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A Day To Go Down In History

Published on 31. May, 2009 ... written by Ecaf Ersa.

by Ecaf Ersa

Beep – beep – beep – beep – beep – beep

I slammed my hand down on top of the alarm clock.

Beep – beep – beep – beep – beep – beep

The alarm clock flew to the floor.

Beep – beep – beep – beep – beep – beep

“What the f…?”

I had been having a great dream and was very annoyed. I can’t remember what it was about now but I knew it had been a good one. Opening my eyes I saw the flashing light on the comm panel and realised my rude awakening had not been the alarm clock’s doing. Despite it’s recent cruel treatment at my hands it still dutifully informed me that the time was 03:42.

Through the sleepy haze I stabbed at the respond button, “WHAT?!”

“That is no way to answer the comm Ersa.”

Recognising Major Felps’ voice snapped my brain into gear. “Sorry Sir, you caught me in the middle of a good dream.”

“Well…for that you have my apologies Ersa.”

Major Felps was a good guy and a great officer – no, a great guy and an outstanding officer. He was the kind of officer that would have me instinctively reaching for the warp button after ordering me to send my freighter into a group of hostile battleships.

Socially he was a real riot and, outside of work, was referred to exclusively by his nick-name “Major Ding-Dong” which he had earned after having being seen naked in the shower. He was not the best looking guy on the station but could get nearly any woman he wanted into bed just by telling them how big his manhood was, which he was not at all shy about doing. This would usually result in anything from a shocked look to a witty put down and even occasionally a slap in the face but nine times out of ten their curiosity would get the better of them and we would see Ding-Dong heading for the bar door with the lady in question on his arm. Our well rehearsed salute to this would be the whole table shouting in unison “DING-DONG!! Time for bed!” – which we never grew tired of.

Felps continued, “Is your Recon flight ready Ersa?”

“Nothing I can’t fix in ten minutes Sir.”

“Good, be in my office in full flight gear in fifteen minutes.”

“Sir.”

The comm light went out and I hurriedly dressed.

*********************************

It only took me a few seconds analysing the scanner data to be sure. “Yes Major, it’s the same thing as I encountered yesterday in DY-P. Looks much bigger and more stable too.”

“Any way of telling where it goes?”

“Not that I can see. That information could possibly be in this data but if it is we don’t know how to decipher it yet. Sending a probe through it might tell us more.”

“Might?”

“Yes Sir, it all depends on where the other end comes out. The probe will need to be able to recognise stellar patterns to know where it is and be able to communicate back to us. For all we know it could get crushed into a microscopic dot before it even makes it through and we’d have no idea.”

“Hmm, that’s comforting to know.” said Felps in a matter-of-fact tone whilst appearing to intently examine the floor.

Looking up at me he continued, “So any volunteers to go in first and find out?”

I knew I was the only other person there but couldn’t stop myself from looking around the room. “I guess that will be me then Sir.”

“Good man. Fit your Recon out as best as you think and be in the briefing room at 04:30.” Free reign on fitting? – that was something new.

I snapped to attention and saluted “Sir!” before turning and marching out. Felps might have been Mr Social but in work you did everything by the book. It had only taken one of us to be fined three days wages after calling him Ding-Dong in the office to learn that you didn’t blur that line.

I quickly adjusted the fitting on my ship. Most of what I figured I might need was already on there, the obligatory covert ops cloak, a full probe launcher, as much of an armour tank as can be crammed in, my treasured Gallente Navy webber, a disruptor and a microwarpdrive. I opted for sensor dampeners seeing as survival was more important than kills but swapped out the energy vampires for a couple of medium railguns just in case. Four medium drones completed the set up before I rushed off to the briefing room.

The briefing revealed a total of ten ships of various types being mustered for the mission as well as three carriers and a dreadnought ready to be hot dropped in at a few seconds notice. I was very happy to see a still blurry-eyed Marakal taking a seat in the room. He was the only one there that would be bringing a battleship to the party. My “volunteering” for a potential suicide mission had earned me a place at the table with the officers and brought a silent “oooh” face from Marakal.

This was to be primarily an information gathering exercise but given that we had no clue what would be at the other end, or even where that would be, we had a very wide remit to do what we thought best in any given opportunity and as I was the scanner I was made FC. WOOT!

*********************************

The nerves began to creep in as I approached my Arazu “Nysm Nyd” but I stopped at the sound of quick footsteps behind me. I turned around to see Felps’ assistant Rashelle chasing after me. I’d been very shyly flirting with her for ages but hadn’t had the guts to ask her out yet. My heart began to race as it usually did whenever she came close. Damn she was beautiful.

“Come back please Ecaf” she said.

I thought at first she meant that the plan had changed but as I started to move back towards to the hangar door she leant in quickly and kissed me on the cheek. “Otherwise I’ll never get that dinner will I?” she said with a cheeky smirk and I realised she meant to come back from the mission.

I forgot my nerves for a few seconds and a big smile grew across my face. “Sure!” I responded and, now full of courage, I added, “Leave a light on for me.”

She just smiled coyly while twirling a lock of her long blonde hair around a finger. I took as long as possible closing the Recon’s hatch as she waved me off and at the last second before it sealed shut she blew me a kiss. Safely out of everyone’s sight I caught it and put it in my top pocket for safe keeping. It was bloody typical that I score just before a deadly mission into the unknown. We didn’t even know if our medical clones would function properly wherever it was we were going.

While the nine of us sitting outside the station waited for Marakal to buy replacement lasers for the ones he was for some reason missing, I examined our odd collection of ships. An official fleet wouldn’t usually comprise of such a variety. We had two frigates, a Rifter and a Maulus, two cruisers, a Vexor and a Blackbird, an Ishtar, a Sleipnir, a Myrmidon, my Arazu and Marakal’s still absent Apocalypse. I guess we covered most of the bases between us.

After another ten minutes had passed boredom began to creep in and I started having some fun abusing my FC comm channel permissions by cutting the middle out of peoples sentences. The resulting confusion was hilarious until everyone realised what I was doing. Within seconds I was webbed, scrammed, sensor damped, unable to target anything, my capacitor drained and my shields down to half.

We were cut short by Felps on the command channel, “What’s with the weapons fire Fleet Commander?”

I thought quickly, “Ah, just testing our set ups before we head into the unknown Sir.”

“Good idea but do it somewhere other than outside the station please.”

“Yes, sorry Sir. We’re done now in any case.” and as Marakal finally appeared I added, “Moving on to the wormhole now.”

“Align planet three.” After an appropriate pause I initiated fleet warp.

Ten ships all sharing a warp tunnel is always sight to behold, no matter how many times you’ve been there before, and I stopped contemplating the enormity of my task ahead to enjoy it. Marakal’s Apoc, with his signature crazy flames paint job, drifted in close then disappeared behind me as the tunnel collapsed and we shot out of it next to the wormhole.

Up till that point the fleet channel had been filled with lots of “La-la lala la-lah, Ecaf’s got a girlfriend.”, “Get bent”, “Up yours” and more of the usual general banter but now it fell silent as everyone except me took in their first sight of a wormhole. The pictures in the briefing room had been pretty but the real thing was simply awesome. Even I was somewhat taken aback as this must have been five times the size of the one I had found before, just a few minutes before it had fallen in on itself and disappeared.

I opened the fleet channel again. “OK guys, this is it, on the clock now, comms clear.”

I switched to the secure command line and reported that we had arrived and were commencing scanning. I fired off the deep space probe and took some initial readings from the wormhole. The data showed it was very stable and would take a significant amount of traffic. While relaying this to command I instructed the probe to move to the wormhole entrance. It was rather fortunate that the science boffins had recently discovered how to cram not only a simple ion drive onto these probes but remarkably a warpdrive as well, otherwise this would have been nearly impossible.

Energy began to crackle around the wormhole’s entrance then leapt across to the probe which simply disappeared.

“Erm….what happened there?” asked Marakal over the fleet channel.

“Comms clear please.” I responded calmly. I didn’t want to admit just yet that I didn’t know. I was getting no telemetry data from the probe and I wondered if my big break was going to be a washout. Then suddenly the data screens blazed alive as the probe reconnected with the ship’s computer and masses of data started pouring in.

“Command this is W-Squad FC. The probe is intact and sending data – routing it to you now.”

“Roger Fleet Commander. Give us your analysis as soon as you have it.”

It took a couple of minutes to extract the information I needed. Basically it was space just like any other bit of space but the probe had no clue where it was despite having the sum total of all technical data regarding all the stars in our known space. Nothing that it detected matched anything in it’s database – it did not recognise a single star.

Command’s analysis concurred with my own and I was given the order to proceed.

“Felder, connect to the deep space probe. I’ll contact you through that.”

“Roger Fleet Commander – Good luck Ecaf.”

A round of good luck messages came from the rest of W-Squad, except Marakal of course who instructed me to find the first bar I could and “get the beers in”. A private typed message appeared on my comm. It was from Felps and read “Major Ding-Dong wishes you the best of luck Ecaf. Fly safe.” I beamed at this previously unknown breach of protocol from a man I admired so much. I briefly considered the possibility of a promotion from this – if I could just make it back out alive.

I manoeuvred my ship toward the wormhole and when I got to around a kilometre away the same energy we had seen before crackled across the gap between the wormhole and my ship.

It appeared I was still alive so I opened my eyes again. Space looked pretty much the same here as it did everywhere. Checking my instruments revealed a standard solar system with four planets and six moons.

I reconnected to the probe and sent a message to Felder that I was alive and well and instructed the fleet to standby. After firing off several different probes I cloaked the Arazu and began to collate as much data from the system as I could.

A few minutes scanning satisfied me that I was alone and I sent another message to Felder to send the fleet through. Only he would remain behind to cover the wormhole entrance and to relay communications with command.

Within a few moments all eight of them had appeared around me and I opened the fleet channel, “Everyone bookmark the wormhole then find a safespot please. Make extra copies of your safespot bookmark for everyone.”

Once they had all reported back I ordered them all to warp to Marakal’s slow-boat battleship where we exchanged safespot bookmarks and established fallback plans and meeting points in case of various possible events. Leaving them there I returned to the wormhole cloaked so I could keep an eye on it while I used core probes to search out any signatures of interest.

I found a lot more than I had expected to and picked the one with the strongest signal. Having scanned the site down to the exact spot I warped in at a distance. I don’t know what I had expected but the sight of a complex of significantly sized structures was not high on my list of possibilities.

The structures looked industrial and although they were clearly not derelict there was not one single sign of movement or life. A place like this back home would be constantly buzzing with activity.

I related this development to the squad who all wanted to come and see it but I told them to stay put for now. I quickly put together a transmission package of scan data from the site and sent it to the deep space probe waiting patiently by the wormhole for Felder to send on to command.

For a while I flew around the buildings looking for some clue of what this place was for. The buildings were arranged in a rough, almost semi-circular, crescent moon shape with the larger structures concentrated in the centre and thinning out at the points. The whole complex was well over two hundred kilometres across. Getting nothing from the structures themselves I navigated towards the logical centre of the site.

Much became clear in the space of just a few seconds. The first unexpected event was the stars on my viewscreen suddenly moving downwards at speed and I instantly recognised that my ship had bounced off something that I hadn’t been able to see just a second before. This was followed quickly by my Arazu’s de-cloak alarm warning me I was visible.

Surprised into inaction for a second or two I sat momentarily confused as the ship attempted to return back to it’s previous course. The stars previously on the viewscreen had now disappeared, obscured by the vast expanse of metal less than a couple of kilometres in front of my ship, “Holy crap!!!” being the sole thought bouncing around inside my otherwise stunned and vacant brain.

The beeping of alarms and sudden appearance of multiple ship signatures on my overview dragged my mind rapidly back into focus and I quickly turned the Arazu around and flew toward open space. More ships poured from the structures and I frantically spammed the cloak button as lock-attempt warnings flashed all over my screen. Thankfully I disappeared again before any of the locks completed. Adjusting course slightly to head straight toward a planet that was mercifully close to my alignment, I had a few seconds to view the gigantic, newly found object as the alien ships swarmed toward my position. The closest was just a few kilometres away when the stars stretched out into lines and I warped the hell out of there.

The pounding of my heart drowned everything else out including my own voice rapidly repeating the single word “SHIT!” Slowly I edged back to reality and what I had seen began to form into a single coherent word – “SHIP!”. The configuration was nothing like anything I had ever seen before but it was easily as big as any titan we had. No, it had to be bigger, much bigger. I’d never before faced a titan without having one of our own plus hundreds of other ships in the fleet and never while I was in charge. My pulse rate raced upward again as I fought to control my panic.

*********************************

“Ecaf…you found that bar yet?……Ecaf…….Ecaf…….FACE!” Even Marakal’s impatient use of my nickname failed to penetrate the terror that gripped my mind like a slaver hound’s jaws on it’s victim’s neck.

“Ecaf…if you don’t respond I’ll have to assume command and take the fleet home without you.” Gorden was designated second-in-command but even this threat to my command didn’t drag me into focus.

“Come back please Ecaf.” Rashelle’s silky tones soothed their way into my head and I calmed down enough to take back some semblance of self-control.

“Comms clear…I won’t say it again. Safespot seven NOW…please.” As if disconnected from my own body I watched my fingers though a haze as they trembled over the controls. “Come on Ersa… get a grip!” By the time I arrived, last of everyone after even Marakal’s battleship, I had the situation clear in my head.

I quickly told them what I had found but had to shout down the babble of questions from everyone. “SHUT UP!!!…They could be listening. Nobody says anything from hereon in – use broadcasts if you need to alert me to something.”

I had been packaging what little data I had of the new ship and sent the transmission to the probe. Aura answered “Unable to connect.”

“WHAT?!…Shut it bitch!” I tried again but got the same result. I had been resolving myself to the task of returning to the site to gather more data but now I had a new problem. I kept this piece of information to myself for now and after broadcasting “Hold position” I warped to fifty kilometres of the wormhole, cloaking mid-warp, but arrived to find nothing. I checked my position – exactly fifty kilometres from my bookmark. “Where the hell is the probe?… Where the hell is the wormhole?…Shit!”

“OK Ecaf…keep calm…think……..right…it’s simple…get more data…make as much distance as you can from all this…scan for a new wormhole…get home…report in…be the hero…take Rashelle out to dinner…take Rashelle to bed…live happily ever after……yeah right…piece of cake!”

Buzzzzz….buzzzzz – the de-cloak alarm again. One of the alien ships had somehow sneaked up on top of me and I was being rapidly locked. With no time to run I locked back and activated all my weapons and warp disruptor while setting an orbit course. The alien ship was roughly the same size as mine but couldn’t keep up with my microwarpdrive enhanced speed so I kept the range I wanted and had good time to analyse the ship. I could recognise features but the technology was quite different, even the material it was made from was unknown to me.

Thankfully it’s turrets couldn’t keep track on me either and I was only taking random hits which my shield easily coped with. Launching my drones at him finished the job off and I rejoiced in the explosion. I was a little surprised to see a pod emerge from the wreck so I failed to lock it before it disappeared. Though why should a pod be surprising? We’d seen near identical technology develop independently in more than one place before. Unless…the two technologies had a common ancestor. This thought worried me a little though I wasn’t sure why.

Bolstered by a nice kill I was back in the zone again and warped back to the complex at a distance, cloaked of course. Some pilots bitched at cloaking ships claiming it was unfair – but bollocks – all is fair in love and war and if it keeps me alive then I’m going to use it. And besides there’s nothing stopping anyone from using them.

Things were now much more like I would expect, a mass of bustle and activity. Hoards of ships flitted here and there, mostly concentrated around the “titan” (for want of a better word) but also many combat vessels patrolling the perimeter. Only now I noticed that the ship was unfinished, although not by much. This site was clearly a mega-shipyard, probably, hopefully, built just for this one ship.

I sat and observed the proceedings for a while, manoeuvring just a few times to keep clear of the roaming sentry ships. After about ten minutes all the ships that had been scurrying around the colossal ship, like tiny shrimp on a giant whale, moved away and huddled next to the structures. A little concerned at this I backed away too. Nothing moved for a few more minutes until an almost microscopic movement in the corner of my viewscreen caught my eye. I watched as two alien pods emerged from the central structure, lost in the vastness of the place. They made their way quickly to a neighbouring structure where several seemingly inactive but identical ships were clustered together. The two pods each disappeared inside one of these ships which then came alive and moved out into the centre underneath the titan.

As they came close, one almost right at the front and the other roughly in the centre, hatches opened and the two ships disappeared into the belly of the great beast, the hatches closing smoothly behind them. Not many seconds later the ship became animated. Plumes of fire, steam and smoke ejected from various points around it and my data screens started showing massive energy spikes coming from the mighty vessel.

I quickly identified two distinct energy signatures, one of which correlated very closely with the energy we had analysed from the wormholes. The other was new but bore many similar characteristics to readings I had seen on doomsday device scan data. My fear that this ship could only have one possible purpose solidified into fact.

I worried that the devices might be set off but I was further away from the titan than the structures and other alien ships were, so I sat tight and waited to see what would happen. By now I knew we had no choice but to somehow try and destroy this ship before it could be unleashed. I had no proof it would be heading to my home but that was a chance I didn’t want to take, and even if it first went elsewhere in my galaxy, would we be able to stop it once it was in full swing? The best chance was now, before it was completed, and I put my mind to thinking up a plan. But how could we achieve such a daunting feat with a handful of ships not suited to the task?

As I prepared to return to the fleet, the energy spikes dropped back down and the beast went back to sleep. I delayed warping as I watched the hatches open again and the two ships re-emerge to repeat their previous journeys in reverse.

A new idea began to form in my mind – an idea more crazy than the whole concept of crazy itself.

*********************************

“You’re fucking insane Ecaf!” shrieked Marakal uncharacteristically, “You have no proof any of this will work!”

“Give me a better idea mate and we’ll do that instead.” I answered sombrely.

There was no response.

“We’re on our own here boys…I can’t, and won’t, make any of you do this. If anyone wants to go off and take their own chances then good luck. But I’m going in with this plan even if I’m on my own.” I’d always pictured myself draped in glory but I’d never gone as far as considering martyrdom before – I was too fond of life. Yet here I was, in all probability signing away my immortal life on a slim chance that I could save the galaxy from something it didn’t yet know existed. Worse than that, even if I succeeded they’d probably never even know I had done it. What a way to go – but the futility of it all somehow spurred me on – too many drunken nights watching action holo-reels I expect.

“OK dude,” came Marakal’s quavering voice over the fleet channel, “You’re a crazy bastard but I’ll follow you to our collective graves. You’re going to need a BS to have the remotest chance of pulling this off.”

Seven more responses came one at a time, some more enthusiastic than others, but all in the affirmative.

After hammering out the last details of the plan, we assembled at safespot two which gave us the best angle of warp into the crescent shape. We said our farewells, some on the verge of tears but I had a grim determination about me now. I wished I could have one last beer before my doom overtook me but, alas, I had neglected to bring any. Then I suddenly remembered boarding my ship and my mood lightened a touch as I put my hand in my breast pocket and retreived the “kiss” from Rashelle that I had stowed there. I pictured her face as I touched my fingers gently to my lips. It was the best I would get now.

I couldn’t enjoy our shared warp tunnel this time. I was too fixed on what I had to do. Against my whole Gallentean upbringing I decided to pray. Not because I was about to die but just in case there was a god out there who could bless this suicidal quest and make the assumptions that our slender chance of success relied on turn out to be fact.

*********************************

I could only watch helplessly as Gorden’s Myrmidon and Pauli’s Vexor disintegrated and their pods blown into spacedust. Samethi’s Blackbird and Zurgu’s Maulus had both done well to keep the alien ships off for as long as possible but now they were gone too. Asketh’s Ishtar had survived remarkably well, taking out dozens of the smaller ships before finally succumbing under the weight of the enemy.

Just four of us remained. Marakal’s Apocalypse was completely obscured by swarms of alien battleships as he sent barrage after barrage of hybrid salvos into the unfinished section right at the rear end of the titan. As we had planned he was attracting the most attention from the aliens. His structure had taken a severe battering and he was barely being kept alive by Jordi’s Sleipnir which was also suffering badly under the onslaught of so many ships. We needed the Sleip for just a little longer and again I prayed that this could be so.

As I neared my objective on the other side of the titan I called to Jaxsen still waiting at safespot two in his Rifter and he confirmed “on my way” a few seconds before he dropped out of warp on top of me, uncloaking me in the process. Saved me from doing it myself I guess. We both ejected our pods and closed the last few metres to the only ships left silent, the ships that had earlier docked with the beast. I crossed my fingers and instructed my pod to board the closest ship. Damn! It was working! As my neural jack interfaced with the ship I became overwhelmed with alien symbols and had to fight to make any sense of it.

Slowly I began to recognise patterns of data and worked out how to get the ship moving. Nobody had noticed us yet but none of the other ships were moving. I hadn’t seen which one Jaxsen had boarded and couldn’t work out how to communicate with him. I didn’t have time to wait for him and carried on across the void towards the head of the beast. I started to make sense of the data I was getting and the picture around me became gradually clearer. I anxiously watched for Jaxsen to start moving but nothing stirred. The aliens seemed to be ignoring me, probably assuming I was on their side. “Yes, yes, I am on your side…move along…nothing to see here.”

An explosion erupted from within the mass of alien ships and I knew this meant the Apoc was no more, but I noticed a pod moving swiftly away and prayed that Marakal had ejected and escaped in the confusion before his ship had gone. Immediately Jordi became the focus of the alien’s attention and it was his turn to disappear inside a cloud of red. The pod that I hoped was Marakal was evading attention and moving toward the silent ships. Then my luck ran out and I turned my focus to the alien frigates which were closing in and starting to target me. Jordi also targeted me now and began turning his repair systems to my aid but surely he couldn’t last much longer.

My alien ship was just holding together as I approached underneath the front of the titan. I wondered how I would get in and just tried a “board ship” command. Logical I figured and sure enough the hatch started to slide open. It seemed I was doing the right thing because suddenly the Sleipnir reappeared again as every alien ship decided I was enemy number one. But they were too late – I was nearly inside the beast.

“Damn dude, you took your time getting that thing going.” came Marakal’s voice in my head and turning my attention aft I just glimpsed an alien ship docking in the rear hatch marginally ahead of mine.

I laughed for the first time in what seemed like forever and our fallen comrades were briefly forgotten as I instinctively quipped back, “Well you always were the languages man. If only you could add two numbers in your head you’d be a genius!”

“Haha, touché! Now, let’s get this party really going…with a great big bang!” I could imagine the grin that would surely have accompanied that sentence.

As the hatch slid shut below me my mind became suddenly stunned with a concept so large my brain struggled to comprehend it. The universe was trying to enter my brain all at once and I felt tiny…microscopic…infinitely insignificant against the backdrop of all of existence.

I was being to drown under it all when “WHAO! What a rush!” and I was back again, Marakal’s voice echoing through my head, anchoring me to reality and my pod, barely bigger than me.

I struggled to get any words to form “Nnnnn….how…did..you.cope with that so easily man?”

“Damn dude, didn’t you do X when you were a kid?” I knew he was referring to the highly illegal mind-bending drug X-Instinct.

“Erm..no.” I almost felt ashamed of my staid years at university studying away diligently while everyone else around me was off their heads.

“Much the same feeling. Are you with me? Jeez this is a damn awesome ship!” He was babbling a bit now.

“Errr..Ecaf…sod self-destructing the ship…we can take this home!”

“What!?!” was all I could manage finally adding, “How?”

“We can make wormholes!”

“Erm…we can?…well…that’s good…I think…carry on then.”

“Roger Fleet Commander. But first, if you don’t mind, I’m going to set off this über-doomsday device!”

“Erm…OK…good idea…proceed!”

Within less than a minute an enormous blast of energy radiated out from our newly acquired ship, majestically sweeping most of the giant structures with it, leaving strands of twisted girders spiralling jaggedly off into the distance. The alien data streaming into my head from the eruption of energy had made a beautiful pattern and I felt the secrets of the universe’s energy unlocking themselves in my mind, as if they had always been there, hidden away in the darkest recesses.

A large number of the alien ships had stopped trying to destroy their own ship and warped off when they realised what was going to happen but they now returned and resumed their vain assault. I felt hope for the first time since I first saw this beast but regardless of the final outcome I was unashamedly proud of how far we had got and what we had already achieved.

I could sense large amounts of energy accumulating within the ship again but this was different to the last time. I excitedly realised this was going to be a wormhole and sure enough seconds later space began to warp and distort a few kilometres away to our right. There was a rushing sensation as if atmosphere had unexpectedly found its way into a vacuum, then the distortion erupted outward leaving behind a shiny new wormhole.

“Right your turn Ecaf…get this giant lump to that wormhole.”

My grasp of the alien technology was forming nicely now and the huge beast began to turn, agonisingly slowly, toward our road home. “Couldn’t you have made it in front of us?” I jokingly chastised Marakal.

“Pfft…the cheek!” was his response to that, thankfully picking up on the joke.

“Good work though mate. Well done.” It might have been my plan but he had made it work and, assuming we made it back, I would make sure he got the credit.

After what seemed like an age we made it to the wormhole with the alien ships still pounding away at us. I’ll never complain about a freighter again. Marakal spoke again, “They know where to hit us dude, some critical systems are going offline. I made the wormhole as big as I could but I don’t think it will survive this much mass. Fingers crossed we make it through.”

The energy from the wormhole surrounded our titan and the mouth opened up, sucking us inside. As we barrelled through the tunnel I noticed many ships following behind us but one was giving off very different energy patterns to the rest. I jubilantly recognised Jordi in his rather battered Sleipnir racing up next to us but I could also see the wormhole collapsing in on itself getting closer and ever closer.

The alien ships bringing up the rear span madly out of control before falling into the oblivion of the collapsing wormhole. A strange pain began to form in my head as the collapse caught up with the rear of the titan and our smooth transit quickly turned violently turbulent. I shared the ship’s pain as it began to twist and writhe under the cosmic stresses. The last thing I was conscious of was a feeling very much like when my ship disintegrates under fire automatically ejecting my pod, but there was something else too – a sense of abject loss, as if I was missing a limb.

*********************************

“You have both suffered some neural damage but exclusively in certain specific memory engrams. Nothing you won’t recover from in time.”

*********************************

“Please come back to me Ecaf.”

*********************************

“Oi!….Dude!…There’s a cold beer here…if you ever come round.”

My eyes opened. Strip lighting. Plastic ceiling tiles.

“Finally!!…Here quick…before the nurse comes back.”

I turned my head toward the voice. Marakal was grinning inanely, as usual, from the bed next to mine, but more interestingly was waving a bottle at me. I tried to lean across but my body didn’t want to respond and the attempt was feeble. He leant in closer and closed the remaining gap between my hand and the bottle which I finally managed to grab. I stayed there just long enough to hear the familiar clink of glass on glass before slumping back into the comfy, welcoming embrace of the clean, crisp bedsheets. Lifting my head a fraction I poured the beer into my open mouth. Shame most of it missed.

“Great man! Well done! The nurse isn’t going to miss that! Neck it quick, we’ve got four more each to finish before she comes back and confiscates them.”

“Oh…by the way dude, we’re fucking heros…and Rashelle just left your bedside for the first time in days…that’s some bladder control she has…I reckon you’re well in there mate.”

He raised his bottle and winked before sinking the remaining contents and grabbing another one. I settled my head back on the pillow and, forgetting all about the beer, smiled the biggest smile of my life. At last…a hero.

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Eyes of the Apocrypha

Published on 04. Apr, 2009 ... written by Alesk Remo.

I sit in wonder, stars surround me
The fate of worlds eaten before me
The blue sun glaring, its power unyielding
I watch in awe, worlds and plasma colliding
Forces unknown, melting, destroying
Imagined screams, fading dreams
I watch in horror, silence consuming
The planet cries, the explosion defiant
On its knees, the planet core breaking
I watch in terror, beyond all reason
I fear, I run, I scream, I’m falling
Plasma grasps, warp drive burning
I watch in blindness, blue light blazing
Warp drive dying, I keep praying
Silence engulfs me, freedom escapes me
I watch without emotion as my clone denies me
I wake in sweat, Death escapes me
Images burnt forever in memory
The fate of worlds destroyed before me

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The Pawn – Epilogue: Fool’s Mate

Published on 01. Apr, 2009 ... written by Ecaf Ersa.

Drevek was exhausted and aching like hell but nonetheless flushed and elated. He gazed at the only ever love in his life lying beside him, once lost but now refound. He took in her perfect skin, her perfect curves, her perfect eyes – simply perfect.

Kira broke the silence. “You know that dream you told me about?” she said with a hint of embarrassment in her voice.

“Erm…the one where you tied me to the bed and slapped me?”

“Yeah. Do you wanna give it a go?”

“Erm….hell yeah!”

Kira jumped up with excitement and looked around the small cabin finally settling her eyes on the overalls Drevek had been wearing. She swept them up and began tearing off strips of cloth. Drevek couldn’t believe things could keep on getting better and was aroused again already. He positioned himself on the bed as she straddled him and tied his hands to the metal posts of the bunk. Turning around to tie his feet she wiggled her backside in his face and giggled as she looked between her legs at the inane grin on his face.

Satisfied the bonds were tight enough she got off the bed and picking up her clothes began to dress, the naughty smile having disappeared.

“Thank fuck I haven’t got to go through that again.” she said in a cold tone.

Drevek’s excitement dropped in stages as it slowly dawned on him that she wasn’t joking. Once again words failed him and he just stared at her, disappointment and confusion stamped across his face in huge capital letters. Memories of being strapped to that cold metal table flickered through his mind.

“Oh come on Drevek.” she said, “Don’t be so damn thick!”

“Wha…” was all Drevek could manage.

A look of triumph crept onto her face as she leant over him, “Who do you think hired you to kill Hodron? Who do you think tipped off Baston knowing he’d tip her off? You think you found me all by accident that day? Your maps were wrong – I arranged for them to be wrong!”

Clearly in her element and enjoying his discomfort she continued, “You men are all the same, so easy to control. You’ll do anything when a bit of pussy is waved in your face.”

“Kira….I….I….love you!” It was the first time he had actually said it and now it sounded desperate and hollow.

She laughed long and loud. “Funny that! That’s exactly how Sella said it. Just before I planted the seed of my master plan in her mind.”

She couldn’t help herself now. Having held it all to herself for so long she finally burst and revealed the whole story to him. She told him how she had discovered Hodron’s secret account chock full with all the embezzled funds and blackmail payments, the sweetness of finding out Hodron didn’t like the touch of men either and how she had manipulated them all into this merry dance.

She used one more strip of cloth to gag him but was surprised that he didn’t resist. Maybe it hadn’t just been lust with him, did he really love her? But she couldn’t contemplate that, it was going to take too many showers to wash the grubby man-hands off her as it was.

She paused in the open doorway and turned to Drevek, “So darling…if you’ll excuse me I have one more thing to take care of then I can finally be back in the arms of my love….” and grinned as she added, “….and stacks of money of course.”

Anger finally came over Drevek but it took a minute or two to wrestle and tear his way out of the bonds. He raced to the flight deck and slid open the door to see Baston slumped in the pilot’s seat, out cold with blood trickling from his temple.

The viewscreen showed a station, though Drevek had no idea which one or even which system he was in, and a shuttle only a few meters away turning then disappearing into warp.

A quick scan of the instruments showed that he was back home, back in Oursulaert where he had not been since the morning after his trial seven and a half years ago.

He was wondering if Kira had just let them go when a large ship creeping into view on the screen caught his attention – A Gallente Navy Customs battleship. The intercom crackled into life, “Caldari vessel ‘Salvation’, this is Colonel Torvan of the Gallente Navy Customs vessel ‘Intrepid’. We have reason to believe a fugitive wanted for crimes against the Minmatar Republic is on board your ship. Approach the station and prepare for docking.”

Drevek saw the obligatory supporting frigates closing in on the scanner and thought quickly. He pressed the button to respond and started to speak but quickly realised the channel was not open. Shock rose in his mind as he noticed the warning light flashing to show the ship was targeting another vessel. His worst fear was confirmed when he looked at the screen to see the yellow box zooming in around the Customs battleship.

The intercom crackled again, “Caldari vessel ‘Salvation’, drop your lock or you will be fired upon. I repeat, drop lock and approach the station for docking.”

“Kira! What have you done?” Drevek shouted, as panic rose in him. The split second he put his finger to the touchpanel to unlock the target he realised that was not the right move. He heard the railguns fire and watched as the charges burst uselessly against the battleship’s shield sending electromagnetic ripples down the length of the ship. Warning lights flashed and an insistent beeping started. Drevek stood frozen and could do nothing but look on in horror as the huge railguns slowly turned to point seemingly straight at him.

In the briefest of moments a thousand images from his past flashed through his mind and he realised with sadness there was not a single good deed among them. The penultimate thought that his mind conceived was that if the Amarr were right after all then he would be going straight to hell. The last was of Kira, of that smile she had given him in the first instant they had met. The antimatter charges spared him from the anguish of the only thought that could possibly have followed.

****************

“Yes Colonel, one of the bodies we recovered was Baston’s. The other one was Drevek Tesnar. We analysed the salvage and, as you suspected, the controls had definitely been tampered with. I don’t believe they had intended to fire on us. The oddest thing though…”, the man didn’t finish the sentence.

“What Midshipman? What was odd?” enquired Colonel Torvan.

“Well Sir, if they hadn’t meant to fire on us I’m confused by the calm smile on Tesnar’s face. You can still clearly see it.”

“Hmmph”, was the sound from Torvan accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders, “Well, it’s all over now Midshipman. Your report on my screen in two hours please. Dismissed.”

As the door closed, Torvan looked away from the paperwork on his computer screen, stared at nothing in particular and said to nobody in particular, “I wonder if that reward is still valid?”

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The Pawn – Part Two: Pawn takes Queen – Checkmate!

Published on 25. Feb, 2009 ... written by Ecaf Ersa.

The Place: Kasstra Corporation, just outside Propadio, Tannakan I, Bleak Lands
The Time: Yulai Convention 12.06.110 – EST 10:26

Sella Hodron smiled, confident in her own superiority, “You are one hard nut to crack, but I knew you’d see sense in the end. It’s a damn shame really, we could have worked together instead of….this.” she gestured about her. “If only Baston had told me about you sooner.” Seeing his reaction she continued, “Oh yes. It was him who told me you were coming.”

The man sitting across the table from him was only restrained at the wrists but she hadn’t got to where she was today by showing fear or weakness. No, quite the opposite, she had got there by instilling fear in others and ruthlessly exploiting their weaknesses. That and the series of carefully engineered accidents and calamities that had befallen the men who had gotten in her way. She smiled as she recalled the sweetest of them all, the downfall of Baston, which ironically had also resulted in the ruin of the man facing her now.

“So. You promised me a name?”

“Before I tell you maybe we can discuss working together after all.”

She pondered this for a second or two. He would be an extremely valuable asset but having already been hired to kill her could also be a liability. She’d need to be certain he could be bought and the knowledge that he’d flushed his life down the pan to save Baston’s worthless ass didn’t give her that certainty.

“Well we can discuss that afterwards. You are not in much of a position to bargain”, she said nodding toward to the two men standing by the door armed with blaster rifles. She fingered the blaster pistol at her side, partly just because she liked the feeling of power it gave her and partly because she was not impressed with the choice of weaponry the guards had been given. The rifles were intimidating but would not be a great deal of use in such close quarters. But it was too late now to do anything about it now without appearing weak and, in any case, she could handle herself.

Drevek was playing for time, slowly loosening the ropes around his wrists with simple but effective muscle contractions. “Well I’d like to discuss it now if you don’t mind. I’m going to have to leave everything I had built up behind again if I give you the name.”

His mark flew into a rage, jumping up and slamming her palms on the table “IF you give me the name?”

Seizing his opportunity Drevek slipped his hands from the ropes and grabbing the table he swept it across the floor towards the guards sending Sella off-balance and stumbling towards him. Moving quickly behind her he swung his left arm round her throat and in one smooth movement his right hand took the pistol from the holster at her side and put it to her temple.

The guards had had no time to bring the cumbersome rifles to bear before the table had crashed into their legs and now they didn’t know what to do. They looked at each other then at Sella. She shouted at them impatiently “IDIOTS! Put the rifles down!” They complied. “And your knives.” added Drevek.

“Move over there.” Drevek commanded calmly nodding to a corner away from the door. “You! Take the rope and tie your friend’s feet and wrists,” he said to the taller of the two, “If its not tight enough I’ll kill him.” The guard, just a young man, did exactly as he was told and his friend grimaced at the tight bonds.

“Now her.” Drevek continued, shoving Sella towards them and levelling the pistol at the group. “If these aren’t tight enough I’ll kill you.”

The man gave a pathetic look and said, “I don’t have any more rope!”

“You only used half of it on him. Use the loose ends and tie them together.”

The poor man was confused and scared witless. He’d only applied for this job because it was the only one going with half decent pay and even that wasn’t enough for all this. He didn’t understand the instruction and tears began to well in his eyes.

Drevek sighed. “Where did you recruit this lot from Hodron?”

“He means tie me to him you moron.” she said, spitting out the words derisively and wondering the same thing, then added optimistically, “OK Tesnar, well done, you passed the test. Now, about that job?”

Drevek enjoyed saying sarcastically “Well we can discuss that afterwards. You’re not in much of a position to bargain.”

“Bastard! You won’t get out of here alive.” A thought entered her head and she added, “Baston will see to that.”

“I’m bored of hearing that name. I’ll deal with him if I see him here, which I doubt.”

Having completed his task the guard looked at Drevek helplessly for further instructions. Drevek asked him “You want to live soldier?”. He nodded enthusiastically. “Then you’re coming with me.” More nodding. “Stand in that corner, hands on head.” The guard obeyed. Drevek sighed again “No. Face the wall.”

After collecting the rifles and knives he took the sidearm holster off Sella, strapped it to his own waist and holstered the pistol. Bending over Sella again he took her access card and grabbing the lapel of her blouse ripped it open. This prompted her to spit in his face and snarl, “If you think I’m going to lie down while you have your fun you can damn well think again.”

Drevek was expressionless as he wiped the spittle from his face, “Well, again you’re in no position to bargain, but in any case, no thanks. I prefer my women nice, not complete bitches. This is all I’m after.” Locating the necklace he had been told would be round her neck he yanked it sending broken links bouncing across the floor. He separated the biometric card from the remnants of the chain it had hung from and pocketed it.

“That’s no good to you without me. We can still strike a deal Drevek.”

“I tire of people pretending to be my friend just because they know my first name. In any case I know that’s not true, I only need this,” he said grabbing her right thumb behind her back. Her eyes widened with horror as he took up one of the knives and she realised what he was going to do. The ruthless and self-confident woman was breaking apart and a frightened little girl was appearing through the cracks.

Sella began to plead pitifully “Please, please. Take me with you, we’ll make a brilliant team!” Getting no reaction from him she became more desperate “Please I’ll do anything – you can have me, any time you want. I’ll do anything you want, be your slave, anything!” She had practically squealed the last word.

“No thanks. Not my thing, and somehow I don’t believe you’d live up to that promise.”

Drevek sliced cleanly through the knuckle of the thumb separating it completely from the hand and Sella emitted a strange muted gurgle as the walls finally came tumbling down and she began to sob, “Please, let me live. You can keep the card.”

Drevek ignored her and instead examined the edge of the knife, impressed with it’s sharpness, and stood up straight. He steeled himself, forcing any feelings of pity from his head. This wasn’t really what he had signed up for but he had a job to do and he had suffered a great deal over the past days at the hands of men doing the bidding of this woman.

“Sella Horton, I am well aware of many of the crimes you have readily committed, regardless of the suffering that it has caused to innocent people. Even if I were not being paid to do this I would be pleased to rid the universe of scum like you.” Stepping back a pace he raised the pistol and fired.

The man Sella had been tied to had been lying still and silent but hearing the unmistakable sound of an energy weapon firing, feeling the woman’s body pushed hard against his and then smelling the acrid stench of burnt flesh he began to wail. Drevek was about to fire again but held back and clubbed him with the butt of the pistol instead. Cutting and tearing a strip from the fabric of Sella’s trousers he gagged the guard tightly.

The tall guard was still standing in the corner with his hands on his head. He was whimpering quietly and flinched as Drevek came and stood behind him. “I have spared your friend’s life and if you do exactly as I say I will spare yours too. She was an evil bitch and I can’t believe that you will have enjoyed working for her.” The man shook his head slowly in agreement and fought back his tears.

“What’s your name soldier?”

“I’m not really a soldier. They just gave me a rifle and told me to look mean.”

“Answer the question soldier.”

“Polski.”

“OK Polski. Take off your boots, trousers and shirt. Give me your access pass.”

Polski did as he was told. He resolved there and then to go back home to his parent’s farm if he made it out of this alive. All those years ago he couldn’t wait to get out but right now he couldn’t wait to see it again. He put on the ragged overalls that Drevek had been wearing, trying hard to look anywhere but at the blasted body of his former commander or the mass of bruises and cuts covering the body of his former prisoner.

“Rule number one – you don’t speak unless I ask you a question.” Drevek looked at the access pass he been given and read the full name. “Until I tell you otherwise you are the prisoner Drevek Tesnar and I am the guard Vladin Polski.” Polski nodded in agreement.

“How well do people here know you?”

“Not well sir, they keep us separated mostly. I worked with Irton most of the time.” nodding at the unconscious form of his friend, still tied up in the corner.

“Good. Rule number two – don’t call me sir. Will there be many people about here at this time?” Drevek asked as he tied Polski’s hands behind his back.

“No, not down here. Probably just the doctor. He’s probably in his office.”

“How far is that from here? Does he have a computer?” Drevek removed the charge cartridge from the second rifle and put it in his trouser pocket.”

“About 40 or 50 metres I guess. Er…yes I think he has a computer.”

“You think or you know?”

“Yes. He has a computer.”

“Good. Lead me there. Remember, you are the prisoner, keep your head low and try to look as beaten up as you have seen I am.”

Polski played his part well and the one person they met on the way didn’t pay them a second glance. Polski nodded at a door with a plaque bearing the name Dr. Hufty. Shifting the rifle onto his left arm Drevek took out the knife and gestured to Polski to open the door. It swung open revealing a small office only two metres by four. “The Doctor”, the man who had been tormenting Drevek for days, was sat at his desk typing on the computer.

Dr. Hufty had been pondering another cup of coffee when the door opened. Expecting it to be “The Bitch” here to tell him it was all over and that he had some “cleaning” to do he started to stand. Seeing the two men confused him somewhat. Suddenly recognising the second man, standing just behind the other, he opened his mouth in amazement just as the knife sliced through the air and into his neck. Choking on the blood running down his throat he sat back down again and silently cursed that woman for bringing him into this mess. “I’m just a doctor.” was his last thought.

Closing and locking the door, Drevek instructed Polski to stand in the corner and moved to the desk, passing a cupboard with its sliding door open revealing medical equipment. He felt no compassion for this man and pushed the body off the chair onto the floor. The access card was still inserted in the slot on the front of the computer and taking the seat Drevek began searching the database for the information he wanted.

Polski, wanting this nightmare to end, dared to speak without first being asked a question. “You’ll probably need Commander Hodron’s access card to get what you want.”

“You know this system?”

“My access is about as low as it gets but I know the general structure. I’m pretty good with computers.”

“Get over here then.” said Drevek rising from the seat. Polski walked over and Drevek untied his hands. Polski sat at the chair taking the card Drevek offered him.

“Try anything funny and it’ll be the last thing you ever do.” Polski nodded solemnly. Seeing the doctor’s limp body still pumping blood onto the floor he retched and looked back at Drevek, “Could you…move that…please?”

Drevek felt a stirring of pity for him and dragged the body into the cupboard before closing the door and standing behind Polski.

“OK I’m in. What are you looking for?”

“Communication transcripts.”

Polski’s fingers moved quickly and smoothly over the keyboard, finally demonstrating a skill in something. “OK here.” he said standing again and returning to the corner.

Drevek found what he was looking for almost instantly, the name Opolen Hutreu standing out like a sore thumb. It was the name of the identity he had obtained for Baston all those years ago. Scanning the transcript confirmed what Hodron had told him, that Baston had tipped her off that he was coming for her. “Why?” he said out loud.

“Why what?” answered Polski and Drevek remembered he was not alone.

“Nothing. Come here and find me the logs of arrivals and departures.”

Polski got them quickly but as he started to stand Drevek put his hand on his shoulder and gently pushed him back down into the chair. “Stay there. Find when Hodron arrived here last.” Looking over Polski’s shoulder he saw that it was the day before Drevek had arrived. “Where had she come from?” Drevek enquired. “It doesn’t say. Restricted information apparently. You’ll probably need to be on Commander Hodron’s personal computer for that. That should be in her office.”

“How long has she been Commander here?”

“Ever since I started but that was only six months ago. Irton has been here ages; he once told me she got the job because the previous guy got busted for having a hide-away full of sex slaves. I forget his name now, some Amarrian guy. I can find it for you.” Polski started typing again but Drevek said “No don’t bother, I know who that was.”

Drevek thought for a few seconds. “Can you get up records of the executive orders that Hodron has given? Between 7 and 8 years ago?”

“I can try.” Polski typed away for a while, scanning the screen looking for what he wanted. “No I can’t get at it from here. I’d have to be on the computer in her office.”

“OK let’s go.”

“WHAT? Are you crazy? That’s on the top floor; you’ll never get past all the security. I’m not allowed up there.”

“Well you’ll have to think of….”

“Oh wait! Once I saw her come out through a door that I’ve never been through in all the time I’ve been here. It’s back near the interrogation room. I was on my way from the bathroom to relieve the guard at the elevator entrance. Just before I finished my watch she came back onto the level again through the elevator doors I was guarding. She hadn’t left that way so she must have got off the floor another way. It must have been through that door.

“OK we’re going there then.”

Drevek tied Polski’s hands again, then cautiously unlocked and opened the door to the corridor. It was clear. ”OK, go.”

Polski led him back the way they had come. As they approached the interrogation room they had been in before a man appeared from a side corridor a few metres ahead of them. His smart suit and the fact he was unaccompanied showed him to be somebody of importance here. Seeing them he stopped and barked “Guard! Why is the prisoner out of the interrogation room?”

Drevek was relieved that this man had evidently not actually seen him yet and answered, “He needed the bathroom Sir. Commander Hodron instructed me to escort him there.”

“Really?” the man said dubiously. He eyed Polski with disdain as if he doubted that this man could really be as dangerous as he had heard. “Lead the way then guard.” Drevek prodded Polski in the back with the rifle. “Move it prisoner, back to the interrogation room.” Polski shuffled on, continuing to play the part well.

As they reached the interrogation room door the man in the suit said, “Wait there.” and moved forward being careful not to turn his back on the prisoner. As he opened the door, he immediately started to speak “What’s going on here Hodron? Why is…” but broke off as he saw Hodron’s blasted body tied to the second guard who was trying to wrestle his way out of his bonds. He span round to see the “guard” stepping forward and a rifle butt rapidly closing in on his face.

Pulling Polski through the door Drevek closed it behind him. “Who the hell is this?” he asked.

“I have no idea at all.”

“Well he must have been important. He didn’t use Hodron’s title. Nice suit though.” A quick search of the pockets revealed nothing of interest except a calling card for what was clearly a local prostitute.

Irton was still trying to escape his bonds. Drevek felt compassionate enough to ask him if he was OK. Through the gag Irton responded, “O I a fukin ot.”

“Well you lie still, it’ll all be over soon and you can go home. Cause me problems and you won’t even make it out of this room.” Irton nodded and returned to his incumbent position.

Drevek had to untie Hodron and drag her to one side before he could tie this new man up in her place. Hodron’s trousers provided another gag. “She’ll be wearing shorts soon if this carries on.” Drevek chuckled at a small scrap of much needed levity. Suddenly feeling mischievous he tucked the calling card into the new man’s gag to be found when he was rescued.

Polski found it funny too but stifled the laugh when he saw Irton’s eyes drilling into his with disapproval. He wasn’t sure whether he was in shock or just becoming immune to dead bodies. He’d never seen one before today and now he’d seen two in a very short space of time. One of them he’d seen horribly killed in front of his eyes and the other he had heard happen behind his back. Both murders had been committed by a man that was now using him to escape a place he was paid to help guard. A man he was helping, a man he had freely offered his help to. The gravity of the situation sank in again and a mental tug-of-war began in his head, morals versus self-preservation. But, in any case, he could not do much right now. His hands were tied and this man was armed and trained to kill, and clearly trained very well.

Drevek saw the change in the Polski’s face and correctly guessed what was going on in his head. He still needed his help but wasn’t sure what to do; people skills were not his forte. The boy clearly cared for his friend tied up on the floor and Drevek decided to revert to his previous tactic. “He’ll be fine as long as you continue to do as you are told soldier. You are both still alive because you were not the ones torturing me but if either of you becomes a problem for me I will not hesitate to remove that problem. You understand?”

Polski nodded but resented the return to threats, having preferred it when the man was being nice. With that thought came the sudden realisation that he had been enjoying helping him and had been getting a thrill from the excitement and tension of it all. He felt sick at the thought and forced his mind to return to the days he spent as boy playing in the fields of wheat on his parent’s farm. He wondered if the tree house was still there in the old apple tree.

“Right soldier. Take me to that mysterious door and hopefully this nightmare can soon end for both of us.”

The boy seemed lost in thought and didn’t respond. “POLSKI!” Now he was paying attention, “That door that you saw Hodron come out of?”

He just nodded sadly and walked despondently to the door. Drevek realised he was losing him and dreaded the thought of having to kill again, least of all him. He was just a boy caught up in a mess not of his own making.

Thankfully there were no more encounters on the short walk there. Drevek examined the door. It had no handle, lock or control panel. He noticed that this door was the only one he had seen that had thin black lines painted onto the frame around it, all the rest had been plain. Running his hands over the frame he quickly discovered a slot hidden in one of these lines just about the right size for a card. Taking Hodron’s access card he inserted it but nothing happened. He tried the biometric card from the chain around her neck but again nothing. This was taking too long and he risked being discovered, it would be tough to explain why a guard would be examining a door while escorting a prisoner.

Removing the card again he started to turn away when a reflection of light from a small area on the doorframe caught his eye. Moving his head around failed to recreate the effect so he felt around again. Finding a small rectangle with a different texture to the rest Drevek discovered it was some kind of coloured plastic instead of the painted metal of the rest of the frame. Re-inserting the second card he took Hodron’s thumb and pressed it against the plastic and the door slid open to reveal an elevator. Taking the card out he pulled Polski inside and the door slid shut again. There were only two buttons so he pressed the top one and felt the surge of the elevator moving upwards. Slinging the rifle over his shoulder he took the blaster pistol from it’s holster hidden under his shirt and stood behind Polski.

A few seconds later the elevator slowed down and then stopped. The door slid open again revealing a lushly decorated office with large windows looking out over the forest that nearly encompassed the complex. Stepping into the office Drevek revelled in the natural daylight on his face and wondered how long he had been in that torture chamber. He quickly spotted a second door next to the one they had come from and, depositing the almost vacant Polski in a nearby corner, he quickly scouted the office. Not only were they were alone but Drevek discovered something that almost made him cry with relief. The office sat on the roof of the building but only took up a small proportion of it. A door led out onto the rest, which was dominated by a landing pad, complete with waiting transport ship!

Feeling the first glimmers of real hope for a long time he led Polski to the office desk, holstering the pistol and propping the rifle against the desk. Gently pushing Polski into the comfortable chair he inserted Hodron’s access card in the slot on the computer.

“OK computer wizard, it’s time to weave your magic again. Find me those executive orders.” Polski just sat staring at nothing and didn’t move. “Polski?” Drevek waved his hand in front of the boy’s face but got no reaction. “OK, down to me then.”, Drevek said out loud, wheeling the chair with Polski still sat in it out of the way. He crouched at the computer and started looking for the information he wanted. He found it quite quickly.

Firstly he found an order from Hodron, dated a week before he had seen that news report in the bar on Oursulaert III, for the transportation of seven Minmatar slave girls that had been recently rescued from an Amarr slave ship by operatives working for the Kasstra Corporation. A report linked to the order described how, during their journey to Rens for repatriation to their families, the ship had been attacked and destroyed by pirates resulting in the apparent loss of all lives on board.

He also found records of several “bonus” payments made shortly before that time to three different Kasstra employees based at their facility on Dammalin VII, for “service above and beyond the call of duty” allegedly involving anti-pirate activity in Bosboger. Another report from a few days after those payments were made described how these same three were killed on another mission into Olfeim.

Suddenly curious he executed a search for his own name. There were several results but one stood out immediately, an official Gallente government report regarding his trial and imprisonment. It stood out because the prison named in the report was not the one he knew he had been incarcerated in. His thoughts immediately turned to Kira and the fact that she had never visited him. He hoped he now knew why that was and his heart lifted. But that had been many years ago. Could there be any chance she was still waiting for him?

Drevek searched for her name and found only one match. It was a Kasstra Corporation employee record for her. It revealed three things, the name of her recruiter, being Sella Hodron, her date of employment which was a little less than a year after Drevek’s trial and a mention of a transfer to the “special operations” department a few months later. There the trail went cold, with everything else marked as “Restricted Information”.

His lightened mood evaporated again and his mind drifted back to when they had been together, back to when he had been happy. A noise broke through his haze and he instinctively reached for the rifle – which was not there. He looked at the chair and Polski was not there either. The second door was wide open and as he stood up an alarm began to sound.

“Back on the clock Richie!” came Boss Man’s voice into his head.

Taking the pistol from it’s holster Drevek moved quickly to the door leading onto the roof, swung it open and ran to the transport ship. Reaching it he realised he did not have the ship door’s access code. As he considered returning to the computer to find it the door opened taking him by surprise. The man standing there said, “What’s going on?….Who the fuck are you?” before noticing the pistol in Drevek’s hand.

The man kicked out at the pistol sending it clattering to the floor then launched himself at Drevek knocking him over and they grappled and punched at each other for a few seconds before Drevek managed to throw him off. He got to his feet but the man had landed by the pistol and was picking it up. As he fumbled it into his hand Drevek took the knife he still had tucked into his belt. He had to throw it quickly and his aim was off, failing to make a lethal blow and only wounding the man, but it was enough to delay him a few seconds. Drevek leapt through the door of the transport, quickly closing and locking it.

As Drevek sat in the pilot’s seat and fired up the engines the man started shooting at the transport with the blaster pistol. As he took the ship up he saw a flood of guards pouring out of Hodron’s office onto the roof. Taking their lead from the man still firing the pistol at the ship they joined in with their rifles and the transport took several hits.

Drevek gunned the throttle and turned the transport toward the port. It couldn’t go out of the planet’s atmosphere so he still needed the ship he had left there. Nonetheless, elated that not only had he made it out of the complex alive but had also completed the mission, he sank down into the chair and relaxed.

Barely a minute into the flight his elation turned once again to despair as warning lights started flashing. These ships were not designed to absorb much damage and the blaster fire had clearly hit some critical areas. More warning lights flashed and an alarm began insistently beeping as the transport quickly started to lose power and altitude. Drevek prepared for an emergency landing at a small clearing he spotted about half a kilometre away. It was a bit too small but it would have to do.

He was losing control of the ship and Drevek buckled the safety harness before wrestling the transport into a crash landing. It skidded further than he had hoped and careered into the trees surrounding the clearing tearing open the hull. He had taken a blow from a chunk of flying metal and was dizzy and bleeding again when he crawled from the wreckage. Taking only a few seconds to compose himself he headed off into the trees toward the port.

*****

The Place: Propadio spaceport, Tannakan I, The Bleak Lands
The Time: Yulai Convention 13.06.110 – EST 07:12

Bang-bang-bang-bang. “Karag! Are you alright? What are you doing in there?”

Slowly he realised he was on the floor in the shower room of the dormitory and that someone who knew Karag was outside the door threatening to break it down. Snapping back into action he swept up the largest shard of glass from the broken bottle lying around him and moved quickly to the door.

Jutta might have only been a warehouse worker but he was not stupid. He knew that breaking a door down wasn’t as easy as the movies would have you believe. He considered getting security but if Karag was in some kind of difficulty that would cost precious minutes he might not have. “The hinges will be the weak point” he thought to himself and was testing to see if the corridor was narrow enough for him to brace his back against the wall and push with his feet against the door when he heard the click of the lock.

He began “Fucking hell man, I was…” when the door swung suddenly open and a naked man lunged through the open doorway, “…FUCKING HELL!”

The man banging on the door had been standing against the opposite wall and not where Drevek had expected him to be. His swipe with the piece of jagged glass had missed and now he was off balance.

In sheer panic Jutta scurried down the corridor into the common room crashing into one of the tables sending it clattering across the floor, scattering the four chairs set about it. On his knees bent over an upturned chair he scrambled to get back up again. Glancing over his shoulder he saw the naked man bearing down on him, his face grim with determination, and Jutta threw himself to one side. The purely instinctive reaction saved him again as the chair tipped with him, swinging one the legs up into the side of his attacker’s head.

Momentarily stunned, Drevek’s head rang from the blow. He shook his head to clear it and blood splattered on the floor. He was getting tired of seeing his own blood and couldn’t help wondering how much he had lost since being captured.

The man was out the door and shouting for help. Daylight showed through the open door and Drevek realised he had been unconscious on the shower room floor all night. He briefly considered giving up and taking what was coming to him but Boss Man came back into his head again “No Retreat! No Surrender!”

Drevek shouted out loud “LEAVE ME ALONE!! I’M ONLY IN THIS MESS BECAUSE OF YOU!!”

He desperately wanted to hate Baston but underneath that he wanted more to believe that there was some higher reason behind it all. If only he had the slightest idea what the hell it was.

The man was too far away to try and chase after now. Back in the shower room he quickly put the overalls on and returned to the door. Standing to one side he peered round the corner and saw a great deal of movement in the distance. Several personnel buggies were heading his way with men hanging on to the sides. He couldn’t make a stand here without any weapons. Drevek cursed as he realised he would have to try to get off the port again.

He ran out through the door back toward the forest. Having no idea how he would get off the planet now despair began to take him over and once again he considered surrendering despite Boss Man’s words still ringing in his head. These were port authority and nothing to do with Kasstra. They would treat him properly, but he had killed a port worker and had no desire to spend any more time in prison, so he continued to run. A few of the men clinging to the buggies took some pot shots at him but they all went wide.

Glancing over his shoulder to see how close they were he was rather surprised to see an explosion just in front of the leading buggy. It launched into the air landing several metres away, scattering the men that had been holding on to it and causing the following buggies to swerve to avoid running them over. Suddenly he heard the roaring of engines above him and he looked up as a ship swung into view and fired a few more warning shots near the men who threw themselves on the ground. The ship sank down to hover just above the ground only ten metres away from him.

Drevek was confused but this seemed to be the normal state of affairs lately. The ship’s door opened turning Drevek’s confusion into utter bewilderment when he saw Kira standing there holding out her arm towards him. She was saying something but the noise of the engines drowned it out completely and Drevek just stood and stared open-mouthed. Was he dreaming again? As she beckoned urgently to him a rifle blast whooshed past his head so close he felt the heat from it. Snapping out of the daze he sprinted to the ship and dived through the door, which closed behind him. The nose of the ship quickly lifted and then rocketed up towards outer space and freedom.

Fighting against the g-forces Drevek got himself into a sitting position against the back wall, which was serving as more of a floor than a wall at that point. Again he just stared at Kira who had managed to climb into one of the seats and was kneeling on it clinging on to the backrest.

She smiled at him and said “Hello darling! How was your day?” That was Kira’s sense of humour all right. Drevek opened his mouth to speak but no words came out and the result looked like an amusing impression of a fish. The ship levelled off, although it was still climbing, so she crawled over and put her arms tenderly around him. Still lost for words Drevek returned the hug, put his head on her shoulder and cried, letting loose all the pain and the frustration of the last seven and a half years./p>

He lost all sense of time and the ship had crossed several systems before he let her go. Gazing into her blue eyes he finally managed to speak albeit only one word, “How?”

“Well you really need to thank somebody else actually.” Drevek understood even less than before. Seeing his confusion she continued, “A friend of yours visited me a few days ago and explained why I could never find you after the trial. He said he needed me to bring you back home.” The door opened and there was Baston in the doorway smiling, “Hello sonny boy!”

“YOU!” Drevek snarled as he started to rise but Kira restrained him, “It’s OK Drevek, hear him out.” Right now he would have done absolutely anything for her and he slumped back down again.

“I hope you managed to get that card?”

Drevek was so drained he just reacted to the voice of his former officer. He realised he didn’t know if he still had it and quickly patted all the pockets on the overalls finding it in the last one. As he pulled it out he saw the dried blood and remembered the severed thumb, which he also retrieved, from the bottom of the pocket.

“Ewww” squealed Kira and she grimaced at it as he handed it to Baston along with the card. Fetching a portable computer Baston inserted the card in the slot on the side. After tapping a few keys he placed the computer on Drevek’s lap, “You can be the one to make the final move.”

Drevek looked in bewilderment at the screen, which showed an almost completed money transfer between two accounts. He did not recognise either name but the amount of the transfer had so many digits in it he lost count twice then gave up.

Baston handed him back the thumb and Drevek pressed it against the touch pad on the computer, which responded by saying, “Transfer complete.”

Baston smiled and said simply, “There! Told you I’d make it up to you.”

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Mondo’s Flight Academy – Part 5 (What about Einstein?)

Published on 20. Feb, 2009 ... written by Sunforge.

Rules: some you observe and others you break. Some rules are sensible and some are there because the lawyers got involved. There is also a minor but very irritating set of rules which are there just to wreck your day. Our next flight was an object lesson in the application of these rules. Now if you ask me, I think that the gods of the space lanes are a cruel and unusual bunch who, over a period of millennia, made sure that everyone was going to fall foul of these rules one way or another. I bet they sit back in whatever qualifies for their heaven, watching us mortals screw up, whilst recording the best bits to show their friends at the weekend. Am I being bitter? Of course I am.

Those of you who were paying attention know that we’d added some secret sauce to our Mark 3 Imparior and were hoping that this new innovation would allow us to listen in to Concord broadcasts. Of course the only way to test that this mod was going to work, was to undock and take a flight. We were all geared up and ready to go. We decided against taking Einstein with us because he told us he got space sickness and I didn’t fancy clearing up my flight deck after him. In hindsight I think he may have had other reasons for not coming with us.

We got a tow to the launching bay and double checked our systems before they were off-lined by the launch control tower. On older stations (like this one) they used a magnetic acceleration rail to ping you out of the station. To ensure that no accidents happened, they took control of your ship during launch. The overall effect of a mag-launch is best described as being pinned to your seat by a three hundred pound gorilla, whilst you’re wearing a black out band over your eyes. After the launch there’s a desperate scramble to check that everything’s back on line and to ensure that the launch tower hadn’t shot you towards an inbound ship. We all frantically checked our instruments (all clear), I checked for neighbouring ships (none). We heaved a collective sigh of relief and then before anything got pinged into us, I punched in a course for orbit around one of the nearer planets in our system, so we could test the Concord rig. The Flight plan kicked in and we warp-jumped to a small planet that doubled as an orbital junkyard. Kzen and Podie were itching to get started with the Concord gizmo, and I knew that I couldn’t let hold them back much longer, so to give the illusion that I was in charge I gave them the nod. They immediately set to work. Buttons were pressed, switches were flicked, relays were relayed and manuals consulted. Actually none of that happened, this is the twenty something century, so Kzen pushed a virtual button on his control surface and smiled at me. So much for putting on a show I thought. There was a pause, whilst Kzen switched the comms subsystem onto “roaming mode”. We caught snatches of conversation on various channels; local is always filled by someone swearing at someone else, travel information is always full of adverts and then suddenly we struck gold.
“Concord 17 this is control, notify infraction at Avada Stargate, code 6 in progress.”
“Roger control, code 6 in progress, notify infraction.”
“Control, this is Concord 22, reporting backups at Haimeh, suspect interference in Jasson.”
“Roger Concord 22, added to info view.”
Oh yes, we were receiving Concord loud and clear.
Kzen and Podie gave loud whoops and punched the air. I allowed myself a quiet smile: the guys had done well. This was indeed something that could save our butts if we paid attention.

I could only keep half an ear on Concord transmissions, as the planet we were orbiting had, as I mentioned before, become a junkyard. Even with collision avoidance on, it was a reasonably taxing job to keep the little Imparior clear of the biggest bits of junk. I had to rely on the shields to deflect the smaller stuff.

Things were going quite well. Kzen and Podie started channel hopping, to collect and programme all available Concorde and local police channels, so that we could access them on demand rather than search for them each time we needed to listen in. We noted from time to time the odd burst of prolonged white noise which hit the Concord channels. The bursts were intense and random in duration. The comms panel got upset with one of the bursts and Kzen had to re-start the sub system to free it up.
“What the frak was that?” Said Kzen.
Podie and I were non plussed, although Podie volunteered a less than useful idea:
“You sure you put everything back together right?” He said innocently.
Now the only way to resolve disputes like this is to refer to the manual. It is at this point I ought to provide you a quote from Sunforge’s Space lane Rules (learned from bitter experience).

Rule 1: All manuals are actually written in Jovian then translated on a computer maintained by a drunken chimpanzee.

Kzen and Podie both reached for the big manual at the same time. After a brief struggle and a bit of swearing, from both parties, they got down to the interesting bit; understanding the manual.

In my experience, manuals only serve to confuse those of us devoid of a god-like understanding of modern electronics, so Podie’s response was pretty predictable.
“This looks like it was translated on a computer maintained by a drunken chimpanzee”
Well Duh, it’s a manual, what do you expect? No I didn’t say that, I just thought it; I had no intention of making this a three way fight.
“Podie, you’re holding the manual upside down”.
The argument could have run and run but the ship decided to butt in with a few ideas of its own. It all started with a spectacularly long and ear splitting burst of white noise, then all our control surfaces blinked and died.
“So Kzen, does the manual cover this?” I said sarcastically.
Kzen had a look of wild panic on this face; I didn’t share that look until I stared out of the bridge and realised that a very large pointy piece of debris was coming right at us.
” Shzpaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!” I said hauling on the controls, then realised that I had to switch to manual over-ride to make them respond. Kzen and Podie joined the chorus a split second later as our shields suddenly made contact with the debris and we rebounded off it like a ping-pong ball. Great, we were now heading sideways at speed. I looked down at my situational controls only to realise that they’d gone out too. There was one small problem with this; there was no side view window, you only got a front view on this little crate. To compensate for that small problem, I jerked the ship round on its bow thrusters and then promptly wished that I hadn’t. Smack in front of us was another large pointy piece of junk. Ker-boink, went our ship, Ka-ping went the shields, “Oh Frak”, went the crew and off we cannoned, backwards.
It’s times like these that a ship’s captain has to give succinct orders, that describe the situation as it stands, that motivates the crew to get things back on track but leaves them room to exercise initiative.
“Sort this problem the Frak out: I’m not gonna get killed by flying junk”.
I think that summed it up nicely. I gave myself a mental pat on the back and then returned to the frantic business of keeping us alive. Kzen and Podie exercised their initiative by descending into an argument about the manual, whilst disassembling some of the comms controls. It was at this point that Sunforge’s Space lane Rules struck again:

Rule 2: Thou shalt not expect two or more technicians to agree. On. Anything. Ever. Especially if it involves a manual translated from the original Jovian.
Did you see that one coming? Sadly I didn’t. Anyway I would have banged their heads together to make them see sense, but that would have meant that no-one was flying the ship, which was a bad idea right now.
“Sun, can you not bounce us round so much?” Complained Podie.
“Oh I’d love to do that Podes, but it’s this space junk and the fact that my entire frakking PANEL’s gone dead”
“We’re frakking workin on’, OWWWWW, that right, FRAK THIS, now!” Added Kzen.
Within the space of a few seconds events had descended into farce. If they weren’t arguing with each other about who had done what to which component, they were complaining about my piloting abilities. I discovered that piloting a ship by hand was much harder work than it looked, especially when I realised that some of the space junk was composed of old, decaying ordnance which went BANG when your shields hit it. Fortunately the stuff abandoned out here had decayed enough to be sub-lethal, but the first collision inspired explosion nearly killed us all by heart attack. We must have spent about half an hour cannoning round the junk yard, shouting friendly words of encouragement at each other, often ending with a pleasant “Frak you and your mother” for the sake of emphasis. Eventually I threaded the ship though the worst of the debris to a clear spot and managed to hold us in a quasi geo-stationary orbit, whilst they guys set about jury rigging some controls. This brings me to Sunforge’s Space lane Rule number3:

Rule 3: Technicians can eventually fix anything, however thou willest pay a high price for the fix bud and it won’t look pretty when they’ve finished. Okay enough with the thou’s already.

So thee and thou have been warned. We sat, or rather orbited in place, whilst Kzen and Podie found their way round the knocked out comms sub system. After a few trials and a lot of errors, we got enough control surfaces back online to attempt a jump back to the station. Now jumps are a matter of careful plotting by the computer, rather than us humans, and you just have to trust that they’ll spit you out of the warp tunnel where they say they’re going to. Mis-jumps aren’t that common but they can happen, especially when Rule 3 is invoked and your gunner has accidentally wired the pseudo-random prime boot scrambler directly to the navigation unit’s second input. Now call me old fashioned but feeding random numbers into a nav computer might do something weird to your flight path and verily it did.

We jumped sideways and arrived backwards. In completely the wrong place, with no idea where we were and just in case the ship thought we weren’t paying attention, everything went offline again. Nice. I opened my mouth to make my feelings known to Podie and Kzen but they beat me to it, as they fell to arguing with each other about who was the biggest Pod Pucker. I ended up reversing my original aggressive stance and had to play peacemaker, which wasn’t something I was expecting; I always thought that the captain was the one to dish out the dirt.
“Can you two stop yelling at each other? You’re both pod pucking idiots and you’re both going to get us all killed if you carry on like this.”
That got their attention, now for the tricky bit:
“Okay how do we get this thing online and back to the station without another jump like that?”
They thought for a moment and were, I could tell, about to indulge in another spectacular disagreement when I held up my hand to stop them.
“Guys we’re all in this together, it doesn’t matter who’s wrong and who’s right in this; when we get back home you two can argue all you like over a beer”
My little speech calmed them down a little (not a lot, they still grumbled under their breaths at each other) and we all knuckled down to business. Ah that brings me to Sunforge’s final rule of the space lanes.

Rule 4: Go Team.
Okay I’ll admit it; rule four isn’t exactly a rule, more a statement of relief. I tore up the manual and we three worked out how to get ourselves back home. So what (you’re asking yourself) did we three plot? It was relatively simple really. We’d rip out the stuff that Einstein had put in, put back what he’d ripped out and concentrate on essential systems only, cannibalising parts if we had to. It took us a few hours to get the basic systems back online. A tense half hour followed as we checked and fretted over the next jump. When Kzen and Podie were happy, I pressed the big red button. Okay it’s not really a big, red button but you get what I mean.

We jumped. We arrived in the right place. Then we crashed into the station shields, rebounded and landed in a heap a few hundred metres from a freighter, whose captain let us know exactly what he thought of my piloting skills on the local channel. Some you win, some you lose. I settled for getting home and called it a draw. Docking was exciting as our systems were flickering on and off every time someone hit the local comms channel. Mercifully the station tractor beams latched on to us and towed us in after a brief interlude of blind panic on my part. We’d arrived back home, our experiment of listening in to Concord channels an unmitigated disaster. Something told me we’d need to have a little talk with Einstein. I fished my personal communicator out of my pocket and gave him a call. We agreed to meet up on the ship to work out what went wrong and to see if we could put the electronics back together into a meaningful whole. Whilst I was pondering what could be done, my eyes alighted on the manual’s title: Impairor Mark 3b. Okay, “3b” I thought to myself, is that different from the original 3 and what about the 3a? How could you tell? When Einstein turned up he had the answer. It was the wrong answer.
“Oh frongsticks had you told me it was a 3b I’d never have made the mods in the first place” Einstein said when he got on board. “Only a raving idiot makes changes to the 3b”.
Now I don’t know how it happened, but for one reason or another, I found that I had a wrench in my hand. Since my hand had nothing better to do and since my brain decided to occupy itself with other things my hand took the initiative and clocked Einstein with the wrench.
“Nice shot” Said Podie.
“Hmmm still breathing,” Said Kzen
“Dumpster?” I added.
We all nodded our agreement and hauled him off to the dumpster so he could sleep it off in peace.

It’s a funny thing but taking my frustrations out on Einstein drew us all closer together. Kzen and Podie stopped arguing and before we knew it we’d got most of the systems back online. We did have to go cap in hand to Mondo for some parts, but once we’d told him the story (and he’d stopped laughing) he gave us most of what we wanted for free after reminding us of Mondo’s general law:
Never trust a genius, especially the last genius that repaired your ship.

I never did find out what happened to Einstein after our last, brief, conversation but I’m told he skipped the station after failing to pay a few bills. Word soon got out that I’d been the man who’d laid him out with a wrench not once, but twice, and I was quite surprised to realise how much good will that got me round the station. I guess every cloud (and some geniuses) has a silver lining after all.

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Mondo’s Flight Academy – Part 4 (What about Einstein?)

Published on 19. Feb, 2009 ... written by Sunforge.

I’d like to tell you all about a man called Einstein and why geniuses and spaceships don’t mix. But before I tell you all about that I should tell you that I’m not going to tell you about my first flight. That’s a lot of telling isn’t it? So before I find myself abandoned on a desert island lets do Einstein.

There are some people who look like their names, like my mum, but I think you know enough about her for now. Einstein looked the part: bushy hair, beard that could have doubled as a nature reserve and a sense of style straight from the homeless shelter. In short, this man was either an eccentric technician, a mad scientist or genuinely homeless. He could of course have been a combination of all three. So how did Mr Homeless Probably Mad Scientist Einstein happen into our quiet backwater lives? Did I pick up my communicator and dial for a genius? Did the Acme Corp drop him off in a crate? Nah, sorry, wrong, none of the above or you can take me away in chains. Uh… on second thoughts, let’s not do chains again. I’ve got painful memories about that whole episode. So, to cut to the point, Einstein sort of happened to us.

So there we were, maiden flight concluded, basking in the warm afterglow of the engines whilst standing on the boarding deck in the station. We all smirked at each other in a combination of pride and relief that we hadn’t messed up and got ourselves killed. I had made a mental note to change out of my brown trousers into something a little more comfortable so we could hit the bar, when Einstein arrived. He looked our ship over, appeared to take some measurements and then, without a word, boarded the ship. This was my ship (okay, our ship if you include Ken and Podia), and no-one just walks onto my ship without permission from the captain…me then. Then I realised something quite important had happened to me. I was a proper captain at last; I’d finally flown my spaceship somewhere. Yeehaaah, the beers are on me. I can’t invite all of you round to the party just yet; this space station isn’t big enough for that.

But enough frippery. Some random homeless guy (with a beard) had boarded my ship (and he had a beard). Did I say I didn’t like guys with beards? I’m even less keen on women with beards but I think that’s easier to explain. So I did what any sane ship’s captain would do; I picked up a wrench from Kzen’s tool kit and headed on board to (politely) ask this guy to leave my ship. When I got on board I realised that it’s hard to be polite whilst you’re carrying a wrench but I might as well keep it with me just in case. Anyway I found Mr Beard standing on the bridge looking at the controls of my flight deck.
“Can I help you?” I said, with sufficient overtones of ‘And I’m carrying a monkey wrench…’ to make myself clear on the matter.
“Nope, I’m good.”
Damn.
I wasn’t expecting that for an answer. I paused for a beat and then decided to come on a little stronger.
“No, I don’t think you understand me, this is my ship and I’d like you to”
“S’kay I’m just checking this rig out, come back later if you want”, he interrupted. Bearded bastard.
I clearly hadn’t come on stronger at all. I sighed a little internal sigh, straightened myself out and said a lot more firmly:
“I don’t think you get this, bud. This is my ship and you’re not meant to be here.”
“Yeah, I get that, but y’ought to know I know a few things, top secret stuff, ’sepecially the mark threes.”
He wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Now before anyone reads the last paragraph back to me, just because I didn’t say no doesn’t mean that I didn’t imply NO with a big fluffy capital N, hold the fluffy. So what next? He was busy prodding various inputs on my command console and talking to himself, which was good, since that provided him with sufficient distraction for me to hit him over the head with the monkey wrench. He fell faster than a sack of spanners down a gravity well. Then I came to my senses, or should I say that I was forcibly brought to my senses.
“Shzpak, Sun, you’ve killed him,” said Kzen.

I’m not sure when Kzen decided to take an interest in my relationships with bearded men, but I really wish he hadn’t seen me hit him over the head with the wrench. I didn’t feel guilty about hitting him: this was my ship and he appeared to be a fully paid up member of the tinfoil hat brigade (and seeing as he had a beard probably the chief druid of something like that). I just didn’t want anyone to witness me clocking this guy from behind, as it wasn’t terribly sporting. Don’t ask about the sporting bit, it’s a Nu-Kunni thing. So there you go; I had my reasons and Kzen had his, which led to the inevitable professional disagreement:
“Sun, if you’ve killed him…”
I interrupted him before he could say any more, “Of course I haven’t killed him – he’s still breathing.” “Sun, I don’t think he is breathing…”
Ah, I thought, game, set and…” Shzpak”?
For a few appalling seconds we both watched, convinced that Mr Beard had stopped breathing, then he had a coughing fit.
“Okay genius, how many people who can’t breathe have a coughing fit?” I said smugly. (Game, set and Shzpak to me!)
I don’t think Kzen was feeling great about me hitting Mr Beard but he wasn’t exactly happy with some random guy boarding the ship either. I could see one feeling collide with the other right in the middle of his face, which led to an odd mixed expression.
“Next time, perhaps a little less hard huh?” He offered.
That was a peace offer if I ever saw one, “Okay Kzen, maybe I went in a little too hard. What do you want to do with him?”
Now, I’ll give Kzen this: he’s a tough guy in a fight, but he’ll never kick a guy when he’s down.
“Frak it” He sighed, “Let’s take him back to the pod and we’ll make sure he’s okay”.
So we three took him back to the pod to see if there was any permanent damage. We broke out the emergency bottle of Spoog’s Pod Juice which Podie kept in reserve. Now there are a few things you need to know about Spoog’s Pod Juice: you never drink it neat, never let it near naked flames and you never inflict a shot of this stuff on strangers unless you have a signed release form. A few capfuls of the clear liquid wafted under his nose and poured down this throat prompted much coughing, rolling of eyes and the eventual sitting upright on the bed screaming moment. Don’t worry it’s quite normal for Spoog’s pod juice to have that effect on you: that’s why it has a skull and cross bones on the label. He made an astonishing trip back to the land of the conscious, albeit with revolving eyeballs. He felt the back of his head and winced when he felt an egg sized lump on the back of his skull.
“Why do people do that?” He muttered to himself, and then he looked up at us and carried on as if nothing had happened.
“So you’ve got yourselves a mark three huh?”
I looked at Kzen and Podie and they looked back at me. I think we all had a look of “this does not compute” on our faces. Kzen spoke before I did, “Yeah.”
“Cool, the mark three is a great little ship, so many mods you can retrofit, lots of cool tricks. Have you tried any modding yet?” He said.
I’d like to give you some advice. If a bearded maniac starts talking about modifying your ship, the best thing you can do is to hit him over the head with the biggest blunt object you can find and then RUN LIKE HELL. We made the critical mistake of continuing to talk to him.
“Mods?” I said incautiously. I should have known that this was the word that our man was looking for. Once I’d said it the floodgates were opened.
“Oh yeah, let me tell you all about the cool mods you can do.”
Several hours passed. Suffice to say he told us all about the cool and indeed groovy (his words not mine) things that you could do to a mark three ship. Some of them got Kzen, Podie quite excited and their eyes lit up in anticipation of what could be done. One thing led to another and, throwing caution to the winds, we departed to the bar and fed our man (who we nicknamed Einstein) sufficient drink to loosen his tongue some more so that could negotiate a few little things with him.
By the end of the evening we knew the following: the mark three Impairor was a significant departure for the Amarr Imperial Shipyards. It was the first ship to have dual controls to cater for pod and standard pilots. As such non-pod pilots could fit additional equipment to the pod interface ports which sat dormant under the control deck floor. To access and control the pod interfaces, you had to modify the main flight deck panels, to translate the flow of information and commands between the old flight deck and newer pod pilot’s feeds. This cheap way to control this flow was by fitting a heavily modified ballistic collision artifice unit, modified with a control surface adaptor. Say what, I can hear you ask? Okay to give you an idea of how this holds together: the pod pilot’s neural interfaces process highly exotic information which a standard instrument rack can’t easily digest. To prevent accidental seizure of the controls, because they’re overwhelmed with the wrong kind of information, you need something that can sum and filter the flow from pod feed to standard control rack. The cheapest way to do this, according to our Einstein, was to use an adapted ballistic collision artifice unit, which was designed to take insanely complex inputs and spit out very simple answers. To achieve this you had to re-flash the internal processor with a different command set and voila: an instant down state gearing unit, whatever that is. So all this talk of interfacing with a pod pilot’s secret mojo kit sounds good, but what could you actually do with it? Ah, welcome to the dark side with a short detour via democracy.

Concord and the local Ni-Kunni border police have their own private, encrypted channels. They use these channels to communicate all sorts of useful information that an average pilot might want to get their grubby paws on. The problem with Concord (and the police) is that they were paranoid about people listening into their chit chat, so they swathed their communications in military grade encryption. Einstein wasn’t put off by inconveniences like encryption or legality and he’d cooked up a solution: use the aforementioned ballistic collision artifice unit, a control surface adaptor, synchronise that to two non-euclydian gyrometric crypto spoolers (no I have no idea what they are even now) and a pseudo-random prime boot scrambler (yeah, whatever, it does stuff I’m sure). The combination of these units, the pod interfaces and a random seed key from a Concord interface, was enough apparently to crack the Concord airwaves. Podie and Kzen couldn’t get enough of the mumbo jargo (or is that jumbo – I had could feel my brain hurting from all the jargon) that Einstein was spouting. I was more sceptical but unfortunately outvoted by my trusty crew.
“What could go wrong?” They both insisted looking like puppies at dinner time,
“The worst that could happen is this thing doesn’t work and we don’t get to listen to Concord” Said Kzen. “So if it doesn’t work we get to rip it out and we’re down, what? About a thousand and change? I think it’s worth the risk”.
A thousand and change was, admittedly, a small price to pay for a huge leap forward in intelligence gathering potential. I shook hands with Einstein and agreed to start the modifications the next morning.
So, bright and early Kzen, Podie and I all trooped over to the ship, only to find Einstein had beat us to it. The flight deck was already in pieces and all we could see were his legs, as he bent round underneath the deck flooring to tinker with something. I could hear vague mutterings which must have been him talking to himself. I coughed loudly to make sure that he knew we were there. After about, oh I don’t know, five minutes or so, he surfaced with a huge grin on his face and a big bundle of wires and chips in his hand.
“Look at that, an original R328 combination phase stabiliser. Gods know how it lasted this long!”
To me it looked like he was holding up a bunch of dirt encrusted wires. Look – I’m the kind of guy that takes out the broken bit, looks up the serial number, orders another bit just like the first bit and puts it all back together. Einstein worked at a different level. I bet he even had pet names for some of his favourite bits of tech. Kzen and Podie were grinning at him: which was a worrying level of encouragement to give a man like Einstein. In the end I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and I left the ship to go run a few errands. I was hoping that Kzen and Podie would eventually get bored of wires and interfaces and decide to come find me. No such luck: they were at it for the entire day and finished late enough in the evening that I’d given up hope and gone to the bar. Einstein would become a problem if he deprived me of bar time with my buddies.
The next morning both of them were yapping away about their discoveries about the ship, the fun (fun? you call wiring fun?) they’d had reconfiguring the comms system and how much they’d learned from Einstein.
“Sorry to be in a hurry here guys but were there any problems?”
“We had a few teething troubles, nothing too big though.” Said Podie.
“What about you Kzen, do you think there’s anything to worry about?”
“Nah, it’s going to be fine once we’ve shaken out a few things here and there.”
Well they both sounded confident and after a light grilling, and a dusting of heavy scepticism from me, they were still confident that everything was going to be just fine. I couldn’t see that disagreeing with them was going to get me too far, so I decided to go along with them and see where life took us.
Life took us all a heck of a lot further than we were expecting it to.

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Basters at Twenty Paces

Published on 16. Feb, 2009 ... written by Shae Tiann.

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‘Hello and welcome back to Cuisine of New Eden. I’m Lairen Comrey–’

‘And I’m Terric Jaimsen. Tonight’s programme is a bit different from the usual; you viewers at home are in for a special treat tonight!’

‘And what a treat it is.’ The camera shifts to focus on the presenter in her neat violet suit as she composes herself. ‘Last week, someone wrote in to our own Chef Marçeau asking if he was aware of a new cookery volume which has recently been published by Capsule Pilot Vaas Milgren via GalNet EMedia.’

‘Yes, indeed.’ The view flips back to Terric as he picks up the narrative. ‘The volume, titled, I Jumped, I Docked, I Dined, has received astonishing reviews throughout the capsuleer community and is being called the premiere recipe-book for the interstellar traveller. It contains literally thousands of recipes from around New Eden, including a section dedicated to alternative and fusion dishes, and extensive descriptions of the cultural backgrounds.’

‘I Jumped, I Docked, I Dined is truly a marvel and Pilot Milgren has clearly dedicated a lot of his time and energy to it.’

The image changes to show a wiry Sebiestor man grinning broadly into the camera; the footage is from an interview which was recorded at his book’s launch. He speaks into the microphone which has been thrust into his face:

‘Well, y’know, I’ve been all over the galaxy– What? No, I can’t say I’ve been to every system, but I’ve certainly seen every region. I don’t look it, but I love food– Yeah, I go to the gym daily, you can’t slack off when you spend your days in a pod, y’know? So everywhere I dock or land, I ask the locals what their favorite foods are. I go to restaurants a lot, y’know, try tons of different dishes. Sometimes the places give me the recipes when I ask, someti– Yeah, they’re all credited. Sometimes they’d rather not share, which is fair enough if it’s someone’s signature dish, so I developed my own variations which are near as damnit.’

He runs a hand back through his short mohawk, pondering a barely-audible question from the interviewer. ‘Well, y’know, part of it has to do with understanding the culture. Did you know there’s an Amarrian sect which forbids the use of cinnamon in dishes containing jaii-fruit? I know, I can’t imagine jaii without cinnamon, but there ya go: that isn’t the craziest food taboo I’ve heard of, either.

‘But I thought, I can’t be the only pilot who loves food, so I decided to publish the stuff.’

The video clip continues, silenced, but Lairen’s voice-over declares, ‘Obviously, Chef Marçeau couldn’t let this challenge to his expertise go unanswered.’

The feed now shows a somewhat portly Gallente man making a poor show of concealing his annoyance; this is also from an earlier interview. ‘–I thought, this is ludicrous! The man floats in a ball of goo with a bunch of tubes up his orifices every day. He’s a pilot, not a trained chef! I paid hundreds of thousands to attend the most prestigious cooking school in the Federation, and this guy claims he’s qualified to produce a book like this? I think this calls for a little test!’

The camera returns to the two presenters; Terric straightens his natty silver jacket and states, ‘The oven-mitt has been thrown down tonight, and Capsuleer Milgren has agreed to join us for a cook-off: a competition between himself and Chef Marçeau.’

‘The rules are to create a full four-course meal in which each course represents one of the four great nations of New Eden. Especially for this event, we have invited ten of our most well-known food critics to determine who knows food better: Marçeau or Milgren.’

‘Milgren caused quite a stir when he arrived last night in an interceptor packed full of ingredients, but station security has not been forthcoming on exactly what the problem was. We’re assuming it was a Customs issue regarding some of his imports, but there appears to be a higher level of security around the studio tonight.’ Terric flashes a too-white smile at the camera. ‘I suppose if one of the eggs hatches there may be a flutter, but let’s hope that doesn’t happen! Let’s go to the kitchens, shall we?’

The camera follows him as he gets up, brushes imaginary wrinkles from his trousers and walks out the door into the neat, industrial hallway. He glances over his shoulder occasionally, narrating to the camera as he makes his way to the studio kitchens. ‘Chef Marçeau has pulled out all the stops tonight. He’s told us he’s using recipes he has never before produced for the show. We can’t wait to see what he comes up with!

‘Chef Marçeau has requested, unusually, to be judged first in this competition.’ The view switches to an interview held earlier that day, showing Milgren in neat chef’s whites. Lairen’s voice asks, ‘Does it bother you that Chef Marçeau insisted on first presentation?’

The pilot grins. ‘Absolutely not. I have no idea how serious he’s taking it, but I’m just here to have fun, y’know?’ He winks cheekily at the camera.

‘So it’s time to see what Chef Marçeau is up to.’ The camera has switched back to following Terric through a set of elabourate double doors and in amongst the chaos within. Cuisiniers bustle about, and the camera pans across, pausing as it finds sights which meet its programmed AI standards of ‘interesting’. It zips back on topic as the presenter locates the master of the mayhem.

‘Well, as you can see, everyone in here is very busy indeed, but, Chef Marçeau, we were hoping you could give the viewers at home a hint of what you have in store for our panel of judges.’

Marçeau’s features arrange into his patented ‘camera attitude’: part jovial fat man, part superior professional. ‘Very well, Terric, since you asked so nicely.

‘What we have right here is the sauce which will eventually go into the main dish, which is going to be a classic Gallente savoury mille-foile. As you can see, we have Jirata here slicing the sausage which will form some of the layers between the pastry Hira is rolling out at the far end of the worktable.’

The camera pans and focusses as the chef indicates different members of the staff, zooming in on Hira’s delicate hands wielding a roller over a flake-thin sheet of dough.

‘We’ll be alternating the sausage layers with this fresh dark broadleaf–’ the chef hefts a wildly leafy bundle of greens ‘–and a regional goat’s cheese we had imported this morning. Over here…’ Marçeau slips amongst the workers, nimble despite his bulk. He leads the way to a workspace along one wall where a commis is toasting flatbread sliced into strips in a pan over an open gas flame. ‘This is in preparation for our starter, which is to be crisped Caldari flatbread served with a selection of patés created using a base of Caldari protein paste… I can see by your expression you’re not convinced. Give this a try.’ The chef breaks off a section of flatbread which looks slightly over-done and scrapes a rime of greyish paste from one of the bowls, passing it to the presenter who looks a bit anxious. Terric hedges a moment, then nibbles cautiously; his expression quickly turns to surprise.

‘Oh my word. What’s in this?’

Marçeau chuckles. ‘Trade secret! We have three varieties we’ll be offering today like so…’ He swiftly arranges spoonfuls of the patés on a blue glass dish and surrounds them decoratively with sections of flatbread raying outward like a solar corona. ‘There’s just enough there to clear the palate without destroying the appetite. Next, over here we have our salad course.’ He leads the presenter and tagalong camera drone over to another worktable near a rank of ovens set into one wall. A cuisinier and commis are working with the care of sculptors over the items before them.

The chef picks up a spongy cup-shaped white fungus. ‘These are Amarrian grail mushrooms, so called because their rims turn up rather than down. As we all know, Amarrian cuisine is humble yet elegant, so what we’re doing is filling the mushroom caps with a lightly-seasoned mixture of saffron finegrains and chopped capsicum. Then these will be baked until the mushrooms just begin to curl over the contents, and because of the structure of this fungus, they’ll stand upright all on their own.’

Terric looks impressed. ‘That is elegant. And as you showed us earlier, the mille-foile is the main course, and I can smell it baking already. What, sir, have you planned for your finale?’

Marçeau’s broad face looks crafty. ‘A Matari tradition, my friend.’ They move over to another table where one cuisinier is stirring something white and glutinous in a heated pot whilst another finely grates cinnamon sticks into a small glass dish. ‘This is a boiled grain pudding, and I can tell you don’t think it looks like much of a dessert. Once the grains have reached a sort of mushy consistency, we’ll be adding honey and spices and setting the lot aside to chill until it’s needed.’

‘And this, you think, is better than anything Milgren could possibly come up with,’ Terric jibes. Marçeau draws himself up, smiling but with a hint of proud assurance lurking underneath.

‘My dear sir, I’m certain Milgren doesn’t have the cooking talents to match his ability to find a crooked publisher.’

The camera returns to the presenters’ studio to show an amused Lairen. ‘Well, there’s some competitive drive there! Let’s see what Pilot Milgren is working on.’

The introduction is the same, following Terric through another set of double doors. The sight on the other side is vastly different, however. Loud music is blasting from a portable audio system propped on one of the unused countertops, and the only soul in the room is Milgren, the Sebiestor bobbing his head in time to the music and practically dancing as he works.

The presenter has to clear his throat and call, ‘Pilot Milgren? Excuse me!’ over the music. The capsuleer notices immediately and turns the volume down.

‘Hey there.’

‘Good evening, sir. We’ve already seen what Marçeau is up to; would you mind showing the viewers at home what you have up your sleeve?’

Straight-faced, the pilot rolls up the cuffs of his white chef’s uniform, revealing heavily-tattooed arms; then he laughs. ‘Just messing with ya! C’mon over here.’

The pilot leads the way to where two pots of thick reddish liquid are setting at just below a simmer; one pot is significantly smaller than the other. ‘This is the starter. I decided to go with a signature Gallente seafood bisque, since it’s not very filling.’ He runs a ladle through the larger of the two pots and displays the lumps of vegetables and various types of shellfish floating just beneath the surface. ‘There’s two pots here because someone told me one of the judges is allergic to seafood. The smaller pot is the vegetarian variant of the same recipe; I can’t use a different sort of meat because this sort of bisque isn’t meant for anything other than seafood and vegetables.’ Milgren glances at the presenter and shrugs. ‘I know it’s breaking form a little, but I’d rather not have someone sitting with an empty plate while everyone else is digging in, y’know?’

Terric’s eyebrows peak but he says nothing against the decision other than, ‘Well, that makes some sense, I suppose. What’s all this over here that you were working on when I walked in?’

‘That’s the salad course.’ The pilot has laid out on another worktable several small squares of dough; a liberal scattering of flour and unwashed tools gives evidence that the dough was made by hand. ‘These are what the Caldari call “garden wraps” — don’t ask me to pronounce the original name. What it is is this very thin pastry, it’s just flour, water and egg. Once it’s rolled out, you cut it into squares the length of your hand. Then you julienne a bunch of vegetables really fine — I’ve used daikon, cabbage and a few root vegetables that are common on Caldari Prime.’ Milgren demonstrates: ‘First you arrange the vegetables on the pastry in a sort of fan shape and drizzle a little of this lemon and ginger sauce over it. Then you fold up the wrap, bottom point first, then the sides, so it looks a little like those weird flower-pots they have, y’know? Then we bake the wraps for maybe a minute at a very high temperature. The dressing keeps the vegetables from drying out or wilting in the heat, and the wrap turns crispy.’

The presenter is looking fascinated. ‘I thought Caldari dishes were traditionally quite bland… this is authentic cuisine?’

‘It is entirely authentic,’ Milgren nods. ‘And it’s in keeping with the Achura belief that you should have five colours in every dish to maintain a balance in the body’s energies.’

‘How… um, fascinating. What are you working on for a main course?’

The Minmatar tilts his head towards another wall-mounted flame unit. ‘Over there.’

On a low flame, a large clay crock is rattling away cheerfully. Milgren lifts the lid and a great puff of steam fogs the camera momentarily. ‘This is a traditional Matari thing, braised rock-hen. It’s common enough among planetary slave colonies; free Minmatar have added a little sophistication by adding wine and cream to the sauce along with the usual tomatoes and green onions.’

Terric’s eyes are watering a bit. ‘That’s quite a potent wine.’

‘It only smells it; the alcohol content is actually really low.’

‘Well, you say that, but we all know the formidable capacity Minmatar possess when it comes to liquor.’ The two men laugh, Milgren broadly, the presenter more reserved.

‘It really is low, the bottle’s over here.’ He passes it over and Terric inspects the label.

‘So it is. I do notice, however, that you have used the entire bottle.’

‘Waste not, want not, right?’

The Gallente presenter looks at the pilot speculatively as he hands the wine bottle back. ‘Were you ever a slave, Pilot?’

‘I was never a slave. Would it matter if I was?’ He shrugs and replaces the lid on the crock.

‘I… suppose not.’ Terric seems a bit off-balance and covers his falter by asking, ‘I notice you have nobody to help you in here. Does it bother you that Marçeau has that extra edge in his preparation?’

‘Nah. I’m used to setting up for dinner parties and stuff on my own, y’know? I think if you’d tried to give me staff to do the work, they’d all be out in the nearest bar right now ’cause I’d've sent them off!’ The pilot chuckles. ‘You don’t have as much control over what you’re making of you tell someone to do it for you, y’know?’

‘Hehe, I see. There is one thing I don’t see out here; this is meant to be a four-course meal. What are you plotting as a dessert?’

Milgren’s face takes on a delighted glow. Excitedly, he leads Terric and the camera over to the large refrigeration units and opens one. The two covered glass bowls he brings out are frosted from the chill; one contains small, pale orange fruits floating in amber liquid, the other is filled with a pale violet cream. ‘I won’t be assembling this till I’ve served the main course. These,’ he announces, holding up the fruit dish, ‘are jaii-fruit. I’ve taken the spiny skins off and removed the massive pits, so they’re really just hollow spheres chopped in quarters. The stuff they’re sitting in is an Amarrian brandy native to the area where the sect which doesn’t like cinnamon is located.’

‘This is one of their recipes?’

‘Yep. When it’s time to make the dessert, I’ll reserve the brandy as an aperitif and put the fruit in serving dishes. Then comes the fun part: lighting the fruit!’ There’s a gleeful look on his face that’s just the slightest bit worrying. ‘You set them on fire, and it burns off the alcohol and crystallises the sugars. Then you put it out with this,’ the pilot holds up the other bowl, ‘which is a cream made using almond milk and Amarrian chillies which have gone purple.’

‘Is the purple part significant?’ the presenter asks. The pilot nods.

‘It’s the stage when the peppers take on a sweeter flavour while retaining their heat. It’s what makes the cream turn blueish like that. Then you dust it with a little cacao powder.’ He looks pleased with himself. ‘It was a real bitch to get the brandy in time, but it’s definitely worth it.’

Terric chuckles. ‘Is that what had security at the docking-bay so concerned last night?’

‘Among other things, yeah,’ the pilot admits with a nonchalant air as he returns the bowls to the refrigerator.

‘Out of curiosity… It’s my understanding that there are some bad relations between yourself and The Scope network, which is why they’ve refused to broadcast this particular show. Is there any particular reason for this?’

Terric has the blandly curious expression of an interviewer. Milgren eyes him, then glances at the camera floating above and behind the presenter’s right shoulder. He smiles faintly and says, ‘I have nothing to say about that, thank you.’

‘Well, we’ll let you get back to your work and return to the studio. Lairen?’

The view returns to the other presenter, now in the studio’s faux-wood-panelled dining-room, standing ostentatiously before a neatly-set table bearing a full array of genuine silverware, crystal glasses and spherical oil lamps which have already been lit.

‘Well, it’s time to bring our judges in and start the tasting with Chef Marçeau’s painstaking dinner.’ She gestures off to her right and a group of ten people of different races and bloodlines enter the room, either smiling and relaxed or solemn and straight-backed as each one’s custom dictates. They move to stand behind the chairs placed around the table and Lairen starts at one end and works her way around clockwise with introductions, her pronunciation of each foreign name flawless. Some of the critics have been on the show before; there’s a general exchange of pleasantries, and then the presenter leaves so that there won’t be any potential pressure for bias.

Unobtrusive camera drones stir and flit about as somewhere a chime sounds and the doors to Marçeau’s kitchen swing open. The rotund chef stands impressively just inside the door as his assistants enter bearing trays of the decorative starters.

‘Mesdames et Messires, I present Caldari paté with toasted flatbread,’ Marçeau pronounces grandly. A server circles the table filling the judges’ glasses with sparkling water from a carafe, then the chef and staff make their exit.

The judges murmur amongst themselves about the presentation and the visual quality of the offering, but most seem reluctant to indulge in the delicacy. Eventually, Eria Karamora from Jita takes the first plunge, perhaps encouraged by her familiarity with Caldari cuisine. The others watch with bated breath, as if fearing the blond woman might fall ill, and there’s a general sigh as she nods and pronounces the starter edible.

As is the custom in such competitions, the judges only consume enough to obtain opinions. When everyone has sipped from their water to clear the flavours, another chime sounds and the salad course is introduced.

And so it continues. The cameras get close-up views of the artistic arrangements of mushrooms on broadleafs, of the small, perfectly pyramidal towers of mille-foile garnished with a scattering of chopped green herbs, and the crystal dishes of sweet pudding decorated with sprigs of fresh mint. Some of the judges don’t approve of all the dishes, but they keep their opinions neutral and merely comment on what they appreciate. The presenters are silent, allowing the tableau to play out for the viewers.

When Marçeau’s meal has been tested, the judges adjourn to another room and the table is cleared. The camera view returns to the studio, where the presenters have been joined by the chef.

‘So, how do you think that went, Marçeau?’ Lairen asks.

The portly chef smiles graciously. ‘I think Milgren may be wasting his time, but I have no idea what he’s prepared.’

‘It looked a bit like Safit JiDan from Khanid wasn’t particularly impressed with the salad course; does his reaction worry you a bit?’ Terric asks. Marçeau shrugs.

‘The others seemed to like them well enough. We shall see.’

A chime sounds, and the camera returns to the dining-room. This time, the settings are plain, with what appear to be hand-thrown clay cups, delicately-carved wooden utensils and raw wax candles. The critics seem mildly taken aback as they enter, though Lito-ndar Okapo from the Vherokior tribe seems delighted; she picks up a three-tined fork to examine the floral vine carved around the grip more closely, then replaces it with a sheepish smile.

The starter course is served personally by Milgren. He enters with a large tray of clay cups containing the soup balanced impeccably on one arm, and not one drop is spilt as he places each serving before a judge; the vegetarian version, clearly marked by a different-coloured saucer beneath the cup, is placed before the appropriate critic last, and the pilot explains the difference to the Achura who only barely contains his expression of deep relief.

The Gallente critics look impressed with the starter, while an Amarrian critic eyes the large lumps of shellfish with some doubt. The salad course pleases the two Achuran critics, and one comments on the precision of the presentation. When Milgren presents the main course, it’s easy to imagine the aroma of the artistically-arranged slices of poultry simply from the expressions on the critics’ faces.

The jaii-fruit and brandy dessert is the crowning moment, however. The pilot enters bearing the same large tray, the hand-blown glass dishes still steaming from having been recently extinguished, the pale violet cream contrasting interestingly with the rich gold of the crystallised fruit. The Ni-Kunni Tali’a Vaskal openly exclaims with pleasure, then looks embarrassed for his outburst. Milgren finishes serving, pours the brandy and exits with a flourished bow.

The camera returns again to the presenters and Terric says, ‘Pilot Milgren has informed us that he will be late in joining us here in the studio, as he must, quote, repair the mess he made in the kitchen, unquote. While we await his presence, Chef Marçeau, what did you think of the pilot’s presentation?’

The studio’s master chef looks somewhat put-out. ‘I’ll admit I was surprised when I saw he’d brought his own table-settings, and creating a substitute option for the allergy-sufferer was a bit off-form. Personally, I can see little of Milgren’s dinner which is exceptional, though he has demonstrated more cooking ability than I gave him credit for. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see what the professionals make of his efforts.’

‘Our judges have adjourned to their debating chambers to confer,’ Lairen states. ‘Chef Marçeau, did you spend a lot of time considering your choices for this evening?’

The small-talk continues for a few minutes, then the chime rolls through the studio. The critics have reached a consensus. Chef Marçeau and the presenters make their way to the dining-room, where the table has been cleared and now displays a chilled magnum of champagne and several fluted glasses.

Syddaryn Trynn of Intaki steps forward, accepting the role of the food critics’ unified voice.

‘It’s been a very difficult choice we had to make this evening. Chef Marçeau, we recognise that you have had extensive training and the dishes you prepared were exquisite. Pilot Milgren’s skills are purely self-taught, and the meal he prepared was impressive for one man working alone. But this light-hearted competition is not about which chef is the most skilled; it is about which knows galactic cuisine the best. Chef Marçeau, you undoubtably have spent years studying food from around New Eden; Pilot Milgren has spent years experiencing the same.’

The camera focusses on Marçeau’s face, and his confident smile is seen to slip just a little as the lanky food critic moves to the table and picks up the champagne bottle. Turning back to the camera, he says with a hint of regret, ‘Chef Marçeau, your work tonight was extraordinary, but a bit too inventive and at times digressed wildly from the native qualities which were part of our judging criteria. Pilot Milgren not only produced traditional recipes with skill, he did so with an innate knowledge of the local customs from the areas where the recipes originated.’ Syddaryn hefts the bottle before him. ‘The man of the hour, this hour, is Capsule Pilot Vaas Milgren.’

There is a delicate smattering of polite applause from the assembled critics and presenters. Chef Marçeau looks a bit chapfallen but puts a smile on anyway. The cameras focus on the doors to Milgren’s kitchen.

After a moment, Terric jokes, ‘He must have that music on loud again.’ The presenter pushes the doors open, and music blasts forth as he disappears inside, going quiet again as the doors swing back.

He emerges a second later, holding the flour-spattered, silenced audio system and looking dumbfounded. ‘He’s not there. Wherever could he have got to?’

There is a flurry of activity from off-screen, and the camera drones, sensing ‘interesting’, turn to survey the commotion. Uniformed security officers are running for the door out to the rest of the station whilst one who appears to be in charge steps forward to speak quietly to the presenters. Both polished professionals look stunned at whatever it is the man tells them, then struggle to retrieve their composure.

After a moment, a report comes through and the presenters of Cuisine of New Eden step forward.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid we were not wholly informed of Pilot Milgren’s activities,’ Lairen begins. ‘According to our station’s chief of security, Pilot Milgren is an outlaw, and the terms of his appearance on the show tonight were that he was to turn himself in afterwards.’ Her expression is one of disbelief.

‘It seems,’ Terric adds, ‘that whilst the final course and judgment were being held, he managed to evade security and made his way to the clone bay, where he utilised a jump-clone to leave the system. As our security has no right to seize the empty clone he left behind, all that is left for us here at the studio is to wish Pilot Milgren congratulations on our critics’ final call, and bid all you viewers at home a good night.’ He smiles urbanely into the camera as Lairen stares at her co-host, slightly agape.

And the credits roll.

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Mondo’s Flight Academy – Part 3

Published on 13. Feb, 2009 ... written by Sunforge.

There are times when you need help and advice from your folks. There are times when you need a shoulder to cry on. Then there are times when your mother calls you up in the middle of the night promising to chain herself to your ship to stop you making the worst mistake in your life. I woke up in a cold sweat at 3:00 am thinking that it was just a dream, then checked my communicator and realised no, it wasn’t a dream, and my mother had actually called and really promised to “stop all this silliness”. Silliness? Don’t go there, this is my mother and she’s not entirely rational when she gets something into her head.

You see I’d been in the orbiting space station for a couple of months by now and had made two very good friends in Kzen and Podie. We all worked in the same ship yard, locally dubbed Mondo’s Flight Academy, and we’d worked hard to save our cash to fuel and fly a little Imparior class ship which we were fixing up. What the hell were my folks rescuing me from? Nothing was wrong as far as I could tell; I had cash in my pocket, I liked my job and had two great friends. In the end I gave up trying to sleep and got up for a shower, in what passed for a bathroom, in the lodging cabin which had become my new home. I had a very cold shower, damn the heating, my mind racing to work out how I could stop my parents from carrying out their bizarre pantomime promise. Was it legal to stun your parents and lock them in your cabin whilst you got away? Could I persuade the station officers that my parents were, in fact, dangerous terrorists with a price on their head? The more my mind raced the more unlikely the scenarios became but I’m going to draw a veil over the darker thoughts I had that morning: they don’t show me in a charitable light.

Let’s face some facts here, parents are great in principle but once you reach a certain age you realise that they’re generally as mad as a bag of bogwumps. Okay maybe only my parents are as mad as a bag of bogwumps and yours are paragons of virtue and charity: congratulations, you can skip the rest of the story. I was faced with the prospect of having my own ship impounded by an overprotective mother with my father (probably driven to the edge by my mother) on hand as enforcer. Okay, the first order of the day, I thought to myself, was to break this little nugget of news to my friends.

Silence wasn’t the reaction that I was expecting. I’d waited until lunch to, you know, slip it casually into conversation. I failed miserably on that count and ended up sort of shouting it in a whisper loud enough for everyone in the makeshift canteen to hear.

“Oh my god my folks are coming up here and mum’s gonna chain herself to the ship, dad’s gonna start a fight with anyone that tries to unchain her. Oh god my parents.”
Absolute silence. Everyone looked at me. Then Big Al, a man who could tear armour plates off ships without assistance, started laughing. I contemplated hiding but I didn’t think it was going to look too dignified hiding under the table. I stood up then sat down, looking sheepish and shrugged my shoulders.
“I’m frakked” I said summing up the situation.
More laughter followed.
Kzen and Podie stopped looking puzzled and joined the laughing parade. I shrugged again and fixed my gaze on a blank spot on the far wall and folded my arms over my chest.
“Say that again Sun” Said Big Al.
“I’m totally, completely frakked” I said.
The laughter continued for a few minutes and then Big Al disappeared from the canteen. He reappeared a few minutes later with an improbable length of chain which he rattled onto the table in front of me.
“On the house” He said with a grin “Does your mum look good in chains?”
I wished that I had something smart and witty to say back but nothing sprang to mind. After moments indecision I stood up said “You guys…” shook my head and stalked out of the canteen to gales of further laughter. Life was not good.

So I checked my communicator and guess what? Yup, my dear old mother had sent another little message informing me that she’d booked two emergency tickets on the red eye shuttle which would arrive tomorrow morning. My head spun for a second: I had less than 24 hours of freedom before my life got curtailed by my parents. It was in the middle of these ponderings that Kzen punched me in the shoulder, which was his standard way of saying Hi.

“C’mon it’s not that bad Sun, a little embarrassment from your folks isn’t going to upset anything” He said cheerily.
The problem with Kzen was that he was Minmitar. Okay that came out wrong: the problem with Kzen was that he wasn’t familiar with Ni-Kunni borderland traditions and not to put too fine a point on it, the Ni-Kunni legal system.
“Kzen, I didn’t tell you this before but if my dad grounds me I’m grounded”.
Kzen gave me a blank look.
“You don’t get it do you? I guess a lot of people don’t, but round here if you’re under 25, which I am, my parents have to give their consent before I can leave my homeworld”
There I’d said it, Kzen looked startled. I’d better explain things for you, just in case you’re not Ni-Kunni either.

You see the Ni-Kunni grew up at the wilder edges of the empire. Our home world is in the Mishi system and whilst the landscape is beautiful, damn, it’s hard to live in. This environment shaped Ni-Kunni traditions long before the Amarr got hold of us and we had a fistful of arcane traditions which matched the Amarr and then some. The longest standing tradition is that the head of the household (yup that’d be my dad) owned his wife and kids and his family couldn’t do anything without his consent. This tradition had a peculiar effect when the Ni-Kunni were conquered and enslaved by the Amarr. The slave traders didn’t buy and sell individuals; they just bought the oldest male in the family: the rest of his family came for free. Things changed when a bright trader realised that splitting the family apart created more slaves to buy and sell, so males above the age of 25 were exempted from the Ni-Kunni tradition of ownership. Pfft – upon a change in the law a heck of a lot more Ni-Kunni slaves became tradable and the trader who changed the law (a freed Ni-Kunni himself) became a very rich man. The law has stayed that way ever since, even with the end of slavery. So I guess I have slavery to thank for giving me some freedom from my father but I was cursing myself for only being twenty years old. It took me a while to explain the in’s and out’s to Kzen and Podie but they got it, in the end. For a while we all sat around keeping our thoughts to ourselves, since the future didn’t look that bright if my dad could simply come along and ban me from going off world.
“So why don’t we make a run for it, he can’t stop you when we’re out there Sun” Suggested Podie.

“I wish it’d work, but the law’s the law Podes: if I leave I’ve broken the law. Concord and the local police could impound the ship and arrest you for aiding and abetting a known criminal.”
“Man this is just like the Minmitar Slavery laws” Cursed Kzen.
Kzen and I got along so well, probably because our common ancestral experiences had slavery in them. You could see from the look on his face that my current dilemma touched a nerve deep inside him; I guess no-one wants to think of themselves as being someone else’s property. We spent about an hour talking about what we could do, and then gave up on the topic as each avenue we explored looked like a dead end to us. Then we got a little more morbid and began to talk about what we could have done had the law not been such an ass. After we exhausted that topic we gave up talking and drifted back to work in Mondo’s yard. I told Mondo all about my predicament and he expressed some sympathy but had a far off look, like he was thinking about something else, which jarred me. Perhaps one man’s burden is another’s opportunity; perhaps he was wondering if he could get the ship back and make a profit. Who knows? I wasn’t brave enough to put that scenario to him.

The rest of the day passed without incident and at the end of our shift we all hit our favourite station bar for some desperately needed alcoholic refreshment, since this was my last night of freedom. The owner of the bar, a man by the name of Jaco, was a decent enough guy, although rumour had it that he was never entirely sober. I strode over to the bar and ordered our usual round of drinks. I was just about to take them back to our table when I received a hearty slap on the back which knocked the breath out of me for a second.

“You’re sure your dad would approve of this?” Said a voice behind me.
It was Big Al again. I hadn’t had him down as a bully, but since his discovery that my folks were going to whisk me away from the station perhaps he’d seized on the idea that he could have some fun with me.
“Don’t start Al, its bad enough knowing that this is my last night up here.”
“You going to take it lying down? Man you’re a bigger mummy’s boy than I thought you were”
“Al it’s the law, I can buck my parents but not the law and you know it.”
Al knew it alright and he knew that he could needle me all night about it, in my favourite bar, with an audience. He carried on with random comments for a while, made loudly enough so that all could hear it until I’d had enough. After a few drinks the booze got a hold of me, I stood up and marched purposefully across the room to speak to Big Al. Al held up his hand to stop me, as I walked towards him.
“Tell ya what kid, seeing as it’s your last day, how’s about a little game of Beat the House?”

I’d forgotten that this was the bar where anyone who could drink more than Jaco in an evening got their bar bill torn up. His suggestion caught me off guard and played to two things that were not working in my favour right now: I was young and I’d already had something to drink. The combination of the two, for those of you who have forgotten what being young is like, was that I agreed to Big Al’s challenge without thinking. The stupid, drunk part of me clearly thought it’d be a great idea to drink so much that I forgot everything.
“Hey Jaco” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Beat the House: I’m the challenger” I said standing up on the bar rail so that everyone in the bar would notice me. A ragged cheer went up from the mob. Jaco smiled and sidled towards me carrying a bottle of my favourite liquor. You had to hand it to a man who was never quite sober; he never forgot what you liked to drink. He pulled two racks of glasses out from underneath the bar and filled one rack with my poison of choice and the other with his. He rang up the bill for both racks of glasses on my tab and stuck the receipt to the last glass in my rack. To prevent any cheating, he moved his rack of glasses out of the way of the main bar to a place where we could all see it.

“Rules are simple Sun, you drink everything in that rack and when you’ve finished you’ve got to read the tab on the last glass out loud without slurring, puking or passing out. If you make it I’ll tear it up and we’re done. If you don’t, you pay for everything.”
He grinned again, reached for two of his glasses and chugged them both down.

Game on.

Whilst I was busy attempting to pickle myself Big Al, being the instigator of tonight’s fun, suggested a game of “Chain your mother”, which being a new game became instantly popular with the crowd. My humiliation became much easier to bear the more I drank, so I put myself to the task of beating Jaco with steely resolve. The evening wore on and to my great shame (I was told some days later) I passed out three drinks before getting to the end of my rack.

When I woke up, it was dark, uncomfortable and I had a headache that was so bad I threw up. I also couldn’t move. Oh frak I said to myself, I’ve got drunk then fallen over and paralysed myself. Where the hell was I? I tried to move again and it slowly dawned on me that I wasn’t paralysed but I was in chains. It took a while to put the fragments of the previous evening together, but in hindsight Big Al playing “Chain your Mother” and me passing out wasn’t a good combination. The old pod pucker had obviously wrapped me in chains and rolled me somewhere unpleasant to live out my final hours. My dilemma was pressing though: I couldn’t think straight, was in chains and couldn’t see either. I tried moving around my new prison but kept bumping into some very awkward (and sharp) metal boxes which hurt. I tried shouting for help but that made my head pound all the more and I threw up again. In the end I settled for moving myself around and then pounding on any object that got in my way with my feet. Someone would hear the noise, I thought to myself, and come to investigate.

I don’t know how long it took before someone noticed my dilemma but after I’d practically wrecked wherever I was trapped, a door opened and light flooded in to illuminate my surroundings. The light hurt my eyes so I shut them and threw up again. There was a tutting sound from my rescuer.
“I’ll put the damage and cleanup on your tab” Said Jaco.
Damn, was I still in the bar?
“What time is it?” I asked blurrily
“About four in the afternoon” He said cheerily and just loudly enough to wake my hangover up again.
I groaned and rolled over: I’d missed my last day of freedom, my parents would have arrived and I looked like a disgrace. Even more worrying was the fact that, since I was technically missing when they must have arrived, they might have filed a report with the police. That would take some explaining. I tried to get up but couldn’t, so I lay back on the floor and groaned loudly. Jaco shrugged his shoulders but left the door ajar so that I could get out. In the end, after I’d recovered enough of my thoughts to get myself together, I made it out of the store cupboard and persuaded one of the staff to help me out of my chains, then I staggered back to my lodging cabin to clean up.

I can’t remember what time I made it to Mondo’s yard but I do remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach when I realised that the Impairor we’d been fixing up wasn’t there. In its place was a big gaping chunk of space. I stumbled my way over to the spot where it had been the day before and just stood there, arms hanging limply at my side. I didn’t feel like a stoic Ni-Kunni as a tear rolled down my cheek; no I felt like a young kid who’d taken a wrong turn and got mugged. How stupid could I have been? I knew what must have happened: Mondo knew that my folks were coming, had sent Big Al over to the bar to keep me distracted and then quietly come to some arrangement with my folks whilst I was out of the way. I’d done business with Mondo over a handshake and took his word that everything was fine. I’d assumed that he’d honour any agreement we had. I’d been so utterly, foolishly young and stupid. I wanted to do something about it but I knew that it was his word against mine and up here, as it had been made clear many times, his word counted for a lot more than a hundred of me. Disconsolate, I walked to the cabin to see how I could get myself out of the mess I’d got myself into and maybe, just maybe, get some wages out of Mondo.

I got to the cabin and went in, not bothering to knock. I didn’t know what I was going to say, hoping that something would spring to mind; some clever, witty remark to retrieve some of my pride. Mondo was sitting behind his desk, attending to some official looking documentation on a digilog screen. He looked like he was half expecting me and gestured to the chair in front of his desk; I sat down. He turned the digilog device round so that it faced me and handed me a stylus.
“Sign here” He said gruffly, jabbing at the screen.
I didn’t have the heart to argue and signed.
“…and here” He said again.
Well, it’s a bit late to not sign now I thought to myself and signed again.
“Thanks” He said brusquely. He turned the digilog back to face him and after a few clicks sighed and switched the log off.
“So what are you going to do now?” He asked.
“I don’t know. Look about the ship..my parents….you know I really wanted to…”
“Ah your parents, they were a handful, especially your father. Not a man to be argued with is he?”
“Uh” I nearly managed a smile “No, no really, he’s a hard man to stop when he gets going.”
“Isn’t he just? So you weren’t around, he assumed the worst and well what can I say?”
You don’t have to say anything I thought to myself. I was silent for a moment. Mondo gave me a moment to gather my thoughts, then he carried on:
“He went crazy you know, wanted to impound the ship, lucky it wasn’t here.”

Lucky it wasn’t here.

Well if it wasn’t here, where the heck was it?
“Uhm Mondo? Where was, is, the, you know?”
“Ah” Said Mondo, pausing for a second “Well you three didn’t show up this morning and the ship had gone as well. Then your dear father turns up, goes nuts at me, then goes nuts at the staff and threatens me with the police. I told him what I knew: you’d not shown up and I didn’t know where the ship was. Before I knew it he’d jumped to all sorts of crazy conclusions and then your mother, whoooee is she a firework, decided you’d all run off into space.”
Ah that wasn’t so good. If my folks thought I’d run off to space they could file a report against me and that would make me a wanted man.
“Of course your dad insisted that we fill out all the forms and that I sign them as a witness. I don’t think I had a choice, given the way things are going.”
He paused as he turned on the digilog, shuffled through a few pages and then hit the print button. I watched a pile of very official looking papers spew out of a printer next to him and flow onto the floor.

“I really must fix that printer” He said, shuffling the papers and putting them back into some semblance of order.
“Anyway, they got me all turned round with the shouting and cussing and heck, I’ll have to tell you sooner or later: they signed the wrong documents”.
By now he’d finished sorting the documents out and passed a neat pile of paperwork over to me.
“Somehow I printed a release form and they signed it”
I think my jaw dropped and didn’t stop dropping until it hit the floor. I shut my mouth, then stood up and promptly sat down.
“Mr Mondo, the what and the form?” I said, making no sense at all.
“Ah the release form, let’s just say that it’s a piece of paper that means your parents have no control over you anymore and since they have no control, I can issue a temporary pilots licence, here you go”. He passed me another official looking document.

I was in a haze having gone from disaster to victory in the space of a few minutes.
“Mr Mondo, where’s my ship?”
“Big Al made a mistake and towed your ship to the launching pad this morning. The idiot had drunk way too much the night before and entered the wrong details into the station logs. God he’s an idiot”
“So I’m guessing my dad forced a station search and my ship had disappeared then?”
“Something like that. Look it’s best not to go into too many details, it’s embarrassing when these things happen. I’ve got a reputation to protect.”
I thought of a million questions I wanted to ask him but he held up his hands to stop me.
“Listen kid, the way I see it, luck smiled on you this morning and whilst you were hiding from your folks some angel up there put your ship on the pad and sorted out your paperwork. If I were you I’d round up Kzen and Podie and take that ship of yours for a spin before anyone has second thoughts”

…And that’s exactly what we did.

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Mondo’s Flight Academy – Part 2

Published on 12. Feb, 2009 ... written by Sunforge.

Picture credit: Wotlankor

My dad use to say that it was great to start at the beginning and never be tempted to give up half way through. I began to realise how true that was as I started working in Mondo’s shipyard: I had a ship but no crew and no money to hire them with.

I tried getting work around the station but everywhere I asked I got a firm No, with a capital N just in case I didn’t get the message. I guess this had something to do with the number of “station bums”, who were guys that hopped from station to station scraping a living at being not very good at anything at all. After a day or two’s searching I trailed back to Mondo’s yard with my tail between my legs to beg him for a job: it was either that or suffer the ignominy of selling my ship back to him at a loss.

“Can you fix things up kid” Mondo said to me after I’d pleaded my case.
“Sure I can, I was pretty good at mechanical stuff planet side”
“Okay” He said as he picked up a box of components from beside his desk and gave them to me
“If you can put this collection back together you got yourself a job.”
So this was it: my life had come down to whether I could make sense of the contents of a box of spare parts. I felt like someone up there was rolling the dice and having a good laugh at my expense.
“Well there’s no sense in wasting time staring at it kid” Said Mondo as he left his office.

I stared at the contents of the box a little longer, then busied myself with assembling the bits and pieces he’d given me into a recognisable piece of equipment. I have to say I was panicking as I sorted out the bits and pieces but the panic began to subside once I’d found a few bits and pieces that I recognised. When I finally realised that this box of bits went together as a high voltage back feed suppression circuit I was so relieved I jumped up, whooped and punched the air. I would have danced round the office but Mondo, a man with exquisite timing, poked his head round the door of his office just as I was in mid Whoop.
“So you’ve finished huh?” He was smiling at me, which was the first time he’d done since I’d met him.

I proudly handed him the finished circuit and even managed to scrape up a few facts and figures about circuit design from my night classes in case that impressed him. He turned the freshly assembled device over in his hands whilst we had a quick discussion about mechanics and ships and then he handed the circuit back to me saying:
“Kid, you’re hired. Go see Geoff the foreman and he’ll set you to work. The first five days you get paid by the hour, if you last longer than that I’ll pay you weekly.” And that’s how I got hired by Mondo.
After two jobs, night class and a mini adventure getting to the station, it was a refreshing change to work on ship’s equipment in the yard and I picked up a lot of useful tricks from other yard hands. Five days passed in the blink of an eye and to be honest I was so busy learning about fixing equipment that my search for other crew members went to the back of my mind. I was reminded that I had to do something when I got summoned to Mondo’s office at the end of my first week.
“So, you found a crew yet?” Mondo enquired.
“Ah I said,” Squirming a little, “I kinda got lost fixing stuff during the week but I have been looking..sort of”
“So, more time in the yard huh?”
“It’s tougher to find guys to fly with than I thought Mr Mondo ” Okay that was a weak excuse, but the truth was that I was flat broke, didn’t know anyone and spent most of my time ripping ships to bits and repairing them with the other yard hands.
“Well you’ve got a puzzle haven’t you: there’s the ship which is your biggest asset but then there’s the pilot who’s the biggest liability seeing as you’re a rookie”
I gave him a puzzled look.
“I’ll spell this one out shall I,” Mondo said, steepling his fingers “No-one wants to get killed flying with a rookie on the promise of being paid at the end of a trip but people will risk it if they have a share in the ship.”
I thought about this for a bit and it made sense but to give up a share in the ship when I’d just bought it: the thought killed me. Mondo wasn’t finished though, he could sense my disquiet
“It’s a tough decision: stay here for as long as it takes to scrape the cash or find some rookies who want to give it a shot. If you’ve had no luck with the data pad try looking around the other yards. You never know: you might find a few like-minded adventurers.” Hmm, it was like he already he a few people in mind but wanted me to find them myself, which was I guess, part of the game. I agreed to give it another few weeks and he was quite happy to keep me around since I was developing a knack for fixing guidance and control systems, possibly because of my interest in being a pilot, and maybe because I’d seen what happened when one of them went wrong.
I followed his advice and in my limited spare time began asking around the other yards in the station to see who was new and most importantly keen to “get a ride” as I’d heard it called and that’s how I bumped into Kzen. In the shipyard next to us, it was Partink’s den I think, I’d got friendly with a few of the yard hands and one of them told me about a wiry Minnie guy by the name of Kzen Tovenburg. He had a talent for improvisation and after a few drinks late one night in a bar, he agreed to sign on for a third share in the ship. We both agreed we were crazy and drank a toast to it. About a week after that Kzen ran into a friend of his, by the name of Podie who liked the idea of signing on for the final share in the ship and had a reputation for being a good shot planet side.
Well the day came, sooner than we thought, when we decided it was time to take the Imparior out for a short spin round the station. We’d got our days off all straightened out and one by one we assembled on the cramped flight deck of the ship.

Podie sat down in the gunners seat and flipped on the controls, idly toying with the data pads and making funny pew pew sounds. Kzen took over the engineers position and began a methodical check of the control switches. I took to the pilots seat and realised that, finally, this ship was going to fly.
It was at this point that Mondo, a man with an unnerving sense of timing, poked his head around the bulkhead door.
“Now you’re not going to fire the engines up in the yard are you?” He said sternly.
“I uh..” I was temporarily lost for words. Come to think of it, how did you get a ship out of the yards? Mondo stood there smiling at me whilst he waited for my next question.
“Okay, I give in, how do you get a ship out of the yards?”
“Weeeel now” He said putting his hands in his pockets “I know a man whose got a tug who might be able to do you a favour. I think you could get him down to maybe five hundred isk or so”
There was a collective cry of “Five hundred isk” from all three of us who were, to a man, flat broke as we’d spent our collective savings, which wasn’t saying much, on buying fuel for the ship. We got killed on the price because we couldn’t commit to a regular contract.
“We don’t have that kinda cash!” We all said at the same time.
“Oh don’t worry about that, if you all work hard in my yard for a few weeks you’ll save the cash in no time.”
A few more weeks was all it was going to take? I briefly toyed with the idea of firing up the engines and saying to hell with it but something told me that Mondo may have already considered that three ambitious young men might do something drastic and had taken precautions. I also knew that Mondo was not a man you crossed lightly and trashing his yard would’ve put me pretty high on his hit list.
I paused to gather my thoughts for a second “Is there any other stuff that we’re going to have to pay for before we fly?”
“Ah well now you ask the question there’s a few things that you might want to think about: station fees, docking and undocking charges, a pilot’s licence, a fuel contract and perhaps a float for repairs”
My heart sank to my boots: it was going to take us months to scare up enough cash to do that.
“How much is that going to cost us?” Kzen butted in with a resigned note in his voice.
He puffed out his cheeks ; you could see him doing to mental sums and coming to a number that he knew we weren’t going to like.
“I’ll tell you straight, it’s probably not a good idea to fly until you’ve got another 10 thou or so tucked away.”
“Mondo” I was annoyed enough to forget to call him mister “Why didn’t you tell me all this before I got the ship?”
Mondo laughed his big, booming laugh.
“Would you have bought this ship if I’d have told you how much more it was going to cost to get it out of here?” He said.
No I said to myself. No I’d have walked away, dreams dashed and probably done something stupid like buy an arable farm. Mondo didn’t need an answer from me, he knew what I would have said. His face softened a little and he walked into the cramped command deck.
“Guys come to my yard every few weeks with a wad of cash and a vague idea about flying a ship. I turn most of ‘em away ‘cos, cash or not, space ain’t the place for ‘em”
He looked around at us all one by one.
“You guys, you’re a different breed: you want to fly anything, no matter how small or what kind of compromises you make to get out there. But before you get out there you gotta know some basics. The kind of basics you don’t learn in class but the kind you learn right here, fixin’ stuff for me.”
We looked at each other, wondering whether he was kidding us or being straight. He held up his hands and carried on:
“My yard’s got a nickname: Mondo’s Academy. I’ve had quite a few hopeful pilots come through here and some even make it out into the space lanes.” He put extra emphasis on the last few words.
“Face it guys it’s good business if you come back in one piece and it’d be heartless of me to push rookies into space without some kinda’ practical experience. ”
With his little speech still spinning round our heads, he walked off the control deck and back into the yard but couldn’t resist a few parting words
“I’ll let you guys hang out for another ten minutes, after that I’m docking your pay”
For a second I thought Podie was going to get up and hit Mondo with something but after he stood up he obviously had second thoughts and sat down again.
“The bastard, the old bastard” Said Podie
“Bastard he might be, but I get the feeling he might be right” Contributed Kzen who was the most level headed of the three of us.
I didn’t say anything. I was busy rewinding all the conversations I’d had with Mondo and coming to the dawning realisation that the old bastard had, somehow, sold me a ship, got me to work in his yard and on top of all that paid him rent for the ship because I couldn’t take it anywhere. I’d also learned a heck of a lot about putting ships like this together again when they went wrong and found a crew I trusted.

“Welcome to Mondo’s Academy” I said to no-one in particular “One day we’re going to graduate from this frak hole and fly this thing out of here and maybe one day, we’ll come back and say thanks to the old bastard and buy a better ship off him”.

One day, I thought, one day.

To be continued in Part 3: Mondo’s Flight Academy.

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Mondo’s Flight Academy – Part 1

Published on 10. Feb, 2009 ... written by Sunforge.

Picture credit: Wotlankor

I can remember the first time I stopped just looking at the stars and started thinking about travelling to them. I was in my back yard and can’t have been more than seven years old when I saw something bright streak across the sky above me. I ran inside, full of childish excitement about my latest observation to ask my dad what could have caused such a phenomenon:

“Dunno” He grunted, without looking up from whatever journal he was reading. Now I don’t know about you but whenever my father didn’t answer a question it was normally because he felt it was something I shouldn’t know about (beer, girls, pulling the legs off spiders, the usual stuff), so I filed his answer away in my child’s mind for further enquiry. During my teenage years I enthusiastically investigated all the topics that my dear father wasn’t forthcoming about. I discovered pretty quickly that, in the main, girls didn’t like being investigated too much but space flight and beer made very good companions. So that, as they say was that, it was going to be a pilots life for me. I did of course harbour the secret plan that pilot plus spaceship equals babe magnet but I’ve yet to find a girl who was magnetically attracted to any ship that I fly. You live and learn I guess.

My father used to despair about my obsession with space travel and my frequent “junkie” visits to local scrap yards just in case there was something I could salvage from a genuine space craft. If I did find something that looked like it came from the skies above, I’d spend the whole day hacking it into small pieces to bring it home. As a result my folks became bemused hosts to a menagerie of ship parts, dead electronics and other paraphernalia that I’d drag back to their humble home.

As I grew up and my teenage years left me I took a bunch of random jobs and saved as much cash as I could so I could buy a ticket off the gravity bound lump of boredom that I called home so that I could do something better with my life. At one point I got so desperate to get a ship that I did, briefly, contemplate stealing one and lighting out for parts unknown to live the life of an outlaw. I was swiftly put off when I realised pretty much every ship had a transponder fitted that enabled Concord to work out where you were: or at least that’s what I was told by an off duty security guard one day over a beer. Scratch that I thought to myself: back to the two jobs and night school.

In the spare time I had left between all the work and evening classes I hung around the space port talking to freighter crews asking, and in some cases begging them, to take me up for a ride. Sometimes a kindly skipper would let me hitch with them, which was always a highlight of my month and other times I’d sit there staring at the ships as they passed through on their business. I began to wonder if I was going to be one of those sad, middle aged guys, you see sitting on the ‘mac outside the space port wondering where their best years went. I know, at the time, it wasn’t the easiest thing for me to accept but I had no flight experience and whilst I thought I was a good mechanic I couldn’t prove it to anyone else. That’s when I realised one very important thing about getting your first crew slot: you had to look like crew and most importantly talk like crew.

I’ll let you into a secret here: freighter captains inhabit the lowest rung of the space ladder. Everyone else looks down on them because they fly the unglamorous slots at a space port: midnight to 6 am. They also survive on very low margins and have to cut their costs to the bone, in harder times, just to keep flying. I noted after a while that these guys were also a breed apart; they didn’t wear fancy uniforms, nor did they care for manners or what school you went to. No: these guys cared about the next trip off planet and whether they had enough cash to keep their crates going. After spending a lot of time hanging around with crews and bugging them for scraps of information I learned to ape their mannerisms and even began to dress like them. If you want to know how an average freighter crewman dresses, just empty out your wardrobe and pick the worst stuff you’ve got then put it on, then go outside and roll in the dirt for a while, you’d be a shoo in for crew. So in possession of the secret code of dress like crew, act like crew and talk like crew I began my quest for a ride.

You know what? One day my little act worked and a freighter skipper hired me on the spot as second engineer to fill in for one of his guys, who’d gone down with food poisoning, or avoidance of the law, I was never quite sure which. This was going to be my first trip and like all first trips it was a memorable one. During my tenure as official second engineer, which lasted all of one flight, I learned an awful lot of lessons. I’ll give you a few examples: a dead guidance system isn’t helped by one of the crew being too tightly wound for the confines of the ship. Lesson two: a crowbar makes for an excellent improvised tranquiliser. Lesson three: when swinging a crowbar don’t get it caught in any overhead control cables, the pilot tends to panic if all his instruments go offline at the same time. Fortunately I was saved by my savant ability to work small wonders with duct tape although I’m not entirely sure I patched every cable back the right way round.

So the excitement kind of turned me round a little by the time we docked up. I needed a drink to settle the nerves and stop my hands shaking. I parted with a few isk and slapped a stiff scotch down the hatch. Did I tell you that the guidance system cut out during docking? Probably not, but the sound of a ship colliding with station shields is as impressive as the sound of a pilot swearing he’s going to kill you if he ever sees you again. The scotch dealt with the shaking hands and did wonders for my confidence, which in hindsight wasn’t so great, but hindsight is twenty-twenty and I was too young to know any better. Now all I had to do, I said to myself, is find a ship yard, buy a ship and ride off into the sunset, right? Yeah, right, you’d better read on hadn’t you.

After a couple of wrong turns I made it to the biggest shipyard in station and there, amongst the piles of scrap and bits of partly disassembled ship, I found the owner: Mondo Thursday. Over the years I’ve got to know Mondo pretty well but I’ve never been brave enough to ask him what kind of parent calls you Mondo Thursday. Mondo’s a cash only guy with a preference for avoiding the words tax, guarantee and working order but apart from those omissions in his character he’s pretty honest. On that first day I spent quite a while walking round his yard staring at the ships, some of them big, glamorous things that looked like they were meant for deep space exploration, others more prosaic industrial types. After about an hour of wandering round, mouth agape at the prices, I struck up a conversation with Mondo. It was a short conversation which ended when he sent me away for wasting his time because I was a kid. I felt like I’d been caught in the adult store and shooed out by the staff: nothing to see here kid, get back to where you belong.

The way I looked at it if I could survive being second engineer on a garbage flight I could get Mondo to sell me a ship, so I begged a place to crash that night and headed back the next morning.
“Howya doin’ kid?” It was Mondo’s standard greeting.
The kid bit grated with me, but I learned later on that he dropped the kid when you’d made your first flight and came back in one piece. It was his way of putting the universe to rights I guess.
“I’m not gonna give up Mr Mondo, I want a ship.” I said with grim determination in my voice.
Mondo looked me up and down as if assessing my credit worthiness.
“Cheap ship huh? Been saving your cash?” He said philosophically.
“Mr Mondo as long as I can afford it and the thing flies in a straight line, I’ll be happy.”
Mondo smiled at me, then he turned round to look at the long lines of ships in his yard.
“Well if you’re just starting out, why not try that little ship” he pointed to a battered looking orphan in the far corner of his yard and then carried on “Three previous owners, none of ‘em too careless, flies pretty well and you know what? I’ve had a good day so I’ll throw in a laser or two.”
I thought he’d stopped but it was one of his pregnant pauses, which you quickly learn not to interrupt. Mondo’s a man that likes to have some space around him so he can think.
“You’ll be paying cash” He said after his pause. I nodded “And you ain’t moving anything from my yard until ever last isk clears with the bank” He continued.
At least Mondo was being honest with me, so after a little haggling and some careful counting of my cash I ended up buying that battered little orphan in the corner. To seal the deal he poured me a scotch which went a small way to easing the pain of parting with my life’s savings. When we were done, he offered me some final words of wisdom:
“That ship’ll treat you well if you fix it up some” He said in a fatherly kind of way “And don’t get too ambitious the first few times out: that’s a great way to get a pilot’s funeral”.
I didn’t know what a pilots funeral was but I learned a little later that it meant dying in the cold vacuum of space. A pilot’s funeral indeed.

There I stood, the proud owner of a new ship, a variant of the Impairor class if you want to know, called “Old Mary”. I didn’t like the name it had, but I knew from traditions going back thousands of years that you never changed the name of a ship. I also knew that shooting Albatrosses wasn’t such a good idea either, which was more problematic, since I’d never seen an Albatross and was hoping they weren’t some kind of weird space creature. Traditions aside, I was one proud happy kid when I clambered on board and sat in the pilot’s chair on the control deck. I’d brought myself up on a solid diet of space fantasies with my buddies but I was the only one that’d got this far. Now I was a pilot sitting in my first ship with a thousand dreams all clamouring to be fulfilled and out there, in the limitless expanse of space, was where I could make it happen or die trying. I can’t tell you if I got misty eyed or wiped a tear from my eye but I do remember a swelling pride that came from knowing that I’d finally made it: I was, for better or worse, a pilot. My dreams of adventure were interrupted by Mondo poking his head round the bulkhead door to the control deck.
“So when’s your crew arriving kid?”
“My, uh, I need…” Something wasn’t right, I’m sure I’d read that the Impairor was a one man ship. “I don’t need a crew” I blurted out.
Mondo laughed.
“You don’t need a crew if you’re a pod pilot, that’s true. But you’re no pod pilot, so you’d better round up an engineer and a gunner if you’re going to get this thing out of here”.
Ah a crew: I’d spent everything I had on the ship and had nothing left to pay a crew with, except vague promises. I felt deflated and sheepish as I sat there with my hands on the control column.
Mondo was, I guess, bright enough to spot a man who had lost his way.
“Ah, you hadn’t figured this out had you? Well you’re not the first and you certainly won’t be the last.” He stopped for a second and pulled a data pad out from his pocket, passing it to me “Take this, it’s on the house, it’s got the recruitment pages”.

I took the data pad from him and began searching through the pages. It was disheartening reading: a lot of the crews were hardened veterans and they wanted more cash than I could have saved in a lifetime. It dawned on me that I had to make a hard choice: pick a veteran who’d fallen on hard times or take a chance with a few rookies, like me, who were looking to catch their first ride. To be honest it terrified me as I realised that I might not have what it takes to lead a crew and fly a ship at the same time. I also knew that I couldn’t go back: I’d bought this ship and I wasn’t going to give up my dream for the lack of a crew.

To be continued in Part 2: Mondo’s Flight Academy.

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