Name: Jason Nathan Booth
Sex: Male
Date Of Birth: 793 AS
Place of Birth: Manhattan, New York system - Liberty House Space
Qualifications:
* Sharpshooter license
* Fighter pilot
* Bomber pilot
**Deep-space engagement
**Black Ops
Military History:
* 6 years in the navy
* 4 years in the 75th Ranger Regiment as sniper
Background:
Born in Manhattan, father served in the Nomad War as a fighter pilot. Teenage years spent accompanying his father's former Navy friends -- retired and working for the LPI at the time -- unauthorized in patrols.
Joined the Navy at 18 years-old, graduated West Point Academy at the top ten of his year. Assigned to Battleship Missouri as a fighter pilot on Beta-11 Guardian wing.
Left Beta-11 and joined the 75th Ranger Regiment StrikeTeam at recommendation of his training sargents. Proved skills suited for a sharpshooter position, joined the 75th Ranger Regiment as a sniper 6 months after entering BS Missouri service.
During operations he flied an Avenger, designation code 12-41. In missions involving transports cleanthrough, hostages rescues or capture of enemy's ships, the team provided support in space and then reassembled at the battleship in one single shuttle to board the enemy vessel.
Given the Rangers nature they were constantly reassigned to more heavy combat locales, most of Booth's time in the Missouri was not actually in the Missouri. Acquired experience with an Upholder bomber during the <REDACTED> mission at Hudson to destroy a under-construction Rogue instalation. Upholders ships became permanent part of the squad after it.
Served in Liberty space, was shipped to the Omicrons, to the Omegas, to the Eta's in covert operations, including a Recon scan of Outcasts bases at Omicron Alpha. Much of the data now avaiable of Planet Malta and Valleta shipyard came from those secret operations.
When the war with Rheinland escalated, he got assigned back to the Missouri. In the earlier months of war Booth assisted in the boarding of Rheinland vessels in an effort to capture them intact so our scientists could analyze them. With the navy focused on holding it's borders, the Liberty inner space became less of a priority. Left navy service a year later due to feeling he "served his time" and went to "protect Liberty, focusing on it's citizens instead of it's territory."
Six years on the navy, almost five as a sniper, never ceased from being a pilot. The Rangers were a elite special ops divison, not a base garrison -- only joined the boarding parties when the situation was too dangerous for regular strike teams to handle.
LSF service:
Passed LSF tests with maximum approval
Sharpshooter qualifications
Unmatched leaderships skills
RDA Clearance and Scientific Expertise
Commanded construction of the DFB Hoover Station
Oversaw construction of the Freedom Carrier
Operations: <CLASSIFIED>
Patrols: <CLASSIFIED>
Promotions:
Achieved rank of Special Agent in record time
Became Director of Homeland Security during LSF reestructuration <CLASSIFIED>
LSF has been my home. Still, things weren't right. Most of the directors felt like they had a pole up their ass, and I was getting tired of the lonely patrols while the rest of the agency was supposedly involved in more "important threats" that always boiled down to reunions and desk reports. As much as I loved the Liberty Security Force, I felt it was time to walk away.
I entered Wolfe's office unannounced two years ago and I dropped my fighter clearance ID on her desk -- the glare in my eyes kept her against all odds quiet. I turned and walked away feeling the burn of her stare on the back of my head, but she never said a word. I left the agency, hopped on my Raven's Claw and set course for the Freeport 4. An LSF agent learns to keep his possessions close by, since we never know if we'll have a chance to go home. In fact, home becomes whenever you and your ship are. So as I left Ellesmere behind, all I had inside my ship was a clothing briefcase, my pistol, and my now-cancelled-and-probably-hated LSF ID.
3 months later, I was hoping from Freeport to Freeport, taking jobs wherever I could -- Kusari to Omega, Bretonia to Rheinland -- whenever the money to keep me flying sent me, there I was.
Until one of my jobs took me one system too close to Nomad infested territory, and my ship got pretty banged up. I ended up with a broken wing and busted transceiver in Freeport 11.
Freeport 11, as every outpost of Zoner build, had a biodome. The green and lakes always relaxed me, so I went lay down beneath a tree to relax while I waited for the mechanics to call my intercom about my lovely crippled Raven's Claw. I remember falling sleep to the sound of rushing water... and waking up to a brunette woman officer standing over me sitting over a rock.
"Booth, isn't it?" she said in a british accent.
My hand dropped to the butt of my pistol as I looked her from top to bottom. Pretty hot officer, too.
"Maybe. Who wants to know?"
"Relax" she said, looking to my gun "you have nothing to fear from me. I am Sarah Parker, and we have kept an eye on you since you left the LSF with so much... subtlety."
I sat up straight against the tree, my hand still near the butt of my pistol. "'We' being...?"
She laughed. Sexy laugh, too. "The Order, of course."
I unholstered my gun and pointed at her chest. Great chest, by the way. "You wanna get moving, sweetheart. Now."
She stared at me and got up. "Your reputation precedes you, Booth -- rightly so, it seems. I heard your ship got pretty banged up, and we know that you have been playing Freelancer for the past few months. I have a proposition for you."
"I want nothing from the Order or any other organization, I am fine on my own."
"Of course you are" she said with a nod "but your talents would be... wasted, if you kept your course of action." I gestured with my gun for her to walk away. "Please give me a chance, would you?" she said coily "Meet me in dock 7 in 20 minutes." She turned and walked away -- seeing her from this angle was as good as the others.
I got up, my nap completely ruined, and went to the shipyard facilities to check on my Raven's Claw. Turns out those damn jellies had knocked out a couple of primary coils when they blasted my wing away, and this completely overloaded the main engine into a feedback loop -- I was lucky the ship didn't went out in a blaze of glory before I docked. Things can't ever go smooth, can they? I looked at the chrono. 15 minutes since I saw the hottie in the biodome. I turned and ran for dock 7.
As I got near dock bay 7, I saw 4 guards with rifles inside it near the access ramp of a Hathor cruiser and immediately pushed myself flat against the wall, unholstering my pistol. "Relax, Booth, they're not here for you." came the call from inside the bay. I peeked over the door, and as I saw them go up the Hathor's walkway, I carefully entered the dock, weapon still in hand.
"You're a suspicious little bird, aren't you?" she said to me with a smile.
"I was LSF. Suspicion is in my nature." I said, holstering my gun. "So, what do you want with me?"
The dock bay was large, but the Hathor was almost larger -- usually requiring mooring points, leave it to the Zoners to fit a ship this big inside an station. Y gestured to some nearby cargo crates on the floor by one of the landing gears and picked a datapad that was on top of them.
"I know you have problems with authority, and I also know you left LSF because you believed they weren't doing the right thing. We agree with you, and some in High Command believe you would be a nice asset to our organization." I almost turned away at the mention of "asset", but her blue eyes kept me in place. That, and the fact she quickly corrected herself "Agent, I mean. Sorry."
I nodded and took the datapad, reading the screen and weighting my options. I had a ship who wasn't going to fly anytime soon, and my future was darker than the space between the stars outside. In front of me I had a gorgeous woman who clearly was warmed up to me, and the chance to do something right again. It wasn't a hard decision.
I turned and walked away.
Hours later, as I was getting myself drunk on whiskey on the bar at deck 18, I saw the Hathor leave the station and head for open space. I don't believe in coincidences, but I don't believe in God either. That's why I don't fully get what happened even today. Three Nomad Archon bombers chasing a badly damaged Border World Transport came out of nowhere, their mad fire directed at the transport hitting the station's shields by accident. The poor transport had more fire on it's hull than a Sunday barbecue, but it was holding itself pretty well and gunning for Freeport 11. I wasn't surprised when I saw the Order gunboat turn and engage the Nomad bombers. I *was* surprised when two Mindnodes guboats and a dozen Voidrunners appeared from the opposite vector and opened fire on the gunboat.
The situation was getting out of control, and even Freeport 11 guns weren't helping much, most being too far away to engage. Now, I ain't stupid, but I ain't a coward either -- and right there, seeing the Hathor being pounded by all sides even while it destroyed a bomber and a Voidrunner was tearing a pretty big hole in my "I don't give a damn" attittude. Turns out the hero -- or the jerk, depending on your point of view -- won: I just couldn't let a pretty girl die.
I ran to the shipyard and ordered the doors opened. As one of the mechanics yelled I had no authority, I pulled my gun on him and threatened to open a new breathing hole in his face. The door was open 5 seconds later.
I jumped into my Claw and activated the cruise engines -- I blasted out of the shipyard taking half the diagnostic machines connected to my ship with me and aimed my ship straight into the path of a strafing gunboat. As the console indicated the engine feedback loop and the energy lines started to explode, I ejected and watched as my ship rammed the Nomad gunship -- neither of them would be flying again. Two seconds later, they exploded.
As I drifted through space, trying to direct myself toward something without getting hit by the stray laser fires coming from everyone and everywhere, I started thinking about how stupid I was. As I noticed how the little fighters became disoriented due to the loss of the Mindnode gunboat and remembered I had my gun in my EVA suit, I got stupider -- I drew my pistol and began shooting at the little fighters flying around. Then I saw in the reflex of my helmet something that at the best of circumstances, could be called a disaster: the other gunboat was flying straight at me.
If I had a ship, with armor, shields and at least a gun, I wouldn't be worried -- but with the only thing between me and a torpedo being a thin EVA suit, I was understandably energetic. I turned around began shooting at the Nomad gunboat, since it was the only thing I could do. I saw the veil of the ship absorb every impact without problem as the fat ship grew closer and closer. As I braced myself for the impact, my mind was flooded with telepathic jelly thoughts, and I flinched at the intrusiveness of it. My mind pounding, the ship getting closer, I curled into a ball holding my head... just as a energy blast sizzled by the place where my head had been a split second before. But it was a near-miss, and the blast grazed my suit, instantly vaporizing my life-support backpack. As I struggled with the airlock in vain, trying to keep the air inside the suit, I remember a huge shadow approaching me, touching me as I died. As I began to black out, that black was indeed darker than the space between the stars.
I woke up with a jolt, grabbing a handgun that wasn't there in a leg holster that wasn't there. As hands pushed me back into bed, I realized I was in a hospital gown, and wasn't dead. I slowly composed myself, just as Sarah walked into the room.
"Leave us" she said to the nurses around holding me, and they did. Good riddance -- they was male nurses, not the foxy female kind. Waste of a perfect good nurse title, if you ask me. She got closer to me, and looked me up and down in my handsome hospital gown. "I'm not waking up so you can see my butt" I told her. She smiled and said "That was very brave what you did. Or stupid." She looked into my eyes. "Probably stupid. And a really bad idea."
I nodded "Hang around; I'm full of bad ideas." I laid my head down on the pillow as she pulled a chair and sat by my bed.
"Still", she said pulling a datapad "you saved the crew of that Hathor. We can't overlook that."
"Big organizations are great at overlooking things."
"Still, we try to make the right thing. And we still think you are it."
I opened my eyes and looked at her "Do I have a choice?"
She handed me a datapad with my lifetime file on it and a signing area. I signed it.
The question had been rhetorical, anyway.
As Sarah left my room, she put her hands on my arm and wished me to be well soon. I fell asleep soon after, and a week later I was in the simulator area of Meskhenet Station, my training beginning in earnest. Due to the similarities between the early tech tree of Liberty and Order design, I was able to learn the details pretty quickly, and less than two weeks later I was flying my first patrol with a rookie squad. Red 5, was my call sign. Don't know why, but I felt like I had heard that somewhere and it had been important.
Over the next months, me and Sarah grew close -- me being a handsome, charming and smart ex-LSF agent and she being a wonderfully well humored and open Order officer, we hit off pretty well from the start, and saving her life did help matters greatly. I became squad leader and she became a Major. Too bad for both of us that we were both so competent -- a year later, I was promoted to a position in the Inquisitor and she was sent to a critical spot in Evora Shipyard. We tried to maintain contact, but the increased Nomad incursions kept me busy with missions and the demands of the main Order shipyard kept her on her feet too. We eventually lost contact, and we would never see each other again.
In the Inquisitor, I fell in love with a pretty little fighter called the Bastet, which was reserved for elite pilots due to being a prototype. I was in quick line to succession and I don't doubt that I would eventually rightfully gain one -- but as I said earlier, things never go smooth.
Two days into a extended tech mission in O-74, I heard a rumor on the officer's table that the increased Nomad attacks were suspected to be something more, maybe involving a mass invasion of multiple systems. My instinct flashed, and I couldn't sleep that night. Over the next week, I thought about the rumor over and over, connecting the dots, and after failing to obtain information from a very uptight research officer, I decided to find out on my own.
Order ships are very secure, to the point of being paranoid. As such, they don't have the normal "ship night" schedule most ships operate on, instead relying on a shift rotation of crew. Luckily, the change of shifts is inherently a little chaotic as always, so I used one of those as distraction and headed to one of the research laboratory's console. As the last researcher of the shift left the room, I locked the door to the crew quarters behind me and begun hacking into the operational data of the Inquisitor. Being an LSF agent, I knew what to look for, and Sarah had taught me a little about the Order's top secret identification systems -- I was able to find some reports on the increased attacks but the file I was locked. I copied it to my datapad and left through the opposite door of the lab while security tried to override the one I had locked.
Going back to my quarters, I sat down in my console and began running an decryption algorithm on the file, then went to bed. I dreamed once more about Sarah that night, and woke up to 10% of the file decrypted and I was feeling terrible. Sarah really hit me harder than I could have ever expected. As I read the unlocked paragraphs of the file, the sinking feeling in my gut sank lower -- intelligence reports indicated a large Nomad fleet approaching and gathering outside rim territories, and intel indicated the jellies planned a replay of the disaster of Planet Toledo. Worse than that, Order suspected that amidst the possible targeted systems was Alaska.
My gut feeling was once more right. I started to think about the consequences. The Order wasn't bad, but... LSF was home. Had been for some time, and I missed it. Without Sarah, things were getting darker by the day, and everywhere I looked, I was reminded of her. I could no longer stand being around Order stuff cause it reminded me of her, and I could not let billions die, either here or in Liberty. I made up my mind, took a bath, dressed in full gear, holstered my hand gun, and left my quarters for the last time.
Accessing the hangar logs, I saw the only mission planned that day was a drill involving maneuvers nearby the system's star to test the Bastets new armor alloy against solar radiation. Since my squad wasn't flying, I needed to get out of the ship by other means, so I went to the cargo storage, put on a EVA suit and removed the countermeasures flares from a casing. 5 minutes before the flight pre-check, I hid inside the CM casing and waited.
15 minutes later, loaded into a Bastet and out in space, I sneaked out into the small and cramped cargo hold. I opened the access hatch and watched as the pilot followed the formation into a series of skimming maneuvers. good, at least I wasn't in the squad leader's figher -- that would make escape slightly easier.
As the drills ended, the fighters began heading towards the Inquisitor. I sneaked out of the hold and hit the pilot in the head, stunning him. I put my weapon against his helmet, shot the back of his head and removed the helmet, using it to bash his head in until he was unconscious -- after all, I was stealing a Order ship and intel, no need to make them madder at me by killing one of his elite pilots. I replaced his helmet with mine, dropped him into the countermeasure casing and sat on the cockpit, closing the cargo hatch behind me. I analyzed the controls as we were rounding the star perimeter, so I waited until the formation changed angle towards the Inquisitor and then kicked the Bastet into overdrive. The 30 seconds of so of silence and disbelief that it took the rest of the folk to realize what might had happened was enough for me to initiate a slingshot maneuver around the star, and I made a run to Alaska.
On the way, I sent a wave to the only LSF officer I still remember the commcode, Norman O'Connel, asking him to meet me in Alaska's jumphole. He always loved me, so if anyone would meet me, it was him.
The pursuit was relentless, but I had more than some clicks of advantage. As we entered Omicrom Delta, I activated the countermeasure system, ejecting the unhappy pilot into space -- I figured if the Order wouldn't find him, at least someone from Freeport 11 would. At least he wouldn't be found by Nomads.
I ran to Alaska and emerged on the other side to find Norm seating in his fighter with a battlecruiser behind him. I transmitted my old codes to him and he saw through the cam that it was me, and granted me exceptional passage to Juneau Shipyard.
Once safe inside, I was taken for questioning, and now I sit here watching my new Bastet being analyzed by LSF engineers against Order surveillance devices or booby traps while I record this. Apparently a lot changed in LSF in my time away. I already notified the new command of the impeding threat, and I sent a wave to some people I know inside the Order. We got to gather more intel about this mysterious ship out there, where it may attack, if it has any weakness -- hopefully we can put our differences aside this time before it's too late and prevent that the galaxy see another disaster like the one the Order saw 2 years ago.
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