A whole life in the surface of the same planet, seeing the same landscapes from sunrise to sunset, listening stories from pilots that went to the far corners of the void, distant star systems where to rise in glory or simply perish in a steel tomb with blaster fire marks, and the voice of my father in the background, forcing me to take care of my mother while she was alive, and to take care of him until the day he died. All that I inherited from him, were debts, and the house where we lived, that I sold to pay them. Starting from zero, I left planet Los Angeles by the first time and went to work to Pueblo station, as support engineer, making basic repairs and tidying up the backroom and the workshop, until I earned enough credits to buy my first ship. Now, I'm heading to discover the secrets of the space, to see up close the stars of the sky, and seek a place among them.
It's been just a few weeks since I left what I used to call home, and I never could imagine that would find what i've found: there are hundreds of inhabited and uninhabitable worlds, lots of star systems full of asteroid fields where you can find from huge mining operations, to pirates looking for a good income attacking traders who dare to enter their domains, debris fields, witnesses and result of great space battles, shipwrecks of explorers who never went back home, and an alien threat, protector and heiress of an ancient empire... something far beyond my imagination. Smuggling has given me the opportunity of purchasing a new ship, but in the "civilized" worlds there's a lot of control,too much rules to follow, now that i have enough money, i'm going to try better luck in the furthest regions of Sirius,i have the feeling of not having seen even a small portion of what awaits me out here, could be dangerous, but it makes me feel alive.
I've been told by some pilots I've met, that the omicrons are an amazing, but also dangerous place, but still wanted to chart them. Miraculously, I've done it. There are shipwrecks everywhere, I've seen a planet burnt to ashes, and I've survived my first encounter with those "nomads", I got frozen by fear when an alien battleship escorted by two cruisers showed up on my radar, something that I can't deal with, I think I've been too lucky keeping out of their shooting range... I've also been able to have a look to their architecture, it's impressive! Sadly, i didn't want to spend more time there, it's a really dangerous place, hostile, and there's still a lot of places I want to visit. I have only seen Kusari when crossing it on my way to Gallia, maybe I should spend a few days there and see what it has to offer.
Kusari... what a colourful place, really beautiful... but there's also a lot of bases, a lot of scrap floating around ruining such sights... I've been thinking, while exploring most of the time you're alone, so you have a lot of time to think, What brings the human evolution? My father used to tell me stories, stories of a distant planet where millions of years ago, a race of apes started evolving: "Imperfect creatures... with the reasoning their brains developed, they discovered a lot of new things, they got further and further, their imagination led simple creatures to be the first civilization on the surface of that planet... But power corrupted them, and as civilizations evolved, so did weapons that were used against each other... The only specie over the surface of that planet that was exterminating itself, only for money, for conquering whatever, for having more than the rest... That imperfect creatures evolved in a world built by wars, they are the ones that divided in two sides and fought each other in a war that led to the biggest exile ever known, the exile that brought us here to the Sirius sector" I don't know how, but I'm starting to feel that he was right, and the human being hasn't evolved at all, nothing has changed, now I understand why pirates don't fit in this world, they think in a different way, they're not how the government want people to be... Understanding this terrifies me, maybe I've spent too much time alone, I'm going to Shinkaku station to have a drink and think what's next, maybe Liberty, is the closest place to my home, or at least where home was for me, and I haven't almost seen it, also will find more people there, maybe that will help me to keep my mind away from strange thinkings...
Back in Liberty, I headed to Pueblo Station, where i worked for some time, some time ago, but I didn't remember that I left in such aggresive way..."Another day of work, I had enough money to buy a basic ship, but not much more... As always after working, I went to the bar for a drink, and there was the lead engineer, with whom I had been speaking about my wish of exploring the universe, he looked at me and said loudly "Here comes who will uncover the secrets of the universe!" Everybody started laughing, but i didn't care, then talked directly to me: "How do you think you will go exploring the universe? you don't even own a ship, and travelling that far is really expensive." I told him that once i had one, i could start trading to pay the travels and earn for a bigger ship. He started to laugh and said that i should trade with my butthole to do that... my blood started boiling, and couldn't resist to give him a punch in the mouth, unluckily he fell backwards and hit the shelves making to fall a lot of bottles, some of them really expensive... We started fighting, but from there, all that I remember is that I woke up in passenger liner heading to Erie. That's when my contract ended"When the bartender saw me, his face changed, it looked somehow angry, I asked him for a liberty ale, but he said: " First you have to pay what you broke the last time" I did, even thinking that it was unfair, but there were some police pilots and didn't want to sleep in a cell, then he pushed me out of the bar and told me to leave, I wasn't welcome there anymore... A fleeting thought crossed my mind, "You will pay for this grievance..."Los Angeles! The few good memories I have, are there, it would be great to relax a bit before continue the exploration
I've been too impulsive going to look for what is not, where it is not. When I reached planet Mojave's orbit, I saw Los Angeles... I stared at it... there wasn't anything for me there... just memories, everything else, is missing. Finally, I decide to concentrate in the future, instead of complaining about the past, and head to Ontario, there's a junker base where some smugglers settle temporarily, or at least this is what i've heard, maybe I'll get some work talking to one of them, I want to get a new ship, but this could be a bit expensive, and i know that some runs can be really profitable. I'll decide it when I wake up tomorrow.
Why do I have these strange dreams? What do they mean? The last one has been too vivid, frightening..."I was naked, alone, in one deck of what seemed an abandoned research facility, some automated basic controls were still online, but nothing else... unless an unusual cold sensation, like it was a haunted station. As i was getting closer to the bar, that sensation was increasing... Two pilots came out of the bar and started to walk towards me, but they didn't care about me, as if I weren't there, then one of them walked trough me. Was I dead? I couldn't understand what was happening, I entered the bar. It was full of people but no one seemed to see me... or the strange figure that was in the centre of the bar, standing... I didn't know if it was looking at me, since I couldn't see eyes in it. I couldn't move, I was petrified, that strange thing acquired my body form, to the smallest details, it was like a mirror. When it was really close to me, opened it's eyes... and as it opened it's eyes, my eyesight went dark until I saw nothing... nothing but darkness. "What are you waiting for? You always have been the same, even if you try to deny it... Stop escaping, there's no way out of yourself, like a wheel that, no matter how many turns it takes, the end of each one, returns it to the initial position." The voice dissapeared, then I recovered my sight. I was at home, in the house that once was home... And I was smaller. I ran to the hall's mirror. I looked like when I was six years old, my mother came to me and asked if I was ok, then she bent in front of me, and said "Dad isn't going to have dinner with us, he'll work late today" She was going to cry, but why? She ran to her bedroom. I followed her silently, when I got there, she was watching the news... I turned myself to the screen... what was my father doing there? they were talking about a terrorist attack, for a second, I thought that he could be one of the victims, but my mother took me out of her bedroom violently "Forget what you've seen, go to your bedroom, there is where you should stay until tomorrow!" I was scared, and even more when I saw my father entering home, he passed close to me, but he ignored me, and headed to the basement stairs, and slammed the door. Once again, everything went dark... and remained like that for a while, then, a female voice whispered "Time for the next spin... choose where to spin to" then, I had a very real vision... I was behind the cockpit of a fighter, one I couldn't identify, and dressed in a different suit, I was ready to launch, the docking bay door opens..." Then I woke up, soaked in sweat, and thought about my father... theres' something that doesn't fit whith how he died... you don't get paralytic working in an office... Neither had a personality that would fit in such work environment... I have a lot of questions right now, I'm going to the bar for a coffee while I decide where to go... or if I really want to go somewhere, I want to sort out what these dreams mean, I feel that I need to.
After some time in the bar, I noticed that there was a rogue pilot looking at me from the door, but I didn't care, I was too busy thinking about where to start my research... that station in my dream... does it really exist? Is it related with my father somehow? The rogue pilot sat in front of me with a bottle of rum and two glasses and gave one to me: "So, Richard Tann junior, I guess that if you're here, your father died recently." How did he know that my father was dead? And my name? "The last time I saw you, you were learning to walk, and look now, you're exactly like your father... He always tried to keep you out of all this, that's why I didn't understand why did he give me this for you, and told me that when he would die, I would meet you here." He gave me a paper with an almost unreadable scribble "I don't know what does it mean, so I think that could be something that you can understand or that is important for you... Also told me that you would pay the ship he made me crash against an asteroid, that moron almost killed me." More debts... I'll pay it, I've been doing it since he died... when he left, I tried to read what was in the paper... "-1-1121249995 10 0" I remember to have seen numbers and phrases written like this... Damn, an useful thing that I learned from my father and I've forgot it! Wait, it had something to do with the number of lines... That's it! He used to write things in a column and then made a single line with the first letter or number of all of them, then the second, the third... Let's try two lines...
--114951
112299 00
It doesn't make any sense for me, maybe they are three...
-11950
1129
-24910
Looks like the coordinates of a point in the space... but where? there's a lot of systems to search for this coordinates! At least, even that that rogue pilot only showed here to get paid for his ship, i feel that I will fly a little bit safer trough this systems.
Thinking about all that stuff of the coordinates, I decided to ask arond in places where I imagine my father could have been, with no results, and to make it better, the liberty navy has started to have interest in annoying me... damn preprogrammed scumbags... I was raged up, so I didn't refuse to join an Outcast pilot to perform an attack on a trade lane... It costed me some credits, a gunboat appeared and shot us away... I lost contact with that pilot so I headed to Alcatraz for repairs. The good thing is that althought I almost die, I've found a ship that suits me, I only have to remember how to fly a fighter properly... and learn some things about piracy if I want to live this way.
At last I've found something! The equipment trader in Fort McMurray knew my father! He told me that the las time that saw him, he equipped his ship like he was going to blow up a whole fleet himself... "He told me that he was going to make everything change,in order to make everything remain as it was, then he gave me a box and told me to send it to a junker's base in Cassini, he said that they would know what to do with it" the day after that, he knew that my father was shot down and made an emergency landing in Los Angeles. I supose that was then, when my father got paralytic... I remember that I didn't see him in about six months until he came back home in a wheelchair... Anyway, he says that these coordinates could be from anywhere, since he was a resless ass... I'll never find where these coordinates are from... Well, at least here I won't die in hunger here, the rations in the bar are big enough to feed an empire. Tomorrow I'll go searching that junker base, is the only clue I have right now.
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