Arkanaut Company

Arkanaut Companies are the deck-crews and boarding parties of the sky-fleets, and the closest thing the Kharadron have to common soldiery. Armed with privateer pistols and heavy-bladed cutters (with skypikes, light skyhooks, and aethermatic volley guns in the hands of the specialists), they fight wherever the ship's ledger demands: on the decks of their own vessels, on the salvage fields below, or swinging across to an enemy hull on a grapnel line.

No Arkanaut is a conscript. Each signs the ship's articles and takes a share of the venture, which is why companies fight with such bloody-minded stubbornness: the enemy is not merely a foe but a threat to the margin. Advancement runs on merit and dividends alike, and every deckhand hauling a line believes, with some statistical justification, that a captaincy and a fortune are one lucky voyage away.