Jerri's background
fionn320 posted the backstory for Brian Trinh. Here's the story for Jerrika Lang. Cut for content. References to torture, rape and other violent nastiness.
I was born on Ariel. My mother died when I was too young to remember her, my father, Joshua Lang, owned Adeptio Consulting, one of the top security technologies companies on the planet. I was his only child, and he was a doting father. I grew up running tame in his offices, learned the intricacies of locks and alarms, vaults and firewalls while most other children were learning to read. By the time I was 14, there was scarcely a place or file on the planet that I couldn't access, if I wanted it badly enough.
My father was the best there was when it comes to protecting other peoples things, but wasn't a whiz with money. So when Blue Sun forced his company under, we had no reserves. We sold the house and used what little we had left to make a push out to the rim. Set up housekeeping on a backwater planet called Jiangyin. Not much call for an electronics expert out on the border planets, so we set ourselves up as J&J Lang Locksmithing and Security, and made a basic subsistence living. It didn't allow for the pretty things or fancy toys I once had, but we were doing well enough. Then came the message. One of my father's former clients on Ariel had purchased a new estate on Bellerophon, and wanted him to come consult on the security. I wanted to go with him, but someone had to stay home and tend the shop. So Papa wasn't here when the slavers came.
They swept in with blasters and guns, and killed all the little children, the old, and anyone who put up a fight. I didn't fight, I hid. Some days, I wished I had fought. They found me and threw me in a cage, took my tools, my clothes, my boots. Then they singled me out and took me to a room with a bed and restraints. My situation was made clear by the man waiting there: young, pretty, no useful skills I was willing to admit to. I could be sold off in a batch lot to terraforming crews or mining interests or I could… cooperate. I'd actually be fed, and protected from further excesses from the guards. I'd receive some "training" and go to be the "pet" of some rich man. Then he raped me.
"It's going to happen whether you cooperate or not, sweetheart. Best get used to it and make the best of your situation."
I'm pretty sure that what wound up happening was hardly the best of the situation. Sir Alton Walker of Persephone considered himself a man of refined and exclusive tastes, for whom the ordinary would never do, a connoisseur of the finest foods, intoxicants, collectibles and amusements that money could buy. The human "toys" that cycled through his home died at an alarming rate, but somehow I survived the tortures. He delighted in several variations on the theme: locking a subject in a dark room and splashing them with ice water at irregular, but frequent intervals for days on end, until the sleep deprivation hallucinations kicked in, locking subjects into a hyperbaric chamber and increasing the pressure and turning out the lights, electric shocks, involuntary response conditioning... Oh, never anything that would leave physical scars - that would be wasteful, he would no more mar the flesh than he would gouge a line in the finish of one of his pieces of genuine Earth-That-Was furniture, unless of course he had tired of one of us and had ordered a replacement. Sometimes that meant that he'd give us away as a favor at one of the depraved parties he played host to. Sometimes he would do worse.
I'd seen the signs that he was losing interest, I was being selected for parties more often than his sessions, and the latter were becoming less and less frequent. That was why I was on the party floor the night a guest who had had a bit too much to drink made a error in judgement, and cut me. I'd seen that happen before, too. The offending guest was politely but firmly removed from the party, as if he were an adolescent who had broken an antique vase. I was removed too, salves and oils applied to the wound, with Sir Walker checking in periodically to see if it would leave a scar. When it did, I knew that I wasn't going to be given away. You can't give damaged goods as a gift, after all.
Three years at his mercy had left me wounded, but not broken. When I was sent to be groomed for that final "session," I managed to palm a hair pin, so that when he pulled out his knives to use them on me, I was ready. I managed to finesse the lock on the manacles while he wasn't looking, and got enough play in the sizing to slip free. He turned back to me.
"I've recently discovered the works of a philosopher by the name of Shan Yu. Let me read you a bit from this book- it's fascinating! He says 'Live with a man 40 years, share his house, his meals, speak on every subject. Then tie him up and hold him over the volcano's edge. And on that day you will finally meet the man.' So, my pet, tonight, I finally get to meet the real you."
He wasn't particularly strong or robust. He always had "handlers" to help him until we were safely restrained, so, once I was out of the restraints, in the soundproofed room, I had a chance, as long as I could keep him away from the door and the com button. I managed to get my hands on one of the knives, and I killed him.
I cleaned out his safe, there was some money, and a couple of firearms. I stole some clothes so I wouldn't be naked, climbed out the third story window, and made a run for the Eavesdown Docks. I had just enough cash to buy some more clothes, a few tools, a new pair of secondhand boots, and to book passage back to Jiangyin on a Firefly class transport called Kitsune .
Captain Trinh wasn't used to a ship carrying passengers, but we got along better once I established that if he wanted to be my employer, he could start by offering to pay me. I started to trust him the night he rescued Xi from her uncle, and the night I cried in his arms in the ruins of a home that was shattered beyond recognition, we started to become friends. Yes, he's very attractive, but I have no desire to give anyone the wrong impression of our relationship. I'm his first officer, and his friend. Besides, he's still in love with a dead woman. And I've got issues...
Character traits of Jerrika's that have crystallized: She's selfish, thus, rather than being sympathetic to the plight of someone else, she looks the other way, to avoid the inevitable pain that comes from empathy. And it is going to take a direct order from Captain Trinh to get her to teach anyone else ANYTHING about computers or electronics, because she's afraid that if someone else learns it, she becomes disposable. She's way more than half in love with Brian, but doesn't admit it. Even to herself. After all, why would someone who was engaged to a pretty, polished doctor want to have anything to do with a scruffy little escaped slave. Besides, she wouldn't want to give anyone the impression that she was his doxy, and she knows quite well what it would look like.