T. Finnegan, Junker

[TFinnegan]

Sonofa...Junker

Born the only son of Patrick (Paddy) Finnegan, Chief of Clan Gordon and Master of Yards, Chief Engineer for Invergordon Station, Inverness, Tim literally grew up on the inside of spaceships. Not the inside areas meant for human habitation mind you, but in thier guts, thier very hearts and bowels. Some of his first tastes and smells were grease, ground metal, and carbonized fuel resin. A wiry, sharp witted kid, Tim Finnegan struggled from the first to spend as much time helping his father in the Yards as he could.

As he could work in places that his father needed costly robots to repair, he found he was often an asset when he would 'happen past' after schooling or when he should have been in the eco-labs. As he learned the 'Way of the Wrench', his father would call it, he slowly started to wonder what it would be like to pilot one of these leviathans that tore the void or the wily fightercraft that could perforate it. He started to notice that his father always had extra time or free parts for Junkers. As he was always underfoot, he did not go unnoticed by a certain important few of them.

Timmy Finn, as the spacers began to call him, found himself doing no end of favors for passing pilots, if only for the chance to speak to them on thier bridges, rather than in some greasy gangway under a cacaphonous turbine. He could get into tight spots to help smugglers hide cargo, or to aid naval vessels in thier rat trapping. Tim Knew ships. He could hear the cough in a humming plasma valve that bespoke a blowthough, feel the vibration of fatigued metal before a gravboot broke free. Tim was learning to know pilots. Smugglers, pirates, naval officers, bounty hunters all had thier own mechanical complexities. The right tool for one person would assure smooth running, the wrong tool would ensure a critical failure. And he spoke the language of the machine fluently, flesh or steel.

By his teens he was running a succesful side business smuggling SynthWeed inside the hulls of Bretonian and Liberty Navy vessels to and from Junker operatives on other shipyards. He was able to save enough to pay for pilot certification as well as purchase an abused old Rhino freighter which needed more work than initially thought. To pay for the extra repairs and refits he became brazen, and would even pack a few extremely illegal items into a ship's nooks and crannies under the guise of repairs. Nuclear warheads stuffed into the service tunnels of a Liberty cruiser, bound ultimately for a Xeno base. Slaves drugged into sleep and strapped to the outer casing of a cruise engine cooling core. Artifacts and even Nomad brains moved through his hands, brought in by Junkers and carried through the empires by those sworn to protect them from what was happening right under thier noses....


All good things end...badly.

They came out of the sky like fireflies. Hundreds of pinpricks of light, burning blues and whites, filling the comm channels with Kusari shouts and the canned air of Invergordon with sirens. They rained a storm of tachyons, protons, and gravitons down on the station's shields, while the tiny, outdated defense turrets whined pitifully and spat laser fire back at them. Spacers and Longshormen ran to thier ships or pressure suits with wildness in thier eyes. Then came the messages.

The Royal Kusari Navy was to recieve the 2nd Prince, the Gunji-no-Kanrei Takeda, alive and unharmed or the station would be reduced to slag. Six Kusari battleships and eleven cruisers slid into range to make thier point stick. The station's Elders, including Tim's father, begged the Kusari fleet for an explanation, as they'd heard nothing of this man being missing, let alone having passed through Inverness space. While they bantered, a small contingent of fighters broke from the main Kusar fleet and force-docked, injecting armed marines by the scores into the station's bays. Tim was one of the first grabbed, as he tried to steer a gravcart in the way of approaching marines, allowing a Junker pilot he had just loaded with cases of contraband the time to slide out of an unregistered dockmount.

The station's Elders and administrators, and anyone resisting arrest was captured and carted off to a cruiser, while Kusari marines and agents literally tore the station apart in thier search for thier missing patron. From the Cortez jumphole, Invergordon was unrecognizable in a cloud of seething steel warcraft.

From the Cortez Jumphole they came. Junkers, Junker's Congress, Junker guardsman, Outcasts great and small, even scattered Zoner craft came one after the other in a fanning claw formation, demanding cessation of hostilities and withdrawal into Kusari space for the bandit fleet. After a few brief and curt conversations between the lords of the two fleets, the Kusar fleet slid off into the black. On board the seventh cruiser in formation, screams of torture and defiance could be heard ringing through the galleys.

Dark times, in blue skies.

Fuchu prison is not a pretty place. It is especially ugly to those who resist torture, fail to give information, or simply have no information, cries, or blood left to give. It is cold, dark, and run by killers. Not your common killers, such as the ego-inflated navy or police officers, or bounty hunters, or even the half crazed Xenos. The killers in Fuchu have thousands of victims, and the Kusari police like it that way. It's cheap to feed a corpse. To survive the grindhouse between the Blood Dragon killers and the Golden Chrysanthemum killers for a year is tantamount to living ten years on the outside. Noone older than forty survived it long, and certainly noone called an Elder, who could wield any kind of power, could be allowed to survive the existing power structure. Tim was orphaned at age seventeen.
Tim spent his first year in solitary confinement, questioning centers, or the infirmary recovering from one or the other. In his second year his Junker connections became known through the general population, and he again became a 'mover' or a 'fixer'. Under the protection of the Kuroi Kiri, the famed Black Mist yakuza of New Tokyo his business again flourished, although his profit now was his life and all his parts in place, rather than cash. His abilities to 'choose the right tool for the job' and to work with people of all types and motives made him a valuable player to both ruling groups in Fuchu, and thus inviolate.

In his seventh year a Junker pilot with horrible burns on half his face was shoved into the cell next to his. 'DoubleTap' was his name. Or his callsign. Didn't matter. If anyone called him anything but DoubleTap, he'd quickly find himself punched in the throat, his feet quickly tangled, and shortly after that, his skull crushed against the floor. repeatedly.
Once he'd assured himself that Tim Finnegan was the kid he'd known seven years ago, he announced himself to Tim as the pilot he'd loaded and run blocking for during the Kusari attack. And he had a gift for Tim...

Big things come in small packages.

That crate, DoubleTap explained, didnt have seventy kilos of cardamine packed in food stores, bound for Beaumont Station as Tim had been told, but rather the drugged and bound 2nd Prince of Kusar, Gunji-no-Kanrei Takeda.

DoubleTap had been sent to pay the commision owed to Tim. Apparently there were quite a few commisions due, as DoubleTap tried to explain...
The Kusar 3rd Prince commisioned the assasination of his elder brother by the Blood Dragons who had caught poor Takeda in transit and incognito, as he landed on Curacao. A Golden Chrysanthemum agent working undercover with the Dragons, unable to allow her soverign prince to be killed, drugged and shoved him into her own ship, locked the autopilot to dive to the bottom of the ocean and park there, sent an encoded message to a Junker operative, then commited seppuku, taking her own life.

The next day a Junker salvage crew hauled the wreck out of the water, discreetly packaged the Gunji-no-Kanrei, and shipped him off through the grapevine, which included Tim, bound for a smuggling operation being run out of Niverton Base, Pennsylvania. There he was met by the Kusari Ambassador and returned to New Tokyo, ordering his brother's death and reclaiming his birthright.
For keeping his mouth shut, and failing to implicate the Junkers in any of these dealings, Tim was to be rewarded by powerful members of the Junker Congress. For returning Takeda to his family, he was to be rewarded by the Kusari Royal Family, even if he were always considered a criminal by the Kusari and Hogosha powerful. For keeping both the Blood Dragons and GC's clear of implication, he was to be doubly rewarded with safe passage and haven henceforth.

And there was a ship. A mining vessel. And some chunky bank accounts in the name of the Fall River Mining Company, a shell of a company, a new beginning. All waiting it's new master. A master who was stuck in Fuchu Prison. Until his identity was confirmed by a Junker prisoner, one who vanished the next day. And was never seen again on Fuchu.

A Gordonnoch ta home

Weeks later Tim Finnegan, officialy a Junker with a Guard application on file, boarded a shuttle bound for Erie. With a "Don't ever come back to Kusari space!" ringing in is ears, and a few million Kusari credits resting in his pocket, he watched the blue skies he'd lived under for nine years wink out as they jumped into neutral space.

The Fall River Metals Company had been set up as an Invergordon based scrap operation, a lease held on the Pittsburg scrap field made it a milk run. And profitable too. But quiet. And local...
Here he was, a spaceship captain finally, and he ran loops through Liberty space. He almost looked forward to the occasional scans and pirates. Oh sure, he moved a few things here and there through the Junker networks. He was good at it after all, and his reputation for being tightlipped, trustworthy, and sly as an Alterian Watersnake soon had him working again with numerous groups, covertly moving or arranging movement of goods meant to stay off the radar.

On just another boring day not long ago, a Junker agent was sent to retrieve Tim to the Inverness system where he was to have an interview with a Guard agent for certification. Clan Gordon agent 'DoubleTap' stood in the hangar bay of Arecaibo Station awaiting Tim's shuttle, with a legion of kilted Scotsmen in full regalia. Bagpipes playes mournfully.
With a handshake and a morbid, half-burned grin, 'DoubleTap' slapped a sealed order into Tim's hand, and verigraped to his data storage device.

Under orders of his uncle, the acting Dockmaster of Invergordon, Tim was made Clan Chief of the ancient House Gordon, and was to forevermore bear the title '444th Duke of Gordon', protector of Inverness and 'Coliach an Taobh Tuath'. He was assigned the majestic con-tower suites as offices and residence, and upon his signature, would immediately take control of all Gordon interests on the remote Junker base where he had been raised. He was given the deed to a ship that awaited him, a Pilgrim class liner, fresh from the Invergordon yards.

Into the black and blue skies

Under sealed orders, Tim and his handpicked crew of Gordons, former Fuchu killers, and Junker mercenary marines pulled the recently commisioned vessel, Finnegan's Wake out of drydock for the first time.
With an empty hold, and an agent waiting on Niverton to fill it with thousands of slaves bound for Malta, T. Finnegan, Junker, began his long cruise through Sirius skies. Ever watchful, ever careful to choose the right tool for the job. He helms his Clan and Ship with a firm hand and a crooked smirk, quick to anger and to laugh.

"Mr. Murphy! Prime those bloody engines and get me a course through th' sigmas!"

"O'Malley, get these blumin' low-lifes off me comms, and switch power to cruise engines!"

"Gunner Kelley! I want a firing solution on all bandits all the time, we clear lad?"

"Aye lads, 'Tis gonna be a right fine day terday, I ken the law on yon winds. What say we give the bonny sonsa beeches a run fer 'der money?"

"Murph! Light 'em!"

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