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join?” another man snapped. He’d been thrown in the brig for rioting on base. “Sir, I accept. What do we do to join?”
    “You have two hours to decide,” Joshua said. “If you want to join the team, call the warden and inform him. You’ll be shipped to a base and transferred to the squadron within two days. If not...well, thank you for considering it.”
    He nodded to them and strode away, leaving them alone to think while he returned to his flitter. Organising a small squadron was tricky. He’d never had to outfit warships before, let alone ensure that there was nothing onboard that had come directly from Earth. But then, the crew DNA alone would prove that they’d been human. The Admiral might be disappointed if   anything   survived a ship’s destruction.
    But the Admiral had been right. There was no other choice.

Chapter Four
     
    “Where the hell did you get these clunkers?”
    Joshua chuckled.   Clunkers   was an apt description for six starships that had been constructed over seven hundred years ago and traded from planet to planet until they had finally been purchased by the human race. The hulls were the only parts of the ships still original, but much of the interiors were still decades old. They’d been updated over the years by successive owners. The Association had long since lost track of what had happened to them, or of their current capabilities. Hundreds of other starships had fallen into unsafe hands over the centuries.
    The Association’s drive fields allowed it to design starships to fit their sense of aesthetics, without needing to worry about visible drives. Each of the starships was a flattened oval shape, bristling with weapons and sensor blisters. Like most starships designed by the Cats, they wouldn't require any reconfiguration to be used by other humanoid races – and the interiors would be standardised. Up close, he could make out scorch marks on the hulls, the legacy of years spent serving less savoury owners. Piracy was epidemic along the Rim and even in some of the inner sectors as the Association lost interest in patrolling the space lanes.
    It didn't surprise Joshua to know that the Federation had established some links with the pirates. There was an entire network of planets and settled asteroids out beyond the Rim, worlds colonized by races intent on escaping the Association and the brushfire wars between states that wanted to take its place as the premier galactic power. Joshua had even heard rumours that thousands of humans had headed out to the Rim themselves, particularly after Terra Nova.
    He smiled as the shuttle drew alongside the light cruiser and mated airlocks, before there was a faint hiss as pressure equalised and allowed his small crew to board their ships. The clunkers had been hidden along the edge of the solar system, well away from any prying eyes, and the flight from Earth had taken hours. There was little point in establishing a quantum gate so far from Earth, even if its presence wouldn't have been a flag to hostile powers that something was afoot at the edge of Earth’s system. But then, the Association and the other Galactics tended not to think about the vast reaches of space between stars, not when they could skip through quantum space and reach their destinations far quicker than sublight traffic through normal space. The hidden colonies along the Rim used that trait to their advantage. Even with the most advanced sensor technology in existence, it was incredibly difficult to spot a hidden base unless it was radiating betraying emissions. A smart crew could remain hidden even at very close range.
    The dry air of the clunker caught at his throat as soon as he stepped through the airlock and boarded the ship. Earth hadn't had much time to work on the ships before committing them to the raiding party, but the engineers had had time to scrub the air processors and fumigate the ships. The Association was plagued with infestations of small rodent