Resigned, the good Captain nodded.

"As you wish, Andrew." She sighed, shaking her and leaving the room. Amy joined her, falling in step beside Eve.

"You look pissed." Amy said, watching Eve's slumped shoulders shake slightly with anger.

"There's nothing I can do about it. They are being perfectly reasonable. Well, accept for the Major, but I hope that nonsense is all cleared up." The dinner bell rang six times and Amy looked over Eve with a frown.

"Go eat. That is an order. I'm taking Dog watch, so I'm going to get some sleep before I need to report."

Amy left reluctantly, weaving her way back down the halls, while Eve instead sought out her own quarters, locking the door behind her.

Crossing the room to her sleep pod, she kicked off her boots and tossed her jacket onto the desk. With the practice of twenty years, she swung herself into her pod and zipped herself into the dark cocoon.

Eve was the sixth child in a family of twelve. Born so in the middle, she was one of the first children that had been born for the Temple system.

The Temple system- used to encourage farmers to have large working families- was very simple. Every farmer that had a male child was given three hundred credits- a year's salary for one farmer, on average. Girls were worth just a little less at two hundred and fifty.

Nearly starving and deeply in debt, her parents did what they did best- made yet another mouth to feed.

As soon as she had been old enough- five, or maybe even four- she had been put to work in the orchards. At first it had been in the berry bushes, and after that high in the trees picking fruit.

She had been nine when Pete came. Though she didn't remember much about his visit, Eve desperately wished her parents had been against the idea of selling their daughter. At least at first, maybe. Perhaps they even loved her once.

But, debts must be paid, and Eve was nearly old enough to be needing a dowry. So, one night her parents sat her down and told her that she'd been sold to a work house.

Eve had been too shocked at first to really cry or fight or protest at all. It wasn't until she'd been delivered to the work house...

No. Eve shuddered at even the thought, closing down that memory. Six moths later she had escaped and half-starving and nearly dead of the flu landed on the orphanage steps.

They had fed her, clothed her, and given her medicine to nurse her back to health. Grandfather- Andrew- had even read to her during some of the worst parts of the sickness.

Though she had never spoken in all of the time that she was at the Orphanage, she did manage to learn her letters and how to read.

But, there had been a raid, and the children who had escaped from the work house were taken up again. They were, after all, property that had been bought and paid for.

Thankfully, a few months later the Cour Valant had bought her to work in the engine room.

And now she was Captain.

-----------------

Amy, unused to being dismissed, especially by Eve, wasn't terribly worried about it. The line for chow went down the small hallway, and she joined it.

It was strange, that the marines were on their ship. After all, they weren't a cargo ship. They were a privateer vessel. "Piracy with papers" one of their captured men had called it. They were supposed to attack other merchant ships and take their goods, bring it back to Beta Dodeca.

Why in the world they were running men and cargo was beyond her. Of course, she wasn't complaining.

A smile played on her lips at the thought of a certain red head with a Pata accent.

No, she didn't mind it at all.
----------------------

Liam looked to Paddy shyly, but answered in the lively manner of young boys his age.

"Oh, yessir! I've been aboard the Cour Valant since I was five. Captain Ghost bought me from the work house on Pata. That's where all of us were bought. Captain Ghost likes taking us from the work house. Rumor is that she worked there herself once! Can you imagine that? And now she's the Captain." A dreamy look came across the boys face and lasted for a moment before his attention came back to the present.

"She's even taught us to read. Captain says she's no use for idiots, and that it's our job to learn as much as possible so we can 'better ourselves'. She even gave me a proper name and everything. When I was first bought, my name was Seven." Liam spun in Amy's chair, watching Paddy.

"If you need to find anything though, I'm your man. I expect you can do your own reading, you being a gentleman and all." The six bells rang, and Liam lifted his head.

"Those are the dinner bells! You better get down to chow, or else you'll have to eat with us."