The interior of the ship was about what he had expected, a series of spartan hallways, made up of metal barely less dilapidated than that of the hull. Crew members ran up and down the hall, heading to destinations unknown.

  “This ship here is called The Brutalizer, and I’m sure you can see why,” one of the three men said, as he started down the hall. Sam and the others followed him, looking like boulders in a river, as the other crew members made way.

  “Yeah, the shape says a lot,” Sam replied. “In any case, you have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

  “Right. You might not be able to tell beneath all this armor, but the three of us are triplets.” The man said, laughing. “Our mother gave us the same names too. Jax. So we just refer to each other by our defining characteristics.”

  “I’m Red,” one of the Teruvarians said, pointing to a patch of red hair visible through the eye holes on his helmet.

  “Scar,” the third added, taking off his helmet. It revealed a rugged face, with, as expected, a large scar bisecting the man’s nose.

  “How did you manage that?” Sam asked, surprised. “You’re an E Ranker, as far as I can tell.”

  Scar grinned. “I decided to keep this. It’s a memento of my last battle before ascending to Enlightened Tier. Some bastard with a thing against our kind, wanted to carve me up like a chicken before he killed me. I returned the favor, but successfully.”

  Sam smiled back. “Sounds like an interesting tale. What about you?” He said, turning to the initial speaker.

  “Everyone calls me Boss. I run this whole ship, as one of the lieutenants of Admiral Zarnag, our supreme leader. There’s another ten ships like this one, and a couple hundred smaller fighter craft.”

  By this point, walking at a pace that would have put a car to shame, they had reached the center of the, admittedly, to an E Ranker, small ship. There was a modest sized cabin, of a generally spartan appointment. The only nods to comfort were a triple bunk bed, and what looked like a crystalline TV screen.

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  “What’s that?” Sam asked, pointing to the device.

  “It’s how we contact others in the fleet,” Boss replied. “Runs off of quantum entanglement. One of the Admiral’s underlings has a Dao that makes her a wizard with physics and the like. There’s all sorts of things like this across the fleet.”

  “But the ship?” Sam replied, raising an eyebrow. The main question went unsaid. Why was it so dilapidated?

  Boss laughed. “Ah, well, that… that’s a bit beyond the purview of Glida. She only works with small things. This ship was built by my mother, of all people.”

  “Yep,” Scar interjected. “As you can tell from us, she has a theme she goes with in her creations.” Indeed, all three men were powerfully built, almost two feet taller than Sam, who was already quite tall himself. The thing was, he hardly noticed things like height anymore. Only power meant anything. After all, he regularly fought monsters that were hundreds of times his size without flinching.

  “Right,” Sam said. “Now, what do you want my services for? Something like this happened to me recently, and I ended up having my entire body snapped in half by a D Ranker.” He winced. “Not a pleasant time by any means.”

  The three Teruvarians stared at him. “You what?” Boss asked, tilting his head. “A D Ranker, and you survived?”

  Sam waved his hand. “Eh, stranger things have happened to me. But that’s not the point. I probably will end up helping you, as your end goal lines up with mine, but what exactly is going to happen? You lot are pirates, right? What kind of pirates?”

  “Oh, I see,” Red interrupted, a bit aggressively. “We’re Teruvarians, pirates, and triplets? So we must be bad?”

  Sam frowned. “The hell does you lot being triplets have to do with it?”

  Red faltered. “Oh, it’s a superstition. You know what, never mind.”

  Boss spoke over his brother, resting a hand on his shoulder. “What he means to say is that we are pirates in name only. When this entire region is owned by Abrinadus, just surviving as a free man means being a criminal.”

  “I see. In that case, I think I can help you. One of my Daos is related to Justice, and although it doesn’t rule my life, it does mean that I need to watch who I associate with.”

  Boss nodded. “Daos can be very annoying. In any case, the Admiral will want to speak with you. One second.” The man fiddled with a few knobs on the crystal television, and flashes of light played across it. A face came into view, that of a tusked, scarred green man, with a heavy brow and a protruding jaw. In short, exactly what Sam had expected.