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The Story of Richard Heidrich
Chapter 1
Its always been difficult being a Rheinlander living in Liberty.
My Da and I moved to Planet Houston from our home in Hamburg when I was five years old.
Da used to work for Republican Shipping at Alster Shipyard, but something happened and we had to leave. He never would tell me what happened. He always said that when I as old enough he would tell me the whole story.
My Mom died when I was two years old. She got sick and the doctors just couldnt do anything for her.
In Liberty, Da worked at the engine manufacturing plants on Planet Houston for years, until he managed to convince a manager that he could pilot a freighter. One day the pilot who was supposed to fly the freighter with the latest engine components delivery was too drunk to fly, and the plant manager let my Da have a go at it out of desperation. The plant was already so far behind quota that the manager said that they were probably going to all be out of jobs even if that shipment arrived on time, so he might as well let Da pilot the shipment. He sure was shocked when Da delivered those engines to Freeport 4 AHEAD of schedule, AND managed to elude a Lane Hacker ambush on top of that.
From then on Da was a freighter pilot.
When we lived in Rheinland, Da was a flight test engineer for Republican Shipping. He designed and supervised the production of new transport ships. Once a prototype was operational, he and his fellow engineers would take it out for test flights. So he knew how to get the most out of a cargo ship, whether you wanted speed, or evasive maneuvers.
But even though Da saved the jobs of everyone at that engine plant, they still treated us differently because we were from Rheinland.
At least once Da was piloting instead of working in the factory, we had our own little cottage to live in, instead of the Plant barracks, and our own food from a store instead of eating at the Plant cafeteria.
Da was also gone most of the time, making deliveries around Liberty.
Whenever he came home, he would take out his star charts and teach me all about the route he had just flown. I could cite from memory the location of every jump hole, anomaly, favorite pirate ambush site, and other locations of interest to a pilot in Sirius. There was nothing more that I wanted out of life than to be a pilot just like my Da.
I always begged Da to take me on his flights, but he always said it was too dangerous for a kid. He did promise me that when I turned 18, he would help me get my pilots license and then we would pilot transports together. We dreamed of owning twin Rhinos and doing independent cargo runs for various Liberty Corporations, rather than having to fly for the engine factory.
When I turned 15, Da brought home the technical manuals for the Rhino, and I started studying them every day so that I could pass the written portion of the pilots license as soon as I turned 17. The licensing board required at least a year in between passing the written tests and taking the space flight exam. As Da often told me, space flight is no game you can get yourself killed faster than an Outcast can get high on cardamine.
Two days before I turned 17, I aced the written portion, and surprised Da with the news when he got home the next day. He was so happy he took me straight out to his Rhino and we spent the rest of the day doing flight simulations. That was one of the happiest days of our lives.
The day I turned 18, Da was scheduled to arrive home from his latest delivery, and we were going to go straight to the Space Flight Licensing Bureau to put me through the first of my flight tests. We had the appointment scheduled for months in advance.
I kept the appointment, but Da didnt go with me.
Four hours after he was scheduled to arrive home, the plant manager showed up at our cottage to tell me that Das ship had been lost during the trip through Hudson. It wasnt known whether it was Liberty Rogues or Xenos who shot out the trade lanes and attacked his ship, but a Republican Shipping Transport that came by an hour or so later reported a debris field with no life signs. The Liberty Navy performed a patrol to search for Da, but they found nothing but cold, blasted pieces of hull and fried equipment floating around.
Da had told me often enough what happened to the human body when a ship suffered catastrophic decompression in space. If he didnt make it to the escape pod, he never stood a chance of survival.
Appointments for flight tests took months to schedule, and there was no way I as going to miss mine. Da would have been proud of me. The test administrator told me that I earned the highest score he had ever seen from such a young applicant.
A week later I did my solo space flight test, and a month after that I was an independent licensed space pilot.
I sold the cottage and nearly everything else that we owned, and borrowed the rest of the credits from a local loan shark to take a transport to Planet Manhattan and purchase the only ship that I could afford: my very own Starflier.
Finally I was a pilot.
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Chapter 2
In a Starflier I could never get freighter contracts, but I knew enough about Liberty that I could earn the credits to buy a Rhino in no time, or so I thought.
First I headed for the Silverton Field in the Colorado system. I felt like I would recognize every asteroid in the field after Das descriptions. Those nutty Xenos never stood a chance of catching me before I filled my cargo hold with mined silver and headed for the California System.
After a few days of mining silver and flying it to California, I paid off the loan shark and had enough credits left over to convince the engine plant manager at Das old factory on Houston to let me take a load of engines to Freeport 4. He was nervous about letting an 18 year old kid fly his engine components out on a Starflier, but they were so far behind schedule that he figured he didnt have much to lose. The bribe I paid him helped too.
Needless to say, I got those engines there on time, and earned a bonus from the Independent Mining Guild to boot. I used the bonus to buy polymers at Los Angeles, which I then ran back to Houston. In no time I earned enough credits on those two runs to buy a Rhino that had just been decommissioned from the Interspace Commerce fleet.
It wasnt long before I developed a reputation for speedy delivery around Liberty. While I wasnt reporting my schedule or routes to anyone, the commodity and equipment dealers knew what goods I was purchasing and selling, and they were smart enough to put two and two together to figure out that I was making cargo runs much faster than the typical pilot. Generally, I would make four engine deliveries to Freeport 4 in the time that they were used to getting three deliveries from the Liberty shipping Corporations. That kind of reputation gets around among the businessmen who are too small to interest the big shipping corporations, but big enough that lazy, drunk, independent pilots cost them loads of credits.
One day I finally got my big break.
I received a message at Freeport 4 when I dropped off a load of engines that a small, independent boron mining operation on Planet Pittsburg needed a fast pilot to make a run to Stokes Mining Station in Leeds. They had a guarantee of a buyer, but they had to beat the Universal Shipping transport that was already en route. I jumped at the chance.
I also jumped through the jump hole from Magellan to Leeds and beat the Universal Shipping Transport by a full day. The corporate pilots would never leave the trade lanes to venture into the asteroid fields patrolled by Lane Hackers, Outcasts, and Liberty Rogues, but years of Das instruction told me everything I needed to know to make it through safely.
I made a huge bonus from BMM for that delivery, and I immediately spent it on a Clydesdale Freighter from Planet Leeds.
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Chapter 3
Purchasing that Clydesdale used up so much of my credits that I could never pay the insurance premium on a cargo load, so I headed towards Tau 23.
Years before, Da had drawn out detailed charts of Tau 31 and Tau 23. He said that the heavy pirate presence in those systems, combined with the war between Bretonia and Kusari, made those two systems very profitable territory for fast pilots who had excellent charts. I intended to prove him right.
I slipped past every patrol that I encountered, hiding behind asteroids to mask my engine signature. When I had Java Station on my scanner, I knew that I must be close to the niobium fields, so I fired up my mining laser, and went to work.
With a full cargo of mined niobium, I knew I was going to be rich if I could just get it to Leipzig Station in the Dresden system.
One of Da’s favorite expressions was “Never tempt fate twice in a row”, so I knew better than to try to slip past the Outcasts and Gaians in Tau 31 again.
I easily found the jump hole to Kyushu from Da’s charts, and I had an easy passage through the trade lanes of Kusari to Sigma 13.
I knew that the Sigma 13 to New Berlin jump hole would shave a huge amount of time off of my route, and I also knew that pirates loved to stake out the jump hole to prey on traders trying to save that time instead of going the long way around through Frankfurt.
I must have been too small to interest them, because not a single pirate stirred from his bunk at nearby Yanagi Depot.
My life then fell into a predictable routine. Diamonds to Kusari, Niobium to Dresden. Repeat. And again. And again.
Actually, the boredom was a welcome relief after sneaking past pirates in Magellan and Tau 31.
Along the way I managed to earn enough to purchase a Kadesh Freighter so I could carry even more cargo.
On one delivery of diamonds to New Berlin, I decided to stop by a ship dealer on a whim, and I just couldn’t take my eyes off the X-Shuttle. There was nothing else like it in Sirius. Perhaps it was foolish of me, and you could call it a function of my youthful impulsiveness, but I paid cash for one. Not only was that ship a lot sexier looking than any other freighter on the market, it sported 6 forward guns, so I almost felt like a fighter pilot. Almost. The X-Shuttle turns like a drunken ox, so those forward guns only do you any good if a pirate is dumb enough to fly straight at your cockpit – from the front.
The turrets don’t swivel forward either, and those guns barely traverse to the side, so mining is a lot trickier than with most freighters.
I enjoyed my time in the X-Shuttle “Blue Breeze”, but I knew that if I wanted to make it rich like Da and I had dreamed, I had to get a bigger ship.
Now most Rheinlanders would tell you that the Humpback is the premier ship for independent cargo haulers. But they say that out of national pride, not engineering. I skipped right over the Humpback and moved into a Camara Freighter when I had enough credits.
The Camara was just what I needed to start getting shipping contracts with Da’s old employer Republican Shipping. I still didn’t know what made Da lose his job with Republican all those years ago, but I knew that if I wanted to make it big, I had to deliver on contracts for Rheinland’s largest cargo hauler. So I registered as an independent hauler with Republican Shipping and starting accepting their overflow contracts.
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Chapter 4
I had been working for Republican Shipping as an independent hauler for several months when I was invited to meet with the Republican Vice President for the Hamburg Region at Alster Shipyard. I wasnt sure exactly what a Republican Shipping VP wanted with me, but I hoped that it involved putting a lot of credits in my pockets. I even bought a new suit for the meeting. Da always said that if you wanted to be rich, you needed to look the part when meeting certain people.
When I stepped into his office, I didnt exactly look rich, but I looked mighty well off for a 19 year old independent contract hauler. The VP seemed a little surprised that I was wearing a suit instead of greasy cover-alls, but he covered it up pretty fast. He got right down to business.
We have been tracking your contracts with great interest for several weeks now, Herr Heidrich. No other independent pilot we contract with fulfills his contracts as efficiently or as free from shrinkage as you do.
I smiled at the reference to shrinkage. Many independent haulers would make detours to pirate bases and sell all or parts of their cargo on the black market and then pay a pirate to fire some scorch marks onto his hull. Then the pilot could claim that the cargo was stolen under threat of death by pirates and collect the insurance pay-out on top of the extra black market premium for his goods. There were even rumors from time to time that the Republican Shipping owned transports that had security crews on board would sometimes suffer engine failure conveniently close to a pirate base and fall prey to looting. Naturally, engine failures only seemed to occur when extremely valuable cargo like diamonds was on board. Apparently water and oxygen cargo loads mysteriously boost engine performance. My ships were all purchased second hand and I had never once suffered an engine failure.
The VP continued, While you may be enjoying the young life of a independent pilot, Republican Shipping can offer you a lucrative career that you can only dream about as an independent. How would you like to trade in that Camara Freighter for a Behemoth?
My jaw dropped open, and I couldnt figure out what to say.
Before I could think of a reply, the VP continued, Of course, you couldnt start out in a Behemoth right away. There are a number of pilots senior to you at the moment. However, from tracking your work, I am confident that one day you will be one of Republican Shippings top pilots. There are a lot of perks that come with that, the least of which is flying the pride of the Republican Shipping fleet. As a matter of fact, just between you and me, he said in a whisper, the Board of Directors has been considering the construction of two new Luxury Liners for the fleet. Transporting filthy rich VIPs to their destinations in comfort as well as safety is a growing market sector and Republican Shipping doesnt want to be left out in the cold while Orbital Spa and Cruise takes all those credits for themselves. The designs are going to the shipyards as we speak for further assessment, and when the first Republican Luxury Liner launches, we will want a handsome, young pilot with exceptional skills and reputation to be its Captain. Right now, I think you could be just that Captain in a couple of years when the first ship leaves Alster. Spend the next couple of years proving yourself in the regular fleet, and I expect you will rise straight to the top of our pilot ranks. So what do you say to joining Republican Shipping as our newest pilot?
How could I have said anything other than yes?
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Chapter 5
Republican Shipping might be a super rich corporation, but it is still a buearacracy. I understood that it was a major morale killer for pilots to skip unsavory ship assignments, even if it was because of his superior skills. So I diligently reported for duty to take command of a Republican Shipping Repair Ship, and then a Mining Ship, before I was sent to Baden-Baden to pilot an Armored Transport.
The ironic thing is that a Mining Ship is several times more expensive than an Armored Transport. But if you lose the cargo on a Mining Ship, you just file some insurance paperwork. If you lose the "cargo" on an Armored Transport, you get sued for millions of credits by the families of your passengers.
Armored Transports aren't your typical cargo haulers, but that VP seemed to be true to his word about my future prospects of transporting VIPs. Republican Shipping wanted to iron out all the details regarding catering to demanding guests long before the first VIP set foot on their first new Luxury Liner. It was my job to report on all of those pesky details by captaining a "cargo" of vacationers to Baden-Baden from New Berlin and other Rheinland Planets.
Three months of that almost made me want to tell that VP that he could give the Luxury Liner to someone else. That, or soundproof the cockpits. I have never heard so many bratty, spoiled complaints in all my life. And that was just from the parents!
After working the kinks out of hauling around passengers with minimal complaints and maximum efficiency, Republican Shipping decided to send me to its fighter pilot training school. Republican Shipping is mostly thought of in terms of its huge transports, but its security force actually outnumbers the cargo haulers in terms of numbers of ships and pilots, and for good reason. There are lots of pirates who want to get their tractor beams on Republican cargo.
A lot of young men dream about piloting a fighter in glorious combat. My Da and I always dreamed about retiring to Curacao after earning millions hauling freight. I never gave much thought to being a fighter pilot, until I had my first flight in a Hawk. After a couple of years of watching the horizon slowly slide past my cumbersome freighter view shield, being able to maneuver so quickly was absolutely stunning.
I already knew just about everything there was to know about ship engineering and flight physics, so I was able to skip virtually all of the academic work by testing out of it, and proceeded in just one week to my first assignment with an escort wing. Our runs were basically uneventful for the first few weeks, with only brief skirmishes that mostly consisted of the escorts charging the pirate ambush and watching the pirates cruise off for the asteroid fields. I was beginning to wonder if all of those tall tales of escort-pirate furballs that I heard around the barracks were all made up, since none of the pirates we encountered ever seemed to want to engage us. I and my mates went around bragging about our reputations as pilots scaring the pirates into running, but I knew that none of us actually had any combat reputation.
But one boring day, that all changed in an instant.
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Chapter 6
My escort wing was assigned to a cobalt shipment from Leipzig Station to Pueblo Station, via the Bering System. Recent convoys had been coming under attack from Unioners operating out of Pacifica Base, so my mates and I were especially alert when we entered Bering. Once we passed Freeport 2 and received an "all clear ahead" report from the Zoners, we breathed a little easier. We should have tightened our grips on our flight sticks. But then again, if we had, I might never have learned the truth.
The Unioners shot out the trade lane between Freeport 2 and the Texas jump gate. When we abruptly came out of the trade lane only one Unioner showed up on our scanners, so my mates and I charged him just like every other pirate we had encountered. And he behaved just like every other pirate we had seen: he headed for the asteroid field nearby. We followed him a klick or two for good measure, and fell headlong into the Unioners' trap.
That lone Unioner's mates had attached their fighters to the backs of asteroids facing away from the trade lanes so that our scanners wouldn't detect them. Once we passed them, they detached and were on our sixes before our scanners even registered them.
Escort 1 and Escort 3 died in fiery explosions before we even had a chance to pass any comms to each other. I had taken the lead, so I survived the first volley from the two Unioners behind us. Evenly matched odds had just turned into 3 vs. 1 in about 5 seconds. The Unioner that I was pursuing engine killed, flipped around and ignited thrusters right for me with guns blazing, while I heard the tone of missile lock in my ears from the two Unioners behind me. That may have been my first serious combat action, but I knew that nobody stood a chance against an Eagle blazing away head on for you and missiles coming right up your exhaust trails.
I'm not exactly proud of it, but I never fired a shot and that probably saved my life. I pulled the eject lever and felt myself fired out of my Hawk under 8 g's of force, secure in my pressurized cockpit. I managed to hit the thrusters on the ejection pod and spun the pod down just in time to see my ship explode from the combined fire of the Unioner guns and missiles.
Then my cockpit pod smashed into an asteroid, and I blacked out.
I came to in a cell in Pacifica Base three days later.
Standing over me was a rough looking man who was shaking me awake.
"Wake up, Richard! The Doc's say you are fine now. Get on your feet!"
Groggily, I stared up at the man. I got to my feet and then it dawned on me: he knew my name. Republican Shipping pilots didn't carry identification like military and police pilots did. We only had a serial number. If pirates captured one of us and wanted to ransom us they couldn't track down our family members to make ransom demands from a serial number. They had to deal with Republican Shipping directly. Republican Shipping is a stickler for details like that. So how did this Unioner know who I was?
The man smiled knowingly and motioned for me to exit the cell.
I figured that he would tell me what I wanted to know on his own terms, and I was in no position to make demands for information, so I just followed him silently down the passage to a small office where he sat down on a crate behind a battered desk blasted from an asteroid rock. There was no other place to sit in the room, so I stood.
"Richard Heidrich, son of Gustav Heidrich, one time Republican Shipping test pilot, engineer, and finally independent cargo hauler in Liberty."
I just stared at the man open mouthed.
The man's face softened, and he broke eye contact to stare down at the desk. When he looked up and spoke, my life changed forever.
"All of us Unioners mourned his passing with you in spirit, if not in person."
All I could do was stare.
And then I found out the truth about Republican Shipping and my Da.
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Chapter 7
“Of course he never told you the whole story about why you left Rheinland, did he? No, of course not. He loved you too much to burden you with his problems. He was always a man who devoted his energies to pursuing his dreams rather than complaining about his difficulties. It seems that fate has brought you to us for a reason though, and it’s time you learned the truth.”
“Gustav Heidrich wasn’t just a flight engineer and test pilot. He was a Patriot. Through years of working at Alster Shipyard he saw firsthand the abuses and deprivations forced on the workers there. He saw men who gave the best years of their lives covered in grease working on ship engines be turned out of their jobs on flimsy trumped up excuses for termination just months short of qualifying for their pensions. It would take me hours to detail to you all of the reasons to hate Republican Shipping, but just know this: you know your Da, and he hated Republican Shipping with a passion. For years he funneled the newest ship designs that he was working on to our operatives. His designs made it possible for the Unioners to build ships that could survive every attempt to wipe us out. His security access as a flight test pilot provided us with the necessary intelligence data to strike the right cargo shipments at exactly the right time and location to maximize our effectiveness and minimize the casualties. I don’t want to overemphasize his important help; he wasn’t the only source of information that we had at Alster Shipyard. But your Da was an enormous asset.”
“After years of his and other Unioner sympathizers’ espionage activities, Republican Shipping knew that it had security leaks at Alster Shipyard. Republican’s security branch launched an elaborate operation to catch the leaks. Fortunately, your Da saw it coming and decided to get out while he still could. He botched an assignment and instigated such an argument with his superior that Republican had little choice but to fire him. He packed up and moved to Planet Houston.”
As he paused, I finally collected my thoughts, “But how can I know any of this is true?”
The man smiled, and stood.
“Follow me.”
I followed him out into the passage and after 5 minutes of winding our way through the tight rocky confines of Pacifica Base, we reached what was obviously the engineering section of the station, attached to the docking bay. I saw Unioner fighters being stripped for maintenance through the plaz windows separating the room from the bay.
The man walked over to a large rock table covered in blueprints and started sifting through them, obviously looking for something. After about a minute of looking, he found what he was looking for and motioned me over.
I could see immediately that it was a design for an engine. But it wasn’t just any engine. It was an engine that my Da had designed when he worked for Republican Shipping. It was an engine design that was so efficient for transport ship operations that Republican Shipping considered it their most secure secret. This engine design managed to capture energy from the actual engine’s exhaust and use it to provide extra power for the ship, making the ship more fuel efficient, and saving Republican Shipping millions in H-Fuel bills. Da had drawn it out for me in the greatest detail years ago and taught me every corner and curve of it. I knew it was the proudest piece of engineering work that he had ever produced, and that it was perhaps Republican Shipping’s greatest industrial secret. And there it was, sitting under a pile of engine schematics in the middle of a Unioner Base.
The man traced the lines of the blueprint, which were faded from years of handling.
“Your Da provided us with this design before his superiors at Republican even received the flight test reports. It has saved us uncountable amounts of credits in H-fuel that we have been able to spend elsewhere.”
Then his finger moved to the most intricate portion of the schematic. I could only stare in amazement. Right there in ink was my Da’s signature. There was no doubt in my mind that he personally signed these blueprints. One of the few things he had ever spent credits on for luxuries was an ink pen from Kusari that incorporated niobium into the ink to give it a uniquely distinctive shine. It was the kind of thing that only Kusari artists normally used for paintings for wealthy patrons. Da always said that a finely tuned engine was a work of art and that a work of art should always be signed by the artist in “style”, so on a trip to Kusari he brought home one of those pens and then he always signed his final designs with it.
My Da only signed the final official blueprints with that pen. That meant that these blueprints went straight from my Da to the Unioners. There was no way that any Unioner operative could steal blueprints of this engine from Alster Shipyard. Photographs…maybe…but the actual blueprints, not a chance. That my Da used that pen on these blueprints meant that they came straight from him, and he was immensely proud to deliver them to the Unioners.
I looked at the man in amazement.
“I don’t know what to say. But obviously you are telling me the truth.”
The man’s face softened again for a moment.
“I wish the rest of what I am about to say wasn’t true, though. Your Da wasn’t killed by Xenos or Liberty Rogues in a pirate attack. Years after leaving Republican Shipping, one of our long term operatives on Alster Shipyard was compromised. To make a long story short, under interrogation that operative revealed details that enabled Republican Security to finally peg your Da as the mole at Alster so many years ago. Even nearly twenty years later, Republican decided not to let bygones be bygones. They tracked down your Da and shadowed his operations. That Republican Transport convoy that brought word to Planet Houston of your Da’s fate was just a decoy. Your Da was ambushed by Republican Shipping Hawks in Hudson who were posing as pirates attacking that Republican convoy. When your Da came close to help the convoy, the transports turned their turrets on his ship along with the Hawks. Under all of that combined fire, he never stood a chance. Other operatives of ours learned of the plot too late. Our own ships were en route to try to warn him but they only arrived to see the Republican ships disappear off their scopes. I’m sorry we didn’t get there in time to save him. He was a great friend to the Unioners for years, and in the end, we failed him.”
People had told me my whole life that I reacted strangely to things. When some people would cry, I would laugh. When others would laugh, I would feel tears well up. I suppose that some “normal” people would be stunned to have heard all of this. To me, it made perfect sense. I knew my Da, and I knew that everything I had seen and heard at Pacifica Base was a perfect match for my Da.
I looked the man right in the eyes.
“Tell me the names of those responsible for killing my Da.”
The man replied, “We are still trying to track down their identities, but as you know, Republican Shipping only identifies it’s pilots with a serial number, so it will take some time.”
I leaned towards him, “No, not the pilots. They were just following orders and they probably had been given some story about my Da smuggling or something. Tell me the names of the men who gave those pilots the orders to kill my Da.”
The man’s mouth turned up slightly in the barest hint of a smile.
“And why do you want to know who they are?”
I turned and looked out the plaz windows at an Eagle being prepped for flight.
“Because I am going to kill every one of them. And I am going to do it in an fighter outfitted with my Da’s engine design.”
I turned back to the man and we locked gazes. After a long moment he spoke.
“The Unioners have been waiting for you for a long time, Richard Heidrich. My name is Bernd Schuster. Welcome Home.”
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Chapter 8
I found myself in a very unique position. I knew that Republican Shipping executives had conspired to murder my Da, and I had possession of a Republican Shipping security clearance. The possibilities swirled through my mind like Xenos around a crippled transport.
Before I could take advantage of any of those opportunities I had to get back to civilization. Leader Schuster gave me a couple of items to take with me, and then I boarded a nondescript Unioner freighter that was headed to Freeport 2 to pick up supplies.
Once at Freeport 2, I contacted Republican Shipping and explained the outcome of my ill-fated patrol. I told them that I had been picked up by a Zoner patrol after ejecting from my ship and had been unconscious for the intervening days. Within a few hours, a Republican Shipping convoy passed by Freeport 2 on its way from Liberty to Alster Shipyard and picked me up.
I arrived at Alster Shipyard to find an invitation awaiting me for a meeting with Phillip Wolf, the Republican Vice President who I had met with several months earlier.
When I was shown into his office he greeted me with more enthusiasm than I reasonably expected from a superior to an underling. As it turned out, just one week before he had managed to convince Republican Flight Operations to give me command of a brand new Behemoth that was about to be launched. That skipped me over several other pilots more senior to me, but was necessary in order for me to achieve the eventual rank necessary to give me command of the one of the new Republican Luxury Liners that would come online in a couple of years. After fighting so hard to get me the posting, he had been completely dismayed to learn of my demise under the guns of a Unioner patrol.
The smile on my face at the news was genuine, but for far different reasons than he thought.
Just then his secretary told him that a procurement committee from the Rheinland Police had arrived and he excused himself to greet them, leaving me alone in his office. My eyes immediately went to his security terminal. I couldnt believe me good fortune.
Quickly I retrieved the data module that I had hidden in my shoe and plugged it into his terminal. Before leaving Pacifica Base, the Unioners had given me the module containing a series of decryption, hacking, and viral programs that I was supposed to upload to a Republican Shipping database. The programs were already tasked to search for information about those responsible for my Das murder, as well as other information that would be useful to the Unioners like scheduled flight manifests. The module also uploaded dormant viruses onto the network that could be activated at a later time by a Unioner operative on the shipyard.
When the green light appeared on the module I yanked it out of the terminal and returned it to its hiding place as fast as I could. My hands were shaking with anticipation as I contemplated how close I could be to finding out who the targets of my vengeance were.
When the VP came back moments later, he ushered me out of his office and handed me a datapad containing authorization to take command of the new Behemoth which was launching that very day!
The flight to Planet Nuremburg seemed to last forever. While Republican operations were headquartered at Alster Shipyard, the final furnishings for their larger transport ships were actually installed at Nuremburg. The ever efficient officials at Republican wanted Alsters construction bays dedicated to deck plating and instrumentation, not installing bunks and faucet fixtures.
The Behemoth was powered up and waiting for me when I arrived planetside. I was a little apprehensive about how I was going to manage the crews unwillingness to turn the ship over to the Unioners, but that was made much easier when I learned that I was supposed to rendezvous with the crew in an orbiting shuttle. Until then I was on my own. I intended to keep it that way.
After several hours of technical briefings, I launched the ship, and immediately engaged cruise engines to escape the planets gravitational pull. Scans of the orbiting ships showed no shuttle, so I safely assumed that the shuttle must be on the far side of the planets orbit more good fortune. Hopefully they wouldnt miss me until I was too far away for an alarm to catch me. I docked with the trade lane and scanned the instruments. One caught my eye an input for a data module. I pulled out the module containing sensitive Republican files and started scanning the information. The module had already managed to decrypt a portion of the files and as I was scanning a familiar name caught my eye: Phillip Wolf.
There in front of me was a memo from Republican Shipping Vice President Phillip Wolf to Republican Security Section giving his agreement to the permanent retirement of Gustav Heidrich, my Da.
I seethed at the lost opportunity to kill that murderer when I only stood inches from him and shook his hand! Immediately, my instincts grew wary. Why would he plot to murder my Da, and then take such an active interest in me?
I activated the Behemoths connection to the Republican Shipping database and searched for Phillip Wolf. To my amazement, he was scheduled to board a shuttle with that police procurement committee for a flight out to Planet Nuremburg. The manifest had the flight listed as underway. They were heading straight for me! I swore not to miss this opportunity.
I pulled the emergency disengagement lever to exit the trade lane and positioned myself next to one. Then I powered up the Behemoths weapons systems, and shot out the trade lane. I was taking a big risk at surrounding myself with lots of witnesses who were coming down the lanes, but I wasnt going to miss this opportunity.
My good fortune held out though. The first ship that was thrown out of the trade lane was the shuttle that I was looking for. It was an Armored Transport especially built for the protection of VIP passengers. I knew that the VIP section was designed to split off from the ships hull in the event of an attack, and could be easily tractored in to the Behemoths cargo bay. The Behemoths weapons and tractor beam accomplished that in no time.
I set the autopilot to take the ship through the jump gate and headed for the ships small armory next to the command deck. I selected a plasma rifle, and headed down to the cargo bay.
There I found some very angry police officials and a stunned Republican Shipping Vice President Phillip Wolf.
Ill save you the account of the threats, demands, and promises of my slow, agonizing death that those men hurled at me. I had one of the other men tie up Phillip Wolf and then the plasma rifle was easily able to convince the rest of them to return to the VIP hold, which I then sealed shut with plasma fire. I left Phillip Wolf trussed up on the cargo deck and returned to the command deck.
I had been fighting within myself about whether to try to extract any information from Wolf, but I finally decided that anything I got out of him was only going to be self-serving lies, so it wasnt worth the effort.
I checked the ships comm systems, but found no alerts about missing ships. So far so good.
I set course for the New Berlin system, and started chronicling everything I knew about what Republican Shipping had done to my Da and their employees.
Once I arrived at Dortmund Station I hailed the Rheinland Military officers patrolling the system.
I informed them of the murderous conspiracy to kill my Da on the part of Republican Shipping executives, and that what they would find at Dortmund was the first installment of my revenge. Then I opened the airlock for the cargo bay. I thought it fitting that Phillip Wolf got a taste of the way my Da was killed death by violent decompression.
As I engaged cruise speed and headed for the Bering system with the newest Unioner cargo ship, I transmitted one final message over the systems comm net:
Tell Republican Shipping : THE VENDETTA HAS BEGUN!
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