Server Character name: Dekishima-Maru
Affiliation: Zoner (IFF and ID)
Ship Type: Kamome GMG Transport (for now)
Captain: Fumiko Kimura (Female of GMG/Kusari descent)
Birthplace: Aomori Station
Birth Year: 796 AS (Age 21 as of 817)
Parents: Hiro and Akiko Kimura
(Hiro is a GMG trade captain, and Akiko works as a Clerk on Aomori Station. Hiro was born on Aomori as well. Akiko is from Planet Honshu orginally.)
Fumiko was always an adventurous child. From an early age, she explored every nook and cranny of Aomori station she could get into. At first she didn't get much out of the living quarters, but as she got older she learned to circumvent security systems more and more. Her innocent appearance and acting skills meant she never got in trouble for these excursions, she always had an excuse ready when she was caught - which was less and less frequently as she got older. You would be hard pressed to find a smarter person, at least where technology is concerned, anywhere in Sirius.
This culminated in her managing to sneak into a docking bay at age 14, and stowing away aboard a Zoner transport. She was lucky or smart and managed to hide in a part of the ship that had atmosphere, but wasn't checked before launching. When the ship arrived at Freeport 9, she almost managed to sneak out without getting caught. Almost. She thought all the crew members had debarked, but the captain was still aboard, and saw her sneaking down the exit ramp. Since he had a sense of adventure himself, he didn't immediately reveal that he had seen her. He let her make her way to the bar area, where she ordered a whiskey and sat at the bar. The bartender had just served the whiskey when the Zoner Captain sat down next to her and smoothly took the whiskey glass away from her and downed it in one gulp.
"What the- Hey! I paid for that!" said Fumiko in her sassyest tone.
The Zoner captain, Dustin Redmond, grinned at her and said:
"Like you paid for passage on my ship?"
Fumiko blushed for a fraction of a second, but managed to stop herself and put on her most innocent look and say in her sweetest tone,
"I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm a fighter pilot, just here for a drink, like everyone else. This *is* a Freeport, in case you haven't noticed."
Dustin decided to play along for now, he could see hostility wasn't going to get him anywhere. And besides, he had a michevious streak, so...
"Sure, you're welcome here the same as anyone else. So, what do you fly, a Stinger?"
"Stinger? Nah, that ship's for sissies! I fly an Eagle."
"Eagle eh? Very nice ship, used to fly one myself before I became a transport pilot. What are you doing way out here, you a Hunter?"
"A Hunter? Do I look like a Hunter? No way, I'm a Zoner."
Fumiko had studied Zoners in school last week, so thought herself an expert on them.
"A Zoner, nice. Me too. Maybe you'd want to escort my transport sometime. I could use you on the next leg of my run. What do you say?"
"How much are you paying?"
"Well, you look pretty young, how many runs have you been on?"
"I've been on 5 runs."
"5 runs, not bad. How about 10%?"
"20."
"15."
"Done. That's great. Well, I have to get my ship ready, you should too. I'll see you in space in 1 hour. Oh, and Bartender, another whiskey for the lady. Sorry about that."
"No problem, see you in space," said Fumiko. She grabbed the glass of whiskey, took a drink, and immediately started coughing. Dustin managed to barely avoid an audible chuckle as he left the bar, though he did shake his head as he rounded the corner of the exit. He wasn't sure where this was going to go yet, but he had a few pretty good ideas. Either she was going to manage to steal an Eagle (there *were* several in the Docking bay, as there usually were at Freeport 9), or she would break down and throw himself on his mercy.
Fumiko, meanwhile, had a problem. Obviously, she didn't really have an Eagle, and didn't know how to pilot one in any case. She thought about trying to steal one, but thought that might be a bit much. She's brave, but the gravity of the situation began to dawn on her. She was in Omicron Theta, light-years from home, on a strange space station, with no legitimate way to get back home. She finished her whiskey, and the bartender asked her if she wanted another. Having never drank alcohol before, she was already feeling a bit tipsy. She shook her head in response to the bartender's question.
"Can I get you something else then? A water maybe?"
Fumiko shook her head again and did the first thing that came to mind: She started telling the bartender a fairly accurate, if whiskey influenced, version of her life story. The story took 35 minutes, and she ended up in tears as she confessed to stowing away aboard the transport and ending up here. As she finished, Dustin walked back in the bar and sat down next to her again.
"So, kid, ready to go home?"
At this point she was hungry, exhausted, and rather tipsy. Despite all that she managed to compose herself and tried to stand up. This turned out to be a mistake, and she collapsed to the deck. Dustin managed to catch her before she bumped her head.
When she woke up, she was in a bed, in a room she didn't recognize. She had a headache, and the light was entirely too bright. Initially she panicked, until she saw Dustin sitting in a chair nearby.
"Welcome to the Adventure kid, offcially this time. Hungry?" said Dustin, handing Fumiko a plate of food. She gratefully took the plate and ravenously began eating. After finishing her food, she thanked him, and they got to talking. They had an excellent discussion of the dangers of space, the Zoner way, the GMG, and many other topics. Eventually he had to get back to helping run the ship, and he let her tag along. She learned quite a bit about flying a transport on the journey from Sigma-17 (she had been unconscious long enough to get through the Theta jump hole) to Aomori. Dustin had never met a smarter kid, but she was just a kid. As for Fumiko, she liked Dustin well enough, but he was old enough to be her father. It would be fair to say they became fast friends - but no more. Fumiko knew what she wanted to do when she was old enough - Captain a Transport. She also knew there was no way her parents were going to let her train for that, especially after this stunt.
They made it back to Aomori without any problems. Her parents were, of course, as furious at her as they were grateful to Dustin. They grounded her, literally, sending her to Honshu to live with her very strict Kusari grandparents. She took it very hard. She didn't get much chance to rebel, her grandparents kept her very close. They were retired teachers, and thus Fumiko didn't even get to go to regular school. They trained her to be a Clerk, like her mother. She HATED that. Absolutely hated it, though she never showed it. She promised herself that she wouldn't end up as a Clerk for life. She saved every credit that her parents and grandparents gave her. When she turned 18, she pretended she was going to take a job as a Clerk on Aomori station. Her parents were so proud, she almost puked. A few weeks after starting her boring dead end desk job, she got lucky (get your minds out of the gutter, this is a PG story!). The Adventure, still being captained by Dustin Redmond, came on station.
She overheard one of her bosses talking about the ship being there, and managed to slip down to the docking bay, saying she had to check on some flight plans that never got filed. Instead, she went straight to the Adventure and begged Dustin to get her off the station before she died of boredom. She even offered him her life savings, which wasn't much, but she had to try. He recognized her of course, and he didn't take the money, but as luck would have it, he needed a new crew member. From their encounter when she was 14, he knew she would be a good addition to the crew.
Being a fast learner, she moved up the ranks quickly. It wasn't long before she was promoted from grease monkey to gunner, to pilot. Now, at age 21 she is the Captain of her own Kamome Transport, owned by her and her crew. It's a used ship that GMG took out of service, but it still flies. They kept the same name on the ship, as changing a shipname is often thought to be unlucky. She spends most of her time in space or on Freeport 9, with frequent trips to Ames Research Station. She still hasn't reconciled with her parents or her grandparents. They have been looking for her ever since she left Aomori, and while her trade runs pass by Honshu and Aomori frequently, she has yet to land in either place since the day she left. And she doesn't plan to.
From an objective standpoint she's an average pilot, and as a Zoner she doesn't have any real combat experience. However, she's an excellent captain. Her crew is loyal and talented. Though she hates to admit it, all her Clerk training has prepared her well for the business aspect of being a ship owner.
Taylor.Davis - Zoner - Osprey MkII based off Ames Research station
Dekishima-Maru - Zoner - 'Pelican' Armored Transport co-owned by Taylor Davis and Fumiko Kimura, based off Ames Research
Alex.Reed - OS&C - Firefly based off Planet Curacao
Fumiko was enjoying her life as a Zoner. Setting her own schedule. Flying around Sirius. Meeting new people. Making money. Lots of money.
One particular trade run the Dekishima-Maru was in the Honshu system, on its way to Freeport 9. They had passed planet Honshu and docked with the trade lane heading for the Sigma-19 gate. Fumiko was on the bridge, as she always was for this part of the run. She had been tweaking the computers in an attempt to suppress the "Warning, sensor efficiency reduced." message that always played over ship's speakers as they left the trade lane near Aomori station. So far she had tried several different methods, including simply disabling the warning, lowering the threshold at which it was triggered, and finally, in desperation, deleting the words "sensor," "effciency," and "reduced" from the voice synthesis program. All, even the last one, had failed. Her latest attempt involved putting the ship in drydock, backing up the ship's computer to an external system, then completely re-writing the operating system and associated programs, wiping the ship's memory, and loading the new programs by hand one at a time.
"This has to work." she said, thinking out loud. Her crew was well aware of her obsession with the warning message, so they knew what she was talking about.
"I'm sure it will captain." replied Julie, the ship's best pilot.
"It better."
"Coming up on the last ring captain." said Tony, the ship's best navigator.
"Warning, sensor effciency reduced." said the ship's computer as they exited the trade lane.
"What?!? How did that not work? I reprogrammed the entire operating system myself! It took days, there's no way that warning should have played!"
"Uh captain, we have bigger problems I think, look out in front of us." said Tony. In front of them were 3 ships of an unknown design, like nothing Fumiko had ever seen. She felt, in her mind, their hostile intentions immediately. The first ship fired some sort of energy weapon, but the shields held.
"Evasive manuvers, get us back in the trade lane! Open a channel to Aomori station!" shouted Fumiko.
"Channel is open, but captain, the trade lane has been disrupted!"
"Cruise engines then! Aomori station, this is captain Fumiko Kimura of the Zoner transport Dekishima-Maru we are under attack by an unknown vessel, I am requesting immediate assistance!"
The ship rocked as the other two ships also opened fire. The cruise engines were charging, but this left them vulnerable in the meanwhile.
"Dekshima-Maru, this is Aomori station, we are dispatching fighters, try to hang on."
"Shields failed! Shields restored. Shields failed. Shields restored. Shields failed." said the computer in rapid succession.
"Cruise engines engaged captain, we're accelerating." The ship was shaking heavily now with every bolt of energy from the unknown ships, but they were starting to gain some distance.
"Warning, hull breach imminent!" said the computer.
"All crew, this is the captain abandon ship, I repeat, abandon ship!" Fumiko activated the bridge escape pods just in time as the ship exploded seconds later. She watched helplessly as the unknown ships flew all around them, picking off escape pods one by one. Then 11 GMG fighters arrived. In a pitched battle, one of the unknowns was destroyed, the other two fled, and 4 GMG fighters were destroyed as well.
One of the GMG fighters tractored in her pod, and they all flew back to Aomori. Fumiko was in shock. The brutality of the unknown ships was unlike anything she had ever seen. Firing on escape pods was something not even the most brutal of pirates usually did. She hoped at least a few of her crewmates had survived, but her eyes had told her that it was unlikely. She had only survived because her escape pod was virtually the last one to be ejected. In her shocked state, it didn't even register that she would be returning to Aomori station, her birthplace and the station she had left suddenly 3 years ago to escape from what she saw as a life of drudgery as a clerk. The fighter carrying her escape pod docked and opened its cargo bay. Fumiko fumbled open the escape pod and stumbled into the docking bay. The fighter pilot made his way to the rear of his vessel just in time to catch her as she fell to the deck unconscious.
When she awoke, she was in the medical bay, her parents at her bedside.
"Fumiko!" said her mother, Akiko, "oh thank goodness you're awake, we were so worried!"
"How...how long..." Fumiko managed weakly. Her mother handed her a glass of water, which Fumiko rapidly drank.
"You were out for two days." replied her father, Hiro.
"What about the rest of my crew, did any of them make it?"
Her father's reply was interrupted by a doctor entering the room.
"Well, you gave us quite the scare young lady. It's good to see you awake." said the doctor as he looked at the biomonitors on her bed, all reading within normal levels. Fumiko recognized the doctor as the doctor present when she was born on Aomori, her doctor all throughout her childhood and early teen years.
"What about the rest of my crew?" Fumiko persisted. She knew she couldn't rest until she knew, one way or the other.
"Uh, I think I'll let your parents answer that one." replied the doctor.
"They're all dead, aren't they? You have to tell me, I'm not a child anymore!" said Fumiko.
Her mother began sobbing, her father put his arms around Akiko and said quietly
"Yes Fumiko, they are. The fighters only found one escape pod intact, yours."
Fumiko began crying, weeping at the loss of her crew, her fellow Zoners, her *friends* at the hands of the unknown assailants. Her father and mother put their arms around her and tried to comfort her as best they could. The doctor remained in the room, a silent witness, though tears came to his eyes as well. After a while, Fumiko calmed down enough to speak.
"I'd like to be left alone for a while." she said.
"Of course," said her mother, "we'll come back later to check on you." Fumiko's parents and the doctor left the room. Fumiko curled up in a ball and immediately fell asleep again.
The next day her parents came back and, as she was physically fine, she was released from the medical bay. She spent some time on Aomori, catching up with her parents and some other childhood friends. After a few weeks she was still sad, but getting bored. Her parents couldn't exactly stop her from leaving, but they certainly could make it more difficult. She decided her best bet was to visit her grandparents on planet Honshu, and leave from there. She really did want to see her grandparents, it had been several years. And she did. She had no problem convincing her parents to let her go to Honshu.
After visiting with her grandparents for a few days, Fumiko booked passage to Ames Research station. She wasn't sure what she was going to do next, but Ames seemed as good a place as any to think things over.
Taylor.Davis - Zoner - Osprey MkII based off Ames Research station
Dekishima-Maru - Zoner - 'Pelican' Armored Transport co-owned by Taylor Davis and Fumiko Kimura, based off Ames Research
Alex.Reed - OS&C - Firefly based off Planet Curacao