Part 1 - Early days
See, I wasn’t born per se. That toxic, putrid shithole Deep Space Engineering so lovingly calls Pittsburgh was where I was concieved, that’s true, but I grew to a functioning form in a maternal replicator, in a medical facility on Fort Bush.
The lack of mother’s contanct made me the cold bastard I am today - I guess the cheap Maltese whore slash amateur psychiatrist was (at least partially) right. I was a regular customer at one time, she had enough time to "study" me. I try to put up a mask of niceness for people, but deep down, I don’t really care.
Anyway, so, of course, I did grow up on the Pitt. The smog, or as we delusionally called it, air, killed my father when I was 13. He died a coughing, wheezing, ugly death, and my mother followed about 2 or so years later. Trust me, it was no picknick to be a puberty-driven, self-providing petty thief on the Pitt. I frequently went to bed hungry, that’s even if I had a bed to sleep in. So one night, I had enough of that shit (literally, I said to some hobo that slept some 4 meters away from me, “I’ve had enough of this shit.”)
I snuck in the cargo hangars one night, and slipped onboard a Orbital Spa & Cruise ship headed to Baden Baden. I figured, hey, Spa & Cruise! I’ll get, like, a proper bath or something. It took them about an hour in flight to detect me. Now, stowaways are usually chucked out of an airlock or put to stasis to work off their flight later, but I guess I lucked out - the ship’s captain, Saemus LaGrange he was called, took pity on a smelly teenager that looked like he should be disinfected with a flamethrower before being allowed to step on...
Man, I will never forget it - to step on Cortez! (It was the first stop.) That place... beaches, water, salty wind, seagulls - the sunshine! So anyway, I cleaned up and worked in a resort there for a few years. It was good, I had a small flat, steady income and a place where you can party whenever you’re not working or sleeping.
Then, of course, shit hit the fan when I had drunkenly hooked up with the wife of an Orbital’s senior board member. It probably didn’t help that I hooked up with his son too. (And don’t judge me - what happens on Cortez, stays on Cortez. Unless it’s herpes, that shit follows you around.)
So the board member dude had some criminal ties, and I got framed for stealing some corporate money, and I essentially I got kicked off a planet - and not many people get to say that. I ended up on a police freighter, and got shipped to that goddamn goulag Sugarland.
Part 2 - The Goddamn Sugarland
(To be continued.)