INTERVIEW: TAPE 4
16 Mar 2021CMDR Vypr
GALNET REPORTER: Earlier you had said you met someone different who changed something. But I don't think you told me what planet you even came from; would you mind telling me?VYPR: Yes I did. And no, I won't. It's not important anymore. That someone was a supposed friend of a farmer who neighbored my family's ranch. He asked me to drop some cargo off to them before I made it to the regional depot. He was paying me, for what I thought at the time, was a very handsome sum. Something to the tune of 350,000cr. In today's world that's a drop in the bucket for most commanders, but for somebody who thought the price of cigarettes was expensive at the time, that was more money than I had ever imagined.
GR: What was the cargo?
VYPR: I only discovered that when I got home from the depot. It was pretty surreal and I didn't want to risk the chance of losing that kind of money by pissing the guy off. I jumped the ranch fence in my skimmer to take a look. My neighbor, who I had only known cordially at the time, was unloading personal weapons and land mines into the back of a trailer. He got kinda startled when he saw me. Asked me what I was doing there. He had no idea that his neighbor's son had dropped him a literal ton of military grade equipment.
GR: What was your neighbor doing with explosives and weapons like that?
VYPR: Arming a rebellion.
GR: I figured that much. But why?
VYPR: You may have forgotten but the Fed "Pioneers" had turned what was originally a very fertile plain into a dying land. The farmers had to now buy specialist fertilizer from off world to keep the colony's food supply up. My family had to buy water and purifiers from the trade depot because the water was polluted from the autonomous factories the Feds built to one-up each other in habitual sales. And half the time our purifiers didn't even work. The local people there were very tired, very angry, and ready to blow.
GR: Did the Federal Settlers know about your grievances?
VYPR: They knew. But they didn't care. Their security forces were the punching bags, the soft-handed freaks they were protecting had never seen violence before. Most of them didn't even know how to properly handle a projectile rifle. Have you ever seen what a laser weapon does to a game animal? It's horrific. I had found the remnants of their "hunting expeditions". Vile people.
GR: So what happened with this "rebellion"?
VYPR: I thought it was pretty spectacular, to be frank. The big hat with the fancy mansion I mentioned last time got ambushed on his way to the depot. Landmines took out the lead escort vehicle and the big guy and his family were taken hostage. His corp didn't take kindly to it.
GR: And what did they do?
VYPR: Came to us in the defense initiative, naturally. It was civil conflict at that point. People all over the place. That was my first taste of war.
GR: What was your role?
VYPR: I had the Cobra. Naturally I was inclined to use it. It was very modestly armed as of course it was a military ship. I thought we had it in the bag at first. That changed when Federal Drop Ships started gliding in.
GR: And then?
VYPR: A pocket of decently trained insurrectionists armed with last gen weaponry went up against armored Fed marines with the best money could buy. Take a guess. It was a total slaughter. I was intercepted by a wing of Vipers and instead of dying, I decided to low wake out to orbit.
GR: What about your family, your friends?
VYPR: I knew my family was gone when a Dropship slagged the depot that I knew my family was holding with the rest of the insurrectionists. I just had to go.