Xeno Alliance communications (iRP) (FO)

[Dusty Lens]

The combat pilots of the movement are a very strange breed indeed. Some of my closest friends have come from backgrounds as diverse as Liberty Navy pilots on the run, Junkers grown ill with a life of money placed over the value of human life and even myself, a former teacher who ended up on the wrong side of the system. Our respective practical training in the art of flight never seemed to be an issue, if you could physically hack it you could secure your wings and a ship. After that it was up to your squad to make sure you knew the ropes.

I suppose in a way it's not exactly a mark of pride to be a pilot. Anyone within the movement who can actually do something with their hands, ply a skill is immediately put to the task and held in high esteem for his contribution. Us flyboys break things, but we don't build things. We're murderers and crazy men. We launch into the black in ships that hardly deserve the dignity of the name to commit unspeakable acts in the name of other unspeakable acts.

Most of us are more than a little insane for it.

Our stock of pilots is generally drawn from those who've done hard times. Full of the rage you need to look past handicaps and focus on directing the screaming torrents of particle blasters into the hulls of Kusarian transports. Huntsville and the prison-factory cities of Denver provide the cream of the crop, pilots who'll willingly lay down their life rather than serve another term in those hellish pits. Another term that they know is all that faces their future. Or, worse, being shanghaied and sold into slavery partway through some uncertain night in the Wall.

Us pilots might not be the ones who'll actually be building our future, let alone living in it, but for now we're the ones who fight for it... I reckon that's good enough.

-David Chambers, memoirs of a Knight of Labor.