I am.

[Ayem]

I am. The words that I spoke over and over as I drifted through oblivion, while sparks skirled from fried engines. It must have been months. I passed silently, the Sabre a mobile tomb. I saw the home of the Corsairs with its antlike activity and passed unnoticed. I tumbled past a nomad lair and saw the turrets adjust to follow my gravity affected trajectory. Gazing down the strange shaped weapons I saw my death, and welcomed it. Death spurned me. I am, I uttered in my litany. I am, but shall not always be.

Death would have been kind, I think. I am not what I was. The maverick pilot who tore through Corsairs, House and Nomad alike with equal glee, sharpened by the genetic work of the beloved hated Cardamine. Hated. There are no words for the torment of being without Cardamine. Your genes reject you, they rip your mind with delusions. Horrors that were beyond anything I could have conceived dissolved the sabre that encased my ego, and demons danced on my soul.

My cache of Cardamine had lasted two months, I used it sparingly. On the day I inhaled my last weak breath of tainted air my nerves burned. Two days and my brain became equivalent to fried neurone steak. Withdrawal was not possible, the Cardamine was a part me. Is a part of me. All that anchored me was the litany. I am. Ayem. I lost my name. I dont imagine it was a great name, Id barely begun to wage my war of acceptance among my people. Perhaps it is a dead name, a name inscribed on the hull of a sabre held in place by the gravity of a jump hole.

When the Hessians found my sabre in the sigma systems, they threw a few green bolts my way. I assume to see if they could dislodge any weaponry or cargo. The ship must have looked a state, meteor scarring covering burn scarring. The cargo bay had partially opened to space. The Sabre held though, and I reached a level of lucidity, or at least I flailed and hit the comms. I cast my litany out into the stars and it brought me to their home. A Cardamine sleep chamber is no Maltan bed, but it served.

With no name, I had no credit balance to activate. No way to pay these warriors for their aid and so I worked. I slogged beside their mechanics, tweaking their borderland imports with what little I could salvage from my ravaged memory. My muscles remembered more than my mind, though they were wasted. Atrophied. It took time to regain my former shape, the firm and cut figure. For a time I must have seemed half dead as I shambled among those hulking warriors. They did not allow me to stay weak, however. What I earned, I owned among them. If I earned nothing, I was given nothing. A fair rule, I felt.

It took time, but I paid my debts. The monetary ones, the spiritual ones I could never repay. I took my repaired Sabre, battle scarred still. They say that scars on a ship are the stronger part, due to the reinforcements that are part of repairs. Or the weakest part, depending on the mechanic. Since it was my work I had no doubt that it could withstand more than in that last fatal engagement. When I cast off, I was alone again. I drifted through Rheinland space and found myself in Liberty where an alert patrol found me. A long fight lead to reinforcements and I was forced to disengage, though on the run to the Rogues stronghold in the Badlands the pursuers dropped off, leaving only one. I slowed and he opened fire.

I released myself then, I tore apart the restraints that had held my consciousness together in the long darkness and through my recovery. I took his ship to pieces and laughed with the pure cruelty of my action. I am. I exist. That was the moments meaning. Still shaking, I docked in the Badlands and prepared for the journey home. I longed for Maltan air.

An irony then, that my life at home was so short lived.

I had gained a Falcata, my sabre long since having lost much of its significance in a galaxy of ships kilometres long. Gaining status in Malta had been difficult, I was not recognisable after the revenge my genes had wreaked upon me, though my people could not deny I was one of them by the very scars that marked me apart. I was apart. New factions had risen in my society, great cruisers and destroyers hung in orbit around Malta, a chilling sight for it seemed a harbinger for more hostile ships of equal size. I could not bear to imagine Malta burned by orbital bombardment after the effort it had taken to return home.

Given orders to cleanse Alpha of bounty hunters, I voided Hammerhead after Hammerhead and even reduced gunboats to slag. My bomber was slow, but I began to mould to its reactions. I felt each strike dissipate on the shield, each pound on the hull. My work one would have assumed, would have yielded rewards. Any graveyard however, has its ravens. Any corpse, its vultures. A mission had been concluded, Malta expressed its confidence that I would progress far. It was time to claim the loot my work had yielded and yet there, streaking towards me was another Falcata. The moment he killed his engines, he glutted himself on the spoils and took off back for Malta. For a moment I merely coasted there, disbelief written plainly on my face.

What I earned, I owned. The first social rule I had gained on my return to humanity was violated.

It seemed the Falcata growled as I engaged the warp engines, as eager as I to redress this insult. I saw the thief dive down into Maltas skies, the great destroyers hanging in space around the docking port. Broadcasting my complaint, I was met with derision. The gleaming NovaExpress rose through Maltas skies almost languidly, as if it were taunting further, the Outcast its pilot had stolen from.

The inferno cannon dissipated his shield. I watched the antimatter lick through his ship like some fiend from my most horrific delusions. The shards of broken metal fell back towards Malta. A traitorous rain.

In that moment I became an outcast from the Outcasts. The irony did not escape me, just as I did not escape Malta unscathed. The destroyers moved almost as one, shocked into action. Perhaps the first time I saw them move. I understood their intent. Two systems away they finally caught my Falcata. The rage they vented on me was an answer to the crime I had committed.

The cries were of murder. All I felt in my veins was cold, cruel revenge.

Still, I am. I exist. Ayem.

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