The US-Opportunity - A Biography

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Stir Crazy.

The weeks blurred into months as isolation and Jimmy's deteriorating mental state ate away at him. Things had gotten worse - his wife had left him a short and cryptically worded comms message about why they couldn't be together any more and filed for divorce. This pushed whatever strained reasoning Jimmy had left over the brink. Xeno Officials had put in place a new Squad Commander, unwilling to let the momentum that had been built for the Alliance dissipate. The Xeno known as Herald was in charge now, giving the Alliance the leadership it needed.

This was his punishment, he told himself. For letting them all die aboard that doomed Hegemon. It occurred to him that he too might die aboard this ship, his own personal huge radioactive coffin. One life paled in comparison to those lost aboard the San Antonio. The Alliance is what mattered. Without this ship the economy Jimmy had strived so hard to create would crumble, and the new found prosperity that the Alliance was enjoying would quickly reverse into a downward spiral of poverty.

Tapping a few buttons on the primary console, he breathed a sigh. It was a miracle the ship was still running, only the attentions of the silent Hellfire Legion's Chief Engineer Kathy Snow and sporadic visits to Oyster Creek by the Duct Tape Gang and their group of repair vessels kept the Serpenitis.Maximus pressurised and moving. He really needed those repair vessels to take another look at the crippled gas-exuding mess of a cargo ship. His recent message had been answered, it looked like he would be meeting them at his hideout.

Plotting the course, he let Blaze (he had named the onboard AI computer after hearing of his impending divorce) swing the ship in a wide arc and push the engines up to their maximum output. The ship was shrieking, alarms were whining, and Blaze the Onboard AI hologram looked beautiful, alluring...

He had been in space alone too long, he knew. He recalled two men in the bar talking about how isolation could make pilots crazy. Hallucinations. "Space Angels, things like that..." He was unravelling, and once he had accepted that and let go completely, it would become much easier.