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The ship is back up and running again! After our spell in dry dock (which took about 2 days longer than originally planned) we did some crew adjustments and we’re off again.

My first mate, Silverfox13, has been reassigned. Where to I can’t say for security reasons but I hope that she’s going to do Zion proud. She was an excellent officer and as fine a second in command as anyone could ask for.

As one door closes, another opens as they say. With Silverfox13’s departure we have taken on board two new crewmembers to fill not only her shoes but also some of the other slots on the ship. The first was recommended to me by PhrogXiX personally and if he says that she’s going to be good then I believe him. Her name is Keakiri.  The other new face is Hydr0gen who we picked up after some active recruiting. Both are wet behind the ears, so to speak, but watching them work on ship and in the simulation I can see promise in them both.

They are newbies as we say back in Zion. They are both quite inexperienced but having said that, how many of us can say that at some point in the past we weren’t the same? I can’t! I remember being woken up and having to learn this new world around me and when I did it, it was much more hard going. Looking back over my logs I can see that there is very little information about me as a captain, about my past. For the longest time I suppose you could say that it was to do with security but with the way things are right now I think I can spill some beans.

I was “pilled” when I was bout 19. I hadn’t led a life of piety, God alone knows but I wasn’t your typical thug either. I never attacked anyone but in my time I started a few fires, shoplifted, stole cars that kind of thing. I could use the excuse that we were young and bored but that’s all crap. We got a kick out of it plain and simple.

Well one night we’d stolen a car, that’s me and little group of hoodlums, and we were basically cruising round all over the place and doing the usual things kids like me did which included drinking from the bottle and frightening pedestrians.

The bottle was being passed around and as I took a swig I looked out of the window at the buildings going past and saw what I thought was a shape jump from one rooftop to another. At first I put it down to the sour mash kicking in but then I saw it again. I pointed this out to my guys and soon we were all looking out the window and sure enough a guy leaping from the rooftops with a long coat flapping behind him.

The next thing I remember is waking up in hospital. I had been admitted with gunshot wounds to my abdomen and had been in a coma for nearly three weeks. According to the doctor I had been found in a deserted piece of land in Magog along with two of my friends. They were both dead at the scene also by multiple gunshot wounds from a large calibre assault weapon and my doc told me it was just pure luck that I was alive at all.

The police had come and interrogated me at length about who my friends were, why we were there, our links to gang activity round the city and a hundred and one other questions that they needed answered in order to try and explain the series of gunshots and explosions that went about half way across Richland.

Then after they left, THEY came to see me. Agents. At that time I didn’t know anything about who they really were, when I saw them in the hospital I was just afraid that the feds were going to try and pin something on me and send me to jail for the next twenty years. Looking back it was a hell of a lot more scary than that especially when one of them introduced himself as Agent Smith. Yes…Him! If I knew then what I know now I would have probably run for it but then I was just a kid with no knowledge of the truth.

Smith asked me about whether I had any links with any terrorist organisations and naturally I said no. Then he asked me a few more questions, mainly asking me exactly how much I could remember about the night in question. I told him everything I could and he seemed to be satisfied that I knew nothing. The doctor even told them that because of the coma and the trauma I had suffered that I was lucky to even remember my name! As they were going though I heard them talking and a name came up twice: Greaves. I planned on finding out as much as I could about this “Greaves” as soon as I could get out of the hospital.

As it turned out I didn’t need to find him. About two days after the Agents had been he came to visit. He was a fairly short man but built like a brick wall and with a neck so thick he looked like he’d had it transplanted from his thigh. He told me that he knew that I had questions and that he could show me the answers if I was willing to hear them.

Another man with him who I learned was called Ronin had a wheelchair waiting for me and together under the cover of darkness they wheeled me out to a car that was waiting by a side door.

Eventually we arrived at a decrepit abandoned tenement building in the barrens and it was there that I was given the choice. I could have my answers but at a price or I could enjoy sweet ignorance for the rest of my life. As I’m sat here able to record this log I think it’s fairly self-explanatory that I took the red pill. After my rehab I was introduced fully to the crew of The Cortosa.

Greaves was the captain. His first mate was a woman called Finale, Ronin I had met which only left his operator and engineer Krieger. I was shown what I had wanted to know and it blew me away, I refused to believe what was clearly before my own eyes, I kept thinking about my parents and my baby sister still plugged in. It was explained about how Agents could use peoples RSI's to move freely through the matrix and that had been what had happened that night. Almost as soon as I first was unplugged from the construct, alarms started to go off around the ship and the crew started to rush to their positions. We had been found!

We were able to take off but we were in the air hardly any time as the squiddies ripped the ship to shreds and we crashed. Krieger was killed almost instantly by the impact; a support beam had buckled burying him under a ton of metal. Greaves had shouted that Finale get me to safety and set off the EMP while he and Ronin held off the sentinels.

They didn’t last long. Ronin was literally ripped to pieces by one of them while Greaves stood his ground to the end. I could see him over Finale’s shoulder as she shoved me towards the elevator that lead down to the main deck and towards the closest trigger. He looked at me and said “Be good, Kid.” before he was killed.

Finale and myself hit the main deck as the sentinels had ripped though the ceiling above us. Finale picked up a nearby beam weapon and held the thing back long enough for me to get to the key. In an instant it was dead along with the two others that had been trying to get at us. For the longest time I was in shock.

We were taken back to Zion and in light of my condition I was given a placing in systems management, which kept me out of the way, looking after the running of the machines in the lower levels. I kept trying to reconcile in my mind what had happened to me, to the crew that had rescued me. Then I was told about six months later that Finale’s new ship had been downed and that all hands had been killed.

I couldn’t cope. I was contemplating suicide, I was so sure that the inevitable was going to happen and that we would all be destroyed and that I wanted to get there first as my own private act of rebellion.

Then He was found.

Almost overnight there was a new sense of hope, the passions for life were rekindled my own included. We now had a way to stay ahead of them, we had a way to fight and it was all thanks to this former blue pill called Neo.

I still remained in systems but I could feel the promise that the future held and all seemed to be heading our way until the machines made their push. They were coming for us and we had to make a stand. It was then that I made a resolve. I had been hiding away for far too long, in the shadows waiting for someone else to do the dirty work. I don’t know why but I volunteered to be in Capt. Mifune’s APC squad. You all know about the massacre that followed.

I’m not sure how I survived but I did. My APC was damaged and I couldn’t bring it to stand again. Knowing that it was useless to stay strapped into this thing and wait to be picked off I got out and ran back to the supply area. It was only then that it dawned on me what the true cost of today would be and so I picked up a beam weapon and started to cover the ammo crews. Many of them never came back.

Through one thing and another I found myself in the cave with all the others, now waiting for the end. I cannot describe the feeling I felt, that we all felt, when the Kid came in screaming like his lungs would explode that we were now at peace, the war was over! I shouted too like all the others and then sank to my knees and wept for those that had gone before me, who had sacrificed themselves so that we all might live just one more day and now their sacrifice had paid off and we had peace!

The same day the truce started I asked to become a member of the Zion fleet. I was accepted as were many others to fill the void left by the fallen and in the fullness of time I was given a ship.

In light of those that had gone before me I could think of no better name than that of the ship that had saved me and so with a new crew the Zion HcCFT Cortosa set sail once again this time with a promise: Never to let their sacrifice be in vain.

Now I’m a few years older and I’d like to think a few years wiser. I’ve seen a lot and learned a lot, I’ve made new friends and even some enemies but I like to think that I’ve kept the promise I made. These new guys on my ship may be new but I can look at them and see the same thing that Greaves saw in me.

To the Fallen: The body may pass but the soul is forever!

Captain Teegro
Zion HvCFT: The Cortosa

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