I am currently a guest of the good ship Ark Royal. I hate sleeping away from Leeds, I get the terrible feeling that something bad will happen when I'm not there, like I won't be there in her darkest hour. Mum always blamed Freeport 4 for destroying her marriage. Pop was a spacer, through and through, and that was the closet thing he had to a home before "settling down" on Leeds. When the Frenchies pushed in, he wanted to fly off and defend his old stomping grounds. My mother said we needed a father more than the station needed another hired gun. When it was destroyed rather than occupied, well, there were fights.
Not like everything was peachy keen before then. I think it was more of a nail in the coffin rather than an ultimate cause. In any event, I get what he was feeling, to see your home under existential threat and feeling the guilt of not being able to do a damn thing about it. He got a nasty thousand meter stare when he first heard the news, it keeps me up when I have to sleep in my hold anywhere but Leeds.
Of course, I didn't have much of a choice in the matter of my sleeping arrangements. Some Other Royal Navy flier named Mounier decided to give chase to me coming out of the atmospheric entry point. Fortunately, the docking rings are a little more predictable and a little slower. I got to the Stokes tradelane, which he for some reason didn't lock down. Double fortunately, I knew the system better than he did. I exited the lane early and made for the Newcastle Jump Hole. He fell for the ruse, assuming that I was making a break for the Taus and it bought me 8 cliques of breathing room to play with. I made it to the jump hole and a mad dash to the Ark Royal. Apparently he didn't know about the jump hole. I hope the Queen will forgive me for disclosing state secrets, but I'd like to think I'm worth more to the war effort than public knowledge of a jump hole. There may be other secrets I know that are worth dying for. That isn't one of them.
So the Ark Royal's crew is pissed at me for taking up a docking bay. I'm pissed at their gunners for being unable to take down a fighter. Call it even.
One plus side is I got to have a lovely conversation with a Freelancer with the callsign "Longshoreman." An interesting fellow who inquired about the LRF initials emblazoned on the Charlie Wilson. Turns out there was another faction that had the moniker, the "Liberty Revolutionary Front." They were a cluster of Rogues that were trying to be "Xenos except not." They never really went anywhere, apparently, swept under by subsequent Liberty separatists who rose and fell alongside the fortunes of the house. Every house has its pet projects, even the Crayter Republic had a revolutionary group years ago, back before I was flying. Apparently it had something like three people in it and no one ever heard of it. Well, that fledgling group can live on forever in my logs, ample fodder for you, future historian, that its name and memory might live forever! If only he had mentioned its name...
Regardless, I hope this LRF doesn't share the same fate as its "predecessor." Not that I want it to last 10,000 years either, of course, we are here to accomplish a very specific goal. So long as Leeds is occupied, we fly the Bretonian banner in distress. Of course, the Mollies have been saying the same thing about a Free Dublin for about 75 years now, a focused mission statement is no guarantee of a quick mission.
Sidenote: The Ark Royal's last orders were to Newcastle to defend against the "inevitable" Gallic invasion. Top brass thought after Leeds it would be the next target. Well, they botched that one slightly, I would say!
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