Author's note: I don't know what format I should continue with following this section. I can continue with the format written here, or I can switch to a first person style in the same vein as the threads in the role play forum. Anyone interested in reading more should feel free to let me know what they prefer.
November 24th, 3250
Old Curie Starport, on the surface of Hope in the Gateway system
Anton Otto Dietze sat in the old Command chair aboard his ancient Sidewinder. The landing pad had just begun its' descent into the station hangar, taking his vessel below the massive interior surface space. There were few spacecraft at this time of day, most of them taking routes to more easily accessible stations elsewhere in the system.
The first time he saw the interior of an Orbis station, he was awed at the sight of spacecraft landing, taking off, descending into and lifting out of hangar spaces, and rotating on their pads.
That was ten years ago. He was thirteen.
Since that day, he had spent an increasing amount of time in space, gradually getting used to flying spacecraft with the other members of his family.
He learned how to solo pilot at fifteen, when his dad took him to Lave for his first trading experience outside of Alliance space.
The Alliance was itself still in its' infancy. The capital of Alliance space was a system named Alioth, a bright giant star with multiple terraformed worlds, one that until 3230s was a system that the Federation and the Empire fought over constantly. The locals eventually decided they had endured enough, and forcibly ejected both occupying forces with the assistance of a sizeable force of civilian combat ships and the will of the resident population to fight for their freedom from both the Federation and the Empire.
Anton was one of the first children of the Alliance, born on the surface of Hope, in the Gateway system. He still visited the world from time to time, so he could spend time with his grandparents.
It wasn't easy.
His father, two brothers and their families had died as a result of Sohalian Fever in January that year, leaving him as the last of his lineage. The last time he saw any of them was in a quarantine facility in Old Curie… Right as several pilots were racing off to deliver some band's latest album to Wicca's World in the Alioth system.
It took some time before he could face going back to the Gateway system again. Indeed, it took over a week before he could pull himself together enough to fly his ship so that he could leave the system in the first place.
His mother had been killed while flying escorts duties for the Southern Star, their trading Python. She had fought off two Eagles and a Cobra III alongside his eldest brother, both flying Sidewinder. He was fifteen and had only started learning how to fly, so he couldn't even go help when her pod ejected into space and was blasted by one of the Eagles.
Revenge was also not an option.
The attacking Cobra turned on the Eagle pilot in question and blasted his ship apart as soon as the escape pod had been destroyed. The Eagle itself had no escape pod, so the pilot was dead.
Rumour had it that Remlok was experimenting with new pilot suits and emergency masks that would allow a pilot to hibernate in the event of ejection to space, but Anton doubted this would become commercially-available any time soon.
‘‘Incoming transmission,’’ the ships' computer announced.
Who the hell is this? Anton checked the comm panel. The sender's name was obfuscated behind a username and had no ship identifier. It had to be someone on the station.
“Accept incoming,” Anton ordered.
“Mr. Dietze,” announced a fluid baritone. “This is Honest John Brimmer's trading store-”
“Not interested,” Anton cut the man off before he could continue, and closed the connection.
Bloody sales callers… Even in the 33rd century they were a pest. How they managed to get a hold of his ship was a concern though. The comm system should not have been publicly accessible with his privacy setup the way it was.
The comm system announced another call incoming. It was the same identifier.
“Accept incoming,” Anton said again. “Who is this?”
“Honest John-”
“I told you, I'm not interested!”
“You misunderstand, Mr Dietze. This isn't a sales call-”
“Yeah, and I don't do marketing calls, surveys-”
“This isn't a survey-”
“-and I don't do research or free stuff, so off.”
With that, he closed the connection and blacklisted the ID on his comm system. Now he was irritated. “Open Contact Manager,” he ordered, then selected one of his regular buyers. In the last eight weeks, he had set up a local network of trading contacts willing to buy less than legal goods off of him, any time he made a trading run from an Alliance system to a nearby independent that had goods to sell not ordinarily available on the open market.
The contact did not answer.
Strange.
Anton tried another… Then a third.
None of them were answering.
“Open GalNet.”
The computer opened a connection to station services and downloaded the latest set of news articles for local and regional traffic. Anton started browsing the news. He caught up on news from Frontier News and Universal Scientist, including speculation on the mysterious Thargoids that were reported to be the bane of pilots' existence up until the latter half of the 32nd century.
“Commander, there is a private message awaiting your attention,” the voice of the computer advised Anton.
“Who is it from?”
“Source unknown, but it is marked priority.”
“Fine,” Anton replied with a sigh. “Let's see it.”
The message appeared on the comm panel. As Anton read it, he became increasingly agitated.
Mr. Dietze,
You must not ignore this message. Your livelihood depends upon your co-operation with us.
As of today, you are personally liable to Mr Brimmer's Financial Holdings for a balance of #1,125,538 in unpaid loans and interest, defaults and admin fees. Our attempts to contact you have been met with resistance and refusal to co-operate. Honest John Brimmer now intends to collect payment in full. Your vessel and it's contents, along with the entirety of your current credit balance, will be seized by our agents immediately. You will then pay the balance within 24 standard hours.
Failure to comply will result in termination of your account with extreme prejudice.
Cordially,
On behalf of Brimmer's Financial Holdings.
By the time Anton finished reading the message, he was confused and angered. Apart from anything else, Anton had never dealt with this Brimmer outfit before, and he had never borrowed any credit. He had to try and sort this out.
“Emergency contact. Open to Ultraviolet Six Three.”
UltraViolet63 was Anton's legal contact. His father had used him on occasion, whenever he had to deal with difficult customers who refused to pay, but more importantly, the man had both an encyclopaedic knowledge of Alliance law, including treaties with independent world's, and a lack of scruples, enough that he would often advise on strong-arm tactics.
As expected, the call was connected after three pings.
“Specify identifier,” a gruff voice answered the call.
“Delta Eight Four Two Three Seven One Charlie Bravo Six,” Anton replied quickly. "Dietsze"
“Stand by,” the connection went silent, but only for a moment.
“Mr. Dietsze,” another voice announced. “How can we help? Standard rates apply, of course.”
“Of course,” Anton replied drily. “Someone just tried to claim I have a debt of a million plus credits. Problem is I've never dealt with them before.”
“Did they give a name?”
“Yes,” Anton replied. “Honest John Brimmer's.”
There was a pause. “Yes, I can see. Brimmer Financial Holdings… Not a registered business… Not a certified lender… Oh… And they're based in the Eranin system. Azeban.”
UltraViolet63 was a moniker used by a local group of enterprising system hackers who used their skills to find information for a price. Anton used them over other local competitors because they had access to faster hardware than their competitors, and were more than eager to use neural interfaces to speed things up, saving time. “Any idea why they are coming after me?”
Another pause that lasted for a bit too long. “You're not going to like this.”
“Let's have it.”
“Seems that they had a business arrangement with your father earlier this year. I'm looking at bulletin board messages he responded to in January, with no further contact after. There was a contract filed for collection of unpaid debt for about 5000 credits in February, with another one filed for an assassination in March. That contract could not be honoured. Seems like the would-be assassin fell foul to the Sohalia fever about the same time your family did.
“I don't think they liked that, so they filed a contract for information on family members, last known whereabouts Gateway. Frankly… I'm surprised it took them this long to trace you.”
“Well… Soon as I was well enough to lift off of Hope, I took off for the frontier past Alliance space. Only just got back.”
“Wow… In that tatty old Sidewinder? I'm amazed you could jump in that thing.”
“Class 2 Military Drive and a map of stations selling the right fuel, I get quite a lot of jump range from it.”
“You should get a bigger ship. Better armed and larger jump range would be a big help, you know.”
“With my credit balance? It would take me another year to get that kind of money!”
“By that time you would have enough to pay the extortionate charges Brimmer filed against…” The conversation came to a sudden halt. This was uncommon for Ultraviolet hackers, and that brought Anton fully alert.
“You there?”
The pause lasted another second. “I underestimated them. They got a coder over there. I just got an alert. They've just infiltrated… Damn. Get out. Get out of there now!”
Anton never heard that tone from anyone at Ultraviolet before, but he didn't need telling twice. The connection had been closed at the other end, but Anton was already busy manipulating the controls, launching his ship. He ignored the incoming message issuing him a fine for launching without clearance, rolled his ship over to avoid collision with the Panther Clipper that had been given clearance, and pushed the main thrusters to their limits in an attempt to reach jump altitude. Warnings went off on his console about hull temperatures and aerodynamic stresses, but he ignored them.
The combat klaxon sounded. Two blips appeared on the scanner in front of him, both were designated as small contacts.
Probably Eagles or Sakers.
The next few seconds lasted an eternity. Without a shield generator, every laser blast caused damage. Anton could hear strikes against the hull, screeching as panels were buckled and torn off, and could feel a tearing across the hull, followed by a sense of dizziness as the ship suddenly swung to face the ground, all while Anton tried to key in a nearby destination for his drive to latch onto.
The forward momentum was still enough to bring the altitude of the ship above the jump line. Anton punched the jump control with his fist. The ship counted down the few seconds while the drive charged up for the jump.
Anton struggled to re-align the ship for the jump so the drive could make the transition, but one of his manoeuvring thrusters was out, and the computer had trouble compensating.
It was sheer luck that the ship was facing the destination system when the drive engaged the final counter… And still, the other ships continued firing.
Anton could not have guessed that one of the shots from his assailants had struck the power plant, causing a spike in the jump drive at the point it discharged its energy.
Everything suddenly shifted as a tunnel formed directly in front of the ship, surrounded the vessel as it journeyed through hyperspace, and then emerged…
Nowhere.
Anton scrambled with the scanner controls and extended the range as far as he could. There was nothing.
Outside the canopy there were stars, and they were becoming brighter as Anton's eyesight adjusted to take in the lack of sunlight outside. The cockpit lights were now the brightest illumination in light years.
The ship had mis-jumped. A quick scan of the ships' systems confirmed Anton's worst fears. The Hyper drive was slagged.
Anton was stranded.
“Open deep space mayday protocol. Begin life support modifications and initialise pilot hibernation procedure.”
“Deep space mayday protocol unable to complete. Communications systems inoperable. Long range transceiver damaged.”
…
Stranded in deep space, with no way to contact anyone. The only way to get a message out now was to send a radio signal, and that could take years to reach anyone, if it was ever strong enough to be picked up by any technology in human space.
“Analysis of starscape complete,” the ships' computer announced. “Current coordinates updated on galactic map.”
Anton opened the galactic map. He recognised none of the local stars, and the nearest inhabited star system was twenty light years away.
It might as well have been twenty-thousand.
“Execute emergency deep sleep protocol,” Anton ordered his ship. He unbuckled his harness and propelled himself to the rear hatch to the sleeping cabin. “Does the Stardreamer still work?”
“Time control system is still functional.”
“Set to standby and engage at maximum as soon as I am strapped into my bunk.”
“Affirmative.”
Anton opened the hatch to his bunk, pulled open the medical cabinet, and pulled out a small injector containing a deep sedative, and a bottle and injector device designed to administer a slow-release nutritional supplement. It took a while to arrange everything, and it was very uncomfortable trying to fit everything around him, but Anton was eventually secured against the bunk with the nutritional dispenser next to him.
He injected the sedative and cast it into the trash receptacle, which automatically cycled closed.
“Life support entering deep conservation mode,” the computer announced. “Time acceleration will engage in one minute.”
If there was any further announcement, Anton did not hear it.
Shortly after, he lost consciousness.
Somewhere in the galaxy, some years later.
“Sir, can you hear me?”
Anton was struggling to organise his thoughts. He was in a major fugue, and his head was swimming.
“Heart rate climbing to forty-three, B P is one fifteen over seventy, oxygen saturation is eighty-two.”
Whoever that was, the voice was too loud.
All of a sudden, the darkness he was seeing flared into an unbearably painful bright white. He tried to squint against the brightness, but his eyelids did not seem able to respond properly.
“Pupil dilation sluggish,” the first voice spoke again.
“Well, it has been a long time in deep sleep for him,” the second voice replied to the first.
“At least there is a response. He can see,” the first voice replied back. “Sir, can you hear my voice?”
Anton remembered fragments of a rushed fight and a frenzied attempt at escape. The last thing he could remember was being strapped in a bunk with an increasing sense of dizziness.
He tried to speak, but all that came out was a croak.
“I'll take that as a yes,” the second voice spoke up.
“Yes,” the first replied. “It's OK sir, you don't need to do anything else for now. Let's get him into a rehab ward.”
It would be a while before Anton could find out what a rehab ward was. It would also be a while before Anton would find out just how long he had been out of commission.
November 24th, 3250
Old Curie Starport, on the surface of Hope in the Gateway system
Anton Otto Dietze sat in the old Command chair aboard his ancient Sidewinder. The landing pad had just begun its' descent into the station hangar, taking his vessel below the massive interior surface space. There were few spacecraft at this time of day, most of them taking routes to more easily accessible stations elsewhere in the system.
The first time he saw the interior of an Orbis station, he was awed at the sight of spacecraft landing, taking off, descending into and lifting out of hangar spaces, and rotating on their pads.
That was ten years ago. He was thirteen.
Since that day, he had spent an increasing amount of time in space, gradually getting used to flying spacecraft with the other members of his family.
He learned how to solo pilot at fifteen, when his dad took him to Lave for his first trading experience outside of Alliance space.
The Alliance was itself still in its' infancy. The capital of Alliance space was a system named Alioth, a bright giant star with multiple terraformed worlds, one that until 3230s was a system that the Federation and the Empire fought over constantly. The locals eventually decided they had endured enough, and forcibly ejected both occupying forces with the assistance of a sizeable force of civilian combat ships and the will of the resident population to fight for their freedom from both the Federation and the Empire.
Anton was one of the first children of the Alliance, born on the surface of Hope, in the Gateway system. He still visited the world from time to time, so he could spend time with his grandparents.
It wasn't easy.
His father, two brothers and their families had died as a result of Sohalian Fever in January that year, leaving him as the last of his lineage. The last time he saw any of them was in a quarantine facility in Old Curie… Right as several pilots were racing off to deliver some band's latest album to Wicca's World in the Alioth system.
It took some time before he could face going back to the Gateway system again. Indeed, it took over a week before he could pull himself together enough to fly his ship so that he could leave the system in the first place.
His mother had been killed while flying escorts duties for the Southern Star, their trading Python. She had fought off two Eagles and a Cobra III alongside his eldest brother, both flying Sidewinder. He was fifteen and had only started learning how to fly, so he couldn't even go help when her pod ejected into space and was blasted by one of the Eagles.
Revenge was also not an option.
The attacking Cobra turned on the Eagle pilot in question and blasted his ship apart as soon as the escape pod had been destroyed. The Eagle itself had no escape pod, so the pilot was dead.
Rumour had it that Remlok was experimenting with new pilot suits and emergency masks that would allow a pilot to hibernate in the event of ejection to space, but Anton doubted this would become commercially-available any time soon.
‘‘Incoming transmission,’’ the ships' computer announced.
Who the hell is this? Anton checked the comm panel. The sender's name was obfuscated behind a username and had no ship identifier. It had to be someone on the station.
“Accept incoming,” Anton ordered.
“Mr. Dietze,” announced a fluid baritone. “This is Honest John Brimmer's trading store-”
“Not interested,” Anton cut the man off before he could continue, and closed the connection.
Bloody sales callers… Even in the 33rd century they were a pest. How they managed to get a hold of his ship was a concern though. The comm system should not have been publicly accessible with his privacy setup the way it was.
The comm system announced another call incoming. It was the same identifier.
“Accept incoming,” Anton said again. “Who is this?”
“Honest John-”
“I told you, I'm not interested!”
“You misunderstand, Mr Dietze. This isn't a sales call-”
“Yeah, and I don't do marketing calls, surveys-”
“This isn't a survey-”
“-and I don't do research or free stuff, so off.”
With that, he closed the connection and blacklisted the ID on his comm system. Now he was irritated. “Open Contact Manager,” he ordered, then selected one of his regular buyers. In the last eight weeks, he had set up a local network of trading contacts willing to buy less than legal goods off of him, any time he made a trading run from an Alliance system to a nearby independent that had goods to sell not ordinarily available on the open market.
The contact did not answer.
Strange.
Anton tried another… Then a third.
None of them were answering.
“Open GalNet.”
The computer opened a connection to station services and downloaded the latest set of news articles for local and regional traffic. Anton started browsing the news. He caught up on news from Frontier News and Universal Scientist, including speculation on the mysterious Thargoids that were reported to be the bane of pilots' existence up until the latter half of the 32nd century.
“Commander, there is a private message awaiting your attention,” the voice of the computer advised Anton.
“Who is it from?”
“Source unknown, but it is marked priority.”
“Fine,” Anton replied with a sigh. “Let's see it.”
The message appeared on the comm panel. As Anton read it, he became increasingly agitated.
Mr. Dietze,
You must not ignore this message. Your livelihood depends upon your co-operation with us.
As of today, you are personally liable to Mr Brimmer's Financial Holdings for a balance of #1,125,538 in unpaid loans and interest, defaults and admin fees. Our attempts to contact you have been met with resistance and refusal to co-operate. Honest John Brimmer now intends to collect payment in full. Your vessel and it's contents, along with the entirety of your current credit balance, will be seized by our agents immediately. You will then pay the balance within 24 standard hours.
Failure to comply will result in termination of your account with extreme prejudice.
Cordially,
On behalf of Brimmer's Financial Holdings.
By the time Anton finished reading the message, he was confused and angered. Apart from anything else, Anton had never dealt with this Brimmer outfit before, and he had never borrowed any credit. He had to try and sort this out.
“Emergency contact. Open to Ultraviolet Six Three.”
UltraViolet63 was Anton's legal contact. His father had used him on occasion, whenever he had to deal with difficult customers who refused to pay, but more importantly, the man had both an encyclopaedic knowledge of Alliance law, including treaties with independent world's, and a lack of scruples, enough that he would often advise on strong-arm tactics.
As expected, the call was connected after three pings.
“Specify identifier,” a gruff voice answered the call.
“Delta Eight Four Two Three Seven One Charlie Bravo Six,” Anton replied quickly. "Dietsze"
“Stand by,” the connection went silent, but only for a moment.
“Mr. Dietsze,” another voice announced. “How can we help? Standard rates apply, of course.”
“Of course,” Anton replied drily. “Someone just tried to claim I have a debt of a million plus credits. Problem is I've never dealt with them before.”
“Did they give a name?”
“Yes,” Anton replied. “Honest John Brimmer's.”
There was a pause. “Yes, I can see. Brimmer Financial Holdings… Not a registered business… Not a certified lender… Oh… And they're based in the Eranin system. Azeban.”
UltraViolet63 was a moniker used by a local group of enterprising system hackers who used their skills to find information for a price. Anton used them over other local competitors because they had access to faster hardware than their competitors, and were more than eager to use neural interfaces to speed things up, saving time. “Any idea why they are coming after me?”
Another pause that lasted for a bit too long. “You're not going to like this.”
“Let's have it.”
“Seems that they had a business arrangement with your father earlier this year. I'm looking at bulletin board messages he responded to in January, with no further contact after. There was a contract filed for collection of unpaid debt for about 5000 credits in February, with another one filed for an assassination in March. That contract could not be honoured. Seems like the would-be assassin fell foul to the Sohalia fever about the same time your family did.
“I don't think they liked that, so they filed a contract for information on family members, last known whereabouts Gateway. Frankly… I'm surprised it took them this long to trace you.”
“Well… Soon as I was well enough to lift off of Hope, I took off for the frontier past Alliance space. Only just got back.”
“Wow… In that tatty old Sidewinder? I'm amazed you could jump in that thing.”
“Class 2 Military Drive and a map of stations selling the right fuel, I get quite a lot of jump range from it.”
“You should get a bigger ship. Better armed and larger jump range would be a big help, you know.”
“With my credit balance? It would take me another year to get that kind of money!”
“By that time you would have enough to pay the extortionate charges Brimmer filed against…” The conversation came to a sudden halt. This was uncommon for Ultraviolet hackers, and that brought Anton fully alert.
“You there?”
The pause lasted another second. “I underestimated them. They got a coder over there. I just got an alert. They've just infiltrated… Damn. Get out. Get out of there now!”
Anton never heard that tone from anyone at Ultraviolet before, but he didn't need telling twice. The connection had been closed at the other end, but Anton was already busy manipulating the controls, launching his ship. He ignored the incoming message issuing him a fine for launching without clearance, rolled his ship over to avoid collision with the Panther Clipper that had been given clearance, and pushed the main thrusters to their limits in an attempt to reach jump altitude. Warnings went off on his console about hull temperatures and aerodynamic stresses, but he ignored them.
The combat klaxon sounded. Two blips appeared on the scanner in front of him, both were designated as small contacts.
Probably Eagles or Sakers.
The next few seconds lasted an eternity. Without a shield generator, every laser blast caused damage. Anton could hear strikes against the hull, screeching as panels were buckled and torn off, and could feel a tearing across the hull, followed by a sense of dizziness as the ship suddenly swung to face the ground, all while Anton tried to key in a nearby destination for his drive to latch onto.
The forward momentum was still enough to bring the altitude of the ship above the jump line. Anton punched the jump control with his fist. The ship counted down the few seconds while the drive charged up for the jump.
Anton struggled to re-align the ship for the jump so the drive could make the transition, but one of his manoeuvring thrusters was out, and the computer had trouble compensating.
It was sheer luck that the ship was facing the destination system when the drive engaged the final counter… And still, the other ships continued firing.
Anton could not have guessed that one of the shots from his assailants had struck the power plant, causing a spike in the jump drive at the point it discharged its energy.
Everything suddenly shifted as a tunnel formed directly in front of the ship, surrounded the vessel as it journeyed through hyperspace, and then emerged…
Nowhere.
Anton scrambled with the scanner controls and extended the range as far as he could. There was nothing.
Outside the canopy there were stars, and they were becoming brighter as Anton's eyesight adjusted to take in the lack of sunlight outside. The cockpit lights were now the brightest illumination in light years.
The ship had mis-jumped. A quick scan of the ships' systems confirmed Anton's worst fears. The Hyper drive was slagged.
Anton was stranded.
“Open deep space mayday protocol. Begin life support modifications and initialise pilot hibernation procedure.”
“Deep space mayday protocol unable to complete. Communications systems inoperable. Long range transceiver damaged.”
…
Stranded in deep space, with no way to contact anyone. The only way to get a message out now was to send a radio signal, and that could take years to reach anyone, if it was ever strong enough to be picked up by any technology in human space.
“Analysis of starscape complete,” the ships' computer announced. “Current coordinates updated on galactic map.”
Anton opened the galactic map. He recognised none of the local stars, and the nearest inhabited star system was twenty light years away.
It might as well have been twenty-thousand.
“Execute emergency deep sleep protocol,” Anton ordered his ship. He unbuckled his harness and propelled himself to the rear hatch to the sleeping cabin. “Does the Stardreamer still work?”
“Time control system is still functional.”
“Set to standby and engage at maximum as soon as I am strapped into my bunk.”
“Affirmative.”
Anton opened the hatch to his bunk, pulled open the medical cabinet, and pulled out a small injector containing a deep sedative, and a bottle and injector device designed to administer a slow-release nutritional supplement. It took a while to arrange everything, and it was very uncomfortable trying to fit everything around him, but Anton was eventually secured against the bunk with the nutritional dispenser next to him.
He injected the sedative and cast it into the trash receptacle, which automatically cycled closed.
“Life support entering deep conservation mode,” the computer announced. “Time acceleration will engage in one minute.”
If there was any further announcement, Anton did not hear it.
Shortly after, he lost consciousness.
Somewhere in the galaxy, some years later.
“Sir, can you hear me?”
Anton was struggling to organise his thoughts. He was in a major fugue, and his head was swimming.
“Heart rate climbing to forty-three, B P is one fifteen over seventy, oxygen saturation is eighty-two.”
Whoever that was, the voice was too loud.
All of a sudden, the darkness he was seeing flared into an unbearably painful bright white. He tried to squint against the brightness, but his eyelids did not seem able to respond properly.
“Pupil dilation sluggish,” the first voice spoke again.
“Well, it has been a long time in deep sleep for him,” the second voice replied to the first.
“At least there is a response. He can see,” the first voice replied back. “Sir, can you hear my voice?”
Anton remembered fragments of a rushed fight and a frenzied attempt at escape. The last thing he could remember was being strapped in a bunk with an increasing sense of dizziness.
He tried to speak, but all that came out was a croak.
“I'll take that as a yes,” the second voice spoke up.
“Yes,” the first replied. “It's OK sir, you don't need to do anything else for now. Let's get him into a rehab ward.”
It would be a while before Anton could find out what a rehab ward was. It would also be a while before Anton would find out just how long he had been out of commission.