Postby Straylight0 » Fri Jul 10, 2015 9:18 am
(logbook extract from a few weeks ago. Bit rambling)
The Abyss stares back
I never believed in Hell until I went to war.
Galnet would have you believe humanity isn’t in battle, that the fate of many systems is being decided by ballots, debates and budgets. In some lucky cases it is, but there are still clouds of evaporated blood along the space lanes leading to them. I don’t know who runs Galnet and if they’re in denial or conspiracy, but do not trust the spin and never believe they are telling you the whole truth. Space has not been peaceful since humanity learned to fly, but a few months ago looks like peace from here. There are thousands of casualties every day, armies of irregular forces without flags or uniforms (but visible badges of allegiance, mostly the correct ones) crossing into each other’s space, pirating and fighting. We have a lot further left to fall, but if this isn’t war, I don’t want to see what is.
Nor do I want to see what else it would turn me into. I am already a pirate, a murderer and a war criminal. I am an Angel but if you were to ask the biblical Egyptians, the difference between the Angel of Death and Lucifer would seem pretty meaningless.
If you want another word to go with War, it would be Compromise. I followed my friends off to join Aisling Duval, our heads full of romantic notions about freeing slaves and putting a beautiful, young and virtuous princess on her rightful throne. It didnt start out too badly. You may have read the account of one of the slaves we rescued, and thank Planck his mother was retrieved as well. I was pretty stressed out and insomniac at the time, but now...
Angel Command has told us not to go after Torval. Nobody has been punished but the rewards are hardly worth speaking of either. I thought I would keep going back, but apparently that might jeapardise our long-term interests. I haven’t spoken to the man I rescued or looked him in the eye since. I might disobey Command, because it’s hard to know what they want. They have to maintain deniability, to avoid any blame filtering back to the Princess, but then how do you tell what they’re really after?
We’re not short of competing voices. I am not even sure which of us are officially Angels and which are not. We even have a Hudson supporter openly making speeches about allying with the Republican war-monger. Kevin Massey has moved his family here from the Federation and a shady past, according to rumours and grafitti. He has set up a slick new media organisation with a posh HQ (I enjoyed the parties there) and does a good line in demagoguery. He calls it the People’s Media but is it any more official, or any more reflecting the people than directing them, than any other? And why does that matter anyway, my highest loyalty at least used to be to principle, not any person.
There’s tension here between the Imperial traditionalists like my friend Derrida, and incomers like myself, Kevin and Johnny. Some of them put Empire loyalty first. I came here to free slaves, but that is stopped and I find myself listening to people boast of destroying federal aid ships. Only it isn’t even as simple of that. Some of the Imperials see Senator Arissa as the biggest threat of all. With her influence greater than ours, and possibly an even better claim to the throne than Aisling (I hadn’t realised she was illegitimate as well before I came here and did my research), there is some talk of how to plot against her.
The first casualty of war isn’t truth, or even innocence as such. It’s hope that we can be better. The people of the Federation have flocked to Hudson, making a clear choice for the military-industrial complex. Support for Shadow President Winters is dropping like a stone, as are her fortunes. The Alliance, which I believed to be the best hope for freedom, liberty and human rights, is losing ground rapidly. What is worse, I have sounded out my old contacts and hear more proud accounts of destroying Winter’s aid ships from Alliance pledgers; it is dark over there too, the liberals cutting each other’s throats. The slaver Torval and the annexer Patreus both now hold more ground than the free systems. The Empire is coming to dominate, and the Empire is the only force to commit genocide of a whole other sentient species.
About the only thing we can agree on here is that nobody likes Archon Delaine, even if they sometimes give him his due for cunning and ferocity. Some liken him to Ghengis Khan of old, and say the Mongol horde came to be a force for peace and stability in the end. That’s untreated biowaste. He slaughters civilians to cow systems into line and turns the families of the purged into marked slaves. He sends his best men deep into our systems to kill at random. Morally he is as matte black as it gets... unless it is us doing it.
Yes, before I met any raiders in our space, I had flown on a raid into Delaine’s territory. Early on, I found one of his recruit pilots flying from system to system. I have killed more pirates and criminals than I can count, but this was different. First off, he had a clean legal status. Secondly, he was posing no threat to me. Thirdly, he was a graduate of the pilots federation, which made him one of us, almost. The PF doesn’t just take anybody with a license or a ship. It offers scholarships to those of proven aptitude, and actually sets some of us up with a loaned ship to get started. We are always able to recognise each other in space if our scanners are working properly; if you see a hollow marker, you know it could be someone who had been to school with you or your friends, and what is more, you know they probably have far more than usual ability.
Which is all wrong in itself. Everyone out there is a person, even if a bad person. Every inorganic, impersonal metal shape that explodes in your sights has flesh and blood in it. Being a PF graduate just removes some of the illusion that helps you sleep at night; you should actually feel worse about the others, because PF ejector seats and escape pods are far superior to standard issue.
But whatever the morality, here was a novice pilot in a cheap ship, minding his own business, no evidence that he had done anything wrong yet (although having pledged to Delaine, he was certainly intending to). So I blew him up. He didn’t have a chance; I had the superior ship, the more experience. He struggled, jumping again but I interdicted him again. He’d probably never even faced a big ship capable of catching his Cobra before. I can only imagine his terror, but I do not recall his name.
Derrida and I felt bad enough about it that we let the next few go. I am not doing that again, not after what they have been doing in our systems. The Code pirates used to have at least a pretence of honour. Now they have joined Delaine, they have abandoned it. Some of the most notorious pilots in the galaxy are working for the warlord, most of them using terror tactics.
So we become monsters in turn, and I don’t mean bellyaching over killing a novice on his side. Delaine rules his systems by fear, and finances his operations by slave labour. Hostages are taken and turned into marked slaves, as are the families of people executed. They are shipped about his systems, and even Federal Security protects them and his thugs where he has taken control. The way Hudson tolerates this shows he cares about his position more than actually protecting the Federation. At this distance from Aisling space, there is little hope of rescuing the slaves, and there are not even any facilities to accept them. So we kill them instead, and are well rewarded for doing so. Delaine must be stopped or in the long term he will do more and worse. It’s not even like those wars where you bomb enemy civilians. These are victims of Delaine we are killing and bereaving. We tell ourselves the only way is to smash the human shield he is holding up, and the only means to liberate the survivors is to make them fear us more than they fear him. They need to know that being taken as a hostage is a death sentence, and they may as well die fighting an army with superior weapons. It is too cruel to be countenenced, final proof that no benevolent deity exists.
I would say I do not deserve to sleep at all, but I sleep better, albeit with a gun beside me and my robot cat with its poisoned claws. The other day I took a mission to stop smugglers who turned out to have kept their legal records clean. I wasn’t going to fail a mission and sully my reliability record, so I killed them anyway. The murder charges and bounties appearing on the display were nothing new, in fact I was disappointed not to reach a total million on my head. I took another mission to kill someone I thought was a terrorist, but turned out to be a mouthpiece with another clean record. ‘What’s another murder?’ I asked myself. ‘The large-scale law treaties have collapsed, it’s only a local bounty. They’ll stop posting it in a week and then I can always pay it off with part of the reward money. If I’m bothered.’
I am returning to my temporary base after completing another couple of missions. Pirate hunting this time; the old-time kind of stupid local pirate you don’t feel too bad about. I also had to take out several of the old-time kind of stupid local bounty hunter along the way; that nearly-million on my head makes some people lose THEIR heads, right before their lives. I took those missions because normal problems and disputes don’t stop when bigger ones are around, they just get worse. Also, the pay structure for supporting Aisling is stupid. Any merits between 1,500 and 10,000 I earn this week are essentially wasted, they would bring me no more pay. Getting the top rung would mean effectively going full-time special forces, living behind enemy lines and doing nothing but harrying and raiding (not to mention the murdering) all day between brief rest periods, avoiding their defenders. I’m not that dedicated or tough. Nor am I that good, if I stop fighting evil when there’s no further money or rank in it. Only fighting evil is pretty evil itself, as I have said.
Honestly, the way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if I showed up asking Delaine for a job in another few weeks having lost the last shred of conscience, faith in human nature or value on human life. All this working for someone supposed to be one of the nicest powers in the galaxy.
One ironic thing is that I don’t even think of myself as a combat pilot. Obviously I can look after myself, but my ranks in exploration and commerce are higher than my rank in combat. The expensive Python I have just bought is as much a result of prudent judgment and avoidance of risk as of hunting and fighting.
That may be about to change. The radar shows two other ships ahead of me. One is also pledged to Aisling, a commander early in his career flying a cobra. The other... is a Vulture, a heavy combat fighter able to challenge ships worth ten times as much, often used even by those who can afford something far larger.
Pledged to Archon Delaine. Master combat rank. Graduate of Pilot’s Federation.
I hear my heart pumping as I set course for him. He has to be kept off the Cobra, and in any case cannot be allowed to run about our systems. I order Katzenstein to hide in the compartment under the ejector seat, we may have to use it.
He is twisting and turning, I can’t get behind him to establish an interdiction tether. No wait, that’s because he’s trying to interdict me. I fly straight and let him; he has the more manouverable ship after all. I drop my throttle to zero and sure enough, we both drop into normal space. I try to steady my fingers as I deploy hardpoints, put the throttle back up, send power to weapons.
There is not a word exchanged throughout the encounter. We go straight to the business of killing each other.
He comes at me, weapons blazing, my shields shuddering under the impact. I only just pull my huge ship around to face him as he rams me. The impact makes me taste blood. He just piled straight into a ship vastly larger than his. He is psychotic, focused on death.
His ship is faster and can turn on a dime. I shove the throttle full into reverse, turn off flight assist, roll desperately and hit the vertical thrusters as I try to pull the red blip back to the front of the radar. At least my turrets will...
My turrets aren’t hitting him. Space has turned into a snow-globe of chaff. High-end combat specialists often fit multiple launchers so they can blind sensors for minute after minute. I’m not good enough to hit much with fixed weapons so I rely on gimbals, turrets and signature tracking. All of which are now useless. Only one of the smallest hardpoints on the ship is fixed, I was persuaded to put it in so I could practice. I fire at the racing wedge as it comes around to shoot me again. All my other bursts of fire are flailing wildly through the blizzard, consuming power and building heat. Oh yes... cancel the target lock and gimballed weapons will fire straight ahead. I do that. Most shots miss but some of them are hitting him. How many of my guns still work? I honestly can’t remember the last loadout I managed to put in. I might check or set the turrets to fire forward, but that would mean taking my eyes off space for vital seconds, seconds that might kill me.
He comes around again. I fire as best I can, he...
Another skull-stabbing collision. He’s mad. My shields are nearly gone. He’s beating me. I need to use a shield cell to rebuild my defences, but I can’t power them at the same time as the weapons. I pull in the hardpoints. Negative g tries to pull my head off as I take evasive manouvres. The whine of capacitor cycles sounds and a shield layer glows back to health. Where is he?
He is seven kilometres away. I don’t get a chance to check the damage data before he is gone. High-energy wake left behind; he has fled the system.
He wasn’t beating me after all, I was beating him. I have survived.
Still nothing to boast about; I just forced a smaller ship to retreat. But even though my arms are shaking as I set a course for home and my heart is still at combat speed, even though I will be removing dried blood from my nose tomorrow and even though the fight will probably not be how I remember it when I review the recordings, I am feeling satisfied.
Despite everything, there is still a difference between them and me. And it’s not the difference between predator and prey any more.
*