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Richard Sykes
| Richard Marion Sykes | |
 | |
| Richard Sykes, c.818 AS. | |
| Profile | |
| Origin |  Liberty |
| Occupation | Wandering freelancer and independent contractor |
| Gender | Male |
| Affiliation | Temporary Autonomous Zoners |
| Previous Employment | Colwell Trucking, Inc., Liberty Navy (Houston Voluntary Militia) |
| Rank | Pope (Even though we're all popes and popesses) |
| Status | Active (818 A.S.) |
| Born | August 31st, 771 A.S., Three Peaks, Planet Houston, Texas System (Age 46) |
| Died | Too stubborn/stupid/ruggedly handsome to die |
Richard M. (Marion) Sykes (call him "Mary" and he'll gut you) is a 'retired' veteran of the Nomad War and sometime freelancer. Now he's a member of the Temporary Autonomous Zoners, and proud of it.
Biography
Early Life
Richard was born in one of the many small towns on Houston, a tiny place called Three Peaks with a population that never breached three hundred. His mother was a local waitress, but he never knew his father - Three Peaks was just off one of the main thoroughfares for planetary commerce on Houston, and as such was a rather infamous "watering-hole" where truckers could stop and experience certain 'pleasures' before having to move on again.
From an early age, Sykes had to work to support himself, his mother mostly just ignoring his existance and supporting her own life. Rick was bitter for a long time, but then slowly came to understand the reasons for this. His mother was out for survival much like himself, and so he should probably do the same.
This philosophy on life led Richard to be a rather dour, withdrawn youth, hardened to the world at an age when most children were still in grade school. He never had any formal education and, as a consequence, remains partially illiterate. He worked many early jobs, eventually settling down in the same vein of work as his father - in the supply transportation industry.
He worked for Colwell Trucking, Incorporated; a tiny transport firm headquartered in Three Peaks. Although at first he could not drive and had to mark his work contract with a diagonal slash, being unable to spell his own name, Richard was a hard worker despite the back-breaking conditions he moved under - he was much younger than the other workers, and his job had him moving heavy boxes by hand to the trucks that would then move the goods to faraway places. He gained driving practice by operating the stockyard's forklift (despite having no licensing) and showed a natural affinity for piloting from an early age. A sub-owner of the company noticed Rick's skill and went to great lengths to procure a transporter's license for the young man, which came with a promotion to truck driver and a hefty raise. Rick was eighteen by this point, and was living on the streets. He saw the sleeping compartments of the transport trucks as a significant improvement to spending the night under a store awning.
The young man, strong from his labor and proud from the lessons it had taught him, took off on the long, arid roads of Planet Houston, where he would spend eleven years serving Colwell Trucking before a certain event would lead him into the cockpit of a completely different vehicle: a Patriot.
In 800 AS, Richard M. Sykes was conscripted into the Liberty Navy as a light fighter pilot during the Nomad War.
Mid-Life
Nomad War
Richard was pressed into the service of the Liberty Navy shortly after the destruction of the RNC Donau, when trouble was expected from all parties involved. Having no experience in spaceflight and even less in space combat, Richard was nonetheless commissioned as an Ensign and attached to the "Houston Volunteer Militia", a so-called 'meatshield brigade' of ship pilots with limited flight experience, given outdated vessels and equipment and tasked with locking down the borders of the only system that directly connected to Rheinland.
In the year of chaos and fire that followed, which later became known as the "Nomad War", Richard fought in a total of thirty-seven engagements on the Liberty border, scoring eight confirmed fighter kills in several hopelessly under-equipped Arrows (he had at least five shot out from under him during the war) before being relegated to defense of the Alaska gate. It was here where the Houston Voluntary Militia would begin experiencing sudden "changes" in mindset and physiology - in reality, each pilot was being infected with a Nomad incubus, with Sykes last on the list.
The day that Richard was slated to be infected and turned into a husk operated by a little blue monster, the Order attacked Alaska. In the chaos, Richard stole his Arrow and defected to the Order for the rest of the War, which would not last much longer.
In the end, Richard returned to Liberty space with a final total of fifteen kills - eight Rheinland vessels, five infested Libertonians and two Nomad fighters.
Post-War
Richard returned to a Houston torn by war but still flying the flag of Liberty with its signature fervent devotion. The pilot gave up his wings and returned to trucking, helping the economy of the planet to return to normal.
But something bugged the pilot. Despite his disillusionment with House politics and infighting, Richard thirsted for space. When he floated out there amongst the sprawling darkness in his Arrow, Sykes often wondered just what could be waiting out there, light years beyond his reach. Eventually this wanderlust, this need to explore, grew too great for him to bear, and he tendered his resignation from Colwell Trucking, Inc. From there, he bought his first fighter, a CSV, and hit the trade lanes.
Present Day
For a time, Richard flew as a freelancer under his own colors. He met several interesting types in his travels, and quickly came to sympathize with Bretonia's plight against the Kusari (although he remained neutral in the Liberty's fighting with Rheinland). He led a brief sedition campaign against Kusari, aiding the Blood Dragons and Golden Chrysanthemums in their fight before retiring from that. However, the Kusari State Police and Navy both remain hostile to him even to this day.
Presently, Rick has fallen in with the Temporary Autonomous Zoners, following a personal spiritual epiphany. As of late, his primary vessel, Seeker Six One, has been racked with hardware problems, and he acquired a temporary vessel, the Fandango! (exclamation point included) while the problems are dealt with. He also brought an acquaintance, Lucas Wisson, Gallian expatriate, smuggler, debonair womanizer and former Sugarland inmate, into the fold to help with commercial duties (shipping and such).
Personality
Richard is a Texan through and through. He frequently displays devotion to his home House abroad, and his thick, almost-indecipherable Houstonian accent often drawls about topics that he cares about, regardless of whether or not anyone else does. He enjoys his meat rare and his beer cold and in a long-necked bottle, and he would gladly give the shirt off his back to someone in need. He is very laid back and sarcastic, although when provoked he becomes caustic and aggressive, which - given his Houstonian nature - is not an altogether unexpected response.
He possesses a deep and ingrained hatred of all things Kusari, referring to them as 'squinty-eyed Xenos in ugly-ass ships', and has gone out of his way to assist the Chrysanthemums and the Blood Dragons on multiple occasions. That said, he maintains a neutral reputation with Rheinland - whom he forgave after the war for being infested with Nomads - and friendly reputations with Bretonia and Liberty, having spoken with several Bretonian pilots while in battle. He has many acquaintances across the galaxy, although they have a habit of mysteriously disappearing on him.
Having become a member of the TAZ, Sykes treats every single member of the strange group as family, but not rendering them immune to the occasional ribbing (such as him frequently referring to them as 'moon-speaking wierdoes'). He also has immense respect for both House militaries and most rebel organizations (see the aforementioned Chrysanthemums and Dragons), although he has stated his distaste for "those vodka-swillin', Marxism-lovin' Red SOBs" and the Ori, an upstart branch of the Zoners.
Richard has since shown a certain degree of softening towards the Coalition after taking their wing in the recent Civil War, mostly due to the fact that the then-Rebels, supporters of Katz, helped free Doc Holliday from imminent capture and probable execution (of course with some assistance from the Dagobaz and some other members of Queen Carina's Privateers). He briefly became involved in an intrigue between the TAZ and the Order when he accidentally targeted, torpedoed and terminated a Cerberus gunship during a Coalition gunfight, where he showed a brief amount of apologetic behavior before becoming a bit sullen for a while. This showed that Rick was unwilling to bring undue harm to the TAZ and showed that he was willing to step up to the plate and take the bullet for his new brothers and sisters in the Temporary Autonomous Zoners.
He gets on fairly well with Popess Concordia and Sister Joanna, along with Xavier Triton and a few other pilots under TAZ colors and several not under the TAZ flag.
Vessels
Seeker Six One
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| E78-12 "Spatial" Civilian Deep Space Explorer | |
 | |
| Ship Class | Super Heavy Fighter |
| Built by | Independent Miners Guild |
| Technical information | |
| Guns/Turrets | 6 / 3 |
| Opt. weapon class | 8 |
| Max. weapon class | 10 |
| Other equipment | |
| Hull strength | 29,600 |
| Max. shield class | 10 |
| Cargo space | 180 units |
| Nanobots/Batteries | 270/270 |
| Max. impulse speed | 80 m/s |
| Max. thrust speed | 199 m/s |
| Max. cruise speed | 350 m/s |
| Power output | 39,130 u |
| Power recharge | 2,350 u/s |
| Additional information | |
| Ship price | $4,180,000 |
| Package price | $4,313,130 |
The Seeker was Sykes' first ship out of the drydocks. He acquired it on Java Station for a pittance and flew it until its untimely death some time in 819 AS. The ship was built well before it was acquired in 817, however - it was one of the original prototype Spatials. That statement isn't to say that is contains some kind of new or revolutionary, unheard-of technology that could potentially alter the face of Sirius forever; rather, it was one of the first buggy, failed Spatial prototypes and as such was plagued with all manner of hardware and computer malfunctions; some of them innocent but annoying and others unsafe and potentially fatal. Everything from the freeze-dryer to the garbage disposal unit to the airlocks to the reactor containment for any of the ship's five or six functioning engines (depending on the day) had malfunctioned, sometimes catastrophically, during the ship's two year commission as Sykes' chosen form of transport. Especially prone to software glitches and ion storms, Sykes nonetheless held onto the ship until the reactor catastrophically destabilized in 819 AS, leaving it stranded on a Gran Canaria landing pad as he hid in a nearby phone booth, watching a spiraling cloud of fire, smoke and debris twirl into the beautiful winter sky.
What was remarkable about Seeker was the ship's navigational AI, called ARIA (Artificial Regulation and Inspection Agent). Purchased from a Zoner bazaar for about eighteen SC, ARIA served as Sykes' comic foil for her stint as co-pilot and AI of the Seeker. She was clean and efficient in working out what was going wrong with the ship and fixing it well enough to hold together until it made port, but it was sarcastic and openly derisive of Sykes' intelligence, making him look like a fool at every opportunity. Despite the icy atmosphere the cowboy and the AI maintained between each-other, Sykes retrieved ARIA's AI core from the wreckage of the Seeker and plans to have it installed on his next ship.
As of right now, the Seeker is awaiting scrapping. Sykes plans to keep it on board his Corvo, when he gets hold of it.
Fandango!
[progress]
Great Hunk of Junk
[progress]
A Houston Burial
[progress]
