The story of Lambast starts with her mother choosing, along with her brother to go into Imperial Slavery. Now in the better systems, it’s not slavery as you may imagine. It’s more accurately a contract controlled indentured servitude. Companies that broker in slaves and companies that purchase them have strict guidelines to follow to maintain the licence to own and use slaves, after all they are Imperial citizens (all be it with suspended rights) and not cattle.


Their reason for choosing this life was to give their parents a better retirement. After clearing nan and granddads debts, and securing a good berth on board a nice agricultural station with a few weeks a year lease on a chalet on the terraformed planet, my teenaged mother and uncle signed the best ten of their life to indentured servitude to pay for it.


My mother, Lisa Peacock was sold to Lambaana Partners to work as a Raw Materials Acquisition and Processing Technician on the Kagawa Works platform, and Uncle Trevor went to work for station construction contractors. Now the good thing about that life is everything is paid for as long as you can work to cover your keeping costs and pay off the contract. If you do well and you get promoted to a better position, you can shorten your contract, or upgrade your living standard. Fortunately for Lisa, she was a good rock hound and soon got herself out of the dormitories and into personal quarts with better food and health care.


Part of the reason for her good fortune, was a young buyer for the Imperial Navy that would visit the station every month. He was in charge of assessing the quality of the materials gathered and bartering the price with the Lambaana Partners. Lisa had become a shift manager in a short number of years, so she would be present at the sales negotiations and somehow, the materials in her refinery bins would fetch a better price than the average shift aboard the station. Whenever the Navy was giving away incentive gifts to its suppliers, a few of the more choice items would filter all the way down to a lowly shift manager on C-deck, usually personally delivered by the oddly bashful junior officer Derek Mercy.


After a while my dad found the courage to actually make a move on Lisa with a lil nudge from her of course, and they started seeing each other outside of official platform business. Now as a slave time off is few and far between, and leaving the station was just about impossible, but dad’s position helped swing a few days here and there with a rare trip away. On one of those trips, I happened to them. With just a year left on her contract, Lisa got pregnant. Now the contract has some very clear penalties for a pregnant slave, and mums contract demanded another five years to pay for the health care and extra food a baby would cost the company. As dad couldn’t afford to buy mums contract, that’s what it had to be.


Dad buckled down and pushed to improve his position within the Imperial Navy in hopes of buying out Lisa’s contract and getting us off the station. My early years were spent on a dirty, noisy mining platform with dirty noisy rough people. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad as long as a young girl kept away from the bars when the buyers were visiting. My baby sitters were a mining laser and a rock to point it at while mum did her job in the pilot seat, or some work-hardened friend of mums that were off shift. It’s strange when most of your baby sitters are brawny men who treat you like glass, but it also gives a girl a few stalwart guardians to turn to when her parents are not the right people for the issue at hand.


Dad visited every opportunity, even if he could only stay a few hours and he always came with the best gifts. He was moving up, but it was slow. Each promotion or side-motion came with more travel as is the nature of the Imperial Navy but he was aiming for the diplomatic office that served the sector that the Kagawa Works platform was in. My schooling was next to non-existent. The platform didn’t have many children on it and the company would only pay for so much non-essential personnel activities. It was up to the parents to do what they could with the limited free time a slave has to them self.


Mum chose to take another two years after her contract ended to help pay for a good start for us as dad was still traveling all over Imperial space with the Imperial Diplomatic Office and she wanted something stable we owned to call home. I was seven years old now, and the mining platform was not a place she wanted her little girl to grow up on. Just another two years would give mum and dad enough to get a lease on good accommodation aboard a nice station while mum went freelance miner. Before I got to nine years of age, dad finely got the sort of position he’d wanted for almost five years. He was on the Diplomatic staff of a retired Imperial Admiral turn Diplomat. There would be a lot of travel, but there would also be a lot of money. More than enough to buy out the year or so mum had taken and plenty for a family to make a good start in Imperial space.

Mum chose to spend a bit of her extra money on a shiny new Cobra MkIII so we could travel to meet dad when he was away, and mum could also keep doing a little in mining. On occasion, dad would get a job that would let us settle for a year or so in one location. One such time we lived in a small farming outpost on Eravate 2 for a while. That's where I met another little girl whose hair was also turning white. No one knows if its exposure to other suns, time spent in Witch Space or just spending so much time in artificial atmospheres subtly changing our genetic makeup, but quite a few people are born with or start to lose pigmentation in their hair. This bothersome girl was at first, exactly the sort of person I despised, but somehow we became friends. Being my first true friend, she taught me how a child of my age should be behaving much to the chagrin of my parents. I still don't really understand what she got from our friendship, because I was an insufferable know it all, but as it is in life, hardships would bond Kaisla and I to this very day.

It was on one of our trips to met dad I met his new employer for the first of a handful of times..His Grace, Admiral Burlington Everett Formason-Hemsworth the second, Defender of the Royal Realms and Duke of Cubeo 3’s northern territories. We were invited to go to his estate for some function or other and I was dressed up like a princess and presented to a big fat red-nosed loudmouth dressed as a clown for all I know about Imperial military regalia.

He looked at me and said in a voice like old crystallized honey.
“You must be the little Lamb with fleece as white as snow!”

He put his big pudgy hand on my head and messed up my hair cut. Naturally I smacked his hand away and berated him for being so rude, and said he should take note that I didn’t comment of his fat red nose and flick it. I was told later, the room went silent and my parents looked like they had just been sentenced to death. The old Admiral just Laughed like booming cannon and barked at my dad.
“Capital! Ya named this one perfectly didn’ch Mercy. A right little spitfire. Rear Admiral in the making what?”

He looked down on me again and said.
”But I think you need to learn a bit of respect for your betters ay?”

For the second time that day, I took about ten years off my dad’s life. I remember setting my fists on my hips and standing as tall as I could, looking the blustering old fuddy duddy right in the eyes and saying.
“Well, if I ever meet anyone better than me, I’ll be sure to think about it"

The admiral turned purple with laughter and cut me a large slice of Chocolate Gateau with his own hand and mum quickly hurried me out of the reception room and into the marquee in the garden with the rest of the children that had accompanied their parents. That is where I met the young, rakishly handsome Charles Faraday Rodmal Goodness the Third before he took the name Creamy Goodness for himself. He was the unofficial leader of the Admiral’s staff’s children, I instantly disliked him. It’s a shame our paths would cross time and time again. I soon made a note to ensure Kailsa and he never met.

It was that little display of obstinance that made mum and dad think it would be best if I was sent to school and taught me how a young Imperial lady should act in public. Not many people of standing would be as gracious as the Admiral, so I was sent to an Academy in Cubeo and naturally, it was the same one Creamy and his cronies attended.

That few years was not the best. I boarded at the Galviston Academy of Higher Education and had to put up with not only being one of the few attendees without a Nobel heritage, but Creamy also found out my mum used to be a slave and I was borne, technically as property of a tiny little mining cooperation. The first year was hell, and I looked forward to coming home between terms, never letting on to mum and dad I was not at all happy, but that changed when fencing classes began.

Creamy was the blade to beat, and my goodness did I beat him. I’d fenced with mum and dad, but I had venom in my blood with my school mates and it showed. I had a Beat that could knock a blade from an unsuspecting opponent’s hand, a finger crushing Coule, and a compound Repost that ended in a wicked Lunge that would often break a practice foil. Being penalised a point for brutality became my personal scorecard and I brutalised all that deserved it. It only took a half a term for my school mates to realise I pay on any slights they aimed my way with a lesson in blade work and in a term and a half more, I had to fence the seniors. Not because I was practically skilled, I was only a little better than most, but because no one in my class would be my opponent. That, for me was a win.

After my time at the Academy, I was to attend a finishing school. It would only be for one season, but it would turn out I needed two. I was told by the mistress “You’re forthright attitude will serve you well, but it should remain beneath a veneer of civility at all times Miss Mercy” Mistress Letty-Parkin was very much like myself, and I learned my current demeanour from her.

Not long after returning home, farther decided I should find some work and try to make my own life. To start with, farther got me a clerical position in his office, mother had given up freelance mining and started a high-class passenger transport business and naturally fathers office was her first major contract, so it made sense to keep it in the family. I applied myself, but mother could see it wasn't for me and I was still living under my parents’ wing, so she decided I should go to the Pilots’ Federation, and get my licence.

It didn’t thrill me, as I’d been around ships all my early life I had very little interest in flying for a living. Mother however, insisted and flew me there in her Cobra MkIII. She also stayed in system while I took my test. If I was in charge of the evaluation, I wouldn’t have given me a licence. I have a strong suspicion Mother had “donated” a stack of credits to the Pilots’ Federation to easy my grade.  I had a shiny new licence and a shiny new Winder called Lil Lamb, A parting gift from mother. She wished me well, and flew home leaving me to make my own way in the wide-open Galaxy.

I did what every new pilot dose and took any job doing anything that would pay. I had enough live onboard my ship and by good enough food, but it wasn’t the sort of life I wanted. I sent a communication to farther office to see if I could get some more stable work. The reply I received was not what I expected. It was boarding orders as a Weapons Engineering Technician onboard the Destroyer HMS Thunder Child. Now I was quite good at repairing a mining laser and maintaining the sub-surface launchers on my Mothers old mining pod, but I was no Technician.

Upon meeting my Commanding Officer, the mystery was cleared up. A certain Admiral had called his old command and had a few words with the brass and his replacement.

”You’ll bally well take the girl, or I’ll come out of retirement and show you wet fops why I was called the Bombardier by Jove. It’s the perfect job for the Spitfire, now get it done”

After the recording ended, my new Commodore impressed upon me the importance of my doing well so I set about learning fast from the people that knew the job. Not out of respect for my command, but my respect for the Admiral. The Commodore found plenty of reasons to make my service in the Navy difficult and I held many dangerous positions. However, I did well in boarding operations and repelling borders. My reputation amongst the commandos was growing and eventually, the Commodore had to relent.

I finished my service and went back to freelance work and soon got myself a Cobra MkIII. I called my parents’ and we all talked about the thrill of owning a MkIII, I felt I would never need another ship. Thanks to the better ship and my connection to the Navy, I found freelance work much more satisfying and did many jobs to support Her Imperial Majesties Navy. I did eventually leave my Cobra behind, but it wasn’t until I got myself a Python I felt the same feeling of accomplishment and lack of urge to upgrade to something else, so I named the new ship Hand of Lambast.

With the Hand of Lambast, I could range further afield and take on a wider verity of jobs. I headed for Robigo and tried my hand at being a Passenger Liner Commander. It was just as I was making headway in that business, I got the news from mother that the Admiral had been lost to Witch-Space. He was traveling to Shinrarta Dezhra for a conference and his ship the Cutter Bombardier was the only one that didn’t make the jump back to our space.

We didn’t attend a funeral, The Admiral didn’t want one, so we instead attended a garden party on his estate. Speaking of his estate, he broke his impressive lands into smaller Baronies and awarded them to the people he considered worthy friends. My parents received a large Barony on the southern border of the Admirals lands. Just like that, Mother and farther became the Baron & Baroness Mercy the first of Ormesby, with all the benefits and duties therein. Being Lady Lambast Mercy did wonders for my fledgling venture as a Passenger Liner Commander, by the real benefit come from a connection to the “Old Boy” network. All of a sudden, other titled nobles start calling for tea and hospitality along with opportunities for a sound investment. One such opportunity came to me in the shape of Creamy Goodness III, sorry, Count Creamy Goodness III.

He encouraged me to put aside our differences and head for Darnielle's Progress in Maia. He had a good friend there that wanted a good pilot with a large ship. Well, I had a big enough ship at least. We had a three-way cut on transporting Meta Alloys for a contact of a contact there. It was dangerous work and I was doing all of it. All Creamy did was Cream the profits, so I soon dropped him and did the runs myself. It was clear I needed help, but Kaisla hadn’t answered for the invitation to Mother and Father's ennoblement, and she didn’t answer my call for fighter cover on this task, so I called a Navy friend by the name of LaFresh.

Together we ran Meta Alloy for months and made a lot of money. On top of that, I found out the Admiral had left me personally a great deal of wealth to, as he put it

“Get ya arse out there and make something of ya self what?”

I really do miss that dotty old codger and his absurd gifts. What does a girl do with a horse when she is living on transports most of her life? I stayed true to his wishes and made Lambaconda Cruises the premier Cruise service flying from Robigo to everywhere, much to  the annoyance of the local Cartel, but that’s another story,