I greet the ascended one above me."
"Save that shit for someone that cares, who are you and why are you here?"
While Mike did his best not to offend the inquisitor, the inquisitor quickly brushed those pleasantries aside.
"My name is Mike, temporarily employed by the Solar Navy Royal Guard as a Captain of the railgun cruiser Valourant, I'm here to secure intelligence on the Eden Theocracy…-"
Manipulating his wrist-mounted console, Mike cut off communications to the Royal Guard tactical network.
"- We have 30 seconds until there are eyes on us again, I want to promise you personally that if you come with me I will make sure you'll be freed from the influence of not only the Eden theocracy and the Solar empire."
Doing the brief communication cut off, the inquisitor took a moment to think before he answered.
"Why would you possibly want to go out of the way just for a bit of intelligence?"
"Because if you come with me you'll save my life, it's only natural I would want to do the same."
Counting down the seconds as he examined the person in front of him, Dan quickly worked through the ups and downs of the offer his strange rescuer had presented him.
"... Sure, why not?... But don't refer to me as an ascended or holy being ever again, the name is Dan."
Extending out a hand to the stranger, Dan flashed a wry smile that disarmed Mike for just a split second as they shook hands.
"Oka-"
Even horrifically starved and mutilated, that split second was all Dan needed, even if despised it, he still had the body of an Inquisitor.
Grabbing Mike's outstretched hand and pulling it, Dan quickly relieved the mercenary of his firearm and tossed it aside.
"You clearly know my culture Mike, I'll need more than a half-hearted 'okay' from you."
As Dan finished speaking the 30 seconds Mike had called elapsed and his drone escorts arrived, ending the pair's time to talk alone. Even without eyes, Dan didn't fail to notice that the remotely operated drones not only pointed their weapons at him, but also at Mike.
After signalling the drones to stand by, Mike put on a serious face before responding to Dan.
"... I promise not to turn my back on you, but even if you don't find that satisfactory then feel free to end me, just as long as you save my comrades."
From Mike's tone, respiratory pattern, pulse and overall stress reaction Dan quickly concluded this mercenary in front of him was willing to lay down his life if it meant saving his comrades.
"Okay then Mike, I'll accept your offer… For now at least."
"Great, I couldn't hope for better."
Finally turning back on his radio and switching to a language that the people on the other side could understand, Mike reported back to his second in command.
"Negotiations successful, we just bagged ourselves an Inquisitor."
Returning to orbit with Dan in tow, the second Mike stepped onto the bridge he was accosted by his XO.
"Mike what the fuck was that back there!? Not only did you leave your support behind but!-"
"Yeah, yeah I know Jack but I have a hell of a hangover after using that many mods at once to save it for later, your boat."
Dumping everything on Jack without giving him a chance to protest as thanks for almost getting executed on his command, Mike clapped Jack on the shoulder as he passed him on the way to his bunk. Entering his office, Mike barely managed to get his arms out of his vacuum suit before he collapsed head-first on the bunk. Feeling like the entire room was spinning around him, Mike's eyelids became impossibly heavy, but he still refused to sleep.
"Oh… Yeah…"
Limply flapping around his arms for a bit, Mike managed to find the console mounted to the wrist of his vacuum suit, dragging it up next to his head as he went into a fetal position, Mike just barely managed to type out a message and send it before the sandman took him.
"What the?"
Staying on standby in case Mike would need an escape with his tail on fire, Jessica tried to decipher the message that had popped up on the Wyrm's radar for a few seconds before she called for help.
"River, can you help me here?"
"... What is it?"
Judging by the slight delay on the intercom and River's groggy voice, Jessica figured she had just woken her crewmate up for a nap, but given that they could be in a dangerous situation with Jessica not able to read what had been sent she ignored that for the moment.
"We just received a very strange message, I think it is some sort of code, that or it was corrupted in flight."
Instead of responding, River threw on the bare minimum of clothes before heading to the cockpit, finding a confused Jessica with one of her large fox-like ears hanging out to the side while the other stood straight at attention.
"Let's see here… What the fuck is this?"
"Yeah, see what I mean?"
Although she had to do a double take due to her drowsiness, Jessica quickly started decrypting the message that had come from Mike's personal terminal.
"Let's see here… 'Missqu' properly means 'mission', while those things after are something Mike calls 'emojis', or at least I think so."
As far as she could read it, the message from Mike read like this: Mission, ok hand, fire, 100%, W, Bed, fire, fire, fire, ok hand, triumph, AFK, cloud.
"... Mike says the mission went well, he's exhausted so he's going to sleep and he'll update us on the finer details after… Or at least that's what I think it says."
"Right… So what kind of code is all this? Although I feel like I've gotten pretty good at both speaking and writing your language, I have no idea how I would start to decipher that mess."
From how serious Jessica was with both her ears standing at attention, River finally realised that she hadn't gotten it yet.
"Oh, no it isn't a code per see… It's more just that Mike refuses to take anything seriously, so he just writes like that most of the time."
"Ah, that makes a surprising amount of sense."
---
After sleeping for 20 hours, Mike woke up and immediately went on a bender in the Valourant's mess hall, inhaling a pair of 24-hour emergency rations and drinking two litres of water before he ran to the bathroom like some sort of possessed girl from a shitty J horror.
Having nearly avoided a catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions, Mike went back to work and called up the fleet commander.
"Simmon, I received word you wanted to talk with me?"
Not even bothering to stand at attention, Mike lay collapsed in his captain's seat with his legs slumped all over the central map plot in the Valourant's combat information centre when he called Admiral Thorson.
While proper protocol would have been for Mike to request a comm link with the fleet commander and for Mike to take the call inside his quarters with only his XO present, Mike wasn't about to play nice after he almost had been executed by the drones which were supposed to protect him.
"Captain, I wanted to update you on the intelligence information gained from your recent capture, as well as disseminate some classified information."
Glancing past Mike, the fleet commander made it pretty clear that Mike should take the latter part of his call in his private quarters.
Only, Mike didn't quite feel like complying at the moment.
"According to Solar royal guard information control regulations classified information above level SIG-4 shouldn't be transmitted over tight beam. Given that every one of my staff officers is cleared for at least SIG-3 there isn't anything you couldn't tell me while I'm here."
"... Our captive refuses to speak, he only says he wants to speak with you, nothing we've done to him changed that."
"No shit, people you take into exile generally don't respond well to torture, especially after leaving a prison where he was tortured for the last 200 years."
Speaking loud enough for the rest of his crew to hear, Mike started slowly eroding his staff's confidence in their commander. Taking the criticism as just the tantrums of a child, the commander didn't see what Mike was doing and just continued talking without acknowledging him.
"As for the general situation it is progressing as you called it, the rest of the information is strictly in the need-to-know category, so I need you to take the rest of this call in your quarters, captain."
"Right-o bossman, I'll get right to that."
Finally getting his feet off of the map chart, Mike massaged his temples for a moment to try and calm his booster-induced hangover before he got up and left his quarters.
"Jackky, your ship."
"Sir?"
Assuming he would naturally be included in the talk Mike and the fleet commander were about to have, Jack stopped in place when Mike commanded him to stay on the bridge.
"The bossman said the information was need to know, as in only I need to know it, if he didn't want any of the staff officers to know about this then I doubt he would want you included."
"... Sir, yes sir."
Finally leaving the bridge, Mike quickly shoot another encrypted message over to the Wrym before getting back to the commander.
"Captain, as you predicted elements of the Eden theocracy have reached out to us for peace talks."
"Yeah, don't."
Knowing how the Eden theocracy operated and that their definition of 'peace' was radically different from how the Solar Empire defined it, Mike had already warned the commander against accepting such an offer, only the commander appeared to be actually considering their offer.
"In regards to our prisoner, I'll arrange for transport to the prison barge where we're holding them, be ready to report for it when it arrives in a few hours, that is all."
As the commander cut the communication short, Mike stared at the screen for a few seconds before he broke into pure rage.
"FUCK! SHIT!"
It was clear to Mike what the Eden theocracy wanted in exchange for their 'peace' offer, needless to say, they wanted their disgraced Inquisitor back, but it was clear to Mike that he was also a very valuable bargaining chip.
Smashing the monitor in front of him to pieces in a fit of rage, Mike took a few seconds to calm down before returning to the bridge, fully aware that the sound of his tantrum would have easily reached the bridge.
"X.O."
"Y-yes sir?"
"The monitor in my room seems to have stopped functioning, could you please look into getting it replaced?"
Exuding a calm rage bordering on straight-up madness, Mike's request didn't really seem like a request at all, leaving Jack no choice but to quickly agree.
"Sir, I'll get right on that sir."
Not even clear where he would get another monitor, Jack quickly left the bridge to go look for it, leaving only an extremely awkward silence behind that one brave weapons control officer finally broke about 30 seconds later.
"Sir, what might be the problem?"
"Oh nothing major, it's just that the bigwigs are figuring a 'peace' deal with the Eden forces would be their best course of action."
Not really caring about information control when his employer was looking to sell him into slavery (or worse), Mike happily answered all questions thrown at him.
"Sir, how is that exactly a bad thing? If we could establish a ceasefire then-"
"Oh, no. You misunderstand. 'Peace' to the Eden Theocracy means total religious homogeneity, so all of us need to convert to their faith after surrendering. Given that we are filthy Xenos, that religious conversion will include DNA grafting."
Just the mention of that heinous and extremely illegal procedure made every single staff officer shudder, but Mike wasn't done yet.
"Of course not the kind of DNA grafting that was banned long ago throughout our galaxy, given that the Eden religion is obsessed with blood, the grafting procedure will be done with bloodletting, with just as high a rate of fatality as when it was done in the middle ages."
"But sir, there's no way the commander-"
"The fleet commander is obligated to protect the royalty, you guys are the Solar navy royal guard, if only the queen survives then you will have done your job no?"
"... Sir, there's a transport waiting for you."
Before he could get to further shake the faith of his 'subordinates', the transport that would take Mike to 'interrogate the prisoner' had arrived.
"Great, I'm off to become a bargaining chip in this peace deal, I hope you guys survive the DNA grafting."
Leaving the bridge as Jack returned with a spare monitor, Mike shot another message over to the Wyrm.
(Well, here's hoping plan B goes well.)
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Gamma420
Gamma420 Reading for thanks
https://linktr.ee/gamma420
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone