The young CO blinks, staring at his screen in the dead of night at the old, repeating message he has discovered in the message dump on Freeport 11. He had been looking for some way to join the Order for some time now, but all his efforts had met with failure, distrust, or silence from their ships.
This, though...this might just be his ticket in. Despite his fatigue, he sets to, and begins to submit the information needed. After what he had seen, and done, there was no going back to his life as a Junker.
He keyed the passive reply to this message, took a moment to make sure he wasn't too disheveled, and began.
<<<FEED ACTIVATED>>>
A severe looking, slightly greasy young man with very sharp, hawklike features appears on the video feed, sitting in what could be his bedroom. A porthole visible over his shoulder details a large pink and purple cloud in the background, and the light from multiple suns can be seen illuminating the far side of the cabin, though the rest of it is shrouded in darkness. Further detail about the man cannot be seen, but it's clear that he has known hardship and large amounts of stress, and recently. Nevertheless his voice is clear and unbroken as he speaks the responses to the prerecorded questions, though the hint of excitement is always there just under the surface.
Chapter 1: General Pilot Information
Name: Nathanial Carter
Gender: M
Age: 25
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 154.8 lbs
S.K.Y.P.E Frequency: desmond.t.1022 (//Skype, specifically the c2cservice, running while playing lags my game really badly for reasons unknown, so I almost never use it.)
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Chapter 2: Pilot's Personality information
Everybody has an origin. What is your history before you decided to join us?
I was born to middle-class parents on the planet Leeds, Bretonia. Almost immediately afterwards my family decided to use their modest fortune to invest in a Hegemon mining vessel and chase the Dublin mining boom of 794 A.S. We spent the next five years trying in vain to strike it rich in that system. During this time I learned everything there is to know about a transport Dulzian-class anti-snubfighter turret, and indeed became something of a crack shot with the manual controls. It wasn't enough, though, when a group of Molly fighters managed to break down our shields and strafe my gun, slagging it. As my control terminal was right behind it, I was critically injured by electrical and plasma feedback, being badly burned on my side and right leg. We did manage to fight off the pirates, but out of concern for me my parents immediately left the system, never to return. They sold the mining vessel on New London and there spent the next year caring for me and struggling to find some kind of work while I recovered.
Later the next year, 801 AS, the Nomad War began, and the Wilde-controlled elements of the Rheinland Military broke Bretonia's fleet and were advancing towards the core planets of that house. Things were not looking good, and so my parents used the last of their proceeds from the mining ship and bought a small freighter with which to flee before the onslaught. They joined a stream of refugees to Liberty, and there settled on Planet Colorado. They both managed to find work in one of Ageira's many assembly plants there, and to my knowledge continue to scratch out a meager living on the factory floor this very day.
As for me, I wasn't scared away from space by my encounter - I wanted to see more. I saved up some money...well, I stole it from my parents...and bought a Starflea- I mean, Starflier civilian fighter, and made ready to leave Colorado on my own. They...were not happy about it, but I stayed on my course and eventually made it to Erie, Pennsylvania System, as a freelancer.
From there I was recruited by a very small transporting concern named Push Industries. They ran freight for OS&C between Curacao and Cambridge, mostly tea and tobacco. With some assistance I bought my first freighter, and off we went. The year was 816 AS, and for most of that year I spent going back and forth from those two planets, largely without incident, constantly trading my freighters up and saving, until I could afford a supertransport. Push Industries grew as well, expanding its interests to the low Omegas.
This was the first time I took an active part in something...slightly less than legal.
Using my transport, we would poach and then smuggle diamonds from Omega 11 to Newark Station, Manhattan. It was...exceedingly profitable, and dangerous. Sometimes I would run the goods myself, and sometimes I would use a stolen decommissioned Liberty gunboat that I had 'convinced' the harbormasters at Norfolk to let me use to escort the other transports and mining ships during our misadventures there. It was only because I was flying escort that day that I survived the Red Hessian retribution, when 90% of Push Industries was KIA in a raid in that very asteroid belt. I escaped with my life, but most of my company and all of the transports did not, and over the next month insolvency and fear did what the Hessians could not and put us out of business for good.
It was then time to lie low. My transport was one of the ones destroyed in the attack, so the only spacecraft I had left was the illegal Liberty gunboat. I returned to the site of the attack and ejected from the ship towards Solaris, leaving it to burn up in the intense radiation, thus convincing the OS&C scouting party that came afterwards that I had been killed like the rest of my group. We were publicly renounced for our illicit acitivities by the corporation, but as the leadership and most of the employees had paid for their insolence with their lives, they considered the matter closed. Thus freed from repercussions, I managed to work my way aboard a passing Junker CSF, and traveled with them until they reached Beaumont Station, Texas. From there I made a new life for myself among the Junkers, using the skills and jump hole knowledge I developed while smuggling to succeed, and went on to inherit a Salvage Frigate from one of the smaller families on that station.
My first encounter with the Order was when, while exiting the Pennsylvania Jump Hole in California, I encountered radio traffic from a group of Rogues and a Hathor gunboat ID'd as the Sanguis that were pirating the tradelanes. I had since developed a good relation with the Rogues, like most Junkers, and offered to transport their swag for them.
Intrigued by this, I made an effort to seek out the Order and see just what it was that the organization was all about. I made contact with an independant Order pilot who explained to me just how the situation was in the deep Omicrons. I had heard rumors of course of the corruption of the Liberty Navy, and everyone heard about the missing battleship Sacramento, but I was not ready for what was presented to me.
I saw Minor. I saw Toledo, or what was left of it. I flew with this pilot next to the hulk of the Isis, heard the stories of valor, and saw the proof of those stories etched into the flanks of that mighty vessel.
I saw the shattered wrecks of a hundred human ships, and the flotsam from a hundred more, all destroyed by a massive armada of alien vessels bent on the extinction of Humanity itself. I closed my eyes, and then I saw Colorado burning. Leeds. Manhattan. All of them. That sort of thing changes a person, at least one who has eyes to see.
I returned from Minor to Liberty, and began to hatch a plan. I had to assist the Order in any way I could, to prevent a hundred Toledos from happening all across the sector.
Making contact with a HORUS pilot, Major Cyber his callsign, I gathered and then successfully smuggled around 3200 tonnes of pharmaceuticals through Alaska and as far as Meskhenet. I was denied entry to Mu, however, and had to leave my cargo on the station. I have made three more such runs since, including a more or less uninvited one to Akabat itself. I also took the liberty of doing a bit of reconnaissance, with an eye towards gathering useful information as 'payment' for entry of your organization. Attached below are photographic evidence of my misadventures through Nomad space, and fairly recent (wthin a week) images of Omicron Alpha.
Tell us something about your strengths and weaknesses. What do you think they are?
My strengths? I can, and have the evidence to prove it, get my salvage frigate in and out of the most dangerous places in Sirius. I have successfully smuggled a hundred cargoes all over the sector, including (and now with some regret, seeing just what the Outcasts really are) the fabled Malta to Manhattan cardamine run. I have taken cargo to and from New York via Alaska, running just a step ahead of their battlecruiser patrols. I have glimpsed the Ravine in Omicron 99 and gazed on the planet and asteroid fields of Omicron Iota while blasting my way past Nomad fighter patrols. Arrogance? Maybe...but this is simply history, not boasting.
As for weaknesses, I have never really regained full use of my right leg, and am severely hampered in a standard fighter cockpit. I have stuck to gunboat or transport class vessels for almost my entire life. I fully recognize the requirement to begin in a fighter for Task Force 141, but am hoping your instructors might see fit to withhold judgment until I'm in something that doesn't require footpedals.
In what way do you think you can serve 141|?
In short, I have a very robust knowledge of the Liberty Core Systems and Alaska, including their jump hole networks. My days as a smuggler have given me a special perspective on flying for survival, and I would consider myself a very decent driver of gunboat- and cruiser-sized ships. With those skills, I should also be decent at scouting assignments.
