Story from a nobody

[Kiltrathi]

Greetings reader, I am Commander Penelope "Kiltrathi" Liefs. Let me just inform you on who I am.

As a young girl I saw my uncle fly Vipers for Lave’s local defence force. Every time I had the chance I went to see his ship blast off from Lave station into the black of space then eagerly waiting for him to return. Although he might not always have told me the truth about what happened out there, he told me more than enough for me to want nothing else than to fly in a spaceship amongst the stars.

As my uncle grew older he eventually retired from the police force and bought a used Sidewinder and started his own business. I saw less and less of him or his ship. Even then I kept my face glued to the portals of the station and watch the ships enter and leave, quietly hoping to spot my uncle, praying for him to offer me a ride.

When my parents decided to leave Lave Station for Zaonce, my dad was offered a job as marketeer, I feared I’d never be able to fly amongst the stars, I dreaded the move to such a tedious place, unfortunately it was even worse than I’d imagined. I hated the parties, I hated the people who went nuts at the Perpetual Party high as a god on Chateau d’If. All I wanted was to see my uncle and his Sidewinder dart through the space station to find it’s landing platform. I wanted to listen to his tales and dream away in my own ship, experience those tales myself.

As it happens to most people, life chose a very different path for me. Upon leaving school I got a job as a marketer, just like my dad. I even got married and had a son. As dreams do when they are no longer viable, I forgot about it. I made myself forget about it.

I saw my uncle only once since the move to Zaonce, we hardly talked, he just complained about the competition and brutality of these new young pilots, “They just shoot anyone, because they can. The whole universe looks like it’s gone loopy.” Looking back I think that was the day he gave up on his business. Our lives, my husband, son and I, just went on. Going to work, growing older, the run-of-the-mill life span of any human these days.

The twist came just days after my 42nd birthday, I received news that my uncle had passed away in some far flung system I’d never even heard of. I was stunned to find there was a personalized message waiting for me, for a small fee the local authorities at LHS 3447 would sign over my uncle’s Sidewinder to me. I had a look on the galactic map to see where on Lave he’d ended up and decided to follow in my uncle’s footsteps. I realize that I made a decision people will judge me on, but I left nonetheless. My son had his own life and I had long since lost interest in both my marketing job and even my husband. My dream of flying to the stars had reared its head with a ferocious passion. I wanted to fly a spaceship into a station and make a little girl dream of flying one, just like my uncle did to me. I wanted to see what was out there, I wanted to be free.

I managed to get a ride on an Orca transporter to Dalton Gateway, to find my uncle’s Sidewinder waiting for me.

[Kiltrathi]

It’s all pretty vague now, recalling memories of events long ago is a tricky business. That first flight was the best day of my life. I really shouldn’t make these claims, they’re never true. I could just lie and claim that I knew exactly what I was doing, but my parents told me not to lie, so the truth is I had great trouble figuring out how to get the machine going. I had nobody there to help me, I did find some sort of automated instructor and it did help. I must have taken off as I’m still flying across the universe, I must have made some credits as I’m no longer flying my uncle’s sidewinder. If I hadn’t gone back to LHS 3447 I probably wouldn’t even have remembered the station’s name or its orbit distance from the main star.

I do remember feeling totally lost with my newfound freedom. I had my own ship, although I found out that most of it was useless and I had to do with replacements. With little to no credits to my name I had to loan them. It’s rock bottom, my dream of flying the stars had turned into flying an old space ship fitted with loaned parts and no idea how to pay these loans off or even make a living doing anything.

“Buy low, sell high” marketing talk I knew all too well. That even applies to a ship that had space to haul a few tons of anything. Once I figured out how to talk to the different station interfaces I had at least the option of making money by trading. Problem was I had no clue what people wanted to sell for a decent price or what a decent price would be like, I just bought the cargo I thought was appropriate and requested take-off.

I am uncertain how I discovered my first trade-run, it couldn’t have been far away from the station I had acquired my Sidewinder, I was ferrying goods, I was self-sufficient, even if at first it was briefly as I quickly found out that I wasn’t the only one trading as my profits plummeted to a level where I was actually running at a loss. Trading was such hard work for me at this stage, too little acumen for the job. I had seen the warrant messages at the stations, some of those offered more credits than I had seen in my life. Just for one confirmed kill. A kill. I had to shoot and kill another human because they’d done something wrong, who knew what that’d been, they’re always very vague about their reasons. I just couldn’t see myself shooting other people, so I kept trading for a measly profit margin.

[CMDR Navin]

Nice work so far looking to see more.

[Kiltrathi]

The Sidewinder I was flying had a serious draw back, it was small, tiny even. I’m not the tallest person in the universe, and quite frankly the Sidewinder totally dwarfed me, but in respect to hauling cargo, totally inadequate. I watched, with different degrees of jealousy, Cobra’s launch from the pads right next to me. A bank balance of 10,000’s where a Cobra would cost me 100,000’s is very humbling.
Who would have thought a few months ago I’d feel bad about owning 10,000 credits. I know you couldn’t buy an apartment for that on Lave Station, and it was more than I’d ever owned in my life, never mind owning my (albeit my late uncle's) own spaceship, an apartment that could jump to any nearby star!

Still, I sat forlorn on my cramped flight deck, surrounded by a few tablets containing information my ship’s computer didn’t want to remember. I activated the Galnet bulletin board and started browsing for news, quickly skipping over the rhetoric from yet another honest politician. You know those moment when all of sudden you feel like the dumbest person in the galaxy? I saw an advertisement to transport some information to the exact same station I’d been hauling goods to. Tentatively I requested more information, but was presented with as little to no explanation as to the nature of the message nor anything about the danger involved. It did have a big number as a reward, big in pay and in text, just to draw enough attention away from the non-existent reason for wanting it transported. It worked though, it had my attention. The pay was way more than what I’d make on a single trade run, something fishy must be going on here, no one pays 1,000's of credits just to get a message to the next star. There are cheaper options, unless of course you don’t want people to know you’re sending a message.

I accepted.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”

I delivered the message without any incident, nobody seemed to care what I was carrying, nobody asked questions when I sat the Sidewinder down on its landing pad, there were no spying eyes following me handing over the message, as least not as far as I was aware. Perhaps readers will find me very naive for believing nobody pays attention or can’t believe that I didn’t know people really don’t care what’s going on. I was convinced everything you did was being monitored, most activities were on Lave Station and even on Zaonce. It’s all I had ever known and I just assumed interstellar space was the same. I quickly learned that as long as you’re not caught red handed, people just don’t care what you transport into their system. They do scan ships approaching stations, they scan some of the ships some the times in my experience.

It would only be for getting a better trading ship, really, and no illegal items, just messages and legal parcels.

At least that’s how I convinced myself I was not a bad person.

[Kiltrathi]

I only meant to raise enough credits to outfit the Sidewinder. The temptation of a bigger, better ship turned out to be too great though. I could do so much more in a Viper, and after all the Viper had been the one my uncle had been flying while working for Lave Station Security. The ship I’d seen him dock dozens of times when I was a little girl.

Every time I landed with a little bit of cargo and the sporadic message I saw the station Vipers. I knew how much those ships cost and how far I was still away from getting to actually flying one of these for myself. Perhaps my uncle had always kept to his promises, no illegal business, and was destined to keep flying the Sidewinder until he got too old to move on to bigger ships.

Trading small amounts and ferrying messages was going to take me way too long. Once in a while I overheard pilots and technicians talk about salvage jobs, most of these conversations were abruptly stopped as soon as they found out someone was within earshot, but they’re always too late. I knew that those assignments would bring in a tenfold of credits, ten times faster to getting a Viper. The very first time I got myself involved in the shadier side of space it was by sheer accident. A technician approached me asking if I had the necessary blueprints ready to unload. She said she was in a hurry and the quicker I could unload the better it was for everyone involved. My blank expression came as a shock to her and she tried to quickly get as far from me as possible. I hurried after her and quickly caught up with her. I shoved her into the wall near my docking pad and made her tell me everything I needed to know. Once you know what to look for, these kind of assignments are just as easy to get as a cargo of biowaste.

The very first retrieval was for a handful of rebel transmissions in a desolated nearby system with just a star, nothing else. The pay was astronomical, at least to me, just for finding a few abandoned canisters in the middle of nowhere. I had little trouble locating the required cargo and headed back to station. I realised that hauling these things, canisters, was illegal, I was fully aware of that when I accepted the mission. I hadn’t come up with a plan to actually smuggle my ship into the docking bay. I hardly could go up to a random pilot and ask for the best way to be a criminal. All I could come up with at the time was to hope the local security forces would just ignore me. A terrible plan by a terrible criminal.
I was utterly baffled my plan worked. I approached the station without them giving me so much as a quick glance. Upon the transfer of the canisters I was commended for my ice cold nerves by just approaching the station as if I had nothing to hide. Usually pilots turn their ships into flying rocks of ice and point their ship in the general direction of the docking entrance or try and dock at as high a speed their ship will go, but not I, they were impressed. The thrill and the pay-out had me hooked, and in the process I had learned a new skill or two. It didn’t take much longer before I sold off my uncle’s old Sidewinder and had a brand new Faulcon DeLacy Viper Mk. III and it simply was gorgeous. I didn’t care for its poor trading capabilities, I had the ship my uncle had piloted all those years ago, and unlike his, this one was all mine.

The shadier side of the galaxy had also noticed my way of obtaining the Viper and I was starting to stand out from the run-of-the-mill traders they’d seen, perhaps I wasn’t as harmless as my small stature suggested. I was flying a Viper and a Viper commands respect. The little leftover credits I had, I spent on making sure my Viper came equipped with some fangs. I rather not shoot and kill someone, but even I was aware that my run of good luck evading those I’d crossed paths with had to come to an end. At the end of that luck streak there’d probably be some weaponry involved.

I may have not been prepared for my first dog fight, for sure, but at the very least my Viper would be.

[Flip]

Very nice, Kiltrathi! But you should try to put some dialogs, if you don't mind me saying that. They bring life to a story.

Looking forward to reading more of that story anyway.

[Kiltrathi]

I know what you're saying, however as I started the 'story' as sort of a diary directed at the reader, a monologue so to speak, I thought it'd be quite odd to include dialogues. I do have to look hard at how I present the story as stream of consciousness gibberish which could become harder and harder to follow and nearly impossible to jump into the middle of.

Thank you for your comment, I'll have to think about this for a bit.

[Flip]

Yeah, I see what you mean and I understand. It's just that I generally find that dialogs make the story easier to read. They tend to force a faster rhythm and help to avoid the "wall of text" syndrome. Maybe you could alternate the "report style" with "live" sequences that would be introduced like recordings, or something to that effect?

[Straylight0]

I like it! Especially original background for the pilot!

Know what Flip means about the dialogue though, but it really doesn't have to be much to break up a paragraph, something like

I approached the station without anyone giving me so much as a quick glance. When a shifty man appeared to collect the canisters, he gave a low whistle and raised his eyebrows.

'Ice-cold nerves, girl!' he said. 'Most pilots turn their ships into flying blocks of ice and try to drift in, or panic and zoom in like maniacs, but you just bluff it out. We're impressed!'

[Kiltrathi]

That's a lovely solution, Straylight0, never thought of that. I still have reservations on using dialogue in a diary form, but what you wrote is very nice.