He leveraged himself up with both arms. He had been lying face-down on the cold, steel floor, though where he had no clue. Rubbing his head, he searched his pockets, having no clue who, where, or when he was. The only thing that was in his pockets was a key-card for a ship. Scratching his head, he set out to find wherever it was parked. Due to the huge headache and lack of memory, he didn't notice the tracer on the back of the key-card, but wasted half an hour crawling around what he found was an asteroid base.
Once he found the docking bay, he went through every ship trying out they key-card. Most were Starfliers and Startrackers, though there were a few Hawks and Eagles as well. It was on one of the Eagles that the key-card finally worked. Inside, he spent a moment sitting in the chair, just thinking. The headache was leaving, but the memory loss was still there. Shrugging it off, he searched the ship's database. It told him very little. As a matter of fact, it told him two things only. First, his name was Caleb Swift.
Caleb walked into the main bar on Ouray, smelling the place out. He saw things a tad differently, now that his head was clear. Motion caught his eyes, he could read people's lips, he could actually tell if people were a threat to him. It was odd, but he accepted it. He had to. Something he caught was a flash of recognition in the bartender's eyes as he entered the room. As good a place as any to start.
He approached and began to speak: "Do you know anything about me?"
"Eh, sonny?" he asked, a little confused.
Caleb licked his lips, then said, "I don't remember anything. Amnesia. Now, do you know anything about me or not?"
A man named 'Caleb Swift' had mysteriously blown into Nome Base up in Kepler, with Zoner credentials and an Eagle. No one ever asked his history, beyond his nation of origin (Liberty, California Minor to be specific), which was all that mattered to Xenos. Apparently he had a bone to pick, and pick it he did. In the first week, he downed enough enemy patrols to get a nasty reputation amongst other Xenos, which was apparently hard to do.
None of those, however, explained why Caleb had woken up on Ouray's deck with no memory, so he thanked the bartender and started to leave the bar, when he caught a snippet of what someone was saying. Rather, he read it off his lips.
"It's that guy, over there. I hear talk someone got paid to..."
The man appeared to realize that Caleb was staring at him, so he beat a hasty exit from the bar. Caleb followed, both at a dead run.
Down the hallway, both men were pounding it, except Caleb was faster. He slammed the guy into a wall after catching up, using his shoulder to force him down. Slippery, the runner managed to leverage himself so that their positions changed. Caleb was now on the bottom. His hands on Caleb's throat, it was only a matter of time until...
With a grunt, Caleb threw the guy off him, or rather rolled him off. Again resuming the 'on top' position, Caleb held him down by both shoulders.
"Who the hell are you and why were you talking about me?"
The man tried to escape once more, but Caleb was adamant that he stay down. Giving up, he looked up and said, "My name's Vincent..."
Caleb prompted him to further speech by pressing down - hard.
"OK OK! I heard some guys talkin' about you, sayin' that they put a hit out on you because they had heard you were a sleeper LSF agent or something."
"LSF?" Caleb asked, not sure. His memory had holes that you could fly a Train through, and the mysterious acronyms weren't helping.
"What, you live under a rock man? LSF, the covert-ops section of Liberty's government?"
Getting off Vincent, Caleb backpedaled some and considered what he had learned. He didn't remember being in the LSF, but he couldn't remember much of anything. What was he supposed to do... it's not like he would leave hints lying around for anyone to pick up on whether he was an undercover agent or not.
"Sorry about that, I'm a little... jumpy. I guess I should be, considering."
Vincent stood up and stayed his ground. "Eh... no problem, I guess. So, I take it you're not LSF because you've never heard of them?"
"Well, we can't rule that out. I have no freakin' clue who I am."
They were in the bar, again. This time, him and Vincent were sitting opposite each other in a booth, nursing their drinks and discussing things. They had a lot in common, at least by what Caleb could remember. He seemed to know things he liked and disliked once they were mentioned, but couldn't conjure anything by himself. He needed something, anything, to help him remember...
A song. It started playing on the radio that filled the bar with music. It was of course on Radio Free Liberty. The man on the radio said it was "I wish you were here" by Pink Floyd. Caleb's left eye twitched; otherwise, he remained paralyzed. Some said that music is the most powerful aid to memory.
Apparently, they were right. The floodgate opened in the back of his mind, and he remembered.
Born 782 AS on planet Houston, Caleb had been the third of seven children. He had excelled in his school, and in 800 AS went on to West Point, graduating four years later top of his class. He applied for the Navy, but the LSF redirected his application to them and snapped him up. About the same time, his father (in a weird twist of fate) was arrested by the LPI in one of their "roundups" on Houston, picking up people on the streets and arresting them using the thin excuse of 'loitering' and 'vagrancy', simply seeking to increase the number of workers on their prison factories.
Caleb's first assignment would be his last - infiltrate the terrorist organization known as the Xenos so as to gather intelligence on them. Unfortunately, the LSF didn't realize Caleb's personality traits led him to make a perfect Xeno: he denounced injustice wherever he saw it, and felt like he had to use his power to help the helpless. Once he realized what the Xenos were about, he threw off his allegiance to the LSF, and stopped reporting in.
However, the LSF wasn't through with their operative. Being a defector, he was a priority target, and an LSF snatch squad was covertly dispatched to Ouray to take Caleb out. However, they failed to finish the job and tripped the security measures on Ouray, and were only able to get a grazing blow at him before beating a hasty retreat.
That one blow (to the head) was enough, however, especially when combined with Caleb hitting his head when he fell to the ground.
Caleb was rather curious why the LSF hadn't finished him. No Xeno had seen anything, at least none he had talked to. And he'd talked to quite a few. Knowing how the LSF worked, he knew they wouldn't have left him like that unless something had stopped him. So he sat in the bar and thought about it. Someone had to have fought them off. But why wouldn't they own up about it? Obviously it was something one would brag about, right? Fighting LSF off of Ouray?
He voiced his thoughts to the bartender, looking for some help.
"Mayhap you want her," he said, pointing to a girl brooding in the corner. "Ain't said a word since she got here. Quiet as hell. Good fighter, though; with hands, at least."
He thanked him quietly and walked over to her, putting a hand on her shoulder. She flinched.
"I'm Caleb. This seat taken?" She just shook her head, and he sat down next to her. She kept staring off out the window, into the Silverton field.
"Can you talk?" he asked, slowly. She simply shook her head 'no'. Caleb cocked his head to the side and stared at her as if at a puzzle. Then he started talking to her as if she would talk back, pausing courteously to allow for a response that never came. On through the night, he talked...
....Who was this strange man?....
What did he ever do to the LSF that they would hunt him down so fiercely?
..So many questions..
The answer walked through the door and she watched him as he went over to the bartender, he looked like he had recovered from his serious encounter and was back to his nosey self.
She averted her gaze as he headed in her direction and sat down. Her eyes barely flickered but her mind was working furiously and her knees, they weren’t even shaking, they just weren’t there. He was talking to her and she couldn’t figure out why, everyone knew she couldn’t speak and no one had ever been this persistent. All she ever got were orders…never questions…never like this..never..like a normal person. He had a soft, deep, comforting voice that relaxed her after a while.
Dusk had a feeling he was onto her for saving his life, though she would never admit to the act.
She could still remember seeing them LSF tying him up as he lay unconscious on the floor, clear as day. She had no reason to protect this flyboy except for the fact he was a fellow Xeno, and, of course, seeing LSF inside Ouray made her hackles rise. She never messed with the flight wing of her faction, she and some others were trained for physical combat and the use of handheld arms, though she disliked guns terribly, having a notoriously bad aim.
Her hours of daily training had finally come into some use and she moved fluidly, relieving one of his gun and knocking two more out too quickly for them to draw their weapons. Dusk then pulled her knife to the gun-less officer’s throat, using his body as a shield, facing the two remaining LSF who had guns leveled in her direction. They backed away slowly, hearing the sirens go off they made a run for their ships. Furiously she banged the only conscious LSF’s head against a wall hard enough to leave a dent as she picked up one of their guns and began to shoot, her shots ricocheting uselessly off the walls. Frustrated with herself for letting them escape, she gave a vicious kick to one of the still bodies lying on the ground, not realizing it was Caleb until it was too late.