-If by any chance someone were to find themselves on Johnson's ship, this log can be accessed from the pilot's control panel.- Entry One Ah, screw it. I've got nothing to do until training tomorrow and nobody's running the bar at Taranis, so I might as well start a captain's log and pass the time. I'd say the date, except that the date is completely relative. So. Not much to talk about, really. Just wanted to get my thoughts in order before I try to get some sleep. Yesterday, in lieu of training, Crosswell called me up to his ship for an interview. Luckily, things went about as well as they could have, and whaddaya know, from lowly cadet to lowly cadet who's also a pilot for the Armada Spec Ops. Certainly better than what I expected going in. All I need now is for someone to list how much I'm getting paid and then it's all set. ...Damn, I need a new ship. It's twenty feet long at the most. Just one long hallway, one step above an escape pod. Maybe one of these days I'll save up enough for something that doesn't make me claustrophobic. Today's been about as slow as possible. There's no training today as far as I can tell, so I've been wandering around and wasting fuel going from planet to planet. I dropped down to Taranis for a while, but like I said earlier the bar was closed and everyone was just staring down into some boards against the wall of the cellar. Nothing exactly interesting, to say the least. Meanwhile, battery on this recorder's getting low. I'll end it here and upload the log to my ship - maybe I can get it to play the important stuff back to me tomorrow. Johnson, signing off.
Entry Two Oh, now here's a nice little fun story for everyone - everyone, in this case, being me and my ship. If anyone else is listening to this, stop, you creep. Months ago, before I even joined the Armada, I was out doing what I've learned to never, ever, ever do in this cluster: I was minding other peoples' business. In this particular case, I was out on Liberty Mills looking for something to do, when I found myself wandering past a group of Fleet birds arresting some people. Just as I arrived, a bunch of smoke bombs ran down as one of them fled off. Naturally, being the go-getting fool that I was at the time, what with the all "new beginning" and such that I'd convinced myself of, I ran up to the top of the building he had grappled to and engaged in some hand-to-hand combat with the guy. Sadly, I only managed to delay his escape by a moment or two, and then he was off into the night. As an upstanding citizen, I made the mistake of a lifetime by reporting to the Fleet that there had been another person involved in whatever these people were being captured for - something violent, I believe - and that he had just escaped eastwards. Naturally, showing exactly why visitors to the planet have come to love the Fleet, they didn't believe a word of it and shooed me off on thread of incarceration. Looking back, I was pretty stupid about the whole thing and really can't blame them much. A bit more recently - a week or so after these last events - I was approached while leaving the underground section of Liberty by a bookish-looking Hylotl fellow, who offered to pay me to critique his music. With no reason to suspect too much, and since he was offering to pay a lot for something I could just bluff my way through, I accepted. Naturally, Liberty Mills being the outstanding place that it is, he proceeded to shoot me in the shoulder - I believe he had aimed for the head - while my back was turned and then fled to the rooftops, at which point I made the connection between him and the man I had fought on the roof before. There's a bit more of interest that happened in the next few minutes, but it's not related to this story and so I'll tell it another time. Anyways, I attempted to place a bounty on the man, since I had a good description of both what he physically looked like and the armor he generally wore, only to be told that formal bounties could not be placed on members of the "Wolves", but that I was free to kill him on my own time. A few days later, I managed to come across him sitting in a chair at the cafe as I entered, facing away from me. As you could've probably guessed, a fight ensued, except this time it ended with my good friend the Hylotl shot in the legs on the streets below the cafe. I could've killed him, but showed a bit of mercy - I've yet to decide whether that was a good or bad idea. Anyways, that all is just to get caught up with the present day. Since then, I've only been to Liberty Mills sporadically at best, since I've gotten caught up in the RA. Now, just a short time ago, I was sitting in my ship, bored, when I remembered a conversation I'd had with an interesting-looking Avian my first day on Liberty. He told me that the planet was collapsing on itself - I'm inclined to agree - and gave me a set of coordinates to a bar of some sort. I had visited briefly the next day, but there weren't many people there so I had left pretty quickly. Today, though, I found the coordinates again and decided to see what was going on over there, at the "Wolves' Den Tavern" - keep in mind, most of the story I just told was completely out of my memory. I arrived, walked up the stairwell, and was debating whether to go to the bar or to just immediately sit down when, what do you know - my good old Hylotl buddy walked up to me. The first time I'd been to the Den in months, after not having been to Liberty in weeks, and I run into the guy immediately. What a coincidence. We quickly came to an agreement not to try anything to each other - I feel it wouldn't end well for him nowadays to attempt to murder a member of the ASO. After that, I bought a drink, had a brief chat with Elizabeth, a Glitch I'd met on Taranis who happened to be there, and left shortly afterwards. Nothing too remarkable. ...And here I am now, having been droning for ten minutes straight to a recording log when I should be sleeping. But hey, it's a good way to relieve stress, a little bit like how in PTSD therapy they have people relive whatever happened to them. Gives closure or whatever. But anyways. Johnson, signing off.
Entry Three Well, now, this is just great. I finally allow myself to get a full eight hours of sleep, and when I wake up the Armada's gone without a trace. Absolutely wonderful. *A reasonably long string of curses are heard, then a sigh, and then the recording shuts off*
Entry Four Oh, hey, this log still exists. I figured it would've been deleted when I wiped my ship's hard drive after the Exotic Alien Booty Incident. So. Things to catch up on. The RA is back, but probably ninety percent of the old guys are dead or MIA. Crosswell is now a robot, and the USCM in the area has collapsed and flooded us with people. We've got spiffy new uniforms, but fewer fun guns, and the only Prometheus-class ship we have is buried under ten feet of gravel. Did I mention it rains gravel on the planet we use for training? It also rains leaves, despite there being no trees, and rain pours down every day, despite it being a desert. It's basically paradise, is what I'm saying. Yesterday was the first 'real' training session, because the bureaucracy decided that basic training is necessary for people who have years of military experience. "Here is how you hold a gun. Don't turn off the safety. Do not place your hand over the heat sink, because you are all four years old, apparently." Meanwhile, the people there were divided up into squads, and I guess at some point I drew the short stick in the fireteam lottery. Never mind that you've been around twice as long as these ex-USCM guys and acutely remember when they were the enemy; don't think about all the years you spent fighting and flying around on Mars; put it out of your mind that you're the only qualified pilot in the entire faction (The other guy is eighty years old or some crap), because your job is to carry around the ammo for the REAL soldiers (Read: The Floran who pulled a gun on me a few weeks ago when I worded my introduction badly) while all the USCM guys get command roles. What's that? You were ASO? I hope you don't expect any sort of promotion: go into the squad with the guy who actively dislikes pilots for some reason, cadet. Enjoy your two hundred pixels every two weeks or whatever. I could make more money bartending, or begging on the streets. But hey, it's not like the job's dangerous, right? *The recording shuts off*
Entry Five Note to self: Even if you personally made the arrest of a criminal who is then put on impromptu trial, any attempts to explain what you saw will be ignored even as demands are made of the prisoner to explain what happened. Once the prisoner gives his biased account, his word will be taken at face value and you will continue to be ignored even as he tells your superiors that you were there and arrested him. Should you attempt to say anything, you will be addressed by the wrong rank and subtly told to be quiet so the sadist Floran can get a chance to maybe beat up the prisoner again. Yep, I'll remember that next time. - Johnson
Entry Six Maybe I should hang a sign saying "Not a Private" from my neck. I can hardly blame people for not knowing their subordinates when we get so many new recruits and when the turnover rate for Armada leadership is so high. I can't keep track of who is my superior at this point, but I can maybe boss around the recruits a bit. I really need to a find a prosthetic or something -- not like I can afford cybernetics with what I get paid, though. Do they even make finger prosthetics? It would be useful for holding the rifle, although I've mostly adapted. Also, hey, coffee machine in the barracks. So maybe life isn't all that bad. - Johnson
Entry Seven Oh, god. I don't even know where to start. Usually I don't like to angst about things and mope around feeling sorry for myself -- from what I've seen, that's more a Felith kind of thing -- but if there's one thing that I've learned from this audio log it's that I sure do love the sound of my own goddamn voice. So let's play self-therapist, shall we? What's that thing that therapists always say in the movies and the TV shows and whatever? "When did this all start" or some crap like that? I know exactly when it all started. It was, ah, maybe 6:47 AM when the news started coming in, delayed a couple of minutes from the distance between Mars and Earth. I was dozing in the captain's chair of some tiny troop transport, coasting around Mars in polar orbit and waiting to circle around to where the troops were dropping. I woke up blearily, looked around, and saw I had a new message on the radio transceiver. Usually things got left as messages, on account of the seven-minute delay in transmissions between Earth and Mars. I pressed the button to play back the recording. Surprisingly, instead of some gruff superior officer, it was my wife. At 6:47 PM and at twenty-eight years old, orbiting Mars, I was now a father. It was a girl, but we'd known that for months. Kaitlyn, named after her mother and my wife. I was told she looked like her mother, and a picture was sent confirming this. I'd call it more like spitting image. Because I'm the most extraordinary of short-sighted dicks, this revelation just convinced me to push harder into my work. I went back to earth for a week out of the month I was allotted for leave, then headed straight back to Mars for more work. I did troop transports, reconnaissance, combat missions, dropped down and fired at sand people for undefined reasons just like the soldiers I was flying around. Fourteen months later, the Earth was destroyed by a tentacle monster. I don't think I need to elaborate much more. In the chaos, I got on my ship -- a pathetic refitted cargo thing that was barely better than an escape pod -- and set the FTL drive for "Anywhere but here". A few minutes at speeds that would make Einstein's brain ooze out of his mouth and I was in beautiful Antares, population: Whoever hasn't been shot to death yet. I did odd jobs, visited the planets around, tried to find some regular work. Instead of doing bartending or something smart like that, I went to the RA, got a job as a pilot. Things were pretty good; I got to fly big ships and scout out places and occupy planets and get paid. I got lost in my work, forgot about the past, fired a gun once or twice. All was well. Then, of course, the Armada decided to blink out of sector while I was asleep in my ship, and by the time I got the message I had no idea where they were. Maybe better off I didn't; I'm told there were ninety-nine percent casualties. Regardless, I went back to odd jobs and alcohol until they returned, significantly worse for wear. Things were different from there on. The Armada gradually transformed into USAF 2.0: All the same guys are back. I was one of the only former RA people who was still in the RA as well as one of maybe two trained pilots, and for that distinction I received absolutely nothing as all the United Systems people were elevated to command positions. We went from a fleet of warships to people sitting in a garrison on Opportunity, and it showed. Enter the Florans. We started fighting some random particularly vicious tribe -- shooting up ships, attacking their bases. None of it really did much, and it was a losing battle -- literally, too, because I lost my left ring and pinky fingers to plasma fire. Some days I still wake up and can't move for an hour while my back shrieks in pain from the toxins in those spines. Nerve damage or something. But I kept my mouth shut, did what I was supposed to do and got up in the mornings without visible complaint. Eventually they attacked Opportunity, and it wasn't a real surprise. On the last day of the fighting I got hit by some spines and shrapnel and pumped full of morphine, and wandered off into an abandoned garage in a daze. When I woke up, I was still in pain but now the Florans had taken over the planet and we were retreating. I headed west to find the security doors to the beam-pad locked shut, and was captured. Really it's a miracle the two Florans that found me didn't eat me on the spot. And so I drifted through a few days in a haze of beatings and shrapnel pain and watching rescue attempts to save other people fail horribly. I managed to strike up conversation with my captors, got them onto my side, saved myself from being eaten at one point. Eventually Greenok came and broke into the prison and we escaped, along with one Floran I'd managed to "befriend". God, my mouth is dry. *The sound of a tap being turned on and water being drank follows.* Better. Anyways, we escaped, and the Armada gave its dying breath and collapsed. A lot of people joined Fracture. I developed an alcohol dependency, floated around Asani feeling bad for myself. Then robots attacked some group of slave cartel members on New Uganda, and for some reason I felt compelled to try to help. Probably I just wanted to put some purpose into my life. I beamed down, looked around for people to save, and was set upon by two robots with machine guns. Took quite a few bullets to my leg and accomplished nothing besides wandering around the tundra to get back to the beam-pad. I'm told my leg will never really heal; I limp around now. And then, just when everything is maybe returning to something resembling normal life, the Floran who was my jailer shows up on Asani, the one Greenok and I misguidedly saved, and from the snippets of conversation I've heard they're joining a new tribe of bloodthirsty Florans. Should I feel bad for hating the whole lot of them? I close my eyes at night and see bloodthirsty eyes, fangs, spines raining from the sky. I try to focus on the one that saved me from being eaten, at cost of his life, when I was a prisoner in that cell, but then I remember that it was one of those same Florans who put me in that same cell. *The recording is silent for a minute or so while he composes himself.* Anyways, there's my life story out on the table. I'd delete this log, but my head does feel a little bit more clear, even if I've had to talk into a recording device for half an hour straight to clear it up. Maybe I won't have to drink to fall asleep tonight. I'd leave the sector, but the only place that I have to go to is Sol and Sol has too many bad memories. As if this sector doesn't. Johnson, signing off. *The recording ends.*
Entry Eight I've decided that I'm going to give up all the rifle-carrying and mercenary work and stuff. I've been a soldier in one way or another for the better part of ten years, and the only things that it's gotten me are chronic pain, two fewer fingers and not enough pay or respect. I think I'll take stock of my old Armada stuff -- armor, guns, things like that -- and sell it off, except maybe a pistol. The real issue is becoming a productive member of society. Maybe I'll see if Asani needs another person working in the bar. I should probably quit drinking too, to think of it, but I'm not sure I could bear it. This was a shorter log than the last one, but sometimes I'm not in the mood to rant to myself for half an hour. Johnson, signing off. *The recording ends.*
Entry Nine Okay, so here's a fun one. So I put up my old Armada things for sale -- a lot of it old stuff, from before they turned into USCM part deux -- like I said in yesterday's log, figured I could make a couple thousand pixels off of it. So this guy offers to buy my old rifle and a riot shield, too, and I offer to sell the riot shield for five hundred pixels and the rifle for fifteen hundred. So I message the guy with that, and he gives me a counter-offer: 375 pixels for the shield, and... Nine thousand freaking pixels for the gun. My guess is he misread fifteen hundred pixels as fifteen thousand. I didn't respond for a bit, figured he'd catch the mistake and alter his price to nine hundred or something like that. After a little bit, he noticed... that his offer was too low, and upped it to 9,750. This is the kind of luck that makes people believe in a deity. Now, I have my morals, but if some rich guy wants to spend nearly ten thousand pixels on a beat-up plasma rifle, I'm going to let him -- the gun's in mostly good shape anyways, and honestly I'm not sure what to price it at. Maybe ten thousand pixels is reasonable, I have no idea. So I message him, up the shield price to four hundred pixels (Because why not?) and he agreed. I met up, gave him the stuff and, what do you know, I'm suddenly 10,175 pixels richer. I also sold the flak vest and pants for a thousand pixels, and the pilot's helmet for 850. So far, selling my old junk is turning out to be one of my better decisions. I should be able to pocket another three thousand pixels or so before all's said and done, and be set for a looong time. On a separate note, I just remembered that I asked about security work at some shipyard or another. I know that in the last one I said I was done with mercenary things, but I don't think that being a glorified mall cop counts. After all, its not like crazed Florans tend to attack shipyards. Maybe I'll see about the work there; more interesting than being a bartender, at least. - Johnson
Entry Ten Hey, it's the big Entry One-Zero. I've decided to keep a more accurate list of how much money I have, rather than just grabbing a random amount of pixels whenever I want a drink. So. + 6000, approximately, from all of my RA days -- wow, the pay was crap. 400 pixels a week and little to no guaranteed benefits to get shot by crazed Florans. + 10,175 from selling random RA crap, detailed more in my last couple of logs. Maybe the real benefit of the Armada was that I got away with keeping my equipment. - 2,000 from the time I saved some random guy who got captured by slavers, then gave him some more money. - 1,175-ish from costs of living -- food, replacing oxygen scrubbers, fuel, et cetera. Which brings us to a grand total of about 13,000 pixels. Not terrible, not good, certainly not rich. I could certainly last a while just sitting on this and letting it dwindle, but that seems stupid. I need a way of getting more money. - Johnson
Entry Eleven - 4000 pixels Total: 9000 pixels *A stream of curses start off the log.* I am just completely and utterly done with this sector. As I walked up to the bar on Asani yesterday, I arrived just in time to watch some idiot storm in and start shooting up the place. Naturally, I shot him, and was thanked for doing so. But the security on Asani, who should have been around in the first place, asked me to wait around for the security chief so I could testify what had happened. Not too illogical so far, yeah? So I waited, and watched two of the three people who would confirm I hadn't just shot the guy in the back wander off. After a long time waiting with nobody showing up, I walked to the security building to see what was going on. Naturally, shortly after I knocked on the door to said building I was tased in the back by some random mugger, jabbed with tranquilizers and taken onboard someone's empty ship. Oh, Antares, you're a cruel mistress. Naturally, everyone who the genius kidnappers tried to extort for ransom either didn't care or thought it was a joke, and so I was forced to pay for myself. If the two guys who captured me were smarter, they would've taken my money and then held me for more, then shot me dead once they had it all. Instead, they shot me in the leg and beamed me off, so... Yay? At this point, the planet's security (Who was unable to stop me from being captured as I was attacked IN FRONT OF THE SECURITY BUILDING for five minutes) finally got involved... In carting me off to some random doctor's clinic on a frozen planet lightyears away and leaving me there. In fact, it is from the same bed that I was plopped in and operated on that I am dictating this log -- my phone's recording it, and I'll upload it to my ship later. So, that puts me down twelve thousand pixels. Luckily I made eight thousand selling some of the last of my RA stuff, so it's "only" a net loss of 4000 and most of the remaining mobility in my bad leg. But hardly being able to move is fine, because I don't plan on beaming down anywhere anytime soon. - Johnson
