SlaveLabor's story

[JadeTornado]

Why it may be interesting to read: I described what I wanted to do in the game and what I succeeded in, starting from my first login. It tells a story from the perspective of a character and without some meta- ooRP input.
Why it may be not interesting to read: It's my first try in writing. It's a story of an ordinary man without plans of having influence on the world.
Enjoy

Prologue

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Medium White, Shikoku system

March 18, 830 After the Settlement of Sirius, Shikoku system.
Icy, boundless space. From the cockpit, it seems completely different, not the way it can be observed from the surface of the planet or on holovideo screens. It is also dangerous - the pilot was convinced of this more than once. Any hauler from the border worlds flying by would easily recognize the model of a ship hovering in space at the intersection of trade lines. The very heavy fighter of the border worlds of the Z-Series “Sabre” - a workhorse of scum of all stripes in the Sirius sector. Small transports operating in the domestic market were curiously pointing their optical devices at it, but even without visual inspection, it can be guaranteed that any “Saber” has multiple traces of repair, often rough and unskilled, and the surface of its hull serves as a real atlas of all existing types of light weapons. Phenomenal reliability and a powerful power core have become the key to the success of the Z-Series.
Deshima Station towered behind the fighter. Ancient and monumental, it hovered in Shikoku, the space of the Kusari Empire, on the border with the Republic of Liberty, and has been guarding the peace of the descendants of Asian peoples for almost 500 years. The pilot scanned every ship coming from the Kepler and Galileo systems - the buffer zone between the two Houses.

Deshima Station

“Who will you send me today?” - he thought aloud, out of boredom repeating the sequence of checking the status of all the ship's systems.
*LIFE SUPPORT - OPERABLE*
“Another gilded youth? Young people ran away from their rich parents in search of new sensations on New Tokyo, bringing with them drugs and alcohol from Liberty, which is why they quickly gained popularity at parties, but more often got into trouble with the local police. For the New Tokyo beaches, I'd run away too.
*POWER CORE - OPERABLE*
Freeloaders are completely lazy and react only to distress signals. Not a single patrol in three hours. In Liberty, a police captain would have been hung by the balls for such a thing long ago. Of course, they have more staff, but they also have enough work: Liberty is a state of many freedoms. I think I was lucky to grow up there. Here, people are more modest: God forbid to shame the honor of the family, and all that.
*ENGINES - OPERABLE*
“Military?”. Hell, no! A case from last month came to mind: the station recorded the signature of a pirate, apparently stupidly caught in the radius of its sensors, moving deeper into the Keiun cloud. A Kusari Navy Wyvern was floating next to me. When I asked why he wasn't chasing the criminal, the pilot replied: “Chasing bandits is unworthy of a true Dragon warrior. Defeating him will not add to my honor, but only detract from it. That's why we tolerate Gaijins on our land who hunt for their heads, like you.” Truly, the narrow-eyed live in their own world.
*WEAPONS - OPERABLE*
“No, you'll send me a transport.” Slowly, in order to have time to slow down with its multi-ton carcass in front of the station, the container ship “Akegata” was leaving the trading line. For some reason, the engineers who designed the transport decided to sacrifice the carrying capacity for the sake of design. The Samura сorporation logo on board the ship reminded him of his former boss, Akira Myotta, deputy director of security at Samura Heavy Industries. “You won't even have to scan it.” Corporations are practically untouchable. No one can imagine that the transport arrived at the wrong time or carried prohibited goods on board. He's clean.

"Akegata" Kusari Container Transport

*AFTERBURNER - INOPERABLE*
What can you do in the cramped cockpit of a fighter? You can't even stand up to your full height.“You can dream that you have finally waited for the delivery of a new afterburner to your extremely common in the House Space fighter.”
*SYSTEM TESTING IS OVER. START RETESTING? YES/NO*
Sun said once she kept a diary.
*YES*
She said that it relaxes and allows you to look at the path you have walked. She's as crazy as her people. It might be worth a try…
*LIFE SUPPORT - OPERABLE*

Part 1: The beginning

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Well, let's get started. My name is Yury Bolotin. I was born on February 27, 800 A.S. somewhere on the periphery of the Sirius. I hardly remember my childhood, but I know that back then I was still at Home, among my own. As soon as I grew up a little, our family made an escape to Liberty. I endured months of flights in cargo holds converted for the transportation of passengers badly: from food - synthetic pasta, from entertainment - climbing boxes with hateful pasta, from friends - a few old men who had no other listeners for their grumbling. It can be said that I held a grudge against my family for such treatment of me. Later, they preferred to avoid the topic of “escape” in conversations, but perhaps the reason for this decision is obvious: they wanted a better life for me, and where to look for it, if not in civilized Liberty.

Flag of the Republic of Liberty

Youth passed quietly. Graduated from the University of New York with a degree in xenolinguistics. Thanks to the Jump Gate technology, people quickly populated space. Hypothetically, the possibility of contact with an extraterrestrial civilization was considered, especially by the military. Society did not stop fantasizing about contact, releasing films and books. But who would have thought that this would become a reality? Almost a year after I was born, humanity went to war with the Nomads, an alien race that came from somewhere in the Omicron systems. Since then, xenolinguistics has come to the fore, although so far the dialogue with the aliens is conducted only in the language of weapons.

An approximate model of a Nomad light fighter, compiled on the basis of recordings of gun cameras of fighters of the Expeditionary Force of the Republic of Liberty Fleet

My mistake was to romanticize my specialty. I pictured myself entering a captured alien cruiser, landing on their base, or, at worst, communicating with prisoners. In reality, everything was different. None of the alien ships had visible entrances or exits, which is why the idea that the whole ship is a Nomad was popular. The bases, or “hives”, of Nomads were found only in space and were either well camouflaged or surrounded by a protective field of unknown nature, preventing the destruction of the base. Finally, in 25 years of fighting, not a single alien was captured: they attacked no matter what and after their destruction there was a minimum of debris. I was finished off by the fact that I couldn't enroll in the Navy - I didn't have enough points in space piloting. Without joining the Navy, all the work was meaningless, because the objects to study are light years away from you. Of course, I could act as a “specialist in xenolinguistics” on some holovision or teach at a university, but this is not what I would really like. I started looking for something else to do.

Emblem of the Research and Development Department of the Fifth Fleet of Liberty

Having rightly reasoned that if for such a long time humanity has not progressed either in liquidation or in negotiations with aliens, then there is no hurry and I can finally turn to the question that has worried me all my life to varying degrees - what prompted my parents to give up everything and fly away? Despite the multinational nature and extreme tolerance of Liberty, I rarely met Russian speakers. My interest was fueled by my grandmother's rare stories about how they lived, which generally boiled down to the fact that my father and mother did everything right and I should be grateful. I was haunted by the thought that I had lost a piece of myself. I know that Russians live somewhere on the periphery, they have a semblance of socialism, they have terrible living conditions. That’s all. A lot of things were censored in the holonet: Coalition of Sol, which included Russia, unleashed a Great War on Earth, because of which the survivors had to make an Exodus to unexplored space, the final destination of which was the Sirius Sector.

The end of my normal life was my move to the Pennsylvania system, to the planet Erie. I found a small mining company engaged in the extraction of Helium-3 in the system, and got a job as a co-pilot in one of the few crews. Either things were not going well for the company, or it was “the rapid growth of a small team,” as the director put it, but my knowledge and skills were enough to pass the test and take this position. Much later I find out that the wreck that was entrusted to me and the first pilot was called Series YX "Dromedary" Border Worlds Freighter. The first pilot... I can't remember his name anymore, he should have retired by that time, and he was an alcoholic. As soon as his foot touched the ground, he disappeared into the nearest bar until the next flight. Over time, he relaxed and trusted me more and more with his responsibilities - now he didn’t hesitate about drinking during the flight. I hated this ship with all my soul, but it gave me the necessary practice of piloting and maintenance. Unfortunately, the money received was not enough to buy even a used one-man ship, not to mention a serious vessel with reliable equipment. The only option was to hijack the Dromedary, which I did with relative ease. The path to the stars had begun and there was no way back to Liberty.

Part 2: The search

---

Not wanting to attract too much attention, I used a jumphole to California, through which the first pilot and I once escaped from pirates. The closest was the state of Bretonia, where I decided to go. Not having a clear plan, I was just traveling rather than searching for my homeland. So I came across Sun Koken, a Zoner, a Freeport 9 administrator somewhere on the periphery, who was either a shaman or a monk. Many passing ships greeted her while we were having our conversation. She behaved strangely, but she helped me a lot with information and advice - the Coalition could be found somewhere in the Omegas. She also invited me to the Zoner community, in case the search would be unsuccessful.

Flag of the Kingdom of Bretonia

For a while I gave up the search, feeling the taste of life in Bretonia. It was definitely better here than in Liberty. I earned money by domestic cargo transportation and eventually changed my Dromedary to a civilian container hauler, the so-called “train". Another important acquaintance happened right after that. Returning from a flight from the Coronado system, I wanted to cut through the Cortez when I caught a distress signal. I couldn't help but react, so I approached the orbit of the planet Baja. The source of the disaster turned out to be a Falcon fighter with a cockpit pierced by a well-aimed shot. Besides me, the signal was caught by a pirate and a free researcher Diamond Wolf, who were arguing about something on the radio. I will omit the details, we decided to tow the fighter that turned out to be intact to the nearest neutral base in the system, sell it, and divide the money equally. It was the jackpot. Along the way, Wolf tried to interest me in his discoveries, but I didn't understand much about it. Apparently feeling it, instead he offered to accompany him on expeditions, which promised even more money. And I agreed, changing the “train" to the Sabre VHF.

Series Z "Sabre" Border Worlds Very Heavy Fighter

At first it was easy money, until Wolf started studying crystals...Nach? Narachtite? I don’t remember. Let it be just a Crystal. We were already operating on the periphery at that time. Wolf sent an SOS signal from Omega-49 when the Crystal exploded in his lab. Physically, Wolf turned out to be fine, but the entity that escaped from the Crystal took over his ship for a while, and maybe himself. Sun Koken participated in the search, as well as her friend, who behaved even more strangely, acting and communicating at the level of a child's development. She turned out to be some kind of Entity, the so-called Wild, an alien. I don't know if it was her fault or the Crystal’s, but all this attracted the attention of the Nomads: an Ishtar-class alien ship jumped out next to us. It was massive. And he demanded the Crystals, which had to be handed to him, after which he jumped. The Wild has been released on some kind of journey of her own. My suggestion to destroy it did not find a response. Meeting with THIS and the Wild was such a big shock for me that I started avoiding Sun Koken and Wolf. They will also disappear for a while.

A whole hunt for Crystals will begin very soon, when several factions of the periphery discover their source. One of these factions turned out to be the Coalition, which put Wolf on the wanted list and eventually caught him, but then released him safely after receiving samples of the Crystal from him. Wolf's meeting with the Coalition forced me to resume contact with him, besides, he had a job for me again. The end of the story of Crystals was a big battle in the system, it seems, Omicron Minor. There were aliens, pirates, and a group called The Order. The resulting dissonance awakened the Entities from the Crystals and the Wolf I knew ceased to exist. I managed to pick up a few containers of Crystals and escape from the battlefield. But the most important acquisition is information from Wolf. I knew the place. Omega-52. The Coalition is there.

Part 3: The reunion

---

“We are in a hurry.” the captain replied, not even trying to hide his contempt.
As soon as I jumped into Omega-52, a Coalition cruiser intercepted me. I explained the essence of my appearance as best I could. The longer my story lasted, the more the face of the captain of the cruiser changed. I suggested Crystal containers. I swore allegiance and wanted to reunite with them, but they didn't believe me. I was kicked out of our system and told afterwards that I would have forgotten the way there if I wanted to live. Disappointment overwhelmed me with such force that something like apathy came over me. If one of the ubiquitous Corsairs were around, I'd be dead. But I was lucky. I got to Bretonia and went through all the stages of accepting the fact that my comrades abandoned me.

Flag of the Sirius Coalition

I was no longer afraid of the periphery - I had seen little and at the same time too much. I decided to go there alone, to look for Zoners. Crazy idea. Idiocy squared. Naturally, it didn't seem like that at the time. I still had money, a fighter, and the need to replace the Coalition that rejected me. Arriving at Freeport 9, I did not find Sun Koken in place, but Melissa Jones and her squadron stopped there that day. This is the future leader of the paramilitary wing of the Zoners - Velvet. She offered to become a part of the combat brotherhood and, no less, to help all mankind by destroying Nomads. It sounded tempting for a young guy, so I joined. In memory of Wolf, who took out the ill-fated Crystal from the prototype of the “JADE” weapon, I took the callsign Velvet|Jade.

Those were the best days. We raided the Nomads' systems, destroying their bases from the inside. Hundreds of intense patrols near alien jumpholes. Velvet gave the Zoners a force that even the locals - the Order and the Core - had to reckon with. It wasn't that any of their leaders couldn't give one order and it would be over with us, but both sides needed us. Both sought cooperation, tried to force us to choose a side, and both did not hesitate to threaten when they discovered our deals with their enemies. We did almost everything. For example, during the invasion of Gallia, we offered to help evacuate the population of the planet Leeds. And kidnapped ten thousand people for The Order, in exchange for several of their first-class Nephthys bombers. Similar deals helped us to build a Battlecruiser Velvet|Centaurus based on the Core’s “Bullhead” design, which has become our flagship. Glorious days. I began to look in a completely different way: at the Sun Koken, who more often disapproved of our actions because of her obvious xenophilia; at the Zoner society; and at the world as a whole.

Kidnapping refugees from Leeds, BAF is chasing	Velvet| raids
Hauling materials for “Centaurus” construction	Velvet| raids

Our influence threatened to go beyond the Omicrons when the internal split began. At least that's what I came to. Melissa Jones left the organization, the command passed to her deputy Max Cosmatopolis. Max could not maintain the pace set by Melissa, and the organization began to wither. I was sent to guard Freeport 6 in the Tau-29 system, where I spent the next few months dying of inactivity. My requests for transfers to Omicrons were ignored. More precisely, any requests not related to Melissa were ignored, she, it seems, contacted Bretonia intelligence and asked me for a couple of services that Max would not like. Knowing what we have lost and how many people we are losing right now on the front line in battles with aliens because of our inaction, I could not sit on Freeport and deserted. Later I found out that the organization was indeed disbanded shortly after my desertion.

Part 4: For hire

---

Alone again. An experienced pilot who has undergone grueling training in piloting very heavy fighters. It's a secret, but we were also trained to resist the hypnosis of Nomads. Not enough to destroy the source, but enough to get out of the fight and send the fighter home. The constant war with such an alien and powerful enemy convinced me that I could quite cope with the cleansing of the cosmos from all trash. I was attracted to fighting in space. Overloads were intoxicating. The fraction of fragments flying into the hull after a close mine explosion gives the necessary adrenaline. There, among the passing shells, I felt alive. So I went to Kusari to become a bounty hunter.

Flag of the Kusari Empire

It turned out that many paths were closed to a non-citizen in Kusari. Therefore, I did not bind myself to the contract tightly, but registered at one of the Bounty Boards. My choice fell on Samura Industries. The boss, Akira Murata, paid regularly for a generally simple job. The descendants of the Japanese practically did not change the traditions and remained very similar to their ancestors from historical books. I liked them, in general. Everything changed after meeting Marquess Shimamori Masahito. He has his own noble clan from the planet Honshu. A kind of state within a state. Working with him meant joining the Clan. Of course, I was only an outsider worker, a Gaijin, in the lowest status. Insignificant, but already with a certain level of protection. One step closer to an ordinary citizen. I turned into a cross between a bodyguard and a policeman. Anyway, It helped in my work, because Shimamori-san allowed me to continue bounty hunting in Kusari. My fighter was not confiscated, and I didn’t switch to another one. It still carries the identification codes of the Zoners, which has repeatedly misled criminals loyal to the Zoners. They let me get within shooting distance, and this becomes their last mistake.

Marquess Shimamori Masahito

*...OVER. START RETESTING? YES/NO*
*NO*

I have not completely severed contact with the Order, in case things go badly in Kusari. Actually I like them more from the two sides of conflict in the Omicrons. I think I can earn their trust if I kill a few targets for them. Unofficially. But for now, the break is over. Time for another sweep.

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In a live role playing environment, you are not owed or mandated to be given a duel. Fights develop differently every time and people have varying degree of time to log on their hands or have their own plans.

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