Jimmy "The Rat" Fattore

[Croft]

Log Entry 07 - 823

Detroit is in the bag.
Gatz didn't mess around with long winded nonsense, we laid out exactly what was expected of each other and boom, done deal. Old school business, the way it should be done.

After that I took a flight back up Kusari way, I wanted to see where the Dragons have got to since I ain't heard from Fujimoto for awhile, well I met one, sorta.
Stopped on Aomori to refuel, 'course the place was packed so I went to the bar and got to talking with an old guy playin' a weird card game, or he could've been fortune tellin' hell if I know.
Anyways we gets to talking, asking me what I did for a living, where I was going the usual chit-chat. He rambles on about his life, past jobs, his ex wives mostly and then he mentions the Dragons. I was being polite so far but that caught me off guard so he pounces on it offering me a map to the Dragon's Den, wanted 80 grand for it, said it'd get me into the heart of their operation. I figured he's just playing for money so I haggle him down to 40 and walk away with a couple of new navmaps.
I jumped back into my ship and decided, hell I've bought the damn thing I might as well see where it leads, plus I've got a shipment of guns in the back from Detroit so theres a chance I could at least make some credits.

Four jumps later I find myself in the middle of a nebula, my navcom goes blank and I lose the jumphole. I'm stuck with no idea where I am or how I can get back, all I can see is the smallest glimmer of a star so I head towards it. I break out into open space into a real stunner of a system and just ahead of me is a huge gas giant, electric blue and shimmering with storms with a big moon next to it. I needed somewhere to fix my nav and having my back to something like that will at least give me half a chance of seeing someone.
Halfway there my scope pings something small just on the edge of my range, it didn't kill me so I try sending out a message, I don't get anything back until I'm at the moon. Turns out its a woman named Em, she asks me what I'm doing here and I tell her I'm looking for a trade deal.
You never tell anyone you're lost, its a chump move and puts you on the backfoot. Like Gino said, you keep the field even and show respect until you know who and what you're dealing with.
Turns out, I was in the home system of the Order and been setting off alarms left, right and centre but my deal talk seemed to interest 'em, so this girl gets some folks to talk with me, one rolls in flying a floating city of some kind but I recognised the markings of the Blood Dragons. At first I thought it was a man through this old comm system, the captain, well she wasn't too happy when I greeted her as such. Good first impression yeah?
Then another shows up from something called O'ruh? O'rha? And another, an Order pilot followed by the O'ruh boss man.

There I am in an unarmoured, second hand rust bucket of a Kestrel filled with black market weapons, facing a battleship the size of a city and two mean looking fighters, talking my way through like my life depended on it. A stroke of luck that these lot were actually interested in my services otherwise I'd be orbiting that blue marble in a thousand tiny pieces. Then some serious stuff went off, something to do with the Core so I high-tailed it outa there, somehow winding up in Tohoku. Normally the Dragons dont let folks in here but I guess coming through from the Order they didn't question it, either way I'm not hanging around.

The Order folks said they'd be in touch at some point, I don't know when but I think this could be the big leagues.

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