A Darker Shade Of Black

[Zapp]

There's the momentary flash of a lighter in the midst of a room of pure black. It illuminates a rugged face, a man around the age of thirty with a pretty collection of scars. He has a cigar in his mouth, which the flames caress. As the lighter dies, the screen returns to darkness.

"Y'know," he begins in a gravelly drawl, "folks don't appreciate us. And by us I mean Rogues."

A slight pause. A deep inhale.

"People call us dumb pirates, two-credit thugs, cardi-sniffers. Y'know how it is. Now, I dunno about that last one. Some are. I ain't. And some are the first two as well. Nothin' but hired guns lookin' for a quick fix. Some of us got a lick of honor, though."

Another pause, another inhale.

"And even at his dumbest, a Rogue's got some smarts. Takes quick wits, quick hands, and a helluva lot of luck to navigate the Badlands. Sensors don't work, 'specially not on our rigs. I've seen more than a few shipments break on the rocks. Seen a Navy battlegroup get eaten alive. Patrol 27? I heard of 'em. Their ghosts haunt the rocks, sure as I'm smokin' me a fine Bretonian cigar right now."

There's a slight break, but no inhale.

"Yeah. Y'know how it is. Rogues may not be the most educated of folk, in the traditional way. They may not be the best of fighters. But damned if they ain't the most tenacious lot of losers ya'll ever meet." The man chuckles. "We're what society don't want. What the LPI terms 'vicious malcontents'. We're a product of the machine that is Liberty. The Xenos... they call themselves the freedom fighters. I've heard a few as call 'emselves the 'Knights of Labor'. We're all the same, though. Just..."

There's a thirty second pause.

"Just... we saw that the system was just too f---ed up to fix, and decided we may as well profit any way we could. That's what's got me right here, right now. In this Mule, floatin' in the Badlands, ass-end of nowhere."

He pauses, and inhales deeply for the first time in a while, as if he had forgotten of the cigar's smoldering existence.

"My name is Zach Tucker. And this is my story."

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