The story of Zaxx Wilder
24 Dec 2015Ant Kingsmill
My mind had drifted into thought. Into the past... I haven’t always been a Baron of the Empire. In fact I haven’t always been in the Empire, I was born on the earth like planet under the Littlewood starport in the sprawling V1688 Aquilae system. Not only did I grow up with clean, breathable air, my planet was a free, democratic world in an independent system that I could happily take for granted. Hard work was always the way of the world though and we were expected to put effort in. Although there was a heavy Federal influence in the region ushering mechanisation it was mostly welcomed. Working on the land was hard and we could still find plenty of work besides toiling all day. Even now Littlewood is the gateway to the bread basket of the system and beyond.
After leaving college I had felt somewhat unsettled, like a lot of college leavers do I suppose. I still felt a strong connection to my home world but perhaps selfishly didn’t want to follow my parents into farming. There’s a limit to how long you can spend playing Sidewinder simulations so I eventually managed to get a technician job in the fruit packing factory close to the capital. It involved keeping the robotics up and running. The mechanics appealed to me more than working on farms, though I remember missing the daylight at first. It was at that time I met Zaxx Wilder, a former merchant trader who narrowed down his career options when getting on the wrong side of the law with the Feds. The coffin was metaphorically nailed when Zaxx apparently tried to smuggle goods into Thomson Gateway. The Thomson dictatorship didn't treat Zaxx lightly - he spent ten years behind bars before being released almost penniless. By then Zaxx was in his latter days of working and went back to what he knew, mechanics, and scraped enough credits to get by working at the factory. He taught me every nut, bolt, chip and memory socket on those robots, everything you could ask of a mentor.
And here’s where my adventures really began, because Zaxx Wilder had built up a tidy sum of fines in quite a few local systems. It was never for anything serious, the odd infringement here, the odd bit of smuggling there, he wasn’t welcome in many places.
One day in the factory Zaxx approached me in private and told me about his Sidewinder sat at Trevithick dock in LHS 3447. Zaxx was barred from the system so couldn't reach his ship. He would happily loan the ship to me and if I liked the pilot’s life I could raise enough cash to buy my own ship. I would then return his Sidewinder to Littlewood so he could fly away to a new life. He knew of an uprising in a distant system called Bipek and would make a home there. I jumped at the opportunity to become a pilot, and helping Zaxx at the same time. Zaxx handed me a tablet containing some a fake request to take the ship over to Yaping Enterprises for some maintenance work. Dressed in some overalls from the factory I was ready to go.
Catching a flight to LHS 3447 wasn’t cheap for someone working in a fruit packing factory. An Orca would have been nice but it turned out to be a hitch in a grimy Type 6 that delivered me too my destination. Trevithick dock is a cold, lonely outpost a long way out from the primary star. It wasn’t a big place and didn’t take me long to find the ship and explain to the authorities what I had to do. They talked amongst themselves for what seemed like ages before letting me through to the hanger. They told me the ship’s worth 27,000 credits to them and they wanted it back within 72 hours. Failure will result in me being hunted down, which I was assured wouldn’t be pleasant.
I entered the ship, stepped into the cockpit and there were the controls all laid out in front of me, just like in the simulators, only this time it was different – it smelt different, it felt different, this was real! I felt excited and apprehensive at the same time. Thrusters up, gear retracted and full throttle. A wobble here, a judder there, I wasn’t entirely convinced I was harmless to anyone unfortunate to be in my path, but I was away into deep space!