Testing testing... is this thing on? Recording? Excellent. Now how to delete a line... bah, never mind, we shall roll with the punches, as it were.
Hello... universe? I am not exactly sure what a pilot's log is supposed to look like or contain, or who will end up reading this. Truth be told, I never really expected to last long enough to create any stories worth sharing. "Docking" on Leeds is always an adventure in and of itself. Gallic patrols, atmospheric conditions, acid rain clouds (did you know that acid rain is unaffected by shields? Neither did I!), resistance flack cannons (we're a little too good at hiding our bases and keeping their location need-to-know it turns out), etc. Survive all that, and you earn the privilege of trying to outrun Gallic patrols to sneak your way out-system. Maybe you hit a few scrub fighters on occupation duty. Maybe you hit a gunboat captain with a chip on his shoulder looking to earn a more prestigious position. Either way, if you survive that and navigating a jump hole (or running the gauntlet through a hostile jump gate) you get to talk your way past the Liberty Navy while they wonder why you're hauling crates clearly labelled "Black Market Munitions" for the return trip.
It is a living.
My first trip, I was lucky. I was lucky long enough to get good, and here we are. In a heavily modified civilian shuttle (OSC makes ships smaller than an Enterprise, who knew?) carving out my own little corner of the war to do my duty for queen and country. I tried to lie about my age when Kusari invaded and was told to have myself a birthday or two before trying again. By the time I was old enough to fight, the BAF recruiters had long since pulled out. The veterans that stayed behind said I'd never have made captain anyway.
Well, look who's laughing now. I've got a shiny letter of marque from her majesty's government and a shiny new title from the "Leeds Resistance Forces!" Not that the LRF is anything to brag about just yet. It is essentially me and one other guy. But, in the strictest sense of the word, it is an organization, I'm not just gallivanting out there on my own anymore. I carry tags on my ship and an even bigger target on my back, but I'm part of something greater. If I don't come back from my next patrol, someone will care who doesn't have the last name "Newport." It shouldn't make a difference, but it does.
And so, the log. Maybe some historian for the Imperial War Museum will find this and use it one day. My grandfather on Cambridge used a personal diary of one of our ancestors for his thesis on ancient Bretonian history, so maybe Drake Newport XVII will likewise see this. I imagine he will think I was an idiot and a fool. I imagine he will not be terribly far off in his esteemed assessment. I can only hope that he will be grateful, and that he will be under the Bretonian flag.
Of course, in the meantime, I have more immediate concerns. Newport signing off.
...off. Stop. Please stop? Bloody thing, there must be a button somewhere- HAH! Found you!
It has been a few days and I am not dead yet. In this war, that constitutes a victory, I suppose.
Truth is, you look forward to the quiet moments. The Charlie Wilson is a lover, not a fighter. She's a glorified minivan and turns like a brick. Her biggest attribute is being able to contain as much human cargo as possible and still have a reasonable chance of making it down to the surface of Leeds in something approximating one piece. Even that can be optimistic. I had once mechanic try to convince me the hull panels he installed that failed to survive a trip were "ablative armor." In any event, while a war lasts years, actual combat makes up only a very small fraction of a soldier's time. Hopefully.
A quiet supply run is what we hope for. We fight when we have to, take out an occupier if the chance arises, but generally we are content if our only contact is a hail from a friendly vessel just looking to break up the monotony of flight. Space is big and the distances we cross are vast. Even with all our technology, there is downtime. If you're lucky, you can even do some sightseeing.
The Frogs had restocked their depots near the jump gate to London. Superconductors are incredibly important for jump gate and capital ship construction. The only problem is the resistance isn't doing much construction of either. Fortunately our brothers in arms in Gallia proper are building ships and maintaining trade lane networks. So, it was off to Frenchie space to trade essentially really good wire for something the boys on Leeds can actually use. I've actually only crossed the line a handful of times. His majesty has been so kind as to bring the war to Bretonia that there simply isn't a lot of reason to venture too far from home. What always amazes me is just how big Gallia is. Even with the Council taking a rather sizable chunk out of it, it's still the size of two houses combined at least. I'll never understand why a people that have so much still craved for more. Bretonian expansion in the omegas at least can be remotely justified as the desperate actions of a flailing empire. Gallia has it all, and still wants more. To borrow one of their phrases, C'est la vie.
The trip was a good excuse to fill out my map of enemy territory. My letter of Marque authorizes actions in the "Gallic Border Worlds" so that puts several systems in fair play if I feel like heading so far away from Leeds. I don't think hitting shipping on French territory is going to end up winning this war, though. So I get to play tourist, hauling the stolen equipment back to a shipyard in Picardy. On the way back, I ran into some lovely Gallic Brigands who were looking to move some human organs. You do a lot of strange things in the name of the service, but we end up with a LOT of injuries on Leeds that we could treat on world if we had organs to insert. We usually don't and we don't have the resources for intensive medical care until a compatible organ shows up. This lot could mean the difference between losing more valuable fighters off-world to facilities on Cambridge (where they usually don't come back) and keeping our fighters in the lines. The organs are well insulated with these self-contained boxes that keeps them happy, which is good as I had to take the long way home. Zurich, Cologne, Stuttgart and then the Omegas. Rheinland wasn't out in force (they frown on the whole organ-smuggling thing. Come to think of it, so does BPA) and I could slip past Omega-3 unmolested.
Sidenote: IMG has a new toy guarding their base in system, a Red Hessian cruiser. Politics certainly makes strange bedfellows, but I do not blame them for a second. I have nothing against the Independent Miners. The IMG in the Tau's seem to be content doing whatever it is they do in the ice fields up there and have yet to make a move against her majesty's naval assets in Leeds. To be fair, that is because her majesty has precious few naval assets in Leeds to begin with, but still I shall take it as a sign of an un-official truce between our factions. If they're content to let me supply the resistance, I'm content to avoid going out of my way to making more enemies for the crown. She seems to be doing just fine on that front on her own.
God save the Queen.
I am currently a guest of the good ship Ark Royal. I hate sleeping away from Leeds, I get the terrible feeling that something bad will happen when I'm not there, like I won't be there in her darkest hour. Mum always blamed Freeport 4 for destroying her marriage. Pop was a spacer, through and through, and that was the closet thing he had to a home before "settling down" on Leeds. When the Frenchies pushed in, he wanted to fly off and defend his old stomping grounds. My mother said we needed a father more than the station needed another hired gun. When it was destroyed rather than occupied, well, there were fights.
Not like everything was peachy keen before then. I think it was more of a nail in the coffin rather than an ultimate cause. In any event, I get what he was feeling, to see your home under existential threat and feeling the guilt of not being able to do a damn thing about it. He got a nasty thousand meter stare when he first heard the news, it keeps me up when I have to sleep in my hold anywhere but Leeds.
Of course, I didn't have much of a choice in the matter of my sleeping arrangements. Some Other Royal Navy flier named Mounier decided to give chase to me coming out of the atmospheric entry point. Fortunately, the docking rings are a little more predictable and a little slower. I got to the Stokes tradelane, which he for some reason didn't lock down. Double fortunately, I knew the system better than he did. I exited the lane early and made for the Newcastle Jump Hole. He fell for the ruse, assuming that I was making a break for the Taus and it bought me 8 cliques of breathing room to play with. I made it to the jump hole and a mad dash to the Ark Royal. Apparently he didn't know about the jump hole. I hope the Queen will forgive me for disclosing state secrets, but I'd like to think I'm worth more to the war effort than public knowledge of a jump hole. There may be other secrets I know that are worth dying for. That isn't one of them.
So the Ark Royal's crew is pissed at me for taking up a docking bay. I'm pissed at their gunners for being unable to take down a fighter. Call it even.
One plus side is I got to have a lovely conversation with a Freelancer with the callsign "Longshoreman." An interesting fellow who inquired about the LRF initials emblazoned on the Charlie Wilson. Turns out there was another faction that had the moniker, the "Liberty Revolutionary Front." They were a cluster of Rogues that were trying to be "Xenos except not." They never really went anywhere, apparently, swept under by subsequent Liberty separatists who rose and fell alongside the fortunes of the house. Every house has its pet projects, even the Crayter Republic had a revolutionary group years ago, back before I was flying. Apparently it had something like three people in it and no one ever heard of it. Well, that fledgling group can live on forever in my logs, ample fodder for you, future historian, that its name and memory might live forever! If only he had mentioned its name...
Regardless, I hope this LRF doesn't share the same fate as its "predecessor." Not that I want it to last 10,000 years either, of course, we are here to accomplish a very specific goal. So long as Leeds is occupied, we fly the Bretonian banner in distress. Of course, the Mollies have been saying the same thing about a Free Dublin for about 75 years now, a focused mission statement is no guarantee of a quick mission.
Sidenote: The Ark Royal's last orders were to Newcastle to defend against the "inevitable" Gallic invasion. Top brass thought after Leeds it would be the next target. Well, they botched that one slightly, I would say!
It's curious. It is easier to move cargo lightyears across the sector, jumping from star to star, that it is to move it from a few hundred kilometers from Leeds orbit to the surface. A large train can move 4,000 units of cargo from one house to another with no problem, but those ships are designed for space, not atmospheric flight, let alone dodging enemy (and friendly) flack cannons. In theory we could just leave our goodies in space and let gravity do the heavy lifting, but Sir Issac Newton is much more cooperative about accelerating that mass than slowing it down. Plus, given the kinds of things we are interested in sending down, well, I wouldn't want to be too close to the landing zone to recover it.
And so our fledgling rebellion faces its first riddle: how do you get a train's worth of supplies planetside without a train? Answer: with a whole bunch of freighter runs. I finally made contact with my CO in the flesh. Turns out it was the same operative I had a run in with a few weeks before joining up, back when I was an independent privateer instead of... whatever I am now. He had a plan to bring in a literal boatload of black market munitions to the resistance but needed a second pilot to pull it off. It seems that I fit the bill.
So the Charlie Wilson stayed behind in a friendly independent base whose owners would rather their affiliation with us not be made public and I headed out in an old Pirate Train. This thing is as massive as it is rusty. If the turrets proved to be an insufficient defense, any Frog that gets too close could get tetanus from just looking at this thing. But, she has an engine attached to a cargo hold that is ten times larger than the Charlie, so I can't complain too much. That's 9 extra trips worth of supplies I don't have to run.
The Rogue activity has been picking up recently, but they didn't bother us as we jumped from system to system to pick up the "black market" munitions. Oddly enough the resistance doesn't have much use for the standard variety. House governments put too many safety mechanisms in their munitions to keep them from setting each other off. This makes perfect sense when you have a stack of the things on the deck of a battleship. This is the exact opposite of what you want when you're setting off an IED under a Gallic convoy. Trying to disable these mechanisms isn't worth the time or lost fingers of our sappers, so we look for shells that are a little too eager to go off and hopefully get them close enough to a target before they do so.
We got the trains back to Occupied Bretonian Space without incident. Then, came time for some switcheroos. The skipper swapped out for a freighter and took "my" cargo down to the planet one freighter-sized hold at a time. Once that was done, we swapped out ships and I returned the favor. We got lucky, the whole operation seemed to take forever, but his majesty's navy was quiet tonight. Even while frantically tossing crates of jury-rigged high explosive off the ship as fast as possible (in hindsight, maybe not the best protocol), we were still sitting ducks in space for longer than I would have liked. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good, but if this is going to become a routine, then eventually luck does run out.
Sidenote: Apparently I'm not alone in my reluctance to support the actions of the Bretonian Admiralty in the Omegas, nor in my desire for a truce with IMG in the Taus. It seems a lot of her majesty's navy is uncomfortable being occupiers (rightfully so!). Perhaps a lot of them will end up serving in Leeds as a way to quell their conscience. With more operations like this, maybe we'll see our numbers creep up, or at least see a capital ship flying the Bretonian colors the right way up for a change. Heaven knows we could use the extra support. As far as I can tell, I've doubled the size of the LRF by joining!
So it seems I've made a nemesis. That's an upgrade from anonymous pirate, I suppose, but I could do without the honor.
Flying in Leeds, back in the Charlie Wilson and noticing everything OSC puts in their shuttles that I took for granted. Little things like lumbar support in the pilot's chairs. Flying a literal rust bucket made me appreciate all the little things that much more. Keep in mind that I wasn't raised as a flyer. My old man has been piloting ships since he was sixteen. He would regale me and my siblings with vivid details of his trips. Ben only found them interesting the first time, and Anne always enjoyed spending time with mum more than with any of the men of the family. But I was enchanted by those tales and made him tell them again and again and again. Those moments only added up to a few hours, tops, in a career that spanned decades in space, but I could tell that those were what he lived for. Having flown quite a few runs now, I understand the feeling.
When the Resistance found the Charlie Wilson nee OSC Breezewood tucked away in a forgotten corner of a collapsed hangar, I volunteered to fly her. I passed off those stories as my own, and a few serendipitous fighters vouched that they heard of a Newport that pulled off some of those stunts. After a significant amount of embellishment and a significant lack of anyone better qualified or willing to fly her, I earned my wings. But the Charlie has been my only ship, my baseline (aside from a week or two of secretly flying a trainer to actually figure out how to function in space, but I don't count that). After being in that train, I shudder to think as to what life was like on the Hegemon my father served on for a significant piece of time. He said its best feature was the windows that allowed you to look at literally any other ship passing by and wish you were on it. It seems I am spoiled.
In flight I noticed another ship with a LRF transponder in Leeds. I was excited for another brother/sister in arms, only to hear my CO's voice on the other side of the radio. The skipper seems to have his own flotilla of fighters, bombers, and trains tucked all over Bretonia. He warned me about the other royal navy skulking about, and it didn't take too long for be to verify those reports personally. Mounier, the pilot who chased me to Newcastle ran into me in New London (small world, er, small sector rather). At least I was on home turf this time. Dashing past the capital proper, I hoped he would find something more interesting to shoot at amongst the home guard, but nothing tickled his (her?) fancy. And so we flew off to the Cambridge gate where a log jam of freighters bought me time. I slipped ahead in the queue while the Frenchie was warming up his version of witty banter and I slipped into Cambridge. Interesting fact: If you're talking, you're not fighting (or fleeing). I will take survival over an impromptu practice of my stand up routine any day of the week.
The trade lane dumps me out in orbit of the planet, with Mounier right on my tail. I seem to have gotten under his skin, which is odd since I was forgoing my usual witty retorts in favor of project try-to-dock-with-something-before-I-die. I was beelining for the research station, prepping my nanobots for the last jaunt when the cavalry arrived.
I've been in Leeds too long that I forgot what a BAF capital ship patrol looked like. A full carrier with two gun boats and flanking fighters. They start lighting up the sky like bonfire night, scaring the Frenchie out of weapons range of the trade lane. That was all the opening I needed. I got in some witty retorts, fully acknowledging that the only reason I was doing so was because the several thousand tons of Her Majesty's navy now occupying the space between us. I slipped back into the trade lane, back to New London, back to Leeds.
Skipper was waiting there, patrolling the system. Seems he wanted to gussy up his ship a bit so we flew out to Coronado and Barrier Station to 'pimp' his ship. He's now flying the red-white-blue of the Bretonian banner, matching the Charlie Wilson, and starting what passes for a uniform for our makeshift ragtag fleet of misfits. Eventually I hope to get a group picture of all of us in our "livery" flying whatever we've managed to keep in the air. Of course, before that we need to get some members to actually take a photo of. Right now it would be me and a half-dozen empty ships flying LRF tags!
Sidenote: Barrier station is really, really weird. It has three separate bases that have their own ship dealers but pool commodities. Far from me to question the Freelancers, but it is quite the odd bit of station geometry to pull that off. In any event, they had light arms to sell. Not as good as the black market variations, but still sufficiently lethal for the planet side resistance. Skip gets his lights, I get a cargo hold of goodies for Leeds, and we both got some company in space. Everyone wins.
Except for Mounier. Bollocks to that guy.
It's always a party in New York.
Liberty was doubly blessed when she settled on Manhattan. Liberty space ended up being in the middle of the other 3 house ships (Hispania and Gallia excluded), putting her at a natural crossroads for trade and transit. Combined with her mineral wealth, plethora of habitable planets, and their admittedly unique skill with jump gate and trade lane technology, Manhattan is the crossroads of Sirius. If you are looking for it, odds are there is someone in New York willing to help you get it for the right price.
Of course, there is also inevitably someone else willing to kill you for it for slightly more, but that's what keeps life interesting.
I've mentioned several times that I consider myself more lucky than good. I have no delusions about my combat abilities and that is what keeps me flying. My old man used to tell me that there are old pilots and bold pilots but there are no old, bold pilots. The first time I remember making him laugh was when I asked him which one he was. My gift is keeping everyone talking until the odds tip in my favor. Whether that's fleeing into a capital ship patrol or just getting a little help from some unexpected friends.
I was shipping Black Market arms out of Manhattan. I'd seen that the 5th fleet had one ship in the area which I wanted to avoid. Liberty and Bretonia are sincere allies against the Gallic menace, but that doesn't mean we always see eye-to-eye on issues like shipping fiendish weapons through Liberty space to give the occupiers a chance to die with a few extra holes than they were born with (seriously, some of these arms are diabolical in what they do, some are designed to leave nasty debilitating injuries rather than kill because it costs the Frenchies more to rehabilitate a soldier than bury him). I hazard a guess that he's hanging around Manhattan and so I take the long way to the California gate, only to run into him near the Missouri. David Nelson, a 5th fleet flier in a Liberty fighter on home turf next to a friendly battleship. I'm not fighting or running my way out of that.
I try to sweet talk my way through the trade lane, playing on his curiosity about seeing a privateer in New York space. He seems to buy that the arms were an honest mistake (a lie, forgive me), but it is clear that he's a solid navy man and isn't letting the guns through on his watch. We're about to start negotiating how to resolve the situation when a Lane Hacker named Metasploit comes out of the Texas trade lane and suddenly David has bigger fish to fry. I have nothing against the Hackers. Nominally, they are enemies of the crown, but with Leeds occupied and New London invaded, some fed up cyberpunk enthusiasts with chips on their shoulders are not our biggest concerns. They aren't making territorial claims against the crown, which puts them fairly far down on my list of existential threats to a free Leeds. In this moment, I'm rather happy for the distraction.
David asks for my help taking him down alongside some poor sap in a police trainer with a callsign of Valkrie. The trainer is obliged to enforce the law. I... am a neutral party witnessing an internal Liberty matter. I offer to swap out the cargo at Detroit and let him verify it at Manhattan if he survives the fight. He starts getting shot by the hacker and moves to engage, which I take as consent to the plan.
Here's the thing: I'm not a monster. I will lie to a Navy flier's face about purchasing arms, but I do respect that he and his mates are dying in New London every day that the crown might live. If I promise that I am going to do something, I will follow through. It is a funny sort of honor, but it is there. I swap out the cargo for standard light arms and wait for David to verify the cargo in Manhattan orbit.
He never comes. Screams over the radio seem to show that the trainer goes down in the first salvo. Brave, but foolish. David lasts significantly longer. I ask a passing ship, Ghod's Demi, to pass along a message that I did change up my cargo and head on my merry way. Another burst of static shows David didn't win the fight. I hope he ejected and survived, I hope I run into him again some day. But I am not entirely regretful that the Hackers showed up to let me through. I let the Liberty Navy know about what happened and that he served honorably and that I honored my agreement to swap out the weapons on Leeds.
I did neglect to mention that I actually purchased the original arms on Rochester, not Detroit. Details.
Light arms got to Leeds, and the Charlie Wilson lives to fight another day. When you are a resistance movement, survival is a victory. Every day I come back to base is another win in our column. Somehow, we link enough of those together, we end up with a free Leeds. I've made my contribution to that win column, but that's not through skill. Today a good pilot died and a lucky one got to land. Won't be the last time that happens.
Sidenote: Here's something that always bothered me. Planet New Tokyo is in the New Tokyo system, and is named for Tokyo, the capital of Kusari's patron faction on Earth (they had multiple hostile factions on the same planet back then!). New Berlin in the New Berlin system is named for Berlin, proto-rheinland's capital. New London, of course, in the New London system is named for London, the ancestral seat of the monarchy. But there is no planet New York in the New York system. Nor was the capital of proto-Liberty called "York." York was actually a proto-Bretonian city. They colonized the land that would become Liberty's precursor and named the city they founded... New York. So, in the spirit of keeping things universal, we should really refer to it as the New New York system with planet New New York at its heart. Or... hear me out, name it for the ACTUAL CAPITAL OF LIBERTY'S PRECURSOR. Yes, New York was a major city (the biggest by population if memory serves), but their government was based in a city called Washington. My Grandfather would always win pub bets with that little factoid. Being a history professor has its perks, it seems.
Question: What's better than one ship serving the needs of the resistance? How about three! Captain Drake Newport now fancies himself a commodore with three mighty steeds under his control. Mind you, that is meant in the literal sense (the control part, not the steeds). I'm the only pilot, but now with a friendly base to land the hardware on with easy access to Leeds (thank the heavens for smog clouds with jump holes to friendlier and more secure space).
First, we have the good ol' Charlie Wilson. This versatile OSC shuttle is quaint enough to charm its way past Navy patrols but still give pirates and low level Frenchies quite a wallop upon demand. With cargo space that can accommodate weapons or refugees and a profile small enough to handle an atmospheric landing, she's my all-around ship for Marauding about when I have nothing better to do. I consider her my "signature" ship.
Next, we have the LRF Puddle Jumper. She's... a puddle jumper. Charlie's built to take a hit or two with cargo space sacrificed for reinforcing armor. PJ has no such accoutrements because she's only supposed to operate in Leeds space when the coast is clear. She'll see a lot of use shuttling cargo down to the surface from ships too big to survive re-entry, moving 630 units at a time. For the traders we hope to attract, time is credits, so being able to shave off an entire trip to offload their cargo is a huge deal.
And last but not least, the one I am most excited about... LRF Vow To Thee, a MASSIVE Oasis class passenger liner. Apparently, I have a fondness for OSC hardware. Given that the main export of Leeds at the moment is refugees and given that the Liberty government frowns on transporting human cargo inside of rusty oil drums, we needed a liner certified for human transport to safely get our people onto Manhattan. We've stripped out anything fancy in favor of a utilitarian hold with full life support that can easily accommodate weapons and more useful cargo for the return trip. On the otherhand, Liberty is full of filibusters looking to crack skulls to build up a resume to impress the Liberty Navy. West Point has no shortage of Marines looking to earn their stripes the hard way. I see no reason to offer them booking on the finest passenger accommodations Leeds has to offer. If Orbital Spa and Cruise wants to challenge me for the route, they are welcome to it.
I should mention that getting all that hardware required a LOT of credit transfers and scrapping of derelict vessels with a lot of trading up along the way. I briefly helmed a Democritus before turning it into credit towards the final liner. But it was most certainly worth it. Now if I could just get the bloody thing to dock with a trade lane properly!
In all honesty, my piloting isn't bad for having literally no experience in space prior to a few months ago. It's been a lot of figuring things out along the way (I ended up going through Rheinland today because I couldn't dock with supergate in Poole, and I was only doing that after a wrong turn got me going to New London instead of Magellan). But fortune still favors the bold, and my luck hasn't run out yet. With larger ships able to move more cargo, skipper's planning bigger and better things. Maybe draw in a gunboat or a cruiser to patrol in Leeds under our flag! Wouldn't that be something? Capital ships in Leeds again, it'd mean the world to the populous to see one of ours in orbit for a change.
Sidenote: All of the houses have their own laws about contraband. Some things, like cardamine, are universal. Some, like human organs, are licensed out to certain corporations and forbidden to everyone else (sorry Cryer for stepping on your turf). Others are openly legal in certain houses and forbidden in others. Take for instance light arms. As long as they are properly registered, Liberty couldn't care less about me flying around with 3000 flechette rifles in my hold. The BPA takes a much stricter view on the rights of a citizen to bear arms. Fortunately, the BPA doesn't do a heck of a lot of flying in Leeds these days, now does it?
Double Sidenote: I think I made a friend in the Liberty Navy. Turns out Nelson didn't die in his fight! I even saw him in a Mexican Standoff with a Xeno and a Rouge. They took forEVER figuring out the politics of the situation before the shooting started. Nelson killed the rogue, but the Xeno wanted to turn on him. Of course, the Liberty navy had a battlecruiser in the area that made the xeno regret that particular decision. I've also run into an intoxicated Outcast several times now, but his name escapes me. He's let me go twice, which is all you can really ask for from a chap like that.
Leeds was quiet today, which was good because there was a literal ton to do shipping goods off Leeds with the Puddle Jumper, transferring them to the Vow, and hauling them out of the system. The only interaction was a brief one with a Lane Hacker. The Hackers are technically enemies of the crown. Like so many other aspects of life as a Privateer, you get a lot of mileage out of the word "technically." They shoot the French corporations trying to ship through Leeds and there isn't any friendly tonnage heading through the system nowadays anyway. Truth be told, they do a better job enforcing the embargo than we can, so why not let them have their fun?
It's not like we can stop them. A passenger liner may be the size of a cruiser, but she is not armed like one.
She seemed intrigued by the privateer ID before pronouncing me no better than a lap dog for the corporations. Seems they are still nursing a serious anti-corporate kick, I wonder if they'll team up with the Mollys, Hessians, or even the Coalition. They'd find ample pamphlets and propaganda explaining the workers struggle to keep them going. In any even, she wasn't terribly impressed with the Puddle Jumper and sent me on my merry way. Bigger fish to fry, I suppose.
Part of me wants to take it as an insult that I wasn't even worth making a piracy demand of, but good relations with the Hackers is in our long term interests. We ship a LOT of supplies via anomaly through Magellan, so keeping on the Hackers goodside is a top priority. Maybe even an informal partnership could be worked out. I hear rumors that they make a lot of black market light arms on their base, only a single jump hole away with no pesky 5th fleet in the way to spoil the fun...
Sidenote: shipping out refugees is going to be slightly harder than I anticipated. They want to take their meager possessions with them which doesn't cost a lot of cargo space but does take up weight. Essentially, my capacity is cut in half to get them off planet safely. This means that every trip down to the surface, I can offload 630 units from the Vow using PJ, but can ferry only half as much back up. Eventually, I'm doing empty runs one way or the other, and if my pops taught me anything, it's that a good freighter NEVER runs empty.
What do you do with a drunken Hegemon?
It was an exciting day for the LRF. For a while now, Skip's been pinging the shippers of Sirius to aid in the fight. Leeds is in desperate need of supplies and the Bretonian government, bless her heart, has been generous in getting credits to the resistance in lieu of ships and supplies. The crown, or more accurately the admiralty board, feels that given the nature of the Leeds system it is better to create a profit differential on the planet and let capitalism work its magic. The only problem is the atmospheric landings which create a massive bottleneck. We could (and do) filter supplies through friendly depots, but it is a long journey through the smog clouds to those jump holes to access a friendly base to facilitate transfer. So Hudson and I sat in our puddle jumpers, pinging the heavens, hoping for some big ships to take a bite.
Today, we landed our first fish. The Hackers as mentioned previously have been active in Leeds recently. Mildred Wolfe was kind enough to merely let me go on my merry way. Another hacker, callsign "Short Circuit" decided to take a more active role. The hackers manufacture black market arms on Mactan. Just like their Detroit counterparts, they are missing safeties that get in the way of ventilating Frogs. Also like Detroit, some of them have taken liberties with the basic designs to create weapons that possibly violate inter-house arms treaties and laws of war. Unlike Detroit, Mactan is one jumphole away somewhere in Magellan. The resistance was greatly appreciative of the side arms, they didn't much care whose logo was on the side. The admiralty board might not like us working with Hackers, but Hackers are allies of the Outcasts and the Outcasts are fighting the Corsairs and the Corsairs are friends of Gallia and Gallia is enemy number one of Bretonia. So my enemy's friend's enemy's friend is... my friend? At least long enough to get a cargo planetside.
I should'd be so harsh on the BAF, they do have a lot on their plate. The Merchant Navy even managed to make an appearance in the system! Yes, they were freighters, but they were flying BAF transponders, which was a sight for sore eyes indeed. The Peregrine and her escort came in with military vehicles from the fatherland, perfect for ramming through blockades and checkpoints on the surface. More importantly, the people saw the Merchant Navy logo on the crates and manifests, they saw that we haven't been forgotten.
Having made several puddle jumper runs, it was time to take the Vow out of system. New York was a party as always. A Col. Blair, member of some group called ThC was leading two colleagues in a... questionable state of soberness. A navy pilot was losing his patience with three Hegemons blundering around Manhattan orbit, hilarity ensued. By "hilarity" I mean three convoys of plutonium detonating in Manhattan's atmosphere because their autopilots were thrown off by the drunken dance in orbit. Whoops. I pulled SAR duty and recovered the cargo (those containers are super thick for a reason it seems) and transferred it to Harrisburg for disposal. At least I came out ahead in all this, which means the resistance is a few million credits closer to whatever comes next.
While ferrying out the plutonium, I came across another independent pilot named Shyanne. She asked my transport to stop in Pennsylvania, but unlike a frechie screaming "Bonjour" at me, I mean she legitimately asked, please and everything. So, out of curiosity, I stopped. Turns out, she had seen our ships around a lot and was asking what we were all about. She's some kind of Bretonian filibuster and was eager to do her part for queen and country and credits. If we keep seeing her in Leeds, maybe we'll have a new recruit on our rosters soon enough.
Sidenote: Stealth is the difference between life and death in Sirius. Both Hudson and I keep untagged ships for more clandestine operations, though more often than not we WANT to fly the flag in Leeds and New York for PR purposes. It's why I keep the lights on the Charlie Wilson so gaudy, so people see the red, white, and blue of Bretonia when I hit atmosphere. However, flying a pirate train... from Rochester... past Manhattan... CALLED THE ILLEGAL OPERATION is just begging to be pulled over. Fortunately, he dropped his cargo on Manhattan before being picked up by the Navy so he only got dinged for the unregistered Pirate train. As one "pirate" to another, I salute your bravery, and hope you keep flying. If nothing else, you'll keep Navy patrols busy!
I am not the hero of my story.
This is an important milestone for people to hit. Yes, some people truly are chosen ones whose actions singlehandedly change the course of history. However, this notion of the personal narrative is exaggerated at best. People are changed by their world, rarely vice versa, and it is important to come to terms with that.
I was on the prowl in Leeds, working the Puddlejumper to deal with our perpetual backlog of weapons and refugees when I got a direct transmission from a pilot named Skyhawk. He claimed that we had met before but was otherwise very coy about his identity. All I knew is that he wanted to meet in a particular sector of one of the smog clouds in Leeds and that he wanted to relay some information that the GRI would rather he didn't. There were a number of possibilities running through my head including that this could be a trap, but it would have been easier to pirate me in a tradelane if that was their true goal. Plus, by coincidence (I hope) they picked a sector that the LRF uses for dead drops, so either he's been observing our actions and knows more than he should, or he was at a high risk of stumbling across us performing a drop, which would also be bad, In any event, I decided to meet him.
He claimed to be a Liberty Navy Operative with the 5th fleet, callsign Wolf. With a civilian Eagle and freelancer tags, it's impossible to verify such a story, but then again he would not be a terribly effective spy if you could tell by looking at him. I started recording the conversation where he outlined the need to get an intel report back to New York without the frogs catching wise. Since the LRF makes a lot of runs between Leeds and Manhattan anyway, he felt it was a good cover story. He also dangled a delicious carrot in front of me in the form of the 5th being more cooperative towards our weapons smuggling operations alongside a rather powerful stick of threatening to blow my ship up. The Charlie Wilson has enough holes in her armor for one lifetime, thank you very much, so I took on his payload.
I flew to Manhattan space with a tampered Nuclear Mine containing the message strapped in the co-pilot's seat. If I tried to open it, it would explode. If I tried to hand it to someone else, it would explode. If I thought about doing anything other than getting it to the fleet, it would explode. All I could do was find my Navy contact in Liberty and pass along the cargo after exchanging some dopey pass phrases. The trip was uneventful until I hit Manhattan space. Long range scanners indicated one 5th fleet ship in system, a fighter piloted by a man named Turner Jay. I was carrying a group of refugees both as cover for the trip and to kill two birds with one stone and so I requested permission to head on to Manhattan. I didn't HAVE to do this, but I was hoping to strike up a conversation to work in the phrase. Unfortunately, Turner wasn't feeling chatty and passed me along. Figures that the one time I WANT attention from the Navy is the one time they're not willing to give me the time of day.
Stewing in the tradelane I had flashbacks to secondary school on Leeds, my dilemma was the same I faced with asking a girl out: how do I know they are interested before making the first move? Fortunately, unlike my half-baked schemes trying to woo Sarah Oldham in sophomore chemistry class, I had significantly more resources at my disposal this time around.
Refugees off and light arms on as per normal when inspiration struck. I asked for a custom job on a thoroughly less-than-legal (and thoroughly not less than lethal) unregistered weapon. It was a beautiful little pistol save for the Aegira transponder it was conspicuously missing. I took the trade lane past West Point and cruised as painfully slowly as I could to the trade land before Turner finally stopped me. I played dumb as I usually do, saying I wasn't smuggling the arms, it was just a customized pistol for myself with a cool engraving. Holding up the gun to the comm, I told him the pass phrase engraved on the handle. He worked the counterphrase into conversation. Now we were cooking with gas.
Unfortunately, that's when a non-5th fleet cruiser crashed the party, like Sarah's best friend / third wheel inviting herself along along to what is clearly a two person picnic (I still haven't forgiven Karoline for that, though I found out a few years ago she didn't survive the initial bombardments, so it goes). So, I had to play coy. I agreed to drop the black market gun at once, along with a dodgy mine I "found" so it could be disarmed by more experienced hands. With my cargo delivered, my mission was far more successful than my Junior homecoming. That... that was a sad night.
In any event, there was another story told tonight, and I was merely a bit player playing my parts. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Someday, I look forward to reading a history book and finding out just what this cloak-and-dagger nonsense was all about. If nothing else, I hope that my naivete puts a smile on your face, dear future historian, since you know exactly what's going on. I will say this, dramatic irony is significantly more fun for the reader than the characters in the moment.
Sidenote: Homecoming was bad, but not as bad as the night I spent cradling a hysterical Sarah in pitch darkness of a shelter while the Carcassone bombed us from orbit. Both are still definitely on my bottom ten. Ten months later when I found out her apartment building collapsed with her still inside, well, I had seen enough to be much more resilient about such things.