I lived in a middle-class family. Since I was young I went with my father to the Ralston Ice Fields to mine and transport Helium back to Erie with our lended Hegemon. This went on until my late teenage years. I started to feel I wanted to do more in my life than mining alone, I wanted to go on an adventure, a good cause. My father was furious but he couldn't stop me from leaving with my self-earned 750AE Starflier.
Unfortunately my ship got destroyed not long afterwards after xenos disabled a tradelane in Texas. I barely made it out alive in my pod. The engines of my pod were damaged. I floated around in space for a long time until junkers from the now gone Tinkers and Transport found me. I managed to convince them to give me a place to stay when I told them I had mining experience. We had a deal, I mined scrap for them with a lended CSV, they gave me a place to stay and food until I paid back my loan for the new ship.
After the disappearance of our beloved chairman Fynn McScrap, things fell apart.. Lack of leadership made Tinkers Haven fall apart until the base was just a piece of scrap (the irony, i know). Here I was again, alone in space with my CSV. I met an old scrapping collegue and friend from T&T, Basti Legionnes. He said i should try my luck with a group called the Junker Marauders.
Basti told me stories about the Marauders. How they fought actively for the junker cause. Fight for our rights, our pride, our existence.. I was easily recruited as they saw my motivation. After some initial successes fighting of Xenos, I got a nice badass Collector ship from them. I drank, i partied, i felt i was the man there. That changed however..
That mission.. The screams still haunt me from time to time.. You can't imagine..
We were close to Falkland Base, Tau 37.. I was told this would be a blue milk run scouting mission.. I was so wrong.. so wrong..
One of our wingmen spotted a group of Manaslu fighters. They were looking for new places to mine. My first instinct was to evade them as we had no business with them whatsoever. Our leader had other ideas. He ordered us to regroup, blitzkrieg into them and take all the loot we can get. No prisoners. So many screams and then.. silence. We returned home as heroes. But i couldn't bear the pain killing innocents. We weren't heroes, we were terrorists. I left the next day, never to return. Just having my Collector.
On my way back to Erie, returning to my probably dissapointed parents I saw another junker ship called the Royal Fortune. I greeted him. He answered "What do you want?" bluntly. I wasn't sure what to answer. So I just answered in calmly voice "respect". I heard a low grin from his ship.
"Well you can find it with us, the congressmen." He said. "I'm John McArthur of the Royal Fortune, follow me" he said.
And so now I stand before you congressmen, older but not that much wiser. I guess i'm a slow learner? At least I can say i've both seen and done some shit.
Will you accept a junker that wants to redeem himself? A bad guy trying to be good? Can I finish my story here, trying to help, Whatever the outcome is?
