Blue Star Enterprises

Mingyu sat silently among the other six council Captains as the prosecutors read the charges.

Unlike the arbitration between Omni and the station, this was an open trial. Instead of being hidden away in some conference room, it took place on the tenth ring in the Court of Affairs.

The space was a large one, meant only for the most important functions of Petrov station. Like the passing of a Captain, or a new Council Captain stepping up to fill their parent’s role. Thankfully those rarely happened in conjunction with each other.

Despite the fact that the room could hold over a thousand attendees it was packed to the brim today. There were even people standing in the back. Word had quickly spread of the attack, and the battle in the hangar. Some of the people were here simply to hear the sentencing, others to sneer at the shackled individuals. That second group probably knew what was in store for these men and women.

There was only one sentence for those accused of piracy. Two of the captured individuals were already missing from the fifteen taken aboard the ship. All of them had been questioned in private. The two that were missing, had been the ‘brains’ behind the attack. That was obvious. But the things they accused Mr. Kane of had to be quietly checked out.

Any accusation of weapons aboard the station was equally as important as an attack such as this. The Captains and Station Security had gone over the video of the scene. They had even brought up old footage from the few working hallway cameras. The only thing they ever saw was Kane visiting the terminal, or going to the smelter to recycle scrap components. A second sweep of the shop after the attack didn’t produce any evidence that Kane had or was manufacturing weapons.

They even audited his printer logs. There were a few items that had been printed that were questionable, but nothing that pointed directly to the man using those components to build weapons. He didn’t think these men were lying though and that put him in a difficult spot.

He wanted to have a working relationship with Kane, but an accusation such as this strained the man’s relationship with the station. It didn’t matter that there was no proof of his crimes, or that the station wasn’t going to pursue the matter any further. He had already overheard some of the other Councilors discussing revoking the man’s elevated status that he earned from exposing the pirate threat.

Mingyu wanted to counsel against that decision, but that was a slippery slope. It was simply too dangerous to appear to be supporting Kane without having him appear to be supporting arms manufacturing. Mingyu would be curious to see what the other Captains said when he brought the topic up. With him being the face of the arbitration between Kane and Omni, he had been on station during the attack. So he headed up the investigation and apprehension of the Devil’s Bargain crew.

The trial went on and Mingyu paid just enough attention not to seem bored. The mercenaries for their part were tight-lipped and stone-faced. They had nothing to gain by talking and nothing to lose by remaining quiet. Mingyu had met Captain Harn years ago. The man was brash and reckless, but he wasn’t stupid. He wondered how the man had lost control over his crew to the point it came to this.

“Do the defendants have anything to say for their actions?” Kovalenko asked imperiously.

Mingyu’s eyes flicked over to the Captain. That was another issue that had to be dealt with. The attack had forestalled the case he had been building against Kovalenko and Hoffman. But they would see justice soon as well.

The shackled mercenaries all hocked gobs of spit upon the ground, before Harn glared up at them. “I hope your station rusts out from under you!”

There was a round of collective gasps from the crowd at the vile insult. It took Kovalenko a full minute to regain order.

“Order in the court! ORDER IN THE COURT!” Kovalenko yelled as he smashed the gavel into the very expensive wooden top of the bench, his face beet red from outrage.

Mingyu winced internally at the dents the man must be putting in the ancient surface that had been in place since shortly after the station was founded.

While this was happening, Captain Harn was laughing and riling up the crowd even more. It took two Security guards with stun sticks to finally silence the Harn.

He wanted to shake his head at the foul display. There were just certain things you didn’t say to spacers. That insult was one. There were others, but even thinking about them was considered a bad omen by some. He let the man’s words slide into the back of his mind as he focused back on the trial.

“As the accused have nothing to add in their defense; except vile insults, we will move on to sentencing.” There was a collective roar of approval from the crowd this time around at Kovalenko’s words.

After a few more pounds of the gavel, the room went quiet again. “What say you, Captain Liu?”

“Guilty,” the woman stated.

“What say you, Captain Yuchen?”

“Guilty,” his friend responded.

“What say you, Captain Na?”

“Guilty,” Mingyu replied.

The questions repeated, moving up in seniority. Starting with Zhang, next up was Weiss, then Hoffman, and ending with Kovalenko himself.

“Guilty,” Kovalenko spoke before slamming the gavel down one final time to the roar of approval from everyone in the room. It was a unanimous vote, which was no surprise.

“The sentence for piracy is death. Since there will be no appeal, your sentence will be carried out immediately. Guards, please take the prisoners to the nearest airlock. Make sure Captain Harn is awake before carrying out the sentence.”

Mingyu couldn’t help but wince at that. The man was gonna die, at least let him do it while unconscious. Since when had Kovalenko become so bloodthirsty? Usually, that sort of vitriol was reserved for the survivors of pirate attacks. As far as he knew, the Kovalenko family never had an encounter with pirates.

The guilty were dragged out a side door, and the holographic display popped to life in the center of the courtroom. It displayed an exterior camera view next to an airlock.

After ten minutes, the lights outside the airlock began to flash, then they stopped as fifteen small forms tumbled out and into the black of space.

Some in the crowd clapped, others looked sick. It was one thing to know someone was going to die, it was another to have to watch it. Mingyu had seen a dozen such trials over his lifetime, so the sight didn’t get to him anymore. Neither did he celebrate it, even if the people being punished had deserved the punishment.

“The sentence has been carried out. As per STO rules, the names of the convicted will be stricken from galactic records, and all assets sold off to pay restitution to their victims.” Mingyu noted that the man carefully left out the part where the station would take its cut as well.

The sooner he got the trial going for his fellow captains, the better.

***

“Well, that was distasteful,” Xu stated.

Sergei snorted and pushed the smaller man out of his way. “What’s distasteful about eliminating pirates? You going soft on us Yuchen? Or maybe they were your friends.”

Before the two could get into an argument, Anastasia entered the room. “You know as well as the rest of us that Harn’s crew weren’t pirates, Sergei. So knock it off.”

The larger man sneered at Mingyu’s friend before stepping away and throwing himself into one of the soft couches along the wall. “A technicality. One that we had no issue exploiting.”

“We weren’t exploiting the law,” Ingrid chimed in as the last to enter. “We were simply being diligent. Any captain seen harboring pirates could be a pirate themselves. And the same goes for a station. We all know how unfavorably the STO looks at those that harbor pirates.”

“Call it whatever you want,” Zhang waved dismissively. “Why are we here?”

“And where are Captains Kovalenko and Hoffman?” The gazes of the group fell on him at Ingrid’s words.

“They aren’t here, because this has to do with them.” He made a flicking motion with his tablet, and all of their tablets lit up with the incoming information packet.

Mingyu gave them time to go over the information. He shouldn’t have been surprised when Zhang groaned and threw his tablet on the table. “Just spell it out for us, Na. I don’t have time for this shit.”

“If you would bother reading more than a sentence or two, you would understand,” Yuchen replied tersely. “This isn’t some joke is it?” his friend turned to him and asked.

He shook his head. “I wish it was. But I’ve gone over the information. There is no mistake.”

“You’re telling us that Kovalenko, and Hoffman, two pillars of Petrov station have been trying to what? Bankrupt the station?”

“What!” Sergei roared and shot to his feet. The man snatched his tablet from the table and began actually reading the document Mingyu had sent. As the big man read, his frown grew. “This doesn’t make any sense. Why would they do this?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping one of you might have an idea?”

“When did you discover this? And why were you looking into their records in the first place?” Ingrid asked with suspicion.

Mingyu knew this would come up. “I discovered it during the arbitration hearing. As to why I looked into it, I felt like some of my fellow captains… were a bit too focused on money.”

Liu put her tablet down. “So it comes back to Kane again. I didn’t vote against your suggestion because of the money if that’s what you think. I voted against it because I believed the man to be a troublemaker. And it seems I may have been correct. In less than a year, we have had to arbitrate against one of the largest corporations in human space, a girl was critically injured while in his shop, and we had to sentence fifteen people to death for piracy.”

“Those are hardly his fault,” Na bristled.

“That may be true. But he was the catalyst for all of them. And let's not forget the accusations leveled against him. Even if it can’t be proven he was manufacturing weapons. Why take the chance?” The woman glanced around the room. “We have a majority here. I say we take a vote.”

“A vote on what?” Sergei asked in irritation. Mingyu knew he was still reading the document because his lips were moving as he read. The man had done that since Mingyu could remember, but nobody brought it up.

“Simple. A vote to exile Mr. Kane from Petrov Station.”

“You can’t be serious,” Mingyu replied. “The man has done nothing to warrant such a vote. If anything, we should be voting to work more closely with him. I’ve told you before, that he is an asset, and all we are doing is constantly pushing him away.”

Liu ignored him. “All in favor of exiling Mr. Kane?”

Ingrid’s hand went up, followed by Anastasia, then Sergei, and then Xu’s. Mingyu could only stare dumbly at his friend's raised hand.

“I’m sorry,” Xu stated. “I believe you, my friend. Kane might be an asset, but he also brings trouble. The station has enough issues and we can ill afford more at the moment. Especially now that you are bringing this financial trouble to our plate.”

“The matter is decided,” Ingrid stated coldly. “We will give Kane two months to collect his property and find a ship off station."

Mingyu did his best not to let his anger show. “I will notify him of this.”

“No. You’ve grown too close to this man. We will choose a Captain at random to notify him.”

“That is not your decision to make. You are not the Senior Captain.”

The group turned toward Anastasia, who had been quiet most of the time. If both Kovalenko and Hoffman were suspect, she would now be the senior Captain, followed by Zhang. And thank the stars for that. The woman sighed. “She is right, Mingyu. Just look at how you are behaving. You are too close to this issue.”

He bowed to her. “Very well, if this is what the Senior Captain wishes. I will oblige.”