Infinity's Edge : Chapter One : Questions

[Soulrage3]

Chapter One

Ringo Moon, Asteroid XI304, The Clockwork Bitch.

CJ had bought the place cheap, and it was huge, that was the beauty of a hollowed out asteroid, you could sit practically on top of the police and they wouldn't notice.
Well that had been his idea to start with, back in his wilder days. Now the place was where the elite hung out; the veterans, the gifted, the rich and those that were just plain lucky, yep they all ended up here.
There were two reasons for this:

Number one being the station's bar; 'The Clockwork Bitch'; named after his first ship, a Buster that seemed to be held together by hope and had been the reason for his being broke many times. The ship it'self had been ripped apart in the Xenon war and had been towed back, where in a fitting tribute it had been made into the entrance to the bar. It was here that you could find some of the more 'Interesting' jobs in this part of space, it kept the bar busy nearly 24 hours a day.

Number two being that two 'Engineers' had taken up residence and having bought some hangar space as a lab, and started producing some of the wildest modifications anyone had ever seen. Ultra high cargo compression, Engine mods that meant you didn't need S.E.T.A. , and all manner of weirdness eminated from Stone'N'Slocket's Chop Shop.

Life was good these days, at least it would be if it wasn't for the recent Khaak Incursion. It as a thorn in the side of business all over the sector. So far it'd only made business better, everyone was coming to get 'souped up', ready to rain all hell down on the next one that appeared. And Stone had been missing for a few weeks now, not that it was unusual, just that he had also been out of contact, now that was unusual.

He had last been seen in the bar with a Boron, some pirate trying to sell him a chip for the price of Argon One,
"The Key it is" he'd said waving his tentacles wildly, nearly spilling his 'fuel, after that they had left, no-one had seen him since.

Maybe he'd to fire up the Barracuda and go looking for the missing tech.

***

UNCC Command Meeting, Temporary Headquarters: The Clockwork Bitch

Admiral Acidic had pointed out the flaws in the Nova from it's blueprints onward, now what had they done, the fools had dishonorably discharged him from the Argon Navy! For what? Pointing out that an unarmed freighter could outperform it? Surely they could see that?
No there had only been one course of action to be taken from that point onward, he would confiscate every last Nova in existence, then they would see that he was right.
The Universal Nova Capturing Confederation had been born that day.
6,492 Nova's they had aquired since that day. Surely they could see the sheer futility of building the damned things by now. No... they had just slapped a Bounty on his head.
He surveyed the five faces round the table before roaring at them,

"Now who would like to tell me who left Two THOUSAND Novas where they could be stolen!" his face going purple.
The faces just stared blankly back at him, all damned good officers,

"Admiral they were taken from the equipment dock and shipyard in Ianamus Zura, they were being repaired after capture Sir. All happened at once Sir, nothing I could do. Before i could do anything there were two thousand sets of guns targeting the 'Venture'. I only just made it." Captain Quattro added, obviously fearing for his life.

"What do we have on the thieves?" Acidic hissed, his face returning to it's usual beetroot red complexion.

"That's the odd thing sir, it just doesn't make sense. They were each piloted by a Boron, the scans showed clearly two thousand borons, but the id scans threw me..." the Captain hesitated,

"Spit it out Quattro! You are trying my patience"

"Well the id scans said the same person was piloting each craft, the really weird thing is he's supposed to be dead. The bounty has already been collected, 10,000 credits paid to a Mr Da Junka for the death of Rask
Ackabar."
"Bring him here, Mr Junka has some questions to answer!"

***

Cloudbase Southwest, Goner temple

Two Jazuras had passed since that fateful day, Junka had stopped in to the temple whenever he was in the system. Not that he was particularly religious, he just came to talk to one of the brothers about the 'Incident'. Each time he would be told it was part of the greater plan, that the universe knew what it was doing.

Junka was skeptical, the universe wanted Rask to have been compressed? Still it made him feel better to talk to someone sympathetic.
His friends had been less so. He had told them in the bar the day after, and they had laughed till they almost passed out. Over the following Mazura's they had nicknamed him 'Squish', made up 'The Compression Song', and generally poked fun at his sudden outbreak of morality.
'The Compression Song' had been heard being sung in various bars, and some fool had jazzed it up, released it commercially,and it was recieving requests by the thousand over the various radio comms stations.

He had become something of a celebrity, everyone knew the name Da Junka through that bloody song. People would say:
"Did you really compress that guy?" to which he would merely nod and head off to the nearest bar, and that would be a mistake because someone would recognise him and it'd start all over again.

If he could do it over again he'd just have passed by and not thought about the bounty.
Every day the credits rolled in from the 5% of the song he had been given by the courts when he'd tried to get it banned, they thought the cred's would pacify him. Blood Money he thought, and he hated spending it.
The universe was a cruel place, so it didn't come as any surprise when there was an official looking person standing outside his ship.
"Mr. Junka, you'll need to accompany me, I have orders for your detention."
Junka merely nodded and followed...

Chapter 2... http://www.egosoft.com/x2/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22640

[Soulrage3]

For those of you who missed the prologue, it can be found here:

http://www.egosoft.com/x2/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22131

Does anyone know how time works in the mizura/jezura system?

[Da_Junka]

Hey, very good.
I must say you seem to have very good sources of information, the first part of the story is so correct it’s basically how it happened, brought back memories of that fateful day.
I am reading avidly how the story is unfolding, and find it gives me answers to many unanswered questions.

[Quattro]

w00t, the UNCC is featured here

[Acidic]

Excellent work!

The UNCC always did hate those 'Argon Fatcats'

[Moss]

w00t, the UNCC is featured here

Hehe the UNCC just lost 2000 ships, have some competition eh? tho I doubt very much if those Novas will be returned to the Argon any time soon

I like the sound CJs place I might just visit that venue, if I can find it.

See pm for time info Soulrage, also if you can find it there is an X universe wiki somewhere that gives much X background info and pretty good timeframe on what has happened to date.

Looking forward to more of this, cheers.

edit, found the wiki at http://helge.de/XbtfWiki/index.php?page=Argon says xbtf but many updates have been added.