My parents were both miners.  My grandparents; miners.  Before them; no stinking clue.  Imperial godam nobles probably.  My folks got blown up by pirates in the Khawchuang system when I was just a little kid.  They had heard some crazy rumors about asteroids made out of solid gold or some stupid shit like that.  That was my dad, always after the big win that would set us up with our own private base somewhere with a breathable atmosphere.  Yeah, and anacondas will fly out of my ass, too.

So I got sent off to live with my mom’s sister.  She runs the food cartridge machines on Aristotle Gateway in the Yakabugai system.  Or, I should say she keeps them running.  Yeah, it’s a real shit job but we always had something to eat.  I remember we got to try out the newest flavors of food cartridges before anybody else on the station. Good times. But the real fun for me was hanging out in the docking bay where the ships came in.  My Aunt Vida had a boyfriend who was a ship mech.  He’d let me sit in the cockpits of the ships while they swapped out modules or patched up holes in the bulkheads.  That was the shit.

By the time I got through puberty, I’d been caught trying to stow away on half a dozen ships and before I’d worked up the nerve to try to steal a couple of others.  They were just Sideys.  I never did see what all the yelling was about.  Anyway, Aunt Vida sent me off to a Federation military prep school at Makarov Bastion In the Uzumeru system.  I hated it.  This was my first time living on a planet and it was freaking miserable. They hated me almost as much as I hated them.  Let’s just say that after a few months, all parties agreed that my being there was a mistake.  They decided that, if I paid off my share of the cost of the damage, they would drop all charges.  My aunt used her connections with the Yakabugai factions to get me a job working in the food cartridge factory at Serebrov Station.   Ugh.  I’ve never been accused of being the brightest laser in the loadout, but I did figure out that I’d better take this chance for what it was.

Slopping food cartridges on Serby Station was ok, I guess.  To tell the truth, my memory of the whole experience is sort of a fog of onionhead and crappy bootleg liquor.  I managed to stay sober long enough to complete my pilots training and qualify for a loaned sidewinder.  I couldn’t wait to get rid of that piece of  crap and buy my own ship.  Right away, my buddies figured out that I was the designated beer runner.  Probably because I was the only one who could manage a jump through witch-space while stoned on onionhead without blacking out or puking my guts out.  Ever clean zero G puke out of the inside of a remlock helmet?  Nasty.  Anyway, I’d make enough profit from a beer run that we could drink for free and I’d set a little aside in my “Anaconda Fund”.

It didn’t take long before I’d ditched the sidey and moved up to an eagle, then a cobra.  Along the way, I ditched some of my old friends, some of ‘em died, and some of ‘em just wandered off to a black hole somewhere. Nowadays I mostly run missions for whoever is paying the most for honest work. I'll do pretty much anything if the pay is right. Except mining, that shit is for suckers with no imagination.