Hershel quietly sighs, pushing aside the translucent blue lenses before his face to rub eyes long since reddened from lack of sleep and fatigue. It's two AM Rubi-Ka Standard time, and the video conference with InternOps just concluded. It's only 3 in the afternoon over on Prime, after all, he mused. Why drag their butts out of bed when us frontliners can lose some sleep? But in the end, I guess it's worth it. He was free.
Free.
After a long grueling 2 years on the planet, and 8 years of service after graduating the academy prior to that, Hershel Thomas Jurik was no longer contractually bound as an indentured emplyoee to Omni-Tek. It was a weird feeling.
Free.
Fifteen years ago, a young, naive little boy who had been given the street name "Kasimir", after an anceint Earth song he was known to hum to himself, had been incarcerated by the most brutally efficient efforts of Omni-Pol, wanted for hundreds of counts of piracy, data theft, extortion..the list seemed endless to those at his trial, and Hershel recalled with a smirk the look on the judge's face when looking on the cherubic face of the teen who'd committed such crimes. He also remembered the sadness on the old man's face when the multiple life sentence was handed down. And, almost a year later, the grave image of the man who'd turned it all around...the man who'd forced Hershel to an ogre's choice: work for 10 years for the Corp, or be terminated. There were days when Hersh almost wished he's let a bullet end it, but now it was all over. He was
Free.
He savored the word, rolled it over in his mind, explored its hidden possibilites and fantasies..and its fears. After all, he could go now. There was no hand forcing him to stay on this planet, in this position, save his own.
Still, that wasn't quite the case was it? Two years ago, He'd been sent down, on a special mission from InternOps to root out traitors and rebel moles in the Omni-Tek program on Rubi-Ka. His job had taken him from sleazy bars to corporate boardrooms to dustball outposts on the edge of nowhere..and finally, into the arms of Division 9 RSGE. In the Division, the lonewolf Hershel found friends, family, acceptance. But even that was part of his job. Even the Division was part of his indenture, his slavery. He didn't have to stay. There were a hundred hundred worlds out there to explore, a thousand thousand dreams to fufill. He could go home again, see his little sister. He could become anything he wanted. So why stay?
*Be-deep! Be-deep!*
Hershel frowned at his comm. It was his personal line ringing, not the work line, so it wasn't Prime harassing him. So who would call me at this hour? he wondered, already reaching over to accept the call.
"Jurik here. Who's this?"
The feed was audio only, and riddled with interference. But even as scratchy as it was, he had no trouble recognizing the troubled, wavering voice on the edge of tears on the line.
"Brother mine?"
And those were the words that sealed Hershel Jurik to Rubi-Ka for his remaining days.
OOC: Just a little background on Kas for you all..and introducing my newest alt
