First of all I would like to express my gratitute for providing me with a safe haven from the clutches of corporate oppression and a place where a person can be free to pursue his technological fancies, far beyond where the syndicates dare to venture for fear of losing their economic interests.
It was only hours ago that I, after having been the slave of the Liberty money machine for so many years, finally took the plunge and made good my escape in one of their government funded rustbuckets. Yet it already seems like years for all the roundabout ways and danger-filled moments it took me.
First to find and reach Rochester, underway accosted by corporate lackeys, Xenos and rogues alike, where I could ditch my obviously easily traceable ride and sell it for scrap to the Junkers.
Having no liquid assets to speak of except the few measly credits I received for the servicable parts of my former mode of transportation and the Junkers being wary of Neural Net transactions I was forced to facilitate my transport to Buffalo as a stowaway on a Liberty Rogue freighter hauling H-Fuel, afterwards having to sufficiently convince the captain of my good intentions, who was fortunately more eager to accept the virtual funds I offered.
Only to find that the rogues there all but welcomed such as myself, being inches away from getting ejected from the airlock like so much garbage before I managed to convince them that some of the information I carried might be of value to them. Which forced me to relinquish some of the more profitable trade route schedules and even some schematics for an improved lane defense and security system, although I was able to withold the log files I had accumulated over the years containing some extremely volatile details that would spell doom for several of the Ageira bigwigs. The proper application of which I think is a task more suited to the Lane Hackers and would never give the rogues the same amount of satisfaction.
After delivering the data to them and agreeing to send the decryption keys upon my safe arrival at Mactan, in order to escape with my skin intact, they even provided me with one of their Dagger light fighters, but I suspect this is only so they can keep a bead on me, ensuring that I do not turn around and sell the location of their base to any interested parties and allowing them to find me to collect their decryption keys should I for some reason neglect to transmit them.
And so, having to outwit several BHG patrols on the way, which most likely recognized the ship as a pirate vessel, I finally arrived in the ice fields of Magellan and requested docking clearance at Mactan, to commence my training as a Lane Hacker.
It was one of the hardest things I had ever done, but I had felt something I had not felt for many years. The thrill of excitement, the strange warm glow somewhere in the abdominal regions of finally doing something worth doing. Living on the edge, but most importantly, living. Instead of being just another cog in the syndicate treadmill of credits and apathy.
Being employed on the same base for most of my adult life, my piloting skills are mediocre at best. Nevertheless, I have designed some, at the moment very rudimentary, automated routines which allow a ship's systems to take care of most of the basics of navigation and combat, leaving the pilot with having to take care of much less tedious aiming and firing and flying around in circles.
These designs are far from perfect and I am at the moment still coping with its annoying tendency to crash into solid objects, but in time, I would like to continue pioneering this technology, perhaps eventually even completely removing the necessity of a human pilot, at least for the more straightforward sort of missions using relatively expendable assets.
Because our numbers are not great, so why should we be risking our lives while we are so much better at using our intellect to avoid such reckless waste?
Ah well, one can dream.
During my training you will most likely find me somewhere around Mactan field-testing and improving on these systems. Please keep an eye out for my distress-beacon, for my escape pod might require some transportation back to safety after another unfortunate collission with a big chunk of ice.
Sacrifices must be made in the name of progress, or so they say.
Max Zorin out.
...encryption.in.progress...hack.terminated...
Max Zorin - Pharmaceutically enhanced engineering of automated combat routines for shipboard computer systems.
Strength: Programming microchips to dodge big rocks. Weakness: Dodging big rocks.
![[Image: LHTechnician.png]](http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e15/rnathanmorris/LH%20clan%20images/LHTechnician.png)