The Privateer/Lucia's Backstory

Well, Virgil, as long as we're telling stories, I've got one for you.

Starts about fifteen years ago...on Earth. Yeah, I was an Earthborn. Probably think I'm a right spoiled brat right about now just 'cause of that. Well, it got to be my twelfth birthday, and I couldn't leave well enough alone. I'd been pretty comfortable most of my young life, 'cause my parents were rich bastards. I'd spent the last twelve years not caring where the money came from, long as we kept having money. But that birthday of mine had to be skipped, and yeah, I kinda acted like a spoiled brat over it, but then I wondered why. Something didn't add up. You read in books about how Little Pretty Gumdrops couldn't have a birthday present because her parents had to save money to keep 'em in house and home, but that didn't sound right to me, so I made the mistake of looking into where our money went. I accidentally unraveled the family business, so to speak. Twelve-year-old me, barely old 'nough to have her tits in, figured out her parents had blood money. Not contract killings, but close enough: they made their dosh from bleeding their tenants dry on property hikes, evicting them, then filling the gaps with more tenants. When they couldn't evict them, they arranged accidents. One of Da's files said something about collapsing an entire building to get rid of one high-risk tenant.

I knew being a land-owner on Earth was a means to loads o' money, but I didn't think that meant exploding buildings and killing tenants after they've signed the bloody waiver. I couldn't take living under that family anymore, so I took what I could and booked it off to space. I couldn't fly just then, too young, but I hopped a transit line to the lunar colony, then to Mars. I wanted out of the whole stinkin' mess, so I sold off all my trinkets and saw about learning a trade.

Time passes (lazy writer's way out)

The next moment of consciousness I had, I found myself stuck in a closet. It had to be a closet, right? I couldn't move at all. I was shackled to something. I wanted to rub my eyes, scratch my nose, something to make sure I could still feel things. For now, I guessed I'd have to make do with the feel of the irons I'd been clapped in. They were freezing to the touch...though the sensation wasn't completely unwelcome.

As soon as I found I was able to move my head, I felt a deep shudder. Before, I felt like I was back on Earth, familiar gravity and all that. But now, I wasn't so sure I was even near a planet. I rose steadily until the shackles caught me. I was now hovering an inch or so from whatever I was strapped to; leaning my head forward at least indicated that I was enclosed in something, but I couldn't see well enough to know what. Especially not when the only light I could see, suddenly disappeared. I hadn't noticed the deep humming noise surrounding me until it, too, disappeared.

Then came the loudest hiss I've probably ever heard. Loud enough that I stopped hearing it before it was done. A flash of red light rendered me blind for some seconds. I wondered if I'd just been shot, or injected, or...something else lethal. But then, the feeling of metal, clamped down on my wrists and ankles, took its leave. With some difficulty, I started to move my limbs. It felt like I hadn't moved around in years. The sensation of touch was beginning to return to my fingers and toes. Soon, I was able to grope around the tight space until I found a handle, which I instinctively pulled until it stopped.

My vision slowly faded back in, but I assumed something was still wrong with it, because I was still only seeing red, and it wasn't very consistent, fading in and out. I wasn't confident I could hold my own weight just yet, so I spent some time looking around as my vision sharpened.

The thing I had just come out of was apparently some kind of...sleep chamber, I assumed. Must have been for crew during long voyages, I figured; the fact that it opened from the inside meant it could not have been for imprisonment. There were more rows of them in the room with me. Some were opened, most were not. Then I looked down, and wished that I hadn't. The ruggedized uniform that I'd been wearing, the nice utilitarian jacket that I'd picked out because it had all the pockets, the snappy steel-toed boots...all of them were gone. I flexed my arms up to my chest - still a bit difficult - and felt around, finding nothing but skin. Aw Christ, I'd thought. The hell kind of people do that to a girl, just take their clothes and put them on ice? At least I didn't feel cold at all; apparently being frozen for who-knows-how-long tends to mess with how one perceives ambient temperature.

I wasn't accomplishing much by staying in the chamber, so I kicked my way out...slightly too hard, as I sent myself sailing into the thin, recycled air. I wasn't stopping. Nothing stops you when you're careening out of control through what amounts to zero gravity. Nothing, that is, except the emergency power. That deep shuddering feeling hit me again, and before I realized what it meant, I found myself on the damp metal floor. I laboriously pushed myself upright, finding that I wasn't doing too bad at standing still, and scanned the room for something to wear. I saw nothing of the sort. Well, I told myself, all the more reason to not get caught. The last year or so of sneaking around poorly guarded records rooms would at least be enough experience to not get myself in trouble...if the threat of death or recapture wasn't enough of a motivator, the fact that I was naked would certainly encourage me not to alert anyone.