Personal Log - 05 December 3306
05 Dec 2020Quriosyty
"I cannot believe that the path to retribution lies in staining our souls so black we become indistinguishable from those we seek to punish."If Lucy Minneux had lit a fire within me, then it was I who fuelled it. And it eventually became apparent to me that, left unattended, it was a fire that would consume me. It took a while, but in the end I chose to stop fanning the flames and simply let them smoulder. After all, I finally figured, I didn't want it to become my funeral pyre.
It would have been easy for me to lose myself in despair and anger after Lucy's visit. Easy to take the knowledge she had given me, temper it to a blade, whet it to a weapon and brandish it with awful, indiscriminate purpose. Easy because it was. Yes, sadly it was all too easy. But that blade would soon be my undoing lest I could sheathe it against its appointed hour.
I was flailing. And all around me grew victim to the feral edge of my fury. My grandparents became the first casualties.
My parents had left a considerable amount of money in trust and, on my sixteen birthday, that trust matured and became mine. At the time I cared little about it. I was wallowing in self pity, plagued by nightmares of my parent's death and so angry that I was unable to see a coherent future for myself. The money seemed useless to me. After Lucy's visit however, I devised its purpose.
It was a gift - from beyond the grave. This was my parents telling me to go out and seek revenge. This was their intention, their parting gift, their legacy. As you can imagine, I wasn't exactly in my right mind. I realised that if I was to find Nicholas Baker I would have to go looking for him. And to go looking for anything, anywhere in this big old galaxy, you had to have a ship and I had just about enough to buy one. But I needed a pilots licence to fly it. That was the easy part.
A month after Lucy came, I enrolled in the Imperial Flight School. They were always looking for new recruits and the training was amongst the best in the galaxy; thorough, comprehensive and broad in scope. Imperial pilots could fly ships, repair them when necessary and even engineer them when opportunities presented themselves. The problem was they expected something in return. Not money you understand, though that wouldn't have been a problem. They expected service; a commitment and the problem was I was already committed to something else. Flight School was just a stepping stone to my goal. I didn't intend to commit to anything else. So I lied to them.
My grandparents were against the idea from the start and their attempts to persuade me otherwise proved to be the thing which finally drove a wedge between us. Thinking back, I suspect that my grandfather, shrewd as he was, had gleaned my intention and guessed how things might turn out. In retrospect I cannot blame them. I only wish I could tell them that now. I still recall what I said to them as I stormed out of their home that final day. "This is the last time you'll ever see me!" How I regret those words now. How I wish I could prove myself wrong.
But I was right.
At the academy I was a good student but a poor cadet. As it turned out I had quite the aptitude for flying and my first year instructors gave glowing reports on my skills and dedication. But having already decided where my future lay I was determined not to ingratiate myself with my superiors. In the end I engineered my final year performance enough to graduate at the bottom of my class and with a disciplinary record sufficient that, though I was not dishonourably discharged from the corps, it was suggested in no uncertain terms that perhaps my future lay elsewhere. I was allowed to resign, was happy to do so, and left the academy with a pilots licence and a real sense of achievement at what, in my eyes, was a job well done. A plan perfectly executed.
I was right where I wanted to be. Except that I wasn't. I was still on Cemiess, and Baker was someplace else.
I bought a ship; quite a nice one as it happens, using my skills and training at flight school to strike an excellent bargain, and launched off into the black. I remember quite clearly, as I broke orbit, experiencing a momentary doubt about my choices, my intentions, my destination. Where should I start? Then, and I can't say why, I suddenly remembered a line from an old Earth story, Peter Pan: "second star to the right, and straight on until morning."
I found the second star, set my course, engaged the frameshift and Poof! I was gone.