Free Gray Panthers Captain Short Blade by David Guenther

be responsible for your partner knowing as much as you do about the ship and engineering. Dismissed.”
    Harve watched as the sailors began to pair off and wondered if he’d made the right decision, since he would lose a day of training.
    Chief Edge sidled up alongside the maintenance officer. “Sir, that was the smartest thing I’ve seen in my twenty years in the Jacka, er, Fire fleet.”
    Harve looked at the old chief and was still surprised at how well the two of them had hit it off, from the very beginning. The old chief had been on patrol ships from both Libra and Jacka fleets. The ships for both fleets had been built in Libra factories.
    “Chief Edge, I’d like you to ask the sailors about their teammates to make sure they’re complying. At the end of the month, we’ll have them swap partners.”
    “Sir, if I order that, the Jacka will feel they’re being disloyal to their mates. They’ll continue to be mates with the original sailor and then try to learn about the new one.”
    Harve looked at the chief and wondered if he’d eventually see the beauty of the plan. Before he could say anything else, a message blared from the ship’s speakers.
    “All ship’s officers to the wardroom immediately. All ship’s officers to the wardroom immediately.”
    “Looks like you’re in charge for now, Chief,” Harve said as he turned to hustle for the wardroom at the far end of the ship.
     
    As soon as all of the officers had arrived and taken a seat, Superior Captain Thrust began to speak. “We’ve been given orders, finally. Our mission is to take a flotilla of destroyers and cargo ships and start stripping out the remote supply depots before any pirates or other groups can. We’re lucky in that all of the ships have FTL drives, so we should be able to complete our mission in a month. Commander Fang will now give you an intel update.”
    The captain sat down and Fang got up. “Many of you know the old Libra Alliance consisted of fifty planets. A dozen of those planets are what we consider hard core. They were active participants and had strong fleets of their own. The other planets either joined out of fear or were captured and absorbed into the Alliance. After the destruction of the Libra home world, the other planets sued for peace. Now they’re starting small wars among themselves. We don’t care about that, but some of our cargo ships have been destroyed while supplying the warring planets. It’s in our interest for there to be peace, so after we consolidate our resources, we’ll start to encourage the planets to join the League Of Planets. That way we can have real peace for everyone.”
    All Harve heard was that there would be more war—only now, instead of the Libra, it would be the League taking over its neighbors. He was surprised that no one laughed or pointed out the similarity.

The Phoenix, en route to Earth
    17 April 2129
    Short Blade could feel his crew’s excitement as he told them the cargo of wine should lead to a profit of roughly one million dollars for each of them.
    “We’ll need to drop off the wine at Peary Crater Lunar Base. The Gray Panthers are going to resell the wine down on the planet. They can import the wine and absorb the taxes because they have resources we don’t have. After we drop off the wine, we’ll head to Wisconsin to pick up some cows and then deliver them to my ranch.”
    “Guess we started something when we called you ‘cowboy’ a few years back, huh?” Guns said with a laugh.
    Short Blade remembered when he did his first space walk to save a Dart pilot who was having engine trouble. When the shuttle he was in was destroyed by micro meteors, he’d had to ride outside, on top of the fighter, like a cowboy on a horse.
    “Captain, it’s time to drop into normal space,” the AI announced. Short Blade checked his wrist computer and silently swore at himself for not tracking the time better.
    “Drop into normal space, Phoenix.”
    “Gray Panthers Control