The Worst Meal in the Galaxy
16 Feb 2016Monolith Preacher
OOC: I hate "NGE arcs" as I call them. You know, those parts where the character has to sit there and have a whinge before deciding to man up and get stuff done....like the first twenty episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Most Overrated Manga of the 90s™. But sometimes you've gotta do it to develop a believable story. The next part should make up for it, I hope...or maybe some of you like NGE. If it's the latter, there's nothing I can do to help you, but you might like this entry more than the others I've written.The cycle started with the worst meal I'd ever eaten. Now I'll admit, I like to spoil myself with food. My metabolism allows me to stomach almost anything without getting a paunch, so I can take double portions of Jaroua Rice with proto-squid for lunch if I fancy it. Only, when you're out at Robigo Mines, they don't get those kinds of imports.
As far as I know, Robigo Mines is owned by two men. One's a small, pasty whelp of a man called Robby, and the other's a small, swarthy whelp of a man called Katlego. The name for their syndicate came about because they're always seen together and people have had a thing for calling couples by some horrible amalgamation of their names for centuries. Apparently the convention began with a zero-g hockey enthusiast who married a woman that planned to make cities out of children. They were so popular as a unit it spawned a nation of imitators, until everyone worked out their capital city had been built by the original couple. Kind of deflated their sails.
Well, Robigo has a tendency to deflate people's sails and increase their insecurities. I know that everything I know about Robigo is false, and so does every other CMDR that's come out here. Because no matter how many of us try and get to the bottom of who owns the place, no two stories are the same. There's only two things we know are true:
1 – The first time you come to Robigo, you have to do the ten to one challenge.
2 – Bring a packed lunch, or you're going to regret it.
Now I've only ever been scanned four times. The first time was my first smuggling run in my Cobra. No-one told me what a heat sink was. The second was the first time I used Eurydice, because the Imperials had a tracking device installed on it which malfunctioned. The third was when I did the ten to one challenge.
The rules are simple: whichever craft you came here in, you've got to take ten smuggling contracts and do every drop before you are allowed to return. Most of the kids that turn up in an Asp with ten million in assets jump at the idea. Those of us with experience know it's an exercise in futility. One does not simply take ten separate smuggling contracts out of anywhere, let alone the hottest smuggling spot in the galaxy. With so many people coming here to shift slaves and data, the only way they can avoid detection is if no two people know who anyone else is. Seems to be working for them so far.
But how does this relate to a packed lunch, you ask? Well, if you don't bring one with you, you're going to be stuck with the food in the dock's canteen. And when no two people know anyone else, you wouldn't want to know what they put in the food. I've eaten everything, but with the exception of Sanuma Decorative Meat I can't think of a single thing worse than the food at Robigo....until I look to the right of my Asp's cockpit...
....shoddy workmanship...
Still, I was here for a reason. To some extent, it was the same reason as everyone else: I was a smuggler, and I wanted to make money. But for me, it was something more. I've always hated mines. My people are descended from the Cornish, and although it's ancient history now, we spent so long in mines we still never want to see them even an aeon down the road. Theyre damp, dusty, dark, and deadly. Not nice places to preach in. They might allow one's voice to echo, but you'll choke if you breathe in too sharply. So hauling slaves out of there was helping them go to better employment. The one time I'd consider working with the Feds would be to get me out of being in a slave mine. Hopefully it never comes to that.
But I was procrastinating, in truth. Robby, if that was his real name, had told me that if I was going to be getting thrown out of Gcirthi, I might as well jog down the road to Marra's neck of the woods to join her wing. They were pyrats, had unofficial links to the Archon, and were actually running a tight ship, unlike my people back home. I told him not to get on the wrong side of my Monolith. Sure, there was a civil war raging, but it wasn't over yet. So I sat staring out the canopy of my Asp towards the stars, trying to come up with a plan.
But no plan came. There was nothing I could do. I'd been running missions out of Robigo exactly because I'd been avoiding that truth. Sure, I'd helped my people take Kent Station, but one CMDR couldn't hold it alone. And truth be told, I wasn't sure it was really my place to. Sure, I was their king, but as a pyrat crew, we were pretty much all autonomous individuals. The king was more of a figurehead, and a person to come to in order to have the last say if necessary. I could muck in, surely, but I couldn't co-ordinate the entire war effort, especially with other CMDRs working against me.
So I decided to listen to the voice of reason for once. As I flew towards some horrendously named LYR system with around ten million credits worth of slaves and data in the back, I decided to check my messages. There was only one, but it was from Scarlet. I was in a hostile system, and I had just disengaged my fuel scoop. The single most likely time to be interdicted during a jump. Nonetheless, my eyes refused to speed up as I read it.
Heya loudmouth,
You've been gone a while. Disappointed in yourself? Me too. I didn't think you'd be stupid enough to go back after KalZakath, but I'm even more disappointed to see you moping about like this. You seem to think your people care about owning the place. From what I've noticed, they only care about wrecking it. You've got an opportunity here, and if you don't take it, I might go stalk someone else for a while.
-S
As much as the red text hurt my eyes to read, she had a point. I was being boring. Running back and forth all day like everyone else wasn't going to look good on my gravestone, and I couldn't take any of these credits with me. I spent the rest of the trip praying to the Monolith for forgiveness. I had been too involved in tertiary concerns. Money. Politics. Saving Face. I needed to get back on my spiritual path. Once I'd finished dropping off the freshly converted slaves and blacknet data, I plotted a route to Tjakiri and asked Marra to get me an audience with Victor Laius, Wing Commander of Black Omega.I'll be engaing my friendship drive right after I get something edible in my stomach. This calls for Kachirigin Filter Leeches. They'll be alive on the other side, but you'll feel three stone lighter!