UD-5 - Printable Version +- Discovery Gaming Community (https://discoverygc.com/forums) +-- Forum: Role-Playing (https://discoverygc.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=9) +--- Forum: Stories and Biographies (https://discoverygc.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=56) +--- Thread: UD-5 (/showthread.php?tid=124370)

UD-5 - Pioneer - 01-06-2015 UD-5 Exedos. Inside the Rhineland Prison system, there are no names, only numbers. I was prisoner number 314159. The Guards called me "Pi". The other inmates and the Escape Committee, called me "The Watcher". My cell was at the start of the second level of "Brahms Strauss", the main corridor of Vierlande. From my cell, I could look down at "Checkpoint Charlie" the single entry point for everything coming and going through the prison complex. Guards, prisoners, and most importantly, information. I watched who, and what went on, and then passed the information on through covert signals to other inmates. Prisoners always arrived during the daylight hours. The prisoners who are escorted out at night, are often never heard of again. The inmates think they are killed, I think they're sold as slaves. One night, the guards rounded up the entire Escape Committee. Everyone - the Boss, the Scrounger - even me. We were stripped of prison uniforms and all identification, and bundled onto some flea bag Junker ship and flown out of Hamburg. When we reached Hudson, there was a firefight with Liberty forces. The ship was damaged, badly, and the crew jettisoned leaving us. Liberty Navy boarded the ship and rounded up those of us who were still alive. They lined us up and walked down the line, writing identification marks on our chests. I was the fifth in line. They wrote on me, UD-5. We were transported somewhere - they didn't say where it was, and the Liberty government begun to process the surviving prisoners. Some were wanted criminals and they went on to complete their sentences inside a dank Liberty prison. Others were identified, and somehow, returned to Rhineland and other systems. I was the last one to be processed. "We have no record of your existence," the LSF investigator told me. "Your identity has no record, you have no neural net data, no record of birth, it's as though, you never existed." Or, someone erased my history. With no charges, no means to identify me, and no reason to hold me, a government bureaucrat created enough documentation for me to go about my business as a free man. To this day, all my Liberty records include the identifier of UD-5. Liberty Police kept me locked away as they manufactured an identity, before handing me over to the Sirius Relief Organization. They in turned gave me interim accommodation and a job at Tinkers Haven in the Texas system. I can see the cells of the LPI Sugarland Prison, from the first residency on the second level of the Haven's Residential block, where I watch ships coming and going. RE: UD-5 - Pioneer - 01-18-2015 UD-5 Salvage. Inside Tinker's Haven, there's a Cantina. Some Junker, come in, probably splashed some money about, and suddenly there's a new watering hole that no one needs to travel to. Safe. Reclusive. Easy targets. The workers on board get paid each Friday afternoon. By 1800, they're fuller than a school girls hat rack. They get flashy with their money, but inside their wallets is something more valuable. Information. Identification. Travel documents. Manifests. Maps. When you've been drinking, you can get careless. Items can leave your wallet, and in the time that it takes to order pizza, I can leave the Cantina and make a generic copy of most things. Then, in my own time, long after you left the station, I can take that generic copy and make it marketable. Make it plausible. Make it identical. Some guys from the LSF were here recently, buying everybody drinks while their ships were repaired after a battle somewhere. I don't care, I'm not interested in what they do, but who they are. A Commander got careless with one of the local girls. While he was exchanging saliva with her, I was doing my job unloading the repairs off his ship. He left the Command console open and I was able to salvage some information. RE: UD-5 - Pioneer - 02-02-2015 UD-5 Acquisition. Their sound of booming guns woke me. I knew without looking it was a Rhineland Task Force on an incursion into Texas. Out of my porthole, I could see that a fire had broken out. Tinkers Haven was in the crossfire. I wandered down to the loading bay amid the panic and evacuations. Traders, furiously trying to leave with their precious shipments. Citizens, bartering passage off. Residents, going about the job as the station was struck again. I looked out at an passing transport. He'd been hit, a casualty as he passed by, and now he was looking for a safe port. The hull appeared to have been breached, and oxygen was escaping as a fireball into the atmosphere. The transport was coming in way too fast and the loading bay alarm sounded. I braced for impact as it crashed in, and lurched to a stop. The pod doors opened and no one exited. I walked in and found the solo pilot still at the helm. He was dead long before he ever reached Haven. Unbuckling the restraints, I dragged him outside and put him in a body bag as the station alarm sounded from another broadside. Tinkers Haven was caught in the territorial feud. The pilots face was blood smeared. He looked like me, but younger. I snatched his identification away - he wasn't needing it anymore, and boarded the transport. For the next three hours, I ferried hull panels, back from Houston, avoiding fire from both sides, before each military tactfully retreated. Tinkers Haven had only been hit by glancing blows. And now, I had acquire a vessel. RE: UD-5 - Pioneer - 03-29-2015 UD-5 Invoiced. Finding jobs in Liberty isn't hard. Everybody wants something transported to some forsaken place. Corporations are best, their multi trades routes keeps long haulers moving back and forth. And then there are the non descript, the haulers which operate in the background, out of trade lanes and quietly moving product - sometimes even lawfully. Space stations are always in need of commodities, some of it for themselves, some of it for other clients. Most of it needs to be shipped quietly, and efficiently. No fuss, no mess, and no gun fights. That tends to draw too much attention. Even Tinkers Haven needs commodities. Food, water, panel supplies, and...other equipment. I walked into the dispatchers office. A hand written sign on the door said "Gone fishing." I folded the invoice and poked it through the mail slot. I didn't need it yet. The money could wait. RE: UD-5 - Pioneer - 07-29-2015 UD-5 Broadside Liberty is crawling with lawfuls, some of them are even able to do their job. Some of them, are worst than the unlawfuls. They operate as rogues under the color of authority. The ship was running empty, dead heading back to Tinkers Haven after delivering much needed salvation to some derelict place. The sleeper was dark when the first volley woke me. "Shields fail." Master alarms sounded everywhere, panels sparked as they failed, and lights began to extinguish. The ship had been hit, hard. Broadside. At point blank range. I staggered into the cockpit as a fourth and fifth rounds hit. The helm was sluggish and barely responsive. "Mayday, mayday." I screamed into the mic - all communications were dead. I watched the satellite dish float past the window, along with other debris blown off the ship. He knew what he was doing, he'd hit me so I couldn't surrender. This was a death match. I yanked back on the yoke and she began to climb, just enough to allow me to glimpse back through the #4 porthole. LSF. It was an LSF ship firing upon me. I could see the ships name, blazed on the side, but there wasn't a lot of time left for negotiations. "Hull breach, imminent." The ship responded with a pitch, and his shots blew by low. I'd moved into his blind spot, but it was only a matter of time before he came around again and finished me off. It went dark quickly - but the console was still lit. It was getting dark outside, and engulfing the ship each second. I watched the LSF stop and recede. His pursuit was over, and he had had left me to bleed...wherever I was. I shut down every system back in the ship and sealed off the cockpit. Whatever cloud I'd flown into, had stopped the prick. But I wasn't out of the woods yet.