Mitch Griffith is sitting near a window holding a glass of beer in his hands. He takes a sip from it and looks out of the window into the darkness of the Denko Cloud. "I guesse that it's time" he says to himself. He looks deep into his glass, thinking about something. He picks up the glass and looks at it from a bit closer ... waiting ... thinking and then takes another sip of his beer, stands up and walks away, his glass still half full. As he walks trew the corridors of Nome base, he greets some of the other Xenos with a nod, but no smile, this wasn't the time to smile. Only a week ago he had held a party for one of the new recruits and today that same person had died in the name of everything that Xenos stood for. He was a Hero, a Hero without a name, and noweone would remember him in a month or two, because then they'd have lost another 2 or 3 pilotes. No, life was to short to not live it, to not wanting to make a differance, because everyone can make a differance, if only you try, that's what life is all about, about trying.
He pushes the button to open the door of the hangar that opens with a typical rusty sound and walks into the hangar towards his ship. The Black Thorn her wings needed some repearing as it was filled with holes and burn spots from their last fight. Mitch pets the hull of his ship and smiles at it: "I'll ask Bob to repear you, I promise, he'll fix you" He lays his head against the hull of his ship as if wanting to hear her heartbeat. "We'll get through this together" He opens the door of his ship and gets inside, pushes some buttons and open up the communication chanel.
"This is Mitch Griffith Captain of The North Xenos Patrol Silver 03. Me and my crew have finaly decided to dedicate our lifes and ships to the Xenos Alliance. Each of us will apply to your elite inner circle of the Xenos individualy, but the other won't apply as long as their captain has not shown the initiative to do so himself, so that's why I show initiative today. About me, because ofcourse you're expecting me to tell my life to you, that's fine with me, but I'm sure anyone on this base can garantee my loyalty to the Xenos, but here comes.
I never really knew my famly, both my father and mother had to work like slaves in the mines of Pittsburgh until they worked themselves to their own dead. I was only 5 back then. After their funeral, wich wasn't more then the burning of their corpses in one the corps burning facilities on Pittsburgh, they brought me to one of the Houston Miner Orphan houses, where they put all the children who lost their parents in the mines.
As I grew up I showed more and more interest in books and knowledge, but every time any of us dared to go to a liabery or try to learn new things, they'd punish us at the orphanage by not giving us food or taking our beds away of us, and many other ways to punish and torture people who are disobedient. We were conditioned and trained to do only one thing, to mine, it's all we were teached, for they expected us to mine until dead, just like how my parents had died. As years passed by we saw more and more Xenos attacks and Liberty striking back at the Xenos on the news. We to at the Orphan house tryed to rebel against our supressers, the people who had tortured us for so long. But our litle rebelion obvieusly failed and even television was taken from us, I was 17 back then a few weeks before my 18th birthday. The people of the Orphanage finaly got sick of me and my litle small scale revolutions that they thought it would be the BEST birthday present to send me to my new home, the same mine as where my parents had died 12 years ago on Pittsburgh.
They landed near our orphanage with an armored transport and forced us into it with guns against our backs, packed like pigs for the slaughterhouse. Many houres later we landed on Pittsburgh. As the prisoner compartiment opened the heath and stench was the first to welcome us. I told my friends to not exit the ship, but the company people didn't like that, they hit me with the back of their gun and then pulled me out the ship "What were you saying?!" They yelled at me, I just grinned at them: "Don't get out of the ship" They hit me with the back of their gun again wich made me bite the dust once more. "Say that again?" They taunted "Don't get out of the ship" I said as my mounth was filling with the red liquid called blood. "You just made my day, kid" the 2 goons said as they started kicking and hitting me with their guns. Every kick and hit with their guns made me burn with anger and hate more and more. It felt as if they were breaking each bone in my body, and the pain kept comming for what seemed to have been ages. Suddenly someone came in between them: "What're you doing to that miner?" A man in a suit asked them "It's a Xeno, boss" the man nodded: "Good, please continue" some other goons walked towards the armored transport and forced my friends out of the ship, hitting those who dared to look at me.
It toke me a month to recover from those wounds and when I finaly was forced onto my own legs again and into the mines, I got to hear that my best friend had already died in a mining accidents. The mineshaft had collapsed because of an explosion and he died while saving one of our other friends. On Pittsburgh, people don't think about human lifes, it's all about profits and they don't care if people die or life, all they think about is money. So I rallied my friend and some other miners and planned for revolution, for an uprising, it was time that the things in the mines CHANGED. We attacked the people supervising us, grapped their guns and fought our own miniature war inside the mines. When we finaly reached the surface and made our run for the landing area so we could steal ourselfs a ship to flee away of Pittsburgh we were greeted by a group of Bounty Hunters. An older man with one blind eyes walked towards us laughing: "My, my if it isn't the young Griffith. I enjoyed killing your father, did you know that?" I lost my guard as he said that and that's the moment he shot me in my leg, my fellow rebels searched cover, but the older man kept on walking towards me: "And I loved raping your mother afterwards" He said with a grin on his face as he spitted on me. He held his hand against his ear and said: "Ok men you have permition to open fire on sector B7. The next moment the orange sky of Pittsburgh turned red as Bounty Hunter ships opened fire on the location where my friends were hiding and then in a flash of light everything was over.
I was the only surviver of that incident on Pittsburgh, I was shipped of to the Walls in Texas where they forced me to work for several years, until I met one of the LPI agents working there. That was Bob Cannon, he had seen the way miners were treated by all of Liberty from very close by. Hundreds and hundreds of people who were broken before they were even born. Even from before their birth it's decided for them that they'll be miners, just because their parents were miners tthemselves. That's the Liberty we live in today, a Liberty where noweone is free anymore, where we're all slaves of a corrupt goverment and of a foreign market. But Bob gave me hope again, he belived me when I told my story and he helped me say good bye to the friends that I had lost on Pittsburgh, he learned me to let go, to let go of all that hate and anger, he learned me to make some productive and creative with it, he learned me how to see the light again, how to experience hope.
One day Bob fixed a relocation for me and even got the job to transport me to the new prison. As soon as we left the walls and got into the tradelanes, Bob opened my prison door, stopped in the midle of the tradelanes, started his cruise engines and we vanished into the Pequena Negra in Texas where we toke the jump hole to Pennsylvania and we surrendered ourselves to the Xenos of Milford Base, who Bob had already informed that we'd be comming and that we didn't care if we were captured, executed or done whatever, we'd be comming and we'd offer our full support to them.
That's how Bob and myself got into the Xenos."
Mitch looks down for a moment and sighs. "We can make a differance, we WILL make a differance. You just have to belive in that. If you DON'T belive in the goals we're fighting for, then you're not ready to be out there. I tell that to each of the new pilotes flying with my squad, if you're not ready to die fighting for the Xenos and their ideas, then you shouldn't be out here fighting with us. You have to be 100% sure of your ideals, or not at all. I don't ... I don't want to waste anymore lifes for nothing, I want them to have a meaning, each single one of them ... they're all equally important." He looks away again and sighs again: "This is Mitch Griffith ending this message. FOR FREEDOM, FOR THE FUTURE" he yells as he ends the message. He lays back in his seat and looks up at the sealing and sighs: "... for freedom"
