Bad Apples and Fond Memories
30 Mar 2022Iridium Nova
This morning I woke to a flurry of chatter on the Canonn operations channel. Looks like our boy in HR 8133 was just about as rotten as he seemed, even though he's on our side. Trouble is, even when you're allied with a group, that doesn't mean you have to like everyone in it, and that's a good thing because every group has their bad apples. And sometimes those bad apples let their power go to their head. This guy, the esteemed politician Dr. Joseph Breen, started curbing our agendas in favor of his own and redirecting funds needed for infrastructure development to recruiting for his own personal army. But he's charismatic and well funded (thanks to our previous efforts), and smart enough to make those investments grow. So the squadron's in a tizzy trying to find a way to discreetly get rid of him without sending up red flags. So that's where I come in. As the squadron's regime-change specialist, I volunteered (for some stupid reason) to get involved and find a way to remove this guy from power.HR 8133 isn't much different from the last time I was there, though Canonn propaganda is everywhere. Despite that, Canonn authority in the system is surprisingly limited around the population centers. Most of the system is broken down into a myriad of jurisdictions, most of whom conflict on the borders. Breen's Boys, as some of the locals call them, identify as System Authority but mainly stick to out of the way areas and let the other factions do most of the policing. Among the Boys are a few well equipped and well trained fighters, likely former mercenaries who are now on Breen's payroll, made possible thanks to the funding we dumped on getting him elected. Most of Breen's power is consolidated and well protected on a few stations, where he can turtle until his armies are large enough for his power play, where he will start expanding his influence into other systems. That wouldn't be terrible of course, as he's still loyal to the Canonn and would effectively be helping us expand, but the squadron doesn't like the way he does things. Under his watchful eye, HR 8133 is a stagnant place, divided and largely still opposed to Canonn interests. The other factions in the system don't take Breen's regime seriously, and the squadron needs this to change. His reluctance to bring the other factions in line has required us to get involved.
After spending quite some time in the system, gathering data, interviewing locals, and representing Canonn to individuals of note, I put together a plan to remove Dr. Breen from office and bring more of the system into alignment with Cannon goals. While working on this project, I received a message from a contact on Jameson Memorial.
The message was in regards to a ship for sale. But not just any ship. The seller specifically wanted to sell it to me, and they were asking quite a high price for the old type-6. I wasn't interested until I saw the registration: ARG-7G. The Bounty of Charon. I couldn't believe it. I'd searched for the ship before, long time ago. Nothing came up, but search systems back in those days were terrible. Half the time they failed to find the ship sitting on the next pad over. I guess I kinda forgot about it as I moved on in life. Well, needless to say, I had to go. It kinda helped that I was already halfway there thanks to an impromptu visit to a prison ship directly between HR 8133 and Shinrarta Dezhra.
I was angry when I first stepped aboard. Everything was different. This wasn't my old home. The interior was all wrong. Throughout the course of decades and half a dozen owners, it had gone from a Type-5F to a Type-6, one of the few ships in existence to receive that treatment. At least they kept the paint job. I didn't recognize anything inside that ship anymore. And then, I did... It's always the small things. The things you forgot. The dent in that one wall, the scratches on the bulkhead where Dad tried to push a big rock though the airlock when the scoop broke. The burn marks on the wall hidden under peeling paint in the galley where I learned to cook. It was all there, when I really looked. It wasn't the way I wanted to remember it, but I remembered it all the same. It was cold and dirty now, the memories were there but buried under generations of other people's lives. It felt wrong. But then I realized, it didn't have to be wrong.
I could pay the bulkhead wizards on Memorial to restore the interior to it's old layout. I have the records. I downloaded them years ago. I could load them into a VR suite and pretend I was 16 again. But it didn't work, it was too empty, no matter what I did. It wasn't real, but now here I was, in my actual home, where I grew up. This was real, all I had to do was pay the local gearheads an exorbitant amount of money (which I could easily afford), and it'd be just like it was. Being rich is great. So that's what I've done. While I was at it, I decided to splurge at the shipyard and bought a few more ships. Why not?
Soon, my old home will be just like it used to be. Well, except for my parents.