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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/rewt66dewd on 2024-11-02 18:09:13+00:00.

“So, Admiral, what have you decided?” Jean asked.

“First., I’m not ‘Admiral’. I’m ‘retired Admiral’.”

“You are? When did you retire?”

“Last night. I can’t claim that this is Terran Alliance Navy business. I’m far enough out here already. And I’m getting bored watching them unload cargo. It’s important, but it’s boring. So. As to your question, I haven’t decided anything. I’m waiting for my conscience to speak.”

“I see. So now that you’re retired, what do I call you?”

“‘Admiral’, or ‘Hawkness’, or ‘Paul’.”

“All right. So, um, Paul, how long do we wait for your conscience to say something?”

“I don’t know. How long is it going to take you to figure out what to say?”

“Me? I’m your conscience? I’m a pirate!”

“You’re a former pirate - one who nearly destroyed his ship rescuing a bunch of people from a space disaster, and risked arrest to get them to safety. And then deliberately got captured by slavers in order to take down their operation. Who left piracy, renaming himself from Jean LaFitte to Jean Valjean. And then pleaded for aid for a race that was about to get conquered, even though they had nothing to offer in exchange. And now is trying to figure out how to free a bunch of races that are under the heel of the Gzaal elite. And who, in several of those situations, pushed me into taking action. So, yeah, you’re my conscience.”

“Oh,” Jean said in a small voice. He thought for a bit. “Well… I can see three possible objectives. One, we try to capture the secret of the elite’s immortality. If we do, it may apply to humans. We also could offer it to the non-elite Gzaal. Second, we try to free everyone from the elite’s control. Three, we try to kill all the elite.”

“That’s about where I got,” former admiral Paul Hawkness said. “And that’s where I got stuck.”

“As you said: I’m going to have to think about this one.”

The next day, Jean met with Paul again. “All right, I have thought,” he said, "And we’re not going to make killing all the elite into an objective. Given what they’ve done, they deserve it, but we aren’t going to focus on it. Some of them may die as a result of what we do, but we aren’t going to make it into a priority. We are not going to be in the mass murder business.

"And if we can free everyone that’s under them, then whatever comes next may give those elite justice, or at least vengeance. And justice and vengeance may not be that far apart.

“We’re going to try to discover their secret of immortality, and try to free people under them. In fact, we may be able to free people under them by finding the secret. They we can offer it to the people under them. ‘Look, here’s this wonderful thing that they kept for themselves and wouldn’t let you have.’ That might be enough to trigger a revolution.”

Paul nodded. “So what do we do next?”

“We recruit some people. We need some fighters, some xenobiologists, some investigators, and… some pirates.”

“Pirates?”

“Sure. You want something. Find out where it’s going to be, go there, and take it. Classic pirate activity.”

Paul smiled. “And I guess you might know some people.”

“For that, yes. For the rest, not so much.”

Paul nodded. “One more thing. We need a hull with more firepower than that freighter of yours.”

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