I can finally do this
13 May 2020Lowbee
At last I have the courage to write this down, my first logbook entry here amongst all of you. I finally got the nerve up after years of lurking and reading hungrily about the exploits of all you other commanders out there. It took me several tries to do this and I'm not one to whom words come easily, so bear with me. I never thought I could do this, growing up as a station rat on Tuan, hiding, lurking, running, trying to survive; cobbling together stolen and forgotten scraps to try and put together a life amidst the din and chaos of what was, to me, a nothing orbital in a sh@tty system. I was told my whole life that a station girl like me wouldn't ever amount to much if she didn't follow her family into the industry, except as maybe war fodder, or worse in the bed of some wealthy commander's 'Conda. "So just keep your head down and learn the ropes," they said, as if I was going to end up like my parents, who could never wash the stink of the refinery from their bodies or their boots. When they went missing between Ogden and Aristotle Gateway I knew a young girl working or whoring wasn't going to make enough to keep our berth. I was too young to join the service or go planetside and it was only a matter of time before SPF security would come for me so I grabbed my pack and became a rat. Turns out I was far from alone.
I would hang around outside the bars near the tech broker and the mats office listening to the stories being told of the dark, the excitement, the terror. I would see the bustle when we were five pads up, full of crews and commanders with credits looking for cargo, drink, and a few days' company. I remember the acrid burnt meat smell of the dark as pad doors were opened to load beryllium and superconductors and as we took on the food cartridges and coffee that stationers like my parents lived on when they weren't at the refineries. In the shadows of the bay corridors all the hatches and service doors that my fellow rats and I used to move unseen throughout the decks were also the lifeline for both Imperial slaves on their way to what they hoped were better lives and the nerve agents used to end those lives elsewhere.
The crews were just like my parents, mostly a**holes who were just looking for the next drink, the next card game, the next night's fun. I found out later that the good ones stayed at their stations. After all, why would they disembark at a sh!thole like Tuan when they would be at Serebrov in a week? I didn't find them remotely interesting, but the uniforms of the Imperials and Feds I did follow, knowing that eventually I'd get to hear tales of real action, real intrigue, stuff you didn't hear through the redacted Galnet feed that installations like ours got. Once I heard a huge mountain of a man in the local market recalling stories of rescues to Old Dorin that sounded impossible to me; later Texla told me he was a rat too, Dorin called him a Fuel Rat. And through it all the commanders strode on the decks like kings with their datapads and XO's never far from their side. To my young eyes they were what real pilots, or pirates, should look like.
I saw their torn and faded uniforms, their weapons, their scars, like treasures of a life being well lived, and I dreamed about going as far away from Tuan as possible. I would climb up to the skyports near the pads (security hated us rats hanging around in the commons) just to get a glimpse of their ships.
And oh, the ships! The heavy traders and the sleek runners alike had me mesmerized. I really liked the look of the Imperials most of all. They were all like jewels or precious metals hammered into weapons of commerce and war. I would feel their engines thrum as they docked and then left, watch them turn and high wake and wish I could follow, to anywhere. Anywhere but Tuan.
My story as to how I eventually left and such I'll save for another time. I don't care if anybody reads this because I realize now that I really wrote it for myself. It feels good to write this, to give myself permission to feel like I'm finally one of you all, doing what we must do in the unforgiving spaces between the stars. But I like to imagine that sometime, somewhere, one of you might read this and I want you to know that I am filled with gratitude to have discovered that there are so many others who share my love for the dark; those who left behind their old lives and built new ones with their own hands and wills, those who grew up steeped in it and have loved it from childhood, and even those who have made it their missions to end the lives of others for their own reasons. The dark is vast and lonely but now thanks to all of you, I never feel alone.