Audio Recording Begins
Log ID: 33030926-16:39-1

I hate mining. It's boring, physically exerting, and doesn't even pay that well. Just my luck then that I was born on a mining colony. My parents were simple folks. They dug rocks for a living, you can't really say much for personality. They were content, but I felt like I was destined for more. Ever since I was a little girl, I would look up at the stars and wonder what amazing things there were out there. Then I would look back down and see my reality. The only good thing that ever happened there was meeting my best friend, Jaycen Krieg. His parents were miners too, and while he was much less forward about it, he hated the mining life almost as much as me. When we turned 18, we put together our wages we had saved for the past two years to buy the cheapest, most banged up Sidewinder we could and we flew off. Technically, I flew off. Jay had to sit in the cargo hold.

We managed to get to Eravate before the entire thing died on us. We got certified by the Pilot Federation and got jobs serving as crew members on a Beluga Liner. Jay was a janitor, my job was... a bit more embarrassing. The only opening they had left was an exotic dancer. I didn't like it, but seeing as my only other option was to work on a mining vessel, I dealt with it. The only plus side was that the rich, old men who came there for "entertainment" tipped well. Well enough that after only three months Jay and I had earned enough credits to buy a ship that wasn't falling apart: a Cobra Mk III called the Cornelia Marie. It wasn't in the best condition, but it wasn't in any danger of exploding.

The two years we flew that ship were the best of my life. We took small jobs wherever we could find them, slowly but surely making a life for ourselves. But it was never meant to be.

One day, we got hired to take out some pirate who had been preying on the local traders. It wasn't supposed to be anything serious, the intel said it was just one guy in a beaten up Viper. But the intel was wrong. When we dropped in on his wake, we were bombarded on all sides by five Vultures. They tore our little Cobra to shreds before we even deployed our weapons. Thankfully, they didn't destroy our escape pods after we were jettisoned, and a few hours later we were rescued by the local authorities.

We may have lived, but we lost everything. We had no ship, no credits, and no hope. We didn't know what we were going to do. Then I had an idea. We used the last of our money to buy tickets to a nearby Imperial system. I took out a massive loan, bought an Asp Explorer, and fully outfitted it for exploration. The only way we were going to be able to get our life back was to go out there and find something that someone would find valuable.

We didn't know what was ahead. All we knew was that we were never going back.

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Recording Ended - 16:47