How I Got Here: "Armati Sacerdotes"
14 Jul 2022Columbuss
Commander Justin Estok. Stardate 14-JUL-3308."Have you ever heard of the Armati Sacerdotes?!"
The first time you kill someone is the hardest. You can't help thinking about who that person was. How all of their memories, their life experiences and everything they've ever done brought them to that moment. Their entire life story lead them to you and you were the one who brought it to an end. It's an almost crippling feeling that doesn't subside, until you do it again. The second time isn't what I'd call a "walk in the park" but it's easier. It's diluted somehow. Like a stiff drink that's been cut with water. Do it enough and it starts to feel mundane, like strapping on your boots in the morning. Do it enough, and it starts to show on your face.
As any pilot will tell you, working in The Black isn't like applying for an office job. You work on contract. Accepting what work you can based on your digital reputation log. Corporations are happy to keep you around for as long as you want to be there. In all reaches of space, there's always pilot's looking for work to replace you, so you take what work you can get for as long as you can get it for. Same was the case with Izumo. Izel Peterson, the Izumo representative handling freelance pilots, was my handler. She was a fastidious, no nonsense, straight to the point kind of Federal you'd expect her to be. Eager to climb the corporate ladder. Despite her cut throat corporate persona, I found her to be a relatively good person at the end of the day. She gave me my start when she really didn't have to. As I said, pilot's are a dime a dozen and contracting a young pilot with a Sidewinder to handle her daily business could have been considered an act of charity on her part.
To be quite honest, it was bullshit work, but it was work nonetheless. I would move a meager amount of goods from one port to another. I'd take data pads to her corporate contacts in other systems or wherever she needed them sent. It didn't matter to me what she put in my hold and I never asked.
Despite the mundane nature of my daily life, The Black has a way of catching up with you.
It's not IN the contract. You don't HAVE to risk your life for the cargo you're moving. No one SAYS you have to die protecting whatever material bullshit might be in your hold. But in The Black, your reputation is all you have and trust matters. Corporations don't offer big contracts to the pilot who rolls over and dumps his cargo at the first interdiction. So when The Chelsie dropped out of hyperspace with a bandit on her tail for the first time, I didn't run.
Fighting in space takes finesse. It's a dance where the first one to make a mistake has it end as being the last mistake they'll ever make. In this "dance" it's always about positioning and regulating your power distributors. Manage the two correctly and you'll end most conflicts the way I did in this one, watching the other ship sputter out, with flames billowing from it's engines and eventually disappearing in a flash of brief flame and void like silence.
"Have you ever heard of the Armati Sacerdotes?!" Izel asked me, hastily working at her data pad with a panicked look in her eyes.
This was two weeks later, after my dust up with the bandit ship.
"Should I have?" I asked her.
"They're not something you hear about until you meet them and by then, you're already dead."