The Life and Times of Mathias Sterling

[matster]

After years as a prisoner then a military slave, seeing friends die at the hands of Gallic and Kusari invaders, Mathias was eager to get away from the war. Even his own people, the Bretonian military and the IMG, held little love in his heart when those junkers found him in his floating tomb.

The junkers were the perfect clan for him to fall in with. He understood engineering, mining and criminals and knew enough about his uncle’s old contacts to make himself valuable to his new captors. What was best about the junkers was he wasn’t considered less than them. Unlike his fellow Bretonians they didn’t consider him useless to their society because of his crimes, in fact he represented many of the things they valued most.

So he rose up through the ranks from slave to ship’s engineer to captain – of one vessel after another – until he finally had a salvager, the cash cow of the wealthiest junkers. This apparently had not gone unnoticed by people who knew him from his past…

THE MEETING

Freeport ten, if it would have to happen anywhere it would be here, he thought. Mathias could not believe the man was sitting in front him. Twenty years, Twenty years!

“I wanted to meet up with you because I heard about you making trips out to T44. People say you get the job done and you aren’t afraid to go into dangerous situations.”

Mathias didn’t say anything, he was having a hard time deciding whether to pull his blaster, hug his uncle or get up and walk away.

Finally he said: “Why would I work with you?”

With a grim smile his uncle replied: “The money I mentioned and… you get to stick it to the Gauls, hard. Also, there’s a bonus, you wouldn’t have to use false ID’s in Bretonian space anymore, My group includes some former military – privateers who have enough government connections to clean up your records. Maybe even erase you completely if you want.”

He didn’t want to work with this man but the price was tempting. “I’ll have to think about it. I’m heading back to Liberty space with a load of ore from Ft Siloso for now.”

“The offer will stand. They need all the help they can get, the wars have not gone well for them, they’re desperate – just drop my name to the station engineer if you come back interested, he knows how to contact me.”

“We’ll see.”