Side Quests for Harem and Power 7: First Crewmate (Patreon)

It was easy enough for me to post jobs seeking people for my crew. What was hard was waiting for right people and weeding out everyone else who just wanted a job but didn’t know how to do anything. 

Steven had the luxury of being the heir of a rich family and thus had received education and more. When he had been sixteen, he wanted to learn how to fly a spaceship so he did. It was exorbitantly expensive to hire a private tutor to teach a kid how to fly a spaceship, but it was done with no damage to his budget. 

Yes, apparently, the previous owner of this body had been given quite the budget if hiring a private, buying a small spaceship, fueling it multiple times, and practicing until he got a license for it.

So taking over his body and keeping his memories, I had both the license and the experience to pilot a spaceship but also license to own a frigate as a “pirate killer” as well as a frigate under my name Together, I had one role filled: the pilot/navigator. This was why I put up job offers for engineers(electrical, safety, eezo, weapons, computer science, etc), securities (on-board and planetary), and more. 

This was where my newfound ability to make alluring food came in. What I did was rent out a food cart. 

Yes, I rented out a food cart. 

It was not only easy to rent, but to move around. 

“Hi!” I greeted the woman who’d submitted her resume for the internal ship security guard position. She was a tall woman, dark auburn hair put up into a bun, high cheekbones, round face, slim chest, straight figured, and long legged. She seemed pleasant enough. “You must be Olivia … Min, yes?” I asked. 

She nodded. 

Min wasn’t exactly a Caucasian surname, but it’s been over three hundred years since humans have been moving freely on Earth. Nothing special about it, actually, considering that between the Indians and Chinese in the early 22nd Century, there had been a boom in their respective surname usages, even if the more nuanced meanings of those names were lost in translation. 

“So, have a seat,” I said with a grin as I prepared authentic ramen. 

She looked wary and not a little confused. 

“Wasn’t I supposed to be … interviewing for a security job?” she asked me hesitantly.

“Oh, you are, you are,” I replied, playing up the cheerful food cart owner persona. “I just like to talk to my interviewees in a more casual setting.” But the truth of the matter was that I intended to snare her with my food. 

When I came to this Mass Effect universe by using the R34 Catalog, one of the abilities I’d gained for myself was “Faerie Feast.” This ability made my cooking extremely addictive, leaving both men and women to chase after me, to get close to me, for more of my food. 

“Got a favorite?” I asked her while she took a seat. She looked around the food cart, seeing nothing off about it except for a small camera at the corner of the extended canopy. Good, if she hadn’t noticed that, I might not have hired her. Securities needed to have sharp eyes and a sharp mind to match. What’s the point of a pair of good eyes if the brain can’t tell what’s wrong with what they are looking at or a good brain if the eyes are dull and blind to see anything noteworthy?

“Not really…” she muttered while raising an eyebrow. “Is that normal?” she asked me, gesturing to the camera.

“A dummy I installed to see if any of the security interviewees got it,” I replied casually. “Sharp eyes and all that’s part of security.”

She nodded, feeling a bit more comfortable. 

“So what makes you think that you’re good enough to work as a ship security?” I asked her. “Your resume does mention your four year military service, but you were a grunt, which puts you rather far from a ship or ship’s security system.”

“I don’t see how a ship is different from a military compound,” she replied. “I just have to focus everywhere inside.” She wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t so clear cut. 

Frigates of the Mass Effect universe may be tough little shits with their armor and kinetic shields, but from the inside, they were prone to damage by guns and sabotage. But then again, she noticed the camera unlike the first security interviewee who I sent home without even giving her a meal. 

“Hmm, alright how about this kind of scenario…” I said as I sat a bowl of beef ramen down in front of her. “You don’t have anything against beef, right?”

“No,” she replied because she took up a pair of chopsticks. “What’s the scenario?”

“It’s something that happened to me actually. Your ship was ambushed by pirate ships, two frigates, and they have latched onto both sides of your ship. What is the first thing that you do?”

She quirked an eyebrow at me. “You survived a pirate attack?” she asked skeptically.

“Yes. I’ll actually have you know that I suppressed a whole pirate crew by myself.”

She snorted. “Right…” she drawled before she dipped her chopsticks into the bowl and pulled out a small sample of beef and noodles. “You don’t have any muscles or scars to pull off a story like that.” Blunt and honest, even when I was her potential employer. Maybe it had to do with the fact that my body looked young, appearing to be barely out of the teens. 

“Well, I did,” I said before fishing out the license I got from the Alliance Navy accountant/bureaucrat (still didn’t know what her title was because I hadn’t asked). “See?”

She took the license, a sheet of paper (price of which had skyrocketed over the years and thus regular people didn’t use them for much since e-textbooks were much cheaper and easier to carry around), and read it. Then her eyes widened comically as she read the words. 

“A-A Privateer License?”

The Piracy, Privateers, and Rewards Act, which was the law that got me my ship and license to own said ship, gave those rewarded by said act a “Privateer License.” Only those who achieved pirate-killing or were part of the military could apply and receive it. To own it was to be acknowledged as a pirate killer. 

She looked up at me, a little wary.

“Don’t worry,” I replied to her unasked question. “We won’t be pirate hunting.”

She let out a sigh of relief she’d been holding. 

“Alright. So what would you do?”

She considered the license before giving it back to me, which I put back under the table, and considered her question. She answered five seconds after. “Check to see if the comms are working, and head to the armory.”

“Good. And then?”

The questions continued in that manner until I was satisfied. She was a good choice for onboard security. 

And she also finished her bowl of beef ramen. 

Perfect.

“You’re hired.”