Running a battleship is like running a factory. But when you make the wrong decisions, you don't lose money, you lose comrades in arms.
I'm Kaan Kelly, First Officer of The FATHER. I've spent the last 20 years of my life on the battlefield.
In the cold darkness of space, through the most painful experiences, I have learned that no sound of death is ever heard.
When you lose a warship or shoot down an enemy ship, the pilot's scream is lost in the vacuum of space, you don't even feel that you have destroyed a human being. So this cold emptiness penetrates your mind like a terrifying nightmare.
One wrong decision and you lose your friends in this darkness. Even your own life flies away silently, no one noticing that you are gone.
After weeks of not being able to reach you, the HQ opens a missing persons file, no one knows if you were kidnapped, taken hostage, crashed on a planet and stranded.
If you are lucky, a search and rescue ship will find your body in the dark void and they will close the file and offer their condolences to your family. Otherwise, if they wait a few years and still don't hear from you, your death is official. When you command a warship in space, making a mistake means a long, silent, slow death.
As the XO of this ship, it is my job to make sure that everyone on this ship gets home to their families. On a warship, there is no tolerance for anyone who breaks discipline, disobeys orders, panics in combat, loses their temper, does not manage a crisis, loses their ability to think clearly under fire. Emotional reactions, actions that violate discipline, will eventually lead to death. Sometimes it means the end of a pilot or dozens of your friends.
When the Federation Intelligence Service offered me this mission for the FATHER, I knew that this secret mission would carry with it the gravest of responsibilities. Captain Lionheart and I selected the entire crew with the utmost care and secrecy. As unofficial fighters on a ship that doesn't officially exist, we must infiltrate behind enemy lines and fight a secret war with our own resources, without Federation support or resupply. And the one thing we don't want in this operation is a crew that has lost its cool, reacts emotionally and panics.
None of us accepted this mission for the money. Every single crew member on board is a highly experienced warrior who has lost loved ones, family, comrades-in-arms in the terror of the AI and is looking for an opportunity for revenge.
If the first requirement to serve on this ship is to be a bastard who thinks like a pirate, lives like a pirate, and has the skills and intelligence to survive without help from anyone, the second requirement is to be a fighter who lives like a soldier, has the discipline and cold-bloodedness of a soldier, is focused on his mission without leaving the chain of command, and has a will of steel.
There are very few fighters who possess these two qualities at the same time. We found them one by one and recruited them. The FATHER is still a prototype ship, but soon we will be infiltrating behind enemy lines, where we will meet new warriors and allies and recruit them to our cause.
Humanity must put an end to the corporatocracy that has sucked our blood for hundreds of years, and we are the last hope in this war.
