Void Wolf [Lore]

[Kazkin]

Tags: [Lore]

Author's Note: This story is an explanation of what being a void wolf is like, a stream of consciousness of the chaotic fates of a ship and the many outcomes that come on a day to day or week to week basis for the life of a space pirate.

__________________________

You had your reasons. A lot of people become void wolves. Sometimes its by choice, sometimes its by circumstance, a few crazies even do it for the thrill and the drugs. Whatever the reason you find yourself on a ship and these strangers become your brothers. You eat, raid, fight, and shit together on a tin can floating through space. You do it as a solo vessel, living off the destruction of merchant vessels and captured civilian ships. Sometimes they put up a fight and you’re forced to blow them to pieces, getting next to nothing but scrap. Sometimes they surrender and you reap the rewards. Your captain might send them on their way once everything of value is taken, but sometimes he’ll take the crew as slaves. Someone under his command, someone with clout, doesn’t like that. He wants the slaves off this shuttle, maybe because he hates slavery or maybe because he sees them as threat. So he starts bringing in all the big players. He gets the ship’s doctor on board, the engineer, the strongest raiders. He even approaches you, so you see the way the tide is going and you sign up. The coup happens and your former captain, your warlord, is unceremoniously murdered by a dozen blasters at once. Maybe that happens, maybe more than the captain dies, old grudges are settled in the cross fire and when the smoke clears the leader of the coup is dead too. Maybe its the doctor, leaving nobody to treat anyone in the aftermath and people die as a result and now your ship is filled with wounded and pissed off people. Maybe the coup fails instead, the captain knew and he killed the potential revolutionaries before anyone could react. Maybe it got that way because you didn’t side with the rebels, you did it, you told the captain because your loyalty is to him first. Maybe he thanks you for that, you get promoted to first mate, now you have eyes on you at all times and people looking for pay back because it was their friends you got killed. Now the air of the ship is tense, nobody goes to sleep easy, everyone has a gun under their pillow. But then the ship gets called, a new reaver is in the sector, a warlord among warlords who is gathering all the scattered ships into a cascade of pirates who are going to start hitting military vessels for bigger scores. You urge your captain to side with this reaver, because nobody fucks with reavers and he listens and your ship falls into the fleets of this reaver as just another gun nobody cares about. You fight and die for a bigger boss who takes a massive share of the haul and you settle for that. But your captain doesn’t settle for that, he talks about everyone getting their fair share. So your captain is executed by the reaver for talking like an excelsior. You and your brothers are pissed, so in the next battle you take your ship and flee during the chaos, leaving your position open. Another ship sees this and joins you because they hate being under the reaver’s yoke too. You both flee and then you join together under one banner, you embrace as brothers. You start your own war party and you grow, more and more defect from the reaver and now there is a full blown civil war between void wolves going on. Or maybe you don’t, maybe when this other ship flees with you, you think its coming to take you out to make the reaver happy so you blow them up. Now you’re on your own and half your brothers are getting cold feet. So you concoct a plan and go back to the reaver, you tell him you saw that ship flee and got so pissed anyone could betray your reaver that you broke position so you can kill them for him. He thanks you and promotes you. Or maybe that doesn’t happen, maybe he knows what happened and he blows you up before you even get close to his fleet. Maybe when you get back there’s nothing but a ruin because the battle went south and the reaver was entirely wiped out to the man. Or maybe that never happened, when the reaver first approached your captain he told him to fuck off and he spat in his face and now you’re fighting for scraps as the reaver’s fleet rolls across the void and takes all the juicy targets. You and your brothers starve together stubbornly, telling your empty bellies that you’re free, that this is better than being a slave to anyone. You meet others like you and you go to war over each others scrap, desperate to provide for your ship and yourself. Or maybe you embrace as brothers, you find kinship in the fact your starving together. You do this for years and you meet these crews again. They fell on hard times and your captain goes after them because their weak and easy pickings. Or maybe he doesn’t, maybe he embraces them once more because their your brothers. Then you learn they’ve fallen under a new banner. They’ve become excelsior, they’re led by a carrion now, or maybe they’ve gone legit and work as mercenaries. They’re not your brothers anymore, they’ve betrayed you, they think differently now. You go after them because of it and you wipe them out. Or maybe it isn’t even ideology, maybe its something as simple as embracing the wrong vice. They’re gene modders now, changing faces and bodies all the time after they took down a science vessel and stole the tech to do it. But you and your crew are stim users and they look down on you for having a ‘simple vice’ and that insult can’t be overlooked. They’ve changed too much and their not your brothers anymore. Now you’re fighting because if you don’t you look weak and looking weak is going to bring other void wolves looking to take advantage of you. Now the friends they’ve made come after you and another war starts all because they thought they could think differently. You wake up each morning thinking that all this could happen and every single day you wonder what happens next. The only constant in your life is you, your captain, and your crew because their your brothers and that’s all that's left.