Furious Angels

[Leo]

I made it to Buffalo without any incident. I never thought leaving through the Texas jumphole would be an issue so my guard was down as I approached the hole. Two fighters appeared and scanned my ship from nowhere. They acted unusual, acting like they weren't supposed to be in the Badlands to begin with. Their Kusarian accents were obvious.

"What is your name, pilot?" said the one in the light fighter. His tone was harsh and accusing. That got me heated from the get go. I couldn't resist the irony in this entire situation from several different angles.

"You know gaijin, because that's what YOU are here, you affront anyone who comes into your home from another place as a criminal. Maybe I should do the same to you here?"

"You forget, Bretonian, that you too, are a foreigner here." said the second ship, a very heavy fighter. His tone was much more gentle, less accusing. "Now, tell us your name and you can be on your way."

"A little far from home aren't you, Kusarian?" I said. I could feel the tension mounting slowly. The Kusarians were powering their weapons. "Lets face it boys, you already know who I am...and for some reason now you're harassing me. Wasn't your loss in Leeds last week bad enough against my fighter?"

"You cheated!" said the light fighter. "You broke the rules in a fair engagement! Now it's our turn to be unfair, Evan Williams!"

Both fighters began beating the hell out of my shields. The aft shields broke and hit the engines, disabling them. Cursing I set the ship to auto thrust and rigged the repair systems to auto repair for as long as I had the nanobots and shield batteries. I unhooked from the chair and ran to the back as the ship shook. I collected my small duffel bag that I kept in the compartment next to the cockpit in case of emergencies and threw it into the open canopy of my fighter. I flicked out my knife and cut all the straps holding the ship to the floor and climbed in.

"Bastard Kusarians...killed my father, probably my mother...now they're going to take my lively hood too? Oh no sir...I'm going to pop both those bastards." I said to no one in particular. "They're going to die" I said again and slid the canopy shut just as the freighter ripped in two and exploded.

I punched the accelerator just as the two idiots were cheering their hollow victory. As I launched out of the debris, I opened up my Roc with two bursts from weapons and one SNAC right to the face of the VHF, within seconds the ship was floating wreckage. The light fighter pilot turned and tried to run, but the explosion from his buddies ship had weakened his aft shields near his engine port. I fired one SNAC into his a** and watched as his ship imploded, his screams only echoing briefly across comms.

After his ship was ripped into pieces, I realized that I was breathing hard and gripping the controls in a frenzied state. I slowly let go and laid back in the ship's seat.

"Who am I kidding?" I said again. "I'm a fighter...not a damn smuggler..." I looked back to the wreckage of my transport. "Ah well, was a waste of credits anyway. Maybe I should check the boards and see what idiots I can go out and kill."

If I'd only realized the two men I killed weren't just Kusarians...but diplomats from Kusari sent here to find me...maybe I could have avoided the entire fall out that was about to occur...but hey, hindsight is 20/20...right?

---

Why are you reading this? Don't you have something else you'd rather be doing? Why are you still reading this? Go out and explore, trade, fight, pirate, or even die thanks to SLRC autopilot. You're still here? What do you want, a poem? Fine. Roses are red, violets are blue, I lose the game, and so did you.