Extract from the book “Confessions, an Admirals tale volume I”

For the past three years I had been a sailor in the Imperial navy, since that was what the state wanted of its citizens whether they were willing or not and despite my t.i.tanic efforts to avoid the whole war, fate had other plans for me!

Before the war I was running a medical transport business and one day my s.h.i.+p was boarded by a pirate raiding party from the Republic and like any sane sentient with half a brain I immediately surrendered and asked for parole, which was a fancy way of saying: ‘If I do not fight you and surrender all my goods, you will do me the honor of not introducing my brain to your axe’.

It worked out for the most part, the aforementioned Republicans seemed alright ,about as alright as  killers and thieves and G.o.d knows what other kind of  madmen and women from one of the most savage dictators.h.i.+p know to the galaxy could be.

It was only myself and Akanthos that day and I am grateful for the fact that none of the women who sometimes served on my s.h.i.+p where present.

 Thrust me, those Republicans may look like pleasant fellows, with they’re silky long hair, pointy ears, s.h.i.+ny skin, and deep beautiful eyes and absolutely gorgeous humanoid anatomy( just because I don’t like them, doesn’t mean I can’t admit they’re pretty!) but that’s the only good thing about them.

Though I am not saying that their particular brand of savagery was worst that the one practiced by the Empire or Federation oh no, we all had an equal timeshare in that, theirs was just of a different flavor, that’s all.

And to be hones as individuals they were pretty decent fellows.

That is if you’re not they’re rivals, of which the Imperium or Empire as it was called back then (and is still used in battle cries) found itself at that particular moment in time.

As they looted our s.h.i.+p taking anything they could: pills, syrup, cus.h.i.+ons, fabric and fabric samples for footstools (seriously what kind of pirates steals stool samples?) at one point they opened the crates that contained bottles filled with medicinal alcohol.

Alcohol that was to be specifically used externally and only externally!

And pirates being pirates they immediately opened the bottles and started drinking it, granted the alcohol was put into recycled wine bottles, but unlike what the press would want you to believe, we did not intentionally put them in those bottles in the faint hope that pirates would pop out of nowhere and start consuming them, but rather the fact that the bottles were cheap, at the ready and reliable for our purposes and since our venture was a small one we needed every penny we could skim!

So I tried frantically to warn them, because honestly who deserves a slow and painful death? But my pleas fell on deaf ears, mostly from the fact that they did not speak Imperial Standard and I was not familiar with their language, that and the fact that at that point in time the two of us where both tied and gagged in a  corner of the room, made my chivalrous intentions doomed to failure.

Well not a total failure, the by then half drunken pirates where having a good laugh at how the two of us where  moaning and struggling with the ropes and gags as we tried to stop them and one of our viewers liked out impromptu mime show so much that he decided to reward me with a good kick in the chest that made me collapse to the ground and elicit a bout of laughter from his comrades.

 A moment later the rest of our adoring audience joined in to let me know just how much they ‘appreciated’ me and they appreciated me a lot!

It only lasted a few moments but it was like h.e.l.l, but even so I wanted to stop them from consuming the alcohol.

And to those of you who did not spent their youth studying medicine, the reason medicinal alcohol is not used for consumption is that there is the danger of it containing methanol, which is a very poisonous type of alcohol, why  just 10 ml of the stuff can render you permanently blind and 30 ml can kill you!

Now don’t misunderstand, every bottle of medicinal alcohol is purified before being released to the general public, but the main problem with our stock was that we where transporting it to a purifying facility! And with those idiots chugging it down their throats like it was ice tea on a beach you can guess what followed immediately after.

Now, I was not to fond of them back then and my opinion over the years has not changed by much, but even if they where a cutthroat band of thieves and murderers, who if they could they would have sold both me and Akanthos to be some plantation owner’s slaves or worst playthings, but as I said before a slow and painful death in which you become blind, you’re insides burned, every muscle in your body spasmed and intense pain jolted throughout your body was not something I would wish on anyone, not even them!

So I laid there on the floor waiting for the inevitable and when it came it was truly horrible, a great scream of agony erupted from every pirate, forming a h.e.l.lish choir that could be heard from all over the s.h.i.+p, as one by one the poor souls had their fates sealed.

As the grotesque scene unfolded around me, a sudden flash of light and a great boom came from my left, I turned my head to see what had just happened. Much to my horror, I discovered that one of the pirates in his pain induced frenzy had fired an arrow into one of his comrades, incinerating the poor or fortunate taffer in an instant.

This made all h.e.l.l break loose or rather more of it, as the pirates started firing their bows and swinging their sword and maces around causing an inferno of fire, water, ice, wind, earth to engulf the corridors, of my s.h.i.+p and the pirate’s s.h.i.+p.

Akanthos managed to get hold of a  broken bottle and cut his bonds free and bless his souls he dragged my beaten and bloodied body to the sleeping quarters, where we locked the doors and waited for the carnage to end.

After a few minutes of what can only be describe as a wall of horrid sounds, silence fell and after untying me and waiting what seemed like an eternity, we armed ourselves with the axes that our s.h.i.+p had in case of fire outbreaks, opened the doors and cautiously peered out to have a look.

What we saw was something out off a horror movie, bodies laid everywhere, blood, excrement, and p.i.s.s pouring out from them, the walls where filled with scars from the weapons discharge and a foul smell of death permeated the entire hull.

We continued our little journey throughout the s.h.i.+p, driven by a curiosity, which when you stop to think about it was borderline suicidal, but to our luck every pirate had consumed the alcohol.

After a few minutes we located the captain of this pirate crew and after a few gentle prods from my axe, we could finally relax.

I thought that the worst was over and gave out a breath of relief, when all of a sudden the s.h.i.+p shook violently.  Akanthos and myself gave each other a look of worry, we both hoped that the warp sanctuary had not been damaged, when all of a sudden the sound of footsteps echoed throughout the s.h.i.+p as the door before us was blasted open and armed warrior poured in.

Much to our relief it was the Imperial Fleet who had boarded our vessel, the cavalry had arrived! A little late for my taste, but that’s big government for you!

And I must say the look on their faces was priceless, behind me there was a corridor filled with battle scars, dead pirates all about and there I was bruised and bloodied, standing atop of the pirate captain with a b.l.o.o.d.y axe in hand( courtesy of my prodding of the corpse a moment ago to ensure that he had expired).

At that moment I felt like I was on cloud nine, but unfortunately for me, news of that incident spread far and wide, word of Captain Metternich who single handedly killed 50 pirates with his bare hands became the talk of the local subsector.

After that a bunch of reporters came to cover the story and Akanthos being the sly business man that he was, charged them heavily for each interview, thus things where looking bright for us!

We had gotten out of a tight spot alive, we now had a very healthy sum of money to help our business expand and we were small town heroes in our neck of the woods (something the ladies appreciated) it was a small piece of heaven, but regretfully it did not last.

For a certain Commodore James Crackerjack had heard of our little adventure and the brainless glory hound immediately showed up a few days later and demanded I transfer to his command, the fact that I was a civilian and my trade was ‘potions making’ which by law protected me from drafting since I worked in healthcare was completely ignored by the t.o.s.s.e.r and despite my best efforts to get into his thick skull, the idiot ignored logic and reasoning and continued to press the issue.

Under normal circ.u.mstances I would have walked away, but remember that he was not some regular loony but a loony with a license to kill from the state, that and old James was not only a fool, he was a fool with a fleet of a hundred wars.h.i.+ps behind him and so much to my horror, they gave me my uniform, slapped a couple of golden b.u.t.tons on my collar to show that I was now officially a Captain and thus I was dragged into the fleet.

Akanthos was ignored in all of this, that much was owned to the fact that sentients tend to only acknowledge the apparent leader of a group when that group allegedly does something impressive, so I  somehow managed to convince Old Mad Jack to let him go on the grounds that he was my underling and he had to make sure my businesses’ where looked after, him being an aristocrat and having some semblance of a brain nodded and let it be so and I was glad for that, I mean no sense in both of us going to h.e.l.l I suppose.

So that’s how I found myself being torn from a safe place, a newly minted Captain, given a s.h.i.+p which I christened ‘The Vampire’s Vengeance’, with a crew that consisted at the top of the following: first officer Lieutenant James ‘Butcher’ Centengu, Logistics officer Sergeant Alega ‘Baker’ Sovorovda, and finally science and engineering officer Lieutenant Lloyd Colomas ‘Candlestickmaker’ Firebark and with this we were sent to fight in various mini wars and full blown wars over the years leading up to the Great War.

And that my readers, is how my inglorious career began, with poisoned drinks, crazy luck, a lot of pain, and my personal favorite stupidity and the eternal question of why such a combination exists and what it has against good and honest folk and me of course.

Metternich per Pelasgiamus, Freelance Potions Maker