27APR3301 – 0811GMT
FEYNMAN TERMINAL, BHRITZAMENO
>>LOG BEGINS
So this is Earth.
For years I’ve longed to see the Cradle World, the place where my ancestors were born, lived, and died. It’s more beautiful than any video or photo could describe. Even my own words fail me. To think that humanity sprang forth from such a humble place is quite humbling in itself.
I have to say I’m relieved to see that Earth is still here and as vibrant as ever; that no asteroid or comet or any number of other disasters have befallen it. It’s more than what some of the planets in Eravate could say, particularly Eravate Five.
Chantilly, my old home, is a smoldering crater now after the Eravate insurgency decided it’d be nice to drop a sizeable chunk of rock onto the city. Said something about sending a message to the Federation and to its supporters, something to the effect of “this be the fate of tyrants.” It was a favored tactic of theirs to turn entire population centers into smoking rubble if they showed even the slightest bit of resistance to their particular brand of politics and economics.
Well, the message was received. The insurgents didn’t very much like the Federal reply, I’m sure. It took several months, but when the Feds finally arrived in-system, I could not have been happier, but it did not undo the massacre at Chantilly.
And though I took great pleasure in seeing my tormentors brought to their knees, it didn’t bring back the people that were lost as a result.
The Federal Navy recruited me about a month or so ago in the aftermath of the conflict. I was in a loaner Sidewinder and just scraping by, trying to rebuild something resembling a life through trading, when a Naval Logistics officer approached me about ferrying some dispatches – things they didn’t want to broadcast out of concern for eavesdroppers and codebreakers – to Chimba, which was in the midst of its own civil war. Desperate for cash after the loss of my home in Chantilly, I figured I’d take the job. Maybe I’d find myself with better footing in that region of space. It wasn’t like there was anything left for me in Eravate anyway.
I delivered the dispatches, as requested, and the Federal contact at Hurley Port asked me if I had ever seen any combat before. I said yes of course; all traders worth their salt have seen some kind of fighting. He threw a few credits my way, told me to go to the station’s quartermaster and outfit my ship for combat, and that the Federal Navy and Chimba Public Industries would pay good credits for anyone who could help out in their push to gain control of the system.
A few weeks and several combat sorties later – with slightly deeper pockets, I might add – I had signed my life away to the Federation Navy for a few years, received a provisional rank within it, and gotten a system permit to Sol, where I was to report to for additional training and my first assignment.
I bought a Cobra with my windfall from the campaign in Chimba, christened it with the name Dreadful Notions. Navy’s okay with that; it seems they give plenty of room for traders-turned-bounty-hunters-turned-combat-pilots to make their ships their own. No cargo racks, just plenty of armor and weapons to work over pirates with. She’s stubborn, but she’s mine – and I am hers.
This journey has taken me far from home; far from the familiar and the things I once considered safe. I can’t say I truly miss Eravate. I do miss what it used to be back when I was a child, but certainly not what it was when I left it. Eravate Five is still a beautiful world, despite the scar on the southern continent where Chantilly had once been, but…it no longer feels like home.
It’s funny to think that I was barely getting by as a trader from a system that had been utterly crippled by blockades and pirates and God knows what else, and now I’m sitting on a station next to a literal gold mine in Bhritzameno, some twenty light-years from Sol, with roughly three and a half million credits to my name. Not from a salary or staple, either – from kills and bounty hunting in the resource-rich rings of the nearby gas giant.
Pirates don’t know when to quit. They come in all shapes and sizes, some associated with the local independent insurgency factions, and others come from out-of-system looking to score big by preying on the local mining outfits. Seems to me like the pirates here are far more aggressive than they were in Eravate, and as such they require a different mindset when dealing with them. Though I can hold my own in a one-on-one fight, it’s better to engage with a formation of Eagles than to take them on alone.
The pirates have strange names. Mister Mittens. Rulin Twuld. Tarqin the Flatulent. I admire their sense of humor; sometimes I find myself laughing as I run their ship through the kill warrant scanner. It adds levity to an otherwise cruel profession. Some dig up relics of the past and go by aliases belonging to characters from old Earth television shows – Homer Simpson comes to mind. Killed him in the belt just the other day – no more donuts for him. I also saw one that adopted the alias Hugo Chavez, after the old dictator of Venezuela, a nation on Earth. Probably some dark joke, I’m assuming. There’s no shortage of Skywalkers either – even after all these centuries, Star Wars still appeals to people. If only they possessed half the skill and a gram of sense that the character whose name they adopted had.
Seems like the pirates come in waves too, one right after the other. Once you’re done finishing off a freebooter Python with a big price on their head, an Anaconda with an even bigger mark jumps in and starts harassing the rock jocks. We Navy pilots are plentiful though, and we make short work of even the largest of predators. They don’t stand a chance, but they keep coming anyway.
I won’t complain. It means more credits for me.
Some are smart and know when to run when they’re outmatched, their shields being worn down and their armor chipped away by a swarm of Navy Eagles. They do this strange “alligator” roll, trying to avoid fire as they’re breaking mass lock so they can jump to supercruise. I hate it when they flee after putting up a good fight, but I take solace in the knowledge that we may cross paths again...if someone doesn’t put them down first.
Things like that makes it so hard to have to walk away after a long patrol. The spirit is all too willing, the ship all too hungry for the kill, but the body – the pilot – is close to passing out from exhaustion. When that happens, I’ll head back to Feynman to rearm and refuel, collect my bounties, and unwind before the next patrol. Occasionally I’ll visit the nearest watering hole, have a drink or two. I try to sleep most of the time, but all I can think about as I lie in my bunk is how the next stint will go, how much I’ll make on the next haul.
And whether or not I’ll make it back.
It could be that I don’t know when to quit either.
You’re always wondering when your number is going to come up, but you never linger on it. Death’s always on my mind, but it’s never my own that I’m worried about. Not yet at least. It’s a reality I try to avoid confronting. Some of the more seasoned pilots assigned here say that when you start thinking about your own death more than those of the people you’re fighting, it means that your end is close at hand. One slip-up, one mistake, the pursuit of one bounty too many, and you’re another notch on the Reaper’s scythe handle.
I’ve had close calls in the belt before. When the RES drifts into the shadow of the gas giant, all you see is silhouettes backlit by the glow of the galactic cloud. You have to go slow, lest you find yourself on a collision course with a planetary body. It’s especially bad when you’re flying towards the dark side of the planet, where there is no backlighting to help distinguish the shapes of asteroids.
I recall quite vividly a time when I was hunting a Viper through one of the many clusters around the planet. I’d just about gotten his shields down with my last salvo of laser fire, and as I was waiting for them to bleed off excess heat, I saw it: a hulking, ominous black mass that took up the entire front view out of my ship. I had too much forward momentum; there was no avoiding it now, so I put all of my ship’s power to shields and hoped that I wouldn’t end up splattered on the side of the asteroid. Dreadful held together, but my shield generator failed, and my canopy got several new cracks as a result. The Viper I was hunting turned around and decided to try and finish me off while I was weakened. Unfortunately for him, it takes a lot more than an asteroid and an opportunist to kill me. Beam lasers made quick work of his shields, dual cannons sent him to the abyss.
Death got close, but I managed to slip away from its grasp that time. It’s stuck with me ever since though.
In the meantime, every time I’m in dock, either before I shut down or before I launch for my patrol, I check GalNet. Call it curiosity, call it boredom, call it a desire to remain informed – there’s something rather fascinating to me about the existence of an intergalactic news network. News certainly travels fast. Lot of talk about a civil war brewing within the Federation’s political structure, pitting Halsey and Hudson and their supporters against one another. Scuttlebutt’s probably right about that. I don’t know whose side I’d be on, if I’d be on someone’s side at all. My interest in politics stems from my abhorrence of it – to me, all of the political leadership are liars and crooks. Whether it be the Federation, the Empire, or the Alliance, I regard them all as fools.
But alas, here I am, making myself available to them as a willing tool, projecting their will with my own. It doesn’t stop me from soaking up the latest headlines, either.
The irony is not lost on me.
I will confess, it is difficult to reconcile what I believe about the Federation as a whole with what I do on their behalf. But there are few things left in this life that make any sort of rational sense. Protecting home, loved ones – those were things that made sense to me. They were the necessary gravity that kept me from floating away into the darkness. After the Chantilly massacre…
On second thought, perhaps it would be best if that discussion is left for another time. Those wounds are still fresh.
I often wonder if I am a hypocrite for partaking in something I hate. Right now I’m the hunter, pursuing predators who would do harm to those just trying to make a living. In a way, I feel like I’m doing what I couldn’t do at Chantilly, so there’s a sense of justice – but at the same time, I’m doing what I wish I never had to do in the first place: kill someone. Does it make me a bad person to be killing for money? Or are we all monsters for what we do in the name of…something?
That’s a war I’m going to have to fight alone.
I should stop drinking, stop thinking. Dangerous mix, the two. I’m patrolling the RES again tonight. Better stop while I’m ahead and get some sack time. Pirates gonna pirate, after all.
And I’ll be right there to cash in on their folly.
More later.
>>LOG ENDS
(*A/N: Relatively new to the Elite universe, so any constructive criticism, both for the story and writing style, is much appreciated. Wrote this using some of my experiences thus far in the game. Looking forward to seeing the dynamics that Powerplay will bring to the universe, and by virtue of that, my character's own story.
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