12-12-2007, 10:52 PM
... I always used to rag on the fighter jocks, it was what me ma and pa used to do, so I didn't know any better at the time. Grew up on a freighter, a rack for a bed and a cargo hold for a playground. Me ma was the pilot and me pa was the engineer. Aside from living in an oversized sardine can, and visiting half the ports in the galaxy before I was 10, I guess you could say it was a fairly normal child hood.
Time passed on, me folks, the grew old, as folks are want to do, and I always figured, that when they died, I'd inheret the freighter and carry on doing the only thing I really knew how. Problem was, turns out my folks still owed a bit on the old girl, to some loan shark on Manhattan.
I can't explain the feeling you get, sitting in your home, waiting for your loved ones to come, only to answer the door to a bobby lookin at ye likes there's a million and one things he'd rather be doing right now... apparently the fuzz caught the bloke with the knife in his hand, so to speak, and being young and full o' rage, I bloody well hired the first lawyer to put his card in my hand, I wanted the bastards to fry.
...long story short, the shark, he went away for an all to brief holiday, the lawyer... damn him, he took my families crate as his court fees... and me, I was left with enough of a settlement to buy a Starflier... a daft little box of a godamn fighter....
I kicked around Manhattan for a while after that, before I decided, well son, like it or not, you now own a fighter, couldn't fit a days meal in the cargo hold, so time to take out some fighter jock type jobs, how hard can it be? Ma used to nap while you flew through the trade lanes, this is your life...
... which was a little to accurate for me liking, I can tell you. See, first job I had, left me high tailing for my life, with the starflier in pieces and half a dozen (I swear) rogues chewing at my tail. But I learnt, I earned me some pennies, eventually made my way back to Bretonnia, technically I'm a citicen, though I've never really lived there.
Being a freight rat, it just seemed right to take jobs from the bobbies, lost count of the amount of burnt panels and dead mercs the pirates and assorted vermin have cost the family over the years. Which leads me to where I am now... the starflier is long gone, I actually have a crate I'm not embarrassed to land in, fat lot of good it's doing me.... I've never seen anything like it, one minute, I'm tangled up in a furball with a wing of Gaians, a little misunderstanding about some bloke I was taking back to leeds for the fuzz, next thing you know.. bang.. ion storm, 5 ships hanging almost apologetically in the asteroid field... cept those bloody smart arse Gaians, I'm sitting there, trying to coax my rig back into life... they... they popped their damn locks and bloody well boarded me.... took their nob.... how am I going to explain that to the cops back on leeds...
God, I wonder how those navy boys are going, there where a couple of them chasing some rogues in system just before the storm hit... you know, saw a poster back on London a few days back... said the navy was hiring, never really been patriotic, hard to when you're never in the same port for more than a week, but maybe I should roster up to work for our mum... at least I'd know where me next feed was coming from.
... gah, the power better come back on soon... I'm going bloody bonkers sitting here talking to myself... being a fighter jock aint so easy after all.
Time passed on, me folks, the grew old, as folks are want to do, and I always figured, that when they died, I'd inheret the freighter and carry on doing the only thing I really knew how. Problem was, turns out my folks still owed a bit on the old girl, to some loan shark on Manhattan.
I can't explain the feeling you get, sitting in your home, waiting for your loved ones to come, only to answer the door to a bobby lookin at ye likes there's a million and one things he'd rather be doing right now... apparently the fuzz caught the bloke with the knife in his hand, so to speak, and being young and full o' rage, I bloody well hired the first lawyer to put his card in my hand, I wanted the bastards to fry.
...long story short, the shark, he went away for an all to brief holiday, the lawyer... damn him, he took my families crate as his court fees... and me, I was left with enough of a settlement to buy a Starflier... a daft little box of a godamn fighter....
I kicked around Manhattan for a while after that, before I decided, well son, like it or not, you now own a fighter, couldn't fit a days meal in the cargo hold, so time to take out some fighter jock type jobs, how hard can it be? Ma used to nap while you flew through the trade lanes, this is your life...
... which was a little to accurate for me liking, I can tell you. See, first job I had, left me high tailing for my life, with the starflier in pieces and half a dozen (I swear) rogues chewing at my tail. But I learnt, I earned me some pennies, eventually made my way back to Bretonnia, technically I'm a citicen, though I've never really lived there.
Being a freight rat, it just seemed right to take jobs from the bobbies, lost count of the amount of burnt panels and dead mercs the pirates and assorted vermin have cost the family over the years. Which leads me to where I am now... the starflier is long gone, I actually have a crate I'm not embarrassed to land in, fat lot of good it's doing me.... I've never seen anything like it, one minute, I'm tangled up in a furball with a wing of Gaians, a little misunderstanding about some bloke I was taking back to leeds for the fuzz, next thing you know.. bang.. ion storm, 5 ships hanging almost apologetically in the asteroid field... cept those bloody smart arse Gaians, I'm sitting there, trying to coax my rig back into life... they... they popped their damn locks and bloody well boarded me.... took their nob.... how am I going to explain that to the cops back on leeds...
God, I wonder how those navy boys are going, there where a couple of them chasing some rogues in system just before the storm hit... you know, saw a poster back on London a few days back... said the navy was hiring, never really been patriotic, hard to when you're never in the same port for more than a week, but maybe I should roster up to work for our mum... at least I'd know where me next feed was coming from.
... gah, the power better come back on soon... I'm going bloody bonkers sitting here talking to myself... being a fighter jock aint so easy after all.