Crappy guns, I'm telling you! Most of the guns didn't even make it out of the explosion, and the very few left took me a fortune to get repaired, but hell... Could've been a good addition to my gun collection. I managed to find this ex-Gallic Junker on Yanagi, who everyone said could repair anything and everything, and seems they were right. The greedy bastard asked me for as much money as he could think of, and even took the half-scrapped guns for himself, leaving me a set of shieldbusters those Council guys called "Falcon", which I figured I can keep as a trophy so I'd have at least -something- from the Gallia trip. The idea of having the guns actually installed on my ship was rather tempting, but it was easier said than done, because of the weird wiring those guns used which totally didn't fit the ones on my Sabre.
Oh, did I mention I switched to a Sabre after the Eagle proved to be not as good of a fighter as Roc was among fighters. Contacted Jameson again, got myself a brand new Cast-made Sabre with an additional Kraken turret on it, and was running around in "yet another Sabre", but with far better guns than any other lancer or merc Sabre out there. Probably wouldn't have lasted the fight with Council in an Eagle, but the Sabre made it too easy. It was a nice ship, nice turning, quick response time, and on top of that, a good cockpit position, but was just too overused for my taste, and I was just flying it for the lack of a better choice.
But anyways... Back to Falcons. That same Gallic Junker - I don't even remember his name anymore -, managed to mess up the wiring on both my Sabre and the Falcons so the two could work together, but turned out a bit too heavy for the powercore, so the bastard made me pay for modifying the powercore as well. The outcome wasn't as bad as I was expecting though. A pair of Falcons literally duct taped to my Sabre made an epic sight grouped with Krakens. I bet it was any Cast's dream to fly a ship firing nothing but orange projectiles. Crappy guns though... They were wearing out just too fast, and didn't want to see them scrapped in a fight, so after having fun with them for a while I just got them off my ship and put them in my collection, going back to good old debs which did actually work better as shieldbusters.
Well, who thought someone like Jameson might one day simply disappear without leaving a single trace. All that time I was messing around in other corners of Sirius, and no one told me about the news. And one day, back in Alpha after a long time, I have to find out how 101st is not run by Jameson anymore and the man is nowhere to be found. Back then, when I found out about the news, I was sure that group won't last without that man in the leading position, and I'm still sure of that. It's just a matter of time. Or maybe the group did die out without that man leading it. The 101st - the way it is now -, is nowhere even near how it used to be back when Jameson was in charge.
There was this new guy leading the 101st. I don't even remember his name, even though I did run into him in Rheinland once. Met him in Koeln, he was there to do whatever I didn't care, and decided to show him a quick way back to Sigmas cause he seemed to be rather unfamiliar with Rheinland and its jumphole network. He was a cool enough guy, decent and all, but nowhere even near "leader material". No wonder he didn't last long. A few months later I heard he had stepped down, and after a other changes of leadership this kid, pretentious little rookie took the seat. I don't even know how he got to lead a group like 101st without even being around the block, but well... 101st was never the same after Jameson disappeared, so I'm not really surprised.
Didn't really bother going anywhere near Outcasts after I found out Jameson's gone. Still don't mind them though, but well... stuff change and I'd rather stick to old things. But remember how I said I paid the price of working with 101st? This is what happened - One thing that bothered me, was having to be hostile to the GMG only cause I was close with Casts, and since Jameson was gone, I figured there's no need to stick to that view anymore. Getting back on their good side wasn't that easy, even though all the records of my activities against them was probably already lost in the archives. Still, I couldn't take much chances, I needed a solid and at the same time indirect approach. That's where I got lucky, and I didn't even realize that could help with the GMG mess -after- I was through with it.
Well... I was good with Casts, and that meant I was good with the GC as well, so even though Dragons weren't a big fan of me, they ignored me long as I didn't step on their toes. There was this one time in Omegas though, I caught this Behemoth who was trying to run some ore out of o7, and to my surprise - after I had shot him down, of course - there were two codes lying there among the loot. Now, I didn't need any more codes, but couldn't really leave them floating there either. It was just a random idea that occurred to me after I got to Sigmas. Maybe I could give those guns to Dragons to work up my way a bit closer to them, but they weren't a bunch accepting bribes, and that was the issue. Even though it wasn't a bribe, it was understandable if they got totally defensive all of a sudden, thinkin I'm planing to bribe them or something.
Gladly, I ran into this gunboat of theirs in Sig13, and the captain was a decent enough guy to see the guns are not a bribe. I fed him some crap about how much I respect the honorable warriors they are and blabla, all the lame lines that'd sound appealing to a Kusarian ear, and he even paid me a few millions to thank me for bringing them the codes, sayin he'll make sure the guns are put into good use blablabla. One hell of a boring talk that was! But in the end, it worked out just as I had expected. Now the tricky part was getting in touch with a GMG - preferably greedy one - through them, cause even though it was supposedly a secret, everyone knew there was loads of under-the-table deals going on between Dragons and those gas miners.
What made it rather easy for me, was... Well, GMG are miners, and miners are greedy, and greed leads to ignoring certain things if there's some cash involved, and that's exactly what I needed to put into some good use. It wasn't really bribing, if you look at it the way I do. It was more like... Sending them some cash to make up for all the trouble. Good deal, actually! But there was a chance of someone finding out and the whole deal going to hell, but the guy seemed to know what he was doing. I wonder how many before me had used his "services" to get back on the good side of the GMG for a 'small sum' which wasn't that small anyways. I could've easily done it myself if I knew the low level criminal database of the GMG was on a public host and not in their central database, but well... I figured that out after the guy took care of everything for me.
I wasn't going to do much with it anyways. Just wanted to have a safe passage through Sigmas whenever I needed, and getting shot at by both Kusari and Rheinland, having the Sigmas right inbetween, it could give me a good breathing room for when things got too messed up. Long as they didn't mind me, it was all fine with me, but that also meant making sure I wont cause any trouble around Sigmas or GMG space, which was also fine by me, cause I rarely went there anyways, and there was no Jameson anymore to drag me into a fight with GMG to ruin my reputation with them and have me go through all this trouble to fix somethin I didn't even mess up in the first place. But oh well, c'est la vie.
The Bretonia does indeed get the worst of anything. Went there again after a long while, and man... That place, is wrecked. Edinburgh and Leeds are practically Gallic territory now, and the Brits have p'much given up on Edinburgh, and trying their best to hold what's left of Leeds. They probably won't last much longer there. Half an hour into the system, and I got involved in this massive fight with a bunch of Gallics. Now, I didn't mind shooting alongside Brits or hitting Gallic ships as hard as I could, but the whole situation was desperate. I even even if a Corsair offered help they'd accept it. Their life sucks, really.. Just done with the war against Kusari, and they have to put up with them Gallics.
They're so desperate they're making all these NAPs with whoever they find, just so they can focus all they've got on their northern front, and one thing's for sure, they're gonna get backstabbed for it, but they're too desperate to notice. But anyways, wasn't there to stay, was just passing through to get to Barrier when I saw all that mess going around the place. Barrier has always been a nice place to chill. Kinda cheap, but well, who cares when it's the one place in all over the Sirius where everyone's minding their own business. It makes it easier to relax for a while when you know whatever you do is your own damn business and you won't have to worry about someone getting mad at you for doing something, or someone trying to set you up for something that'd screw you over some day.
They say they've made a new freelancer base similar to Barrier somewhere out in Sigmas. Maybe I should visit that one some day as well.
I've been called many things. Nostalgic ain't one, but it really should be. The other day I figured I can climb into my Roc and take her for a spin again, cause she was just sitting there collecting dust all this time since I switched to that crappy Eagle and then my precious Sabre. But man... I just realized, there's nothing like flying a bomber. Sure, flying a fighter was nice, but it makes things too easy, there's no fun in it and there's no adrenaline rush that you can smell through your nose. Ten minutes out in the open with that thing, and I could already feel the excitement of flying a bomber again. That was a hell of a flight. I even considered going to Liberty for the sake of old times, but figured it'd be suicide after all this time away from bombers and LNS swarms, so I decided to take it for a test drive instead.
There was this random trader I ran into around FP4. He was a cool guy. He was flying one of those medium Bretland transports, and you could clearly see how scared he was when he saw a bomber kicking his little trans out of the lane. His cargo was rather interesting though. Some wines, some cigars, and if you looked at the scan logs close enough, you could see some synth weed in a corner too, and that guy definitely had no idea how to hide them so they don't appear in scan logs. That cargo was somethin you'd more often see around Cortez than Magellan, and seems that's where he was headed as well, but had accidentally taken the wrong gate or something, because he was seemed confused about being in Magellan, thinking he was supposed to be in Cortez.
It was so tempted to try my SN aim on him and see how much of my aim's been screwed after all this time, but the kid was all nice and polite, and figured I can keep my finger off the trigger at least till he's gone and the next poor bastard's off the lane. Apparently the ship was his dad's who used to work for Gateway, but he had retired and his son - the kid captain of that Brit med trans - had decided to go freelancer with the ship, and there he was, with all his cash spent on the luxury cargo he had bought, and not a single dime left on him. Well, I didn't need his cash anyways, so figured I can just get some of that good stuff he was taking to Curacao and let him be on his way. I don't do weed though. It's nasty and pointless, and potheads turn out so miserable in the end. I don't do Cardamine either, don't wanna get stuck with orange powder crawling up my nose for the rest of my unnatural life, but I couldn't say no to a few nice bottles of wine and a couple of hand-rolled cigars. Life's generous toward some, every once in a while, and so am I.
