Not Built for Freedom

The ship was a monkey's paw of an inheritance. It had been intended as such, but it also couldn't be avoided. Arnold Bellamy didn't go looking for it or even find it on a beach, it found him.

The ship wanted, needed, an owner. It had been designed that way. It was also under orders. Shoven, its former owner, had wanted more than anything to keep it out of the hands of his creditors. If it caused the destruction of an alien race that was just a bonus.

That was where the cursed part came in. As much as Shoven didn't want his ship to fall into Tarkiv's tentacles, that was how much Tarkiv wanted the ship. Not out of need or even desire for the ship itself but simply to take it from Shoven.

The extinction of the human race wasn't the goal. Just a minor unimportant side effect.

Pest control.

Arnold could grab his family and run. That would probably work. Of course, the Earth would still be destroyed. The high ground advantage meant that Earth lacked the means to stop hundreds of extinction level asteroids sent their way. That was assuming that the repossession ships didn't just stand off and blow the hell out of the planet with nukes or lasers.

Arnold decided to stay and fight. He named the robot brain that ran the ship James and the ship itself, he named the Black Star.

Then he got to work.