You only lose what you cling to...
05 May 2021Lowbee
Sitting here now, guiding the Hokuleʻa through the stars of the Errant Marches, I am a long way from the girl I was eighteen months ago back in Ansuz, running missions with Gustav Rook against the Blue Mob. Cripes, this scan is taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r so I'll give you a short recap.I was just learning to fight...no, to fight *back* against my fears, my terror at the thought of being defenseless out in the black, unable to hold my own against even the most paltry of assailants. Of my ship breaking apart around me as I panic trying to make it to a station, a planet, anything. Of dying. Alone.
Well, my four months with Gustav's flight school took care of that bullshit pretty quickly. The combat and skirmish training was just the prelude to my discovering that he was running the school as a side gig to his real passion - greywork. He told me one day that he was under contract to the Democrats of Ansuz to keep the Blue Mob away from their mining interests in the asteroid belt around Ansuz B and that he’d arrange to work me into the missions, if I wanted. For three weeks at first. It was low key and the safest way for me to learn the trade, he said, since the DoA was funding everything and would run cover for any mishaps. Like I said in my earlier logs, I was already a pretty good pilot when I met Gustav, but he’d made me a *combat* pilot. He trusted me and I felt safe with him; I figured there'd never be a better chance for someone like me so despite my fears, I said yes.
Turns out I was an even better killer.
The first ones were tough. I tried to stay focused, knowing the struggle was all in my head, and Gustav constantly told me to trust my training. As the missions went by I settled down and then it just started to flow. The three weeks he had asked me for came and went and over the next year we developed a rapport that I'd never had with anyone else in my life. It was like we could read each other's minds. Gustav was unfailingly professional and never treated me like anything but an equal. After a while he introduced me to Saito, a friend of his from Delta Defense who offered me my own security contract for one of their facilities in C Belt, even farther out. I was grateful, knowing full well that he wouldn't do that for just anyone and also because I could see how much Saito respected him and he probably wasn't the only one in Ansuz who did. My fear of dying gradually gave way to a confidence that I could hold my own in most encounters, and I had gotten and given the scars to prove it. The credits didn’t hurt either.
Gustav died on a Sunday. I had gotten up early to bring him a pot of my neighbor’s menudo to share before we started inventory at the flight school. His apartment door was ajar and I found him on the floor right in the entryway. I called station security and they showed up in minutes with a DoA vehicle and crew right behind them. They asked me who I was, told me to step outside the unit, and just like that he was gone.
I was numb. I never found out how he died and I didn’t ask. No family ever came around that I saw. The school was eventually sold to one of Gustav's old military buddies and kept operating, but I never set foot in there again. I went out to the Delta Defense installation for five months after that, taking jobs and dealing with folks that I really don't want to discuss here. When the contract ended I bought one of Delta's fully decked out Phantoms with what was left in my company account there, sold my place in Gantt Colony and left Ansuz for good. I was two jumps out when the tears finally found me.
I eventually came to accept where my life had taken me. The wide eyed teenaged hard-scrabbling station rat who spent cold nights dreaming of the stars beyond the refineries and the viewports of the place that had claimed my parents' lives was gone, as was the happy-go-lucky patrician trader and scholar who flitted cargo around the bubble, dropping in on friends and who thought nothing of spending too many credits on old books and fancy upgrades to scanner equipment. I needed to head out now and get away from everything, to do something else. Now that I was truly alone I could hear the call of the darkness between the stars, of the things I had yet to find, and I wanted nothing more than to go out and look.
So that’s the recap and here I am, in the Errant Marches, seeing what there is to see. I’ve decided to use the Deep Space Support Array as my guide, to visit all ninety or so carriers in service as I make my way back to the rest of my life. And I don’t mind leaving my old selves behind for this, I know I’ll eventually see them all again.
As I traverse the galaxy I always delight at seeing terrestrial worlds like this and feeling the nostalgia it brings me. When I scan and collect data from these jewels I imagine what it would be like to live an entire life on just one planet, perhaps this one. School, career, love, friends, family, old age, death; all without setting foot offworld. Sometimes I feel an almost imperceptible pull towards such a life. Then the galaxy calls, I pull back on the stick and charge the FSD; the urge passes and I am off in search of the next green world, perhaps just a fleeting point of light in the night sky to the uncounted billions below.
