I fly among them as the crow amongst the bloodied hawks.
They are my kin, and I have called the storm they soar towards.
....
I cannot describe to you the torment of growing up the weakling in a race of heroes.
Corsair.
My kind destroy their young: As infants if we cannot walk from the age of one and beat to a pulp our opponents from the age of three - We are tossed into the well.
I was the pulp, yet I was spared the well.
...
I have bureaucracy to thank for my existence: It is my one true parent.
My mother and father were annihilated by a freak solar flare on Skiros before my skinny frame could be formally rejected and recycled as a tagged set of organ donations: My inevitable termination ticket was mistakenly (Providentially?) reassigned to some other poor (and no doubt perfectly perfectly healthy) Cretan child in the administrative error.
I know this to be true, mind you: I later checked the paper trail down to the id number on the fertilizer injection unit which was supposed to scatter my entrails across a meager crop of silt-weed. They scattered his instead.
It's good to know your roots.
...
I ended in the Judiciary, where one astonished look at me pointed me in the direction of a disgusted nose and the red clay edifice of the infractions department.
A five year old in a 15 year olds shoes, all thanks to the administration. Yet none could tell the difference, or detect the error - The unfailing system had made it so.
Size 10 shoes on size 3 feet were a sign of... rather curious... undernourishment, certainly.
But shut your trap child. Every belly goes empty on Crete - it leaves room for the fires of vengeance!
...
Thus began my orphan existence and education within the Corsair administrative system.
There is no such thing as an orphanage on Crete. There are labor camps, and training camps, and prison camps, and internment camps. And the paperwork for keeping all of them running smoothly defies description.
But the paper they give me to shuffle is information - And information is power, even for Corsairs who struggle to see power as something more than the blaze from their guns.
I have an aptitude for the paperwork, which is highly unCorsair-like,
I have an aptitude for the power: And this is highly Corsair-like.
Of course I like it. My superiors know I like it and give me more of it and I do paperwork and information gleaning better than anyone they have ever seen.
And usefulness is purpose and identity in Corsair terms.
...
I also have a solid capacity for punishment... and I thus asked to be transferred to war logistics when the opening came.
Perhaps this is my only true genetic Corsair inheritance: Punch us a hundred times in the face and we will smile bloodied back.
We will take any beating you give us, and then beat ourselves up further just to show you how its REALLY done.
Intelligence is watching your species take a 100 beatings and then try and learn why by beating yourself up more.
I know more about beatings and fighting than my small frame suggests: As a weakling I earned my scars as truly as any prince of war earns his.
Numerous backyard thrashings, and one or two public disciplines: I'm a smart little rodent with the intelligence unit, and cocky with authority - but I've picked my share of poorly planned conflicts.
I am Corsair after all.. the beating reminds us of what life has in store for us if we stop beating each other.
....
Corsair Intelligence.
I take the beatings. I take the beatings. I take the beatings.
Then I beat back.
....
Corsair Intelligence....
... Is almost a misnomer.
We don't recognize or appreciate "intellect" so much as the cunning it implies.
We are quite primitive as a result, and it takes effort to explain to a room full of fleet commanders why withdrawal today will win the war tomorrow.
It is a cowards act.
No. It is a winners act.
We take a beating!
Yes. We take a beating. It is worth it.
Who can win in cowardice?
An intelligent man.
Then they want to kill me. Kill the crow that tells the storm to abide.
But the crow is right.
....
Now, we have a fleet intelligence department.
This is my doing. My little stiletto at the neck of the enemy.
Let the Captains of the fleet wield the swords, for I point a hundred daggers.
A hundred daggers held by a hundred intelligent men.