Anastasia Chance
Captain Anastasia Chance (a.k.a. Ana)
Anastasia Chance was born in the void thousands of light years from the nearest inhabited settlement, in the hold of a scow-freighter. Her mother fashioned herself to be an explorer, though her rap sheet claimed she did a lot more than just ‘explore.’ Anastasia never knew who her father was, but was never terribly concerned about it.
And so Anastasia grew up the daughter of the men and women who crewed the ships of the space ways, her mother always off on a new scheme or chasing down yet another lead that would actually lead to nothing more than even more trouble. She wasn’t a great mother, Anastasia knew that, but it didn’t stop her from loving the woman more than anything. Even more than that, she admired her.
And that’s not to say that Catherine Chance was a bad mother. Not at all. She was a loving, sweet woman who supported Anastasia and encouraged her in everything she ever showed interest in. She taught her everything she knew, and pushed her to develop as many skills and passions as possible, finding new people for the young girl to meet and learn from at every port of call, on every ship that they stepped foot upon.
They loved each other, there was no dispute in this matter. But, sometimes that was not enough. It took over a decade, but eventually her own passions caught up to Catherine, and the law came calling. When Anastasia was eleven years old, Catherine was captured and executed for “defiling a holy site” (grave robbing), leaving Anastasia with a crew that she barely knew.
For a time they took care of her and let her do small jobs in an attempt to pay her way, but it wasn’t long before the crew simply couldn’t afford to let her ride for free. So for the next two years she flew from one end of inhabited space to the other, stowing away on larger ships where she could sneak food and water without drawing attention, or serving as a cabin steward or other lowly position when she had to.
While aboard one of these ships, it came under attack as it tried to smuggle contraband through contested space. The ship was fired upon, disabled, and boarded. The crew was slaughtered by the soldiers, while Ana was terrified and hidden in between the bulkheads. She stays there for hours as they ransack the ship, and hours more terrified that they might still be on the ship.
Finally she ventures out to see the carnage. Parts of the ship were in vacuum, the crew their dead from suffocation, while others were the scenes of gruesome massacres. The ship was adrift and she’s the only survivor. Afraid that activating the distress beacon will just bring the attackers back, she has no choice but to hope that someone else just happens upon the ship.
After days of waiting and crying and feeling helpless, she realizes that nobody was going to rescue her, it’s all up to her. So she began to teach herself how to make the repairs needed to get the ship’s engines back online, and how to fly the cargo hauler.
Weeks passed. She read all of the ship manuals, spending every waking hour learning the bare minimum skills to save herself. She gathered the corpses of the crew into the now empty cargo hold, giving them a cobbled together funeral service, using names she took from the crew manifest. Finally, she began to make the repairs to the engines as best she can, though lacking any real expertise or experience, and doing it by herself, it’s barely even a bandaid.
But it’s enough. After two months of solitude aboard the ship of the dead, she reactivates its fusion drive. Using the pre-programmed jump coordinates, she made the jump through the Collapse and arrives, safe and alive, in the Crossroads System, the ship’s engines dying for the last time as soon as they return to real space.
Flipping on the distress beacon, she suited up in a stolen EVA suit and waited on the hull for the system patrol craft to respond. It took a few hours, but eventually they tow the ship to Hecate. As they get into range of the docks, Ana unlatched from the hull and maneuvers into another open dock, the chaos of the busy port hiding her.
The ship was a mystery, a modern day Mary Celeste. The conventional wisdom was that the ship was attacked, the crew spaced, and the ship’s computer simply completed its journey. But skeptics point to weird things like the lack of blood in the ship where combat had obviously taken place, the makeshift repairs on the engines, and the lack of any real records. Maybe a mutiny? News stories report a variety of different stories, one or two actually getting it pretty close, but many painting stories of alien abductions and ghost ships in the dark.
It’s not too long after Ana made it aboard the station that it’s locked down because of pirate raids, the only ships arriving being a handful of desperate blockade runners delivering basic supplies and refugees from the Wars. Ana slips in to one of these refugee camps, and goes unnoticed for a while. But as the attacks were repelled and the pirates eliminated, the station bureaucracy catches up to the influx of refugees. In time, the camps were catalogued, and Ana was moved to an orphanage, where she meets Sam.
Eventually, she made her way to Hecate Station, and the port revealed itself to be the trap it was. For months the station came under attacks from various sources, making travel impossible. For a while Anastasia was able to avoid notice because of the chaos that erupted during every attack, but over time the station and its inhabitants grew more used to the violence. And so, inevitably, she was picked up by the local security firms and turned over to the orphanage system.
It’s here that she met Samiya Styles, a girl a few years younger than her who had similarly spent years surviving on her own after her own parents had left her to die. They had a lot in common, and in their common pain they formed a close bond, quickly becoming inseparable.
Unfortunately, it was not to last. Anastasia could never dampen her wanderlust, the void ever calling to her, the space ways always drawing her back out into the black. Samiya, on the other hand, had never known anything outside of Hecate, and because of her own traumas could not stand the thought of leaving its confines. So they parted ways, Anastasia finding work on various freighters and even combat vessels, saving money in the hopes of one day captaining her own ship.
Their parting was not what Ana had wanted it to be. They both cared deeply for each other, more deeply than either of them really realized, and this emotional depth revealed itself through anger. They argued and yelled at each other, Sam accusing Ana of never caring for her or Mika and abandoning them, just like all of their parents had. Ana, taken aback, was furious at the accusation and the comparison. It was an ugly split, and one that caused an emotional rift between the two for years.
Over the years, Ana would send out a few messages to Sam to attempt some sort of reconciliation, even apologizing in one of them. But when Sam didn’t reply, she became angry again, and the rift grew. When we meet the two, they haven’t spoken in a decade, and the resentment from that alone seems almost insurmountable. Despite that, though, Ana wasn’t really angry anymore. She sees what Sam was angry about, how she might have viewed her leaving as abandoning them. She’s sad, and still misses her more than anything, but was also proud. It’s only when she hears Sam was in mortal danger that she returns to find her, putting all other disputes aside to help the person she loves most in the universe.
The two talk when possible, though that seems to be less and less often. Today Anastasia did indeed finally come to captain her own ship, the Naegling, hiring herself out as a privateer vessel that patrols the systems of Hecate and surrounding systems. She finds herself back in port in Hecate at least once a year, but exactly when was impossible to predict.
Relationships
An intelligent woman who dreamt of owning her own ship her enitre life. Now she captains the Naegling, a mercenary ship traveling from system to system looking to help those in need while making a buck.
Current Location
the Naegling
Year of Birth
2656
32 Years old
Spouses
Siblings
Children
Current Residence
the Naegling
Gender
Female
Eyes
Black
Hair
Black
Height
5'7"
Weight
165 lbs
Owned Vehicles
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