Sharp wasn't always like this. He had joined the Spartan terrestrial defense forces younger than he should have, under pressure from his high school after conflict with local authority, but he hadn't always been like this. They'd originally thought it would straighten him out or something - and to be fair, it actually had - but he certainly, definitely, absolutely hadn't always been like this.

When he was growing up, Isaac Wilkinson had a bit of a thing for chaos, pyrotechnics, and disorder; this had made him the black sheep of his family, his class, and his generation, and after one especial debacle of a prank with some highly illegal fireworks had almost threatened the primary life support systems of his town's hab-dome on Sparta, the police had gotten involved. He went from being socially short sighted and erratic to being actively anti-authority overnight once he'd been processed, and was involved with law enforcement repeatedly from then until the end of his academic career. He was not by any means an unintelligent boy and had, until his last warning and first arrest, maintained enough good academic standing and reputation to have at least a shot with the planet's premier university - but a criminal record utterly disbars you from that. The judge had given him the choice of imprisonment and forced labour, or one last chance to prove himself with military service. Anarchist tendencies aside I did mention that Isaac wasn't a stupid boy, and forced labour didn't seem like his kind of thing.

The marines straightened him out. Like a piece of steel.

He spent eight years in the Spartan Orbital Marine corps, serving with the combat engineers and occasionally serving as an impromptu EOD Officer when the situation called for it - though that did not happen frequently. In these years he learnt to appreciate the direction that Man can take from authority, and eventually conceded that taking orders wasn't always such a bad thing; this improved his relationships with his comrades spectacularly and he quickly wound up being invited on squad nights out. He made friends that he had expected would be lifelong, saw some real action suppressing piracy in the region and so on, and generally grew as a person - including acquiring his first proper nickname, though he won't tell you how he got it.

He was 26, finally had a good family life when he was on leave, had earned the respect of his father, and was even dating. He'd matured.

He'd grown up, and he loved it.

But he still wasn't like... well, like this. The Sharp in the Marines was a clean shaven, reasonably weedy but still toned, moderately attractive young man with bright eyes and a fast, intuitive mind. He had been one of the coolest, levelest, sharpest heads in the regiment (once the training regimen had smoothed him out), and almost never panicked. He'd gotten a reputation for being deceptively calm when dealing with explosives on the back of this, to the point where he was one of the few demolitions operatives whom you couldn't rely on for the old adage 'don't ask demo-men why they're running, just follow them' because he basically never did. The Sharp you'd find now is a twitchy, mumbling, muttering wreck of a paranoiac who compulsive-obsessively wires his own quarters with antipersonnel mines and considers every living thing (and then some) to be a potential hostile.

The Tour Ball is a hell of an event. It's the end to the military social season in peacetime, and sees attendance from most or all of the army and navy officers in the system, drawing all to the glory of New Corinth for wining, dining, and dance as it marks the end of one group's end of duty. By this point a Corporal in the marines, Sharp was no exception; he and his squad attended, some with dates, and were given seats at their CO's table. They'd been to this event before - Sharp 4 times, in fact - but tonight would be different.

As usual, after six or so hours of moderate to heavy drinking, the evening began to blur. High society and the enlisted men sort of generally separated themselves to different sorts of entertainment and things continued in the same downwards but hilarious and usually wholesome alcohol-warmed spiral. Until somebody spiked the keg his squad was drinking from.

They'd heard the rumours of press-ganging PMCs predating on military social events, looking to snap up the marines who were on their way out of the forces, but since they didn't personally know anybody who'd gone missing yet they didn't put much stock in it - and certainly you'd have to be mad to try that at the Tour Ball. But his squad were, at least mostly, about to retire to civilian life, and somebody was indeed mad enough to try it at the Tour Ball.

The Londinium Free Companies were better known as the Bastards of Britannia, a brutally effective private military corporation known for copious human rights abuses, low standards for officership, and a willingness to engage in 'recruitment' outside of their legal zone of mandate. To their credit, the wages were fairly good since lots of troops didn't survive til pay day, and you did technically get to see the galaxy - but against their credit, they're a press ganging bunch of shits with a legal clause in the recruitment contract allowing for a 'suitable representative' to sign it in case of 'recruit incapacity', and a stunning lack of ethics even for a mercenary gang. Lots of idiots sign up willingly and go on to become the marginally better equipped 1st-15th Londinium Free Companies. Lots of poor sods are found blackout drunk or get drugged and spiked, and get signed up by the aforementioned suitable representatives instead, forming the 16th-30th Londinium Free Companies - who are mostly cannon fodder.

The morning after blacking out, Sharp woke up to a splitting headache, blood all over his face, and this poster.



He and his squad were on a starship in the middle of a drill, on their way to a training camp in a hot zone somewhere in the buffer territory between Knossos and the Caliphate, and they were not happy. It was explained to them reasonably quickly that under certain laws dictating behaviour aboard starships designated as fighting vessels, they were welcome to try and fight their predicament if they didn't mind being evicted via the airlock without vaccsuits the very moment their drill trip ended - or being las-shot to death trying. Their situation was not explicitly claimed to be legal, nor were their contracts explicitly said to be binding - but they also weren't said not to be, and in the face of the airlock-alternative they'd been presented, their NCO decided they were best served by shutting up, at least for now. They could register legal complaints and such when they were planetside, or, failing that, start up a plan to find another way out of the situation.

They didn't get that far.

Within a week of finishing the three day 'bootcamp' troopers with known past military experience were expected to complete, half the squad had been killed by technically-rogue caliphate radicals or by artillery fire therefrom, another quarter had been executed by PMC officers during the resulting escape attempt... and the final quarter had, in the absence of any other opportunity to get out of it presenting itself, decided to get on with the business of war, and plot revenge later.

Of these men, only Sharp survived. The rest were killed by ambush tactics during the subsequent pushes, wherein companies 16-30 were used to clear the path for the former, fresher, livelier companies 1-15. Sharp lived through it solely by the mercy of luck, copious combat stimulants and coffee, and an almost total absence of sleep. This paranoia, this anxiety, this sad state of living - it slowly seeped into him over the next year. It dripped through his heart and froze him, then it smashed through his soul and shattered the frozen form into pieces. More than once he woke up to find he had been saved from knife-wielding attackers during the night by shaped charges and claymore-pattern antipersonnel mines he had planted in his own tent. Time and time again he took life, time and time again he lost friends. Isaac Wilkinson was slowly stripped away until only Sharp remained. The squad itself was stripped away, member by member, until only Sharp remained.

The contracts they issue only last two years, but it was enough. When they offered him a repeat contract with double pay and a spot in the 4th Company instead, he denied politely - which is to say he screamed at them in a language he didn't actually know, tore up and ate the contract, and fled. He made his way home to Sparta, only to find that the man he had become didn't fit in any more. He couldn't sleep without knowing he had something bulletproof between him and the door, doubled by frag grenade based improvised proximity mines and motion sensors - which made seeing his girlfriend again utterly impossible, since she slept lightly and needed a solid 8 hours nightly.

After one final outburst in public he was told by the hab police that he wasn't welcome in his family home any more, and asked to find passage offworld or risk fines.

He couldn't afford the fines. Now he just wants to stay free, make some money, and keep flying.