[h1]The Cumberland[/h1]
[h2]Orbit above Eos[/h2]

The Cumberland was a sizable, utilitarian craft from from to end. No effort had been made to make it beautiful at all, and the entirety of its warehouse scaled scope was not adorned to decorate it to any end. While it drifted in orbit above Eos it bathed itself in the strong light of the nearby star. Its sharped edges and industrially squared compartments cast sharp shadows along its thick armored hull as much as the light from the star cast other bits in such a strong light the entire craft glowed a deep threatening red. Though the Cumberland was a sterile industrial gray, the light of being in orbit withing a star-system none the less gave it a fierce fiery glow. The intensity of the effect was as if it was plummeting through an atmosphere and just beginning to glow with heat from the strong friction against its heavy metal skin.

As Levi's passenger shuttle labored closer the finer details of the Cumberland's construction came into clear view through the vacuum of alien space. The large pipes and ducts that hugged the outer shell of the Cumberland as well as the small slotted windows that showed an unfiltered yellow light from inside. Towards the rear massive engine thrusters extended out into space as the barrels of hidden weapons compartments built into the ship pointed out into the emptiness of space.

Eos itself lay behind Levi now, a great terrestrial orange and yellow ball adrift in space pitted with crater-like seas of green brackish water. Deep orange and red gorges cut the entire planet length-wise giving the impression it had been clawed by some angry god in a more ancient time. Humanity's signs were heavy all across the new home-world with cities and roads meticulously laid out with adept planning. It was all the more clear from space when the dark-side of the planet showed and where shone the blueish green lights of human development there. Levi felt no wonder for the planet, not in the way so many did when they had described Earth when it still existed. With the death of Earth Levi felt humanity and lost its home, all others had put on the impression of being impostors or temporary apartments for humanity's rent. But he still held the hope he may someday find himself a more permanent home. It just wasn't Eos, or CI-147e.

The shuttle docked with The Cumberland. A loud banging echoed through the still air of it as the connections were made and a loud hiss of roared between the two as an airlock was prepared. With a pneumatic groan the doors began to part before suddenly shooting open with a bang. A short corridor was opened between he, and the main body of the Cumberland.

The Cumberland itself was as beautiful and refined inside as it was outside. It held the same sort of depressing spartan atmosphere in its airlocks and hallways as it did in its outer hull. An oppressive industrialism ruled with brutal effectiveness inside it. And clustered with an array of pipes and cables from wall to ceiling the crew was forced to traverse its narrow hallways atop catwalks suspended just inches above additional cables that ran below the floor. There was attempt to sensitize the brutal misery of the halls through the years by installing white fiber-glass detailing that rounded out the corners of the hall where roof met the ceiling, and capped in the yellow fluorescent lights that gave the ship its warm glow. But a man passing from a more formal vessel or even a Eosian military vessel might be stricken by the derelict conditions that appeared to be The Cumberland itself. In fact walking through the ship, it would not be hard to imagine the government representative on Eos that Levi had met with would finding it impossible to believe such an ill fitted and ancient looking spacecraft as The Cumberland taking on the most refined and advanced vessel in their entire space force.

But then again, it hadn't been Levi's attention to fight Nemesis. A matter he grew more comfortable and confident in not doing as he went through. Still, assurances that they had received nothing to detail the Nemesis in way of armament, staff, equipment, and all other technical details bothered him and he knew he would need to make a sure and heavy detour from the expected course to determine what The Nemesis was.

Stopping in the hall, Levi came up to a door leading to an internal room. “CONFERENCE” the sign above it said, and then again repeated in Russian and Chinese; all the signage in the Cumberland was repeated in the same way. This would be where the crew waited to see what their captain had done, and he took a minute to collect himself and reached out to hit the button alongside it. With a click the lock was disengaged and the door slid open on oiled pneumatic rails.

The conference room was one of the more homely rooms on the Cumberland. The loose bundles of cables and exposed pipes and air ducts had been meticulously hidden by white fiber-glass panels that by now had begun to fade to an off color. Round tables and desks filled the floor all in orbit around a large central table; and each one of these were filled by expectant wide-eyed crewmen as they turned to greet Levi.

There was no formal greeting to the man as he walked down through an open aisle between the tables. No salutes, no bowing, nothing that would be expected aboard a formal shuttle. Each man greeted their captain with a greeting of him being an equal though, by silently nodding their heads in greeting at his passing and mumbling a respectful, “How ya' doing?” or “What's the news?”

The later Levi was to answer as he stepped up to the central table where his officers sat, but did not just take a seat, but climb aboard. The cowboy boots he wore over his feet clunked heavily as they carried him up atop the polished white metal table and he turned about to receive the entire room.

“You want the news?” he called out to the crew, holding out his hands.

“Hell yeah!” a man called out from somewhere in the back.

Levi's crew was a mismatched quilt and the complete puzzle of all of humanity's nonuniform pieces now that it had been thrown through the stars. His crew was white, it was black, it was as yellow as it was red and brown. There were women here as much as men and each regarded themselves no more equal to each other as Levi was considered in all but a few areas. They looked to be as much the same as the ship in the way they were a collection of odd parts and odds and ends scavenged from one end of the system to the other. It was what Levi called, “His art.”

“We are under the Eosian contract!” Levi declared, “For now, all of our passed crimes and transgressions against the oligarchs and their government have been excused. According to them, only permanent forgiveness will befall us when we return the Nemesis.”

There was a polite smattering of applause through the crew and more than a few tacit nods of approval. But Levi wasn't done and they knew that: “But I don't think that's enough.” he continued, “We good men desire more than simple forgiveness for our good, honorable enterprising. Our only transgression against them has been acting in the Oligarch's territory for our own survival. Doing what they had had an absolute monopoly on since the war with the Vorghul. We are free enterprise men, nothing else!”

He roared his words as if he were Caesar himself. He wasn't ever a statesman, or any sort of magistrate. Speach had not become expected of him but he had learned to give one as a commissioned officer and he learned to refine it through his pirate career to address his crew as not a superior, but as an equal. “I know this in all of us.” he continued, “We are dutiful, good, ultimately people without sin. We commit no universal evil that our friends in the High Pyramids do without guilt or fear of being indicted and found guilty of. And so be damned the man who thinks he can do one thing and others may not do themselves!

“No, forgiveness for acquiring the Nemesis is not what we deserve. What we deserve is a world of our own!” he stomped his boots on the table for emphasis. The crew applauded heavier, louder, “The Nemesis isn't just a means for us to buy our right to be free. We know the Oligarchs will only steal that from under that. I – we well know when we were to take this offer that in the end they will find a way to back-stab us or find some law or order we disobeyed for operating as free merchants. This we all know when we elected to take this up.

“So we are not capturing the Nemesis for them. We're capturing it for us.” he continued with a cheer, “And if the admiral in its command doesn't see it our way we will find a way to brush him aside and we shall take that warship as far as we can. We will have a free world my friends. We will have a world free of the tyranny of the Oligarchs! We will build a world where all free man will have sanctuary, where common enterprise will be free and moral. This is my goal, and that I am confident is all of ours. Are you with me?”

There was a loud cheer that bellowed through the chamber. But Levi wasn't appeased. “I didn't hear your enthusiasm!” he nearly screamed, his voice cracking as it rose. The crew answered with a louder cheer and applause. Boots pounded against the ground. Fists against the walls.

“I still didn't hear you!” Levi roared, his face beaming. His crew humored his demands and erupted to as loud as they can be until the tight chamber erupted in a deafening cheer and it shook so much that Levi was sure it was going to fall apart as the fasteners tore themselves apart and dropped panels and wire all about them. Laughing he clapped his hands together and in a celebratory end held out his hands and said with a smile, “Then let's get started!” he smiled, “To your stations!”

The crew whooped and hollered and filtered out excited and entirely amused with the ambitious spectacle. If they went cynical of the entire plot, they were dampened out by the rest who simply sought to do more of what they had always done.

“We should probably start plotting our moves.” an officer from below Levi spoke up. He turned to the source of the voice, a wiry haired woman with a small chest and a large head-full of curly black hair.

“I agree Carol.” Levi said, she was their navigating officer, “Right now set a course to get us to the edge of the system. Red, you and I need to go through our records.” he added, turning to a rather overweight looking Latino man seated on the other-side of the table.

He was younger looking than Carol, with a thin mop of frizzy coarse brown hair. He looked up at Levi with a brief lost look, but quickly figured out what was going on and his green eyes shown with brilliance. “Of course!” he said with excitement, “Meet me in data. I wanted to talk to you about what came in with the Eosian packets as well.”

“I bet they sent a worm?” Levi inquired.

Red bit his lip and nodded, “They did, but I got it isolated and it's not going to do anything. I went and ran another scan of our files just to make sure nothing else came up. But we can still search our databanks.”

“Excellent, I'll be with you in a minute. Go ahead and try to bring up as much of the information we have on known cruiser wrecks. I'll review them with you in a moment.”

“Absolutely, thank you.” Red nodded, and got up from his seat. He darted off through the emptying conference room. His nimbleness contrary to his otherwise awkward build.