19.10.3306.1
Wow. Just Wow. I’ve heard how beautiful Dawes Hub is for years, but nothing could prepare me, aside from the flight through Achenar itself, which alone gives one an overwhelming feeling of importance, grandeur, and spectacle.
I guess I should back up a little. When I was a young man of 22, I enlisted in the Imperial Navy, and spent two years in a terrestrial combat and surveillance unit, on Adad A 3. Most of my time in the navy can’t be discussed due to the sensitive nature of the operations I was involved in. What I can tell you is that I had made the rank of Knight when it all literally blew up in my face.
Now, Knight sounds pretty great, but it’s sort of mid-career tedium if I’m honest. Too far up the ladder to see any action unless things have gone REALLY wrong, and not far enough up the ladder to sit back and bask in the glory. It often felt like being a single sheet of paper in the middle of a tall stack of paperwork, waiting for the shredder. All that said, I really took pride in what I did. Pride, and honor. That was my life. It still is in a lot of ways.
That’s how the Empire is at it’s core. Pride, honor, and contribution above all else. The thing about those principles is that they all hinge on the last. If you contribute, you can have pride. You can have honor. People show you respect, even if you have a yank Federation accent, like us “Robigo trash”. If however you can’t contribute, the world becomes much more grim.
It’s not impossible to regain your principles, but the work is hard. Long, back breaking hours, often spent under a sun whose name you don’t know, in a system far from home. You work. You work, and you sleep, and you work. It doesn’t matter what happened, or how you became indebted, only that you did, and now, until you repay your debts, you no longer have freedom of agency. You become property. We’ll come back to this in a moment.
I lost my vision while transporting sensitive materials for the Empire. As with everything in the Empire, that data had a value. Now, us transporters never knew what we were carrying, and we never knew the value. I understand the secrecy. We theoretically could have nothing more than a base food supply order, or we could have something as important as details of Forward Strike Bases next movements toward our targets. You just never knew.
We lost several transporters while attempting to deliver a package deep behind enemy lines, to a resistance group providing aux support to the cause. Again, I’m not sure what it was, but obviously the Federation troops thought it was important. After I had lost three of my men and women, I knew I had an opportunity to get out from behind my desk, and put in some leg work for a change.
It was the middle of the night, and it was NOT “a little too quiet” like you sometimes hear people say. There was so much fire coming from both sides, it lit the sky, and you could feel the energy of the pulse lasers rip through your essence if you stood still for longer than a second. There was almost a chaotic rhythm to it all. I did the dance of a transporter. From shadow to shadow. I had made it through the front lines, and past the second line without much to note.
I saw the green dot flash three times in the trees, once long, and then two short bursts, what I knew was the signal from the resistance, I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. I was 100 yards away from delivering the package that had cost so many lives. My heart rushed. THIS is what I enlisted for. Just as the sky darkened again briefly, I made my move. A move that would cost me years. In a single bright flash, my world came to a halt.
The resistance fighters managed to fight off the Feds and rescue me, but the package was lost along with my sight. They returned me to my FSB where I learned that what I carried was estimated at a value of 6,000,000 credits. Much more than my Navy wages could afford. I’m still not exactly sure how they can justify the claim that I was responsible for the loss. It’s not like I took it upon myself to take the documents, and go on a little stroll, but nonetheless, I owed the Empire six million credits… And I was going to pay.
Due to my otherwise outstanding service to the Empire, I was allowed to be relocated back to my home system to work at the refineries until my debt was paid, mostly because I had family there that could provide essentials like housing and food, that the senator I was indentured to wouldn’t have to spend credits on. I worked that debt off for seven years before I earned my humility back, but I was still blinded (legally. I could still make out shapes and colors well enough to function). I’d be a liar if I told you I had no animosity towards the Empire for treating me like that. I had given my all, and then some, and in return they took more than I had to give.
I was just cruising in the black, like Catfish suggested, making my way anywhere but home. Enjoying what the galaxy has on offer. I was surprised to say the least when I ran into my old commanding officer in the Mainaini system, at a little post called Mies van der Rohe’s Claim. Mattis gave me a warm greeting, and asked me if I was still enlisted. I told him I was, and that I’m now a licensed pilot, which is mostly true. I was never discharged, but I had never been recalled to duty once my debt was paid either.
Well, Mattis told me he had some pretty mundane carrier routes that he needed manned for about a month, and that if I would step up and fill the role until his fresh service persons arrived, he’d make sure I had a nice ship to make the runs in, and because of the nature of his request, it would earn rank pretty quickly.
I spent the next month running back and forth between Mainani and Ngalinn in a mind numbing loop that made my slave days feel like a vacation, in an Imperial Eagle that wasn’t quite the Courier I was expecting, and at times reminded me of a New Balance running shoe, except less functional. At times I hoped to be interdicted, just to give me something… ANYTHING else to do.
Mattis eventually got his new pilots in, and I showed them the best routes to take if they wanted to avoid interested parties, and which to take if they didn’t, and then he handed me my last assignment from this post. A trip to the mother system, Achenar.
What a grand spectacle. When I dropped out of hyperspace in front of Dawes Hub, I had no idea what to expect, but nothing could have prepared me. This was a place of endless basking. They must repaint this port once a week to keep it so polished. Every surface and structure was like an alabaster marvel of fit and form. Palm trees line the docks, and there are terraces with blue ponds, and people basking in it’s greatness what seems like every five feet. Truly this place is amazing.
I’m met by a prince whose name now escapes me who rather unceremoniously hands me a scroll, and swiftly walks away, leaving me standing by my new ship more than a little confused. I unroll the scroll to find a very thoughtful note from Mattis thanking me for my service again, and informing me that with my promotion to Duke, I have a flat at Dawes Hub, access to the shipyard, and rights to purchase Imperial Navy ships. This is a beautiful place.
I’m afraid though, that this beautiful place is a veil for the unbridled greed of men and women that put vanity, and their own narcissism ahead of their fellow man. Not that the Feds are any better. They’d be happy to give you all the dirt, and all the poor you can stand, in fact they’ll bury you in it if you’re not careful. I’m a Duke in a Navy that respects me about as much as I trust them. What an interesting turn of events. I need to make my way to an independent system where their reach can only go so far, before I end up on a chain again.
CMDR Umile Starcaster, Duke of Robigo (Lulz)
