Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary

Kasandra and Kaiden looked towards each other for a few seconds and seemed to come to a silent agreement.

They both knew at some point that they would need to tell Avery about who they had been in the past. And this recent attack was going to serve as the catalyst.

"Fine. We'll tell you about it, but only you. If you want to tell everyone else afterwards, then that your decision to make." Kaiden said bluntly.

While Kasandra seemed to have made peace with telling Avery already, Kaiden was clearly disgruntled by being forced to divulge secrets he would have rather kept between him and his sister.

Regrettably, Avery could not be any more accommodating considering the circumstances.

A group of dangerous thugs had just tried to abduct Kasandra and Kaiden, putting everyone else at risk in the process.

Considering how many enemies they already had, Avery needed to know about the people targeting two members of his team. That way he could plan countermeasures and make sure that something like the incident that occurred today would not happen again.

"Okay, let's go to the dining room to discuss this. Jasmine, I'd like you to go to the cockpit and contact Ezra and Olivia. Tell them what happened and get an update on their progress. Grito, Vi'ivando, you two are free to do what you want."

Once he had given everyone their directions, Avery led the way to the dining room with Kasandra and Kaiden trailing behind him.

Before the three of them got down to business, Avery headed over to the autochef and put in an order for a dozen Ariac Buns. He did not know how Kaiden liked them, but he knew that they were some of Kasandra's favorites.

When the ding of the autochef finishing echoed through the room, Avery pulled out the plate with the twelve steaming buns and placed them out on the table.

Kasandra hesitated for only a moment before grabbing one, and while Kaiden glowered at the plate for a few seconds, seeming to be trying to resist the temptation, he gave in before long.

After eating for a bit and calming down, Kasandra locked her eyes with Avery's and began talking.

"I'm not really sure where to begin, or how much to tell you. Do I just start at the beginning, or do you only want to know the relevant details about the men that attacked us?"

"I'll leave that up to you. What I want to know is who those people were and what sort of forces were up against. If there are parts of your lives you want to keep to yourselves, that's fine." Avery replied, trying to be as considerate as he could be.

"No! If we're doing this, we might as well get everything out in the open." Kaiden said brashly.

He then began telling Avery about where he and his sister came from and who they were there.

"Our home isn't a part of the Dramid Alliance. It's about a two-and-a-half-month trip beyond the border system of Hanvaris."

To give Avery a better visual, Kaiden pulled up the map of the Alliance and zoomed in on the Hanvaris System.

It was one of the farthest systems within the sphere of the Dramid Alliance's control, and tens of thousands of light years away from their current location.

Yet, what Kaiden did next was manipulate the map to show an unexplored system several hundreds more light years away from the border.

This was an area of unexplored and unclaimed space. There was some data on it from long-range scanning technology, but no one from the Dramid Alliance had ever been there in an official capacity. To find out anyone had ever made it there at all was a surprise.

Mapping out hyperspace lanes was no easy feat. And obviously travelling by light speed was out of the question. It would simply take far too long that way.

"I'm pretty sure that the therianthrope home world had long since been a member of the Dramid Alliance. I thought that was where both of you were from." Avery said, a bit confused by this shocking revelation.

"Yes, that's true. But our ancestors left around six centuries ago. Before the planet was part of the Alliance."

"Hah! They didn't leave. They were forced out!" Kaiden interrupted indignantly.

Kasandra slapped him on the arm for his outburst, and Kaiden jolted in his seat from the impact.

Rubbing his arm that was now sore, he growled at his sister for hitting him, but she merely stuck her tongue out at him mockingly.

'Why have they started acting like children all of a sudden? Is it because I've forced them to bring up their past?'

Avery coughed loudly to get them both to focus back on him and urged them to continue. He had a feeling that this was going to take a while, and the day had already been a long one.

"Okay, fine. Our ancestors were forced to leave. From the records we have, we know that around eighty thousand members of our clan were exiled from our home world. The reason that we heard was that our ancestors supposedly conspired to assassinate the emperor at the time. Though the historical documents left to us always stated that this was a false claim." Kasandra said, digging deep into her memories.

Apparently, all of their clan's leaders from that time period were executed, and anyone within a certain degree of relation to the clan were given the choice of exile or death.

Obviously most picked exile, and they packed themselves onboard every transport ship they could get ahold of and headed out into space.

By all accounts, it was quite the harrowing journey for them.

Six centuries ago was a far more turbulent time, and space was a lot less devolved and explored. Truthfully, it was a miracle that all of them did not end up dead. Though, around a third of them did pass away from disease, starvation, or violent attacks.

"I read a few personal diaries from that time, and honestly it sounded like hell for the most part. There were not many colonies or outposts to stop at, and the few habitable planets they came across were already claimed and highly defensive against outsiders. With few even willing to trade with a bunch of vagrants. It's a miracle that our ancestors found a place to settle at all.

Nearly forty-five years went by for the exiled Felis Therianthrope clan before they found a somewhat habitable world that was unsettled by another intelligent species.

The place was a giant dessert world though, with only a little bit of water and life on it. With most of the native plants and animals being quite dangerous.

Nevertheless, it was the best opportunity Kasandra's and Kaiden's ancestors had found, and after over four decades or wandering around the galaxy, they were tired and ready to settle down.

"The first thing that they did was find some decently sized comets and divert their trajectory into the planet. This helped to give them access to some more water. Although, it was difficult to get the things to go where they wanted."

Kasandra was about to continue with the long history lesson of her people, but Avery stopped her.

He could not say he was completely uninterested, but they were getting away from the point of this discussion.

"I think I have enough background information now. I understand that you two aren't from the therianthrope home world now. That you're not even originally Dramid Alliance citizens. Now, tell me more about Fahad and this Daxton guy he works for."

At the mention of these two names, both Kasandra and Kaiden scowled. No doubt they had a very unpleasant past with them.

"Fahad's basically a no one. Just a yes man that sucked up to that bastard Daxton to get the position he has. I hate to say it, but Daxton was one of the three chiefs of our people." Kaiden said, a bitter look on his face.

Over the centuries, the exiled clan had broken into three new ones as they spread out and settled the planet they now called home.

The Woest clan which Kasandra and Kaiden were a part of, the Verraad clan that Daxton currently lead, and finally the Omstander clan.

There had been peace for a long time between the three of them, but as often happened when different factions were formed, eventually they would disagree and one or both sides would decide the only way to settle things was with violence.

"It all started around twenty years ago when we we're both still kids. A long-range hyperspace probe from the Dramid Alliance reached a system around seven away from our home. From what I know, a monitoring station was left there and picked up the foreign object."

This was the event that had sparked the conflict between the three clans. Each of them had their own ideas on how to handle it.

Obviously, they knew what a massive power the Dramid Alliance had grown into since they had dedicated merchants that would travel to the close by inhabited systems to trade for manufactured goods they could not obtain on their own.

"Our father wanted to join up with the Alliance rather than wait for them to find us eventually. He believed that we would get better terms if our planet willingly joined, rather than the Alliance possibly claiming our system as their own." Kasandra said, her eyes appearing to be focused on something very far away.

There had been a great deal of pushback to this, in large part because the therianthrope home world was a core member of the Dramid Alliance. They did not want to end up in a similar position to their ancestors from centuries ago.