I was born in 771AS to Zoner parents on planet Erie in the Pensylvania system.At least, that's what they told me. We left when I was 3. My father was a trader-cum-miner. He did whatever he could to make a credit and put food on the table, so we moved around. We moved around a lot.He never told me about my mother. Whenever I'd ask him about her, he'd say "she's dead, and that's all you need to know". Years later, I found out that she wasn't dead at all. She was living somewhere in the Liberty core sectors. Apparently, she got tired of being on the wrong end of another drunken beating. That happened a lot too.
My father ruled our lives with a rod in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other."You'll thank me one day, son" he'd say. He was wrong.I remember when I was thirteen, he beat me almost unconscious because I hadn't cleaned the house quite the way he'd wanted it. My brother, Cerdic, was six at the time and I remember swearing to myself that I'd never let that happen to him. I needn't have bothered. My father saw in Cerdic, everything he didn't see in me. On my sixteenth birthday, I packed a rucksack and, safe in the knowledge that little brother would be just fine, I left. I never went home again.
I went looking for my mother. I lived on the streets and did whatever odd jobs I could do to turn a credit and put food on the table. Where had I seen that before? I finally caught up with my mother a couple of years later. Well, I found her grave, at least. She'd died of a pulminory embolism just five months before.
With nobody else and nowhere to go, I joined the Liberty Navy. I suppose I hoped it'd give me the home I never had - be the family I'd never been part of. I threw myself into my training and graduated top of my Academy class. I was soon flying patrols around the New York/Alaska jump holes. That's where I first saw them. The Order. We'd been told they were terrorists, but for some reason, something about that didn't sit right.
As time passed, I continued up the ranks and had soon made Commander. I was twenty five by then, but I'd begun to feel restless. I transferred to a unit acting out of the Virginia system and became part of a special ops/Guard squadron. Then came the war.
By now, I was thirty years old and was starting to openly question everything that I'd previously thought was gospel. I lost count of the number of occasions saw Order pilots engage Rheinland forces, destroying only targets they said were "infested", whist leaving the others alone. On one occasion, in a dogfight between us and the Rheinland Military, I had a target in my sights and was just about to pull the trigger when my engines were shot out from under me by an Order fighter. As I sat, helpless in space, waiting for him to deliver the coup de grace, the Order pilot came over the comm. He told me that he was sorry for disabling my ship, but that I was about to fire on an "uninfested human". He told me that the Nomads were the real enemy, not each other and that unless we started to learn this quickly, what hope did we have?
It was at that moment that I decided to join The Order.
As soon as the war was over, I resigned my commission, took my exit payment, bought a small ship and headed out into the Omicrons to try to find them. It took me a further 2 years, but find them I did and they welcomed me.
Since then, I've been serving the best interests of humanity and Sirius. The threat's real and ongoing. They're already here and we're fighting with every resource available. Unfortunately, it isn't enough and we've been slowly but inexorably losing ground. Their numbers are swelling whilst ours diminish. Why can't people see what's right on their doorstep?
If our status in the eyes of the rest of Sirius is the price we must pay to ensure everybody's freedom, then Amen.
