James Lauren was born in 3278 in the system of Samen in the heart of the Empire. His mother was an Imperial slave on the surface of the Imperial resort planet Samen A 1. James’ mother often worked inside resort facilities as a servant for Imperial clients, families, and tourists, while James, when he was old enough, spent most of his time with the common laborers at the landing platforms hauling shipments of food and alcohol to distribution facilities. Though a child, James was not blind to his condition and often spent his hours daydreaming of escape.

When he was 9, a deadly outbreak swept through the slave quarters in the region they worked, and his mother fell ill. In order to prevent the spread of the disease to guests, the planetary administration placed all slaves under quarantine. As the disease was spreading quickly through the overcrowded complex, administration took drastic action and a decree was sent from Achenar itself authorizing a culling of the slave population to slow the spread to the billions of others on the planet. Heavy Executioners swept through the complex burning every building in sight with all the quarantined slaves still inside.
James managed to escape the slaughter, but his mother, weak from the illness, could not follow. He stowed himself aboard a freighter and was transported to the outer reaches of the Local Bubble. He spent several years as a drifter, doing odd jobs for passage aboard star ships that ferried him around the edge of civilized space.

At 15, he arrived in the Amanii system and fell in with a gang of pirates known as the Camorra of Amanii. The pirates survived by raiding Federation Vindumbiva Crimson Advanced Corporation shipments that passed through the system’s two refinery stations. They operated with relative freedom in the low security of the outer systems. It is with these brigands that James learned the political nature of the galaxy. He learned how to read and write, and how to fly. He participated in many attacks on VCAC convoys in the system and eventually was given command of a stolen Federal Gunship called Excelsior. He also took up the name “Berrett” to hide his past as an escaped slave, for if he were captured by Federal agents, it was possible he would be returned to the Empire.
Berrett always kept his eyes on the stars and had dreams of exploring the galaxy. After a decade with the Camorra, he had squirreled away enough credits to get out of Amanii. He stole an ASP Explorer in the system over and spent another several months drifting around the sector before he managed to outfit his new ship for long range exploration.

Somewhere along his travels he came upon a strange, dated drive which contained a massive dump of corrupted data. Having learned how to hotwire COVAS systems on stolen ships from Camorra, he was able to manipulate the data and recover a vast collection of audio files from the drive. When he began his long journey out into the Black, he played the files from the ship’s computers.

What he found were books, hundreds of them, written during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries on Earth. They were works by communists and revolutionaries who fought for the rights of the people way back then, and he was drawn by their mission and their message: to unite all the people’s of the Earth in equality, peace, and harmony; to allow human beings to live as such with dignity and freedom. It was remarkable to him how much human civilization had changed, and yet how much had stayed the same over the past millennium.

Berrett spent two years exploring the galaxy and he found that he had a deep appreciation for nature and its processes. The way things moved, the way they interacted, it helped him understand what they were saying in those books. He learned dialectics and contradiction from the stars.

Originally, he had set no return date, as he had no home to return to. He loved exploring, but something was calling to him, drawing him back toward civilization. Eventually, in 3306, he made his way back to the Bubble. He went straight to Manite and joined the Communist Interstellar where he devoted his life to the people of the galaxy.

Today, Berrett flies the “Jackson’s Revenge”, a Krait named after revolutionary theorist George Jackson. He travels with his comrade Katarina Buckner, and together they work to liberate systems from the clutches of the Empire, and to unite all the people of the galaxy in equality, in peace and harmony, and in freedom.