Ethics, Part 2
08 Oct 2021Iridium Nova
I remember the first time I killed. I want to say it was hard, that I deliberated and couldn't bring myself to take another human life. But if that were true, I wouldn't be here today. It wasn't hard at all. It was easy - maybe too easy. I suppose it helped that it was kind of accidental.I say "kind of", because, truth be told, I didn't really know what I was doing. This was back just after I got my Cobra. I was running cargo for my parents, hauling the ore we mined to refineries in other systems, skipping the middleman of Dobson Orbital. A hostile ship, maybe a pirate, attacked me on my usual route. I had managed to avoid pirates up till this point by dropping a little when they showed up. I didn't tend to attract a lot of attention, so mostly they were petty thieves in small ships that couldn't really carry much anyway, so a couple of canisters was plenty to satiate them.
Over the years, combat has changed dramatically as technology has changed and adapted to various challenges. Back then, we were still using Quirium drives, which operated pretty similarly to Frameshift, and created interference which limited sensor range. Of course, after the Quirium age, sensor technology adapted and took advantage of the extra range afforded by the lack of interference. Nowadays, sensor systems are tied into the frameshift drive. This allows the sensors to function in the presence of a frameshift drive, though at ranges limited to, at most, around 8-9km but then can drastically improve their range while Supercruise is in full function, thereby taking advantage of the superluminal frame displacement to detect other frameshift signatures in real-time.
Back in the Quirium days, sensors were much more limited. You couldn't see a ship until it was within around 14km, and that was already close enough to mass lock a Q-Drive, most of the time. People these days don't remember how finicky the Q-Drives were. Anyway, it meant that it was entirely possible that you'd have next to no warning when pirates attacked. Sometimes you'd mass lock at a distance where you had a few seconds to prepare before the lasers started, but sometimes they'd drop in close and firing like a maniac. You had to be on the ball all the time in space.
So when that pirate dropped right on my backside and started firing immediately, I panicked. Usually, they'd try to bargain with you, or threaten you, or convince you that dropping your cargo was in your best interests. The greedy fuckers would often demand more than they could carry, just to spite you, or maybe because they're just assholes. And dropping some would usually satisfy them. But there were also "space crazies" back then, same as now, but a lot more of them. Most of the time, they'd just rant at you while firing. This one was totally quiet. The ship looked like it had fallen apart and been put back together again using scrap metal. Didn't say a word, opened fire immediately. Pirates would very rarely do that, only the most murderous ones. Usually Pilot's Federation members who developed a taste for blood, interestingly. Some things never change. I dropped some cargo, the bastard didn't even notice. For the first time in my life, I had to push myself to fly evasively, pulling all of my tricks out of the bag. It helped, but the guy wouldn't stop, even after all my cargo was floating in space.
By this point my body had become cold and numb with panic. My reactions slowed, I couldn't think straight. I'd never really been in a fight. My rear shield dropped as the nutjob slammed into me, and his ship sliced along the dorsal plating of my Cobra. I tried to maneuver, second guessing myself, afraid that whatever I did next would be my last move. The collision didn't even phase the bastard. I realized, it was a sidewinder. The me of today would shrug it off, this guy wouldn't even scratch my shields, I could probably take him out in one shot. But I was a very different person back then. He wheeled around, and in doing so, passed right in front of me. I reacted on instinct, firing my pulse lasers as he psychotically whirled through my crosshairs. The shot knocked out his control and he span. With adrenalin pumping and instinct now fully in charge, I zeroed in on him and let loose. The little ship didn't hold up long under that kind of fire and broke apart, not with an explosion, but with a little pop and a slowly spreading cloud of debris. I kept shooting and vaporized some of the debris, before realizing that the deed was done.
The experience left a mark on me, one that told me that I needed a killer instinct if I was going to survive. I was alive because he was dead. I killed someone, but not because I wanted to, because I had to, because he very clearly would have done the same to me. That was the reality of this universe. Death comes with freedom, and the only thing that determines which one of you dies is skill and willingness to kill. I grew up with dreams of adventure, of meeting interesting new people and seeing new places. I dreamed of rescuing people, of being a hero. I dreamed of exploration, and unraveling mysteries. Part of me knew combat was going to be part of it, but I thought it'd be like it is in the holovids and the stories. Dashing space rogues and dogfights where the loser gets rescued later, having learned a lesson. Funny thing about those stories, they didn't really talk much about death. Maybe it was just the kind of stories a little miner kid could get ahold of in the backwater of the Fomalhaut disc, but it was what I grew up with.
I'm so far from that person now. I guess I got what I wanted. A life of adventure. A life lived at the cost of hundreds, maybe thousands, of lives. I'd like to say that they all deserved it. I'd like to say that most of them deserved it. But who deserves it? Who is the ultimate authority on who deserves it, and why is it that everyone who claims to have the answer is just trying to justify their own "righteous" crusade? There is a true good and a true evil out there, but lately it seems that it's become so distant that we, as a society, may never reach it. Or maybe it's just me.
All I know now is that I don't even flinch at the prospect of taking a life. I hardly even consider the morality of it anymore, since every time I did, it always came back to the same conclusion: "They would have done the same to me."