Pip is a cabin boy on the Unreasonable, and he has the best family in the world. His captain would die for him. The cook makes chowder that could make a grown man weep. The gunner tells terrible jokes, the navigator sings off-key, and the first mate has one arm and the heart of a leviathan. They are pirates. They are his. He would burn the world down for them without a second thought. So when a glowing blue screen appears in his vision during a Category 5 hurricane and tells him he has been selected by the FREEDOM SYSTEM, Pip assumes it wants him to overthrow the captain. It does not. It wants him to laugh at the hurricane. It wants him to collect curses like seashells and grin when his blood turns to kraken ink and his bones go liquid and his ship grows tentacles and a personality. It wants him to look at the Royal Navy, the Imperial Tax Authority, the Laws of Physics, the Concept of Destiny, and the Moral Framework of the Known World, and say — with complete sincerity and a mas