Okay, I wrote this one a long long time ago, so please, don't give me too much grief. It may be improved one day 
BTW: This is only the fist part.
I was born in good old Stardock Alpha. The very first space station
mankind had put up. Stardock Alpha was the second closest object to
Earth, other than the moon. It had been put up shortly after the 20
century, when the era of man in space was a shaky but fruitful one.
Stardock Alpha was 25 decks long and took over 3 million tons of
reinforced durasteel, the most popular steel there was. Each deck was
about the size of 10 football fields and had various things inside those
decks. There was the central command of the entire station on deck 1,
where the entire station was operated. Decks 2-15 were used as either
recreational or crew quarters. (Deck 5 was the bar). Deck 16 was the
main transport area. Decks 16-20 were used as storage areas for various
parts and merchandise, and last but not least, Decks 20-25 were
basically a gigantic Ship bay where the station kept all of its fighters
and shuttles.
As I have already said, I was born in Stardock Alpha's medical room,
which was little more than a crew quarters turned into a mini-hospital,
there were rarely any accidents here. It was also where my birthdate,
weight, description, and most importantly my name, Mark A. Scurvy, were
recorded.
When I was little my parents had always called me Captain Scurvy,
because of my fascination of the ships that frequently came to port. As
you will see later in my story, this is a relevant fact, but that time
has not yet come.
When I was 5 years of age, my parents discovered that I was nothing
short of a genius. I excelled in everything I did. A year later, my
parents decided to put me in school. It was a small class, only 6
children in it actually, and was not much for academics, but it was my
school that I loved dearly.
Five out of the six children were human, the other child was a Meepod. A
Meepod was a large wormlike creature, that had an entire different body
composition that humans, so it needed a space suit that could contain
its air and humidity requirements. None of us really talked to the
Meepod and it did the same. We were happy that way. But, alas, the
Meepod died only a year after we had met him at school. He was playing
and tore his suit on a jagged edged corner. It was the end of him, but
not the end of my adventures.
When the five of us were in sixth grade, we were all fairly acquainted
with the station. We had all been to each others quarters many times,
had all been shoved out of the bar when trying to get real beer and
exotic drinks, and of course, had all gotten into trouble. The only two
places they had not really gone too was the CCC (Captain's Central
Command) and below deck 15. They all knew that going to the CCC was
seriously wrong, because real people worked on the daily problems of
life. But their curiosity was cooled when the teacher, as a special
bonus treat, had scheduled a short 30 minute field trip up to the CCC to
get a look at it, meet the people that ran it, and to see what their
jobs were like. At that time Scurvy had been very interested in the
Engineering position on the station. But again, we will get to that at a
later time.
I suppose I should mention my friends now before I go any further. I
will only mention the two that are extremely important to this story
though, and were my two best, best friends. The first was Peter
Williamson, a wise, but daring person. He was always willing to go along
with the ruses they had concocted, even though he was a little weary of
them. And then there was Will Gates. We all knew Will had an evil side
to him, but to us it was just for fun. Besides, there was only five of
use the same age on the station. Anyway, one day Scurvy, Peter, and Will
were walking along the corridor of Deck 15, where Will's quarters were.
"What do you want to do?" Peter asked.
"I don't know, what do you want to do?" Scurvy replied.
"I don't know, but lets do something." After a pause. "What do you want
to do?" This usually went on for a while until one of the three could
think up an idea when the others weren't there.
"I know!" Will said wildly.
"What?" both Scurvy and Peter said in unison.
Will answered with a wry smile on his face. "Lets go down below Deck 15
and see what's down there."
Peter answered immediately, "No way. Forget it. I heard about what's
down there, nothing to see. Besides, my dad would kill me if I got
caught."
The five boys had always rumored what was down there. There had to be
more than what the Station said. Who knows...dead bodies, secret
documents, lots of credit chips.
Will turned to Scurvy, "What about you Captain Scurvy." Will said in a
mocking voice. Scurvy remembered back to his earlier days when he had
asked his father what was down there
...............
"Dad, what's down below Deck 15. You've always said that I was never to
go down there, but you never told me why." Scurvy said.
"Son, maybe it's time we had a talk. On decks fifteen and below there is
nothing secret about what is down there, it's just there's a lot of
things down there that could hurt you. On Decks 16-20 there is various
machinery parts, some of which are very dangerous or even deadly if
activated. And on Decks 21-25, that is where they keep all the stations
ships, and not even I can go down there without my permit and pass. A
lot of things can happen down there. So do you understand me about why
you mustn't go down there."
"Yes dad." Scurvy replied. But he didn't understand. He had a thousand
questions, but his father wouldn't tell him anything else
.................
"I don't know Will, like Peter said we are supposed to go down there."
Scurvy replied.
"Oh come on, your just scared. Tell you what, I'll be you 10 credits
that you cant go down there and go touch the atmospheric pressure door
on Deck 25. All you need to do is use this mini-vidi (a miniature
camcorder used for taping) and prove you did it."
That did it. Even though Scurvy knew it was wrong, he still wondered
what was really down there, and 10 credits was a lot of money (at least
to him). Scurvy walked over to the SSL (Space Station Lift) and took it
down to Deck 16. He knew that it wouldn't be safe to ride it down any
farther because somebody might catch him. He took his first look around.
The entire deck seemed like one large room, full of all kinds of things.
There was everything from boxes of credit chips to large gaudy statues.
It was were all the stations guests and crew kept their large
belongings. Scurvy's temptation grew as he kept looking at the credit
chips. He decided just to look at one, then put it back. He reached his
hand over to get one when he felt his hand being fried by the personal
force field the owner of the chips had placed there. Yelping in pain,
Scurvy took his hand back away from the chips. He took about 20 minutes
just looking around the deck. There were things he had never seen before
on there, and he was reluctant to move on, but he had to go down to deck
25 to win his bet. He moved through Decks 17 and 18 quickly, having the
same stuff that Deck 16 had, but on Deck 19, he stopped. In his mist
were all sorts of machine parts. All sorts of things from various
computer parts, to strange foreign parts Scurvy had never seen. On every
object there was a computer label that said what it was and what it was
meant to do, and how to install it on every thing it was made to be
installed on. Scurvy walked down the ladder leading to Deck 20.
'My God!' Scurvy thought. He looked across the deck. It was so
interesting. It was so fulfilling. It was so deadly! The entire deck was
full of weapons. All sorts of weapons from hand held devices to ship
weapons.
Scurvy saw some familiar weapons he saw. There were the handheld
weapons, the phaser, the stun gun, the electromagneted shield, the
subatomic particle ray. Then there were the bigger, ship weapons, both
laster and proton guns and turrets, missile and torpedo launchers, with
hundreds of missiles and torpedoes lined up next to then. Javelin
launchers and thousands of javelins. Heavy rockets and rocket launchers.
He also saw two very, very interesting devices he had only read about
but had never seen even pictures for.
'The Rebellion Mass Driver! How did the Confederation get a hold of
this?' Scurvy had only heard of this from his friend Will. He had said
that this was a new Rebel technology that was very deadly. It was known
to deplete the armor of ships faster than any other weapon could,
destroying any ship easily. Will had also told him that they had
Confederate spys trying to get hold of this weapon, but had not
succeeded yet. Despite the detailed description Will had given Scurvy
about the weapon, at the time he had not believed him. But now that he
had seen it in real life....
The other thing that had caught Scurvy's attention was a weird looking
device. It was about the size of Scurvy and about as wide as 2 of him.
It was yellow and had two very deadly looking spikes sticking out of it.
Scurvy looked at the computer name of it.
"The Forklift!" Scurvy said in awe. He then noticed the top secret sign
above the padd. 'A new Confederation weapon!' Scurvy thought. He had
never read anything about this so that is what it had to be. And because
there was only 5 of them, Scurvy thought that they must be pretty
powerful.
Scurvy figured he better move on. He still hadn't reached Deck 25 and
his luck might run out. He preceded to the last five decks. The ladder
for that area was separated from the main area because it went five
decks down. When Scurvy reached Deck 25 he stepped out of the ladderway.
When he opened the door he thought he was in heaven. What stood before
him were five gigantic Confederate Cruisers standing side by side, wings
nearly touching each other. Scurvy looked at them in awe for a moment,
soaking up all the images he saw. He then quickly went over to the gate
and touched it.
'Ha!' He thought, 'they'll believe me now.' Scurvy began to walk back to
the ladder, but he lingered around the Cruisers. He had always loved
ships, and he might never have this opportunity to see one again. He
went over to the specs of the ship. They were impressive. So was its
armament.
Scurvy was then shocked to see that they were not only equipped with a
mass driver each, but with a forklift launcher and five forklifts each
also!
"Hey! You! What are you doing down here?" A voice shouted. Scurvy
figured it must be one of the guards. If he was caught, he would get in
really big trouble. He began to run. He had just gotten to the door of
the ladder chamber. He thought he was home free, but the guard had shot
him with his hand held phaser weapon. Scurvy fell backwards and hit his
head on the floor. Then everything went black. He wondered if he was
dead.
Scurvy awoke in the Medical office of the starbase. He found the doctor,
his father, the Captain, and a stranger looking at him. Scurvy knew he
was in big trouble, but he was yet unable to speak. His father beat him
to it.
"Son, why did you do it? After I told you not to...." His father trailed
off. He turned to the doctor. "Is he going to be alright?" he asked.
"Yes," the doctor said, "he has a mild concusion, but a few days in here
will fix that." He turned to Scurvy, "You'll probably have a splitting
headache for a few days. That'll teach you not to go snooping next
time." he said with a bit of amusement.
Scurvy noticed that the Captain and the stranger had been talking to
each other until now. The Captain spoke up.
"Sorry, but I'm afraid you two (he gestured to Scurvy's father and the
doctor) will have to leave while we speak to young Mark here."
Both Scurvy's father and the doctor nodded, as if they knew why they had
to leave, and left promptly.
The Captain turned to Scurvy. "You know, you caused quite a bit of
trouble today, Mark. And you found out a lot of things that you weren't
supposed to. Now we know you saw two weapons that are top secret, and we
can't let that information stay out in the open, so we have two options.
Now we usually don't let civilians do this but we have seen you. We
think you are right for the job. But of course you don't even know what
we are talking about yet, and even if you do, you wont realize what you
are doing for a few years to come." The Captain paused for a moment.
Then continued. "I better just get down to the just of it. Since you
have knowledge of secret weapons, you we can either A: Permanently brain
wash you, deleting any knowledge of this incident ever happening to you
or B: Use a short term Brain wash, and that will simply bury this memory
far into your neural pathways of your brain, and when we feel the time
is right, we will send out a radio signal to reveal those memories when
we need your help, for any reason. You will lead out the same life
either way, its just that with choice "B" we might be calling on you to
help us some day.
After some careful consideration Scurvy made his choice. (But that will
be revealed at a later time.)
When Scurvy's school group was in eighth grade, Scurvy had an
interesting turning point in his life. Scurvy, Peter, and Will were
walking in the corridor, when Will suddenly burst. He had told them
during school that he had the best news ever, but he couldn't tell them
until after school. He had then stayed silent, nearly torchering the
other two with his silence.
"Okay, guys, I can finally tell you." Will said.
"What!" They asked in unison.
"Well, two days ago I was in the bar talking to a Captain of an Argosy,
and he told me if I was interested in making a lot of money very easily,
and I said yes, so he told me to meet him in the bar yesterday. So when
I met him he said that all I had to do was relay a little coded message
to Paleshife on my computer and I would get 10,000 credits!" Will said,
excitedly.
Both Peter and Scurvy were very excited for a bit, but then they
remembered what their fathers had told them about doing things like that
for strangers. They both reminded Will of this.
"Who cares?" Will said, "it's 10,000 credits! And besides, I already
agreed to it, cant back out now can I?" Will left, a little sad that his
friends would jump on him like that.
The next day Will wasn't at school. All of his classmates thought that
he might be sick, but when he didn't come the next day they started to
get worried. The next day, every crew member did a ship wide search for
Will. He wasn't found anywhere. That was the last Scurvy saw of Will for
a long, long time.
Soon after Scurvy and them had finished high school, the station had
gotten a new entertainment device from Sol. It was called the
holographic generator. It was basically a large room where you could
tell the computer what you wanted to happen and it would literally
display it. You wanted to fly a ship, well just tell the computer that
and you could do that. Scurvy went there many times just to fly his very
own Corvette. Then one day, Scurvy and Peter were walking to Peter's
quarters.
"Hey," Peter said, "I found a really cool sim. for the HGG (short for
Holographic generator)."
"What is it?" Scurvy replied.
"Just wait and see." Peter said. They then went off to the HGG, leaving
Scurvy to wonder just what Peter had found until they had gotten there.
Peter told the computer to run the sim and they went it.
Inside, instead of just the bare room, was a giant battlefield. Peter
explained.
"It is a simulation of the great 2nd civil war of Earth. (The 2nd civil
war of Earth was claimed to be the bloodlyiest battle that Earth was
ever faced with, and though no one really knew what had started it, it
was rumored that it was started by a game of chess, where one of the
players accused the other of cheating, which eventually led to war) And
what's best of all is that we can fight in it. We wont get hurt though,
but still it's fun as hell."
While they were fighting in the reenactment, a computer voice suddenly
stopped them.
"Warning, HGG malfunction, warning." it said.
'I wonder what that was for?' Scurvy said. They continued there game and
after a few hours shut it off. What they didn't realize was that it
wasn't completely shut off.
When they walked outside, they came across hundreds of Confederate and
Rebellion soldiers, fighting each other and the crew.
"Ohhh, no!" they both cried in unison. It was two days they had to
endure this before the Chief Engineer could shut off the HGG. It wasn't
used again for a long time.
Scurvy and his group of now 4 studied their way through high school.
Considering that it was such a small class and that there teacher was
really enthusiastic of the 4 learning everything, Scurvy's class
excelled in everything. They were all straight A students and by the
time their high school and college level studies were over, they could
practically do anything they wanted to do.
One of the kids decided to become a doctor for the Confederation. He was
soon know throughout the Confederation, and ended up dying during the
second Confed/Rebel war, by steering his medical ship into a comet, that
if left alone, would have struck a key Confederation planet that would
eventually give birth to the man who would win the Third war, a hundred
years later. Strange how every little thing a person does effects
everything else in such a way.
Another kid had become an astronomer, studying the Stars of the outer
region of the universe, doing exactly that until the end of his days.
The only significant event he had was when he discovered the first Alien
ship in the outer reaches of the galaxy.
Peter Williamson went on his own way before Scurvy had a chance to ask
him, but he did promise he would keep in touch. But it was only years
later when Scurvy saw him again.
And Mark A. Scurvy decided to stay aboard Stardock Alpha. He was further
studying to become the Station's CE (Chief Engineer). Even though he
always had his passion for flying, he did also enjoy working on the
ships parts, and he would still be doing what he loved, even though it
was something different.