Nova Cassidy's Chronicles: Judges, Pt 1
22 Feb 2016Nova Cassidy
"Some people are driven by a most naive sense of justice-the need to protect the innocent and vanquish those who would oppress others.
All ridiculous motivations, of course. The only real means of justice in the universe is to possess the power to ensure it- and power is seldom upheld by strictly honorable means. People like you and I see it. Arissa sees it. Zachary Hudson sees it... Those like her never will.
What do you suppose her reaction would be if she knew the truth?"
- Inquisitor Gideon
Let’s get something straight: I love being right. Love it.
In fact, you could say that I’ve built my piloting career around being right. For example- can I take on two Vipers in the Bluebird? Absolutely. Three? In a real pickle. Four? Not a chance.
Can I smuggle some slaves out of their situation and onto a remote outpost to hand off to someone else? You bet. Can I fly into a core system swarming with Authority and do the same? That’s… well- you don’t hear about a lot of successful smugglers operating in crowded areas, do you?
So when I get a nagging feeling in my chest that doesn’t go away, it means that I was likely wrong about something. And if that nagging feeling goes on for the better part of a year, it means that I was wrong about something big.
And I hate being wrong...
I’ve had several partners on different jobs in my time as a freelance pilot, but not many. For the most part, I earn my credits by hunting down criminals- and that’s a one-woman show. But every once in awhile, it's a good idea to branch out. Maybe I'm too good at my job, but my home system was getting pretty quiet. I heard deep-space salvage could be good credits, so I hopped in the Bluebird and did some exploring.
There aren’t a lot of good salvage jobs out there. In fact, there aren’t even many salvage jobs, period. So when I stumbled across a fellow pilot advertising on the bulletin board that he was willing to pay out two-million to a pilot for a salvage assist, I damn near dented the touchscreen from how hard I pushed the “accept” button.
Of course, a job for two mil doesn’t just drop in your lap without you having to jump through at least a few hoops. Firstly, I needed to clear certain Pilot’s Fed ranks. Done. Second was cargo capacity. No problem. Replace some components with cargo racks and I'm set. Asp Explorers are amazingly versatile.
Third, I had to be willing to meet my partner face-to-face for an interview. Different, but that was reasonable, too.
So, I put on some decent clothes and headed for the sushi place that we had agreed upon. Young, old, man, woman- I had no idea what to expect from my potential partner.
My initial impression of Matt was less than impressive- the man actually mistook me for the waitress. But by the end of the interview, I was reassured. It’s only too easy to run into some lonely creep in this business, and I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t have to deal with that. For a young woman, that’s pretty important. Not that Matt came off as a creep. He was actually kind of cute- but so are lots of other guys. I wasn’t in it to find a boyfriend. I was concerned about the money and job experience.
And the job itself? Jesus, where would I start with that? What’s important is that we ended up in a situation that I didn’t like one bit- Matt and I tasked to eliminate average working Joes working for Lysenko corporation (We'll get to that). We accomplished our mission, but Matt was damn near killed when his Vulture’s canopy was blown out and he took some flak to the stomach. It took several days of resting and recovery, but we managed to make it back to his contact in the Imperial Inquisition (long story). Matt was debriefed, we said goodbye, and we went our separate ways.
It should have ended there. It didn’t.
I had voiced my concerns about targeting civilians to Matt’s contact, a smooth-talking man named Gideon. He had assured me that we had been targeting Lysenko VIPs in disguise - that they'd changed their IDs on their ships to evade their hunters. Just before Matt and I parted ways in from of my ship, he smiled and told me the same.
And that’s when I first heard the voice- right as Matt was assuring me that him and I hadn’t killed any innocents people during the job. It was soft-spoken at first, only whispering into my ear in my most bored or lonely moments. It was a voice of doubt, and self-loathing, and insecurity. As the months went by, that gut feeling of mine that something was off never went away. Still, I ignored it. Matt had been one of the only honest, committed partners I had ever had. He had taken a bullet for me. He had been a gentleman. He had treated me like an equal. There was no way he would lie to me because he didn’t think I could handle an ugly truth, right?
… right?
Well, I suppose I always really knew. It seems obvious looking back. The look in his eyes, the subtle hesitation in his voice. But I was naive, and so desperate for that to be the right answer I made myself believe it.
As time went on, I threw myself into the business of being a pilot- trading, taking jobs, and above all spending lots of time in unpoliced extraction zones, watching over the miners and wasting scumbag pirates. It was a lucrative business, being a system’s guardian angel. In time, I had more money than I knew what to do with- the Asp was as upgraded as she was going to get, and my credit balance just kept growing.
Eventually, I took the plunge and bought a Python. It had always been a goal of mine to fly one. I ordered a brilliant white paint job for her and named her the Snowbird. I was smart about it too, stock components wouldn't work for a bounty hunter. I'd saved up enough credits to outfit it with some bigger, shinier internals too. She was everything that the Bluebird was, but more. She had more cargo, deadlier weapons, a spacious bridge, and an actual captain’s quarters with an actual bed instead of some grungy afterthought of a crew cabin.
I can still remember the day I “moved in”. I was surrounded by piles of my belongings, but was just laying in bed, letting my mind drift. Not that I’m a lonely person, but I found myself thinking of my time with Matt, and the times we had had to sleep next to each other. The memory made me smile. As much as I could tell he wanted to he hadn’t ever made any awkward advances at me. Never propositioned me. Never “accidently” put his arm around me to rest on my boob. As a result, I hadn’t minded co-sleeping with him- even on one of those dingy little ship bunks. Still-
Where the hell was this giant bed when it would have come in handy?
Eventually, I decided that I needed to get to the business of unpacking. I was uncrating a container of odds and ends when I noticed it; an old data disk, with the magic marker “L” I had written on it almost a year ago.
It was the copy of Lysenko’s corporate records I had made. Someone was going to pay five million credits for this data and what came with it, so if I was going to be backstabbed for it a second time I was going to make it worthless. Someone tries to cheat me out of the deal and suddenly their secrets were being sold on the black market. If their goal is nothing but money then mine is too, I couldn't care less about their bottom line.
Every piece of data that came my way during those two weeks was stored on that disk. It was leverage in the event some corporation tries to stab me in the back again. A good habit, I thought. Not the safest habit, but I wasn't going to let a bunch of suits use and double-cross me again. It was my own little insurance policy, but I had almost forgot that it existed - I didn't have any immediate use for it after the job, so I stashed it away.
I picked it up, trying to remember what the 'L' stood for in this case. I'd had a couple of 'L's since then (I organize my data better now) and then, like a storm, memories and feelings came back to me in a rush. The sushi restaurant, Matt, the anaconda, the ambush, the Bear Den, Hutton, all of the dogfights. Matt again, and all those times I had to change his gross bandages. That stupid mug I bought.
But there was more. The Inquisition, the assassinations, the tense time in Gideon’s office, the feeling of unease-
-and the very last thing you spoke with Matt about. The Lysenko civvies. When you asked if Gideon had been telling the truth and we were actually hunting down VIPs in disguise.
His words came back to me, clear as day: “Yeah, darlin’. We were. Lysenko was good, but the Inquisition was better.” At the time, his words had filled me with relief and reassurance. I hadn’t been a murderous tool of the Empire, after all.
But that was also the first time I heard the voice, whispering so softly that I was being a fool.
And now, here I stood, Lysenko’s complete corporate records in my hand. It was unthinkable, the thoughts coursing through my mind, finally bursting to the forefront of my consciousness. Matt was a good man. We had saved countless lives.
But what if we didn’t?
Over a year, the voice eventually faded. I only really heard it when something reminded me of the job, I had a lot of other things to keep me busy and fill that head space. But as I turned the disk around in my hands, the voice came back, and I was holding what could finally answer that question once and for all.
There's only one way to find out.
Matt had always liked to tease me for being a snoop- but I loved knowing things I wasn't supposed to. With a slightly trembling hand, I inserted the disk into the player, and watched as the progress bar loaded. The Lysenko logo flashed in bright colors, and I sat down at my chair. I dug through the trove of data until I had the employee records, and then I had a dread feeling that I wasn’t going to like what I found. There was hesitation in my hands as I loaded up the list of targets I'd been given that day alongside it. Maybe it was better not knowing. I didn't even know what I would do if I could prove that I was manipulated.
I recognized a couple of names already. For the first time in my life, I found myself hoping that I wasn’t right.
Everything was ready to have the computer cross-reference the names. I sat there for what felt like hours debating in my mind whether or not to hit the button, convince myself not to. But I made my decision as soon as I put the disk in. I ran the query. All I needed to do now was sit and wait. It only took a minute, but it was a very long minute.
As it loaded, I asked myself a few questions. If they could have scrambled their names to hide their identities as high ranking members of the corporation, why would they have chosen to still identify as members of that corporation at all? People were - I was attacking people who were members of the company. So why still identify as a lower ranked member of the company instead of someone entire different? …How would the Inquisition have known what they were going to change their names to? I was an idiot.
I asked myself what I would do with the answer I got. If it was good news… I guess I owe Matt an apology. If it was the other thing… I... had no idea.
Every single target I had been given was in Lysenko's employee records as a real employee. I looked every match up on the Galnet one by one. Almost every single one came up the same. Deceased. There were obituaries. There was time of death. Cause of death. Profiles of their families. I could count the survivors on one hand, but each of them all had up to date details. They were all real people. I went through every last one. These were the faces of the people I had murdered.
My emotions were a real mess after that. I was a murderer. Gideon and his God damned Inquisition had tricked me into murdering innocent people so that maybe the real targets wouldn't go into hiding. They were all fine people. Most of them low paid, trying their best to get by. Provide for their families, to give their kids a future. Thanks to me, there were people waiting for the return of a family member who was never going to come home.
That's not why I fight.
I fight because if I don't, who will? I'd never felt vindictive until the day I passed by a young bright-eyed boy waiting for his dad to come home from work on the way to my ship. And then when I passed him again, several hours later as a sad looking man in a uniform was trying to tell him that his dad wasn't going to be coming home. I'll never forget that kids face as he figured out what it was the man was trying to gently tell his mother had happened. My blood boiled. That was the exact moment I became a reaper.
Call it vigilantism if you want, but I know that what I'm doing is helping more people than it's hurting. From the narrow view of my cockpit, I don't see the so called bigger picture. People like Gideon may see the 'bigger picture', the 'greater good', 'necessary sacrifices' and 'acceptable losses'. I personally witnesses the destruction of an innocent man trying to provide for a family who'll never see him again.
I focused all my regret, all my shame, my guilt and my anger into one tangible thing. Something I could do. The Bluebird and I had one more job together.
I was going to kill Gideon.