Jim Dawson
Roatan Cloud, Cortez
July 7th, 801 A.S.

Right now I’m drifting in space, pondering my future, which most likely won’t be with the Bounty Hunters Guild. The last 24 hours were a wild ride…

We headed out from Curacao towards the Corcovado Field yesterday morning. It was fairly long approach, so I had some time to learn about my new comrades. It turned out that Roy Sloan and the rest of them were ex-Rogues from Hudson that had done time in Sugarland. When they got out, they joined the Bounty Hunters Guild. The Guild actively recruits ex-cons for their valuable insiders’ information on criminal bases and jump holes.

We picked up some distant Hacker and Outcast patrols on our radar, but my group had a more specialized target in mind. A certain Rogue by the name of Joe “Ice Pick” Brown had been causing a lot of trouble on the Roatan Cloud Trade Lane recently, robbing several transports in the last two weeks. IC had taken some big insurance losses on one of them, so the bounty was pretty good. The mission was straightforward – take out Ice Pick and his gang, and recover any stolen goods. As we approached the Corcovado Ice Field, criminal activity picked up considerably. We were not welcome here. Sloan spotted our target first, and took off, guns blazing. The Bounty Hunters certainly aren’t much into teamwork. I hit my afterburners and engaged the Rogues. I was totally not prepared for how much tougher the ships in the Independent World are compared to Liberty. My ship sustained a lot of damage and I was forced to use all my spare nanobots and shield batteries to keep flying. Fortunately, the rest of my patrol was more than capable. It was all over in a few minutes. There was a lot of loot that had been ejected from the destroyed pirates’ ships, including some stolen Luxury Goods, but it was getting tractored in pretty fast by the others. By the time I scanned the area, all that was left were some countermeasures and a couple of shield batteries, worth a fraction of my repair costs.

Back on Curacao, I was surprised when Sloan and the others sold the Luxury Goods to the commodity dealer. He growled when I suggested that we should return them to IC. “First thing you need to learn about the Guild, there are never any stolen goods to return to the police - finders, keepers,” he said. My repair costs were so high that they ate up most of the bounty payment. Sloan demanded all of my remaining cash, and muttered something about lousy LPI recruits.

This morning, he approached me in the bar and threatened dire consequences if I didn’t repay the loan in full after my next job. The pressure was on. I accepted an Outcast capture and retrieval job from the automated mission vendor, which was way over my head. But it offered enough to repay the loan, and maybe I would run into Mendoza this time. Sloan had some mechanical problems on his ship, so we went out without him. His buddies were a bit stressed out about taking on such a hard job, but most of them had blown their bounty money at the casino the night before, so they had little choice. This time it was deadly quiet as we cruised through the mists of the Barrier; everyone was on edge. Far off the Trade Lanes we found our quarry. He turned out to have some unanticipated company in the form of two escorts. I opened fire and the battle was joined. In the ensuing melee, I launched a salvo of missiles directly in the path of one of my patrol mates. He exploded in a fireball. The firefight quickly turned into a rout. The Outcasts picked off a second Bounty Hunter, so I did the only rational thing – run for my life. My sole remaining companion cursed in despair as he was surrounded by the bad guys, circling in for the kill. I turned off the comm. channel and flew in silence further into the clouds. Returning to Curacao and the Guild was now out of the question. I needed to look for a new line of work…

------------------------------------
Jim Dawson
Kensington Platform, New London system
July 9th, 801 A.S.

I’m back on the legal side of things after a brief journey into the criminal underworld. Only two days ago I was drifting in the Roatan Cloud in the Curacao system, a man without a future. That reflective moment abruptly ended when I picked up a slew of contacts on my radar. A Lane Hacker attack was in progress against a Bowex gold transport. The Hackers were rumored to be friendly with the Outcasts. If I could get in with them, maybe I could finally find Mendoza…

I joined the battle on the side of the criminals, taking out one of the convoy’s escorts. It quickly tipped the balance in favor of the Hackers. Within minutes, all of the Bretonian ships were reduced to flaming wrecks. Although still suspicious of me, the Hackers were grateful, and offered to share some of the looted Gold with me. Desperate for cash, I accepted, and tractored in my share. At that moment the Bounty Hunters showed up, headed by none else than Roy Sloan. “I always knew you ex-LPI scumbags were no good,” he yelled over the comm link as he opened fire on me with his dual “Warrior” particle cannon. The Hackers fled, although not before wasting one of Sloan’s buddies. I dropped some countermeasures and mines and joined formation with them, heading to parts unknown.

It turned that the Hackers had some base in Magellan, through a Jump Hole somewhere in the southern end of Curacao. As we made the long journey through the Barrier fields, I got to know them a bit better. The patrol leader went by the name of Red Rocker. He was into loud music when he wasn’t out relieving Independent World convoys of their cargo. They targeted the high end stuff like Gold and Luxury Goods using information they gleaned from hacked Interspace Commerce Trade Lane scanning logs. IC had numerous bounties out on them, but the Hackers were careful, only targeting those high value convoys that were poorly escorted or far from help.

My pulse raced as we made the final approach to their hideout carved out of an ice asteroid. There would be many criminals passing through here, maybe my Outcast. When I walked into the bar, I saw her almost immediately. Sitting over in a corner, she had that strange mask on that I’d heard the Bounty Hunters talk about back on Curacao. They said it was some sort of inhaler they need to survive outside of their home planet’s atmosphere. I got a lucky break when I overheard the bartender tell someone that Mendoza had just bought a load of supplies for her return trip to the Edge Worlds tomorrow.

The next morning, I bought the location of the most likely Jump Hole that Mendoza would use from one of the Hackers. He uploaded it into my neural net, which saved me a lot of searching through the fog and ice asteroids. Out in the Barrier Cloud I drifted near the Hole for several tense hours. Finally, my prey appeared. She was alone, not expecting an attack from a Lane Hacker ally. But Outcasts never give up easily. The dogfight lasted for several minutes. Soon I was low on both Shield batteries and Nanobots. In one last desperate move, I dropped the rest of my Razor mines and put on the afterburners. She stumbled directly into my trap. Her ship in flames, she did the honorable Outcast thing and tried to ram me. With one burst of my Gunslinger turret, the pirate ship exploded in the most beautiful fireball I’d ever seen. Kellan was avenged…

I decided to head for Freeport 4 along the Liberty/Bretonia trade route. Freeports are a great place for someone in trouble with the law. Anyone can land, no questions asked. Usually you can find someone to help fix your reputation. The Independent Miners Guild runs this particular operation, which extracts water ice to sell to California Minor. They’re a motley crew of Bretonia and Rheinland miners that couldn’t take working for the big mining companies. The bartender was helpful, though not cheap. He patched my rep up enough to allow me access to the Trade Lanes and Jump Gates to Bretonia.

In the bar I also met a Gateway Shipping pilot, who suggested running some cheap Liberty Consumer Goods to Kensington Platform in the New London system. It wasn’t exactly a high profit run, but it was less likely to attract unwanted attention from the Hackers and Outcasts that I would have to run past on the Trade Lane to Bretonia.

His advice was sound. The journey was relatively uneventful. Although when I delivered my load at Kensington, my take home pay was definitely nothing to write home about. That gold that I had sold at the Hacker base was far more profitable. The bartender at Kensington suggested I try my luck mining in the Dublin gold fields. So that’s where I’m heading tomorrow.




<@ElectricBrain> TACH IS DEAD! <@Tachyon> am not <@Tachyon> stfu <@ElectricBrain> no u stfu <@Tachyon> no you
<@ElectricBrain> no u <@Tachyon> no you <@ElectricBrain> no u <@Tachyon> NO YOU I WIN
-- Our very fine IRC ops --

Jim Dawson
Freistadt, Omega-7 system
August 2nd, 801 A.S.

I just realized it’s been a while since my last journal entry. I’m on Freistadt in the Omega-7 system. Pretty gloomy place! The view out the bar window here is everything but pleasant: mostly sulfur clouds and dust. Omega-7 lies in the heart of the Walker Nebula. It’s officially a Freeport, so you see lots of different groups. There’s a bunch of IMG personnel, the odd Gateway crew taking a breather, a dozen Bounty Hunters, and even some Red Hessians. Really strange mix, but everyone pretty much gets along, except maybe the Bounty Hunters. They’re a crusty looking group who keep to themselves over in the corner, their backs to the wall. Tomorrow I’m running some supplies down to Ronneburg, the Red Hessian base over in Omega-5. One of the Hessians at the bar here said there’s been some pretty hot and heavy fighting lately, so they’re running low on supplies of H-fuel.

Just a quick recap how I got here: Three weeks ago, I set out from Kensington with supplies for the Hood, an abandoned Bretonia Armed Forces battleship in the Dublin system. The Independent Miners Guild refurbished and turned into a Freeport of sorts. It attracts a scruffy lot, all the dregs from the bottom of the Bretonian barrel. My initial journey went smoothly, although I was scanned twice by BAF crews as I passed by the battleships guarding either side of the Dublin gate. The Bretonia military currently checks everyone coming and going from Dublin very carefully. Rumor is they’re looking for MOX or Toxic Waste, both good materials for making dirty bombs. There’s a separatist group that operates in this area – they’re called the Mollys. They’ve been threatening to take out targets in New London for the last forty years or so and the government is apparently very worried about attacks. Word is that the Mollys home base is somewhere in the Dublin system, at least that’s what the Gateway rep. told me. She also said they probably wouldn’t bother me too much, since I wasn’t allied that closely with BMM. But she urgently warned me about the Corsairs.

And sure enough, a raiding party of three Corsairs jumped me soon after I left the patrol perimeter of the Essex Battleship. Only the chance arrival of a group of Bounty Hunters saved me from certain death and I barely made it to the Hood. Once I reached the safely of the Hood, I checked out my surroundings. It certainly was a pit. There were no Liberty pilots in sight. The miners were pretty hard to understand. I did pick up that the best Gold mining area in the system belonged to the Mollys. Second best was the BMM operation, which was strictly off limits to independents like me. My best chance was in the Independent Gold Field. Only problem was, that was Corsair central, since the New London Jump Hole was in there somewhere. A lot of the miners looked pretty stressed. They were doing more fighting than mining. Casualties had been running pretty high. I set off the next morning and decided to test my luck. The mining itself is pretty straight forward. Look for any stray asteroids flying along, shoot them. Now and then, some gold would be revealed. Slow work, but lucrative if there are no hostiles in the area. I went for several hours before the dreaded Corsairs showed up. Then it was hit full cruise and head for help. You could only pray that they didn’t have a lot of Cruise Disruptor missiles on hand. I successfully evaded the pirates several times that day, although once I started to take some serious damage on my shield.

After several weeks of daily forays in the Gold Fields, I had amassed a pretty good load of Gold. I sold some of it to upgrade my ship and weapons, and returned to mining. Eventually my luck ran out. A large Corsair contingent caught me far from safety one afternoon. It was a desperate moment. I had to pull every evasive trick in the book. Countermeasures, drone mines – I used them all. It was a long battle of attrition, but I finally killed two of them. The last one decided to withdraw at that point, which was not a moment too soon. My ship was flaming, most of my weapons gone. But my cargo was intact. When I got to base, the equipment dealer gasped when he saw the condition of my ship. I was the talk of the Hood that night. The bartender called me “Lucky Jim” when I ordered a drink.

It was time for me to get out of the mining business. I’d made my money and my luck couldn’t hold forever. Battling the Corsairs had been much more exciting. I asked around at the bar where my Gold would get a good price. Everyone mentioned Rheinland, or somewhere on the way to it. That’s how I ended up in the southern Omega worlds, very far from home. I wonder what I will find out here.

--------------------------------------
Jim Dawson
Baden-Baden, Stuttgart System
November 12th, 801 A.S.

The trip to Ronneburg was pretty intense. The Walker nebula in Omega-7 is dense and full of asteroids and explosive gas pockets. As if that weren’t enough, you’ve got Corsairs wandering around in the mists. At least I was friendly with the Hessians. The Daumann and Kruger mining operations in the system are subject to daily harassment by the infamous Rheinland criminals. I fought my way through several Corsair patrols, and even got scanned by two Hessian ships. Red Hessians and other criminals have no problem stealing from theoretically “friendly” freelancers. Fortunately, a couple of Corsairs showed up just as I was deciding whether to drop my cargo and run, or stand and make a fight for it. I was able to slip away in the ensuing melee.

Omega-5 is a desolate system completely engulfed by ice asteroids. Nothing to write home about, except that it contains no less than five Jump Holes, the greatest number known of any system within the Sirius Sector. Known as the crossroads of the Omega Worlds, it has become the focal point of an epic turf war between the Red Hessians and Corsairs. At stake is the exclusive right to plunder the lucrative Trade Lane routes linking Rheinland and Bretonia.

Just getting to the base once within Omega-5 was a feat. Corsair patrols badgered me the entire way. At one point I stumbled into one of the extensive mine fields laid by the Corsairs to protect their interests in the area. It was rough dodging all the mines and asteroids while keeping the afterburner on almost full time to avoid the ever present Corsair cannons and lasers. At one point I stumbled too close to the weapons platforms that define the defensive line for the Corsairs. Completely out of shield batteries and nanobots, starboard weapons and wing damaged, I limped into Ronneburg after what seemed an eternity.

Ronneburg is a pretty ratty place. A place to eat, sleep and repair ships and weapons. The casualty rate is pretty high, but fresh replacements arrive daily from Omega-11 and Dresden, which keeps the meat grinder fed. They were grateful for the supplies, but immediately pressed me into action. After some field surgery on the ship, I was off on a combat patrol into the “Hammen” Hole, a no mans land between the two weapons platforms lines that offers the only open space within the entire system. Due to the easy maneuverability in this area for ships, most of the daily battles are centered here. Fortunately the action was light that day, and we easily disposed of the two Corsairs that we came in contact with. I noticed during our flight that the pocket was littered with wrecks from both sides. It seemed like there could be some good money to be made in stripping weapons off the derelict ships, if you were gutsy and lucky enough.

When I mentioned this to the base commander back at the bar that night, he replied, “How do you think all of those ships got there in the first place? The grave robber must be very careful here. If you are caught too far from your base when an enemy attack occurs, it’s over. The dead ships you see are all those of scavengers that became too greedy. Neither the Hessians nor the Corsairs condone such behavior, so we leave them to drift. Eventually they prove too tempting to someone with questionable moral standards, and the cycle continues. But feel free to rob the dead, although I didn’t think you were such a character.”

The message was loud and clear. Help them kill Corsairs, but stay away from looting. So I entered into the service of the Hessians for the next several months, fighting someone else’s brutal war of attrition that seemed to have no end. By late October I was physically and mentally exhausted. I became more and more fearful of the daily patrols. My luck was certain to eventually fail. It was time to go. I now had a state of the art Hessian ship and 500K credits to my name, thanks to some looting on the side that I’d kept secret. One evening, I overheard a guy in the bar by the name of Peter Schlupp. He boasted of great riches to be found in the Von Rohe Belt, which lay next door in the Omega-11 system. It was dangerous, to be sure. But if you had strong enough shields and a lot of good luck, you could rake in the credits scavenging wrecks that had been disabled in the intense radiation fields surrounding the dying red giant sun.

It sounded perfect - the retirement run. I requested a transfer to Freital the next day. Freital was another lonely rock on the other side of the Omega-11 Jump Hole. It was used mostly as a staging point for war supplies, although they also ran raiding parties against the Daumann operations within the system. It also served as an outpost to check Corsair expansion north from the Omega-41 Hole, which was a developing problem. Omega-11 was truly the end of the world. The sun had gone red giant, consuming the inner planets before humans ever set foot in the Sirius Sector.

The Von Rohe Belt was the remnant of one of them. It happened to contain the richest diamond deposits known. But it was not easily accessed. It was surrounded by region of intense radiation, known simply as the “Abgrund.” There was no other way to access the Belt. You had to gun it from the edge of the planetary fragment fields that ringed the perimeter of the system. “Bring a full load of nanobots, you’ll need them. And watch your damage bar, or you’ll join the many others that stayed out a bit too long,” was the advice I got from one sickly looking veteran scavenger on Freital. Radiation poisoning was a daily fact of life for the scum that inhabited this pit.

Early the next day, I crossed the Abgrund and entered the Von Rohe Belt. Moving parallel to the sun, I discovered many wrecks that day and the week following, each one a little bit further out along the Belt. In one week, I made my first million, mostly on diamonds, but also on salvaged weapons. All sorts of dead ships were out there: Hessians, Daumann, Corsairs, Bounty Hunters. They had all succumbed to greed.

After two weeks of life on Freital, I was deathly ill from the daily doses of radiation. Fortunately, my net worth was now well in excess of 1.5 million Credits. It was time to return to civilization and the good life. I bid my comrades goodbye and headed to Freistadt to bribe myself back to respectability with the Rheinland Police. As I flew in silence across Omega-11, I reflected on the remarkable journey I had completed since leaving Liberty what seemed like a lifetime ago, yet was actually less than five months.

So here I am, relaxing in the mud baths of Baden-Baden, an exclusive resort for the Rheinland and Liberty rich. Who knows, maybe one day the mysteries of the universe will again drive me to explore the unknown – or I manage to burn through all the money I have – either way, I’ll take it easy for a while.




<@ElectricBrain> TACH IS DEAD! <@Tachyon> am not <@Tachyon> stfu <@ElectricBrain> no u stfu <@Tachyon> no you
<@ElectricBrain> no u <@Tachyon> no you <@ElectricBrain> no u <@Tachyon> NO YOU I WIN
-- Our very fine IRC ops --

Here's the links to the original posts:
Transmission 1
Transmission 2
Transmission 3
Transmission 4
Transmission 5
Transmission 6 + Final

Enjoy!


<@ElectricBrain> TACH IS DEAD! <@Tachyon> am not <@Tachyon> stfu <@ElectricBrain> no u stfu <@Tachyon> no you
<@ElectricBrain> no u <@Tachyon> no you <@ElectricBrain> no u <@Tachyon> NO YOU I WIN
-- Our very fine IRC ops --

Hurrah! Everything in one place! THX!

`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`
"Life against remotes is one thing. Life against the living? That's something else."
-Han Solo, Star Wars Epidode IV: A New Hope

SInce I've added it to the articles, I'll now "unstick" this one

Best Regards
Christian "Bargib" Koerner
Editor in Chief, The Lancers Reactor

Cool Gibby

I've got a story I wrote awhile back, how should I send it in? (can't use it for the contest )


<@ElectricBrain> TACH IS DEAD! <@Tachyon> am not <@Tachyon> stfu <@ElectricBrain> no u stfu <@Tachyon> no you
<@ElectricBrain> no u <@Tachyon> no you <@ElectricBrain> no u <@Tachyon> NO YOU I WIN
-- Our very fine IRC ops --

Just drop it in my mailbox!

Just seems kinda sad to me that people have so little a shred of what could be called a life to write fictional journal entries based on a computer game... *sigh*

Well, at least it keeps the economy going by putting infusing some cash into those physciatrists pockets. lol

Live Long and Prosper.

Rogue Lead, do you mind if I use the picture in your sig in mine?

JEDI ERRANT
For the joy of smoting.
"You're clever than you look, Q" ~Bond
"Better than looking clever than you are, 007" ~Q

Don't want to offend you, Kahar, but...

I couldn't help noticing that you must really like yourself. You post a message, OK... then you react to your own message and go on etc.

But then again, the world would have missed some awsome stories if you HADN'T posted them

Allthough I would really like to post 3 more messages directly after this one, I'll do something unexpected and WAIT FOR OTHER TO POST.

Happy flying to everyone.


---Everything is evolution---

Many forums have a limit on the length of post you can make. This causes people to post in multiple parts, when there is incentive to string alot of material together.

I would say this fits the criteria, and was an interesting read.


To the 'no-life' poster: Writing about a game is far more sensible than playing it. Think about it. A good writer can get a job doing so. A good gamer, well, there have been a few who have made a decent amount of cash gaming (anyone remember Thresh?) but I would say that the odds aren't in favor of gaming career hopefuls.

Additionally, storywriting has been a respectable profession in almost every culture since the dawn of time. No matter what the kids at school say, writing always has, and always will be 'Cool'.

Omg .. he who has written this is a very skilled writer .. i actually like it more then the 'real' freelancer log, written by the professionals

Wicked story man. wish i could write like that and what was that i read about another story, please put that up aswell

time is an illusion, lunch time doubly so.

A good writer should be writing original things, not wasting his talent extending someone else's work.

Live Long and Prosper.