07-14-2009, 10:48 PM
Every once in a while, in just about any bar throughout the galaxy, you might stumble upon a man that perhaps not really catch your eye, but still somehow provokes some curiosity about his presence. 5 10 tall with a muscular built, wearing long, black boots, a pair of gray pants, and a long, dusty trench coat that reaches him to the middle of his thighs, under which he wear a white-yellowish shirt. He has shoulder-long black hair, greasy from periods of unknown length where it has not even felt the touch of water. On his wide chin grows a messy beard, simply there because he does not care enough to shave it, and on his upper lip a mustache that was once grown on purpose and neatly trimmed, but now is even more bushy and disorderly than the rest of his facial hair. You might notice the fact that, although he is standing at the bar and chatting with the bartender, discussing something you cannot hear, he only drinks water, and never alcohol of any kind. If you notice this, you might also notice the strange expression in that mans eyes a shadow behind the otherwise merry eyes and the light-blue irises.
And if you really notice all that, you might even be curious enough to ask the bartender who that man was, once he leaves, and depending on whom you ask, you will get a different answer. Some will let you know that the man is a Freelancer, taking just about any mission he is offered if it pays enough. Others will tell you that he is a man that strongly oppose all kinds of illegal actions for some reason. And others yet again can claim that he hates Rheinland above all else.
But only if you go to that very place, Rheinland, and visit the bar in the spaceport on the planet of New Berlin, the bartender there will be able to reveal the entire story about that man, and tell you just who he is. That his name is Jack Bleye but his contractors know him as Dark Jack.
In his early youth, Jack Bleye was raised to a mundane existence in Rheinland on New Berlin, where he was educated as a mere peasant to take care of the businesses that the common layman needed to take care of on the planet. His parents wanted nothing more from him than that he took over either of their businesses which they actually required of him. So in fact, Jacks only choice was between being the leader of the almost completely automated farming facility that his father ran, or taking over his mothers business as a combined spokesman of the local society on New Berlin and a traveling trader in her old, worn out Taiidan Freighter. But although there was plenty of pressure on Jack from both of his parents, since they both wanted him to take over for them in time, he lived a rather comfortable and quiet life on New Berlin for several years, despite the general bad condition the entire faction was in due to the war with Liberty. He was actually quite happy, and missed nothing, since his parents businesses supplied their family with plenty of wealth to make it through the day.
On when Jack was fifteen standard years old, things started going wrong for their family, though. It all started out in the most insignificant way, with his mother being offered an excellent job by Republican Shipping. She was to be paid handsomely for transporting a number of very valuable shield-generators to Koblenz in Frankfurt for use in the war. A relatively easy and short journey, the mother only hired a small escort of Freelancers for the trip which proved to be a fatal mistake. Just halfway out of the New Berlin System, her trade lane was disrupted by a group of Unioners. While they would undoubtedly usually have overlooked Jacks mothers small, worthless vessel with her insignificant escort, they had somehow gained knowledge about the shields she was transporting, and demanded her to hand them over. The Unioners disposed of the escort with ease, leaving the mother alone against their fighters. Of course, she had no choice but to hand over the goods, and in return, the Unioners let her escape after she had beamed the escape pods of the escorts aboard her ship to take them back to New Berlin.
That was how the chain of events that ruined Jacks quiet life began. When the mother returned, shocked but unharmed, Republican Shipping contacted them and required to know why their merchandise had not yet been delivered to the Rheinwehr, and when they reported the ill-fate of the journey, Jacks mothers employers demanded that she paid the cost of the wares she had lost. The amount of credits was so large that both of Jacks parents businesses were instantly threatened with bankruptcy. The mothers reputation was ruined with the loss of the valuable shipment, and even the locals in their area no longer trusted her as their spokesperson, so she and Jack had nothing to hope for other than helping the father on the farm, but their efforts made little difference in a business that required next to no manpower at all. They even had to sell much of their furniture and some of the fathers land just to avoid being in overwhelming debt enough so that they risked the Bounty Hunters coming after them, which they definitely did not want.
Once the Freelancers that had escorted the mother on her last flight had recovered after the lost battle, they sought her out to thank her and to offer her a bit of hope. The thing was, they had earlier worked for other people that were less than honest about what exactly they hid away in their cargo, and they suggested that they could set her up with one of their old employers, whom they knew now ran a private smuggling business through Rheinland. Seeing that they had no other choice, the mother agreed on the job, and once the Freelancers contacted the smuggler, she received her first job. Luckily, she did not encounter any problems, and after a couple of trips back and forth, she managed to earn quite a bit of credits for their family and saved them from having to sell their property. On her third trip, however, things got worse for them all than ever, as the mother, so familiar with the legal trading business that she did not give it any thought, did not even try to evade a RFP patrol, which scanned her cargo and found her goods. Desperate, the mother attempted to flee to save the familys best income, but the RFP dedicated to their duty to the last pursued her and destroyed her ship, shot her cargo to bits and beamed the mothers escape pod aboard their patrol. She was sentenced a heavy fine for her crimes and several years of prison for having tried to run from the RFP.
After paying the fine, Jack and his father were left with next to nothing, and they finally had to sell the fathers farm. The father, depressed by the mothers fate, quit working at all and picked up the habit of drinking all day. To support the fathers alcoholism and their very life, Jack had to work, so he headed to the New Berlin spaceport to work there, but with his training having only prepared him for large businesses, he had little success at smaller jobs. He tried working with the different dealers, washing, polishing and repairing ships and weapons all day, he tried helping the local commodities store, mostly with arranging the goods in the storage, and he even worked in the bar for a while, first as a waiter, later as a bouncer. But no matter what he worked as, his income was only barely enough to support his own and his fathers expenses.
On top of that, as the days passed, Jack would use every break sitting out in the spaceport, watching the vessels come and go through the docking rings above them. All the different ships and people he saw there, all the damages he saw on their ships he imagined what brought them here, through the endless reaches of space. He imagined what they had seen in their countless journeys, all the planets, bases and battleships they had visited, and all the alien systems they had explored. He imagined what exciting adventures they had had out there, fighting for their different causes, be it wealth, justice, power or something different. And finally, he imagined what it would be like if it had been himself that lived like that, traveling between the beautiful stars that he could only see at night and serving their causes. Several times was he close to using the little money he had saved to buy some small ship and journey out into the galaxy, but every time he almost had built up enough courage to do so, an escape pod would arrive in New Berlin, with the people inside more-or-less wounded, if they were even alive, and he would lose his determination and decide to stay where he was where it was safe.
Then, at the age of twenty-two, Jack experienced what had been mostly only considered a nightmare: the war reached their very home. In retaliation to a Rheinwehr-attack that had gone awfully wrong, and in which the Rheinwehr had lost one of their battleships, the Liberty Navy invaded Rheinland-space and even got as far as to New Berlin. While the inhabitants of the spaceport ran about in panic, Jack stood and watched in awe as the battle took place above them, and the Liberty Navy met the Rheinland defenses. It was a mighty battle that lit the entire sky as fireworks, but every now and then the people on the planet were reminded of the serious nature of the display above then, when stray bursts of lasers or plasma, or occasionally even a missile or torpedo, came their way and destroyed random structures, causing untold damages to both the city itself and the citizens.
But as epic as the battle was, eventually the Rheinlanders managed to force the Liberty Navy to retreat, and a new panic spread in New Berlin as the repairs begun and the medics rushed to take care of the wounded and dead, both on the ground and the ones that came in by escape pods. Jack helped the owner of the bar get an estimation of the damages done to the establishment, but luckily, it had only been slightly damaged and could easily be restored completely. Although the hectic work of rebuilding the spaceport continued around him, Jack returned to his work as a bouncer at the bar.
But the new calm did not last long, as just two days after the massive clash of the two fleets, Jack and his father received a troubling message from the RFP that would bring even further devastation to their lives. It seemed that, when the Liberty Navy had been retreating, the RFP had decided to try to block their path by sending all ships that had not already engaged combat to the Jump Gates and Holes. One of these ships had unfortunately been the Prison Liner that Jacks mother had been kept aboard. The spare RFP forces had been unable to hold back the Liberty gunships, which had blown their way through the barricade and escaped through a nearby Jump Hole. One of the vessels that had been lost in the barricades was the Prison Liner, and unfortunately, the pod containing Jacks mother had not been successfully retrieved, along with almost two-hundred other prisoners, since the RFP and Rheinwehr were too busy chasing the Liberty Navy away to care about rescuing prisoners. Jacks mother died a horrible death, trapped in space and he was crushed by the news.
But Jacks reaction was nothing compared to that of his fathers. Faced with the horrible truth that he had now truly lost everything, the father finally had a mental breakdown and was taken to an institution where they kept him and made Jack pay for the expenses of keeping him there which was quite a lot more than it had been to support the fathers drinking problem. And just when Jack thought it could not get any worse, the mental institution contacted him to tell him that his father had committed suicide.
As time passed, Jack developed a continuously growing hate for New Berlin, where he had only bad memories about his parents ill-fates and demises; for the Rheinwehr, who were the ones who were from Jacks point of view the ones responsible for the war with Liberty; for Republican Shipping, whom he blamed for having ended his mothers career; for the outlaws, who had his desperate mother fall into crime; for the RFP, whom he addressed the guilt of his mothers death, and through that his fathers as well; for the entire Rheinland republic and everything in it. For each passing day, Jacks desire to escape the place that he loathed so much grew, and each day, the furious glow in his eyes would become darker. Soon, people gave him the nickname Dark Jack Bleye because of his negative opinion on everything in Rheinland, and over time, it was shortened down to just Dark Jack.
Just a short time after his twenty-seventh birthday, the ticket that Jack counted on as his escape from this hellhole presented itself to him as a gift from God himself. It came in the form of an Officer from the Liberty Police Incorporated, who, under cover, had traveled to New Berlin in pursuit of a smuggler that the LPI had put a hefty bounty on, and which he planned to cash in. But when the Officer landed on New Berlin for supplies and went to the bar, he could not help it but to notice Jacks gloomy look in the eyes as he let the Officer in. When the Officer had asked the bartender, and he had explained, the Officer addressed Jack and offered to take Jack with him when he left New Berlin, back to Liberty space. He would even give Jack a small, cheap spaceship, the so-called Starflier, and pay for some basic weaponry to get him started all he required from Jack in return was his allegiance with Liberty. And since Liberty was the enemies of the republic that Jack hated so much, he was more than willing to oblige with those terms.
And so it began. After a long journey through space with the Officer, Jack was left in Pennsylvania, where the Officer proved true to his word and bought Jack an old Starflier and outfitted it with a pair of Justice Mk I cannons. Eager to start his new career as a traveler of space, Jack used the money he had saved up while working in the bar back in New Berlin to buy and install a Bluebell Chaingun onto the Starflier a cannon that clearly was a tad too much for the little ship, but it was just what Jack needed to exact some of his desire for justice.
Now fully equipped, Jack started his career as a civilian contractor, starting out with taking on a mission from the very faction that had saved him from his miserable life on New Berlin: the LPI. And the mission was even perfect for him: it was a simple matter of seeking out a group of Liberty Rogues, a group of pirates in Liberty space, and destroying them. Happy for a chance to work against the world of organized crime, which had played such a grand role in his familys fall, Jack set out and soon found the pirates. He also found, however, that the job as an adventurer was not as easy as he had first thought. Even though the mission he had picked was classified as being of the easiest available, Jack had to fight for his life, and was constantly reminded of his lacking skill as a pilot as the Rogues outnumbered and outmaneuvered him. But despite his cheap shield generator failing several times, and his nanobots having a hard time keeping up with repairing the damages caused on the hull, Jack managed to take out the Rogues one by one. The Bluebell proved a very powerful weapon, but the obvious issue revealed itself that it spent far too much energy for the little ship to support, decreasing its performance. Despite all of these horrible odds, Jack defeated the Rogues and was rewarded with more credits than he had earned in New Berlin over several years, for just a days work! Furthermore, as he beamed the wreckages of the Rogue ships aboard, as well as the escape pods of the pirates, Jack found that he could sell all of the wreckages and dropped goods for a good amount of money, and could cash in a hefty bounty on the captured pirates. And such a long, hectic career began.
Life was hard for Jack as a new pilot and a new resident in Liberty space, with no reputation with anyone and no knowledge of the local areas or customs, but as time passed by and Jack completed missions, he became more renowned for each passing day and grew to be an ever-improving pilot. Glorious was the day for Jack when he had finally saved up enough credits to replace the old Starflier, and thus Jack flew to the battleship Missouri, where he exchanged the nostalgic Starflier with a Defender, which he, having seen the dangers of space, wisely equipped with a set of Magma Hammers Mk I, an Advanced Stunpulse to take out the shields of enemy ships, which he had experienced to be quite an issue, and a Scorpion he had looted from a destroyed Xeno ship. He also found that the Defender had space to install a turret, and nervous about buying this new type of weapon chose a Magma Hammer turret to go along with his set of cannons.
And the days kept going, Jack kept becoming a better pilot, and soon he found himself allies with the LPI, Liberty Navy and several other lawful factions, as he fulfilled a number of missions for all of them. He became increasingly rich, and soon not even the Defender was enough to contain him anymore. Instead, he bought a new vessel, the Hawk, from a base he discovered during his adventures. For a long time, he was happy with this light, nimble and yet potent ship, and fought his way to glory in it. But soon, he grew bored with the missions he actually could handle, and decided that he needed more money and fast. To achieve this goal, he headed for Pittsburgh in New York and started mining scrap metal from the massive debris field around the planet and selling it for credits. This proved more profitable than random mission solving, and soon Jack actually found himself a rather wealthy person eventually, he even became a millionaire!
To celebrate his wealth, Jack headed straight to Manhattan, where he had earlier spied a glorious vessel the Kingfisher, a ship that seemed so great that it would remain out of his reach forever. But now that he had the money, Jack actually bought the fine spacecraft, and suddenly found himself confronted with the true meaning of the word raw power. Equipping the ship solely with Vengeance Mk IV and a single Mk V and Heavy Flashpoint, he went out to find new adventures. Drunk with his own power, he blasted through several missions for the legal factions, especially the LPI and the Liberty Navy. Rogues, Xenos, Outcasts and Lane Hackers fell like flies to his new craft with its new guns, and even the criminals Weapons Platforms and Outposts were destroyed with ease. Jack found his wealth growing faster than ever with less effort than ever.
But still, he continues to seek out new adventures in the vast reaches of Sirius. In honor of the group of Freelancers that once fought against the terrible odds to protect his mother, and who later presented them with the first hope of recovering after the mother had gotten robbed, Jack officially became a Freelancer himself. Seeking out riches, fame and glory, Jack now wish to extend his influence as far as possible. He is willing to work for just about any employer and fulfill just about any bounty contract offered to him, except that because of his bad memories of the criminals and their part in his mothers death, they would have to pay him significantly more to have him stray from the path of lawfulness.
He has already decided that Freelancing is not is permanent choice, but for the moment, that is what serves him the best. Until a better opportunity arises, Jack figured, this could at least earn him some easy credits.
And if you really notice all that, you might even be curious enough to ask the bartender who that man was, once he leaves, and depending on whom you ask, you will get a different answer. Some will let you know that the man is a Freelancer, taking just about any mission he is offered if it pays enough. Others will tell you that he is a man that strongly oppose all kinds of illegal actions for some reason. And others yet again can claim that he hates Rheinland above all else.
But only if you go to that very place, Rheinland, and visit the bar in the spaceport on the planet of New Berlin, the bartender there will be able to reveal the entire story about that man, and tell you just who he is. That his name is Jack Bleye but his contractors know him as Dark Jack.
In his early youth, Jack Bleye was raised to a mundane existence in Rheinland on New Berlin, where he was educated as a mere peasant to take care of the businesses that the common layman needed to take care of on the planet. His parents wanted nothing more from him than that he took over either of their businesses which they actually required of him. So in fact, Jacks only choice was between being the leader of the almost completely automated farming facility that his father ran, or taking over his mothers business as a combined spokesman of the local society on New Berlin and a traveling trader in her old, worn out Taiidan Freighter. But although there was plenty of pressure on Jack from both of his parents, since they both wanted him to take over for them in time, he lived a rather comfortable and quiet life on New Berlin for several years, despite the general bad condition the entire faction was in due to the war with Liberty. He was actually quite happy, and missed nothing, since his parents businesses supplied their family with plenty of wealth to make it through the day.
On when Jack was fifteen standard years old, things started going wrong for their family, though. It all started out in the most insignificant way, with his mother being offered an excellent job by Republican Shipping. She was to be paid handsomely for transporting a number of very valuable shield-generators to Koblenz in Frankfurt for use in the war. A relatively easy and short journey, the mother only hired a small escort of Freelancers for the trip which proved to be a fatal mistake. Just halfway out of the New Berlin System, her trade lane was disrupted by a group of Unioners. While they would undoubtedly usually have overlooked Jacks mothers small, worthless vessel with her insignificant escort, they had somehow gained knowledge about the shields she was transporting, and demanded her to hand them over. The Unioners disposed of the escort with ease, leaving the mother alone against their fighters. Of course, she had no choice but to hand over the goods, and in return, the Unioners let her escape after she had beamed the escape pods of the escorts aboard her ship to take them back to New Berlin.
That was how the chain of events that ruined Jacks quiet life began. When the mother returned, shocked but unharmed, Republican Shipping contacted them and required to know why their merchandise had not yet been delivered to the Rheinwehr, and when they reported the ill-fate of the journey, Jacks mothers employers demanded that she paid the cost of the wares she had lost. The amount of credits was so large that both of Jacks parents businesses were instantly threatened with bankruptcy. The mothers reputation was ruined with the loss of the valuable shipment, and even the locals in their area no longer trusted her as their spokesperson, so she and Jack had nothing to hope for other than helping the father on the farm, but their efforts made little difference in a business that required next to no manpower at all. They even had to sell much of their furniture and some of the fathers land just to avoid being in overwhelming debt enough so that they risked the Bounty Hunters coming after them, which they definitely did not want.
Once the Freelancers that had escorted the mother on her last flight had recovered after the lost battle, they sought her out to thank her and to offer her a bit of hope. The thing was, they had earlier worked for other people that were less than honest about what exactly they hid away in their cargo, and they suggested that they could set her up with one of their old employers, whom they knew now ran a private smuggling business through Rheinland. Seeing that they had no other choice, the mother agreed on the job, and once the Freelancers contacted the smuggler, she received her first job. Luckily, she did not encounter any problems, and after a couple of trips back and forth, she managed to earn quite a bit of credits for their family and saved them from having to sell their property. On her third trip, however, things got worse for them all than ever, as the mother, so familiar with the legal trading business that she did not give it any thought, did not even try to evade a RFP patrol, which scanned her cargo and found her goods. Desperate, the mother attempted to flee to save the familys best income, but the RFP dedicated to their duty to the last pursued her and destroyed her ship, shot her cargo to bits and beamed the mothers escape pod aboard their patrol. She was sentenced a heavy fine for her crimes and several years of prison for having tried to run from the RFP.
After paying the fine, Jack and his father were left with next to nothing, and they finally had to sell the fathers farm. The father, depressed by the mothers fate, quit working at all and picked up the habit of drinking all day. To support the fathers alcoholism and their very life, Jack had to work, so he headed to the New Berlin spaceport to work there, but with his training having only prepared him for large businesses, he had little success at smaller jobs. He tried working with the different dealers, washing, polishing and repairing ships and weapons all day, he tried helping the local commodities store, mostly with arranging the goods in the storage, and he even worked in the bar for a while, first as a waiter, later as a bouncer. But no matter what he worked as, his income was only barely enough to support his own and his fathers expenses.
On top of that, as the days passed, Jack would use every break sitting out in the spaceport, watching the vessels come and go through the docking rings above them. All the different ships and people he saw there, all the damages he saw on their ships he imagined what brought them here, through the endless reaches of space. He imagined what they had seen in their countless journeys, all the planets, bases and battleships they had visited, and all the alien systems they had explored. He imagined what exciting adventures they had had out there, fighting for their different causes, be it wealth, justice, power or something different. And finally, he imagined what it would be like if it had been himself that lived like that, traveling between the beautiful stars that he could only see at night and serving their causes. Several times was he close to using the little money he had saved to buy some small ship and journey out into the galaxy, but every time he almost had built up enough courage to do so, an escape pod would arrive in New Berlin, with the people inside more-or-less wounded, if they were even alive, and he would lose his determination and decide to stay where he was where it was safe.
Then, at the age of twenty-two, Jack experienced what had been mostly only considered a nightmare: the war reached their very home. In retaliation to a Rheinwehr-attack that had gone awfully wrong, and in which the Rheinwehr had lost one of their battleships, the Liberty Navy invaded Rheinland-space and even got as far as to New Berlin. While the inhabitants of the spaceport ran about in panic, Jack stood and watched in awe as the battle took place above them, and the Liberty Navy met the Rheinland defenses. It was a mighty battle that lit the entire sky as fireworks, but every now and then the people on the planet were reminded of the serious nature of the display above then, when stray bursts of lasers or plasma, or occasionally even a missile or torpedo, came their way and destroyed random structures, causing untold damages to both the city itself and the citizens.
But as epic as the battle was, eventually the Rheinlanders managed to force the Liberty Navy to retreat, and a new panic spread in New Berlin as the repairs begun and the medics rushed to take care of the wounded and dead, both on the ground and the ones that came in by escape pods. Jack helped the owner of the bar get an estimation of the damages done to the establishment, but luckily, it had only been slightly damaged and could easily be restored completely. Although the hectic work of rebuilding the spaceport continued around him, Jack returned to his work as a bouncer at the bar.
But the new calm did not last long, as just two days after the massive clash of the two fleets, Jack and his father received a troubling message from the RFP that would bring even further devastation to their lives. It seemed that, when the Liberty Navy had been retreating, the RFP had decided to try to block their path by sending all ships that had not already engaged combat to the Jump Gates and Holes. One of these ships had unfortunately been the Prison Liner that Jacks mother had been kept aboard. The spare RFP forces had been unable to hold back the Liberty gunships, which had blown their way through the barricade and escaped through a nearby Jump Hole. One of the vessels that had been lost in the barricades was the Prison Liner, and unfortunately, the pod containing Jacks mother had not been successfully retrieved, along with almost two-hundred other prisoners, since the RFP and Rheinwehr were too busy chasing the Liberty Navy away to care about rescuing prisoners. Jacks mother died a horrible death, trapped in space and he was crushed by the news.
But Jacks reaction was nothing compared to that of his fathers. Faced with the horrible truth that he had now truly lost everything, the father finally had a mental breakdown and was taken to an institution where they kept him and made Jack pay for the expenses of keeping him there which was quite a lot more than it had been to support the fathers drinking problem. And just when Jack thought it could not get any worse, the mental institution contacted him to tell him that his father had committed suicide.
As time passed, Jack developed a continuously growing hate for New Berlin, where he had only bad memories about his parents ill-fates and demises; for the Rheinwehr, who were the ones who were from Jacks point of view the ones responsible for the war with Liberty; for Republican Shipping, whom he blamed for having ended his mothers career; for the outlaws, who had his desperate mother fall into crime; for the RFP, whom he addressed the guilt of his mothers death, and through that his fathers as well; for the entire Rheinland republic and everything in it. For each passing day, Jacks desire to escape the place that he loathed so much grew, and each day, the furious glow in his eyes would become darker. Soon, people gave him the nickname Dark Jack Bleye because of his negative opinion on everything in Rheinland, and over time, it was shortened down to just Dark Jack.
Just a short time after his twenty-seventh birthday, the ticket that Jack counted on as his escape from this hellhole presented itself to him as a gift from God himself. It came in the form of an Officer from the Liberty Police Incorporated, who, under cover, had traveled to New Berlin in pursuit of a smuggler that the LPI had put a hefty bounty on, and which he planned to cash in. But when the Officer landed on New Berlin for supplies and went to the bar, he could not help it but to notice Jacks gloomy look in the eyes as he let the Officer in. When the Officer had asked the bartender, and he had explained, the Officer addressed Jack and offered to take Jack with him when he left New Berlin, back to Liberty space. He would even give Jack a small, cheap spaceship, the so-called Starflier, and pay for some basic weaponry to get him started all he required from Jack in return was his allegiance with Liberty. And since Liberty was the enemies of the republic that Jack hated so much, he was more than willing to oblige with those terms.
And so it began. After a long journey through space with the Officer, Jack was left in Pennsylvania, where the Officer proved true to his word and bought Jack an old Starflier and outfitted it with a pair of Justice Mk I cannons. Eager to start his new career as a traveler of space, Jack used the money he had saved up while working in the bar back in New Berlin to buy and install a Bluebell Chaingun onto the Starflier a cannon that clearly was a tad too much for the little ship, but it was just what Jack needed to exact some of his desire for justice.
Now fully equipped, Jack started his career as a civilian contractor, starting out with taking on a mission from the very faction that had saved him from his miserable life on New Berlin: the LPI. And the mission was even perfect for him: it was a simple matter of seeking out a group of Liberty Rogues, a group of pirates in Liberty space, and destroying them. Happy for a chance to work against the world of organized crime, which had played such a grand role in his familys fall, Jack set out and soon found the pirates. He also found, however, that the job as an adventurer was not as easy as he had first thought. Even though the mission he had picked was classified as being of the easiest available, Jack had to fight for his life, and was constantly reminded of his lacking skill as a pilot as the Rogues outnumbered and outmaneuvered him. But despite his cheap shield generator failing several times, and his nanobots having a hard time keeping up with repairing the damages caused on the hull, Jack managed to take out the Rogues one by one. The Bluebell proved a very powerful weapon, but the obvious issue revealed itself that it spent far too much energy for the little ship to support, decreasing its performance. Despite all of these horrible odds, Jack defeated the Rogues and was rewarded with more credits than he had earned in New Berlin over several years, for just a days work! Furthermore, as he beamed the wreckages of the Rogue ships aboard, as well as the escape pods of the pirates, Jack found that he could sell all of the wreckages and dropped goods for a good amount of money, and could cash in a hefty bounty on the captured pirates. And such a long, hectic career began.
Life was hard for Jack as a new pilot and a new resident in Liberty space, with no reputation with anyone and no knowledge of the local areas or customs, but as time passed by and Jack completed missions, he became more renowned for each passing day and grew to be an ever-improving pilot. Glorious was the day for Jack when he had finally saved up enough credits to replace the old Starflier, and thus Jack flew to the battleship Missouri, where he exchanged the nostalgic Starflier with a Defender, which he, having seen the dangers of space, wisely equipped with a set of Magma Hammers Mk I, an Advanced Stunpulse to take out the shields of enemy ships, which he had experienced to be quite an issue, and a Scorpion he had looted from a destroyed Xeno ship. He also found that the Defender had space to install a turret, and nervous about buying this new type of weapon chose a Magma Hammer turret to go along with his set of cannons.
And the days kept going, Jack kept becoming a better pilot, and soon he found himself allies with the LPI, Liberty Navy and several other lawful factions, as he fulfilled a number of missions for all of them. He became increasingly rich, and soon not even the Defender was enough to contain him anymore. Instead, he bought a new vessel, the Hawk, from a base he discovered during his adventures. For a long time, he was happy with this light, nimble and yet potent ship, and fought his way to glory in it. But soon, he grew bored with the missions he actually could handle, and decided that he needed more money and fast. To achieve this goal, he headed for Pittsburgh in New York and started mining scrap metal from the massive debris field around the planet and selling it for credits. This proved more profitable than random mission solving, and soon Jack actually found himself a rather wealthy person eventually, he even became a millionaire!
To celebrate his wealth, Jack headed straight to Manhattan, where he had earlier spied a glorious vessel the Kingfisher, a ship that seemed so great that it would remain out of his reach forever. But now that he had the money, Jack actually bought the fine spacecraft, and suddenly found himself confronted with the true meaning of the word raw power. Equipping the ship solely with Vengeance Mk IV and a single Mk V and Heavy Flashpoint, he went out to find new adventures. Drunk with his own power, he blasted through several missions for the legal factions, especially the LPI and the Liberty Navy. Rogues, Xenos, Outcasts and Lane Hackers fell like flies to his new craft with its new guns, and even the criminals Weapons Platforms and Outposts were destroyed with ease. Jack found his wealth growing faster than ever with less effort than ever.
But still, he continues to seek out new adventures in the vast reaches of Sirius. In honor of the group of Freelancers that once fought against the terrible odds to protect his mother, and who later presented them with the first hope of recovering after the mother had gotten robbed, Jack officially became a Freelancer himself. Seeking out riches, fame and glory, Jack now wish to extend his influence as far as possible. He is willing to work for just about any employer and fulfill just about any bounty contract offered to him, except that because of his bad memories of the criminals and their part in his mothers death, they would have to pay him significantly more to have him stray from the path of lawfulness.
He has already decided that Freelancing is not is permanent choice, but for the moment, that is what serves him the best. Until a better opportunity arises, Jack figured, this could at least earn him some easy credits.