Sit close to the fire, my young friends! Take a sip of beer and listen to what I have to say to those young ears of yours, because the story of Sovereign Fleet is about old men and even older grudges. And about crazy aliens, yes, about those too. So listen up, now. It will be really shiny.
You all know the Sovereign Fleet of today. They call us space pirates and see us as smugglers from rim colonies who accept any fugitive and weirdo who stray among us. Ha! Those empty kegs! We are so much more!
Primo, we are family. The ever-fighting, bickering, and annoyingly loud kind, but a family nevertheless. We care for each other and have one another's back like a family and it makes us strong.
Secundo, we are warriors. Warriors born both of necessity and lust for an adventurous life. A colorful rebellion against the UNSS, its oppression, and its artificial way of life, bound and governed by corporate greed. And those crazy aliens. The Sovereign Fleet is like a wild weed. It sprouts in places unfit for life, turns to blossom against all odds, and then withers away only to grow again just a few feet away. This weed cannot be eradicated by any elaborate poison. If you stomp it down it will rise again, and trust me, my friend, it will leave some long thorns in your boot’s sole.
But why the metaphor: “poisons and heavy boots”? The answer is once again the UNSS - and there would be no UNSS without the crazy aliens. The Earth as their predecessor and the Sovereign Colonies, our ancestors, had their fair share of animosity before, but only when the cursed aliens called Hesperidians arrived in the Solar System and stuck their ugly insect faces out of their mothership, an immense interstellar ark, the real ugly business started to happen.
I don't know why the Hesperidians chose the Earth over the Sovereigns, but they did. Together they started to build the UNSS establishment and Earth received all the alien technology and know-how. That was the beginning of the end for the Sovereign Colonies.
What happened then, you ask? You know what always happens when two possess all the power and have no common goal. The war happened. It does not matter which incident kindled the fights but they spread like wildfire and quickly as one, too. The war started by clashes between starships, but the Sovereign fleet was quickly scattered. We had no idea the Hesperidians had the shield technology and without it, the fights quickly moved to our space stations, asteroid mining facilities, and under the crystal bubbles of planetary colonies. We gave them a hell of a fight, but they fought dirty and did not shy away from using any new technology.
Then the governors arrived and established a protectorate. Labor camps, prison colonies, repopulation. Name any atrocity, you won’t be wrong. But in those dark times, the Sovereign fleet began its return. The small acts of heroism, inconsequential sabotages, and ambushes in the rim territories. Masked as transport ships, we began our fight against tyranny. A desperate fight, fed by grief and vengeance.
Over the years, most of the old captains fell to the UNSS hunt, one by one. The Hesperidians used all the dirty tricks they had, but a handful of those old spacewolves managed to survive to this day. That is good because they are the backbone of the Sovereign Fleet now. The body and muscles. You lot. The young generation became Sovereigns for different reasons. You hot-headed devils seek adventure, wealth, and the most glittering currency of them all, fame. The usual expiration date of the new sovereign captains back in the Solar System was a year or two, depending on their talent for evasion. But despite the number of exemplary cases, new captains always appeared.
The Solar system is only so big and it can only hide so many ships. A balance was kept for some time. But everything changed the moment a path to a new world opened. The Siren System became our promised land. And then a miracle came. We were cut from the Solar System. The remnants of the UNSS fleet that moved here with us lost their advantage of superior numbers. Forgotten settlers from rim colonies, Fossorian deserters, and renegade Children of the Source, all came to join our way of life.
The UNSS already lost the Siren system, because they lost the most important war. The war for people's hearts. Step by step, heart by heart, we will take everything they have and return nothing. We will build this place wild and beautiful. We will take the old dream about sovereignty and make it into reality in our new home. And one day, who knows? Perhaps there will be enough strength to kick the UNSS and their crazy alien friends from the Solar System too!
