how did he escape? and what did you mean by "something else"?

How did he escape? Punched through a goddamn wall and took off in one of my own heavy cruiser, thats how!

And do I have to spell it out for you? He was Marksman to the core. I'd never seen someone that lifeless yet still alive. He gave me chills just knowing he was imprisoned in the same system as me.

i thought you said he escaped out of your hands? how did you even almost capture a marksman in the first place?

I said he escaped out of my hands figuratively. My men, under my direction, had imprisoned him deep within one of my secret bases. He broke out and escaped on my own ship. How did I capture him? Luck, son, complete luck. We came upon him while he was asleep, injected him with a tranquilizer before he even woke up, and he still managed to kill three of my men. Three! The stars help us if he had been awake when we found him. He fought more like a caged animal than a man.

what kind of ship do you own?

what were you doing when you found kol? where did you find him?

[i got a question though. i thought that the guy (whatever his actual name is) switched identities during a battle, after he was badly burned. you referred to him as the jackal. why does everyone who knew him earlier know him as kol?]

[after the jackal, but before ADMIRAL kol. refer back to the Sinners part 2 teaser...o no! its not there. refer back to the part where Kol comes into contact with the leader of the Marksmen. The leader said in 2 years they would come back and take Kol. well, in two years that will happen. and kol, after being captured by the Vasari (cliffhanger ending, will happen next chapter), and THEN being captured by the Advent (who consequently help him escape the Vasari), he will be captured AGAIN by the Marksman. And be indoctrinated. poor, poor man. i think i've given away a little too much here. i wont say more! but i hope that answers your question.]

[actually, its AFTER admiral kol. once kol becomes a marksman in spirit instead of just name/gets kidnapped by the Vasari, a new Admiral is announced and Kol is no longer the Admiral. and when my character meets him, he's simply a Marksman (tho theres nothing simple about that). hope THAT answered ur question ha.]

Me? A heavy cruiser. Best in the line. Faster than the average TEC cruiser too, because of the turbo engines I installed. It gets me from point A to point B. And behind me I leave the burning debris of a few TEC fleets. What was I doing when I found Kol? I was infiltrating an enemy ship. Unmarked. Which is, if you didn't know, impossible these days. Either you're TEC, Vasari, or pirate. But this one was something else....once we burned through the hull we found a terrified crew that were already binding themselves to the walls. They pointed us to Kol's sleeping quarters. Funny thing, it was almost like they wanted us to take him. Haha.....I couldn't imagine what that monster had threatened he would do to that crew to make them fly him around. I don't know what he was doing out there, and I don't care. I was performing a simple infiltration, and I got that monster of a problem on my hands. Bloody worst day of my life.

thats a great story. were the people on that ship human? was this before or after the advent invasion?

how many men are under your command?

They were human, yes. Advent? Oh, they were around, but they were new. Maybe a few months prior to the kidnapping was when they arrived. And do you honestly think I'd tell you who was under my command? Have you even identified yourself? What makes you think I trust you enough to tell you that?

[i'll give you a hint, since its been a few days. ask about how he call travel anywhere in the universe in only hours. in what should take years, or even decades.]

[but he never mentioned that... how are we supposed to know about that... ok fine i'll bite]

how is it possible for you to travel anywhere in the galaxy in hours instead of years?

[quote who="C.I." reply="224" id="2452874"] [forums did go boom! ha. and correct, it is a he but he is not TEC, not exactly]

Well if I told you that I'd have the TEC breathing down my neck faster than I could say supernova. But don't worry, no matter where I am, I can be anywhere else within a matter of hours. Anywhere.[/quote]

[he did say it ]

Ha, wouldn't you like to know? Ah, well I can't resist telling this little story. Everyone has their leader, the one who they take orders from. I am no exception. My boss is the elusive Commander Eon. You may have heard of him, he's the Trade Order's Public Enemy #1, if they ever start caring about that again. He's also the leader of all the pirate gangs. The Crusaders, under my command, are his favorite and most elite group. What we can do, no one else can do. So one day Commander Eon ordered us to perform a grab-and-run at planet X-4, the old Advent planet. It was still radioactive due to the Advent's chemicals that they had left for any Traders wanting to look around, but we stole some special suits off of a Trader private cargo and flew down. The planet's surface was barren, rock hard and dusty. Bare. Whatever civilization had once lived on it was utterly gone, caput. {character pauses} But then we found the caves.

At first all we saw was a darkness around a portion of a mountain. Going closer to examine it, we found an enormous tunnel carved into the planet, large enough for spaceships to fly through. We hurried down and found....well, we're calling it X, but its a mineral the likes of which has never been seen before. Large piles of the stuff were connected up to large machines that were dark and dusty. Obviously these minerals had been powering whatever sick, twisted society the Advent run.

We brought the X mineral back to base--not telling you where that is, we still use it as an outpost--and our scientists tried to study it. Well, we captured some scientists and brought them in. Had to kill them after they were done, but I'm sure you don't care about that. No, you care about what those scientists discovered. The X mineral had the energy of a hundred nuclear bombs, and I'm not talking about the little ones used on planets back in the day. I'm talking about the warship let's-blow-up-a-system-with-one-bomb nuclear bombs. Our next step was obvious. We harvested an incredibly small amount of the X mineral's energy and placed it into a missile. We then detonated that missile in an empty plasma field, to see how it worked.

We could never have predicted the outcome.

At first we thought nothing had happened, and we returned to our base, disapointed. The next day however....we were carrying the X mineral through the plasma storm when it suddenly started shining. A wormhole formed in the center of the plasma storm, just like that! A wormhole! It took less than a minute. Once the ship containing the X mineral left, however, the wormhole closed. Over the next several months we studied this carefully. We found that we could control the destination of the wormhole by releasing different amounts of X mineral energy. We traveled back to planet X-4 and brought back shiploads of the stuff. Now every pirate commander has a small piece of X mineral with him, enough to get him at least a couple systems away in an emergency. Because releasing the mineral's energy opens a wormhole anywhere. And it leads to anywhere. Haha...shaking now, aren't you? Trembling? You never knew the pirates had such power as this. If we cared to, we could open a wormhole to the Central Worlds themselves and rain death down upon the Trade Order Council. But we make our demands, and with this war our bounty hunters are booming in business. Besides. most pirate commanders only have a small piece of X mineral, enough for only an emergency jump. I however.....I am in control of the X mineral stockpile, so I have unlimited power. Don't forget, X mineral energy doesn't just open wormholes...it destroys planets.

[hey, give the mineral a real name, please]

how do you control your destination?

[was in a hurry. the pirates wont have a name for it, but the Advent sure will. Don't have the quote exactly, but the Advent decided that this was the time to return and attack the TEC partly because the special minerals of their planet had run out. I'm elaborating on that. The pirates, and maybe the TEC as well, will only call it X.]

That, my friend, is a secret.

a secret. really? come on, how can that information hurt you anymore than telling us about the mineral did in the first place?

Because if you get a hand on some of th crystals, you'd be able to use them....and I'm not enough of an idiot to let that happen. Not yet. You must prove yourself first.