Log Entry Two
13 Mar 2024wickedwisdom66
TRANSLATED FROM AUDIO (see below)Log entry two.
Why must I believe? I think that’s where I left off. Well, the answer is because of the story that brought me here. It’s a story that involves two beautiful girls and a useless space bum with no apparent future. That bum, of course, was me.
I didn’t start that way. Hell, I don’t believe I was initially meant to be a pilot, or at least in the capacity to which I am now. I was, more or less, that happy young man learning to be a ship's mechanic beside his parents, happy to put in a day's work refitting or repairing those remarkable works of mechanical art that made traveling the deep black possible. My father often said, “It took a brilliant pilot to make a ship dance, but only a genius could make the engine purr.”
But, as fate would prove, sometimes that purr would turn into a growl, which was trouble. But when the growl morphed into the call of an angry roar, it sounded like some demonic Harald ushering the apocalypse before unleashing what seemed like a catastrophe of biblical proportions.
It was the powerplant, you see. It overheated unexpectedly and, in its meltdown, exploded, taking out the repair dock and disintegrating seven innocent maintenance engineers instantly, including Kimberly and Aren Wickley, my parents.
I was just a kid then, still awe-struck by parents I believed immortal. In a span of several heartbeats, the flames of hell had taken my moral compass and my guiding light and ripped them from existence, leaving me alone in a world as cold as the emptiness between the stars.
I have a vague sense of recollection of the days that followed. The scripted condolences from the company management and the meek credit pittance highlighted their hopes for my future. A future they none too subtly suggested I lived out elsewhere.
Lost as I was, I fell for the idea of moving on but had not quite made my journey outward before the rumors of the disaster started raining down the station's corridors. The scuttlebutt among the elite and ordinary workers was that the accident was anything but. No, the suspicions turned to allegations that some pro-slavery gang had targeted that particular ship in hopes of murdering its pilot, who had been involved in some rescuing of captives meant to be sold. And that turned me from the lost and sad to the angry and vengeful.
So, I took my newfound thirst for violence and retribution and did the only thing that made sense: I enlisted in the Federal Navy. I became a pilot.
I cut my teeth flying dropships into ground battle hot zones. Revealing in the rush of adrenalin that flooded my veins as I swooped in, waited those precious and vulnerable moments as the troops offloaded, then hammered the thrusters full, hoping I didn’t get shot out of the sky as I left. Yet, for all the exhilaration I felt doing the missions, I could not help but feel as if I was just the ferryman conveying wave after wave of soldiers to their deaths. It was a nagging sentiment I began having trouble coping with. So when I found the chance, I requested a transfer, choosing to be a fighter pilot instead. Hell, the way I saw it, if I were going to be the death of someone, at least in a fighter, the target would be fighting back. The odds would be relatively even, and that I could live with.
But that transfer idea backfired. I was sent to the Exbeur system, promoted to Captain, and spent time flying around as security. My only excitement was to harass the Pilots Federation Commanders travel through with random scans and threats of deadly action should they break the rules of the orbiting stations. Although the random pirate attack made for a bit of sport, boredom was the typical call of the day. Until the day Wakata Hub, on Exbeur 6, fell under attack.
It was a fight I joined despite my orders not to. It was the fight that led to my discharge from the Navy. It was the fight that landed me in the back ally gutter, drunk off of who knows what. It was the fight that ultimately led me to her.