Mirth the Bounty Hunter Hunter

[Atma]

July 5, Malta

I'm taking a few minutes to put the past several week's experiences on paper so that maybe I can make sense of what got me to this point. I wasn't always a cardamine addict, I used to have a conscience, I used to be a lot of things that I'm not anymore.

It all started a few weeks ago when I was working in Bretonia. Just odd jobs. A few for the military, a few for the police, mostly for BMM where my brother Atma worked. Simple contract stuff in my Somtaaw fighter. Then one day while I was returning from a routine mission, I stumbled into a firefight between some bounty hunters and Mollys. It wasn't in my contract to engage and the ships were a lot more powerful than mine, so I tried to steer myself clear. One of the bounty hunters mistook me for a Molly though and nearly tore my ship to shreds with one shot. I hit the thrusters and barely limped back to port.

By some stroke of luck, or perhaps the opposite, while I was at the bar the same bounty hunter who had almost vaporized me was at a back table laughing about the incident to his companion. I decided to strike up a "conversation". Things got a out of hand. I walked away the marginal victor with a black eye and a cut arm. He left with a few broken ribs. I thought that was the end of it.

A few days later I was leaving port on another errand when I saw a flash of weapons fire and found my auto-eject activated and propelled me away from the field of debris that had until recently been my ship. As I drifted in space in the middle of nowhere I watched a group of familiar-looking bounty hunter ships cruise off.

Eventually my distress beacon did got me rescued after over five hours drifting in space. While I was out there I did a lot of thinking though. I was going to give up piloting, but I couldn't just run away. Instead I chose to seek revenge.

When I got back to port I used my savings to buy another ship. It wasn't much of a ship, but it flew. I knew it wouldn't be enough exact vengeance though, so I had to find a way to make some quick cash. Courier missions and the like just weren't good enough anymore. I needed cash and I needed experience fighting ship-to-ship. So I started seeking out lone bounty hunters and picking fights. It seemed like a reasonable thing to do, all things considered.

At first I would simply salvage the debris and let the pilot go at the nearest port of call. This didn't make me much money though. What I needed was a way to get paid for fighting bounty hunters. So I thought about who might pay me to hunt thems. That's when I made to fateful decision to seek out the Lane Hackers at Mactan.

They were more than happy to pay me to fight bounty hunters, blow up their stations, whatever. And rather than drop the pilots off at the nearest planet, the Hackers would pay to take them off my hands. I liked to think that the pilots were traded with other bounty hunters for Hacker prisoners, but I knew that wasn't true. Self delusion is a powerful tool though.

After a while I found that I was making more money off the pilots I "rescued" than the missions I was flying out of Mactan. I decided to expand my horizons and look for more lucrative bases to deliver bounty hunters too. One day while chasing bounty hunters in Dublin, I stumbled into a mine field. After recovering from the initial shock of having my target explode before I shot him, and narrowly avoiding the same fate myself, I finally found what I was looking for: Arranmore.

Any reservations I may have had about selling my captives to torture and eventual death vanished when I discovered how much the Mollys were willing to pay for live bounty hunters. I began viewing them as commodities rather than people. Pretty soon I had a sleek new Slipstream with bigger guns and larger holds ready for even more captives. I searched out the best possible weapons among the pirate factions whom, although I really didn't identify with them, all loved me for the services I provided.

So, that's how I ended up on Malta. I came here looking for weapons but found that cardamine was the perfect cure for that last nagging remnant of my conscience. Soon my money will run out and I'll have to go looking for fresh bodies to sell to the pirates. I think I'll also have to join a pirate faction soon. They're beginning to suspect that I may be a mole of some kind, since I haven't officially come over to their side. I'll give that some though after some more cardamine.