Dietrich, Jorge and I.
We were 3 young rascals back then... well, we still are actually.
A lot has happened before the situation we are in now...
But let's not get ahead of ourselves! Some introductions are welcome here, I see.
We are three orphans, all from seperate systems.
Our 'guards' (as we liked to call them. It seemed a universal way of calling one's supervisors) had the nice idea of organising a field trip together. So the 'Epic Universal Orphanage', having orphanages on Planet Hamburg, Planet Cambridge and Planet Kyushu, decided to come together for a week on Planet Manhattan.
We, the three friends, met eachother shortly after the meeting between the orphanages at New Central Park and got along pretty well.
Dietrich came from Hamburg and was a smart young guy fella who was into computers and mechanics.
His mother died while giving birth to him and his father was killed in a barfight.
Jorge came from the Kusari based orphanage, but wasn't Kusari. His parents, both Corsairs, died in an accidental skirmish with the Kusari Naval Forces. Before their death, they put Jorge in the escape pod which was tractored in by the Kusari Forces. He held a grudge against the KNF from then...
Jorge is a muscly guy, used to fighting in the orphanage. He's always the first one to fire the turrets... but that's for later.
And finally, there's me: Brian. I'm from Cambridge and actually, I don't know why my parents died... and I'm not really planning to find out either.
You could describe me as the perfect mix between my 2 friends. I'm not the genius Dietrich is and I'm not the heavy weight boxing champion Jorge is, but something inbetween.. okay. I'm also the negotiater and more importantly: The pilot! I'm the only one that can fly, though Dietrich could too, I'm sure.. He just doesn't have the ba... well, you know what I mean.
In short, I lead us.
So we were astray on Manhattan, knowing we needed to make money.
We broke into some houses, sometimes, mostly for food and clothes (and videogames for Dietrich) and did this for 2 years - becoming professional housejackers- , untill we came onto a loft that would change our lives.
Dietrich got us past the security (I'll never understand hacking) and Jorge scared off the owners as he always does. Once inside we were delivered to a house full of treachery. Artifacts, jewels, everything!
We took what we could find and stumbled on a weird looking safe.
Not to mention, we were professionaly curious and Dietrich here hacked the safe.
As we opened it, a strang feeling breeze came out of the safe, as if it was high pressurized.
Inside, we found some other strange things: Beer bottles, old looking ones with old, but wel preserved labels.
There were some parchments inside which in generally said something about the beer.
Seems it was old beer, from Planet Earth. Smuggled on the Liberty Sleeper ship by the ancestors of the family of this house.
Jorge, being the macho man, took one of the beer bottles and opened it with his bare hands and drank it completely in one go. He soon began acting kind of, weird, which hinted us this was some strong beer.
I took a bottle out of the hybrid-fridge-safe and read the white label with the red letters on it... 'Duvel'.
I took a sip and gun me down if it isn't true, but that was the best beer I've ever tasted!
Jorge and I feasted on the remaining beer bottles (Dietrich tasted, but decided he'd stick with soda).
While we were drunk, Dietrich checked the safe and found something else: 60 million worth of Credit Cards!
But our luck threatened to change, as LPI sirens were heard... probably tipped off by the owners. Instead of chasing them away, Jorge had better bound them to a chair or something... he clearly lacked some insight.
We hurried towards the garage-hangar and found an old Starflier. Tossing the Artifacts, jewels, credit cards, the remaining beer and my 2 friends in the cargo space, I jumped on the pilot seat and speeded off.
Having raced on Cambridge when I was 15, It wasn't hard to shake off those donut lovers.
We undocked into space and headed towards Bretonia. I knew off this cute student that lived in the Newcastle system. Even though I was pretty young, I looked old enough to flirt with the college girls on Cambridge.
After a trip of a week or so (tradelanes make it so easy) we arrived on Scarborough station in Newcastle.
I explained the story to Sarah (the cute student) and she hinted us to get a new ship.
So with all the artifacts, jewelry and 20 million we bought ourselves a Gunship.
I wanted a fighter, actually, but Jorge threatened to beat me up (I almost accidently ejected the two into space when they were in the cargo space of the Starflier) and buy something that had comfortable beds and living space.
We decided to name the ship Duvel, as an ode to the beer that changed our lives, and christened it with some of the bottles we took along.
On our way back to Liberty, we had a short skirmish with some Lanehackers.
We were watching them fight with an LSF guy, when one of them shot a missile at our gunship.
The shock made Jorge spill one of the last Duvels we had on board and he jumped at the console, opening all turrets on the lanehackers.
We chased them away (2 helping Cruisers and a Battlecruiser had nothing to do with it... honest!) and went on our own way.
We equiped our ship to the fullest with all the money we had, planning wild trips to the Borderworlds and meeting lots of pretty girls.
However, we didn't really like our gunship. It was pretty simplistic, being Bounty Hunters Guild stuff and it didn't really attract... you know. After three years, we became bored with it. Dietrich told us of a nice looking ship the Lanehackers had (honestly, he was more interested in the supercomputer it housed) and we decided to visit Mactan base.
We had to pay some weasel faced guy 900 000 credits to get in (Yeah I know! Isn't that just awfull? Having a weasel face...) and soon were interrogated why we attacked some of their guys some weeks before.
Amazingly, Dietrich saved our skin there. Explained and impressed them, even helping them with some issues they had. Well, that's how I remember... Christening our new Duvel, a lanehacker Gunship costed me my attention.
So, here we are now in our new, nice gunship. We decided to put the last Duvel in a seperate escape pod, in case our ship gets blown.
Now, it is time to seek Fortune, Fame and Honour!
Well, something like that ... nice girls will do too, though, instead of honour.
