The Confederation, a group of independent worlds bonded together for mutual trade and defence, have a dirty little secret in how they make their trading ships - hijacking the souls of dead transgendered. But are there other dirty secrets piled into the mess?

This one gets around to explaining the jarring sex scene in the first chapter of book one, and sets up the question - who really are the bad guys?

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For a ship who is an active member of a trade confederation, I'd done an awfully good job of avoiding carrying any cargo. We'd done a quick run around of a number of secure locations for me to teach people my new tricks, before returning to the moon system of the Rigel gas giant to pick up some supplies first from Rigel Seven - finally I had a cargo run! From there it was picking up a load of new ships-to-be, human bodies and their focus champers from yet another highly classified world. Now we were once again at Vechog, the same world where my ship body had been created and I'd met Tag. The unloading of all that stuff from my cargo bay was just about finished.

"Kim?" asked the supervisor, someone I knew vaguely from my time here before.

"Yes Kad?"

"One of these is marked for you."

"Really?" I said as I was scanning it. It was, but I hadn't noticed it before - it must have been under something else. "Oh, OK, just leave it."

Soon they were all clear, and Tag returned from filling out paperwork. He looked quizzically on seeing me absently running my hand over the packaging label on the one remaining crate.

"They missed one?" he asked.

"No, it's addressed to me, now."

"Now?"

"I'm pretty sure it wasn't when it came on board, and there's a faint magical signature on the shipping docket."

"Do you think it's dangerous?" he asked protectively.

I smiled at him. It was nice to have a hunky man worried about me.

"No, I've scanned it. Inside is a block of wood with "Open in private" carved into it, and paper. Nothing magically active, no nanites, nothing."

"So what are we waiting for?"

"You too get back." I said as I snaked a tentacle from the roof to release the catches.

"Hmm." he said looking inside.

I grabbed the papers. There were three envelopes, labelled "Read first", a much thicker one labelled "Read second", and unsurprisingly "Read last".

"What are those strange markings?" Tag asked, pointing at the wooden block.

Oh dear, how had I not noticed that before? The carving of "Open in private" was written in English.

"Written in my previous bodies native language." I said, now becoming quite concerned.

"Have you ever used that here?"

"No." I replied.

"So it's not something someone's figured out from hints you've dropped?"

"Possibly. The Harpagornis name is probably unique to my original dimension, so if someone had access to records of various dimensions they might be able to figure it out." I said, now quite worried with visions of Faithful plots running through my head, or maybe someone locally who had managed to read my mind at some point?

"So, what's in the envelopes?" Tag asked.

"Pardon?" I asked. See, I didn't say "What?", or at least Basic's equivalent. Don't laugh, but I was trying to be more lady-like.

"If I know you, you're calculating fifteen different nefarious ways the Faithful could have pulled that off."

"I'm not that paranoid, am I?"

"Not when we both know they really are out to get you. But if you think it's safe, if it really is a plot, it's probably head games and we'll need to open the envelopes to play this out."

I sighed. Tag was right, even if I wasn't looking forward to head games. Anyway, there could be a completely innocent explanation for it. No, not even I was buying that.

They at least were labelled in Basic, and only the first was unsealed, so I pulled out the single piece of paper inside.

Dear Kim,
please keep this in confidence at least until you have finished reading it. Make your own decisions from there, but I would appreciate it if all original materials were destroyed, it might help protect my sources. Apologies that I must remain anonymous for now.

I handed the paper to Tag, before ripping open the second envelope and pulling out the papers inside.

To whom it may concern.
If you are reading this, you must have taken over control of one of the ship focus chamber facilities. You've probably worked most of this out by now, but since there is a lot of misdirection to prevent people from putting it all together, here is the truth of what you need to know.
Ships are our greatest strength, but here we must be mindful that we are combining a lot of potentially dangerous powers and inclinations into individuals. No matter how much the law of averages holds, we must remain mindful of those outside the averages that could cause shocks to our economic system.
It's well documented, even if unofficially, that ships include succubus DNA to control the ships sexually, but there's more to it than that. As well as succubus DNA, we have tentacle demon DNA for loading assistance, and for that we use a servitor tentacle demon, naturally submissive. To manage the human/ship separation, there's a small amount of insect demon DNA to lean on the demonic insect hive mind's ability to have a single soul and intellect across multiple bodies. Confirmed captains have additional nanites added that emit compatible pheromones to subtly influence the ship into at regarding positively any suggestions made (see on-site secure document 4ffda9a153db for more details).
Then we get to the dragons, known universally for pride and hoarding. During mental conditioning prior to awakening (see e787d3e01ae2), ships are subtly influenced to interpret their hoarding instinct towards our standard currency. Putting them into debt triggers both reflexes, to try and do they best they can do to get out of debt honourably. By the time they have paid off their debt, they have been conditioned for years to work within our system to gain the currency they wish to hoard, and so will continue to work with our commercial system, if not directly for us.
Although in 98.5% of cases we are aware of the dragon's colour from DNA matching with previous results, we pretend to not know as the guesswork helps give the ships a sense of uniqueness, feeding their pride and allowing us to leverage that. Any found to have orange dragon sources should be immediately terminated, as with their additional mental powers they are highly likely to either throw off the conditioning and/or figure out what we are doing to them. Those that we miss before leaving facilities are allowed to mature but are watched very closely, as too many accidents in less secure ship growth facilities would likely be noticed and various ethical groups and the senate would be likely to involve themselves to the detriment of the programme. Better to perpetuate the official myth that oranges are rare, and the restricted story that oranges don't integrate well with demons and the DNA merge is usually rejected before a soul is introduced to the proto-neurons. See d345598070dd for historical problems with oranges.
As well as the mental conditioning of ships while their brain matter is forming in their focus chambers and integrating with their integrated computer systems, a tests of conditioning integration are conducted immediately afterwards. Male soldiers are stationed outside the door of a ship once awake, orally given a dose of the pheromone such that it exudes from their skin. The amount extruded is orders of magnitudes higher than a captain emits, but it's there as a check. Such a high dose should trigger the insect demon conditioning, in turn triggering the other demon desires of submission and lust. If these are not triggered (around 1.2% of the time) a similarly-dosed female is presented. If this still does not illicit the desired reaction (around 47% of the time) the chances this ship will go rogue are unacceptably high and the subject immediately terminated. Afterwards an undosed superior officer of the same gender as the one eliciting the first reaction will make a sexual offer. Those that accept this offer (around 3.2%) are likely to end up too sexually demanding and are also terminated. Further details in 6f28a474bfe8. Note that conditioning is never placed in the computer sections as this is too easily found via self-audit and may promote feelings of distrust.
Selection is supremely important, and not just for ships. For captains, we want someone of above average intelligence, but not genius level as they are harder to predict and manipulate. Fit, healthy and with a bare minimum of thirty (preferably 100+) years of fertility in front of them (for males) or with a proven record of lesbian dominance (for females) to be able to keep up sexually with the ship is an absolute requirement. Most importantly, they need to have a sense of loyalty both to the Confederation and to their families, the latter for two reasons. Those loyal to their families are more likely to engage in a bond the ship instinctively knows is real, and so is more likely to trust. If things go really bad, family members can then become leverage against the captain, and therefore indirectly the ship. Conditioning of captains is prohibited as it's too likely to be picked up by either the ship thereby harming the relationship or relatives who may ask awkward questions that are hard to squash given the level of loyalty required usually is only found in those whose families benefit greatly from the Confederation, and so may have some pull to investigate. Please review 40bcce1aa081 (pre-qualification) and f8905777c92e (psychological evaluation) for more information on the selection process.
As I'm sure you're aware, we have fail-safe codes. Each secure manufacturing facility creates chips used in creation of ships, and every focus chamber includes chips from each facility. To avoid tampering, Nanites in the ship are programmed to start disassembly of the ship's neural networks if codes are not received from these chips. Upon receipt of digitally signed external signal to the chip, a catastrophic overload is initiated in the power storage systems. All codes are kept off-line under physical, technical, and magical security at each facility. Publicly, only the origin facility has the code for a ship, but any facility can provide the code for any ship if required. This information is only known by sector controllers with a security clearance of ultraviolet or higher. Code management procedures are documented in 3c5d26d76af6.
Lastly, the general prohibition on reprogrammable nanites holds, no matter their potential utility in controlling ships and captains. It took 1800 years to get over the second dark ages after the so-called "zombie apocalypse" when a virus invaded cerebral communication nanites. Despite the extremely low chance of this happening again, it's far too easy to obtain samples of ship flesh, frequently done in decontamination procedures and to a lesser extent in some criminal investigations. It only requires one reprogrammable nanite to be found to generate far too much interest in this programme that even we might be unable to deflect. Some current senators were involved in the last of the world sanitisations to eliminate the remainder of the infected just under 700 years ago, and they will not be brushed off. Given they would have public opinion on their side, the risk is just too great.

I'd been handing over the pages to Tag as I finished them, which was pretty quick. I didn't even know ultraviolet was a security clearance. I took a step back and thought about the consequences while he was catching up at human speed. Honestly I was feeling a bit green, a mix of anger and disgust working through me.

"If this is true..." he tailed off after finishing the last page.

"I know, I feel used too."

"Do you think they'd do that?" he asked, pointing at the bit on leverage of family members.

"Well, it all makes sense from a twisted point of view. I can see how people who think of the greater economic good without respect for ethics would come up with a plan like that."

"Yes, but still..."

"That people at the top think this changes a great many things?"

"Not wrong," Tag said, "but it does look they're actively hiding their activities from the senate. The question is how far this really does go."

"Probably not that far and compartmentalised, or something would have leaked by now." I agreed.

Tag then paused with his thinking face, and I could feel the surprise and concern coming from him. "I have a very bad feeling, and I don't know why this didn't occur to me before, but if Hok was involved at one of the original facilities and already has some codes from those he was involved in creating..."

I realised where he was going with this, and mentally slapped myself for not thinking the same thing earlier.

"... then the Faithful might try and mount an attack on one of those facilities to get the codes and disable the Confederation fleet!" I completed.

"Maybe there's protection for that sort of thing, self-destruct sequences or similar." Tag continued. "Given that they only need access to a single facility to get codes for all ships, sacrificing a single facility to protect the programme is probably acceptable to whomever wrote this."

"We won't know without access to those documents, and I can't see that happening. Just knowing those references would be impossible to explain."

"Maybe not." Tag had that evil grin growing on his face that worried me so much. "We could say when cleaning up we found a scrap that might have come from Hok with that reference number on it, but no context."

"Right, so if this is a fabrication from the Faithful to mess with us, doing so won't trigger anything. But if this is a real document, they'll believe Hok and therefore the Faithful know the protection measures." I replied.

"And take steps to address that sort of threat." Tag concluded.

"Clearly their procedures are broken because you honey, are a genius." I smiled at him, snaking my arm around his waist. I indicated the third envelope, raising an eybrow in question.

"May as well see how deep the rabbit hole goes." he replied, so I opened it.

Dear Kim,
Meet me at the corresponding location and time. If you really are a true silver, the obvious problem won't be an unassailable issue for you. Cross spinning is not a silver's most interesting talent.

After a quick check of my navigation database I could tell the location was fine, it was a completely empty area of deep space, something no-one else would stumble into. The date, however, was a week ago, long before I picked up the crate.

Whoever this was, they expected me to be able to travel in time.