Somewhat Like a Brother
(The Early Adventures of Biff and Montague)
At the age of 5, Jonathan "Biff" Bradford Kroger III and parents were beset upon by
marauders during space travel. Unknown to his family, Kroger II had a staunch
reputation as a smuggler, and these rivals had decided to eliminate a feared competitor.
Just before the ship was broken up, Kroger II secured Biff in a vaccsuit.
The marauders found Biff clutching a chunk of debris, and was spared. What followed
was 3 years of cabin boy service with the smugglers, where he was told about his father’s
secret business.
A diplomatic party making contact on an isolated dessert planet, found 8 year old Biff
wandering the wasteland- dehydrated and exhausted.
The party’s leader, Lord Algernon Watwatley, took the boy into his family. Biff was
raised as a son to him and his wife Maud, and had a brother in the Watwatley’s charming,
intelligent son, Montague.
The little boy never volunteered how it was he came to be on that dessert, and talks little
about his life before being saved by Lord Watwatley.
Montague eventually became fond of the little dessert rat that had become his pet. As
they grew into adulthood, he found Biff’s physical aptitudes and streetwise machinations
to be praised, and more than once saved him from the unimagineable.
From:
Musings of a Prodigy
By Montague Anstruther Watwatley