T. Finnegan, Junker

[TFinnegan]

ALLENTOWN CANTINA, TODAY



Oi!
Who yer eyeballin' there? Ya wee runt ye...

*jerks a thumb at you*

You see who's givin ol' Murph the one-eye there Johhny boy?

*nods to the Allentown bartender, Johnny*
*stares down over a fresh pint of porter at you, his left eye glints as if it contains diamond and steel*

T'aint right ye be starin' at a soul 'round 'ere, kid. Nea many friendly types 'ere this time o' night.

*looks you up n down, grinning slightly*

Though looks like yer a greenhorn, eh? A lil bit yellow 'bout the gills aye? I'll fergive it this once...
Y'see, Its me birthday, and I'm gettin pess drunk tonight.
Johnny lad! Pour this 'un a porter and a whiskey. Put it on Finn's tab, the scoundrel.

*places a hand firmly on your shoudler, steering you to a table*

Y'ever heard'a Invergordon? 'Swhere I met Timmy Finn...

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Robert William Murphy Jr., Pilot and 1st Mate, Finnegan's Wake
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Bobby Murphy was a diceman. Always had a pair with him. And a short stack of one-creds. He'd grown up in Dublin, the son of a widowed cantina owner. His father had been shot during a pazaak game and his mother, pregnant with him, was forced to assume proprietorship of the bar, if only to pay his father's debt. The cantina was a dive on Arranmore near the docks, named O'Malleys, frequented by Mollies and those that provided services to them, here he learned to gamble.

An expatriot named Brand Garrison, an Outcast recruit not much older than Murphy himself, a frequent customer taught him many games. WHile he was earning his chops with the Outcasts, Garrison would often lay low at Arranmore, and the two would rake up the c-notes by the handfulls. He taught Murphy mathematics and theory of odds and gambling as well as how to read your opponents slightest move and tell.

One day a passing Zoner astrogator named Namiras caught the two working thier magic on a group of unsuspecting miners fat with fresh pay, and decided to watch and see what developed. Immedeately Namiras was impressed by the young Murphy's intrinsic grasp of mathematical principles, and offered to employ him as a deckhand, while he apprenticed under the Sailing Master of Namiras' massive Zoner Whale.

He quickly surpassed the abilities of even his own astrogation teacher, and constantly would outbid, seemingly by feel, the autopilot calculations for delta-V's. Within a year's time he was able to twist vectors, compute thrust potentials, and gravitic curvations of seven or more ships simultaneaously, and could draw flightpaths on his console with 97% accuracy, beating even state-of-the-art vectorcomps.

While he continued to strip his shipmates of thier hard-earned cash with dice and card games, astronavigation became his first love, and he quickly replaced the original Pilot. His time on board the Whale was to be short, however.
Murphy gained the nickname 'Dropkick' because he liked to get up games of zero-g rugby and football in the cargo bays when empty, and gamble on them, often throwing them or arranging for a drill or system failure at opportune times. One day he programmed the ship's drive to hiccup at 'just' the right moment during a rugby game that he just 'happened' to have ten thousand creds bet upon, which was unfortunate because Namiras had 'just happened' to be docked with the Battleship Arc Royal at the time.

After Murphy was turned over to authorites as a gesture of goodwill, Namiras and his whale slid out of dock quietly, though a comtech had overheard the captain expressing his gladness to be 'rid of the kid' for he'd feared that one day the blamed-fool pilot would stardive the Whale or grav-whip her around a gas giant, when she clearly wasn't built for such manuevers...

A twist here, a bet there, a fried system node over here, and Murphy was back on Invergordon before his jailers even knew where they'd put him. It took weeks to remove a badmath root parameter from the Arc Royal's master compbanks, and in the end, the only way they'd ever known they'd had him was the heresay of some junior MP's and a very angry Commander and dock repair crew.

Enter Tim Finnegan, fresh in his Clan Chief seat at Invergordon. Tim was looking for a pilot who was unafraid of the rougher sections of Sirius, clever enough to evade even the most aggravated pursuit, and able to pilot a godawfully large and lugubrious ship, as well as it's attending skiff, a refit Recycler. The Wake, though older and moure touchy than the Whale he'd flown was beautiful to Bobby Murphy. The Pilgrim-class liner had a three-hundred year old gravdamper system that allowed her maneuverability he'd never seen in a ship that size. The armaments alone required her powerplant to be huge, and well within what he termed his 'experimental zone'. Her captain had built a pub complete with billiards and darts into her forward crew section, and even had an onboard brewery. The crew, being Junkers for the most part, was a bit tougher than he was used to, and the job was, well, less-than-legal at best.

He'd have to be on his guard, he thought as he boarded the Wake, kitbag over his shoulder.
This was no Zoner-milk-run, this was smuggling. Played properly, this was the path to riches.
Time to stop working the gamble on shipmates, and begin to work it on all of Sirius now.

Still, his dice rattled together in his pocket as the airlock cycled shut.

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