As a young man, Zieg earned distinction as a UEE fighter pilot and was widely viewed as an up-and-comer who would go far in the ranks.  This changed after one of his few actual friends was brought up on charges of sedition and collusion with enemy factions.  Zieg knew Rainer had disagreements with the system of government in the UEE, but he was also an absolute patriot and proud to defend humanity.  Through some slightly less-than-legal digging, Zieg found that the evidence used to convict and execute his friend had been fabricated.  Zieg's efforts to bring this to light resulted in him being ostracized and eventually driven out of the service for "Conduct Unbecoming an Officer".  It was only through the intervention of his former commander that Zieg entered the civilian world with enough money intact to start a new life.

 

Thoroughly disillusioned with the UEE by that experience, Zieg drifted from one place to another, taking only the occasional escort contract to keep his Aurora flying.  The world he'd built his life around had been turned inside out.  The UEE beaurocracy had been revealed as a corrupt, politically-driven, and power-mad entity that would ruthlessly destroy anyone daring to speak out.  His beloved military was staffed at the top by toadying cowards who cared more about currying the political favor to maintain their lavish lifestyles than protecting the troops under their command.  Zieg would have just continued to drift, circling the drain until something pushed him over the edge.  He would have, but sometimes fate comes calling.  Sometimes fate even looks like a pirate.

 

Nearly two years after being expelled from the service, Zieg was filling a typical merchant escort contract along with two other mercs when they received a distress signal from a nearby cluster of asteroids.  A transport was under attack by a pack of pirates, too much for its pair of escorts.  Normally, Zieg would have been punching up his thrusters along with his employer and the other mercs, but he'd pulled up the transport's manifest on a whim.  The pirates were attacking a transport full of colonists bound for the an outer world.  There was no equipment or goods of value aboard that transport, and the pirates had to know it.  They were slavers.

Sometimes good men go bad.  Sometimes the 'verse beats them down so much that they say, "To hell with it," and turn down darker paths.  But more often people just go to sleep.  They walk and talk, even fly and fight, but they're not awake, not truly aware of themselves, much less the world around them.  The 'verse is cold and brutal, so they wander through life just trying to ignore as much of it as possible.  However, the right spark can wake a sleeper, and Zieg's spark was the memory of a good man and a life taken by bastards drunk on power.

 

Zieg's now-former employer and other mercs continued away at full-burn, and the transport's two escorts were destroyed by the time Zieg reached the battle.  They'd done well for civvies:  The pirates had brought two Auroras and a 300i no doubt looted from another victim, and only one of the Auroras was still intact while the 300 limped back towards whatever base they'd come from.  If there hadn't been a Cutlass hidden among the asteroids, the transport and its escorts might have been victorious.  The crippled 300 continued away as Zieg raced towards the transport, its pilot certain that the remaining two ships could easily handle one more ragged Aurora.  He lasted longer than his comrades purely by virtue of being further away.

 

That day rekindled the spirit that originally led Zieg to join the military:  Monsters, both alien and human, prey on the their weaker victims with abandon, and only the strongest warriors can protect the innocent.  Gone, however, is the naivete that the UEE was on the protector side.  While they fight Vanduul and outlaws, they do so out of selfishness, to protect what the Empire claims as its own, not out of any altruism or sense of duty to the people.  In then end, the UEE is just a monster that happens to fight other monsters now and then.  Gone too is the childish notion of "fighting the good fight".  Raiders, slavers, or politicians who sentence an innocent man to death, they're all just monsters, and only a fool fights fair or shows mercy to a monster.

 

 

 

"I don't 'catch bad guys'.  Do you know what happens when you 'catch' one of those monsters?  Not a damn thing.  A week, a month, a year, however long it takes, as soon as they're free, they go right back to destroying lives.  No, I do what has to be done to make the 'verse a little safer.  I put an end to things that hurt good people, and it doesn't matter what anyone think of me.  If I have to wade through an ocean of blood to save one innocent life, so be it."