Meet the Black Throats

Though you suffered disgrace

and sorrow grieved me,

though I was outlawed and you dishonoured,

joyful revenge will now proclaim us happy.

The rumour went that they got their name from that time they were accused of slicing open the throats of a bunch of tourists who had foolishly wandered into the wrong section of a hangar bay, probably in the wrong station and the wrong system too. But, anyway, when they found them the blood had turned black and all that was left was some poor dead souls a long way from home.

The Black Throats is not what the authorities had wanted to call them but as news spread of the murders the public and the press picked up on the Black Throat name and it kind of stuck. For weeks after the Black Throat Murders people were outraged but they'd never find them.

A loose brotherhood of thieves, wanderers, villains, outlaws and other lost souls in reality they number approximately fifty odd members, scattered to the winds and with a very small core leadership that nobody ever hears of. From the outside looking in and if you believe the press cuttings and mass hysteria they number in the thousands and they have members in every corporation in New Eden and with contacts in every space station that you ever wish to visit.

They have no banner and some of those who are classed as Black Throats probably don't even know who the Black Throats are in the first place.

An extension of the rumour suggests that at the top of the brotherhood are three unknown murderous capsuleers who control and instruct their membership in the trafficking of narcotics, people, weapons and other contraband. The Black Throats are for the most part just everyday citizens who have fallen into a dark circle that they have no escape from. They are paid quite handsomely by those upstairs for the work that they do, they are never short on Kredits or gear and equipment, it is a lifestyle choice, a movement. They don't care for the luxuries.

They don't fly spaceships like the gods of New Eden, they have no means to do such a thing, instead preferring to piggy-back across New Eden in any way they can, as hired crew, as stowaways and hitchhikers. They are opportunists and they will live in the places that things are not meant to live in--factories, the structures of space stations, abandoned reprocessing units, old bars, anywhere that they can sleep for a day or two and then piss and shit in they will call it home until it is time to move on.

Jimmy is a mixed race Jovian-Caldari man just out of his teens, with the most striking fluorescent yellow hair and in keeping with his Jovian ancestry the yellowest skin you have ever seen. He is short, like all Jovians, perhaps five foot with his boots on. He wears worn black denim bottoms that look like if he takes them off at night they'll crawl away and he wears a dark grey t-shirt that was probably once white. His grungy clothes a million miles away from his pure and almost marble-like yellow skin. Nobody knows much of how he escaped the secrecy of the Jove Empire, the others just assume that he is an outcast who was kicked out because of his mixed race.

"Hey, come on man," said Jimmy, kicking his scuffed boots on the rusted table leg below him.

"You're a fucking liar, Dagger!"

Dagger is the leader of the group, maybe just in his thirties, he is the blackest and meanest Brutor man this side of the Golgothan Fields. Everybody said he should have gone into the capsuleer programme but he never did, always putting off the calling until it was too late. He is angry with himself because of this but he never talks of it, you just sense it with him. He has cold black eyes hidden far back in the deep shadows of his eye sockets. He has so many tattoos that it is difficult to differentiate between what is black skin and what is a tribal emblem, inked skull or other marking. He has the smoothest bald head and he always dons a long black trench coat. Dagger is the kind of man who looks like he has just murdered his parents. He stands close to seven feet tall, he always sports a full and scruffy beard.

"Fuck you Yellow!"

The steel walkway clanked in the cavernous bottom of the station underbelly. Jimmy and Dagger could be seen just ahead under the flicker of the makeshift lighting piece that was crudely constructed above their heads, its orange glow forming a tiny spot in this vast block of darkness.

Zilly strode into the warm orange glow, her breath spiking in the cold air, the two men acknowledging her arrival with a quick nod before they carried on with their card game, the rusty hands of the Brutor a stark contrast to the bright yellow fingers of the Jovian mongrel, both clutching at their greasy cards.

"I could have been anyone," snapped Zilly with an air of annoyance rasping in her voice.

Dagger, with his eyes still fixed on his cards in his right hand half-heartedly raises his left in apology.

"The flight data suggests there will be activity sometime later today, there's a shipment docking for resupply that we really need to hit," says Zilly, her voice now softened.

"Cargo is as yet unknown."

Zilly, a Sebiestor runaway teen, perhaps close to twenty now but with a head much wiser than her youthful frame would suggest. She is five foot five of attitude, angsty, a little bit of punk here and there scattered with a sprinkling of strength, for she is well-trained in the art of hand-to-hand combat. Nobody in the group messes with Zilly. Her pale skin, so youthful and fresh, she oozes beauty and boy does she know it. Her head shaved at the sides with a strip of floppy blackish-blue hair growing long down the middle.

Zilly pulled up a wooden crate and sat at the table with the two men. Her black leather jacket creaked as she placed her elbows on the table, stuck full of various buttons and patches of badness and a large electric white skull patch stitched at the top of her right shoulder pad, the myriad of silver zippers catching the dim light above. She watched the men play out what she had decided was now a staring contest.

Suddenly the station started to rumble and the docking alarms could be heard in the distance faintly wailing their familiar sound. Zilly jumped up abruptly and then shot off into the empty black corridors. Jimmy and Dagger soon following, abandoning their little orange space that they had called home.

The trio snake down the maze of twisting beams and metal flooring, Zilly stops and turns on her heels facing the two men.

"Oh yeah I forgot to mention, Julio is on board."

Without another word they quicken their step and disappear like little black dots.



MB.