Liberty's Finest

[Blighter]

[font=Trebuchet Ms]Suffice to say that, as most stories that lead to glory, pride and bloodshed, it started with the death of someone.
This someone was a certain Grace Callahan, a Star Colonel of the Hellfire Legion. Devoted and most loyal to the Hellfire Legion's cause, Grace joined it at a young age and worked her way up until she became Star Colonel, commander of the Legion's Special Operations and Armed Reconnaissance Division.
Some fateful day in 817 A.S. Grace ventured into Zone-21, for reasons unknown to this date.
It's not known who or what she encountered there, but it is known that whatever it was left her drifting in an escape pod, badly wounded and sealed in automated cryostasis.
The Legion, under the orders of by then Lord Commander Aethelu, launched a recovery operation as they received the automated distress signal coming from Grace's pod.
The operation was a success.
But Grace died a few days later on Fort Leniex, having never woken up from her comatose state.
What few people know however is that she had a sister, Natalie.
And Natalie was devastated once the word of Grace's death came around.
One has to understand that one of the main reasons Grace joined the ranks of the Legion was her thirst for vengeance, her and Natalie's parents having been executed by Liberty Military firing squads for reasons unknown.
A thirst Natalie never shared, having separated herself from her family at a young age, it wasn't until her parents' death that she reunited with her sister, joining her in her endeavor to crush Liberty's Military and to purge Liberty from the corruption that, as Grace always believed, led to the death of her parents.

[color=#CC99CC]It is said that blood is thicker than water, but when everyone who has the same blood as you running through their veins is dead, there is nothing left to hold you in the same way.
And it didn't take long until Natalie realized that she didn't want to share Grace's fate. She didn't want to die for the Legion's cause. She didn't want to spend her days fighting a fight which, as she believed, she wouldn't see the end of in her lifetime.
She didn't want vengeance.
She wanted to be free.

And she wasn't the only one.
A Fleet Captain in the Legion, she herself commanded a Legion Gunship, the 'Blue Raven', and it was the men under her command, the ship's crew, who shared her views.
They had been loyal to Natalie and her sister, but with Grace's death, only Natalie was left.
Their hopes shattered, their dreams crushed, they knew not whom to follow but Natalie herself, and so, taking the Blue Raven and all the equipment and supplies that would fit aboard, they set off for a journey into unknown land, secretly.
Nobody followed them, why isn't exactly known, but rumors suggest that prior to their departure Natalie had been aboard the Incursus, Lord Commander Aethelu's personal command ship, and that behind closed doors they had a talk and he decided to let her go, that being the least he, shattered by Grace's death no less than Natalie, could have done.
Not for Natalie. Not for himself. But for the now-dead Grace.

So it came that Natalie and her men headed to Bretonia.
It took them a couple weeks, weeks spent grieving over Grace's death, weeks spent trying to find a purpose in a life now devoid of such a thing, until they reached Trafalgar Base.
They were all tired by then.
Tired of wandering around aimlessly, tired of the life aboard that cramped little Gunship.
Everyone wanted to start anew.
Start from square one. Live a new life. A good life. An easier life.
After a couple days on Trafalgar, they were given the opportunity. And that opportunity was called the 'Stellar Ranger'.
A former Enterprise-class Luxury Liner that had been recently found by some local Junkers and towed to base it was.
The ship's glory days long past and gone, it had been stripped of most of its luxurious installations and turned into a floating prison.
It had belonged to an unknown slaver and his crew, both of which died due to some event that involved the entire ship being decompressed, sending all its inhabitants out into the cold and dark blackness of space.
Empty, clean... one could say 'fresh', it arrived at Trafalgar on a fateful day where Natalie's men were close to breaking apart from all the dull and uneventful waiting.
She didn't pass up the opportunity. She just couldn't. The ship was there, it was there and she knew just what she could trade off for it. She knew it would be worth it.
And so she became the new owner of the Ranger. Her and her crew's new home, and as the future would show, not only theirs.
But they weren't enough. Not enough to crew the ship. To make it work. To go anywhere with it.
They didn't even know what to do with it in the first place.
It was old, in good shape but old, and they just needed more people to be able to do anything at all.

Luck was on their side, on the same day.
And it came in the shape of a man called Nicholai Kosygin, who set foot on Rochester and ran into Natalie as she was pouring down a glass of Vodka after the other in Trafalgar's bar.
Nicholai just plain loved the taste of ice-cold Vodka.
And Nicholai was flat-out broke.
A couple drinks later, he revealed that he was the current man in charge of a group of Coalition refugees. Ones that miraculously shared a goal like the one of Natalie and her men.
They had taken off from Coalition space to Nova Terra, more commonly known as the planet Gran Canaria, restocked on supplies there, and they had made it all the way into Dublin where their ship's reactor ceased working and they were left adrift for a fair while, having only auxiliary power and few supplies left, basically waiting to die.
A group of Junkers found them and decided to tow them to the safety of Trafalgar.
But that rescue came at the price of the ship itself.
In short, Nicholai had the men, Natalie had the ship.
And both had the same goal. To be really free and unbound.
It took a couple days, and both groups wouldn't really get accustomed to each other until much later, but the same goal and the fact that both had Military-like backgrounds helped a lot in growing mutual trust and understanding to a point that they could work together aboard the ship.
It took a while until everyone knew what they had to do and until a hierarchy had been established aboard the Stellar Ranger.
Natalie, owning it, was to be the Captain, and Nicholai, former Commanding Officer of most men and women aboard the ship, was to be the XO of it.
They took off, having had enough spare funds from the sale of the Blue Raven, which had been worth a giant fortune due to the abundance of high-quality equipment aboard it, and headed to no place other than Liberty.

What followed was a couple rather quiet weeks that ended with a business idea Natalie and Nicholai came up with it.
Both having been former rather high-ranking officers in their respective organizations, they still held true to at least some of the virtues that had been drilled into them over time.
The Stellar Ranger was intended to be used for slavery, but the crew would've been just as reluctant to partake in the slaving business as the Captain and her XO.
Instead, they did something else.
It's simple fact that sooner or later Pirates are forced to fight the local authorities, be it to make a run to whatever place they call home, be it to just avoid capture, or to plain and simple save their hide.
And some of them are quite successful at it.
Those usually end up catching some escape pods coming out of the ships they set on fire.
And in those, there are the escapees. Pilots of the Liberty Navy for example, or the Bounty Hunters Guild.
People whom no one aboard the Stellar Ranger had ever had good relations with.
Simply put, people the crew couldn't have cared less about.
Not men and women abducted and forced into slavery, but enemies, ones who wouldn't stop until they saw Natalie's and Nicholai's men and women captured or dead.

Using all the leftover money they had, they bought those captives off every Pirate they came across and locked them in the vast cells aboard the Stellar Ranger, and there were plenty.
Once they nearly ran out of money, they restocked on supplies, and began a long venture to a place far, far away from Liberty.
A place where people resided who would pay good money for all those captives begging, crying and screaming inside the Ranger's cells.
That place was Planet Malta, in the Omicron Alpha system.
And Natalie, thanks to the Legion having had good relations with the Outcasts by that time, knew just exactly how to get there.
The Outcasts, while suspicious at first, were pleased once they sent a boarding party aboard the Ranger to inspect its now mentally shattered cargo.
Needless to say that they welcomed them on Malta with open arms right after, the Maltese Navy and the Dons outbidding each other in order to get a hand on all the captives...
Officers of the Liberty Navy, the Liberty Police, Bounty Hunters, Corporate Employees, they wanted them all, and they wanted them really bad.
Bad enough for the men and women aboard the Ranger to make a fortune, with just one trip.
Enough to spend on plenty of the latest available equipment for the ship, enough to spend on new weapons, even a used and rather battered Tridente-class Gunship and half a dozen Series Z Border World Very Heavy Fighters, fresh out of the local shipyards.
And most importantly enough for ludicrous amounts of the most exquisite food and drinks Malta had to offer.
Life was beginning to look good, but as much as the Outcasts loved that unexpected and very special delivery, the presence of former Hellfire Legionnaires together with former Soldiers of the Resurgent Coalition wasn't something they really liked. They tolerated them thanks to their delivery, granted, but the tolerance was fading with every single day, so the men and women of the Ranger mostly stuck to their ship. Their home.
Until some day Natalie decided to head back to Liberty.
A trip that didn't start too well, and yet just in time, due to the Outcasts wanting her to take a full shipment of Cardamine back to the place she once called home.
She declined the offer, backed up by Nicholai and the entire crew.
They weren't drug traffickers, and they certainly weren't the Outcasts' lapdogs.
Not surprisingly, tolerance quickly turned into rage, and had they stayed any longer it's most likely that the ship would have been taken over and its crew been forced into slavery themselves.
And so they headed off, the scornful gaze of the Outcasts focused on their backs.

During the journey the bond between both groups aboard the ship strengthened.
It wasn't because of what they had gone through. Wasn't because of what nearly had happened to them on Malta. And it wasn't because of the new wealth or the food and drink they shared.
It was because of a ship.
Natalie had been a pilot at heart throughout her entire life. In the Legion, she had flown everything. Light, Heavy, Very Heavy Fighters, Bombers, and lastly she had commanded her own Gunship.
She wanted to do it again. Having found a business opportunity like this one, she wanted to make more money than she would if she remained the 'middle man'. Because money meant fuel, food, all kinds of fancy and shiny things and supplies, and it meant a happy crew.
But for that she needed to go out into battle again, and she had to do a damn fine job if she wanted to last out there in Liberty and make a profit.
For that, she needed a ship. And she had it. That Tridente-class Gunship was to become her ship of choice.
But it needed to be worked on, since it wasn't in good shape. Not in good shape at all.
So, with Nicholai's backing, she gave all the technicians and engineers, former Coalitioneers or Legionnaires alike, a job.
To turn that old and battered Tridente into a really menacing bird of prey.

And it would become just that during their journey back to Liberty.
A real bird of prey, a force of nature, a murderous beast with an appetite for unparalleled destruction.
The second Blue Raven.
The modifications done to that ship brought together the knowledge and expertise of the engineers from both sides, combined with the best equipment money bought them on their way back, and as they arrived in Liberty, countless hours of work and enormous amounts of sweat after, it was ready.
And what had started with just the engineers and technicians had spread throughout the entire crew.

Unity. And the Blue Raven was its symbol.

It goes without saying that it got put to good use afterwards, the Ranger's men no longer having to buy captives off the local Pirates, but Natalie bringing new ones in while the men were working and living aboard the Ranger, doing business with the locals and just investing their time into turning the Stellar Ranger itself from a slaver's ship into a place they could call home with pride.
All while Natalie, mostly being referred to as 'Blue' by now, thanks to her weakness for the color in all its variations and the distinctive blue shine of the Raven's armor plating along with the blue glow of its H-Fuel-boosted engines, earned herself a name in Liberty.
And she attracted the attention of many people. One being the by-then head of the Hellfire Legion, Tadao Mori, whom she struck a deal with, one that brought her back a very sentimental piece of gear. A Broadsword-class Bomber she used to share with Grace, the Blue Dove.
When one walks into the Stellar Ranger's bar, one will notice the very high ceiling of the room.
And when one looks up, he will see that very ship, the Blue Dove, hanging from the ceiling.
Sometimes Natalie will be sitting in it, the cockpit canopy wide open, enjoying some Vodka and a fine Maltese cigar while watching everyone below with a faint little smile.
Something that happens to this day.

But that wasn't it. Mori wasn't the only one. There was someone else. Someone who would turn out to be more important, and later on a valuable part of that group of people who lived aboard the Stellar Ranger.
He wasn't very special at first. Just a man who appeared to captain yet another Rogue Gunboat in Liberty space. But he was different. He meant business. And he did business. And, surprisingly, he was very good at doing business.
Jimmy Engvall. A former Vagrant Raider gone Pirate and, more importantly, a really mean bastard.
Natalie, from now on referred to as Blue, didn't take long to make friends with the man, and they quickly combined their own respective businesses into one.
Engvall was a Pirate at heart, and knowing how things went in Liberty, piracy in the open quickly got you the attention of the lawful forces.
And when those came, they were faced with a problem.
Well, two problems. One was the Blue Raven. The other was the Be Good At It, Engvall's personal and Vagrant Raider-modified Rogue Gunboat.
Not a combination a Navy Officer wants to encounter when on patrol. In fact, not a combination anyone wants to encounter. Both Blue and Engvall were good, really good at the fighting game, and it didn't take long for their reputation to skyrocket. Fighters, Bombers, Gunboats, Cruisers and Battlecruisers were torn to shreds by them day by day and they made ludicrous amounts of money off the merchants passing through Liberty.
And the captured crew members and pilots all ended up aboard the Stellar Ranger, now beginning to frequently wander into Outcast space, always delivering fresh captives to the Maltese Navy and the rich Dons on that one planet in the far reaches of the Omicrons, holding true to their ideals and never dropping low enough to traffic Cardamine for the Maltese. While they didn't earn their respect that way, the cash however still poured in, lots of it, and life for everyone was good, so good in fact that the Stellar Ranger, with the help of its crew, transformed into a ship that right now can support multiple Gunboats and plenty of Fighters, having its vast cargo bays filled with all the resources ever needed at all times and its interior, the crew's areas, being more luxurious than they even were when the ship still was an Enterprise-class Luxury Liner. Not to mention that Engvall, and the few men who crewed his Gunboat, were welcomed and integrated into the crowd with open arms, having proven themselves time and time again.

Be it against the law enforcement of Liberty, whom he dared to 'kindly ask' for 'munniez' over and over again together with Blue, no matter whether it was Fighter and Bomber pilots, Captains of Gunboats, Cruisers, Battlecruisers, Dreadnoughts and Assault Carriers even.
Or be it against the mysterious Phantoms, one of whom, going by the name of 'Black Rose', still owes them a load of Nomads and Nomad Brains to this date as a result of an encounter during which she tried to fight them. They let her travel on in her badly-damaged Cruiser afterwards, showing mercy and preferring to strike a deal instead of shedding blood.
And they actually have even proven themselves against the Nomads themselves, going into battle against those creatures, doing so with greatest pleasure.
And they did so not to protect the men and women of Sirius.
Not because Nomads are usually bad for business either.
Not for pure sport or just because they can too.
But simply because they are... delicious.
It might seem strange at first, but it kind of came as a result of Engvall's curiosity that the men and women aboard the Ranger discovered that Nomads, as manipulative their mind control and destructive their ways, can, if successfully 'captured' or shot down, be actually prepared in a multitude of ways second only to raw Synth Paste and be eaten without any harmful side-effects.
Not to mention that Nicholai, having had to prepare all kinds of food that wasn't really of the best quality during his time in the Coalition, proved to be an exceptional chef.
'Fried Squid on a stick', 'Squidspleen Sandwiches', 'Squidburgers', 'Squid in Winesauce', those are just a few of the various delicacies the Stellar Ranger's cuisine offers these days.
Whenever the ship is moored at a station these days some of the more daring locals don't hesitate to step aboard, kindly asking if they might get to taste those culinary delights per chance.

But that wasn't all in terms of fame that came to that old Liner and the men and women aboard it.
Word spread around and people started to follow Blue and Engvall, whom Blue simply called 'Jimbo' all the time by now. From all corners of Liberty, there were free men and women, unbound and sharing the same goals, coming to join them. Be it on just one raid, be it in hopes of becoming part of the crowd aboard the Ranger, whatever their reasons, they came. If they were courageous enough.

And courage they needed plenty of, because as good as things sometimes were and as plentiful enjoyment in the life of the men and women who called the Ranger home was, there always was an abundance of trouble and danger around just as well.
You just don't devastate the forces of Liberty's law enforcement day after day on top of extorting money from merchants, independent or otherwise, without repercussions. There were times when a simple raid that started with Blue's and Jimbo's Gunboat and Gunship combination was met with more than just 'heavy resistance'. In fact, one particular time their ships were met with a plethora of small craft and a few stray Gunboats, which wasn't anything outside the norm, but those forces got followed up by no less than two of the Liberty Navy's Assault Carriers and a Dreadnought.
But Jimbo and Blue weren't as alone as they thought. In a couple minutes an entire flock of assorted Pirate and Vagrant Raider Bombers showed up, lending a hand to 'Liberty's Finest' in that dire hour, and even a Hellfire Legion Battlewagon, the Pandion, arrived on the scene, guns blazing and shelling the Navy's ships along with the entire swarm, until those burst into flames, but not before sending the Pandion back to the dry-dock.
Still, it was just one of their many victories, just one reason as for why they got all that attention in the end.
The attention that made so many people come and want to be a part of their 'stunt'.
But only few were really cut out for it in the long run, since the daily hardships they faced and the overwhelming odds they would charge into fearlessly discouraged everyone but the most daring.
Or the most desperate. And in some cases the most... crazy.
But those who actually made it?

They might not be many in number. In fact, they are few.
But what they lack in numbers, they make up for in a multitude of ways.
Be it in ruthlessness, proficiency in combat, charms and wit, or whatever else.
Each and every single one of them shares the common goal, lives the life as the men and women around him or her.
And each of them adds something of his or her own to the entire crowd, something unique, a little bit of variety in a cold and grey universe.
One by one, they all showed up in one way or the other, they showed up and wanted to be part of this one 'stunt' and actually got to be it, knowing it might end any day, at any moment and in the blink of an eye, and over the course of time they all proved themselves in many ways, just as Jimmy Engvall did.

Meet the men and women who call themselves Liberty's Finest.