After dinner I mentioned meeting Minty. Tanya told me to keep away from ‘that man’ as he was ‘trouble with a capital T’. Max disagreed; then told me that Minty had been arrested a couple of times for fighting at football matches and he owned a couple of rough pubs in the centre of town that his sons Phil and Grant managed and the local football hooligans met at; plus he also owned a garage that his other son Gary managed. Minty’s wife Dawn owned a ladies dress shop in a shopping centre a couple of miles away. Oddly enough Tanya liked the wife; who sounded like a snob to me; just like her. The following morning I lay in bed fiddling with my kitty until long after Max and Tanya left for work; then at roughly the same time as the previous day I wandered to the back door coffee in hand and lit a cigarette before checking my texts. I felt like a smitten schoolgirl as my stomach was in knots and my pulse was racing as I kept glancing at the neighbour’s back door. I eventually smoked. That was a pretty cool job -until the attack.During a patrol your ship was boarded by a Draykchin slaving party. It went very wrong, all the support team died in an explosion and the reactor went into critical failure. Rather than flee to a lifepod, you went back alone in the blazing fury of the overloading reactor.That day 12,765 lives were saved by your actions. By stopping the explosion you gave time to the marines to repel the boarders and save the ship and all its crew. It took you almost a year to recover from the radiation poisoning and the skin grafts that covered over 60% of your body.Decorated with the Ultima Star, one of the fleet's highest distinction, you were awarded a commission to Captaincy on board of a small engineering support corvette attached to the ship carrier Acheron. (75% attrition in its last battles had left the Acheron Expeditionary Force in need of new blood)The Gorgon, an Ophidian corvette newly launched from the shipyards on your homeworld, was your.