Conversation With a Pirate

I was flying around Octavian Space today (in the game, JumpGate), and saw a public POS that looked interesting. It was an Arty selling shop, so I stopped in to check out the prices. When I docked, I was greeted by a pilot named ernie. "Not constantinople," he said. This was quite shocking. Why, you may ask. I'll tell you why. He's a notorious hard-case. A pirate with seemingly no morals, or care for fellow pilots! I was planning on logging out and going to another registration at the time anyways, so after saying that he was the last person I'd have expected to see there, and a short hi, how you doing. I logged out and switched.

Then I thought about it. Here was one of the more notorious bad guys in the universe, holed up for awhile after a strike he'd made, waiting for the people searching for him to give up, so he could cash in his stolen goods. What an opportunity! So, I immediately switched back to my Istanbul registration and found he was still there.

So I began a discussion with him. Mind you, my opinion of him has been rather low, as he doesn't communicate publicly with the rest of use pilots, and he has no qualms about destroying someone who is more or less defenseless if he feels it will fulfill his goals. My opinion was about to change though.

As you are all aware, I'm writing a story about JumpGate, so I asked him about how he got into piracy. What poured forth was a story, as compelling as it was heart-rending. It turns out that he had started his pilot career as an idealist, firm in the faith of his faction. Then along came a war, a war of the Quantar (his faction) versus Hyperial. I can't say that that little tidbit excited me, but, he was fighting for what he thought was right. I'm not gonna knock him on that account. Anyways, over the course of this war, TRI (The Reconstruction Initiative) and the government of Hyperial recruited muscle to overpower his squad. Slowly his squad started deserting him, until the end, when another squad from his faction apparently swooped in and took over the war and got all the credit for winning it. Then, after it was all said and done, one of his squadmates hacked into his registry, stole all of his property and money and reset all of his information, putting him into the Solrain faction as a recruit. His pleas to TRI went unheard.

At this point in time, he become enraged and violent. He went on a spree of desctruction, laying all in his path to waste, whenever and wherever he had the opportunity. Time passed and his rage cooled somewhat. But he would never again go in with a squad or fight for a faction or TRI. He had only one person he felt he could trust, Spacious. Blood makes for trust for them. They become privateers, hunting, threatening and stealing, causing methodical damage to pilots and the projects of TRI, more so for their profit than for a cause. They look out for themselves, to keep from being betrayed once again. Though, obviously this story is only from his point of view, I believe it is, at the very least, very close to what really happened.

Throughout this conversation, I was impressed by the manner of ernie's speech. He wasn't the despicable criminal I had once thought. He's not a monster, but a person on whom the circumstances of his life caused him to trust no one any longer, so he looks after himself instead. He's not a mindless killing machine, but a human with his own set of morals bred from the treachery he suffered from. Maybe someday he'll be able to work his way through the past, and learn to trust again. Mind you, I still consider him dangerous, but I will look on him now with new light of understanding.

These are the things you learn when you take the time to talk to, and listen to a person whom you may have judged from a distance as a reprobate. Even in space, there is always more to a person than meets the eye.

~Istanbul