Fighting the Good Fight, and loosing
27 Sep 2018Dryheat4u
There is a pleasant little bar at Cottenot Terminal shoved into the back of the docking bay. Its nothing special, except that it offers an excellent view of the entire docking bay and features one of the best cheeseburgers I think I have ever had. The owner is one of those ex-spook types who says he used to do wet works for the federation. How he washed up in imperial space is a mystery to me, and in typical fashion he changes the story every time one of the customers asks him how he got here. People on the station aren't generally kind to him, and as a result permanent station residents stay away. The only regulars guy, whom I will call Gary, can depend on are the random spacers and ship crews that wash in and out on a regular basis. Why does this story matter? and what have I to gain from giving away a local secret? Its a long story.My career started it's life in Eravate, and for the most part my life before that point was uneventful. I worked a few office jobs planeside, got training as a welder before that, and before that was a storefront cashier. Things were ok, but at 25 with a bad economy and rising costs of living I found myself living at home with my parents while I tried to get more schooling and invest as much money in myself as possible. A few of my friends made occasional non-committal mumblings of going off and joining the military but I never was sure if that path would work out the way they expected.
After a few years scratching the bottom of the economic barrel, trying to earn enough money to afford my own place I realized the Eravate was not going to work out, at least, not on any planet or station. I had managed to save up enough money to pay for flight training from the local Pilots Federation Branch. All together, it came to about twenty thousand credits and represented almost everything I had. The pilots federation is no military organization, and the training was just under a month in total length. The reason I took it though, was that you got a ship at the end. Most non-military pilots start out in a Sidewinder, I was no exception. Although, they are gracious enough to offer flight training in something more substantial. My first flight with an instructor was in a cobra Mk III, which I crashed into a star. Trainer ships have no weapons and no utilities, so the jump back out cooked the ship halfway to hell. After we got away I thought I'd tell a joke to ease some of the tension and made a quip about the stellar exclusion zone being a dry heat. It didn't take well, and a few days later, after word had gotten around, someone changed my registered pilots federation name to Dryheat4u. That nickname shorthand "Dry Heat" stuck hard and has been what I have gone by ever since.
It may surprise you to know that I did eventually pass my flight training, barely, and receive the ship I was promised. Want they don't tell you though, is that the sidewinder is a sad recused heap of loaner parts that you aren't allowed to sell. If you upgrade a module or buy a ship then all the components go back to the Pilots Federation. The old ship smelled like outhouse gel, and flew like a sailors mouth on bad day.You don't want to know what I fround in the bunk room, and about a third of the components weren't working right despite the status indicators reading normal.
The controls were sticky, both literally and in the navigational sense. The first time I tried to use the head, one of the blackwater lines blew out and to smeared poo all over the maintenance bay. What I didn't know was that the septic system was also leaking externally, and on approach to the station I managed to blind one departing ship and sprinkle the control tower before landing, which is something I never lived down. Lacking the money at the time, and not wanting to complain to the Pilots Federation about this, I decided to have the system drained and lived off MRE's and minimal water for the first day or so, keeping close enough to a station that I could stop in for a wee if necessary. Thankfully, waste management systems are cheap and the revenue from a few data running missions more than paid for a total overhaul of the entire system. Of course the pilots federation kept the overhaul when I eventually traded the sidewinder in for a Cobra III.
That about covers the start of it, there are a lot of little adventures here and there. The important thing to know is that I lost a lot of them. Eravate is known for its pirates, and for occasional psychopathic CMDR's who blow into the system killing everything in sight. The locals call these CMDR's and pirates seal-clubbers, because they seem to take pride in shooting down civilian and merchant ships. Put simply, don't fly a wedding barge in Earvate and do your best to mask your FSD signature whenever you jump in or out system.
I've been shot down more than a dozen times in my career, and I'm proud to say two of those times were by Thargoid interceptors. Two were fellow Pilots Federation CMDR's and the rest were random pirates with a ship and a sense of stupid greed. I've never cared for pirates and mercenaries, and worked mostly as a trader and explorer. I have personally been to Beagle Point and seen the Maw we call Sagittarius A. I've run data courier missions and moved supplies for some of the great powers in the inhabited bubble. I made myself as valuable as I could to the people I worked for, and strove to work for honest people. What I could never escape though, was a sense of responsibility as my credit balance climbed. You pick up distress calls as you fly, and most traders ignore them. When you have no weapons, a cabin full of passengers, or a hold full of cargo you find yourself in a position where ignoring the call is the only option you have. I had the means to help traders and miners and merchants, and eventually I decided that meant I had a responsibility to help.
My first foray into bounty hunting came at the behest of a friend I had encountered who we will call Ebeta. He had assembled a three man crew and needed a fourth ship to help support the wing. I accepted the invitation and found myself supporting one of many appeals for aid from the galactic community. This time however, I was hunting the pirates who used to hunt me. In one week I racked up over ten million in bounty vouchers, and lost two million after my prized Cobra III was shot down. Still, I a fellow CMDR and friend of this Ebeta (friend of a friend) tipped me off to some big happenings out in the Pleadies. An engineer who went by the name Palin was looking for pilots to bring in research materials relating to the Thargoids. I took all the money I had earned bounty hunting, and applied an insurance credit alongside my remaining savings to purchase a Diamondback Explorer. Incidentally, this ship is the very ship I would fly to Beagle Point in. Initially however, this ship was fitted to do one thing run Thargoid parts. Most pilots did not have access to corrosive resistant cargo racks at the time, so this 35 lightyear run is something dangerous. It involved finding guardian crash sites, scooping up materials from an assigned list and rushing them back to Obsidian Orbital as fast as you possibly could. About half the time, these highly corrosive parts would burn a hole in your cargo hatch and wreck a bunch f internal systems. In a worse case scenario they could destroy your ship, leaving your helpless escape pod floating out in the black for a Thargoid to find and take away.
I got lucky, and got in early. Palin, was willing to pay up to 25 million a run for good materials. A price that was phenomenal by any standard and one I have never seen since. Of course it was not more than two weeks after my arrival that the Targoids invaded in earnest and wrecked every station between Maia and the bubble. Once a few stations were set on fire, there were a lot more vengeful pilots willing to contribute to the effort and soon the markets were flooded with Thargoid components. It was several months before obsidian orbital was back online and Palin was able to begin collecting components for his research. However the abundance of Thargoid components made the price evaporate down to about 2.5 million a run. That was a sum that could be attained from any booming mission board in the bubble, and one that no longer covered the risks associated.
I made a lot of connections out in the Pleadies, and my efforts landed me an opportunity to go after the pirate threats in a backwater system named HR 8514. While not well known, HR 8514 sits on the border between Federal and Imperial space. At the time it was a booming system rich in mineral and elemental ores. That mineral wealth brought pirates galore, and that meant there were a lot of traders to protect. Though that protection was hard won, in no small part because this region of space was only loosely controlled by the Empire and Federation. It lay at the mercy of one of the most evil men in all the inhabited bubble, Archon Delaney.
[end of part 1]