...and all the king's men
24 Jun 2022Valanga
Y'know, sometimes I just have the absolute worst luck imaginable.I'm not even going to bother running any risk analysis on the odds of what happened, because there's no point, because the odds are so astronomically low, and- Gods, I'm STILL upset.
Needless to say, I learned what happened 6 months ago. I'm less than thrilled with the state of affairs.
On the 7th of December last year, a criminal on the run in a Fer-de-Lance made an emergency hyperspace jump without locking in a destination vector, in an attempt to evade authorities. That Fer-de-Lance, as luck would have it, collided with the RSC Infinitas - my beloved megaship - at approximately 800 times the speed of light. No amount of mil-spec composite and chobham in the world would have stopped that arrowhead-shaped mass from punching straight through the carrier's onboard shipyard, power plant, power distributor, and ballistics storage. Truly a perfect kill shot, one in a few trillion. The Infinitas' vitals were gutted in the blink of an eye, and the rear end of the ship was blown apart by the detonation of thousands of anti-materiel rounds and missiles.
I don't know who all was onboard at the time other than myself, but it would seem that I was rendered comatose from the incident, and 4 of my personal craft onboard the Infinitas destroyed. Because the defendant was both wanted at the time of the incident and had a past criminal record, I was absolved of any suspicion of foul play or wrongdoing. I didn't even have to be in court for them to rule in favor of me and award damages. So, if there's any silver lining to me losing so much of what I had worked for, and being separated from my crew - whose fates remain unknown to me - it's that I've woken up with almost 5 billion Credits in the bank. Most of which were awarded by the courts for, you know, my 5 billion Credit megaship being forcibly decommissioned by a FTL FdL SOB.
I still occasionally pore over my galaxy map in blind vain desperation, hoping that if I stare at it long enough, I’ll find my megaship floating somewhere out there in the black. I know it's gone, but I don't want to accept it. I won't accept defeat on account of scumbag fate throwing me the curveball of a lifetime.
So let's try to look on the bright side, yeah?
My efforts to grow the Seven Keys Alliance were definitely subverted, but my life's work has not been compromised. I always made sure that the Infinitas never turned into a floating storage unit, and for exactly this reason. All of our interests are secured across multiple company-managed and personal facilities in Almagest and Fomalhaut. And I’ve personally verified that these facilities remain uncompromised, so we're still in business. Maybe. Kind of.
Sadly, we were studying some Guardian technology last November and December, so a good amount of that work has undoubtedly been lost. Upsetting.
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I actually wrote the above part of this entry a few weeks ago. Forgot to publish it, I guess. Ever since waking up from cryosleep, my mind hasn’t really been… all there. But I may as well give an update on affairs.
I’ve spent the last month committing acts of corporate espionage and subterfuge against the Sirius Corporation in the Almagest system. After a few smear campaigns, economic manipulation, and some random acts of violence by my more unscrupulous associates, their stranglehold on the system has been fractured, and we are running off against them in an election for control of the territory. This is a dream come true, and I hope we can make it happen. Sadly, a viral outbreak has befallen my people there, but won’t it make me look so good as a leader for me to dump millions of Cr of my own money into the health and well-being of my subjects?
Fuck the megaship, I’m gonna have a star system. And I won’t let anything stand in the way. I’m feeling a new and unfamiliar ruthlessness in me, and it feels good.