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+--- Thread: The rest of nothing (/showthread.php?tid=111255)
The rest of nothing - Kampanom - 02-01-2014
"The GRN finds New London".
The headlines.
"Gallia attacks Southampton".
The subtitle.
Thomas sat on the chair, unmoving, looking at the last number of the Times, at its front page. No, not looking at it; staring at it. Staring at the front page.
He was there when it happened. It probably was a raiding force, but it took the BAF completely unprepared. Another attack like this, and his own country would've fallen. Eight hundred years of history...gone.
The libertonians were nowhere to be seen, his country stood alone and he wasn't even serving it. Flying around between the Tau systems and Rheinland, safely (or almost safely) hauling cargo and making money, instead of joining the armed forces, he felt like he deserved something worse than being stripped of his citizenship, in times like these.
But there was a question in his mind: "how much would have I lasted there? And how many frogs would have I clipped before going out of this world for good?"
He replied to himself, with a low tone of voice:
"Not enough..."
That calmed him, a bit.
There was rage and fear in his head. Losing the citizenship of his country while still being able to live within its borders, talking with its people, interacting with that country, was something, but having it see annexed
by an enemy whose sole reason of war was conquest was something else.
He muttered a number:
"178".
God, the floating district! His new home!
Were the people of 178 planning to move somewhere else after what happened? Or would they show themselves stupid but defiant (or defiant but stupid) in front of the danger of death?
The Màrine Royale wouldn't have spared the giant ship orbiting New London. They would've shot it down, with its thousands of people inside, and eventually claimed it as a side casualty.
He heard rumors of similar "performances" from the refugees from Leeds he used to smuggle to Cambridge; torture, arbitrary executions, entire cities on Leeds razed...
Thinking about the refugees made Thomas feel somehow better. Smuggling civilian refugees out of a war zone. Civilian refugees from his country. Maybe he wasn't entirely useless...Maybe he still had a way to serve
his country, his people. After all, if he wasn't to die in a Templar or as a bretonian marine during a gallic boarding, he could've died from gallic fire...in Leeds' orbit, his ship, himself and his crew teared apart by those
snail-eaters on the bridges of battleships, cruisers and gunboats. Hopefully, with no refugees on board, his lifter friends being on Leeds to pick them.
Ok, enough about Leeds, focus Thomas!
178, he had to discuss about a possible evacuation of the floating district to...somewhere else, to Omega 3 or Cambridge, just in case things go horribly, horribly wrong in New London. After all, if he couldn't protect
the lives of billions, he could at least try to protect the lives of those in his situation...
RE: The rest of nothing - Kampanom - 04-11-2014
A couple of months passed since he last heard from the syndicate. He tried to contact his associates in it, but to no avail. It was as if they simply vanished. The floating district, 178, was still orbiting New London, and a part of his family was still there. Gauls didn't attack New London, but he was still afraid of that. There has been calm in the last two months, too much of it. And calm comes before the storm. A storm may have been on the way, and he felt the need to take precautions.
Still, the excessive calm was not the only source of his anxiety. He used to have a semi-regular job, but now he didn't even have that. He, his ship and the sorry excuse for a crew he had were living off of occasional deals, and the money gained from them was barely enough to keep themselves from starving and the Hirpinia from falling to pieces.
To make things worse, creditors.
The Hirpinia, his Firefly-class transport, was bought with money loaned from people whose friendships were dubious at best. Crooks, essentially. The payments were supposed to be regular, but with his struggling situation, they became less and less frequent. The creditors were growing impatient, and God-knew what would have they done to him or his ship to get back the money with the interests.
They had contacts and agents everywhere in Bretonia and in the Omegas. They could've blown up the ship when he and his crew were away from it. And his family...they knew where they lived.
His life has been one big mistake, from his refusal to serve in the BAF to having wanted to go out there, in space, seeking who-knows what fortune when he only found misery.
He looked on his table. He saw a gun, an old fashioned one, it used lead bullets, instead of lasers or plasma. Besides it, ten bullets. He picked the gun, loaded it and put it in his mouth.
A few seconds passed, then he put the gun back on the table. What a little shit he was... He couldn't even pull a trigger...
His thoughts returned back to the debts and his family.
Heinrich came in his room.
"Hey boss...wanna help me clean the ship?" he said with a typical Rheinlander accent. "Me, Detfri and Robert need two more hands" he continued.
"Jesus Christ, Heinrich... Ok, where did you start?" Thomas said. His tone was annoyed, but he was still content with that request. Anything to not think of his troubles.
"We're cleaning the cargo bay".
"Ok, I'm coming...".
He rose from the chair, got out of the poorly-lit room, took a rag and headed for the cargo bay.
30 minutes later
Thomas was still cleaning. Detfri, Robert and Heinrich were with him, doing the same.
"Did you hear the last one?" Heinrich casually asked.
"Who died?" asked Thomas, chuckling.
"Noone died, you moron. I'm talking of home. Change of Chancellor" answered Heinrich.
"And what should we do about it?" asked Robert, annoyed.
"I'm just trying to start a conversation, gee..." replied Heinrich.
"Noone here follows politics, pal..." said Detfri with an annoyed and semi-distracted tone. She didn't even divert her look from the floor she was cleaning.
"She's right, you know. Noone here gives a taff about that bunch of crooks, anyway... Why do you Rheinlanders care so much about politics?" Robert said. "You're a really boring people..." he finished.
Heinrich didn't know what to say.
Thomas intervened. "We should give a taff, actually. For all we care, politics decides who can enter a country and who doesn't. And we need to be everywhere, lest we start begging for food and fuel".
"What did he say?" Thomas added.
"Same stuff as always... 'We'll make Rheinland a great House again' etcetera. Generally, his opening discourse was quite plain".
They talked about Rheinland and its situation for several minutes, Detfri and Robert mute. When the conversation reached the subject of the Sigmas, Detfri casually intervened. "The best place, where there are no Houses...".
"There's the GMG..." Heinrich said.
"Not a House, and surely not a source of authority worthy of this name". Detfri replied.
"Woah, the anarchist..." Thomas said, sarcastically.
He then stopped cleaning, and his brain started to process the informations collected in the last hour.
"Captain?" Robert asked.
Detfri and Heinrich stopped cleaning and joined Robert. "Thomas, are you alright?" "O-ooh?".
This continued for a few seconds, then Thomas said "You know what? Fuck Bretonia".
"Why? What's wrong?" asked Heinrich.
"I'm saying we're leaving" answered Thomas.
"Leaving what?"
"Bretonia".
The four stayed silent for a few seconds, then Robert asked "Why?". He liked the idea, but he wanted to see if the captain had his reasons, hence the question.
"Debts, war, bad friends..." Thomas answered.
"And? Do you think you can escape debts and bad friends? I'll concede on the war, though" said Heinrich.
"For Christ's sake, Henry... Just make a new account on the Neural Net and fill in false informations, and transfer on the new account whatever money you have there. As for friends, we can't have any. The syndicate, they were our friends, God knows what happened to them, did they dump us or what?" said Thomas. He then added "I can't rely on anyone... I can barely rely on you girls and I wanted to rely on foreigners... I was a damn idiot...".
"Making friends implies relying on them, we relied on our syndicate friends... I think I'm following you there. As for YOUR debts that YOU're dumping on us, we'd all need to eliminate our traces. False Neural Net accounts, false names... heck we'd even need to rename the ship, probably" Robert said. He passed over the insult he received.
"Changing the ID from the Bretonian Transport Registry should do fine. But we need a hacker for that, and hackers cost money" said Thomas.
"...which we don't have" finished Robert.
"Getting out of Bretonia implies taking residence...elsewhere. Or... not getting residence at all... We may as well sell our properties there and use some of the money to hire a hacker. Just giving a hint, of course, I'm not forcing you to do that". Proposing to his crew to sell their properties just so that they could follow HIM may have been a quite bad idea. Surely an absurdity to their eyes. The replies he heard instead surprised him.
"That isn't a bad idea. I have noone on New London, anyway, and who knows how much will that system hold...". The first surprise came from Robert.
"I don't even live on New London, I'm from Canaria. And it's badder than you can imagine". Second surprise. Detfri.
"What's wrong with Canaria?"
"Pirates. Aaand the commies, I don't know who's worse"
"Do you have family there?"
"Just ma and pa. They're old and the pensions they get are enough to keep living, apparently"
"Do they need you for anything?"
"Pensions are all they need. And they never really liked me"
"Why?"
"Not the rich girly girl they wanted"
They chuckled.
"Ok, Detfri doesn't likes Canaria, Robert is shit scared of New London". Everything was going well. Thomas then asked. "Heinrich?"
"I'm not leaving my residence in Rheinland just for you, man".
"Heinrich, you already left your residence in Rheinland. Do you want to know which is your country now? The taffin' Hirpinia, that's your country. And I'm the taffin' king, and these people there are your connationals"
"They're no connationals, they're just two idiots I have to be with if I want to earn my daily bread"
"Jesus Christ, Heinrich, did you see anything else besides the Hirpinia in these months? Because the Hirpinia, Heinrich, that is your home now. You live here, and if you want to keep working here, you will continue to live here. Else we throw you to the engines, they'll mince you to pieces so small that even ants will consider them the tiniest crumbs"
"You have a point..."
"The engine room always has a point"
"Not that, the house thing. This pile of junk is my home and, as much as I hate all of you people, I'm staying there. I have nowhere else to go"
"Glad you're with me" Thomas was satisfied. He and his crews were about to become homeless vagabonds and nomads, but with the best tents one can have. He only had to convince the rest of the crew now.
"Ok. Last decision; when we'll have finished cleaning this, we'll have a 'Ouch, My Balls' Marathon"
"Love that show..." Said Detfri.