IW 5 - Blue Jungle

Context

The crew of the CAMEROON has received a distress call of their clients. The call, extremely weak, is taking them deep in the hinterland of Brethrow, a backwater on Prometheus. The clients are shady hunters from Terra. They are short of weapons, and are suspecting that the extraction will be complicated by the presence of raptors.

The air is thick enough to make soup with it.

Location

Prometheus is the oldest Terran colony. Brethrow is a distant developing nation where little laws are in effect. The air is thick, the temperature an uncomfortable 35C(95F). The topography is made of mountains covered by a dense jungles.

The insertion spot (purple), the creek (orange), the cave entrance and exit (blue).

   

Location: 400m of approximate extraction site, mainworld, Prometheus system
Terran timestamp: May 1, 2170 AD

The CAMEROON descends to 20m and release the air raft. On board of the raft, Tom and Anika. The only weapon on board is a 4mm gaussian pistol that Tom puts between his legs as he drives the craft over a creek heading up the slopes. On the CAMEROON, Diane pinpoints the signal from the transmission to a nook at the foot of the mountains. She passes the data to the raft and the CAMEROON begin sweeping the area. The free trader grates against the tree canopy to mask the approach of the raft. Jane has the dual 100MJ laser at the ready.


Location: some godless creek bed, mainworld, Prometheus system
Terran timestamp: May 1, 2170 AD

Anika clings to her dazzler laser flashlight. Tom is speeding over the creek bed in a scary display of driving prowess. Debris and leaves are rubbing against the craft and the visibility is down to nothing from her point of view. When the raft begins banking, Tom swerves to avoid crashing into trees. A 5m long raptor is now perched at the rear of the raft, and came out of nowhere. Anika has to throw herself off the raft to avoid a deadly bite to her torso. She lands heavily in the creek bed, but the nanoweave suit turns a deadly fall into a bad one. Her hands clings to her dazzler. As she wipes the wet hair from her face, she sees the raptor lose its footing and falls into the creek, some 20m upstream. 

Hey, Anika, you smell like lunch.

Tom has abandoned the wheel and takes a few shots at the raptor. One 4mm tungsten rod hits the beast hard enough to make it jerk out of sight. Anika is struggling in the heavy foliage on the bank. The scene calms down: only the cackle of the creek and the drone of the CAMEROON overhead remains. Anika climbs back on the raft, sore from the fall.

On the CAMEROON, Diane detect a heat signature as well as a weak electromagnetic signal. The location is piped on the raft’s computer with a precision of 1m. Tom hits the throttle until the creek becomes too narrow. The raft then starts to slalom in slow motion at 15m off the ground, sandwiched between the undergrowth and the canopy.


Location: Cave entrance, mainworld, Prometheus system
Terran timestamp: May 1, 2170 AD

The raft descends through the undergrowth and get a visual on the entrance of a man-made cave. A trail of smoke is coming out, and the smell of thermite lingers. Tom lands the rafts and head to the tiny hole, both weapons trained on the unknown. Anika trips, hangs upside down and panics. She thrashes and tries to climb back on the raft as Tom slips down into the cave.

Tom finds a tablet, but it is locked. He switches his flashlight to the LED. The tunnel is about 1.5m high by 0.6m. The air was sucked out by the burning of a thermite grenade. He finds the mangled body of Phillip, one of his client. He was somehow dragged by a small toothed creature that held him by the throat. The dirt nearby has turned to glass by the heat.

Anika takes a hold of herself and slips down into the tunnel. The smell of thermite is intense. She can see the glimmer of Tom’s light ahead, but keeps the dazzler mode on, just in case. The two meet a little past Phillip’s body, into a small antechamber. The room is filled with trash, some of the wrappers are Terran household brands "Mr. Noodles". The place was used recently. They head out by the other access tunnel.


Location: Cave exit, mainworld, Prometheus system
Terran timestamp: May 1, 2170 AD

The cave exits to another sealable trapdoor. The light is blinding as Tom peers outside. Nothing snatches his head, but a raptor could be a few meters away and he wouldn’t be able to tell. Three horribly mutilated bodies are lying on the ground next to him. The scene makes him woozy and he needs to catch his breath. Anika looses her cookies loudly back into the cave entrance. Amongst their anxious whimpering, the weak voice of a man hanging overhead. Tom recognizes Marion, the other hunter and client. He is swinging at the end of a rope, attached by his waist. His head is badly beaten.

Marion cues Tom of the impending charge of a raptor. Tom blinds the monster with his dazzler laser. The raptor runs into a tree and finds a way to get out of sight in the thick undergrowth. They can hear it scurry away. Maybe 150m to the North the CAMEROON has opened fire with the dual laser. In the thick and moist atmosphere, the laser makes noise analogous to thunder. Tree trunks explode in the intense heat of the beam. A number of raptors seems to be scattering away from the scene.

Anika locates a rope and climbs to meet Marion. He points at three terrorized men clinging to a tree 20m above. He refers to them as targets/flags. Tom makes the connections. He thinks back at the 3dT of unknown cargo that was in his hold before and figure out that the targets had been smuggled in a cryo state.

“Have you smuggled these men to hunt, asshole?”, Tom and Anika seem to be on the brink to execute Marion on the spot. Marion begs for mercy, but his voicebox has been smashed and nothing but gargles come out.


Location: Brethrow airspace, 1000m alt., mainworld, Prometheus system
Terran timestamp: May 1, 2170 AD

It turns out that the targets are Prometheans natives. They speak a hard to parse cajun. Tom finds on the damage dinosaur gun and make it his. Marion is hauled onboard and given to the care of Aeryn and Flo. If Marion survives, which he should, they’ll make him pay and then turn him over to law enforcement for his sins.

Character Cast

• Tom Anders: Retired Marine, gruff, good hearted. Now get off his cargo hold.
• Diane Ayetou: born rich and far less qualified than given credit for. Gets an A for A-fort.
• Jane Calhoun: Business-like business end of things. Reluctant pilot, appreciate spirits and solitude.
• Anika Kaprescu: Recluse. Did some time, killjoy. The ship’s cat.
• Aeryn Lorien: Stumbling steward, athlete and nurse. Gets the ribbon for caring the most.
• Molly Pepper: Engineer and ship’s puppy. Her giggles are wasted on the crew.

IW 4 - Hunters

Context

While crossing the asteroid belt at 2000 miles per second, the TCIV CAMEROON was recruited by the UWO Interplanetary Police to engage a corsair. The engagement was brief, and left the ship with a hull breach through the habitat. Lucky for them, the UWO covered the repairs and medical bills of their passengers. The crew is now in Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) while Molly tests the new Jump-2 drive and the UWO shipyard patch the old trader.

Location

TSS Obama is a Class A space station largely employing UWO personnel. It is a hub of interplanetary travel, which leaves the drydocks for jump-capable ships slightly underutilised.


Location: TSS Obama, LEO, Terra system
Terran timestamp: April 15, 2170 AD

The CAMEROON entered a pressurized enclave for large scale repairs. The crew was offered to attempt to obtain a deputy license. The crew was enthusiastic as the insurance coming with the deal was rather attractive. Diane, officially dead to avoid prosecution by the Wheat Board and a messy divorce with her wife, made herself invisible as the UWO inspected the ship. Jane, Molly and Tom got certified while Aeryn failed her attempt at the medical officer placement. Anika and Diane took a pass on the events.

A holomail came in on the 27th from the belters that were saved by their intervention. It turned out that their 100MJ laser fused the corsair’s maneuver drive, breaching the hull. Most of the crew perished before rescue could arrive on the scene. The corsair ship was sold for scrap and the proceeds used to pay the insurance premium of the belter community. As a thank you, the belter recorded a folk song and had it sent to the CAMEROON as a thank-you gift. The crew was the hero of a community of about 20 souls. As if this day had not been good enough, the Sisters of Mercy transferred the passage of the two nuns. One of them suffered a stroke, but the other called from the hospital to thank the crew.

Brethrow: come for the client, stay for the drinks.

Location: TSS Obama, LEO, Terra system
Terran timestamp: April 18, 2170 AD

The CAMEROON loaded up nearly to capacity the holds with packaged good bound to Prometheus. They settled the hunters into the high passage cabins and went on their way. The pre-jump thrust was uneventful. For the first time of their contract, the CAMEROON jumped.

Location

Prometheus is the oldest terran colony. With a jungle-like environment, some 850M terrans are living a colonial life mostly in high tech installations. The population is mostly of the Mormon faith in the centers. Gravity is 0.93G, temperature is around 30C-25C. Control rating is 3 and TL 10.


Location: Prometheus, 100D line, Prometheus system
Terran timestamp: April 25, 2170 AD

Philip was a dentist and Marion owned a 3D printing manufacturing business. They paid good money for the crew to insert them into a corrupt backwater on Prometheus named Brethrow. The terms: no paperwork filed to the highport and 3 dT of mystery cargo. Tom figured out that they were on some poaching kind of trip while Aeryn found them easy to keep happy as passenger. Tom noticed that they were preparing very high-caliber rifles for their trip. 

When the CAMEROON arrived, they made a beeline for Brethrow. The place was more or less an unregulated space. They landed on a Class E strip barely big enough for the Hero-class to land in the jungle. 

The hunters debarked, the crew stopped for a drink and soaked up the 35C, dense and moist atmosphere for an hour. They then departed for the UWO lowport to deliver their cargo and wait for the hunters for their call back home.


Location: Prometheus, Low-port, Prometheus system
Terran timestamp: May 1, 2170 AD

Six days went by at the lowport. Aeryn disappeared into the gym/MMA scene while Tom rounded up a few passages back to Terra. An ex-scout agreed to a medium passage and so did two needy and irritating pompous aristocrats. Diane managed to get the hulls full of jobs while Jane tried in vain to locate speculative cargo. 

The timing was rather good because a message came in, weak, from Marion. The message was garbled, video and audio failed. It fell back to text:

Help!
Philip is dead.
I’m trapped, we’re surrounded.

A set of coordinates then got uploaded. Diane rallied the crew into the bridge to await more details. Twenty-five minutes later, the CAMEROON came in LOS and scanned the coordinates. It was dense jungle, mist and 700km North from Brethrow. Diane found a pond some 400m to the east where the airraft could be inserted as the tree canopy around appeared to be some 60m high. By then, there was only 5 minutes to the entry window.

The crew decided to gear up for an extraction to recover Marion, the sherpas and the corpse of Philip the dentist. Someone pointed out that they never got around to purchase personal weapons other than the dazzlers lasers that Diane got in Douala. The exception was the carbine in the ship’s locker. In the interest of time, they voted against dropping by Brethrow to purchase better weapons.

The CAMEROON approached the coordinates. The 100m low precision became obvious when they realized how difficult the terrain turned out to be. More text streamed in:

()*(*ASDSDHLKSJDHSHAGU kslkjfs raptors sjkldkshlkjhflskjhd wd w9809udsjnl high-powered rifles kjsdjkhlakjdhfd9809adfpahdflandf asfkdj;f ;;;;

Tom and Anika suited up and boarded the air raft as the ship sliced through the jungle mist just before dawn...

Character Cast

• Tom Anders: Retired Marine, gruff, good hearted. Now get off his cargo hold.
• Diane Ayetou: born rich and far less qualified than given credit for. Gets an A for A-fort.
• Jane Calhoun: Business-like business end of things. Reluctant pilot, appreciate spirits and solitude.
• Anika Kaprescu: Recluse. Did some time, killjoy. The ship’s cat.
• Aeryn Lorien: Stumbling steward, athlete and nurse. Gets the ribbon for caring the most.
• Molly Pepper: Engineer and ship’s puppy. Her giggles are wasted on the crew.

IW 2 - King Saud's ice paradise

Context

The licensees of Charter 22 are about to launch TCIV CAMEROON to Callisto. There, they expect to find a second hand Jump-2 drive to replace the old and tired one on board.

Shatah: Saudi colony on the fringes.

Callisto

The Saudi royal family founded a colony on Callisto some 50 years ago. The colony’s main economic activity is intercept refueling for starship transiting through the Terran system without stopping at the main world. Callisto is a 100km-thick layer of ice (water and carbon dioxide) over a 10-20km deep subsurface ocean. Some 45K people, mainly arabic-speaker live there.   

Location: Terra, Escape trajectory, Terra system

Terran timestamp: March 11, 2170 AD

A stream of swears in Anglic, Chinese and Vilani float in space from the ship’s bridge as Jane realizes that she made a data entry error and cause the escape burn to be off course by 15 degrees. “Sorry folks”, she broadcast on the intercom, “our new ETA is now March 17th”. Two days will be lost using partial thrust to compensate or else the CAMEROON will become an Oort cloud artifact.

Location: Outbound thrust, 2.7 AU from the Sun, Terra system

Terran timestamp: March 14, 2170 AD

The ship smelled like disinfectant as if a platoon of neurotic crewmates went on a spring clean for the last two days. Tom looked upon the hold, rubbing the tip of his nose and dreaming of having a lift directly on board. He tried to know better Anika, but she showed little interest in interpersonal relations. Instead, she seemed single-minded on lifting the dirt on Rashid, their sole paying passenger, without success. Rashid, an underwear model for department store online catalog, was treated to tasty home-cooking by Aeryn. Aeryn, assuming the role of the steward, mainly improvised from what she knew about the job from sitcoms.

Diane was something else: she built personnel files and asked for everyone’s mugshot. Aeryn provided her medical assessments for everyone as it seemed to make sense. Molly, when she was not fretting about the maneuver drive and predicting its impending failure, was trying to make friends. She initiated games of cards, engaged unwilling others into light talks. Jane’s cabin was filled with three cases of assorted liquor. When she wasn’t working, she keept to herself, a tumbler in hand.

While the ship was tearing at peak speed, the asteroid belt required regular course adjustments. There seemed to be many unmapped objects still in this corner of the belt. In a day or so, the CAMEROON should be back into clear space.

Location: Shatah-2, Callisto, Terra system

Terran timestamp: March 17, 2170 AD

The underground Rouhabiah scrapyard was a dreary and dank place. An old man was shouting at two teens as unsecured material was gently tumbling in the 0.4G environment. Jane tried to look suave, but bounced too hard and would have impaled herself on a titanium rod had her nanoweave undergarment not been worn. Mammoud Rouhabiah was a pleasant man with a thickly accented Anglic.  Molly ran a few diagnostic tests on the crated jumpdrive and gave the thumb up. Mammoud eyes flicked on into haggling mode. He first refused to converse in Anglic anymore, forcing Jane to be the sole interlocutor. Jane and Diane played off each other, coordinating in Vilani when needed. Many times, Mammoud threatened to kick them out of his office, but it became clear that the old man was better at making small talk than playing hardball. The crew traded a defective drive and 750KCr for a better one. Given the 1MCr capital funds for this from Douala LLC, a lot of money ended up in their pockets out of this tangled mess of arabic shouts.

Location: Shatah-1, Callisto, Terra system

Terran timestamp: March 17, 2170 AD

After delivering the aluminium cargo and cashing in the pay, Tom, Anika and Aeryn took the mag elevator through 85km of ice to Shatah-1. Temperature and moisture control down here was much better. The place felt like a small town/diffuse space station. Signage was mainly in arabic and the crew clearly stood out. Aeryn lead them to a MMA gym to meet Hassan: an acquaintance. It was clear to Anika that the place was a front for some other, shadier business.

Hassan was friendly and helpful. He suggested a good hostel and advised to stay out of the way of law enforcement officers as much as possible. The place was loosely run by a Saudi King delegate named Abn Al-Bagdadhi.  Up there, Molly had damaged the jumpdrive brackets and informed the crew that the new refit estimate was 8 days.

Anika went for a walk and found two christian Nuns desperately looking for passage back to Terra. She roped them in right away and got Diane to draft the contracts. Anika poked people at the gym, looking for trade lots, and eventually got in touch with a shady russian bodybuilder bemoaing that he couldn’t move a 30 dT of military-grade polymer pellets. Aeryn passed along the opportunity to others, but the restriction that it may only be sold to UWO approved armed forces was a deterrent. They decided to take a pass.

Aeryn and Tom decided to take a room down on Shatah-1 for the next week or so while Chipper-Molly was fitting the new jumpdrive onboard. Anika opted for the quietness of her cabin back up the shaft. She scrounged for a handgun but got frustrated by uncommon they happen to be. Her only lead was to attempt to buy one from a dirty cop: and she also decided to take a pass.

Location: Shatah-1, Callisto, Terra system

Terran timestamp: March 28, 2170 AD

While the jumpdrive was finally secured onboard on the 25th, Diane decided to hang-on until the 30th to catch another freight job to subsidize the thrust back to Terra. They decided to wire the jumpdrive back on Terra so Molly spent 5 days embarrassing herself in various entertainment establishments. Diane decided to have some "me-time" and shopping therapy, Jane kept on looking for speculative lots while Tom and Aeryn planned to make the most out of the gym, maybe organizing a for-money fight on the 29th.

Character Cast

• Tom Anders: Retired Marine, gruff, good hearted. Now get off his cargo hold.
• Diane Ayetou: born rich and far less qualified than given credit for. Gets an A for A-fort.
• Jane Calhoun: Business-like business end of things. Reluctant pilot, appreciate spirits and solitude.
• Anika Kaprescu: Recluse. Did some time, killjoy. The ship’s cat.
• Aeryn Lorien: Stumbling steward, athlete and nurse. Gets the ribbon for caring the most.
• Molly Pepper: Engineer and ship’s puppy. Her giggles are wasted on the crew.

IW1 - Advertising faux-pas

We had a very brief session. But we are sorting out how we want to play this game.

Douala’s Tramp freighter market, March 10th 2170AD 

The meeting with Pierrot ended by early afternoon. The contract for charter 22 was signed, but the CAMEROON was still in low-earth orbit at TSS Merkel. Molly, Aeryn and Anika bought a shuttle ticket and caught the burn upward just as the gate was closing. Some two hours later, they keyed in the passcode and entered the tramp freighter. Molly ran a few diagnostic, Aeryn . Aeryn checked life support then the kitchen. Anika looked in vain in the ship’s locker for armament, then established contact with orbital control to obtain the permission for a reentry to Douala regional spaceport. The last crew were smokers and the ship felt filthy. With minimal system’s running, Molly made the first of many burn and plunged into Terra’s atmosphere.

Diane and Jane installed their copies of the best trading assistant that money could buy on their shiny new tablets. Their next stop would be Callisto: in most way a backwater in the Terra system. The soundness of this next move resided in the availability of a second hand Jump-2 drive for them to acquire. While Jane started a search for speculative cargo, Diane engaged with the tramp freight bidding process. It was a slow day, with a small 17 dT shipment of paletted aluminum trusses. No less than three other tramp freighters were interested in going to Callisto on that day. Diane had to go as low as 10.3 KCr to get the contract. Nothing else was coming in the pipe for now. She shook her head in disbelief and went across town to pick up a nursebot that she scored from the surplus of an NGO.

Douala in the mid-day sun. Circa 2170AD.

Tom headed for the bar to score the place for passengers. There was a lot of people, but most were waiting for their chartered liner. A single man was desperately looking for a passage. His name was Rashid Meer, a department store catalog model trying to head back home in a pinch. Tom signed him up and sent him to Jane to sign the contract and close the deal. Jane got the deal signed and probed him for information on what would sell well on Callisto. He smiled blankly and replied that the most valuable thing on Callisto would be soon be a pair of underwear with himself in them.

Diane, concerned about running the Cameroon at a loss, dictated a snappy advertisement for passages of all kinds. Unfortunately, she figured out only much later that instead of sounding funny, the ad had a threatening tone. Shockingly, no one followed up on the disturbing offer.

Tom was eating a packaged sandwich in the heat of midday as Molly was testing the interior grav fields. The plan was to get going to Callisto, procure the Jump-2 drive and outfit the CAMEROON with it. This will cost the ship about 3-4 weeks of valuable time. Hopefully, Jane can score something worth selling on the remote ice cube. At the ship's console, a couple of people inquire about a shipment of ATVs that she has put a feeler for. Chatting with people 33 light-minutes away can be annoying. Diane wants to go and Tom groans at the thought of unloading all that aluminum crap to make place for second-hand 4-wheelers.

IW0 - Inception

Doualé, Cameroon, Terra; March 10 2170 AD -- Life had been cramping Diane Ayatou's style like a dead bird hanging over the porch. Her dreams of the next big thing, of unfettered pop explosion seemed dead in the water for years. However, that stalled ship had sailed: she read once more her obituary and giggled. Of course, her wife will take a while to heal, but this is the cost of loving someone like her. Most importantly, the gremlins from the Atomic Energy Board were certain to get off her tail for as long as she was no longer a player in Western Africa.

The coffee shop was in an affluent neighbourhood of Doualé, the capital city of Cameroon. She met with Pierrot Ekangaki, a slippery business acquaintance that had made a career from harvesting money from small investors. He was sincere, at the very least. But dressed like a bore. Diane told him that she wanted to get the license for his Hero-class free trader because it was good time for her to literally get off the face of Terra. Pierrot was hesitant, but promised her the license if she could secure a competent slate of operators.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Terra; March 12 2170 AD -- Anika and Jane left the UWO low-security compound of the Rio campus as free women. Mistake were made and crimes atoned for. It was high time to feel the tingle of gravitic fields once more. With a credit account full from her work in the penal system, they caught a flight bound to Cameroon. Their objective: meet with an airhead looking to assemble "a bunch of sparkling assholes" to crew an old Hero-class.

Doualé, Cameroon, Terra; March 13 2170 AD -- The meeting took place in a coffee shop where the sun shines bright and the coffee price ignores the laws of supply and demand. When Diane arrived, two ex-marines were already there. Tom Anders and Aeryn Lorien we're exactly material for the next cardboard band: quiet and reasonable. Tom boasted his freight handling credentials as if the 3rd Interstellar war was still on. Aeryn had served as a nurse onboard a medical relief ship for the last two years. To the merry crew, a pair of ex-convict joined shortly later. Anika may have never smiled in the last ten years and seemed to struggle with words a bit as she spoke. Jaiying, or Jane, rapidly took over the agenda of the meeting. "Who can do what here? Or will I have to do everything by myself?" They found common ground and determined that they could be working together in a cramped space for 16 months.

Diane ran a search for an engineer on the usual right spots. Within the next day, they had Molly Pepper on video conference. She was just what they were looking for: a versatile engineer and a pleasant personality to work with. Conscious of their fixed cost, they offered her a partnership rather than a contract position.

Doualé, Cameroon, Terra; March 16 2170 AD -- The bunch of merry gals (and Tom) finally met with Ekangaki to get the paperwork sorted out. Ekangaki took a lot more care examining each operator's credentials, often interupting the meeting to look things up online. It even looked like someone at the other ends was performing some kind of fact checking.

Ekangaki explained that the ship and the capital was an important investment strategy for up to 2000 middle-class investors. He impressed on them how important the venture of Charter 22 was not only for them, but for hundreds of college kids, pensioners and single mothers.

The contract read as follow (exerpt only):

---

The chairman of the DOUALE CONSORTIUM has approved Charter 22 under the following terms. In this document, the signatory of Charter 22 are referred to as OPERATORS. All OPERATORS are equally liable and legally bound by the terms of Charter 22. DOUALE CONSORTIUM entrusts the operations of the following assets:

1. ASSETS

1.1 - TCIV CAMEROON, hero-class private merchant, Registration TER-F454AC-6.
1.2 - Operating Fund: 1.1 MCr
1.3 - 100T of hydrogen fuel
1.4 - Capital investment funds: 1.0 MCr

2. DURATION AND CONDITIONS
The OPERATOR are granted full operational control of TCIV CAMEROON from MAR.15.2170 to AUG.15.2171. Possession is to be taken and returned at TSS MERKEL, terran staging yard. The ship must be returned with the same level of readiness as when checked out (including a fully operational Jump-2 drive). Operations are granted under the following conditions:

2.1 - No warrant be issued against any of the OPERATORS of TCIV CAMEROON.
2.2 - Inventory and operating fund doesn’t get under 0.65 MCr upon reporting.
2.3 - Quarterly dividend meets (0.2 MCr). Exception can be granted for single quarter reporting.
2.4 - the Jump MkII drive renewal project isn't complete after 100 days.

Upon violation of these terms, the OPERATORS are legally required to return the ship to berth in the best possible times.

3. JUMP DRIVE RENEWAL PROJECT
The OPERATORS are to acquire a Jump drive MkII with the special capital fund, install and bring to operational status within the first 100 days of Charter 22. A MKII was located at the AHMED LLC scrapyard on Calisto as candidate replacement part.

---

It was agreed that the crew would set out ASAP for Calisto to purchase the new MKII Jumpdrive. The crew broke after the meeting to make last minute preparation and plan the first haul for Charter 22 of the venerable TCIV CAMEROON. Aeryn fetched her biotech gears, Tom went for another beer. Anika looked up deck plans for the Hero-class, Jane started to troll the tramp freight future market while Diane took a picture of her biscuit, but fell short of sharing with her friends since dead people usually don't do that kind of stuff.

Tom Anders

And yes, I kiss my mother with these lips.

Tom Anders joined the Marines at the age of 18 - it was that or continue working on the family farm and getting in drunken fights with the other young men in the area with too much time on their hands. He was a natural fit, big and barrel chested, but with a quick mind as well under all the muscle.

He fit in well, and found his niche quickly. He was competent with a rifle but actually flourished in handling the mounds of red tape that any military organization creates as a waste product. He was quickly made company clerk and found his way almost indecently fast to the rank of Staff Sergeant where he stayed for fully half of his time in service. But he wasn't so entirely changed as to be able to keep out of trouble entirely, and his bull headedness got him into trouble a time or two along the way. His CO found an outlet for Tom by assigning him to training duty, specifically with unarmed combat. he became and instructor and taught young Marines how to handle themselves when they were disarmed.



Everyone knew Tom was a lifer, and he did his 20 years in service before he was finally cut lose. At 38 and in the best shape of his life, it seemed like he had the whole world in front of him, but after just six months out of the service he was ready to pull his crew cut hair out. He got out of the lease on his apartment and stowed his meager possessions at his parents' farm, a footlocker full of memories - uniforms, citations for good conduct, his shooting medals, pictures of himself and his fellow Marines, mostly. And a tricked-out grav car he'd bought with his mustering out money.

He started travelling the world at this point, taking on odd jobs, visiting his friends from the service who had managed, somehow, to find the sort of stability that he never found and now realized he'd never wanted. He made trips to all of the major cities - and the casualties of the atomic strikes that had scarred the earth so badly.

He was in Giza, at a bar that catered to military types, when he heard through the grapevine about a job possibility on a ship. A chance to not just get away from home but escape the bounds of gravity and get away from Terra - that sounded like just the thing. Flush from his most recent job, and with Kcr 10 in his pocket, he made his way to the promised interview site, only to find himself surrounded by the most unusual collection of people he'd ever laid eyes upon. Thank god some of them were Marines...