The first thing I remember is my mother crying while running with me in her arms...
I grew up on a small farming community, on Hera Prime. Ever since I've known myself, I grew up without a father. My mother only told me that he left us before I was born. I grew up hating him.
Life was though on Hera Prime, yet rewarding: we worked all day long, but what we needed, we had and what we had, we produced ourselves. We had no need for outside goods, but sometimes, a merchant would land in our settlement and bring us used electronics, hydrocarbons fuel and old comics in exchange for food and wooden decorative objects, that my people made. These visits were quite rare, yet every time I saw the merchant ship, my heart felt as if it would explode. I found it fascinating How that odd heap of metal could float into mid-air, defying all the natural laws of my little world. And when I heard of stories about millions of stars and people flying from one planet to another, I was simply mesmerized. As I was going to find out, it wasn't the flickering stars, nor the wonders of the other worlds that was drawing me way from my peaceful existence. No... It was the call of blood. But I shall get there soon...
Amongst the merchants that visited us, there was a man that developed affection for my mother and for me. But no matter what he did, my mother never considered him to be more than a friend and I did not understand that until the day she died. It was this man, against all of my mother's protests, that first took me on a spaceship and showed me how my little planet looked from above. Ever since that trip, all I could think about was buying my own trade ship with which to wonder through the stars.
At the age of 16, I decided to join the HDF, Hera's Defense Fleet. Against my mother's cries, I took my horsanet to the neighboring city and joined the fleet. When I say fleet, do not think of Battleships and Cruisers, Gunboats or Heavy Fighters. Our fleet was composed of a handful of old, rusty light fighters, equipped with primitive laser weapons. If we ever were to be attacked, the attackers could have thrown boulders at us with their empty hands, and they would still have won. Still, it was on such a ship that I first learned to maneuver a fighter.
At the age of 18, my mother became ill. The doctor said that she wouldn't make it through the year. Still, she lasted 3 more standard years.
By that time, I had already been promoted to Lieutenant, due to my outstanding skills of shooting rocks in the nearby asteroid field, which was our training ground. I was happy, so my mother was happy for me. But she wasn't happy. And that made me unhappy, too. We both had gotten used to the idea that we could say goodbye from each other at any moment. But we didn't really talk about it.
One day, when I had barely turned 21, a villager came to me and told that my mother wishes to see me. I had known then that the dreaded moment had finally come. But when I entered my mother's room, it wasn't a kiss and a goodbye that I found. It was the truth about my father, the truth my mother had hid from me, hopping to protect me, hopping I would not follow his way. She told me how she fell in love with a young Outcast, how they got married, how she became pregnant and how they went on their honeymoon. She told me how three Corsairs recognized my father and attacked him and my mother while they were going back to their room. She told me how he screamed "Run, my love! RUN!!!" and how he held them back to give her time to run. She told me that she escaped and saw the news about a man being attacked by three others and how that man managed to kill two of his attackers before being stabbed in the back by the cowardly third. Finally, she told me how they hunted her down and how she managed to escape on a trade ship with her newly born child. She told me how much she regretted the fact that he hid the truth from me, she asked for forgiveness and then she died...
I hated myself. I hated myself so much that I was amazed of how much hate a human being can harbor... I hated myself and I still do.
Four weeks after her death, I stood in my house, barely eating or drinking anything. The desire to die and my thirst for revenge waged a bloody battle in me. But at the end of those dreadful four weeks, my thirst for revenge was victorious. I was half dead, but a shadow of the proud young man I had been not long ago. Yet, a new force had risen my body of the cold ground, forced food into my mouth and poured water down my throat. And it is simply amazing how rejuvenating this force was... In 2 weeks I was back on my feet.
I started by stealing what I considered to be the best fighter in my squadron and left the system. I wondered from planet to planet, hunting down criminals for credits, knowing that I was about to become the hunted one, myself. I will not bore you with stories of how I got to earn my small fortune. I will tell you that I managed to get myself a fully equipped Sabre and a couple of million credits with which, through never-ending bribing, I managed to find Planet Malta. I am currently docked on Malta, writing this message to you, hoping you will not deny me my revenge, allowing me to earn forgiveness from my father's memory and from myself.
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1) There is a certain romanticism to the story of the Outcasts and to their war with the Corsairs. I am a romantic person and I want to taste this romanticism by being part of it. And why the Outcasts? Because they were survivors all the way, waiting until the last moment, before abandoning their ship.
2) I am very passionate about Sci-Fi books and movies. I'm also very passionate about chemistry, so I spend hours in the chemistry lab.
3) There is no "living happily ever after"; life has it's own inertia, it's own self-preservation mechanism, so when yo draw the bottom line, you see that all is still the same.
4) James Kirk from Star Trek. I find myself in his desire to explore the unknown.
