William Johnson had a past. Everyone has a past. Yet most people had more interesting names, but his parents weren’t the brightest of stars in the sky. William never had much of a home. Zoners from Omicron Theta, they spent the better part of William’s childhood running escort in their Ospreys for enterprising traders. Of course, they didn’t come with child seats, so William found himself watching from the deck of a Whale most of his life.
Truth be told, he never knew what he thought of his parents. Maybe he was simply a mistake – the result of a fun evening on Freeport 2.
Oh, and no.
His parents weren’t married, but his father seemed to like his mother enough to keep her around for the occasional romp or two. Even his bastard son was worth it, or so William liked to think. He never really knew, though.
However, William was bright, and he learned much from the traders, mercenaries, slaves, and refugees that often accompanied him on his parent’s journeys. Self-educated, or at least as educated as one could be jumping from system to system, William was finally smuggled by a Bretonian Privateer to Plant Gran Canaria at the age of 19, and even left him some credits to get started. More than his parents had. They probably didn’t notice he was gone.
William matriculated into law school. Whether that speaks to his wit, charm, and smarts or the lack of educational opportunity on Gran Canaria, we shall never know. Nevertheless, the trader life was not for him. Years of being baggage left him wanting something more. Where else to make one’s mark on the world, to feel important, to be viewed (at least by oneself) as a person than the trenches of court.
William soon found himself cloaked in an imaginary armor of justice – incorruptible, honorable, respectable, and fair. An officer of the court and a servant of righteousness.
Then, his first case. Defending the dregs of Canaria was not an envious job, but all were entitled to fair representation. It was their right, and rights matter. A Corsair brute, the member of a lowly family of smugglers, thieves, and slavers, was accused of murdering a recent refugee from Leeds. The refugee called Botella’s mother a whore. Which she was. Sometimes one’s mouth would be better off shut.
Seemed a pretty open and shut affair. "Plea," Johnson told his client.
“No.”
“If you plea, you live. If you don’t you die.”
“Senor, you seem to be confused as to who lives and who dies in this world.”
William filed the plea.
The brute cornered William in a bar one evening, taking his grudges from the courtroom to the whiskey bottle. Exhausted from work, barely managing his emotions on a wave of anti-anxiety medication, William was in no mood to counsel his client. In fact, he didn’t care about much those days. The hot evenings, the sound of fans on the ceiling, the laughter of a bar wench wooing the evening’s paycheck. And after William took that whiskey bottle to the head, it felt little different. He couldn’t see for the blood tricking down his brow. He couldn’t hear for the shatter ringing through his ears. As he fell, he grabbed the first object he thought he could grab to keep from falling. It was his client’s throat, and on the way down, William managed to collapse the brute’s windpipe. In his stupor, he pulled the Corsair’s plasma pistol from its holster and shot the body seven times.
Shortly after, he realized what he had done. Dissolved was his armor, and in its place a label naming him no better than the body laying next to him. He knew he couldn’t stay.
And he didn’t.
William skipped his victim’s justice, forsake his own position as an officer of justice, and traveled with a group of outlaws to Omega 15. Freeports were free enough, and he hoped he could find some respite there.
None was to be had.
To win a bottle of whiskey to calm his nerves, he had to shoot another man in the eye or lose one of his own. Sometimes shooting was a man’s way to privacy.
Two weeks after entering hiding, William was playing cards with another Corsair. Winning most of his hands, the brute threatened to cut out Johnson’s liver if he won again. Drawing a blade and a small pistol, the brute chased William out of the bar. In the hallway of the station, the brute took a shot at the tall, formerly honorable fugitive, which, his pretty face was grateful for, missed. William’s did not.
Vogtland Base was nothing special, but it would do. It was as far from Omega-15 as a small group of Junkers were willing to take him, and with his seemingly unexplainable propensity for killing Corsairs, the Hessians didn’t mind if he took a seat at the bar.
And that’s mostly where he stayed, taking favors from the tender and some of the other patrons. His suit, still bloodied with the life of his client, made an acceptable pillow in the corner of one of the booths.
He clinked around a few cubes of ice in a tumbler full of weak whiskey.
What has happened to me? Why am I even here?
A warm touch came to his shoulder.
“You look lost. This doesn’t seem to be where I dropped you off at last time.”
It had been four weeks since he heard a woman’s voice, and even longer still since a familiar one had crossed his path.
“Why are you here?,” Johnson asked, astonished to see the same Bretonian Privateer who had saved him from a life of whale window watching.
She sat down next to him, raising a finger to signal the keep. Silent until her order clunked down in front of her, she had an almost jovial look on her face. Her, an older woman than when Johnson had seen her last, yet still exuding spunk and energy. Him, a grizzled, bloody, almost corpse-like shell of a man.
“I work for myself now. Choices are a blessing in this world. You however,” she poked at his chest, “seem to be out of those.”
Johnson kept clinking his tumbler.
“I never wanted this to happen.”
He said it, but he did not know if he felt it. He killed a man and shot his corpse. Was that for safe measure? Was he scared? Did he even care?
It seemed more and more that option three was the most likely.
“Look, boy. Sometimes we’re not asked whether we like the cards we are dealt, but we must all play our hands as best we can.”
She stood up and tossed her head back, emptying her tumbler.
“Come with me, I have something to show you.”
As they wound their way out of the bar and through the labyrinth of streets inside the asteroid that Hessians called home, Johnson could not avoid the eye staring at him. The plasma pistol at his waist, the tattered and bloody suit he managed to keep with him, and the beauty by his side.
I look like the gutter rat I am to these people.
And many of them were gutter rats themselves.
Entering the dock, his companion pointed to a small ship.
“The Sabre.”
It was a familiar sight, a potent fighter that he had seen his parents engage many times. Early in life he feared for them, either out of love or naiveté, but after so long he couldn’t tell which.
“Beautiful, isn’t she? It is time you lost that armor of academia and took up some plate. You won’t stay alive long without your own ship, and begging your way across the sector isn’t the prettiest way to get around.”
She walked around the hull, stroking it’s graceful lines as she spoke.
“She’s ready for a name and a pilot. Loaded with all of the essential gear except guns. A pilot must choose her weapons as she develops….”
She stopped and looked over her shoulder.
“Or him.”
Johnson approached the ship and followed the woman’s path around the ship.
This was an enemy ship to me. Is this what I have become?
He shook his head.
No, this was my parents’ enemy.
“Why would you help me like this? I don’t deserve your compassion. All I want to do is fix this mess and…”
She put her finger over his lips.
“You’re beyond fixing. Do you want to die today or tomorrow?.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Then live today.”
As she strolled out of the hangar, she turned around.
“You were always a smart lad. People in my shoes have to make connections. When I saw you doing sums and reading philosophy with that group of Zoner half-wits, I knew that wasn’t the life for you. So I gave you a choice on Gran Canaria, and you did well. But life gets in the way, and here you are.”
She turned and made her way to the door.
“And another thing. I kill Corsairs. Imagine the surprise on my face when I found out who was taking out my targets face to face.”
She flung Johnson a credit card.
“You earned that. Go make your own money and leave me to mine. The next time I see you, it had better not be in a blood soaked priss suit without his own ship.”
Alone, Johnson had a moment with this metal behemoth in from of him.
Syren. I shall call her Syren.
This was the beauty that had lured him from a flowery, dreamy life to die on the cliffs and rocks of fate and chance.
The crossroads of Omega-41 were never friendly, but Freeport 5 never turned away a paying customer. Johnson took his typical spot at the bar next to the crier, or so he was called. Standing next to the doorway and advertising for heads on spikes, escorting, or taking the occasional shipment of cardamine was a horrible way to earn a living.
*Tink*Tink*
Another empty glass. Johnson lifted his finger, earning an appropriate nod from the keep. The dun of commotion form the crier’s windy and overly descriptive speeches were always a bother, but it kept Johnson’s pockets full.
“… two new bounties in, this time for the infamous ‘Jack’ & ‘Jill.’ Word has reached the corners of Sirius that they have left the service of OSI and are now working for a group of Rheinland traders…”
Johnson’s eyes rose from his empty glass. The keep strutted over in his usual manner, typically to impress new, and young, faces. Johnson barely noticed him walk up, but the keep pried the hand away from the empty glass and silently placed a full one in its grip.
It often happened that when something caught Johnson’s attention, he became a statute for a time. Those who knew him though the remnants of his training on Gran Canaria were forcing him to “think” on things. Yet truth be told, Johnson was an unperceptive man and seemingly existed only via sensory experience.
Death by strangling was a satisfying way to end the life of an indifferent individual. And despite the fear and confusion he suffered afterward, there was no difference between life as a hunted man and life as a suit.
He stood up, pushed the full glass towards the rear of the bar top, and leaned over the crier’s ear.
“Taking a job? Something tickle your fancy for once? Or are you just bored.”
Ignoring the jabs, as common as they were, Johnson whispered, “Send word that I will find Jack and Jill. Alone.”
As he rose, the crier gave a curt nod and scurried out of the bar, his soft shoes scuffing the concrete floor as he took his leave.
Johnson approached his glass, lifted it up to his eyes, and started analyzing its contents.
The call signs were familiar to him. His mom and dad had no lack of flair for the “cute” and “witty.”
They never included a mention of a son, though. Jack and Jill, the absurdity that they were, was never a family rhyme.
Oddly, he felt that same as he did whenever he was about to take on another job.
Nothing. Live today.
Two days later, Johnson found himself docking Syren back onto Freeport 5.
Leaving his Sabre in good hands, he jumped down for the cockpit, pulling the gloves he had taken from the corpse of an Outcast pilot finger by finger. They felt small for his hands, but the constriction made his senses tingle and the control of his ship tighter and tighter. He even had them washed once a week to see how firm the old leather would get.
When he reached his quarters, he sat on the lackluster cot he had slept on for over three years. His boots were muddy and caked, once belonging to a Daumann miner who spent time dirtying himself in the innards of rocks in search of glory. He had lost his legs when the cockpit of his ship collapsed under fire from a set of Heavy Flashpoints, pinching his body in two and hurling the pieces out into the darkness.
Laying peacefully in his own private darkness, Johnson whistled to himself.
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