Its Been Awhile pt. 1
22 Jan 2019Maul Montresor
So...how does this work? Do I just talk into this.Hello?
I guess it's working....
So, I suppose I should start with why I am even recording these logs. I have been in hiding for a little over a year now and I feel like I need to talk about everything that has happened. Maybe it will make me feel better. I don't know. I just want my story out there in case something happens.
I'll start from the beginning and stop rambling now.
I'm Maul Montresor and I'm currently 26. I grew up in LHS 3447 on Dalton Gateway. Like I'm sure many did. My parents raised me just fine. Mom and Dad both worked in agriculture but I never took a liking to any of that. It all seemed rather boring to me but that's just how it is when you're a kid, everything is boring and stupid. I dreamed of being famous. Looking back I realize I had no idea what that really meant or how I would even achieve that goal but it doesn't matter. That dream died in my teenage years. Reality set in hard and I quickly realized I was going to have some mundane job and die alone or something.
.....
Ah fuck....I'm rambling again aren't I? Sorry.
Anyway...
Once I was out on my own I got a job at a local bar. Serving drinks and the like. A pretty typical job for a 22 year old. It was nice talking to the patrons and hearing their stories but the best stories came from the pilots...or..uh...Commanders. Whatever the individual fancies being called. One older gentleman in particular was my favorite customer to talk to. His name was Rusty. Well, I can only assume that was a nickname or just him having a laugh because when I'd ask what his real name was or his full name he would just say: "I told you kid my name is Rusty Bolts! Now stop asking me!" Rusty was a super kind guy. He would knock back a few drinks and tell stories till it was time to depart again. Now, the reason I even bothered to mention him is because without him and his stories I would have never dreamed of owning and piloting my own ship. In fact, he sold me my first ship, although it was a rusty old sidewinder. It needed some serious work but I kept working at the bar till I had saved enough credits to fix it up a bit. At 25 I was ready, I set off on my first trip. Nothing too far away as I still wasn't well versed in flying at all. I decided to visit the neighboring system Eravate. Little did I know that I chose my fate that day.
After making my first jump I was shaking. I've never felt so scared and happy in my life. I was finally free to see all these things Rusty told me about. Honestly though, at the time I was just hoping the old fart wasn't lying to me. I looked at my navigation panel and decided I'd go visit Cleve Hub. Everything went smooth until I made my first landing, which mind you, was terrible and I still feel the eyes of everyone in that station staring at me in confusion and absolute disbelief. Once I brushed off the embarrassment I made my way into the local bar. I served enough drinks to pilots back home so I figured it was time someone served this pilot a drink. I walked into the the bar head held high and asked for my favorite drink...milk. I wasn't about to get tipsy and fly back home. I mean, I could barely land the damn ship anyway. After I had ordered my drink, another patron laughed and sparked up a conversation with me. We became fast friends. See, this guy worked for a local corporation who was looking to hire on some new pilots to haul cargo and the pay was great. Only thing is, I'd have to move to Cleve Hub. So, of course I said yes. I finished my drink and headed home to tell my parents the great news and to pack some things to take with me. This corporation even covered the cost of my living expenses. It was almost too good to be true.
I was living comfortably on Cleve Hub working for this corporation. Settling in was hard but you get used to things quicker when you're being paid good. After a month of regular deliveries to neighboring systems things started to go bad though. Now, I won't say the name of the corporation here because I know some honest and good people who work there. Most of them have families and are just doing honest work to feed their children. No, my problem is with the folks in certain positions of power in the corporation who fucked me over. Anyway, after a month or so they started a training program to train some of us to be protection for the ships hauling the cargo, like an escort I suppose. I didn't think twice about it. I mean, they gave me a raise and a free Cobra MkIII, again it was all so unreal. I started getting the hang of combat in all the practice scenarios they put us through. After a few months of training we were ready for the real thing. Most days we didn't have any issues but other days we had pirates attacking the haulers and would have some tough fights on our hands. Nothing we couldn't handle. One day I was called to meet with one of the guys in charge. He wanted me to assassinate a pirate who had been bothering us for weeks. They figured we could eliminate the problem before it starts this time. So they gave me the system he was in and exactly where to find him. I figured it was no big deal. It would save me from having to do it later during a haul so why not? I sat down in the cockpit of that Cobra and left Cleve Hub for the last time.
See....now....
ugh...
This pirate they had me kill well, he wasn't actually the pirate that had been hitting us. This guy was the head of a new up and coming rival corporation. I never thought the guy really posed a threat to us but I'd heard people talking about him around our headquarters. These fuckers lied to me to me though. They sent me to murder an innocent and I showed up ready and willing to take this guy out. Hell, I didn't even scan his ship to confirm his identity. I just locked on and started firing, it was in the last few seconds of his life that I looked down and seen whose ship it was. His ship exploded before I could do anything about it. I just sat there confused and thinking that I fucked up somehow. I checked my objective again but no, they set me up. Once I came to my senses I realized that security ships were already there and locked on to me. They fired a few shots and my shields depleted, the next few busted my canopy. I wasn't wearing my helmet at the time and in all that commotion some glass had got in my left eye. Knowing that I had no time and no oxygen, I quickly grabbed my helmet and put it on to see that I only had about 5 minutes of oxygen. In a panic, I charged my FSD and targeted my home system.
I had to think quick on what I was going to do next, I had never had a fine before, much less a bounty on my head. I targeted Dalton Gateway and headed back home. I didn't know exactly what I planned on doing but I needed a doctor for my eye and being a kid playing around on a starport, well, lets just I went to a surgeon or two growing up. I landed my ship and quickly made my way to the doctor while my canopy was being repaired. Now, I had heard of having things replaced with mechanical components and the like before but I never thought I'd need anything like that done until now. The doc was a little hesitant on helping me because I wasn't willing to explain what happened but with enough credits anyone will do anything. So, he did an emergency replacement of my eye and now it's all mechanical. It works fine nowadays but it was quite the adjustment back then. A few days had passed and after some conditioning this eye a bit I realized I needed to leave before The Corporation found me. I decided not to visit my parents. I didn't want to have to explain the circumstances or say goodbye. So I just left.
I needed a place to start over but I'd barely left home and had no idea where to go. Suddenly, I remembered Rusty talking about all of his adventures, I always loved the story of him getting drunk and boarding the wrong ship to take a nap at Ray Gateway. I looked the station up in the galaxy map and seen it was in a system called Diaguandri. So that's where I went.