I remember when I was a little girl -- back before Mum left, and before my little brother got big enough to fight back -- Dad took us on a trip to Gallente Prime.
This was a big deal back then: he had just retired from his Navy service and had stumbled into politics rather by accident than by intent. He'd simply been a victim of saying, 'Somebody ought to...' one too many times, and one of his old drinking buddies finally responding, 'So why don't you?' Mum had been enamoured of Dad's position in the Navy when they'd met, hooked up and married, but wasn't too keen on the shift; she said a regional planetary governor's position was hardly noteworthy after Dad's service record.
But Dad had ideas. He'd spent thirty years of his life in service to the Federation, and felt he could better help his people from the ground they walked than from a station looking down on them. Mom was not one to suffer in silence, and things were just beginning to break down between them.
From his modest governor's salary, Dad scraped together enough to charter a private Exequror-class cruiser from Athinard to Luminaire. He booked tours of historic monuments and museums all over the system, got a hotel room not too far from the Crystal Boulevard so he could take Mum shopping. For what we had at the time, he really went all-out.
The flight there took a while, since they didn't want us to get sick during warp. I was supposed to be paying attention to my tutor, but what I really wanted was to be stood with my nose pressed to the forward viewscreen, watching nebula-dust flash past. Too bad the VI noticed and gave me a mild static shock through my tablet stylus to get my attention.
I tended to get zapped a lot in class. 'Head always in the stratosphere, need to bring you back down to earth,' the Virtual Instructor had said when I complained, once.
My brother Val had been all excited about going to the places we'd only heard about through class and docudramas. Me? We were in space. SPACE! It was my first dream come true, and I had to attend classes as usual even though we were on holiday. How unfair was that?!
But lessons were over soon enough, a jump or two before our destination, and I could not get away fast enough. At some point, Dad joined me in the forward lounge on the level below the bridge, where I stood with my hands and face pressed against the transparent material, oblivious to everything but the stars.
He ruffled my shoulder-length mass of red curls. 'Pretty, isn't it?'
I nodded without taking my eyes from the view, utterly entranced.
I heard him take a seat in one of the chairs behind me. 'I used to stare through my skylight at night when I was your age, and wish I could be out here. Six years later, they let me into the Navy, and I never regretted making that wish come true.'
'Is piloting even better than this, Daddy?'
He chuckled. 'As different as this is from riding in a hovercar. Down here, we're just along for the ride. But up there on the bridge, the captain and crew are all a part of the ship. They have holo-projectors so that they see things the way the ship does.'
For the first time, I turned away from the view, just as we coasted past the sun. The shifting light made the shadows in the dimly-lit lounge slide across the walls. 'Do capsule pilots have the same thing?'
'No, they have something different.' He patted the seat beside him, and I went over to hop up and snuggle against Dad's side. He put his arm around my shoulders. 'They have a full neural interface with their ship, and their crew are just support. The capsule allows them to actually become their ships.'
'Oh.' We watched in silence as the ship slowly sailed up to the gate, and there was the soft ping alerting the passengers to strap in for the jump. My stomach twisted and I felt dizzy for a moment; then the world returned and the view out the window had changed.
Dad's hand squeezed my shoulder. 'Does that sound like something you'll want to do in a few years?'
I nodded just as Mum's voice came from the door behind us, 'Do you really want to be giving her that idea, dear?'
Dad half-turned to look over his shoulder. 'I don't see why not. If it's something she wants to do with her life, she should be allowed to try.'
'But there's so much more for her...'
'You mean less dangerous.' Dad gave that low laugh again. 'Also more mundane and more boring.'
'Dear...'
'Aevy, I'm not going to discourage our children from finding happiness their own way, and this isn't the time to have the same old argument.'
Mum sighed. 'I was just wondering if you'd like a drink. The captain says they have a bottle of Heurot '87 set aside. Complimentary.'
It had always been a sticking point between them whether to ecourage me and Valar to make our lives planetside or let us reach further. Mum had always had the daft notion that I'd be a stunning fashion-designer or some such, possibly because I spent so much time drawing. When I finished my formal education, I'd gone along to the art institutes to humour her, but the attitudes there had disgusted and -- at one place -- outright offended me. When I entered the Naval prep academy at 16, she stopped sending me messages; after the hounding she'd given me about it, I was relieved. Val never got the same treatment, prehaps because she felt a Navy career was better-suited to boys. I don't know; I don't care, anymore.
To this day, I feel annoyed that my decision to pursue somewhat less-than-legal activities has pleased her, since piracy is SO much more glamourous than being a boring old naval officer, don't you think, darling? The holos never do show the harder side of it, after all. But Dad... Dad had to publicly disown me, in order to not lose political face. Despite that, he reached out to me through Valar, and we send messages regularly via a reroute set up by an acquaintance of mine.
I learned more from Dad than I maybe thought, at first. We both break the rules in our own ways, and are utterly unashamed about it.
Showing posts with label memory lane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memory lane. Show all posts
Thursday, 11 June 2009
Roots
...They can be pulled up, and put down, but they should never be forgotten.
I stepped out of the shower, feeling refreshed, the rush of combat adrenalin rinsed away. We'd just had an incredibly successful run with The Bastards, at Flashfresh's invitation, and desipte the misgivings RoninData had initially voiced -- that the long-established pirate force might not feel they could be themselves with the two of us around -- after the last week or so of intermittent association,things seemed to be running smoothly.
Flash met me at the hangar entrance. 'You and Mynx coming to the pub?'
I shrugged and said, 'Well, I hadn't really made any plans...'
'Come have a drink with us. First fleet since the afterburner standardisation regs went out and we take down three battleships? Ronin's called for a little party.'
We found Mynxee and headed up to the bar which sat in the centre and above the space-dock, unimaginitively named 'The Hub'. The revelry was only just starting, and I shouldered my way amongst the taller pilots towards the bar to order drinks while Mynxee looked for a table on the lower level.
As I waited, I realised I was elbow to elbow with one of the other pilots we'd flown with. Offering a smile, I said, 'Hi there.'
The Khanid man started; it was hard to tell where he was looking with the solid hood pulled low over his face. 'Uh, h-hi.'
Shy, huh? I studied him. 'You were the Vengeance pilot, right?'
'Yeah,' he said shortly. His drink arrived and he hurried off with it without another word.
Someone tapped my shoulder; San Rintu, one of the Bastards' few women pilots, said, 'That's Jorge. He doesn't tend to socialise a lot. Drinks lke a fish, though. Weird boy.'
'No shit. Oh well, long as he doesn't turn turtle on an op...'
'Nah, he focusses well enough.' The taller Achuran woman wrapped her arm around my shoulders. 'So are you guys going to be sticking around a bit? It's kind of nice to have some more ladies to hang out with in the testosterone pool.'
I smiled. 'Dunno. We've been discussing setting up a base here, but we're still a part of Doom Armada.'
'Oh, of course. But, I mean...' She took a drink from her pint. 'We work well together. And you have a lot more roaming space out here than you do in a pocket lowsec like Decon.'
'We're considering it, San. That's about it for now.'
The bartender slid Mynxee's and my drinks onto the counter, and I carried them carefully down the wide spiral stair to the lower part of the bar. Down here, the walls were filled with windows overlooking the space-dock, an upturned hemisphere with dozens of individual hangars stepped and honeycombed together around the docking lanes. The far walls were almost indistinct through the thin haze of moisture and exhaust clouds.
Mynx had picked a table tucked into one of the wide bays, looking out with her chin cupped in one hand. 'I was thinking we should maybe move a few more ships out here, Shae,' she mused as I handed her drink over. 'It'd be easier to join the guys if we had more flexibility in what we're flying.'
I was nodding. 'I've been meaning to get a Myrmidon brought in... I have a lot of stuff still sitting in Arnon from when I first joined the corp. Maybe we should just open a corp office here so we can manage a communal hangar for ammo.'
'Makes sense.' She took a swig of her drink and hmmmmed thoughtfully. 'I hope Sicks doesn't mind. I love the guys in D-Gen, but it's kinda fun flying with the Bastards, too.'
'Hope they don't feel we're "cheating" on them in some way...'
Mynx snorted. 'Cheating, my ass! We're an independent corporation, and we already have a side-base in Vitrauze anyway. We're a part of the alliance, not sleeping with them!'
We cracked up laughing and touched the rims of our glasses together.
'I'll get on moving the Myrm in. My hauler's been busy with her own stuff, I may just take a chance and run the lowsec route.'
'I'll set up a corp office tomorrow. Make Evati our little home away from home.' She grinned. 'This could be fun.'
I stepped out of the shower, feeling refreshed, the rush of combat adrenalin rinsed away. We'd just had an incredibly successful run with The Bastards, at Flashfresh's invitation, and desipte the misgivings RoninData had initially voiced -- that the long-established pirate force might not feel they could be themselves with the two of us around -- after the last week or so of intermittent association,things seemed to be running smoothly.
Flash met me at the hangar entrance. 'You and Mynx coming to the pub?'
I shrugged and said, 'Well, I hadn't really made any plans...'
'Come have a drink with us. First fleet since the afterburner standardisation regs went out and we take down three battleships? Ronin's called for a little party.'
We found Mynxee and headed up to the bar which sat in the centre and above the space-dock, unimaginitively named 'The Hub'. The revelry was only just starting, and I shouldered my way amongst the taller pilots towards the bar to order drinks while Mynxee looked for a table on the lower level.
As I waited, I realised I was elbow to elbow with one of the other pilots we'd flown with. Offering a smile, I said, 'Hi there.'
The Khanid man started; it was hard to tell where he was looking with the solid hood pulled low over his face. 'Uh, h-hi.'
Shy, huh? I studied him. 'You were the Vengeance pilot, right?'
'Yeah,' he said shortly. His drink arrived and he hurried off with it without another word.
Someone tapped my shoulder; San Rintu, one of the Bastards' few women pilots, said, 'That's Jorge. He doesn't tend to socialise a lot. Drinks lke a fish, though. Weird boy.'
'No shit. Oh well, long as he doesn't turn turtle on an op...'
'Nah, he focusses well enough.' The taller Achuran woman wrapped her arm around my shoulders. 'So are you guys going to be sticking around a bit? It's kind of nice to have some more ladies to hang out with in the testosterone pool.'
I smiled. 'Dunno. We've been discussing setting up a base here, but we're still a part of Doom Armada.'
'Oh, of course. But, I mean...' She took a drink from her pint. 'We work well together. And you have a lot more roaming space out here than you do in a pocket lowsec like Decon.'
'We're considering it, San. That's about it for now.'
The bartender slid Mynxee's and my drinks onto the counter, and I carried them carefully down the wide spiral stair to the lower part of the bar. Down here, the walls were filled with windows overlooking the space-dock, an upturned hemisphere with dozens of individual hangars stepped and honeycombed together around the docking lanes. The far walls were almost indistinct through the thin haze of moisture and exhaust clouds.
Mynx had picked a table tucked into one of the wide bays, looking out with her chin cupped in one hand. 'I was thinking we should maybe move a few more ships out here, Shae,' she mused as I handed her drink over. 'It'd be easier to join the guys if we had more flexibility in what we're flying.'
I was nodding. 'I've been meaning to get a Myrmidon brought in... I have a lot of stuff still sitting in Arnon from when I first joined the corp. Maybe we should just open a corp office here so we can manage a communal hangar for ammo.'
'Makes sense.' She took a swig of her drink and hmmmmed thoughtfully. 'I hope Sicks doesn't mind. I love the guys in D-Gen, but it's kinda fun flying with the Bastards, too.'
'Hope they don't feel we're "cheating" on them in some way...'
Mynx snorted. 'Cheating, my ass! We're an independent corporation, and we already have a side-base in Vitrauze anyway. We're a part of the alliance, not sleeping with them!'
We cracked up laughing and touched the rims of our glasses together.
'I'll get on moving the Myrm in. My hauler's been busy with her own stuff, I may just take a chance and run the lowsec route.'
'I'll set up a corp office tomorrow. Make Evati our little home away from home.' She grinned. 'This could be fun.'
Monday, 27 April 2009
Road Trip
I caught a windfall the other day. I was passing some time chatting in a public channel for one of my former alliances and mentioned that I was having some more interceptors delivered. One of my old mates said, 'Oh! You fly those?' and the next thing I knew, I was receiving a contract for yet another Taranis. Redric couldn't be bothered to fly all the way out from the place he was based in to retrieve the ship, so he'd got it off his inventory list by giving it to someone else to deal with; namely, me.
There was a catch, though: the ship was still in our old hunting-grounds in Kor-Azor. Seventy-six jumps is a long way to go for one ship. I could easily pay a friend to travel the comparatively short run through highsec and bring it back, and I'd be out little more than a million in exchange for a t2 frigate.
But it was early in the day, there was nothing else happening, and I'd not been out there in nearly a year. So I packed a full inty fitting into the hold of an Incursus, plotted my route to Schmaeel, and plugged some good tunes into my personal audio player. A brief map check showed there'd been some heavy casualties in the past hour in Sakht, but I figured any fighting was more likely to be either on the 1-SMEB gate or over the dysprosium moon in there, and would probably have petered out by the time I would be passing through. I let Mynxee know where I'd be disappearing to for the next three hours, and set out.
Travelling around New Eden, despite what many people think, does not actually take that long. I suspect a great deal of the impression of long distances and time-consuming travel comes from people flying on autopilot and/or in slow haulers. In my Incursus frigate, I'd calculated a minute's travel between gates. Unless I went through an exceptionally large system, the trip out and back would take two and a half hours, and I was planning on a cup of coffee in the bar in Schmaeel and a little hunting in the inty on my way home.
The riskiest part of my trip would be at the start, which took me through Egmar, where our neighbours GiS and Com-Star tend to base from. Our pilots had frequently reported gatecamps there, along the route towards Amamake, so I trod cautiously. There was a GiS Phobos on one gate, and another pilot pursued me for a few jumps beyond, but by the time I reached Frerstorn, I was on my own again.
Because I'd arranged my course to keep me as much in low-sec as possible, my route bounced back and forth between Metropolis and Heimatar, with a quick skip through Devoid and the Bleak Lands and another bounce between Sinq to Everyshore and back, until I reached Amarr space. It was a straight route through Domain to Kador, Genesis and then Aridia. Aridia was my biggest problem now, I figured, since there was a nice little highsec pocket in the middle of nowhere which extends clear across the route. The last time I'd tried to avoid that, I'd ended up on a massive detour through 0.0 which had left that particular clone with more than a couple premature silver hairs.
But that clone was long dead somewhere deep in Syndicate, and when I hit the next gate in Van I flew straight through a fight in progress involving several pirates and a hauler of some description. It was tempting to ninja in on the kill, but I had sentry guns and the high-end interceptor fitting in my cargo to think about; I jumped without pause, briefly wondering if that kill would be worth the attackers' efforts.
Aridia, so far from highsec proper and riddled with pockets in which outlaws dare not linger, is a desolate place. You may go several systems before seeing another pilot or tower on scan. So it was to my surprise that I jumped into Yehaba only to notice a pilot who looked vaguely familiar. An instant later, he invited me into a private comms channel.
In the midst of my chat with Izo, I'd passed through my one highsec jump in Sazilid; the police threat had blared across my comms, momentarily drowning out the other pilot, but it was little more than an automated alarm system and the few police cruisers who appeared were too slow to catch my ship. I've often wondered if they're always deliberately slow to lock the outlaw who chances into highsec and if the MO isn't simply to speed the evildoer from the system before he gets too comfortable. Only in CONCORD-sovereignty systems have the police ever pounced with extreme prejudice.
I'd been right about Sakht having calmed down; there was still an unusually high number of people in the system, and the sheer numbers of wrecks on my scanner gave me a headache. The scavenger in me cringed at the thought of so much tech-2 salvage going to waste.
If Izo had thought he'd had deja vu seeing me twice in an hour, it was nothing compared to how I felt upon entering the kingdom of Khanid. Chitiamem, Nandeza, the idiotic fight in Goudiyah which cost us a fleet of battleships. Arzieh, where I'd spent so much down-time running missions and being called a coward by some null-sec dweller who'd undocked his carrier on us. Vezila, Ashmarir and the Querious gateway in A2-V27 Icefox and I had used on our trip to see the ruins of the first titan. I knew these places so well, it was a wonder I hadn't been through in nearly a year.
I docked in Schmaeel, remembering when we'd first moved to Kor-Azor and I'd opened my first cyno field to bring our gear in, not realising at the time that the system had been taken over by the BeachBoys in the time since Atrocitas had last moved out. Oh, the nights spent sneaking around the towers watching dozens of capital ships returning from fights in nullsec; sitting cloaked a hundred kilometres off the Oguser gate counting fighters from Omega Alliance and Nex Eternus as they came looking for easy targets. I have so many bookmarks around that little cluster of lowsec systems, they don't all fit on one page in my NeoComm.
I checked that the Taranis was in the hangar, ordered her prepped and fitted with what I'd brought, and went in search of a cup of coffee and something to eat. It was a typically Amarrian station, all towering arches and gold accents and people in robes eyeing me suspiciously without once dropping their kindly smiles. I was raised to be polite, and despite having no religious belief to speak of, when an Amarrian bids 'God be with you', I return the favour. As long as they don't try to evangelise, it's all good.
The little verses printed on the take-away coffee-cups are kinda patronising, though.
Most of the pilots in this system were nothing but haulers, I realised. The sort who never seem to take a break, continuously back and forth for some agent or other hauling rubbish and support staff; but then, why would you need a break when you're only flying from point A to point B on autopilot? Might as well get a 'bot to do it all for you, in the end. On my way back to the hangar, I spotted a couple faces whose uniforms sported the BeachBoys insignia; I guess they didn't all move out, after all. They left me alone, and I ignored them.
These systems used to be fucking hazardous. What's happened to this area?
My Taranis was ready by the time I returned, and I wibbled a little over a name for her -- I dislike flying a ship without a proper name. It's like denying each unnamed hull its soul, and without a good, fitting name, you can't trust it to return your love and respect. Eventually, I called her Little Missile, despite lacking launchers of any description; the Taranis' DPS output is high enough that I felt the name was justified.
I'd intended to go hunting on my way back, but every system was either depressingly empty, every pilot was docked, or any likely targets were on gates. The one cruiser I attempted to tackle in a belt was already aligned and was hitting warp as I landed; he had too much experience, and I mused on how frustrated enemies must have been trying to nail down my anti-Serpentis Myrmidon in Syndicate.
Egmar, when I went through, was hosting what appeared to be a mining operation, but I'd had enough by then and merely wanted to get the Taranis back to my hangar in Evati. Nobody seemed to have even noticed I'd been gone; quiet day all around, but it had been a good morning for a road-trip.
There was a catch, though: the ship was still in our old hunting-grounds in Kor-Azor. Seventy-six jumps is a long way to go for one ship. I could easily pay a friend to travel the comparatively short run through highsec and bring it back, and I'd be out little more than a million in exchange for a t2 frigate.
But it was early in the day, there was nothing else happening, and I'd not been out there in nearly a year. So I packed a full inty fitting into the hold of an Incursus, plotted my route to Schmaeel, and plugged some good tunes into my personal audio player. A brief map check showed there'd been some heavy casualties in the past hour in Sakht, but I figured any fighting was more likely to be either on the 1-SMEB gate or over the dysprosium moon in there, and would probably have petered out by the time I would be passing through. I let Mynxee know where I'd be disappearing to for the next three hours, and set out.
Travelling around New Eden, despite what many people think, does not actually take that long. I suspect a great deal of the impression of long distances and time-consuming travel comes from people flying on autopilot and/or in slow haulers. In my Incursus frigate, I'd calculated a minute's travel between gates. Unless I went through an exceptionally large system, the trip out and back would take two and a half hours, and I was planning on a cup of coffee in the bar in Schmaeel and a little hunting in the inty on my way home.
The riskiest part of my trip would be at the start, which took me through Egmar, where our neighbours GiS and Com-Star tend to base from. Our pilots had frequently reported gatecamps there, along the route towards Amamake, so I trod cautiously. There was a GiS Phobos on one gate, and another pilot pursued me for a few jumps beyond, but by the time I reached Frerstorn, I was on my own again.
Because I'd arranged my course to keep me as much in low-sec as possible, my route bounced back and forth between Metropolis and Heimatar, with a quick skip through Devoid and the Bleak Lands and another bounce between Sinq to Everyshore and back, until I reached Amarr space. It was a straight route through Domain to Kador, Genesis and then Aridia. Aridia was my biggest problem now, I figured, since there was a nice little highsec pocket in the middle of nowhere which extends clear across the route. The last time I'd tried to avoid that, I'd ended up on a massive detour through 0.0 which had left that particular clone with more than a couple premature silver hairs.
But that clone was long dead somewhere deep in Syndicate, and when I hit the next gate in Van I flew straight through a fight in progress involving several pirates and a hauler of some description. It was tempting to ninja in on the kill, but I had sentry guns and the high-end interceptor fitting in my cargo to think about; I jumped without pause, briefly wondering if that kill would be worth the attackers' efforts.
Aridia, so far from highsec proper and riddled with pockets in which outlaws dare not linger, is a desolate place. You may go several systems before seeing another pilot or tower on scan. So it was to my surprise that I jumped into Yehaba only to notice a pilot who looked vaguely familiar. An instant later, he invited me into a private comms channel.
Shae Tiann > can I help you?It was about then that I recognised him as the outlaw Arazu pilot who'd given me a start on the Evati gate in Arnher at the very beginning of this trip.
Izo Azlion > Hey there
Izo Azlion > Random question!
Shae Tiann > go for it
Izo Azlion > Did I see you in metro?
Shae Tiann > um, probably
Izo Azlion > I've just popped through a wormhole from there in the last 20 minutesWe chatted for a bit, mostly about wormholes and the difficulties involved in finding them before signing off to go about our individual business.
* Izo Azlion grins
Izo Azlion > Figured I'd seen you there and down here, thought I'd say hey seeing as I had a bit of a deja vu!
* Shae Tiann laughs
In the midst of my chat with Izo, I'd passed through my one highsec jump in Sazilid; the police threat had blared across my comms, momentarily drowning out the other pilot, but it was little more than an automated alarm system and the few police cruisers who appeared were too slow to catch my ship. I've often wondered if they're always deliberately slow to lock the outlaw who chances into highsec and if the MO isn't simply to speed the evildoer from the system before he gets too comfortable. Only in CONCORD-sovereignty systems have the police ever pounced with extreme prejudice.
I'd been right about Sakht having calmed down; there was still an unusually high number of people in the system, and the sheer numbers of wrecks on my scanner gave me a headache. The scavenger in me cringed at the thought of so much tech-2 salvage going to waste.
If Izo had thought he'd had deja vu seeing me twice in an hour, it was nothing compared to how I felt upon entering the kingdom of Khanid. Chitiamem, Nandeza, the idiotic fight in Goudiyah which cost us a fleet of battleships. Arzieh, where I'd spent so much down-time running missions and being called a coward by some null-sec dweller who'd undocked his carrier on us. Vezila, Ashmarir and the Querious gateway in A2-V27 Icefox and I had used on our trip to see the ruins of the first titan. I knew these places so well, it was a wonder I hadn't been through in nearly a year.
I docked in Schmaeel, remembering when we'd first moved to Kor-Azor and I'd opened my first cyno field to bring our gear in, not realising at the time that the system had been taken over by the BeachBoys in the time since Atrocitas had last moved out. Oh, the nights spent sneaking around the towers watching dozens of capital ships returning from fights in nullsec; sitting cloaked a hundred kilometres off the Oguser gate counting fighters from Omega Alliance and Nex Eternus as they came looking for easy targets. I have so many bookmarks around that little cluster of lowsec systems, they don't all fit on one page in my NeoComm.
I checked that the Taranis was in the hangar, ordered her prepped and fitted with what I'd brought, and went in search of a cup of coffee and something to eat. It was a typically Amarrian station, all towering arches and gold accents and people in robes eyeing me suspiciously without once dropping their kindly smiles. I was raised to be polite, and despite having no religious belief to speak of, when an Amarrian bids 'God be with you', I return the favour. As long as they don't try to evangelise, it's all good.
The little verses printed on the take-away coffee-cups are kinda patronising, though.
Most of the pilots in this system were nothing but haulers, I realised. The sort who never seem to take a break, continuously back and forth for some agent or other hauling rubbish and support staff; but then, why would you need a break when you're only flying from point A to point B on autopilot? Might as well get a 'bot to do it all for you, in the end. On my way back to the hangar, I spotted a couple faces whose uniforms sported the BeachBoys insignia; I guess they didn't all move out, after all. They left me alone, and I ignored them.
These systems used to be fucking hazardous. What's happened to this area?
My Taranis was ready by the time I returned, and I wibbled a little over a name for her -- I dislike flying a ship without a proper name. It's like denying each unnamed hull its soul, and without a good, fitting name, you can't trust it to return your love and respect. Eventually, I called her Little Missile, despite lacking launchers of any description; the Taranis' DPS output is high enough that I felt the name was justified.
I'd intended to go hunting on my way back, but every system was either depressingly empty, every pilot was docked, or any likely targets were on gates. The one cruiser I attempted to tackle in a belt was already aligned and was hitting warp as I landed; he had too much experience, and I mused on how frustrated enemies must have been trying to nail down my anti-Serpentis Myrmidon in Syndicate.
Egmar, when I went through, was hosting what appeared to be a mining operation, but I'd had enough by then and merely wanted to get the Taranis back to my hangar in Evati. Nobody seemed to have even noticed I'd been gone; quiet day all around, but it had been a good morning for a road-trip.
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
A Little Bit of Low Sec is Good for the Soul
'Yes? I'm busy, just now... Who?... Her standings are a bit poor. ... Yes, yes, I'm aware of that. Very well, send her in.'
I stood in the outer office, staring at the Slays starscape in the fake window -- really a feed connected to a camera mounted somewhere on the skin of the station -- behind the secretary's desk, feeling both nervous and annoyed. After flying with Under the Wings of Fury for a couple weeks, my standings with Centre for Advanced Studies had taken quite a hit thanks to killing one too many of their idiot students in the nearby nullsec regions. I didn't want to hurt my standings too much -- I bought my skillbooks from these people, after all. I needed this agent to give me a chance.
The secretary returned, mincing delicately in stiletto heels and a skirt too tight for her curves. 'He'll see you now, Pilot Tiann.' I gave her a tight smile, thanked her politely even though she was clearly no longer concerned with me, and went through into the agent's office.
Ivonalle Galelare looked up from the computer terminal inset into his desk as I entered, giving me such a thorough once-over that I may as well have stripped naked right there. Instead, I came to attention -- no salute, he wasn't military -- and kept a straight face as I said, 'Thank you for seeing me, sir.'
Softened, too-perfect features which looked disturbingly underage regarded me impassively. The he snorted and gestured carelessly at the chair placed before the desk. 'Sit down, Pilot.' As I made myself as comfortable as possble, he said, 'You're here for an underlying reason. I don't care what it is. People like you only come to me when you want something to do.' Galelare spoke with a casual attitude, not caring if his words offended me or not.
'Now, you...' He aimed the first and middle fingers of his right hand in my direction. 'Your standings, Pilot, are shit. You have a bad record here, and the only reason I agreed to see you is that my superior sees your father as someone to support. If I had to tell him I turned you away, it would look bad. Do I make myself clear?'
Politics. It gets into everything, like sand at the beach. I mirrored his bland, unconcerned expression. 'Perfectly clear.'
After a moment more spent regarduing me through narrowed eyes, the agent leaned back in his chair and tapped a couple times at the terminal. 'Word's just come in that the Serpentis have attacked one of our people who was on a routine survey patrol. He's not lucky enough to be immortal like you lot-' the agent gave me a baleful look '-and it's my unfortunate duty to inform his wife and family that he won't be coming home tonight. We have the location of a Serpentis base in a nearby system; I want you to go over and make an example of it so I can tell the widow that his loss has been avenged.' Galelare raised his eyes to mine. 'Do you have a problem with this assignment, Miss Tiann?'
I shook my head. 'No, sir. I'll take care of it.'
'Good.' He tossed a chip across the desk; I caught it. 'The location bookmark is on there. System is Iges, you have two hours. Don't come back to me unless you have something good to report.'
-----------
Iges. Iges was a low-security system a jump away from UWoF's base in Stacmon. I was still a relatively unskilled pilot; low-sec made me nervous as anything, and the shallow end of Syndicate was home to capsuleer pirates. I debated my options, then had the hangar crews prep my Vexor. The drones, I thought, would help speed things up.
I was nervous, now, and not in the same way I'd been when I went to meet the agent in Slays. Low-sec was unpredictable. There was nobody else from my alliance who was around to help me, and I was feeling very alone as I eyed the system maps. Three pilots in Iges, and that was three too many. I called Suze.
Suze'Rain was an acquaintance I'd made through friends nearly a year earlier; I'd suffered a girlish crush on the dour Caldari pilot for a bit, but I'd been seeing the son of a Poteque pharmaceutical technician at the time and suppressed the attraction before I did anything regrettable. Suze was a fun person to be around, with a dark, cynical sense of very twisted humour and excellent taste in music. He'd been an independant pilot for some years already, and was only too happy to come on comms and coach me through things whilst still being on training duty for The Grey Academy half the galaxy away.
'There are three pilots in Iges, yes, but two of them are docked up. That's only one in space that you have to worry about, and there hasn't been much traffic lately -- see the option titled "jumps in the last hour"? You should be fine getting in, just warp to the bookmark straight away.' Suze's posh accent was reassuring in my ear. I knew he was too far away to help if I needed it, but it was nice to know I wasn't wholly on my own.
Iges, when I entered, had acquired an additional local, but the gate was clear. I keyed in the location I'd been given and initiated warp to zero km. The bubble popped, dropping me on top of a Serpentis patrol, and I set about with railguns flaring.
'Do you have your scanner open, Shae? Keep an eye on that, keep refreshing it. It'll tell you if there's anyone trying to probe you out,' Suze warned. 'Those Hammerheads of yours are like a great big sign advertising an all-you-can-shoot buffet.'
'Oh, brilliant,' I muttered. Every ten seconds or so I ran a scan on everything in the system within 14 AU, even as I dispatched pirate frigates. A blip on my system overview made me look twice. 'What's that?'
'What? What's what?' Suze sounded a bit alarmed; perhaps I might have been, as well, hed I his experience.
'Cyno... cynosural field?' I said distractedly, attempting to nail down another Serpentis frigate.
'Oh shit. Check your scanner, Shae!'
I was trapped in the middle of the fight, now engaged at close range with a pirate in a cruiser which was hammering into my ship's armour-tank with everything he had. Another Serpentis frigate exploded as my drones swarmed it like a flight of angry bees. Multitasking was difficult, and I suddenly noticed that the local population of capsuleers had risen by ten.
'What's a Cheetah?' I asked, spotting the new ship on the scanner as it cycled again.
'Covert ops. Get out of there!' The Caldari's voice sounded strained; most likely, he was wishing he was down there to help me rather than being stuck at the AIAA offices in Korsiki.
'I have to finish this,' I protested. The pirate cruiser finally exploded, but there were more frigates coming at me and I still had to destroy their base.
'Then do it quickly. Don't bother salvaging.'
Risking another glance at the scanner, I saw something else I didn't recognise. 'What's an Archon?'
I could practically hear Suze's eyes fall out of his head over the comms link. 'It's a carrier. Fuck, you stubborn cow, don't stay in there!'
'I'm only in a Vexor... they wouldn't consider me worth hunting down, would they?'
'That depends on who they are. Link pilot names when you can.'
I finished off the last pirate frigate and powered toward the Serpentis habitat module anchored to a nearby asteroid, sending the drones ahead. 'ID links coming now...'
Suze coughed. 'They're nasty, you really don't want to be in there Shae.'
'Almost done here...'
'Great, great. Finish it off and scram. Any probes on scan?'
I checked. 'No...'
'Doesn't mean anything, they could be using the 20AU variety and you'd never know til it was too late.'
The habitat module blew with a spectacular fireball and shockwave of ignited pressurised gases. 'Right, I'm done here.'
'Pull your drones and go, girl, you don't want to get caught.'
I made it out of Iges intact, though somewhat shaken. It wasn't the first time I'd been in the same system as a capital ship, though the ones I'd seen before were friendlies. I somewhat doubted that I'd been in as much danger as Suze had thought -- he was known to be a little more on the paranoid side than I was -- but it had still been nerve-wracking.
Galelare eyed me critically when I appeared in the doorway to his office.
'Well?'
'It's done.' I folded my arms, well aware of the effect that would have with the close-fitting jumpsuit I was wearing. 'The pay better be worth it, that was less than fun.'
The agent's eyebrows went up, and he held out his hand for the chip, which had recorded the data from the run as proof-positive the job was completed. I flipped it to him and he plugged it in, scanned the contents briefly, then nodded. 'Excellent work, Pilot Tiann. I'll add your records into our database.' He paid me a sum that was just shy of paltry -- it would make up the cost of the ammo I'd used and repairs to two of my drones which had taken armour damage -- then stopped me as I was about to leave.
'I must say I'm relieved you didn't disappoint, Tiann. You have no idea how badly a failure from you might have affected my status here.' He ran his fingers back through his short brown hair. It seemed everyone was trying to climb on everyone else's shoulders first around here; I wasn't particularly impressed. 'A longer association will afford you some benefits as well, by the way. We need pilots who can carry through on their promises.'
'Mr Galelare,' I said as I turned to leave. 'I never make a promise I can't keep... unless breaking it is more beneficial to myself and my crew.' I paused in the doorway to look back at the self-important little man. 'Try to remember that in the future.'
I stood in the outer office, staring at the Slays starscape in the fake window -- really a feed connected to a camera mounted somewhere on the skin of the station -- behind the secretary's desk, feeling both nervous and annoyed. After flying with Under the Wings of Fury for a couple weeks, my standings with Centre for Advanced Studies had taken quite a hit thanks to killing one too many of their idiot students in the nearby nullsec regions. I didn't want to hurt my standings too much -- I bought my skillbooks from these people, after all. I needed this agent to give me a chance.
The secretary returned, mincing delicately in stiletto heels and a skirt too tight for her curves. 'He'll see you now, Pilot Tiann.' I gave her a tight smile, thanked her politely even though she was clearly no longer concerned with me, and went through into the agent's office.
Ivonalle Galelare looked up from the computer terminal inset into his desk as I entered, giving me such a thorough once-over that I may as well have stripped naked right there. Instead, I came to attention -- no salute, he wasn't military -- and kept a straight face as I said, 'Thank you for seeing me, sir.'
Softened, too-perfect features which looked disturbingly underage regarded me impassively. The he snorted and gestured carelessly at the chair placed before the desk. 'Sit down, Pilot.' As I made myself as comfortable as possble, he said, 'You're here for an underlying reason. I don't care what it is. People like you only come to me when you want something to do.' Galelare spoke with a casual attitude, not caring if his words offended me or not.
'Now, you...' He aimed the first and middle fingers of his right hand in my direction. 'Your standings, Pilot, are shit. You have a bad record here, and the only reason I agreed to see you is that my superior sees your father as someone to support. If I had to tell him I turned you away, it would look bad. Do I make myself clear?'
Politics. It gets into everything, like sand at the beach. I mirrored his bland, unconcerned expression. 'Perfectly clear.'
After a moment more spent regarduing me through narrowed eyes, the agent leaned back in his chair and tapped a couple times at the terminal. 'Word's just come in that the Serpentis have attacked one of our people who was on a routine survey patrol. He's not lucky enough to be immortal like you lot-' the agent gave me a baleful look '-and it's my unfortunate duty to inform his wife and family that he won't be coming home tonight. We have the location of a Serpentis base in a nearby system; I want you to go over and make an example of it so I can tell the widow that his loss has been avenged.' Galelare raised his eyes to mine. 'Do you have a problem with this assignment, Miss Tiann?'
I shook my head. 'No, sir. I'll take care of it.'
'Good.' He tossed a chip across the desk; I caught it. 'The location bookmark is on there. System is Iges, you have two hours. Don't come back to me unless you have something good to report.'
-----------
Iges. Iges was a low-security system a jump away from UWoF's base in Stacmon. I was still a relatively unskilled pilot; low-sec made me nervous as anything, and the shallow end of Syndicate was home to capsuleer pirates. I debated my options, then had the hangar crews prep my Vexor. The drones, I thought, would help speed things up.
I was nervous, now, and not in the same way I'd been when I went to meet the agent in Slays. Low-sec was unpredictable. There was nobody else from my alliance who was around to help me, and I was feeling very alone as I eyed the system maps. Three pilots in Iges, and that was three too many. I called Suze.
Suze'Rain was an acquaintance I'd made through friends nearly a year earlier; I'd suffered a girlish crush on the dour Caldari pilot for a bit, but I'd been seeing the son of a Poteque pharmaceutical technician at the time and suppressed the attraction before I did anything regrettable. Suze was a fun person to be around, with a dark, cynical sense of very twisted humour and excellent taste in music. He'd been an independant pilot for some years already, and was only too happy to come on comms and coach me through things whilst still being on training duty for The Grey Academy half the galaxy away.
'There are three pilots in Iges, yes, but two of them are docked up. That's only one in space that you have to worry about, and there hasn't been much traffic lately -- see the option titled "jumps in the last hour"? You should be fine getting in, just warp to the bookmark straight away.' Suze's posh accent was reassuring in my ear. I knew he was too far away to help if I needed it, but it was nice to know I wasn't wholly on my own.
Iges, when I entered, had acquired an additional local, but the gate was clear. I keyed in the location I'd been given and initiated warp to zero km. The bubble popped, dropping me on top of a Serpentis patrol, and I set about with railguns flaring.
'Do you have your scanner open, Shae? Keep an eye on that, keep refreshing it. It'll tell you if there's anyone trying to probe you out,' Suze warned. 'Those Hammerheads of yours are like a great big sign advertising an all-you-can-shoot buffet.'
'Oh, brilliant,' I muttered. Every ten seconds or so I ran a scan on everything in the system within 14 AU, even as I dispatched pirate frigates. A blip on my system overview made me look twice. 'What's that?'
'What? What's what?' Suze sounded a bit alarmed; perhaps I might have been, as well, hed I his experience.
'Cyno... cynosural field?' I said distractedly, attempting to nail down another Serpentis frigate.
'Oh shit. Check your scanner, Shae!'
I was trapped in the middle of the fight, now engaged at close range with a pirate in a cruiser which was hammering into my ship's armour-tank with everything he had. Another Serpentis frigate exploded as my drones swarmed it like a flight of angry bees. Multitasking was difficult, and I suddenly noticed that the local population of capsuleers had risen by ten.
'What's a Cheetah?' I asked, spotting the new ship on the scanner as it cycled again.
'Covert ops. Get out of there!' The Caldari's voice sounded strained; most likely, he was wishing he was down there to help me rather than being stuck at the AIAA offices in Korsiki.
'I have to finish this,' I protested. The pirate cruiser finally exploded, but there were more frigates coming at me and I still had to destroy their base.
'Then do it quickly. Don't bother salvaging.'
Risking another glance at the scanner, I saw something else I didn't recognise. 'What's an Archon?'
I could practically hear Suze's eyes fall out of his head over the comms link. 'It's a carrier. Fuck, you stubborn cow, don't stay in there!'
'I'm only in a Vexor... they wouldn't consider me worth hunting down, would they?'
'That depends on who they are. Link pilot names when you can.'
I finished off the last pirate frigate and powered toward the Serpentis habitat module anchored to a nearby asteroid, sending the drones ahead. 'ID links coming now...'
Suze coughed. 'They're nasty, you really don't want to be in there Shae.'
'Almost done here...'
'Great, great. Finish it off and scram. Any probes on scan?'
I checked. 'No...'
'Doesn't mean anything, they could be using the 20AU variety and you'd never know til it was too late.'
The habitat module blew with a spectacular fireball and shockwave of ignited pressurised gases. 'Right, I'm done here.'
'Pull your drones and go, girl, you don't want to get caught.'
I made it out of Iges intact, though somewhat shaken. It wasn't the first time I'd been in the same system as a capital ship, though the ones I'd seen before were friendlies. I somewhat doubted that I'd been in as much danger as Suze had thought -- he was known to be a little more on the paranoid side than I was -- but it had still been nerve-wracking.
Galelare eyed me critically when I appeared in the doorway to his office.
'Well?'
'It's done.' I folded my arms, well aware of the effect that would have with the close-fitting jumpsuit I was wearing. 'The pay better be worth it, that was less than fun.'
The agent's eyebrows went up, and he held out his hand for the chip, which had recorded the data from the run as proof-positive the job was completed. I flipped it to him and he plugged it in, scanned the contents briefly, then nodded. 'Excellent work, Pilot Tiann. I'll add your records into our database.' He paid me a sum that was just shy of paltry -- it would make up the cost of the ammo I'd used and repairs to two of my drones which had taken armour damage -- then stopped me as I was about to leave.
'I must say I'm relieved you didn't disappoint, Tiann. You have no idea how badly a failure from you might have affected my status here.' He ran his fingers back through his short brown hair. It seemed everyone was trying to climb on everyone else's shoulders first around here; I wasn't particularly impressed. 'A longer association will afford you some benefits as well, by the way. We need pilots who can carry through on their promises.'
'Mr Galelare,' I said as I turned to leave. 'I never make a promise I can't keep... unless breaking it is more beneficial to myself and my crew.' I paused in the doorway to look back at the self-important little man. 'Try to remember that in the future.'
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Looking back
I let loose with a string of obscenities, careful not to transmit them over comms, cursing out my fleet, my ceo, and the world in general. Depite my noobishness and utter lack of experience, Abbel Nightroad had spontaneously dropped Fleet Commander duties on my head and gone off to take care of his own stuff. I found myself now, barely more than two months out of the Academy, in a Tristan and in charge of a small and incredibly chaotic fleet, without a clue in the world how to deal with it.
We'd been hired to mess with Insurgency alliance's highsec operations, and I hadn't seen much action from it. Not knowing what else to do, and unable to foist FC off on anyone else, I had picked a gate in Vuorrassi on our targets' main trade route and sat us on it, with scouts in the nearby systems. It was boring, I had the shakes from being on a prolongued adrenalin high, and for maybe an hour, no targets passed through the system.
The guys knew I was inexperienced. Most were sympathetic and helpful, but a couple of the hotheads thought this meant they didn't have to listen. One went haring off after an outlaw who was doing a seat-of-his-pants flee through highsec in an interceptor; when I put my figurative foot down and bitched him out for his lack of professionalism, the opportunist left the fleet. Another got fed up and went roaming on his own in search of war-targets.
Eventually, the gatecamp paid off and we caught an enemy Bustard. I didn't even get on the killmail because my reflexes weren't so great and I'd been too far away for my scram - what in the name of Black Rise had I been thinking, fitting a shortrange scram? - to catch it. When I docked up for the night, I felt a mixture of embarrassment and frustration at my own ineffectiveness. Everyone who'd stayed for the camp told me I'd done well, we'd caught a transport due to my choice of camping-spot, after all, and a Buzzard covert-ops in the same system an hour later - though that had less to do with my direction and more to do with sheer luck on the side of the Hawk and Ares pilots who'd nobbled him. For my part, I knew my inexperience could easily have got someone else killed if Insurgency had decided to challenge us, and I resolved to shoot Abbel if he tried to leave that responsibility in my hands again before I could instinctively tell the difference between a hauler and a battlecruiser.
I've FC'd a few more times since then, but by that time Atrocitas had gone pirate and I was starting to get a feel for the kind of trouble a particular ship could dish out. It's not been quite a year since that first run as FC and I can still remember that sort of frustration-terror feeling that makes you want to pull at your hair, and the queer, sick tremors that run through you in waves as the adrenalin starts pumping and doesn't let up. Hell, I still get those shakes from time to time, usually when I'm going into a situation where I'm likely to die horribly.
You can't do stuff like this in Real Life. Those were hair-raising hours for me, but it still counts as one of my favourite memories from when we were doing the highsec merc thing, if only because it was my first real test and I learned a lot from the experience.
We'd been hired to mess with Insurgency alliance's highsec operations, and I hadn't seen much action from it. Not knowing what else to do, and unable to foist FC off on anyone else, I had picked a gate in Vuorrassi on our targets' main trade route and sat us on it, with scouts in the nearby systems. It was boring, I had the shakes from being on a prolongued adrenalin high, and for maybe an hour, no targets passed through the system.
The guys knew I was inexperienced. Most were sympathetic and helpful, but a couple of the hotheads thought this meant they didn't have to listen. One went haring off after an outlaw who was doing a seat-of-his-pants flee through highsec in an interceptor; when I put my figurative foot down and bitched him out for his lack of professionalism, the opportunist left the fleet. Another got fed up and went roaming on his own in search of war-targets.
Eventually, the gatecamp paid off and we caught an enemy Bustard. I didn't even get on the killmail because my reflexes weren't so great and I'd been too far away for my scram - what in the name of Black Rise had I been thinking, fitting a shortrange scram? - to catch it. When I docked up for the night, I felt a mixture of embarrassment and frustration at my own ineffectiveness. Everyone who'd stayed for the camp told me I'd done well, we'd caught a transport due to my choice of camping-spot, after all, and a Buzzard covert-ops in the same system an hour later - though that had less to do with my direction and more to do with sheer luck on the side of the Hawk and Ares pilots who'd nobbled him. For my part, I knew my inexperience could easily have got someone else killed if Insurgency had decided to challenge us, and I resolved to shoot Abbel if he tried to leave that responsibility in my hands again before I could instinctively tell the difference between a hauler and a battlecruiser.
I've FC'd a few more times since then, but by that time Atrocitas had gone pirate and I was starting to get a feel for the kind of trouble a particular ship could dish out. It's not been quite a year since that first run as FC and I can still remember that sort of frustration-terror feeling that makes you want to pull at your hair, and the queer, sick tremors that run through you in waves as the adrenalin starts pumping and doesn't let up. Hell, I still get those shakes from time to time, usually when I'm going into a situation where I'm likely to die horribly.
You can't do stuff like this in Real Life. Those were hair-raising hours for me, but it still counts as one of my favourite memories from when we were doing the highsec merc thing, if only because it was my first real test and I learned a lot from the experience.
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