#1 by Carnifex

The brilliant stars of the New York system were washed out by the sunlight reflecting off the clouds of Manhattan making the glints off the multitude of fighters and the LNS Libertatum that surrounded his ship all the more bright.
“We were approached with such a contract against Liberty, yes, but we did not wish to accept it because we value your house as a client,” continued Carnifex, “We also consider it good policy to direct clients to another organisation under such circumstances, a referral if you will, that we place under the context of good customer service. We merely offered to forward the contact’s details to the GMS once they had confirmed the completion of the contract, nothing more.”
“I don’t care who told who about anything. Names, we want names!” said one of the pilots with determination. If he’d had a desk in his fighter Carnifex expected he would have heard him pounding his fist on it.
“I’m afraid I can’t give you that information,” he said stonily, “The League has a reputation to protect, unlike the GMS it would seem,” he concluded with a mix of anger at being so easily sold out and glee that the GMS weren’t getting off easily.
A somewhat calm voice chirped in from a corvette class liner of some sort, “Carnifex we need those names. If you don’t give them to us then Liberty will no longer allow the League access to our space and you will get no contracts from us.”
“Quite frankly I don’t care if you tell us or not,” scoffed a pilot sporting the callsign ‘Walker’ into his com, “As far as I’m concerned the Deshima League is finished in Liberty.”
Carnifex paused momentarily and took a breath. After a short silence he made his mind up and said with confidence, “You’re not a very good poker player Mr Walker, that is not an incentive for me to show my hand. No, I’m afraid I must stand by my statement that disclosing such information is unacceptable.”
As he said these words there was a system wide alert and most of the pilots who’d had their ships pointed in his direction flew off to some new conflict. Carnifex let himself relax a bit, safe in the knowledge that he could get away easily if things went bed suddenly.
“I’m giving you free passage out of Liberty Carnifex so please leave and don’t come back. Your wingman as well.” The calm voice said with finality.
‘Wing woman.’ thought Carnifex.


Kakera left via her own rout, her mood a bit more then foul. When Carnifex dropped out of the jump gate and into the Galileo system he was alone, the ilky black of the dark matter clouds giving him a feeling of home even though he was light years from Ames.
“Well that didn’t turn out how I had expected it to,” He said into his deactivated coms, “It looks to have almost achieved what I wanted though. Losing Liberty was always a risk. No risk, no reward.”
He took another deep breath.